Volume 18 — CHAPTER XXV. ALL IS LOST!-THE PROSPECT BRIGHTENS.

Louis spent several evenings in succession with me. He briefly related how the day had passed, and afterwards took up the different events, and enlarged upon them. He often found enough to talk about for hours upon the sometimes ungrateful theme. I can still see him sitting opposite my mother and myself in the arbor in the little garden behind our house. Everything was calm and delightful around us in those beautiful autumn evenings. Louis alone was troubled. In vain we tried to restore peace to his soul: it was gone!

I never comprehended so thoroughly all the power of love as then. The profound sadness in which I was at that time overwhelmed rendered me inaccessible to such passionate outbreaks—such fits of elevation and depression as Louis was then subject to. I gazed at him with a cool, dispassionate eye, but with the affectionate compassion with which we regard a friend who is trying to make himself unhappy. I was astonished; sometimes I was even—yes, I acknowledge it—irritated to see how utterly he gave himself up to the passion he had allowed to develop so rapidly in his heart. Doubtless my poor friend remained resigned to the will of God, but not so completely as he thought. It is true, even when his mind was apparently the most agitated, we felt that piety was the overruling principle; but then, what a struggle there was between the divine Spirit, which always seeks to infuse calmness, and the gusts of passion that so easily result in a tempest!

Ah! I loved my husband too sincerely, and I recall other loves too pure, to dare assert that love is wrong. But believe me, my young friend, I do not exaggerate in adding that, if love is not always censurable, it is in danger of being so. We are told on every hand that love ennobles the heart and tends to elevate the mind; that it is the mainspring of great enterprises, and destructive of egotism. Yes, sometimes; ... but for love to effect such things, what watchfulness must not a person exercise over himself! How much he must distrust his weakness! What incessant recourse he must have to God! Without this, the love that might ennoble is only debasing, and to such a degree as to lead unawares, so to speak, to the commission of acts unworthy, not only of a Christian, but a man.

Allow me, my friend, continued Madame Agnes, to make use of a comparison, common enough, but which expresses my idea better than any other. Love is like generous wine. It must be used with sobriety and caution. Taken to excess, it goes to the head, and makes a fool of the wisest. You are young. You have never loved. Beware of the intoxication to which I allude! If you ever do love, watch over yourself; pray with fervor that God will give you the grace of self-control. The moment love becomes a passion—an overruling passion—ah! how its victim is to be pitied! When reason and conscience require it, you can—I mean with the divine assistance—banish love from the heart where it reigns; but believe me, it will leave you as an enemy leaves the country it has invaded—with fearful destruction behind. And first of all, it destroys one's peace of mind. The soul in which passion has reigned continues to bear marks of its ravages a long time after its extinction!...

Louis had arrived at this deplorable state; he had not full control over his heart; his happiness depended on the success of his love. Eugénie's image beset him everywhere. The word is hard, I confess, but it is true. He attached undue importance to whatever had the least bearing on this predominant thought. One day, he announced he had seen Albert walking with a melancholy air. He was sad, then. But why should he be sad unless his cousin had treated him coldly? And Louis hastily added by way of conclusion: "Mlle. Eugénie knows all I have to annoy me; she follows me in thought, she participates in my sorrows, she repays me for them...." Another day he had really seen her. She passed by his window, lovelier than ever, but more thoughtful. She was doubtless as anxious as he to be freed from the suspense in which they both were.

At last he came with important news. He had had the unhoped-for happiness of meeting Eugénie. She was advancing towards him, blushing with embarrassment, and was the first to greet him, with an expression so friendly as to leave no doubt of her sentiments. He returned her salutation, but was so overpowered with emotion that he could scarcely speak. After some words of no importance, he said: "I am going to leave you, mademoiselle."

Eugénie replied that she should regret to see him go. Then, as if to intimate he had enemies in the house, she added: "More than one—I wish I could say all—will be as afflicted as I at your departure. I refer to those you have benefited, and to whom you might continue to do good."

"Yes," said Louis, "it is hard to have to leave my work incomplete. However limited it is, my soul is in it. But I must not make myself out a better Christian than I am. It is not my work I shall leave with the most regret...." He dared not complete the expression of his thought.

Eugénie, generally so self-restrained, was visibly affected and intimidated. She was about to reply, when Mme. Smithson suddenly made her appearance. It looked as if she kept watch over her daughter. When she saw her talking with Louis, she could not conceal her annoyance. Saluting him in a freezing, insolent manner, she said: "Eugénie, what are you doing here? Your cousin is hunting everywhere for you to go to town with him!"

"There is no hurry," replied Eugénie, resuming her habitual coolness and dignity. She went away, taking leave of Louis with a visible air of decided sympathy.

This brief interview was sufficient to render Louis' hopes legitimate. I agreed with him that Eugénie would have behaved very differently if she regarded him with antipathy, or even with indifference.

"There is no doubt she knows all that has taken place," said I to my friend. "If there is any plot against you, she cannot fail to be aware of it, or, at least, suspect it. Under such circumstances, the very fact of her showing you unmistakable sympathy is a sufficient proof that she loves you."

At this time, an occurrence took place that had an unfortunate effect on me, and created new difficulties in Louis' path. It was then in the latter part of the month of September. The summer had been rainy and unpleasant. The rains increased in September, and soon caused an alarming rise in all the rivers. I was then at the end of my stay in the little village of St. M——, where I lived unknown to the Smithsons. Faithful to my request, Louis had told no one of my temporary residence in the vicinity.

Excuse me for giving you here some topographical details, perhaps somewhat difficult to comprehend, but necessary for you to know in order to understand what follows.

St. M—— is situated in a charming valley. In ordinary weather, the current of the Loire is below the level of the valley through which it winds with a majestic sweep. When a rise occurs, the plain would at once be inundated were it not protected by a dike which the water cannot cross. This dike did not extend to Mr. Smithson's manufactory, though but a short distance from St. M——. When, therefore, the river got very high, the mill ran the risk of being inundated. The dwelling-house alone was out of danger, being on an eminence beyond the reach of the waters of the Loire, even when it joined, swelled by the junction, the small stream that drove Mr. Smithson's machinery.

Having given you some idea of that region, I will now resume my story. One evening, then, towards the end of my stay at St. M——, Louis told me the Loire was rising fast. He assured me, however, before leaving, that there was no danger. "No matter how strong or high the current," he said, "the dike secures you from all danger. It is as firm as a rock."

My friend was mistaken. The bank had certain weak places which the water had undermined without any one's being aware of it.

Towards eleven o'clock, there was a tremendous noise in every direction. People were screaming and rushing around the house: the dike had given way! The water had reached the ground floor. My mother, my sister, and myself were lodged on the first story. The proprietor, beside himself, and frightened enough to alarm every one else, came up to tell us we must make haste to escape; his house was not solid; we were in danger of being carried away.

"The water is only rising slowly," he said. "By wading two or three hundred yards, we can reach the causeway. There we shall be safe; for the ground is firm, and the causeway extends to St. Denis. The inundation cannot reach that place, for it is built on a height."

I did not lose my presence of mind in the midst of the alarm. Victor's death had destroyed all attachment to life. If my mother and sister had not been in danger as well as myself, I should have remained where I was, trusting in God, not believing I was under any moral obligation to escape from a house which might withstand more than was supposed; as it did, in fact. But my mother and sister lost all reason, so to speak. Wild with terror, they fled, and I followed them. When we got down to the ground floor, we found the water had risen to the height of about six inches. There was a mournful sound in every direction which made us tremble. We sprang towards the causeway. I was at that time in delicate health. I had been suddenly roused from sleep. The distance I had to wade through the cold water had a fearful effect on me. When we reached the causeway, they had to carry me to St. Denis: I was incapable of walking.

While we were thus flying from danger, Louis committed a series of generous but imprudent acts which became a source of fresh difficulties to him. He was sitting alone in his chamber, when, about half-past ten, he heard a dull crash like a discharge of artillery at a distance. He hastily ran down into the court, entered the porter's lodge, and inquired where the noise came from that had alarmed him.

"I do not know, monsieur," replied the man, "but I have an idea that the levée has given way. At a great inundation twenty years ago, the Loire made a large hole in the dike, which caused a similar noise. I know something about it, for I was then living near...."

This was enough to alarm Louis, and just then a man passed with a torch in his hand, crying breathlessly: "The dike has given way at St. M——! Help! Quick! The village will be inundated!"

These words redoubled Louis' terror. St. M—— would be inundated; perhaps it was already.... I was there ill, and knew no one!

"Is there any danger of the water's reaching us?" asked Louis of the porter.

"The mill? Yes, ... but not Mr. Smithson's: that is impossible. The house stands twenty feet above the river."

Eugénie and her parents, then, had nothing to fear. I alone was in danger—in so great a danger that there was not a moment to be lost.

"Go and tell Mr. Smithson all that has happened," said Louis. "I am going away. I am obliged to. I shall be back in half an hour, or as soon as I can."

Of all the sacrifices Louis ever made, this was the most heroic. In fact, had he remained at his post, he might have saved the machinery, that was quite a loss to Mr. Smithson. Instead of that, he hurried off without any thought of the construction his enemies might put on his departure. To complete the unfortunate complication, Mr. Smithson had an attack of the gout that very day. When I afterwards alluded to his imprudence in thus risking his dearest interests, as well as life itself, Louis replied: "I knew Eugénie had nothing to fear; whereas, you were in danger. I had promised Victor on his death-bed to watch over you as he would himself. It was my duty to do as I did. If it were to do over again, I should do the same. Did Victor hesitate when he sprang into the water to save me? And he did not know who I was."

The house I had just left was about half a league from the mill. The water was beginning to reach the highway, though slowly. Louis kept on, regardless of all danger, and arrived at our house in feverish anxiety. I had been gone about fifteen minutes, and the water was much higher than when we left. Louis learned from a man who remained in a neighboring house that I was safe: we had all escaped by the causeway before there was any danger. He added that I must be at St. Denis by that time. Louis, reassured as to my fate, succeeded in reaching another road, more elevated, but not so direct to the mill. This road passed just above the Vinceneau house. When Louis arrived opposite the house, he saw the water had reached it. He heard screams mingled with oaths that came from the father, angry with his wife and daughter. Having returned home a few moments before, the drunken man was resisting the efforts of both women to induce him to escape. Louis appeared as if sent by Providence. He at once comprehended the state of affairs. His look overawed the drunken man, who left the house. They all four proceeded toward the mill. There was no nearer place of refuge. The first people they saw at their arrival were Durand, Albert, and some workmen. An insolent smile passed over Albert's face. He evidently suspected Louis of having abandoned everything for the purpose of saving Madeleine Vinceneau. But he did not dare say anything. Louis intimidated him much more than he could have wished. He resolved, however, to make a good use of what he had seen. Louis at once felt how unfortunate this combination of circumstances was, but the imminent danger they were in forced him to exertion. It was feared the walls of the manufactory might give way under the action of the water, if it got much higher, and it was gradually rising.

Louis set to work without any delay. The workmen, who had hastened from every part of the neighborhood to take refuge at Mr. Smithson's, began under his direction to remove the machinery that was still accessible. They afterwards propped up the walls, and, when these various arrangements were completed, Louis, who had taken charge of everything, occupied himself in providing temporary lodgings for the people driven out by the inundation.

Mme. Smithson and her daughter had come down to render assistance. The refugees were lodged in various buildings on a level with the house. Louis would have given everything he possessed for the opportunity of exchanging a few words with Eugénie at once, in order to forestall the odious suspicions Albert would be sure to excite in her mind. But he was obliged to relinquish the hope. Mme. Smithson and Albert followed her like a shadow. Louis could not approach her without finding one or the other at her side. Overcome by so fatiguing a night, he went towards morning to take a little repose. He felt sure fresh mortifications awaited him in consequence of what had just taken place, and he was right.

When he awoke after a few hours' sleep, his first care was to go and see Mr. Smithson. He related what he had done, without concealing the fact of his abandoning the mill to go to my assistance. Mr. Smithson was suffering severely from the gout. He was impatient at such a time to be on his feet, and was chafing with vexation.

"I cannot blame you, monsieur," he said. "The life of a friend is of more consequence than anything else. Whatever be the material loss I may have to endure at this time in consequence of your absence, I forbear complaining. But it was unfortunate things should happen so. If I had only been able to move!... But no.... You will acknowledge, monsieur, that I am the victim of misfortune.... Did you succeed, after all, in saving the person whose fate interested you more than anything else?..."

"She had made her escape before my arrival. I hurried back, but, on the way, a new incident occurred. An unfortunate family was on the point of perishing. I brought them with me, as there was no nearer asylum."

"Are these people employed at the mill?"

"The woman works here; her husband elsewhere."

"What is their name?"

"Vinceneau."

"I think I have heard of them. The father is a drunkard; the mother is an indolent woman."

"You may have learned these facts from Mlle. Eugénie, who takes an interest in the family, I believe. I recommended them to her."

"Was that proper?... I have every reason to think otherwise.... But it is done. We will say no more about it. And since I am so inopportunely confined to my bed, I must beg you to continue to take charge in my place, watch over the safety of the inundated buildings, provide for the wants of the people who have taken refuge here, and, above all, have everything done in order."

Louis was uneasy and far from being satisfied. There was a certain stiffness and ill-humor in Mr. Smithson's manner that made him think Albert had reported his return to the mill with the Vinceneau family. He attempted an explanation on this delicate subject.

"Mon Dieu! you seem very anxious about such a trifling affair," said Mr. Smithson. "It appears to me there is something of much more importance to be thought of now.... It is high time to try to remedy the harm done last night...."

Louis felt that, willing or not, he must await a more propitious time. He went away more depressed than ever.

The whole country around was inundated. I was obliged to send a boat for news concerning my young friend, and give him information about myself. The unfortunate people who had taken refuge at Mr. Smithson's were at once housed and made as comfortable as possible. It happened that Durand and some others were put in the same building with the Vinceneau family. Nothing occurred the first day worth relating. Louis watched in vain for an opportunity of seeing and speaking to Eugénie. He only saw her at a distance. The next morning—O unhoped-for happiness!—he met her on her way to one of the houses occupied by the refugees. She looked at him so coldly that he turned pale and his limbs almost gave way beneath him. But Eugénie was not timid. She had sought this interview, and was determined to attain her object.

"Whom have you put in that house?" she asked, pointing to the one assigned to the Vinceneaus, which was not two steps from the small building occupied by Louis himself.

"The Vinceneau family and some others," replied Louis.

At that name, Eugénie's lips contracted. An expression of displeasure and contempt passed across her face. Then, looking at Louis with a dignity that only rendered her the more beautiful, she said: "Then you still have charge of them? I thought you gave them up to me."

"I have had nothing to do with them till within two days, mademoiselle. It was enough to know you took an interest in their condition." He then briefly related all that had taken place the night of the inundation, and ended by speaking of the letter I had written to relieve his anxiety. He finished by presenting the letter to Eugénie, under the pretext of showing her the reproaches I addressed him. I wrote him that, before troubling himself about me, he ought to have been sure he was not needed at Mr. Smithson's.

Eugénie at first declined reading the letter. Then she took it with a pleasure she endeavored to conceal. Before reading it, she said:

"Why did you not tell me your friend was at St. M——?"

"I have been greatly preoccupied for some time, and I seldom see you, mademoiselle. It was in a manner impossible to tell you that my poor friend had come here to be quiet and gain new strength in solitude."

"I should have been pleased to see her." So saying, Eugénie, without appearing to attach any importance to it, read my letter from beginning to end.

Thus all Albert and Mme. Smithson's calculations were defeated. There is no need of my telling you the inference Louis' enemies had drawn from the interest he had manifested in the Vinceneau family.

"He left everything to save them, or rather, to save that girl," said Mme. Smithson. "He would have let us all perish rather than not save her."

My being at St. M——, and my letter, threw a very different light on everything. Thenceforth, Louis, dismissed by her father, and calumniated by her mother and Albert, was, in Eugénie's eyes, a victim. And he had risked his own life to save that of his friend. It is said that noble hearts, especially those of women, regard the rôle of victim as an attractive one.

When Eugénie left Louis, there was in the expression of her eyes, and in the tone of her voice, something so friendly and compassionate that he felt happier than he had for a long time.... To obtain this interview, Eugénie had been obliged to evade not only her mother's active vigilance, but that of her cousin and Fanny. This vigilance, suspended for a moment, became more active than ever during the following days. It was impossible to speak to Louis; but she saw him sometimes, and their eyes spoke intelligibly....

The water receded in the course of a week. Louis profited thereby to come and see me, and make me a sharer in his joy. I was then somewhat better. I passed the night of the inundation in fearful suffering, but felt relieved the following day. My dreadful attack of paralysis did not occur till some weeks afterwards. I little thought then I had symptoms of the seizure that has rendered my life so painful.

The refugees were still living at the manufactory, the Vinceneau family among them. Louis had scarcely returned to his room that night, when he heard a low knock at his door, and Madeleine Vinceneau presented herself before him.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE NAPOLEONIC IDEA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

FROM THE CIVILTA CATTOLICA.

I.

For several weeks past, we have heard much of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.[17] Nothing less than his mournful physical death, on the 9th of January, 1873, was needed to draw him from the oblivion to which Italian liberals consigned him after his political death of September 2, 1870. It would seem that from the imperial grave opened at Chiselhurst went forth a bitter reproach against the unexampled ingratitude of those who saw the tombstone of Sedan close over his empire with mute impassibility and secret joy. Now to the cowardly silence of two years succeeds an uproar of elegies and praises. Remorse for having left the conqueror of Solferino in the mire of the Meuse is lulled to sleep by the wailing of hired mourners; as if the shame of basely forsaking him could be masked behind a block of unblushing marble.

No man was ever more fatal to himself than Napoleon III. All which was his by usurpation or right turned against him in the end. His worst humiliations were the work of his own hands. He destroyed himself, and the words of the Christian Demosthenes were truer of him than of others: Nemo nisi a se ipso læditur.

Now, by a final mockery of fortune, he is punished after death by having bier and tomb dishonored with the apotheosis of the Italian party who laud to the skies the weapon that worked his ruin—the ruling idea of his reign.

This idea, which necessarily failed because it was impracticable, and in its failure reduced him to nothing, is his sole title to compassion or glory in the opinion of this faction. But as the cruel irony contains a historical lesson, useful for the present and the future, we will study it by the light of facts, incontestable except to the blind.

II.

Such were the contradictions, perplexities, and duplicity of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte upon the throne, that he was often believed to be a prince reigning at hap-hazard. Indeed, it is said, now that he has left the earth, that the history of his incomprehensible reign will be the most difficult work ever undertaken. This seems to us a mistake, if a distinction be made between the man and the prince, his life and his reign. The man and his life will always seem inextricable, for he used all means that suited his convenience, and in their choice gave preference to no moral rule or principle of honesty; following openly or hiddenly the mutable interest of each day. But the prince and his reign, in spite of apparent contradictions, are easily understood by the simple study of the political end which he invariably proposed to himself.

This end is not hidden. His youthful writings, and the series of his imperial documents, read by the light of the actions of his administration, make it plain. He aimed at reestablishing and consolidating in his dynasty the power of the First Empire, and at the elevation of France to the headship of Europe, reorganized in its territorial divisions according to the law of nationality, and in its institutions in accordance with the forms of Cæsarean democracy.

An author who has read his books, and confronted them with the achievements of his reign, thus sums up the new Napoleonic idea constantly pursued by Louis in his youth, middle life, and old age, in exile, in prison, and on the throne:

"Peoples distributed according to their needs and instincts, belonging each to a self-elected country, provided each with a constitution fixed yet democratic; devoted at their choice to works of civil industry destined to transform the world; Europe, free in her various nations, consolidated almost into a federated republic, with France as its centre; France aggrandized and forming the clasp in the strong chain of free intercourse; universal exhibitions to encourage nations in the exchange of reciprocal visits; European congresses, where governments, laying aside arms, could compose their differences; Paris, the imperial city par excellence, wonderfully embellished, raised to the honors of capital of the world, metropolis of wealth and wisdom, under the wing of the Napoleonic eagle, offering to the two hemispheres the rarest discoveries in science, masterpieces of art, exquisite refinements of luxury and civilization."[18]

Divisum imperium cum Jove Cæsar habet!

Such was the intoxicating dream of the life and reign of Napoleon III., the idea which he believed himself created to carry out—a combination of the designs of Henry IV. and the aspirations of Augustus, mounted on the frail pedestal of the principles of 1789.

In fact, proceeds our author, "Within and without the confines of the Empire, this idea was reduced to two words: reconstruction and reconciliation, based upon the principles of the French Revolution. Here was to be the general synthesis of all external and internal politics in France and Europe: Reconstruction of nations founded on national will within and without; effected by a single instrument—universal suffrage—applied to the determination of the nationality as well as of the sovereign and the government; reconciliation of nations among themselves, and of the divers classes composing them, thanks to an equal satisfaction of the rights and interests of all."[19]

That nothing might be wanting to the enchantment of his fair dream, the young prisoner of Ham contemplated a double mission of giving peace and glory to France. "War was to consolidate peace, imperial battles were to give repose to the world. Thus the famous device, The Empire and Peace, came to bear a sublime significance."[20]

In short, the Napoleonic idea had for its ultimate aim the aggrandizement and European omnipotence of France under the dynasty of the Bonapartes, through the universal means of popular suffrage with plébiscites, forming a basis of a new national and international right, opposed to the old historical right of peoples. The other three principles of territorial compensation, non-intervention and accomplished facts, were special means and passing aids to be used according to opportunity for carrying out intentions.

III.

Louis Napoleon received his political education from his uncle exiled in the Island of St. Helena, and from the Carbonari, among whom Ciro Menotti enrolled him in Tuscany, in the year 1831.[21] In these two schools he acquired the fundamental idea of reconstructing European countries according to nationality. But he did not see that, in the hands of Napoleon I. and of the Carbonari, this idea was a strong weapon of destruction, not a practical or powerful argument for reconstruction. Bonaparte, gaoler of European potentates, and the Carbonari, persecuted by them, wished to use it to destroy the order of things established by the Holy Alliance in the treaty of Vienna of 1815, upon the right, more or less defined, of legitimacy. On the pretext of restoring political nationality to peoples, the first Napoleon bequeathed to his heirs the command to excite Italy and Hungary against Austria; Poland against Russia and Prussia; Greece and the Christian principalities against Turkey; Ireland, Malta, and the Ionian Isles against England; hoping that the changes originating in this movement, and the gratitude of these nations, would make easy to his heirs the extension of French boundaries and the recovery of the imperial crown.

The Carbonari worked with the same pretext to overthrow princes and substitute themselves, with a view of introducing into states their anti-Christian and anti-social systems.

The so-called principle of nationality resolved itself, then, with Napoleon I. and the Carbonari, into a pure engine of war—into a battery which, after destroying the bulwarks of the opposite principle of legitimacy, should give into their hands nations and kingdoms. That Louis Napoleon, in prison, a fugitive, a conspirator, should support himself with this flattering principle, and dexterously dazzle with it the eyes of those who could help him to recover the sceptre of France, can be easily understood; but that, after obtaining this sceptre by a network of circumstances wholly foreign to the principle of nationality, he should adopt that principle as the final aim of his empire and the corner-stone of his own greatness and of French power—this, in truth, is hard to understand.

But that it was the case is only too clear. He spent the twenty years of his dominion over France in coloring the design which he had puzzled out twenty years before, dreaming over the memories of St. Helena, and plotting in the collieries of the Carbonari.

IV.

To a sagacious mind which had well weighed the true worth of the Napoleonic idea, even before the new emperor attempted its fulfilment, terrible dangers and obstacles must have presented themselves.

After a succession of wars and successful conspiracies had led nations to an independent reconstruction within natural frontiers, what increase of territory could have accrued to France?

Suppose Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Iberia adjusted on this principle, would their power have remained so equalized as to leave France secure of preponderance?

If Germany had been so reconstructed, to the certain advantage of Prussia, was there not a risk of exposing France to a shock which might have proved fatal?

According to the theory of natural limits, the aggrandizement which France could have demanded in compensation for protection and successful warfare would have been reduced to some additions towards the Alps, the Pyrenees, and in Flanders; to a few thousand square kilometres, and perhaps three or four millions of inhabitants. Towards the Rhine, we cannot see what the Empire could have claimed without contradicting the theory itself. Germany has maintained that Alsace and half of Lorraine, incorporated with French soil, are German, and has forced them to a legal annexation to her territory. Now, were these slender acquisitions, so disproportioned to the acquisitions of neighboring countries, worth the cost of turning Europe upside down, and subjecting France to a chance of political and military ruin?

Louis Napoleon rejoiced in the thought of one day resuscitating the fair name of Italy, extinguished for many years, and restoring it to provinces so long deprived of it. This sounds well; but was this resurrection to end in a united kingdom, or in the simple emancipation from foreign rule? And granted that unity could not be prevented, and that it should prove equal to the imaginary union of Spain and Portugal, was it really advantageous to create alongside of France, from a platonic love of nationality, two new states of twenty-five millions of souls each, capable of supplanting her later in the Mediterranean.[22] And if Prussia, taking advantage of the loss of Italy and Hungary to her rival Austria, had united in a single political and military body the scattered members of Germany, would it have been useful and hopeful for France to feel herself pressed on the other side by a kingdom or empire of fifty millions of inhabitants, a military race of the first order?

Moreover, what would have become of the Roman Pontiff in this renovation of countries, governments, and juridical laws. The Pope is a great moral power, the greatest in the world. If his independence were to give way before the principle of nationality, what would become of his religious liberty, so necessary to the public quiet of consciences. Could a pope, subject to an Italy constructed in any way soever, increase the light, peace, and tranquillity of France and the rest of Europe? Would the palace of the Vatican, changed into a prison, have accorded with the imagined splendors of the Tuileries?

Finally, a new international and national right, which should have sanctioned, in accordance with popular suffrage, the obligation of non-intervention and accomplished facts, far from reconciling nations and various classes of citizens among themselves by superseding the inalienable right of nature, would have become a firebrand of civil discord, an incentive to foreign wars, and a germ of revolutions which would have plunged Europe into the horrors of socialism.

An eagle eye was not needed to see and foresee these weighty dangers. However affairs might have turned, even if they had succeeded according to every wish, it is indubitable that the ship of Napoleonic politics, following in its navigation the star of this idea, must eventually have struck on three rocks, each one hard enough to send ship and pilot to the bottom: the Papacy, Germany, and Revolution. The Papacy, oppressed by the Italy of the Carbonari, would have taken from France her greatest moral force. Germany, in one way or another, strongly united in her armies, would have tried, as in 1813, to overwhelm the Empire. Revolution, kindled and fed from without, would have gathered strength in France to the ruin of the Empire.

These rocks were not only visible, but palpable to touch. Napoleon III. saw them, felt them, and used all the licit and illicit arts of his administration to avoid them. In vain; it was impossible. He should not have followed the guidance of his enchantress, his idea; following it, perdition was inevitable.

V.

Perhaps history offers no other example of a man who has grasped the sceptre under conditions so propitious for good and so opposed to evil as those under which Louis Napoleon Bonaparte began his reign; or of one who has so pertinaciously abused his advantages to his own ruin and that of others.

The vote of the better and larger portion of the French nation had raised him to the throne, that he might save them from the hydra of socialism, and stop the course of political changes in France. Europe, just recovering from terrible agitations, welcomed his elevation as a pledge of order and peace. Catholics of every country rejoiced over it almost as the reward of the uncontested restoration in Rome of the principality of S. Peter. Interest and conscience seemed to unite in inducing him to take the triumphal road of justice which must lead to certain glory.

But cum in honore esset non intellexit.[23] He seemed to wish to take this path. But, in fact, he showed that he was preparing to follow another by the ephemeral light of that idea which he worshipped on the imperial throne with the same devotion which he had professed in prison and in exile.

The Crimean war, to a participation in which he invited little Piedmont, predestined by him to enjoy the benefits of Italian resurrection, helped him to cut the knot of the Holy Alliance, to humble Russia and set her at enmity with Austria, to create by a plébiscite the first of his national unities—that of the Roumanian Principalities—and to introduce at the Congress of Paris that subalpine diplomacy which, endorsed by him, sowed the seeds of the contemplated Italian war.

Meanwhile, the daggers and bombs of the Pianori, Tibaldi, and Orsini came to remind him that, before being Emperor of the French, he had been an Italian Carbonaro, and that he was expected to keep his oaths. It is said that, after the explosion of Orsini's bombshell, a friend of the assassin, to whom Napoleon complained confidentially of this party persecution, replied: "You have forgotten that you are an Italian."

"What shall I do?" asked his majesty.

"Serve your country."

"Very good. But I am Emperor of the French, a nation hard to govern. Can I sacrifice the interests of my people to accommodate those of Italy?"

"No one will prevent you from studying the interests of France when you have promulgated the independence and secured the unity of your country. Italy first of all."[24]

But he had less need of spurring than was supposed.

After the secret negotiations of Plombières, he attacked Austria in the plains of Lombardy, and, having subdued her, he inaugurated the resurrection of Italy according to his idea, which, presiding over the work, showed itself unveiled, with all the magnificence of territorial compensation, universal suffrage, non-intervention, and accomplished facts, as we all know.

VI.

But the Napoleonic ship got lost irreparably among the three rocks above named. Between the Mincio and the Adige it met Germany in threatening guise; in Rome, the betrayed pontiff rose up; and in Paris revolution lifted her savage head. For eleven years Bonaparte struggled to save the ship from the straits into which his Italian enterprise had driven it; but the more earnest his efforts, the worse became the entanglement, until the tempest of 1870 split the vessel in the midst with awful shipwreck.

His crimes towards the Pope, the ignoble artifice of insults couched in reverential terms, of perfidy, lies, and hypocrisy, alienated from him not only Catholics, but all those who honored human loyalty and natural probity. The so-called Roman question, a compendium of the whole Italian question, ruined the credit of Napoleon III., unmasked him, and made him appear as inexorable history will show him to posterity—a monster of immorality, to use the apt expression of one of his former sycophants.[25]

Prussia, after checking him at the Mincio in 1859, cut short in his hands the thread of the web woven in 1863 to regenerate Poland on the plan of Italy. God did not permit a good and noble cause like that of Poland to be contaminated by the influence of the Napoleonic idea; and this seems to us an indication that he reserves to her a restoration worthy of herself and of her faith. Prussia also held him at bay during the Danish war, into which he threw himself with closed eyes, in the mad hope of conquering Mexico, and making it an empire after his own idea. This whim cost France a lake of blood, many millions of francs, and an indelible stain; it cost the unfortunate Maximilian of Austria his life, and his gifted wife her reason. Prussia solemnly mocked at him in the other war of 1866, when, leagued with Italy by his consent, she attacked the Austrian Empire.

It was the beginning of that political and military unity of Germany which was destined to make him pay dear for the work of unity accomplished beyond the Alps by so many crimes.[26]

Lastly, Prussia, choosing the occasion of the vacancy of the Spanish throne, and seconded by him in the promotion of an Iberian unity like that of Italy, and prepared by a subalpine marriage, drew him into the toils where he left his crown and his honor.

Step by step with the barriers opposed by Prussia to the foolish policy of Napoleon III. in Europe went the anxieties caused in the empire by revolution. Losing gradually the support of the honest Catholic plurality of the French, he thought to reinforce himself by flattering his enemy, demagogism, and by unchaining gradually passions irreligious, anarchical, destructive to civilization. Taking all restraint from the press, he removed every bar to theatrical license, gave unchecked liberty to villany, free course to nefarious impiety and a Babylonish libertinism, and finished by opening the doors to public schools of socialism. But as outside France his duplicity and cowardly frauds had drawn upon him the hatred and contempt of accomplices and beneficiaries, so at home they excited discontent and distrust among all parties.

On the 2d and 4th of September, 1870, he reaped at Sedan and in Paris the crop sowed by him in 1859. Germany broke his sword, and the Revolution his sceptre. The Napoleonic idea touched the apex of its triumphs.

VII.

The old Prince Theodore of Metternich, after 1849, predicted of Louis Bonaparte, then only President of the French Republic, that he would restore the Empire, and ruin himself as revolutionary emperor in Italy. Donoso Cortès, Marquis of Valdegamas, predicted a little later that Bonaparte, after becoming emperor, would work very hard, but the fruits of his labors would be enjoyed by another; by whom he could not say. Both these shrewd statesmen knew Louis Napoleon, the secret chains which bound him to his party, and the idea which clouded his mind, and both hit the mark; for Napoleon III. made every effort throughout his reign to play the revolutionary emperor in Italy; and, with all his refined policy, he worked for no one but the King of Prussia. Thanks to this policy, William enjoys the vassalage of the only two national unities created by the Napoleonic idea: the Roumanian, whose head is a Prussian prince, and the Italian, whose kingdom has become a Prussian regiment of hussars. He enjoys the German Empire reared on the ruins of that of France; and, moreover, he enjoys European supremacy, taken from France with the keys of Paris, and five milliards poured by her into the Prussian treasury, to pay expenses. In his own good time we shall see for whom Bismarck has made and still makes the King of Prussia work.

Such are the weighty consequences of that idea whose execution Bonaparte believed was to make the world over again, and raise his race and France to the summit of power—a political calamity, military ruin, and a dynastic downfall the most terrible which history has to record.

In conclusion, the dogma of nationality for which French liberalism played the fool with Napoleon has caused the loss to France of two provinces as opulent as those which Bonaparte took from Italy in homage to the same dogma. The principle of non-intervention, so carefully guarded by Bonaparte at the cost of the Roman Pontiff, and so loudly applauded by French liberalism, has borne fruit to France in her hour of sorest need, in the desertion of all those states, and especially of Italy, who owed their existence to French blood, and gold, and honor.

The new right of 1789, perfected by Napoleonic Carbonarism, of which Bonaparte, with the approval of French liberalism, made himself the apostle in Europe to the disturbance of the best-ordered countries, has sprung up for France in the joys of Sept. 4, 1870, in the delights of the Commune of 1871, and in the comfort of her present peace and security.

Thus has Bonaparte's idea crushed him and reduced him to nothing. The unhappy man has had not only the anguish of suffering historical dishonor while yet alive, but also that sharpest pang of seeing all the most celebrated works of his reign destroyed. The destruction, military, moral, political, and in part material, of France, which he hoped to raise to the summit of greatness; the destruction of the palaces of Saint Cloud and the Tuileries, embellished by him with Asiatic magnificence; the destruction of popular votes, those wings which bore him from exile to the throne; of the treaty of Paris, that crowned his Crimean victories; of the glory of the French name in Mexico with the empire founded by him; of the treaty of Prague, for which he well-nigh sweated blood in opposing the union of Germany under Prussia: in short, all his enterprises have resulted in smoke. Only one remains—the subalpine kingdom of Italy, for whose formation and support the wretched man staked crown and honor. But before closing his eyes for ever, he tasted the sweetness of his last treachery in seeing that kingdom pass from his bondage to that of the conqueror of France. If God still allows it to his soul, he may now see his beloved Italy, with a Prussian helmet on her head, bend over his tomb, and shed two crocodile's tears—the only kind of tears which he deserved. Let us see what the Napoleonic idea has lavished upon her blind idolater—the defeat at Sedan, the burning of Paris, the lonely tomb at Chiselhurst. It was an idea conceived without God and his Christ, and against them, and therefore unable to bring forth anything but ruin and death. And certain ruin and death it will bring on him who shall hope to live and grow great under its influence.

FOOTNOTES:

MY FRIEND AND HIS STORY.

I had been spending the winter with a friend in poor health in the South of France. I will not name the place, but it was one of the loveliest spots on the northern Mediterranean coast. Perhaps I shall have something to tell of it at another time.

After prolonging our stay till we began to feel that a change would be beneficial, we travelled on along the glorious old Cornice road into Italy, and sat ourselves down among the palms and olives of a region that, on account of its eastern vegetation and general likeness to the Holy Land, is often called "the Jericho of the Riviera."[27] For, in truth, when the traveller climbs the steep slopes and staircases of that old town, pierced by narrow, winding troughs of streets, tied together, as it were, by old crumbling bridges and arches, built as a protection against continual earthquakes; and after groping through what is more like a labyrinth of subterranean caves than a town of civilized build, he gains the crest of the hill, and looks down from the sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin which is its crown, the actual Holy Land itself seems spread below his feet. There are the very outlines of Palestine: The stony slabs and tilted strata of crag and ridge; the aromatic shrubs; the wealth of sad olives, fruit-bearing to an extraordinary degree; the vast tanks, haunted by bright-green, persistently serenading frogs; the lizards darting in the hot glare; the flat-topped, low houses, and the women carrying jars of the identical Eastern forms on their heads. The very dark-skinned men and women themselves have the like sad, sweet, mournful Eastern eyes; for throughout the Riviera there is a large admixture of Arab blood, as many Arab words are crystallized in the strange, rough patois of the speech.

In this wild, bright, solemn country, I found and made the friend whose story I am going to tell; and, if it is disappointing at first to the expectant, I shall ask them to wait till they near the end.

We lived in a not very comfortable boarding-house outside the town, chosen on account of its position, and being quite removed from the noise of the sea, which those acquainted with the Mediterranean will thoroughly understand; for there is no noisier or more aggravating sea-shore than that which is poetically the tideless, waveless, sapphire-like mirror of the old Tyrrhenian. In this house I soon made out my friend—a white dog with black points, shaven to the shoulders, and of Spitz breed, as his tail, put on very high up, and twisted with a jaunty, self-asserting swirl over his back, denoted, but with an undoubted bar sinister in his shield—some English spaniel or terrier "drop," which, strange to say, gave him a power of persistence, a dauntless courage, and loving faithfulness, such as I never saw in any dog before; and yet I know about dogs and dog ways, too.

The first thing my friend did—his name was Cicarello, abbreviated to Cico, and anglicized to Chick—was to lift himself up very high on his toes, erect every hair into a wire, and growl so as to show all his beautiful young white teeth at my approach and outstretched hand.

"Chick! how dare you, sir? Come along, be a good little dog, and let me scratch your back; you don't know how nice it is, dear!"

But the growling and defiant looks continued, as Chick lay down on his own chosen step of the stairs. I pushed him with my foot, and said emphatically:

"Chick! you're a nasty little dog!" At which candid opinion, Chick, sulkier and crosser than ever, settled himself to sleep.

It was not long, however, before Chick, like all other dogs, succumbed to the dog mesmerism of that hearty good-will and affection in which dogs are apt to trust with a much more generous confidence than men. He began by licking my hand, then came to my room for water, and at last was won from his disreputable habits of straying from one wine-shop to another about the town, into which he had fallen from not being made happy and comfortable at home. One day, he condescended to offer himself for a walk, and we went through sundry tortuous lanes to some olive-terraces above the town. Once there, the dog's unbounded delight was pretty to see. He rolled among the fresh grass and hop-clover, thickly sprinkled with lovely red gladioli; he careered in and out of the olive-trees, as if weaving some mystic, invisible witch-web; and then, rushing back to me, barking sharply in a high falsetto, he sprawled at full length on the ground, wagging his bushy plume over his back, and saying, in the clearest speech of his wonderful brown eyes, "I am not a nasty little dog now. Thank you for making me so happy!"

My friend, whom I had long loved with all my heart, was easily made happy. The one thing necessary to him was some sort of master whom he could love. With any such, his queer, sullen temper brightened, his thoroughly obstinate will grew docile, his eyes watched every motion and indication showing his master's wishes, and, if anything were given into his charge, no amount of tempting or frightening could win or scare him from his trust. His chiefest delight was running after a stone or cork, in which also his ways were special to himself. When the stone was found or dug up—that very stone and no other—Chick would stand with one paw placed upon it, looking down at it with crest and tippet erect, and exactly as if it were some sort of live game. If no notice were taken of his dumb appeal, he would snatch up the stone, and carry it on, but always with appealing looks to have it thrown again. On the olive-terraces, among the grass and wild flowers, where he always became intensely excited, he would run round the stone, growling, roll upon it in a kind of frenzy, and snap at every one who came near. When I gravely called or spoke to him, he would relinquish this Berserk mood, and, wagging his brush, lick my hand as if to beg pardon for such childishness, and return to the decent sobrieties of ordinary life. I need scarcely say that it was only because the over-excitement was bad for himself that he was ever controlled in his fancies and conceits; for dogs, even more than children, should be allowed to express their own character and make their own happiness, in unimportant things, in their own way.

Chick attached himself to me in the most persistent way. He took walks with me, scratched at the room doors to be where I was, ran up and down stairs after me on every errand, used my room, like the dogs at home, as the "United Dogs' Service," and slept on a chair at the foot of my bed. Even when left at the church door during daily Mass, when I vainly thought him securely pent within gates and rails, the padded door would be shoved open, and Chick, with his ears and twisted tail

"Cocked fu' sprush,"

and his whole bearing that of "the right man in the right place," would scuttle over the stone pavement, scent me out, and ensconce himself beside my chair. At meals he took his seat beside me, in which he would rear himself up unbidden in the drollest way, lolling back with perfect ease, and gracefully holding one forepaw higher than the other, as if addressing the party. Sometimes he would even emphasize his remarks by bringing one paw down on the table, and, amid the shouts of laughter he occasioned, would look us steadily in the face, as if enjoying the joke as well as the rest. He learnt to sit up with a shawl round him, a napkin-ring on his nose, and one crowning his head; to hold biscuit on his nose untouched till bidden to eat, and even to stand quite upright in the corner, watching with the gravest intelligence till he was told to come out. In short, as I said before, if the one motive-power of love were found, Chick's genius seemed to know no limit.

But, meanwhile, the day was drawing near when the deep and most real grief must be suffered of leaving my friend. Our temporary rest was over, and our faces were bound to be turned towards home. Chick, also, took good note of the preparations for departure, and I read in his eyes that he guessed their import, and knew that our separation was drawing near. Never for an instant would he let me move out of his sight, except for Mass, when I locked him up in my room. His exceeding joy at my return was one of the most touching things I ever felt. When every other demonstration had been made, he would get up on his hind legs, and gently lick my face, not as a dog usually does, but just putting out his tongue, and touching my cheek. This special act always seemed to say, "Can you go away and leave me behind? Why not take me with you?"

The consciousness of this feeling wrought so strongly that the question was seriously mooted between my friend and me of buying Chick and carrying him with us to England. But there were great difficulties in the way. The expense was no small addition, besides the anxiety and added fatigue of another fresh thing to lead about and struggle for in stations and waiting-rooms, being, as we were, only a party of women, neither strong nor well, and already burdened with a superfluity of luggage and impedimenta. So the mournful decision was come to that it could not be. Our last walks were taken, our last gambols on the olive-terraces played out, and it seemed to me as if every hour Chick's eyes became more tenderly loving and more devotedly faithful. And soon I should be far out of reach and ken, while he must be left in the careless, indifferent, dog-ignorant hands to which he belonged. Doubtless the many well-read and cultivated people who are in the habit of reading this periodical have already set me down as a remarkably foolish person; but what will they say when I confess there were moments when the very thought of leaving Chick without certain bed and board, water at will, and sympathy in his ways and love, made me weep real, scalding tears, and not a few?

Out of the very abundance of thoughts and pain some light appeared; and one fine day, when the heat was fierce, I put on my hat, Chick took up a stone, and we both made our way to a large villa in the neighborhood, occupied by a family from Wales, whose acquaintance we had happily made: what sort of people they were the story of my friend will show, at least to those, in my eyes, the truest aristocracy of the world—the people who have an inbred love of dogs! On this visit, I remarked that Chick, instead of walking on his toes and wiring his hair as he usually did with strangers, accepted the whole party as friends, and showed off all his stock of accomplishments with as much docility as if we had been at home by ourselves. On the other side, Mr. and Mrs. Griffith—as I shall call them—thoroughly appreciated the dog, and, seeing this, I made my proposition—an unblushing one, considering that they had already rescued two other dogs from ill usage—that they should also possess themselves of Chick. Having once broken the ice, I launched into a moving description of his wretched plight, and greater misery when we should have gone, as well as the reward they would reap from Chick's delightful ways. They laughingly took it all in good part, and said, if they had not already an Italian Spitz which they had sent home, and a dancing dog just brought on their hands, they might have thought of Chick. I took poor Chickie home, therefore, with a heavy heart, though I did not yet give up all hope; and, because I did not, I put him under S. Anthony's care, and asked him to suggest to these dear people to buy Chick and give him a happy home.

The eve of our departure was a few days after this, and, when Chick followed me up-stairs to bed as usual, I took him in my arms, and told him I was going away; that nothing on earth should ever have made me leave him but the being obliged to do so; that I had put him under S. Anthony's care, who I was sure would find him a friend; and that he must be a good, brave little dog, and hold on for the present without running away. Chick licked away my tears, looking at me with his brave brown eyes full of trust, as I kissed him over and over again before going to bed. But afterwards I could never tell how many more tears I shed at leaving Chick friendless and alone.

The next morning very early, I wrote a last appeal to Mrs. Griffith, which I carried out to the post myself, that it might be sure to reach her; and then the carriage came to the door, and we drove away, seeing Chick to the last on the door-step, sorrowfully looking after us with his steady brown eyes.

It was a long time before I myself learnt the second chapter of my dear friend's story. Mrs. Griffith duly got the note, and, being much touched by it, she went to the boarding-house to call on me, thinking that I had been left behind for a week, not yet recovered from an illness, and also wishing to get another view of Chick. Neither of these objects being gained, she returned home with a strong feeling "borne in" upon her mind that Chick must be rescued at any inconvenience to themselves. Not long afterwards, she and her husband were asked by the owner of the boarding-house to go and look at it, as she wished to sell or let it on lease. They both accordingly went, chiefly with a view to seeing Chick. After a long visit and much conversation, Mrs. Griffith did at length see the poor little dog lying panting in the sun in the garden, where there was not an atom of shade. She called the attention of the owner to him, and told her that the dog was suffering and in great want of water. His mistress made some careless reply as usual, and passed on, still talking, down the stairs, when, at the front door, Mrs. Griffith chanced to look down into the court, and there saw poor little Chick stretched on his back in the violent convulsions of a fit. She hastily summoned her husband, who, after one glance, vanished into the lower regions, instinctively found a pump and a large pan, and reappeared to drench the poor little dog with a cold-water bath, strongly remonstrating with his owner the while that any one with eyes or ears could have seen how suffering the animal had been from heat and thirst.

Ah! Chickie! Chickie! did any thought cross your dog's mind then of the "United Dogs' Service" of my room? Alas! when I heard of it, how did I not feel for my dear little friend, proclaiming by every mute appeal his urgent need, and bravely suffering on in silence near to death, while not a hand was lifted to give him even the cup of cold water which brings with the gift its reward! By dint of much bathing and rubbing for nearly an hour from Mr. and Mrs. Griffith, while his owner looked on in stupid amazement at this waste of time and trouble on "only a dog," Chick recovered breath and life and was able to take some physic administered by the same kind hands. And then, at last, an agreement was entered into that he should be made over to these generous friends on certain conditions, one of which was that he should be left to guard the house where he was for the present; for though much was not given to my poor little friend, much was required from him by his wretched masters.

A few days afterwards, Mrs. Griffith felt restless and uneasy, and told her husband she should like to have Chick in their possession before the time stipulated; for she felt afraid he might come under the fresh police regulations for putting an end to all stray dogs during the raging heat. Mr. Griffith laughed at her "fidgets," but went to the boarding-house, nevertheless, to comply with her wishes. He was met at the door with the announcement that Chick had run away, and had not been heard of for two days! Grieved and completely disgusted at the heartless neglect which had again driven the poor dog from his so-called home, Mr. Griffith hurried back to his wife with the news, and she, like the true woman and mother she is, sat down and burst into tears. Mr. Griffith caught up his hat, and hurried out to the police, set several Italian boys whom he taught, and who loved him well, to search everywhere for the missing Chick, and did not return to his own house till late, completely worn out with the heat and worry.

Some time later, he was told that one of his Italian boys had come, and was asking to see him; and, as soon as he was ordered in, the boy, who knew what pain he was giving, sorrowfully told his news that the police had seized upon the "bravo Cico"—the half-shaven dog whom everybody knew and loved—"and...."

"Well, and where is he?" cried Mrs. Griffith, her husband, and the child in one breath.

"Ah! signora, Cico è morto!" (Cico is dead).

"Dead! How do you know? Where?"

"Signora, the police take the dogs they find to the Mola (breakwater), and, if they are not claimed before the next night, they make away with them. Ah! Cico was a bravo, bravo canino!" (a brave little dog).

Looking at his wife's face, Mr. Griffith quickly despatched the boy, and, once more taking up his hat, this brave and good man again sought the police office, where the news was confirmed that Chick was dead. Still hoping against hope, Mr. Griffith said, "There are many white and black dogs; I should like to see his dead body."

This, backed by other arguments, admitted of no demur. The foreign English lord must be humored in his whim, and he should be conducted to the poor dead Chickie's dungeon. On the way, Mr. Griffith amazed his wife by rushing into their house like a "fire-flaught," calling out for a piece of cold meat and a roll and butter "as quick as possible!"

"But Chickie's dead—the poor dog's dead!" she began. But he waved his hand and vanished, running down the street with his coat flying in the wind. He, too, almost flew across the reach of sand and driftwood to the Mola, and up to the prison door of the dark, airless, filthy hole into which poor little Chick had been thrust, like a two-legged criminal guilty of some horrible crime, from the last Saturday afternoon till this present Monday night. Not a single drop of water had been vouchsafed him; but the fiendish cruelty which characterizes people ignorant of the habits and sufferings of animals, while denying the dog this one necessary, had instigated the police to leave him a large piece of poisoned meat.

"Signore," said a magisterial voice from among the idle crowd which had gathered to see what miracles the English lord was going to work—"signore, if the dog will not eat, he is mad, and you must not take him away!" And a lump of hard, mouldy black bread was thrown down before the seemingly lifeless body of poor little Chick, who of course made no sign.

"E matto! E matto!" (he is mad) cried many voices.

"Chickie! Chickie! dear little doggie, come and speak to me!" cried Mr. Griffith, who was nearly beside himself at the bare sight of what the bright, happy little creature had become, and the thought of what his sufferings had been. Chickie heard the voice, recognized his kind helper, opened his eyes, and, feebly dragging himself up from the ground, came forward a step or two towards the door, which caused a general stir of dread and horror among the spectators, and made the police half close the door, lest the terrible monster should break loose upon them. Mr. Griffith forced himself into the opening, and threw his bit of cold meat to Chick; but he had suffered too much to be able to eat it, and turned from it with disgust, though he feebly wagged his brush in acknowledgment to his kind friend. Almost in despair, but calling the dog by every coaxing, caressing name he could think of, Mr. Griffith then held out to him a morsel of well-buttered roll, and, again wagging his brush, Chick smelt at it, took it, and ate the whole of it in the presence of the august crowd.

Mr. Griffith felt that he could throw up his hat, or dance for joy, or misbehave in any other way which was most unbecoming to a staid country gentleman; but all he actually did was to pull a piece of cord quickly out of his pocket, and say, "I can take the dog home with me now, can't I?"

"You can take him to the owner, signore. And on payment of ten francs to the police" (for the poisoned meat?), "and with the owner's consent, the dog will be yours."

The prison door was then opened a little wider for the cord to be tied round Chick's neck, when, behold! he spied the moment of escape, and, refreshed with his morsel of roll, and not knowing what more the cruelty of man would devise, the plucky little dog rushed through the crowd, and raced along the shore to the town as hard as he could go, Mr. Griffith after him at the top of his speed, to a certain low wine-shop, where also Chick had a true friend. And there Mr. Griffith found him, after drinking nearly a bucketful of water, in the convulsions of another and most terrible fit! His generous friend carried him home in his arms, tucked up his sleeves and gave him a warm bath, physicked him, nursed him, washed and combed the vermin of his loathsome prison-hole from him, and, with untiring pains and a love that never wearied, brought the brave little doggie back to life and health.

The story of my friend is told. Chick's last appearance in his native town was when making a triumphal progress through it in a carriage with his master and mistress; he sitting up on his hind legs in his old fashion, lolling back against the carriage-cushion with one paw raised, while every man and boy they met saluted the English lord and lady with lifted hats and delighted cries of "Cico! Cicarello! Bravo! bravo canino!" Chick was eventually brought home to England by that best of masters whom S. Anthony had found for him, to whom he has attached himself so devotedly that nothing but force will induce him to leave him by night or day. And that master and I are of one mind—that a braver, cleverer, more loving, or more faithful dog could never be found.

FOOTNOTES:

THE LOVE OF GOD.

The chief thing that is to be regarded in him that doth anything, is the will and love wherewithal he doeth it. O Redeemer of the world! although thou has done much for us, and given us great gifts, and hast delivered us from many mischiefs, and hast promised us thy eternal and everlasting bliss, yet is all this, being so much that it maketh one astonished and afraid, far less than the love that thou bearest us. For love thou gavest thyself unto us: thou camest down from heaven, thou tookest flesh, and diest; and through the unspeakable love that thou borest us, thou hast created and redeemed us, and gavest thyself unto us in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, and deliveredst us from so many evils, and promisest us so great goods. Thy love is of such force towards us, that the least favors that thou doest us, coming polished with such singular fine love, we are never able to be sufficiently thankful for it, nor to requite, although we should thrust ourselves into flaming furnaces for love of thee.—Southwell.

A FRENCH POET.[28]

It is often said among those who assert much and investigate little that the control of science, of literature, and of art has passed beyond the domain of the ancient church, that her children have given up the contest, and that she no longer produces distinguished men. It seems to be an understood thing that sound Catholicism is not consistent with proficiency in any branch of the higher pursuits, and that every artist, scientist, and littérateur ceases to be a good Christian in proportion as he is successful in his profession. There has been some apparent excuse for such an impression gaining ground, but it is none the less an erroneous impression. Especially of late years has it been triumphantly refuted, and nowhere with more éclat than in the very stronghold, the sanctum sanctorum of free thought and private judgment—England. There has arisen in that land of successful and jubilant materialism, that citadel of rationalism in matters of religion, a knot of men formidable for their learning, their eloquence, their taste, and their wit. But if even in England, under the shadow that was yet left hanging over the church from the effects of three hundred years of repression, the vitality of the old "olive-tree"[29] was amply proved by the grafting in and prosperous growth of so many new branches, still more was the fruitfulness of the ancient mother and mistress of all knowledge shown forth in Catholic France. That country has suffered sorely; it has been the experimental plaything of the world, it has been torn by unchristian politicians, gagged by Cæsarism, drenched in blood by demagogism; it has been deluged with a literature as shameless as it was attractive, until the name of France has become identified in the minds of many with deliberate and organized immorality. It is asserted that the names of her most famous novelists are synonymes of licentiousness; that her philosophers openly preach the grossest materialism; and that those of her littérateurs who are not absolute libertines are undisguised Sybarites. Never was country so thoroughly and deplorably misrepresented as this Catholic land, whence have come three-fourths of the missionaries of the world, armies of Sisters of Charity, the most impetuous and the bravest of the Pope's defenders, the most indefatigable scientific explorers, the purest of political reformers. If France must be judged by her literature, she can point to Montalembert, Ozanam, Albert de Broglie, Eugénie de Guérin, Louis Veuillot, Dupanloup, Rio, Lacordaire, Mme. Craven, Pontmartin, La Morvonnais, as well as to Balzac, Dumas, Eugène Sue, George Sand, and Alfred de Musset. If by her art, De la Roche, Ary Scheffer, Hippolyte Flandrin, vindicate her old Catholic historical pre-eminence; if by her science and her philosophy, there are Ampère, Berryer, Villemain, even Cousin. Everywhere the old sap is coursing freely, and in the ranks of all professions are champions ready to do battle for the old faith that made France a "grande nation." But those we have mentioned, especially the distinguished and brilliant cluster, Montalembert, de Broglie, Lacordaire, and Dupanloup, had eschewed the old legitimist traditions, and, without detracting from their fame, we may say that they were eminently men of the XIXth century. The charm and poetry of chivalry, fidelity to an exiled race, the spell of the white flag and the golden fleur-de-lis, were in their minds things of the past; noble and beautiful weapons, it is true, but useless for the present emergency, like the enamelled armor and jewelled daggers which we reverently admire in our national museums. The old monarchical traditions needed a champion in the field of literature where their conscientious and respectful opponents were so brilliantly represented, and this they found in Jean Reboul, the subject of this memoir.

One would have thought that the legitimist poet would have arisen from some lonely castle of Brittany, and have borne a name which twenty generations of mediæval heroes had made famous in song. One would have pictured him as the melancholy, high-spirited descendant of Crusaders, orphaned by the Vendean war, inspired by the influence of the ocean and the majestic solitude of the landes.[30]

He would be likely to be a Christian Byron, a modern Ossian, far removed from contact with the world, almost a prophet as well as a poet. But as if to render his personality more marked, and his partisanship more striking, the champion of legitimacy was none of these things. Instead of being a noble, he was a baker; instead of a solitary, a busy man of the world—even a deputy in the French Assembly in 1840. Who would have dreamt this? Yet when God chose a king for Israel, he did not call a man of exalted family to the throne, but "a son of Jemini of the least tribe of Israel, and his kindred the last among all the families of the tribe of Benjamin."[31] So it fell out with the representative who, among the constellation of more than ordinary brilliancy which marked the beginning of this century in France, was to uphold the old political faith of the land. There was doubtless some wise reason for this singular and unexpected choice. Reboul was a man of the people, a worker for his bread, that it might be known what the people could do when led by faith and loyalty; he was from Nîmes, in the south of France, not far from Lyons and Marseilles, that his attitude might be a perpetual protest against the wave of communism and revolution which had its source in the south; he was, so to speak, a descendant of the Romans—for Nîmes was a flourishing Roman colony and its people are said to retain much of the massiveness of the Roman character—that he might rebuke the mistaken notion of those who make of the old republic a type of modern anarchy, and desecrate the names of Lucretia and Cornelia by bestowing them on the tricoteuses[32] of 1793, or the pétroleuses of 1870. It must have been a special consolation to the exiled representative of the Bourbons, the object of such devoted and romantic loyalty, to follow the successes and receive the outspoken sympathy of so unexpected and so staunch an adherent. Uncompromising in his championship of the "drapeau blanc," Reboul was politically a host in himself, and, untrammelled as he was by the traditions and prejudices that hedged in the nobles of the party, he was able to mingle with all classes, speak to all men, treat with all parties, and yet to carry his allegiance through all obstacles, unimpaired and even unsuspected.

Jean Reboul was born at Nîmes on the 23d of January, 1796. His father was a locksmith and in very modest circumstances. His mother was early left a widow, with four young children to provide for. Jean, who was the eldest, and of an equally thoughtful and energetic character, soon contrived to relieve her of the anxieties of her position, by establishing himself in business as a baker. Whatever ambitious and vague longings he might have had even at that early period we do not know, but can easily guess at, and his sacrifice of them already endears the future poet to our hearts. How he ever after preferred the claims of his family to his own convenience, and refused to take from them the security which his lowly trade gave them, and which the precarious success of a literary career might have taken away, we shall see later on. But Reboul did not forego his poetical aspirations; he published various detached pieces in the local journals of Nîmes, he circulated MS. poems among his friends, and his name began to be well known at least in his native town. It was not till 1820, however, that the outside world and the literary assemblies of Paris knew him. He gave half his day to the labor of his trade and half to intellectual work and hard study, and the activity of his character, as well as the rigorous measurement of his time, so arranged as never to waste a moment, made this division of labor prejudicial to neither one employment nor the other.

In physique he was tall, athletic, and stately enough for a Roman senator. His features were cast in a large and massive mould, his dark, brilliant eyes were full of meridional fire, and his abundant black hair seemed a fitting frame for his manly, fearless countenance. Even in old age and when dying, a friend and admirer recorded that "his face has suffered no contraction, but has wholly kept the purity of those sculptural lineaments so nobly reproduced by the chisel of Pradier; it even seemed to have borrowed a new and graver majesty from the dread approach of death; ... even death appeared, as it were, to hesitate to touch his form, and seemed to draw near its victim with the deepest respect." His vigorous life, his active intelligence, his inflexible uprightness of character—everything seemed to point him out as a man beyond the common run of even good men. We shall see his character as developed in the admirable letters which form the basis of this sketch. Type of a Christian patriot, he towers above his contemporaries by sheer nobility of soul, and is an example of that moral stature to which no worldly honors, no political position, no hereditary rank can add "one cubit." Pro Deo, Patria et Rege was his lifelong motto, and it may safely be said that if France had many such sons, no one in the past or in the future could have rivalled or could hope to rival "la grande nation."

His first volume of collected poems was published in 1836, and one by one eminent men of letters, struck by the beauty, severity, and freshness of his diction, sought out the new light and entered into brotherhood with him. His lifelong friendship with M. de Fresne, however, dated from 1829, when he had already published The Angel and the Child,[33] in a Paris magazine, and other pieces at various intervals in local periodicals. A traveller from the capital knocked at the unknown poet's door, and the tie knit by the first external homage that had yet come to Reboul, was never dissolved. The letters from which we draw his portrait, as traced by himself, were all addressed to this first friend. In 1838, another and more illustrious visitor came to the baker's home at Nîmes, the patriarch of revived Christian literature in France, the immortal Châteaubriand. He tells the story of his visit himself:

"I found him in his bakery, and spoke to him without knowing to whom I was speaking, not distinguishing him from his companions in the trade of Ceres; he took my name, and said he would see if the person I wanted was at home. He came back presently and smilingly made himself known to me. He took me through his shop, where we groped about in a labyrinth of flour-sacks, and at last climbed by a sort of ladder into a little retreat (réduit) something like the chamber of a windmill. There we sat down and talked. I was as happy as in my barn in London,[34] and much happier than in my minister's chair in Paris."

Reboul was an ardent Catholic, an uncompromising "ultramontane," as their enemies designate those who refuse to render unto Cæsar the things that are God's. He took a keen and sensitive interest in the struggles of religion against infidelity, the prototypes, or rather the counterparts, of those we see now waging in Italy and Germany. On the occasion of one of these attacks on the church in 1844, he writes these trenchant words:

"The sword is drawn between the religious and the political power: if I were not a Frenchman before being a royalist, and a Catholic before a Frenchman, I should find much to rejoice at in this check to the hopes of a certain part of the episcopate who honestly believed in the reign of religious freedom, on the word of the revolutionists. But, good people! if revolution were not despotism, it would not be revolution."

The unity of the church struck him as immeasurably grand. Speaking of the great Spanish convert Donoso-Cortes and his religious works, he says:

"What a marvellous faith it is which makes men situated at such distances of time and place think exactly alike on the most difficult and deepest subjects!"

A most striking passage in his writings is the following opinion on the Reformation:

"Forgive my outspokenness," he writes to his friend M. de Fresne, "if my opinion differs totally from yours. No, the Reformation was not an outburst of holy and generous indignation against abuses and infamies. This indignation possessed all the eminent and virtuous men in the church, but it was not to be found among the reformers. The Reformation, on the contrary, came to legalize corruption and bend the precepts of the Gospel to the exigencies of the flesh. Luther was literally the Mahomet of the West. Both acted through the sword: the one established polygamy, the other divorce, a species of polygamy far more fatal to morals than polygamy proper. If you would know what the Reformation really was, look at its founders and abettors, and see if chastity was dear to them. Henry VIII. married six wives, of whom he divorced two and executed two more; Zwinglius took a wife, Beza took a wife, Calvin took a wife, Luther took a wife, the landgrave of Hesse wished to take a second wife during the lifetime of his first, and Luther authorized him to do so. The caustic Erasmus, whose Catholicism was not very strict, could not help saying that the Reformation was a comedy like many others, where everything ended with marriages. The real reformers of the church, those who reformed her not according to the gospel of passion, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ, were S. Charles Borromeo, S. John of the Cross, S. Teresa, S. Ignatius Loyola, and thousands of holy priests and bishops."

Not to weary the reader by constant comments on the text which reveals this great Christian thinker's mind, we will append the following significant quotations from his letters with as few breaks as possible. They are gathered from a collection extending over a period of more than thirty years:

"The secrets of the church are ruled by a divine order, and to judge of them according to merely human fears or prudence, is to mistake the nature of the church, and to ignore her past. Time takes upon itself the vindication of decisions arrived at by a legitimate authority, even though it be a temporal one; ... truth will come to the surface, and is often manifested by the very men apparently most earnest in combating it.... I believe this work (a religious publication of M. de Broglie) is an event, as much because of the author's character and the principles which his name is understood to represent, as because of the epoch of its publication. This frank confession in the belief of the supernatural in the teeth of the public rationalistic teaching of the day—ever striving to wrap Christ in its own shroud of philosophical verbiage and to bury him in the grave from which he had risen—makes us pray to God and praise him, ... that his kingdom may come.... The struggle nowadays is between God made man, and man making himself God.... I wonder that you take the trouble to break your head thinking about these German dreamers (atheists); for my part, I gave orders long ago to the door-keeper of my brain, if any of these gentleman should ask for me, to say that I was 'not at home.' These old errors served up with the new sauce of a worse darkness than before seem to me very indigestible.

"Genius which devotes itself to evil, far from being a glory, is but a gigantic infamy. Plato is right when he calls it a fatal industry.

"The French Revolution has done in the political world what the Reformation did in the religious world; it has taken from reason her leaning staff, and reason, trying to stand alone, has caused the things we have seen—and so, alas! at this moment, the Revolution cries out for a principle, but is itself the negation of all principle."

In politics, as we have seen, Reboul was a staunch legitimist, but a shrewd observer. He was no dreamer, though his belief in the ancient Bourbons was with him a perfect cultus. He never swerved from the road which he had traced for himself. As a poet, his native city was proud of him, France held out every honor to him, fellow-littérateurs of all shades of opinion welcomed him as a brother, governments flattered him, the people looked up to him. Had he been ambitious, civic and parliamentary honors were ready for him; had he been venal, his career might have been brilliant, lucrative, and idle. In 1844, the mayor of Nîmes, M. Girard, proposed to him a change of occupation, offering him the position of town-librarian, as more suited to his tastes than the trade he followed. He was assured that this appointment would entail no political obligation, that perfect independence of speech and action would be guaranteed to him, but, says M. de Poujoulat: "Reboul, intent above all on the services he could render the cause among his own surroundings, and solicitous of hedging in the dignity of his life with the most spotless integrity, refused the mayor's offer. He did not even seek to make a merit of his refusal; his friends knew nothing of it; M. de Fresne alone was in the secret, and it was not divulged till years after." The Cross of the Legion of Honor was twice offered him: once by the government of Louis Philippe, through the agency of the minister M. de Salvandy, who was fond of seeking out honest and independent talent, but the loyal poet answered briefly: "He who alone has the right to decorate me is not in France"; and again by the empire, when it was urged that the decoration was a homage such as might have been respectfully offered in les Arènes (the Roman amphitheatre at Nîmes). Reboul proudly yet playfully replied that "he had not yet quite reached the state of a monument," and feeling plenty of vitality left in him, did not need the red ribbon. He explains to his friend M. de Fresne that he asked the God of S. Louis to enlighten his perplexities, to lift his soul above all small vanities, to deliver him from political rancor, if he harbored any, and to guide him to a decision which would leave him at peace with himself. "I have not the presumption," he adds, "to think that I received an inspiration from above, but I believe in the efficacy of prayer. I know not if I was heard, but at any rate I did my best."

There is a grand Christian simplicity in this, which marks Reboul as a man far beyond the average. Nothing dazzles him, because he always has the glory of God before his eyes. His friend M. de Poujoulat says of him:

"I find in Reboul a penetrating and serious good sense, broad views, as it were luminous sheaves of thought; I see in him an unprejudiced and discriminating observer of the affairs of his day. The noise of popularity is not glory, and the stature our contemporaries make for us is not our true one, but one raised by artifice and conventionality. Here was a man who looked down from the height of his solitude, said what he thought, and in his judgment forestalled the verdict of posterity. Reboul was interested in the individual works of his day, but he had only scant admiration for the age that produced them. His conscience was the measure of his appreciation both of men and events, and it was a measure hardly advantageous to them."

In 1836, a few of his friends clubbed together to offer him at least a pension, in the name of "an exile" (the Comte de Chambord), but he refused even this with touching disinterestedness, saying: "There is but one hand on earth from which I should not blush to accept a gift: the representative of Providence on earth. The gifts of this hand increase the honor and independence of the recipient, and bind him to nothing save the public weal, but adverse circumstance having sealed this fount of honor, I could not dream of drawing aught from it, for l'exil a besoin de ses miettes,[35] and it is rather our duty to contribute to its needs than to draw on it for our own." Later, when pressing necessity made it incumbent upon him to accept help from his friends and his sovereign, as he loyally called the exiled Comte de Chambord, it was so great a sorrow to him that he could scarcely enjoy the material benefit of such help. The poor and faithful poet had "dreamed of leaving earth with the memory of a devotion wholly gratuitous," and was sincerely grieved because it could not be so. He received several letters from the Comte de Chambord and his wife, some written in their own hand, others by their secretary, and he addressed himself several times to these objects of his cultus in terms of impassioned yet dignified loyalty. Henri V. fully appreciated his homage, and treated him as a friend rather than a stranger. Reboul visited the royal family at Frohsdorf, their Austrian retreat, and received the most flattering marks of attention. To him it was not a visit so much as a pilgrimage; his devotion to the person of his sovereign was but the embodiment of his principle of fealty towards hereditary monarchy. Speaking of the Requiem Mass celebrated at Nîmes, in October, 1851, on the occasion of the death of the Duchesse d'Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI., he says:

"She had made a deep impression, and left durable memories among the working classes of our town, on her passage through Nîmes some years ago.... The people, my dear friend, the Christian people, recognizes better than les beaux-esprits what true greatness is, and is ever ready to bow before the majesty of a nobly-borne sorrow. No orator could adequately describe the appearance of our church to-day. This great gathering en blouse ou en veste,[36] these faces browned by toil and want, bore an expression of nobility and gravity fully suitable to such an occasion.... When one still has such courtiers, is exile a reality?"

Reboul would never allow that the irregularities of its representatives were enough of themselves to condemn a system. We have seen how, while recognizing the degeneracy of many churchmen in the XVIth century, he yet denounced the pretended reformers who sought this pretext for attacking the church, and in politics his judgments were equally clear and impartial. "If," he says, "it is still possible to be a republican despite the Reign of Terror, it is not impossible to be a royalist despite a few moral deviations which have disgraced some of our kings. Was the Directoire (a genuine republican product) an assembly of Josephs? And the houses of our day—are they not of glass? It is not wise, therefore, to be incessantly throwing stones.... After all, I return to my original argument: notwithstanding the shadows which darken the great qualities and high virtues of many of our kings, can you find anything better?"

Reboul's political faith is traced at length in the following paragraph, which may be called statesmanlike, since it contains a theory of government: "The sovereign is by all means a responsible agent, but I add to this, that the people also, when it makes itself sovereign, is equally responsible. The habit of thought which separates the one from the other is one of the misfortunes of our times. Without sovereignty there can be no nation, nor even a people. There remains but an agglomeration of individuals. When I say sovereign you know, if you understand the language of politics, that I mean any legitimate form of government. This is applicable to all governments. Be sure that it is nonsense to talk of a nation as making its own sovereign. A "nation" which as yet has no sovereignty is no more a nation than a body without its head is a real body."