Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 359, September 1845

by Various

MARGARET OF VALOIS.

On the eighteenth day of August 1572, a great festival was held in the palace of the Louvre. It was to celebrate the nuptials of Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois.

This alliance between the chief of the Protestant party in France, and the sister of Charles IX. and daughter of Catharine of Medicis, perplexed, and in some degree alarmed, the Catholics, whilst it filled the Huguenots with joy and exultation. The king had declared that he knew and made no difference between Romanist and Calvinist—that all were alike his subjects, and equally beloved by him. He caressed the throng of Huguenot nobles and gentlemen whom the marriage had attracted to the court, was affectionate to his new brother-in-law, friendly with the prince of Condé, almost respectful to the venerable Admiral de Coligny, to whom he proposed to confide the command of an army in a projected war with Spain. The chiefs of the Catholic party were not behind-hand in following the example set them by Charles. Catharine of Medicis was all smiles and affability; the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III., received graciously the compliments paid him by the Huguenots themselves on his successes at Jarnac and Moncontour, battles which he had won before he was eighteen years old; Henry of Guise, whose reputation as a leader already, at the age of two-and-twenty, almost equalled that of his great father, was courteous and friendly to those whose deadly foe he had so lately been. The Duke of Mayenne and the Admiral, the Guise and the Condé, were seen riding, conversing, and making parties of pleasure together. It was the lion lying down with the lamb.

On the twenty-second of August, four days after the marriage, in which the Huguenots saw a guarantee of the peaceful exercise of their religion, the Admiral de Coligny was passing through the street of St Germain l'Auxerrois, when he was shot at and wounded by a captain of petardiers, one Maurevel, who went by the name of Le Tueur du Roi, literally, the King's Killer. At midnight on the twenty-fourth of August, the tocsin sounded, and the massacre of St Bartholomew began.

It is at this stirring period of French history, abounding in horrors and bloodshed, and in plots and intrigues, both political and amorous, that M. Alexandre Dumas commences one of his most recently published romances. Beginning with the marriage of Henry and Margaret, he narrates, in his spirited and attractive style, various episodes, real and imaginary, of the great massacre, from the first fury of which, Henry himself, doomed to death by the remorseless Catherine of Medicis, was only saved by his own caution, by the indecision of Charles IX., and the energy of Margaret of Valois. The marriage between the King of France's sister and the King of Navarre, was merely one of convenance, agreed to by Henry for the sake of his fellow Protestants, and used by Catherine and Charles as a lure to bring "those of the religion," as they were called, to Paris, there to be slaughtered unsuspecting, and defenceless. Margaret, then scarcely twenty years of age, had already made herself talked of by her intrigues; Henry, who was a few months younger, but who, even at that early period of his life, possessed a large share of the shrewdness and prudence for which his countrymen, the Béarnese, have at all times been noted, was, at the very time of his marriage, deeply in love with the Baroness de Sauve, one of Catharine de Medicis' ladies, by whom he was in his turn beloved. But although little affection existed between the royal pair, the strong links of interest and ambition bound them together; and no sooner were they married than they entered into a treaty of political alliance, to which, for some time, both steadily and truly adhered.

On the night of the St Bartholomew, a Huguenot gentleman, the Count Lerac de la Mole, who has arrived that day at Paris with important letters for the King of Navarre, seeks refuge in the apartments of the latter from the assassins who pursue and have already wounded him. Unacquainted, however, with the Louvre, he mistakes the door, and enters the apartment of the Queen of Navarre, who, seized with pity, and struck also by the youth and elegance of the fugitive, gives him shelter, and herself dresses his wounds, employing in his behalf the surgical skill which she has acquired from the celebrated Ambrose Paré, whose pupil she had been. One of the most furious of La Mole's pursuers is a Piedmontese gentleman, Count Hannibal de Coconnas, who has also arrived that day in the capital, and put up at the same hotel as La Mole. When the latter is rescued by Margaret, Coconnas wanders through Paris, killing all the Huguenots he can find—such, at least, as will defend themselves. In a lonely part of the town he is overpowered by numbers, and is rescued from imminent peril by the Duke of Guise's sister-in-law, the Duchess of Nevers, that golden-haired, emerald-eyed dame, of whom Ronsard sang—

"La Duchesse de Nevers
Aux yeux verts,
Qui sous leur paupière blonde,
Lancent sur nous plus d'éclairs
Que ne font vingt Jupiters
Dans les airs
Lorsque la tempête gronde."

To cut the story short, La Mole falls violently in love with Margaret, Coconnas does the same with the duchess; and these four personages play important parts in the ensuing narrative, which extends over a space of nearly two years, and into which the author, according to his custom, introduces a vast array of characters, for the most part historical, all spiritedly drawn and well sustained. M. Dumas may, in various respects, be held up as an example to our history spoilers, self-styled writers of historical romance, on this side the Channel. One does not find him profaning public edifices by causing all sorts of absurdities to pass, and of twaddle to be spoken, within their precincts; neither does he make his kings and beggars, high-born dames and private soldiers, use the very same language, all equally tame, colourless, and devoid of character. The spirited and varied dialogue in which his romances abound, illustrates and brings out the qualities and characteristics of his actors, and is not used for the sole purpose of making a chapter out of what would be better told in a page. In many instances, indeed, it would be difficult for him to tell his story, by the barest narrative, in fewer words than he does by pithy and pointed dialogue.

As the sole means of placing his life in comparative safety, Henry abjures the Protestant faith, and remains in a sort of honourable captivity at the court of France, suspected by Charles and detested by Catharine, to whom Réné the Florentine, her astrologer and poisoner, has predicted that the now powerless prince of Navarre shall one day reign over France. Some days have passed, the massacres have nearly ceased, and the body of Admiral de Coligny, discovered amongst a heap of slain, has been suspended to the gibbet at Montfaucon. Charles IX., always greedy of spectacles of blood, proposes to pay a visit to the corpse of his dead enemy, whom had called his father, and affectionately embraced, upon their last meeting previous to the attempted assassination of the admiral by Maurevel, an attempt instigated by Charles himself. We will give the account of this visit in the words of M. Dumas.

It was two in the afternoon, when a long train of cavaliers and ladies, glittering with gold and jewels, appeared in the Rue St Denis, displaying itself in the sun between the sombre lines of houses, like some huge reptile with sparkling scales. Nothing that exists at the present day can give an adequate idea of the splendour of this spectacle. The rich silken costumes, of the most brilliant colours, which were in vogue during the reign of Francis I., had not yet been replaced by the dark and graceless attire that became the fashion in Henry III.'s time. The costume of the reign of Charles IX. was perhaps less rich, but more elegant than that of the preceding epoch.

In the rear, and on either side of this magnificent procession, came the pages, esquires, gentlemen of low degree, dogs and horses, giving the royal train the appearance of a small army. The cavalcade was followed by a vast number of the populace.

That morning, in presence of Catharine and the Duke of Guise, and of Henry of Navarre, Charles the Ninth had spoken, as if it were quite a natural thing, of going to visit the gibbet at Montfaucon, or, in other words, the mutilated body of the admiral, which was suspended from it. Henry's first impulse had been to make an excuse for not joining the party. Catharine was looking out for this, and at the very first word that he uttered expressive of his repugnance, she exchanged a glance and a smile with the Duke of Guise. Henry, whom nothing escaped, caught both smile and glance, underwent them, and hastened to correct his blunder.

"After all," said he, "why should I not go? I am a Catholic, and owe as much to my new religion." Then addressing himself to the king:—"Your majesty may reckon upon me," said he; "I shall always be happy to accompany you wherever you go."

In the whole procession, no one attracted so much curiosity and attention as this king without a kingdom, this Huguenot who had become Catholic. His long and strongly marked features, his somewhat common tournure, his familiarity with his inferiors—a familiarity which was to be attributed to the habits of his youth, and which he carried almost too far for a king—caused him to be at once recognised by the spectators, some of whom called out to him—"To mass, Henriot, to mass!"

To which Henry replied.

"I was there yesterday, I have been there to-day, I shall go again to-morrow. Ventre-saint-gris! I think that is enough."

As for Margaret, she was on horseback—so beautiful, so fresh and elegant, that there was a perfect chorus of admiration around her, some few notes of which, however, were addressed to her companion and intimate friend, the Duchess of Nevers, who had just joined her, and whose snow-white steed, as if proud of its lovely burden, tossed its head, and neighed exultingly.

"Well, duchess," said the Queen of Navarre, "have you anything new to tell me?"

"Nothing, madam, I believe," replied Henriette. Then, in a lower tone, she added—"And the Huguenot, what is become of him?"

"He is in safety," replied Margaret. "And your Piedmontese hero? Where is he?"

"He insisted upon being one of the party, and is riding M. de Nevers' charger, a horse as big as an elephant. He is a superb cavalier. I allowed him to come, because I thought that your Huguenot protégé would be still confined to his room, and that consequently there could be no risk of their meeting."

"Ma foi!" replied Margaret, smiling, "if he were here, I do not think there would be much danger of a single combat. The Huguenot is very handsome, but nothing else—a dove, and not an eagle; he may coo, but he will not bite. After all," added she, with a slight elevation of her shoulders, "we perhaps take him for a Huguenot, whilst he is only a Brahmin, and his religion may forbid his shedding blood. But see there, duchess—there is one of your gentlemen, who will assuredly be ridden over."

"Ah! it is my hero," cried the duchess; "look, look!"

It was Coconnas, who had left his place in the procession in order to get nearer to the Duchess of Nevers; but, at the very moment that he was crossing the sort of boulevard separating the street of St Denis from the faubourg of the same name, a cavalier belonging to the suite of the Duke of Alençon, who had just come up, was run away with by his horse; and, being unable immediately to check the animal, came full tilt against Coconnas. The Piedmontese reeled in his saddle, and his hat fell off. He caught it in his hand, and turned furiously upon the person by whom he had been so rudely, although accidentally, assailed.

"Good heavens!" said Margaret, in a whisper to her friend, "it is Monsieur de la Mole!"

"That pale, handsome young man?" cried the duchess.

"Yes; he who so nearly upset your Piedmontese."

"Oh!" exclaimed the duchess, "something terrible will happen! They recognise each other."

They had done so. Coconnas dropped the bridle of his horse in surprise at meeting with his former acquaintance, whom he fully believed he had killed, or at any rate disabled for a long time to come. As to La Mole, when he recognised Coconnas, a flush of anger overspread his pallid countenance. For a few seconds, the two men remained gazing at each other with looks which made Margaret and the duchess tremble. Then La Mole, glancing around him, and understanding, doubtless, that the place was not a fit one for an explanation, spurred his horse, and rejoined the Duke of Alençon. Coconnas remained for a moment stationary, twisting his mustache till he brought the corner of it nearly into his eye, and then moved onwards.

"Ha!" exclaimed Margaret, with mingled scorn and vexation; "I was not mistaken then. Oh, this time it is too bad!" And she bit her lips in anger.

"He is very handsome," said the duchess, in a tone of commiseration.

Just at this moment the Duke of Alençon took his place behind the king and the queen-mother; so that his gentlemen, in order to follow him, had to pass Margaret and the Duchess of Nevers. As La Mole went by, he removed his hat, bowed low to the queen, and remained bareheaded, waiting till her majesty should honour him with a look. But Margaret turned her head proudly away. La Mole doubtless understood the scornful expression of her features; his pale face became livid, and he grasped his horse's mane as if to save himself from falling.

"Look at him, cruel that you are," said Henriette to the Queen; "he is going to faint."

"Good," said Margaret, with a smile of immense contempt. "Have you no salts to offer him?"

Madame de Nevers was mistaken. La Mole recovered himself, and took his place behind the Duke of Alençon.

The royal party continued to advance, and presently came in sight of the gallows at Montfaucon. The King and Catharine of Medicis were followed by the Dukes of Anjou and Alençon, the King of Navarre, the Duke of Guise, and their gentlemen; then came Margaret, the Duchess of Nevers, and the ladies, composing what was called the Queen's flying squadron; finally, the pages, esquires, lackeys, and the people—in all, ten thousand souls. The guards, who marched in front, placed themselves in a large circle round the enclosure in which stood the gibbet; and on their approach, the ravens that had perched upon the instrument of death flew away with hoarse and dismal croakings. To the principal gallows was hanging a shapeless mass, a blackened corpse, covered with mud and coagulated blood. It was suspended by the feet, for the head was wanting. In place of the latter, the ingenuity of the people had substituted a bundle of straw, with a mask fixed upon it; and in the mouth of the mask some scoffer, acquainted with the admiral's habits, had placed a toothpick.

It was a sad and strange sight to behold all these elegant cavaliers and beautiful women passing, like one of the processions which Goya has painted, under the blackened skeletons and tall grim gibbets. The greater the mirth of the visitors, the more striking was the contrast with the mournful silence and cold insensibility of the corpses which were its object. Many of the party supported with difficulty this horrible spectacle; and Henry of Navarre especially, in spite of his powers of dissimulation and habitual command over himself, was at last unable to bear it longer. He took, as a pretext, the stench emitted by these human remains; and approaching Charles, who, with Catharine of Medicis, had paused before the body of the admiral—

"Sire," said he, "does not your Majesty find that the smell of this poor corpse is too noxious to be longer endured?"

"Ha! think you so, Harry?" cried Charles, whose eyes were sparkling with a ferocious joy.

"Yes, sire."

"Then I am not of your opinion. The body of a dead enemy always smells well."

"By my faith! sire," said Monsieur de Tavannes, "your Majesty should have invited Pierre Ronsard to accompany us on this little visit to the admiral; he would have made an impromptu epitaph on old Gaspard."

"That will I make," said Charles. And after a moments reflection, "Listen, gentlemen," said he—

"Ci-gît, mais c'est mal entendu,
Pour lui le mot est trop honnête,
Ici l'amiral est pendu,
Par les pieds, à faute de tête."

"Bravo! bravo!" cried the Catholic gentlemen with one voice, whilst the converted Huguenots there present maintained a gloomy silence. As to Henry, he was talking to Margaret and the Duchess of Nevers, and pretended not to hear.

"Come, sir," said Catharine, who, in spite of the perfumes with which she was covered, began to have enough of this tainted atmosphere—"Come, sir," said she to the king, "the best of friends must part. Let us bid adieu to the admiral, and return to Paris."

And bowing her head ironically to the corpse by way of a farewell, she turned her horse and regained the road, whilst her suite filed past the body of Coligny. The crowd followed the cavalcade, and ten minutes after the king's departure, no one remained near the mutilated body of the admiral.

When we say no one, we make a mistake. A gentleman, mounted on a black horse, and who, probably, during the stay of the king, had been unable to contemplate the disfigured corpse sufficiently at his ease, lingered behind, and was amusing himself by examining, in all their details, the chains, irons, stone pillars, in short, the whole paraphernalia of the gibbet, which, no doubt, appeared to him, who had been but a few days at Paris, and was not aware of the perfection to which all things are brought in the metropolis, a paragon of hideous ingenuity. This person was our friend Coconnas. A woman's quick eye had in vain sought him through the ranks of the cavalcade. Monsieur de Coconnas remained in admiration before the masterpiece of Enguerrand de Marigny.

But the woman in question was not the only person who sought Coconnas. A cavalier, remarkable for his white satin doublet, and the elegance of his plume, after looking before him, and on either side, had at last looked back and perceived the tall form of the Piedmontese, and the gigantic profile of his horse, sharply defined against the evening sky, now reddened by the last rays of the setting sun. Then the gentleman in the white satin doublet left the road which the cavalcade was following, struck into a side path, and describing a curve, returned towards the gibbet. He had scarcely done this, when the Duchess of Nevers approached the Queen of Navarre, and said—

"We were mistaken, Margaret, for the Piedmontese has remained behind, and Monsieur de la Mole has followed him."

"Mordi!" cried Margaret laughing, "is it so? I confess that I shall not be sorry to have to alter my opinion."

She then looked round, and saw La Mole returning towards the gallows.

It was now the turn of the two princesses to quit the cavalcade. The moment was favourable for so doing, for they were just crossing a road bordered by high hedges, by following which they would get to within thirty paces of the gibbet. Madame de Nevers said a word to the captain of her guards, Margaret made a sign to Gillonne, her tirewoman and confidant; and these four persons took the cross road, and hastened to place themselves in ambuscade behind some bushes near the spot they were desirous of observing. There they dismounted, and the captain held the horses, whilst the three ladies found a pleasant seat upon the close fresh turf, with which the place was overgrown. An opening in the bushes enabled them to observe the smallest details of what was passing.

La Mole had completed his circuit, and, walking up behind Coconnas, he stretched out his hand and touched him on the shoulder. The Piedmontese turned his head.

"Oh!" said he, "it was no dream then. You are still alive?"

"Yes, sir," replied La Mole, "I am still alive. It is not your fault, but such is the case."

"Mordieu! I recognise you perfectly," said Coconnas, "in spite of your pale cheeks. You were redder than that the last time I saw you."

"And I recognise you also," said La Mole, "in spite of that yellow cut across your face. You were paler than you are now when I gave it to you."

Coconnas bit his lips, but continued in the same ironical tone.

"It is curious, is it not, Monsieur de la Mole, particularly for a Huguenot, to see the admiral hung up to that iron hook?"

"Count," said La Mole with a bow, "I am no longer a Huguenot, I have the honour to be a Catholic."

"Bah!" cried Coconnas, bursting into a laugh, "You are converted? How very sly of you!"

"Sir," replied La Mole, with the same serious politeness, "I made a vow to become a Catholic if I escaped the massacre."

"It was a very prudent vow," returned the Piedmontese, "and I congratulate you on it; is it the only one you made?"

"No, sir, I made one other," replied La Mole, patting his horse with his usual deliberate grace.

"And it was——" enquired Coconnas.

"To hang you up yonder, to that little hook which seems to be waiting for you, just below Monsieur de Coligny."

"What!" cried Coconnas, "all alive, just as I am?"

"No, sir; after passing my sword through your body."

Coconnas became purple, and his grey eye flashed fire.

"Really," said he, with a sneer; "to yonder rail? You are not quite tall enough for that, my little gentleman."

"Then I will get upon your horse," replied La Mole. "Ah! you think, my dear M. Hannibal de Coconnas, that you may assassinate people with impunity under the loyal and honourable pretext of being a hundred to one. Not so. A day comes when every man finds his man, and for you that day is come now. I am almost tempted to break your ugly head with a pistol shot; but pshaw! I should perhaps miss you, for my hand still shakes with the wounds you so treacherously gave me.

"My ugly head!" roared Coconnas, throwing himself off his horse. "On foot! Monsieur le Compte—out with your blade!" And he drew his sword.

"I think your Huguenot called him ugly," whispered the Duchess of Nevers to Margaret. "Do you find him so?"

"He is charming," cried Margaret laughing, "and Monsieur de la Mole's anger renders him unjust. But hush! let us observe them."

La Mole got off his horse with as much deliberation as Coconnas had shown haste, drew his sword, and put himself on guard.

"Ah!" cried he, as he extended his arm.

"Oh!" exclaimed Coconnas, as he stretched out his.

Both, it will be remembered, were wounded in the shoulder, and a sudden movement still caused them acute suffering. A stifled laugh was audible from behind the trees. The princesses had been unable to restrain it when they saw the two champions rubbing their shoulders and grimacing with pain. The laughed reached the ears of La Mole and Coconnas, who had been hitherto unaware of the presence of witnesses, but who now, on looking round, perceived the ladies. La Mole again put himself on guard, steady as an automaton, and Coconnas, as their swords crossed, uttered an energetic Mordieu!

"Ah ça!" exclaimed Margaret, "they are in earnest, and will kill one another if we do not prevent it. This is going too far. Stop, gentlemen, I entreat you."

"Let them go on," said Henriette, who, having already seen Coconnas make head successfully against three antagonists at once, trusted that he would have at least as easy a bargain of La Mole.

At the first clash of the steel, the combatants became silent. They were neither of them confident in their strength, and, at each pass or parry, their imperfectly healed wounds caused them sharp pain. Nevertheless, with fixed and ardent eye, his lips slightly parted, his teeth firmly-set, La Mole advanced with short steady steps upon his adversary; who, perceiving that he had to do with a master of fence, retreated—gradually, it is true, but still retreated. In this manner they reached the edge of the moat, or dry ditch, on the other side of which the spectators had stationed themselves. There, as if he had only retired with the view of getting nearer to the duchess, Coconnas stopped, and made a rapid thrust. At the same instant a sanguine spot, which grew each second larger, appeared upon the white satin of La Mole's doublet.

"Courage!" cried the Duchess of Nevers.

"Poor La Mole!" exclaimed Margaret, with a cry of sorrow.

La Mole heard the exclamation, threw one expressive glance to the queen, and making a skilful feint, followed it up by a pass of lightning swiftness. This time both the women shrieked. The point of La Mole's rapier had appeared, crimson with blood, behind the back of Coconnas.

Neither of the combatants fell; they remained on their feet, staring at each other, each of them feeling that at the first movement he made he should lose his balance. At last the Piedmontese, more dangerously wounded than his antagonist, and feeling that his strength was ebbing away with his blood, threw himself forward upon La Mole, and seized hill with one arm, whilst with the other hand he felt for his dagger. La Mole mustered all his remaining strength, raised his hand, and struck Coconnas on the forehead with his sword-hilt. Coconnas fell, but in falling he dragged his adversary after him, and both rolled into the ditch. Then Margaret and the Duchess of Nevers, seeing that although, apparently dying, they still sought to finish each other, sprang forward, preceded by the captain of the guards. But before they reached the wounded men, the eyes of the latter closed, their grasp was loosened, and, letting fall their weapons, they stretched themselves out stiff and convulsed. A pool of blood had already formed itself around them.

"Oh! brave, brave La Mole!" exclaimed Margaret, unable to repress her admiration. "How can I forgive myself for having suspected you?" And her eyes filled with tears.

"Alas! alas!" cried the duchess, sobbing violently. "Say, madam, did you ever see such intrepid champions?"

"Tudieu!—What hard knocks!" exclaimed the captain, trying to stanch the blood that flowed from the wounds. "Hola! you who are coming, come more quickly."

A man, seated on the front of a sort of cart painted of a red colour, was seen slowly approaching.

"Hola!" repeated the captain, "will you come, then, when you are called? Do you not see that these gentlemen are in want of assistance?"

The man in the cart, whose appearance was in the highest degree coarse and repulsive, stopped his horse, got down, and stepped over the two bodies.

"These are pretty wounds," said he, "but I make better ones."

"Who, then, are you?" said Margaret, experiencing, in spite of herself, a vague and unconquerable sensation of terror.

"Madam," replied the man, bowing to the ground, "I an Maître Caboche, executioner of the city of Paris; and I am come to suspend to this gibbet some companions for the admiral."

"And I am the Queen of Navarre; throw out your dead bodies, place our horses' clothes in your cart, and bring these two gentlemen carefully to the Louvre."

La Mole recovers from his wounds before Coconnas is out of danger. The latter is, in great measure, restored to health through the care and attention which his late antagonist generously lavishes on him; they become intimate friends, and Coconnas is appointed to the household of the Duke of Alençon, to which La Mole already belongs. The duke, out of opposition to his brothers, the king and the Duke of Anjou, has a leaning towards the Huguenot party. De Mouy, a Protestant leader, whose father has been assassinated by Maurevel, comes in disguise to the Louvre, to communicate with Henry of Navarre, in the sincerity of whose conversion the Huguenots do not believe. Henry, however, who knows that the walls of the Louvre have ears, refuses to listen to De Mouy, and declares himself Catholic to the backbone; and De Mouy, despairing and indignant, leaves the king's apartment. The Duke of Alençon, who has overheard their conference, as Henry suspected, stops the Huguenot emissary, and shows a disposition to put himself at the head of that party and become King of Navarre. There is a great deal of intrigue and manœuvring, very skilfully managed by Henry, who makes D'Alençon believe that he has no wish to become any thing more than a simple country-gentleman, and that he is willing to aid him in his ambitious designs. He proposes that they should watch for an opportunity of leaving Paris and repairing to Navarre. Before the negotiations between the two princes are completed, however, the Duke of Anjou has been elected King of Poland, and has had his election ratified by the Pope; and D'Alençon then begins to think that it would be advisable to remain at Paris on the chance of himself becoming King of France. Charles IX. is delicate and sickly, subject to tremendous outbursts of passion which leave him weak and exhausted; his life is not likely to be a long one. Should he die, and even if the Poles should allow their new king to return to France, D'Alençon would have time, he thinks, before the arrival of the latter, to seize upon the vacant throne. Even the reversion of the crown of Poland would perhaps be preferable to the possession of that of Navarre. Whilst ruminating these plans, one of the king's frequent hunting parties takes place in the forest of Bondy, and is attended by all the royal family except the Duke of Anjou, then absent at the siege of La Rochelle. At this hunting party the following striking incidents occur.

The piqueur who had told the king that the boar was still in the enclosure, had spoken the truth. Hardly was the bloodhound put upon the scent, when he plunged into a thicket, and drove the animal, an enormous one of its kind, from its retreat in a cluster of thorn-bushes. The boar made straight across the road, at about fifty paces from the king. The leashes of a score of dogs were immediately slipped, and the eager hounds rushed headlong in pursuit.

The chase was Charles's strongest passion. Scarcely had the boar crossed the road, when he spurred after him, sounding the view upon his horn, and followed by the Duke of Alençon, and by Henry of Navarre. All the other chasseurs followed.

The royal forests, at the period referred to, were not, as at present, extensive parks intersected by carriage roads. Kings had not yet had the happy idea of becoming timber-merchants, and of dividing their woods into tailles and futaies. The trees, planted, not by scientific foresters but by the hand of God, who let the seed fall where the wind chose to bear it, were not arranged in quincunxes, but sprang up without order, and as they now do in the virgin forests of America. Consequently a forest at that period was a place in which boars and stags, wolves and robbers, were to be found in abundance.

The wood of Bondy was surrounded by a circular road, like the tire of a wheel and crossed by a dozen paths which might be called the spokes. To complete the comparison, the axle, was represented by carrefour, or open space, in the centre of the wood, whence all these paths diverged, and whither any of the sportsmen who might be thrown out were in the habit of repairing, till some sight or sound of the chase enabled them to rejoin it.

At the end of a quarter of an hour, it happened, as it usually did at these hunts, that insurmountable obstacles had opposed themselves to the progress of the hunters, the baying of the hounds had become inaudible in the distance, and the king himself had returned to the carrefour, swearing and cursing according to his custom.

"Well, D'Alençon! Well, Henriot!" cried he—"here you are, mordieu! as calm and quiet as nuns following their abbess. That is not hunting. You, D'Alençon—you look as if you had just come out of a band-box; and you are so perfumed, that if you got between the boar and my dogs, you would make them lose the scent. And you, Henriot—where is your boar-spear? Where your arquebuss?"

"Sire," replied Henry, "an arquebuss would be useless to me. I know that your majesty likes to shoot the boar himself when it is brought to bay. As to the spear, I handle it very clumsily. We are not used to it in our mountains, where we hunt the bear with nothing but a dagger."

"By the mordieu, Henry, when you return to your Pyrenees you shall send me a cart-load of bears. It must be noble sport to contend with an animal that can stifle you with a hug. But hark! I hear the dogs! No, I was mistaken."

The king put his horn to his mouth and sounded fanfare. Several horns replied to him. Suddenly a piqueur appeared, sounding a different call.

"The view! the view!" cried the king; and he galloped off, followed by the other sportsmen.

The piqueur was not mistaken. As the king advanced he heard the baying of the pack, which was now composed of more than sixty dogs, fresh relays having been slipped at different places near which the boar had passed. At last Charles caught a second glimpse of the animal, and, profiting by the height of the adjacent trees, which enabled him to ride beneath their branches, he turned into the wood, sounding his horn with all his strength. The princes followed him for some time, but the king had so vigorous a horse, and, carried away by his eagerness, he dashed over such steep and broken ground, and through such dense thickets, that first the ladies, then the Duke of Guise and his gentlemen, and at last the two princes, were forced to abandon him. All the hunters therefore, with the exception of Charles and a few piqueurs, found themselves reassembled at the carrefour. D'Alençon and Henry were standing near each other in a long alley. At about a hundred paces from them the Duke of Guise had halted, with his retinue of twenty or thirty gentlemen, who were armed, it might have been thought, rather for the battle-field than the hunting-ground. The ladies were in the carrefour itself.

"Would it not seem," said the Duke of Alençon to Henry, glancing at the Duke of Guise with the corner of his eye, "that yonder man with his steel-clad escort is the true king? He does not even vouchsafe a glance to us poor princes."

"Why should he treat us better than our own relations do?" replied Henry. "Are we not, you and I, prisoners at the court of France, hostages for our party?"

The Duke Francis started, and looked at Henry as if to provoke a further explanation; but Henry had gone further than was his wont, and he remained silent.

"What do you mean, Henry?" enquired the duke, evidently vexed that his brother-in-law, by his taciturnity, compelled him to put the question.

"I mean, brother," answered Henry, "that those armed men who seem so careful not to lose sight of us, have quite the appearance of guards charged to prevent us from escaping."

"Escaping! Why? How?" cried D'Alençon, with a well-feigned air of surprise and simplicity.

"You have a magnificent jennet there, Francis," said Henry, following up the subject, whilst appearing to change the conversation. "I am sure he would get over seven leagues in an hour, and twenty from now till noon. It is a fine day for a ride. Look at that cross-road—how level and pleasant it is! Are you not tempted, Francis? For my part, my spurs are burning my heels."

Francis made no answer. He turned red and pale alternately, and appeared to be straining his hearing to catch some sound of the chase.

"The news from Poland have produced their effect," said Henry to himself, "and my good brother-in-law has a plan of his own. He would like to see me escape, but I shall not go alone."

He had scarcely made the reflection, when several of the recently converted Huguenots, who within the last two or three months had returned to the court and the Romish church, came up at a canter, and saluted the two princes with a most engaging smile. The Duke of Alençon, already urged on by Henry's overtures, had but to utter a word or make a sign, and it was evident that his flight would be favoured by the thirty or forty cavaliers who had collected around him, as if to oppose themselves to the followers of the Duke of Guise. But that word he did not utter. He turned away his head, and, putting his horn to his mouth, sounded the rally.

Nevertheless the new-comers, as if they thought that D'Alençon's hesitation was occasioned by the vicinity of the Guisards, had gradually placed themselves between the latter and the two princes, arraying themselves in échelon with a sort of strategic skill, which implied a habit of military manœuvres. Guise and his followers would have had to ride over them to get at the Duke of Alençon and the King of Navarre; whilst, on the other side, a long and unobstructed road lay open before the brothers-in-law.

Suddenly, between the trees, at ten paces from the King of Navarre, there appeared another horseman, whom the princes had not yet seen. Henry was trying to guess who this person was, when the gentleman raised his hat and disclosed the features of the Viscount of Turenne, one of the chiefs of the Protestant party, and who was supposed to be then in Poitou. The viscount even risked a sign, which meant to say—"Are you coming?" But Henry, after consulting the inexpressive countenance and dull eyes of the Duke of Alençon, turned his head two or three times upon his shoulders, as if something in the collar of his doublet inconvenienced him. It as a reply in the negative. The viscount understood it, gave his horse the spur, and disappeared amongst the trees. At the same moment the pack was heard approaching; then, at the end of the alley, the boar was seen to pass, followed at a short distance by the dogs, whilst after them came Charles IX., like some demon-huntsman bareheaded, his horn at his mouth, sounding as though he would burst his lungs. Three or four piqueurs followed him.

"The king!" cried D'Alençon, riding off to join in the chase. Henry, encouraged by the presence of his partizans, signed to them to remain, and approached the ladies.

"Well," said Margaret, advancing to meet him.

"Well madam," said Henry, "we are hunting the boar."

"Is that all?"

"Yes, the wind has changed since yesterday morning. I think I predicted that such would be the case."

"These changes of wind are bad for hunting—are they not, sir?" enquired Margaret.

"Yes," replied her husband, "they sometimes overturn previous arrangements, and the plan has to be remade."

At this moment the baying of the pack was again heard near the carrefour. The noise and tumult rapidly approaching, warned the hunters to be on the alert. All heads were raised, every ear as strained, when suddenly the boar burst out of the wood, and, instead of plunging into the opposite thicket made straight for the carrefour. Close to the animal's heels were thirty or forty of the strongest amongst the dogs, and at less than twenty paces behind these came Charles himself, without cap or cloak, his clothes torn by the thorns, his face and hands covered with blood. Only one or two piqueurs kept up with him. Alternately sounding his horn and shouting encouragement to the dogs, the king pressed onwards, every thing but the chase forgotten. If his horse had failed him at that moment, he would have exclaimed, like Richard III., "My kingdom for a horse!" But the horse appeared as eager as his rider. His feet scarce touched the ground, and he seemed to snort fire from his blood-red nostrils. Boar, dogs, and king dashed by like a whirlwind.

"Hallali! hallali!" cried the king as he passed. And again he applied his horn to his bleeding lips. A short distance behind him came the Duke of Alençon and two more piqueurs. The horses of the others were blown or distanced.

Every body now joined in the pursuit, for it was evident that the boar would soon turn to bay. Accordingly, at the end of ten minutes, the beast left the path and entered the wood; but on reaching a neighbouring glade, he turned his tail to a rock and made head against the dogs. The most interesting moment of the hunt had arrived. The animal was evidently prepared to make a desperate defence. The dogs, fierce and foaming after their three hours' chase, precipitated themselves upon him with a fury which was redoubled by the shouts and oaths of the king. The hunters arranged themselves in a circle, Charles a little in front, having behind him the Duke of Alençon, who carried an arquebuss, and Henry of Navarre, who was armed only with a couteau-de-chasse. The duke unslung his arquebuss and lit the match; Henry loosened his hunting-knife in the scabbard. As to the Duke of Guise, who affected to despise field-sports, he kept himself a little apart with his gentlemen; and on the other side another little group was formed by the ladies. All eyes were fixed in anxious expectation upon the boar.

A little apart stood a piqueur, exerting all his strength to resist the efforts of two enormous dogs, who awaited, covered with their coats of mail, howling savagely, and struggling as though they would break their chains, the moment when they should be let loose upon the boar. The latter did wonders. Attacked at one time by forty dogs, that covered him like a living wave or many-coloured carpet, and strove on all sides to tear his wrinkled and bristling hide, he, at each blow of his formidable tusk, tossed one of his assailants ten feet into the air. The dogs fell to the ground ripped up, and threw themselves, with their bowels hanging out of their wounds, once more into the mélée; whilst Charles, with hair on end, inflamed eyes, and distended nostrils, bent forward over the neck of his foaming steed and sounded a furious hallali. In less than ten minutes twenty dogs were disabled.

"The mastiffs!" cried Charles; "the mastiffs!"

At the word, the piqueur slipped the leashes, and the two dogs dashed into the midst of the carnage, upsetting the smaller hounds, and with their iron-coated sides forcing their way to the boar, whom they seized each by an ear. The animal, feeling himself coiffé, as it is termed, gnashed his teeth with pain and fury.

"Bravo, Duredent! Bravo, Risquetout!" vociferated Charles. "Courage, my dogs! a spear! a spear!"

"Will you have my arquebuss?" said the Duke of Alençon.

"No," cried the king. "No—one does not feel the ball go in; there is no pleasure in that. One feels the spear. A spear! a spear!"

A boar-spear made of wood hardened in the fire and tipped with iron, was handed to the king. "Be cautious, brother!" exclaimed Margaret.

"Sus, sus, sire!" cried the Duchess of Nevers. "Do not miss him, sire. A good thrust to the brute!"

"You may depend on that, duchess," replied Charles. And levelling his spear, he charged the boar, who, being held down by the two dogs, could not avoid the blow. Nevertheless, at the sight of the glittering point of the weapon, the animal made a movement on one side, and the spear, instead of piercing his breast, grazed his shoulder, and struck against the rock in his rear.

"Mille noms d'un diable!" cried the king, "I have missed him. A spear! a spear!" And backing his horse, like a knight in the lists, he pitched away his weapon, of which the point had turned against the rock. A piqueur advanced to give him another. But at the same moment, as if he had foreseen the fate that awaited him, and was determined to avoid it at any cost, the boar, by a violent effort, wrenched his torn ears from the jaws of the dogs, and with bloodshot eyes, bristling and hideous, his respiration sounding like the bellows of a forge, and his teeth chattering and grinding against each other, he lowered his head and made a rush at the king's horse. Charles was too experienced a sportsman not to have anticipated this attack, and he turned his horse quickly aside. But he had pressed too hard upon the bit; the horse reared violently, and, either terrified at the boar or compelled by the pull on the bridle, fell backwards. The spectators uttered a terrible cry. The king's thigh was under the horse.

"Slack your rein!" cried Henry, "slack your rein!"

The king relinquished his hold on the bridle, seized the saddle with his left hand, and with his right tried to draw his hunting-knife; but the blade, pressed upon by the weight of his body, would not leave its sheath.

"The boar! the boar!" cried Charles. "Help, D'Alençon! help!"

Nevertheless the horse, left to himself, and as if he had understood his rider's peril, made an effort, and had already got up on three legs, when Henry saw the Duke Francis grow deadly pale, bring his arquebuss to his shoulder, and fire. The ball, instead of striking the boar, now but at two paces from the king, broke the front leg of the horse, who again fell with his nose upon the earth. At the same moment Charles's boot was torn by the tusk of the boar.

"Oh!" murmured D'Alençon between his pallid lips, "I think that the Duke of Anjou is King of France, and that I am King of Poland!"

It seemed indeed probable. The snout of the boar was rummaging Charles's thigh, when the latter felt somebody seize and raise his arm—a keen bright blade flashed before his eyes, and buried itself to the hilt in the shoulder of the brute; whilst a gauntleted hand put aside the dangerous tusks which were already disappearing under the King's garments. Charles, who had taken advantage of the horse's movement to disengage his leg, rose slowly to his feet, and, seeing himself covered with blood, became as pale as a corpse.

"Sire," said Henry, who, still on his knees, held down the boar, which he had stabbed to the heart—"Sire, there is no harm done. I put aside the tusk, and your Majesty is unhurt." Then, getting up, he let go his hold of the hunting-knife, and the boar fell, the blood flowing from his mouth even more plentifully than from the wound.

Charles, surrounded by the alarmed throng, and assailed by cries of terror that might well have bewildered the calmest courage, was for a moment on the point of falling senseless near the dying animal. But he recovered himself, and turning towards the King of Navarre, pressed his hand with a look in which was visible the first gleam of kindly feeling that he had shown during his twenty-four years of existence.

"Thanks, Henriot," said he.

"My poor brother!" cried D'Alençon, approaching the king.

"Ah! you are there, D'Alençon?" cried Charles. "Well, you famous marksman, what is become of your bullet?"

"It must have flattened upon the hide of the boar," said the duke.

"Eh! mon Dieu!" cried Henry with a surprise that was admirably acted; "see there, Francis—your ball has broken the leg of his Majesty's horse!"

"What!" said the king; "is that true?"

"It is possible," said the duke, in great confusion; "my hand trembled so violently."

"The fact is, that for an expert marksman you have made a singular shot, Francis," said Charles frowning. "For the second time, thanks, Henriot. Gentlemen," continued the king, "we will return to Paris; I have had enough for to-day."

Margaret came up to congratulate Henry.

"Ma foi! yes, Margot," said Charles, "you may congratulate him, and very sincerely too, for without him the King of France would now be Henry the Third."

"Alas! madam," said the Béarnais, "the Duke of Anjou, already my enemy, will hate me tenfold for this morning's work. But it cannot be helped. One does what one can, as M. d'Alençon will tell you."

And stooping, he drew his hunting-knife from the carcass of the boar, and plunged it thrice into the ground, to cleanse it from the blood.

Before leaving the Louvre, on the morning of the boar-hunt, Charles has been prevailed upon by Catharine of Medicis, who, in consequence of the prediction already referred to, has vowed Henry's destruction, to sign a warrant for the King of Navarre's arrest and imprisonment in the Bastile. In this warrant she inserts the words, "dead or alive," and entrusts its execution to the assassin Maurevel, intimating to him that Henry's death will be more agreeable to her than his capture. Charles, however, learns that his mother has had an interview with Maurevel, guesses the fate reserved for Henry, and, as the least troublesome way of rescuing the man who had that day saved his life, he makes his brother-in-law accompany him to sup and pass the night out of the Louvre. Henry does not dare to refuse, although he is expecting a nocturnal visit from De Mouy in his apartment, and the two kings leave the palace together. Here is what passes after their departure.

It wanted two hours of midnight, and the most profound silence reigned in the Louvre. Margaret and the Duchess of Nevers had betaken themselves to their rendezvous in the Rue Tizon; Coconnas and La Mole had followed them; the Duke of Alençon remained in his apartment in vague and anxious expectation of the events which the queen-mother had predicted to him; finally, Catharine herself had retired to rest, and Madame de Sauve, seated at her bedside, was reading to her certain Italian tales, at which the good queen laughed heartily. For a long time, Catharine had not been in so complacent a humour. After making an excellent supper with her ladies, after holding a consultation with her physician, and making up the account of her day's expenditure, she had ordered prayers for the success of an enterprise, highly important, she said, to the happiness of her children. It was one of Catharine's Florentine habits to have prayers and masses said for the success of projects, the nature of which was known but to God and to herself.

Whilst Madame de Sauve is reading, a terrible cry and a pistol-shot are heard, followed by the noise of a struggle from the direction of the King of Navarre's apartment. All are greatly alarmed, except Catharine, who affects not to have heard the sounds, and forbids enquiry as to their cause, attributing them to some brawling guardsmen. At last the disturbance appears to have ceased.

"It is over," said Catharine.—"Captain," she continued, addressing herself to Monsieur de Nancey, "if there has been scandal in the palace, you will not fail to-morrow to have it severely punished. Go on reading, Carlotta."

And Catharine fell back upon her pillows. Only those nearest to her observed that large drops of perspiration were trickling down her face.

Madame de Sauve obeyed the formal order she had received, but with her eyes and voice only. Her imagination represented to her some terrible danger suspended over the head of him she loved. After a short struggle between emotion and etiquette, the former prevailed; her voice died away, the book fell from her hands, and she fainted. Just then a violent noise was heard; a heavy hurried step shook the corridor; two pistol-shots caused the windows to rattle in their frames, and Catharine, astonished at this prolonged struggle, sprang from her couch, pale, and with dilated eyeballs. The captain of the guard was hastening to the door, when she seized his arm.

"Let no one leave the room," she cried; "I will go myself to see what is occurring."

What was occurring, or rather what had occurred, was this: De Mouy had received, that morning, from Henry's page, Orthon, the key of the King of Navarre's apartment. In the hollow of the key was a small roll of paper, which he drew out with a pin. It contained the password to be used that night at the Louvre. Orthon had, moreover, delivered a verbal invitation from Henry to De Mouy, to visit him at the Louvre that night at ten o'clock.

At half-past nine, De Mouy donned a cuirass, of which the strength had been more than once tested; over this he buttoned a silken doublet, buckled on his sword, stuck his pistols in his belt, and covered the whole with the counterpart of La Mole's famous crimson mantle. Thanks to this well-known garment, and to the password with which he was provided, he passed the guards undiscovered, and went straight to Henry's apartment, imitating as usual, and as well as he could, La Mole's manner of walking. In the antechamber he found Orthon waiting for him.

"Sire de Mouy," said the lad, "the king is out, but he begs of you to wait, and, if agreeable, to throw yourself upon his bed till his return."

De Mouy entered without asking any further explanation, and by way of passing the time, took a pen and ink, and began marking the different stages from Paris to Pau upon a map of France that hung against the wall. This he had completed, however, in a quarter of an hour; and after walking two or three times round the room, and gaping twice as often, he took advantage of Henry's permission, and stretched himself upon the large bed, surrounded with dark hangings, which stood at the further end of the apartment. He placed his pistols and a lamp upon a table near at hand, laid his naked sword beside him, and certain not to be surprised, since Orthon was keeping watch in the antechamber, he sank into a heavy slumber, and was soon snoring in a manner worthy of the King of Navarre himself.

It was then that six men, with naked swords in their hands, and daggers in their girdles, stealthily entered the corridor upon which the door of Henry's apartment opened. A seventh man walked in front of the party, having, besides his sword, and a dagger as broad and as strong as a hunting-knife, a brace of pistols suspended to his belt by silver hooks. This man was Maurevel. On reaching Henry's door, he paused, introduced into the lock the key which he had received from the queen-mother, and, leaving two men at the outer door, entered the antechamber with the four others. "Ah, ha!" said he, as the loud breathing of the sleeper reached his ears from the inner room, "he is there."

Just then Orthon, thinking it was his master who was coming in, went to meet him, and found himself face to face with five armed men. At the sight of that sinister countenance, of that Maurevel, whom men called Tueur du Roi, the faithful lad stepped back, and placed himself before the second door.

"In the king's name," said Maurevel, "where is your master?"

"My master?"

"Yes, the King of Navarre."

"The King of Navarre is not here," replied Orthon, still in front of the door.

"'Tis a lie," replied Maurevel. "Come! out of the way!"

The Béarnese are a headstrong race; Orthon growled in reply to this summons, like one of the dogs of his own mountains.

"You shall not go in," said he sturdily. "The king is absent." And he held the door to.

Maurevel made a sign; the four men seized the lad, pulled him away from the door-jambs to which he clung, and as he opened his mouth to cry out, Maurevel placed his hand over it. Orthon bit him furiously; the assassin snatched away his hand with a suppressed cry, and struck the boy on the head with his sword-hilt. Orthon staggered.

"Alarm! alarm! alarm!" cried he, as he fell senseless to the ground.

The assassins passed over his body; two remained at the second door, and the remaining two entered the bed-chamber, led on by Maurevel. By the light of the lamp still burning upon the table, they distinguished the bed, of which the curtains were closed.

"Oh, ho!" said the lieutenant of the little band, "he has left off snoring, it seems."

"Allons, sus!" cried Maurevel.

At the sound of his voice, a hoarse cry, resembling rather the roar of a lion than any human accents, issued from behind the curtains, which the next instant were torn asunder. A man armed with a cuirass, and his head covered with one of those salades, or head-pieces, that come down to the eyes, appeared seated upon the bed, a pistol in either hand, and his drawn sword upon his knees. No sooner did Maurevel perceive this figure, and recognise the features of De Mouy, than he became frightfully pale, his hair bristled up, his mouth filled with foam, and he made a step backwards, as though terrified by some horrible and unexpected apparition. At the same moment the armed figure rose from its seat and made a step forwards, so that the assailed seemed to be pursuing, and the assailant to fly.

"Ah! villain," exclaimed De Mouy, in the hollow tones of suppressed fury, "do on come to kill me as you killed my father?"

The two men who had accompanied Maurevel into the chamber alone heard these terrible words; but as they were spoken, De Mouy's pistol had been brought to a level with Maurevel's head. Maurevel threw himself on his knees at the very moment that De Mouy pulled the trigger. The bullet passed over him, and one of the guards who stood behind, and who had been uncovered by his movement, received it in his heart. At the same instant Maurevel fired, but the ball rebounded from De Mouy's cuirass. Then De Mouy, with one blow of his heavy sword, split the skull of the other soldier, and, turning upon Maurevel, attacked him furiously. The combat was terrible but short. At the fourth pass Maurevel felt the cold steel in his throat; he uttered a stifled cry, fell backwards, and, in falling, overturned the lamp. Immediately De Mouy, profiting by the darkness, and vigorous and active as one of Homer's heroes, rushed into the outer room, cut down one of the guards, pushed aside the other, and, passing like a thunderbolt between the two men stationed at the door of the antechamber, received their fire without injury. He had still got a loaded pistol, besides the sword which he so well knew how to handle. For one second he hesitated whether he should take refuge in Monsieur d'Alençon's apartment, the door of which, he thought, was just then opened, or whether he should endeavour to leave the Louvre. Deciding upon the latter course, he sprang down the stairs, ten steps at a time, reached the wicket, uttered the password, and darted out.

"Go up-stairs," he shouted as he passed the guardhouse; "they are slaying there for the king's account."

And before he could be pursued, he had disappeared in the Rue du Coq, without having received a scratch.

It was at this moment of time that Catharine had said to De Nancey—"Remain here; I will go myself to see what is occurring."

"But, madam," replied the captain, "the danger to which your Majesty might be exposed compels me to follow."

"Remain here, sir," said Catharine, in a more imperative tone than before. "A higher power than that of the sword watches over the safety of kings."

The captain obeyed. Catharine took a lamp, thrust her naked feet into velvet slippers, entered the corridor, which was still full of smoke, and advanced, cold and unmoved, towards the apartment of the King of Navarre. All was again dead silence. Catharine reached the outer door of Henry's rooms, and passed into the antechamber, where Orthon was lying, still insensible.

"Ah, ha!" said she, "here is the page to begin with; a little further we shall doubtless find the master." And she passed through the second room.

Then her foot struck against a corpse: it was that of the soldier whose skull had been split. He was quite dead. Three paces further she found the lieutenant: a ball in his breast, and the death-rattle in his throat. Finally, near the bed, lay a man bleeding profusely from a double wound that had gone completely through his throat. He was making violent but ineffectual efforts to raise himself from the ground. This was Maurevel.

Catharine's blood ran cold; she saw the bed empty; she looked round the room, and sought in vain amongst the three bodies that lay weltering upon the floor, that of him whom she would fain have seen there. Maurevel recognised her; his eyes became horribly dilated, and he held out his arms with a gesture of despair.

"Well," said she, in a low voice "where is he? What has become of him? Wretch! have you let him escape?"

Maurevel endeavored to articulate; but an unintelligible hissing, which issued from his wound, was the only sound he could give forth; a reddish froth fringed his lips, and he shook his head in sign of impotence and suffering.

"But speak, then!" cried Catharine; "speak, if it be only to say one word."

Maurevel pointed to his wound and again uttered some inarticulate sounds, made an effort which ended in a hoarse rattle, and swooned away. Catharine then looked around her: she was surrounded by the dead and the dying; blood was flowing in streams over the floor, and a gloomy silence prevailed in the apartment. She spoke once more to Maurevel, but he could not hear her voice; this time he remained not only silent, but motionless. Whilst stooping over him, Catharine perceived the corner of a paper protruding from the breast of his doublet: it was the order to arrest Henry. The queen-mother seized it and hid it in her bosom. Then, in despair at the failure of her murderous project, she called the captain of her guard, ordered the dead men to be removed, and that Maurevel, who still lived, should be conveyed to his house. She moreover particularly commanded that the king should not be disturbed.

"Oh!" murmured she, as she reentered her apartment, her head bowed upon her breast, "he has again escaped me! Surely the hand of God protects this man. He will reign! he will reign!"

Then, as she opened the door of her bedroom, she passed her hand over her forehead, and composed her features into a smile.

"What was the matter, madam?" enquired all her ladies, with the exception of Madame de Sauve, who was too anxious and agitated to ask questions.

"Nothing," replied Catharine; "a great deal of noise and nothing else."

"Oh!" suddenly exclaimed Madame de Sauve, pointing to the ground with her finger, "each one of your Majesty's footsteps leaves a trace of blood upon the carpet!"

Thrice foiled in her designs upon Henry's life, the queen-mother does not yet give in. Henry, whom the king has reproached with his ignorance of falconry, has asked the Duke of Alençon to procure him a book on that subject. Catharine hears of this request, and gives D'Alençon a book of the kind required—a rare and valuable work, but of which the edges of the leaves are stuck together, apparently from age, in reality by poison. The idea is old, but its application is novel and very effective. The queen-mother convinces D'Alençon that Henry is playing him false, and the duke places the fatal book in the King of Navarre's room during his absence, being afraid to give it into his hands. He then re-enters his apartment, hears Henry, as he thinks, return to his, and passes half an hour in the agonies of suspense and terror. To escape from himself and his reflections, he goes to visit his brother Charles. We have only space for a very short extract, showing the frightful and unexpected result of Catharine's atrocious scheme.

Charles was seated at a table in a large carved arm-chair: his back was turned to the door by which Francis had entered, and he appeared absorbed in some very interesting occupation. The duke approached on tiptoe; Charles was reading.

"Pardieu!" exclaimed the king on a sudden, "this is an admirable book. I have heard speak of it, but I knew not that a copy existed in France."

D'Alençon made another step in advance.

"Curse the leaves!" cried the king, putting his thumb to his lips, and pressing it on the page he had just read, in order to detach it from the one he was about to read; "one would think they had been stuck together on purpose, in order to conceal from men's eyes the wonders they contain."

D'Alençon made a bound forwards. The book Charles was reading was the one he had left in Henry's room. A cry of horror escaped him.

"Ha! is it you, D'Alençon?" said Charles; "come here and look; at the most admirable treatise on falconry that was ever produced by the pen of man."

D'Alençon's first impulse was to snatch the book from his brother's hands; but an infernal thought paralysed the movement—a frightful smile passed over his pallid lips; he drew his hand across his eyes as if something dazzled him. Then gradually recovering himself—

"Sire," said he to the king, "how can this book have come into your Majesty's hands?"

"In the most simple manner possible. I went up just now to Henriot's room, to see if he was ready to go a-hawking. He was not there, but in his stead I found this treasure, which I brought down with me to read at my ease."

And the king put his thumb to his lips and turned another page.

"Sire," stammered D'Alençon, who felt a horrible anguish come over him, "Sire, I came to tell you——"

"Let me finish this chapter, Francis," interrupted Charles. "You shall tell me whatever you like afterwards. I have read fifty pages already, or devoured them, I should rather say."

"He has tasted the poison twenty-five times!" thought Francis. "My brother is a dead man."

He wiped, with his trembling hand, the chill dew that stood upon his brow, and waited, as the king had commanded, till the chapter was finished.

The end of Charles IX. is well known. A dreadful complaint, a sweat of blood, which many historians attribute to poison, and which the Huguenots maintained to be a punishment inflicted on him by Heaven for the massacre of their brethren, rendered the latter months of his life a period of horrible torture. At his death, Henry, having every thing to dread from the animosity of Catharine, and from that of the Duke of Anjou, Charles's successor, fled from Paris, and took refuge in his kingdom of Navarre.

---

THE BARON VON STEIN.[16]

"It is to the great abilities, enlightened patriotism, and enduring constancy of the Baron Stein that Prussia is indebted for the measures which laid the foundation for the resurrection of the monarchy."—Alison.

"Baron Stein," says Bourrienne, "has been too little known;"—and unquestionably, considering what he was to Prussia, and through Prussia to Europe, at the most important crisis of recent history, he is too little known still. Why is this? Plainly, in the first place, because he had the misfortune to be a German statesman, and not a French one;—these French do make such a noise in the world, partly with real cannons, partly with artificial volcanoes and puerile pyrotechny of all kinds, that a man cannot live and have ears without hearing about them. Celebrity is, indeed, a very cheap affair, according to the French fashion; restlessness and recklessness are the main elements of it. Only keep spurting and spitting about obstreperously, and the most stiff ears must at length be converted. As to real character and substantial worth, that must not give you a moment's concern. Is not Catiline to this day as famous a man as Cicero? and is not the celebrity of Bonaparte, who was (pace tanti nominis) nothing better than a bold and brilliant blackguard, equal to that of the Apostle Paul, who was a saint? Yes, verily; and M. Thiers, and the hot war-spirits in France, know it very well: but as for your great, meditative, unobtrusive, honest, truthful, and laborious German—your devoted Scharnhorst, for instance, who fell at Lutzen—the great world hears not of such a man, unless by accident, though his life be a living epitome of the gospel. But there are other Germans, too, as fiery, and hot, and volcanic as any Frenchman, of whom, however, Europe hears but little in proportion to their worth; their reputation suffers partly by the virtue, partly by the vice, of the people to whom they belong; for the people in general are not a noise-making people—this is the virtue—and the German government—this is the vice—are timid and eschew publicity. The Baron von Stein was one of these hot, glowing, impetuous, volcanic Germans—a political Luther, as he has most justly been called; but he had the misfortune to belong to a people who never dreamed of conquering any thing except transcendental ideas in the region of the moon, and beyond it; and he served a good, pious, "decent" master, the late Frederick William III., who, when he was merry, (like a good Christian,) was more inclined to sing psalms than to crack cannons, and prayed heaven every morning that he might die a good man, rather than live a great king. Then, in addition to this, comes the great and authoritative extinguisher of all German political reputation, the Censorship—a "monstrum horrendum ingens," and "cui lumen ademptum" truly; for it will neither see itself, nor allow others having eyes to see for it. An honest and thorough life of Baron Stein is, in fact, in the present slavish state of the Prussian political press, an impossibility; for the sturdy old Freiherr was a declared enemy of the whole race of red-tapists, and other officials of the quill, who, since the peace, have maintained a practical monopoly of public business in Prussia, and who, in fact, keep the monarch's conscience, and tie his hands, much more effectually than chancellor or parliament does in Great Britain. It is only therefore, in the way of scattered notices, drawn from various sources, that a knowledge of such a German statesman as Stein can be obtained; and these sources also, from the same evil influence of the censorship, are necessarily very imperfect; the men who knew Stein, and were in possession of correspondence and other papers that might illustrate his life, are all marked men; to the government of the bureaucracy suspected men—men who had, many of them, like the Baron himself, been, immediately after the peace, subjected to the most odious kinds of moral, and sometimes corporeal, persecution. Their publications, of course, were watched with peculiar jealousy by the Argus-eyed censorship; and we may always be sure that what they do tell us is only the half of what they might have told us, had they dared to speak out. Under these circumstances, the English reader will perhaps be obliged to us for taking the trouble to sketch out a short outline of the life and temper of Baron Stein from such scanty materials as time and chance have thrown in our way; and he will, at the same time, pardon the great deficiencies that must necessarily exist in the execution of such a work.[17]

Henry Frederick Charles, of and at Stein, (vom and zum Stein!) was born in the year 1757, of an old and noble family at Nassau on the Lahn. His father belonged to that higher class of nobility, according to the old German constitution, who held immediately of the Empire, (Reichs: unmittelbare und Landbarfreie,)—a descent which had perhaps a not unimportant effect in influencing the position which Stein afterwards assumed; for while the Baron always acted in the spirit rather of the middle classes than of the princes and their courts, and indeed often indulged in the strongest expressions of contempt for the whole body of princes in Germany, he never forgot his own character as a free and independent baron of the German empire, and was, notwithstanding the popular character of his great measures, in his tone of mind as much aristocratic as democratic. Intended by his father to take office under the Imperial government, he was sent first to Göttingen to study public law and history, and then to Wetzlar, the seat of the Imperial chamber; but the name of the Empire in those days had already lost its power over the minds of ambitious youth. Frederick the Great was the guiding star of the time; and, as if prophetic of the death-blow that awaited the crumbling old edifice from the hand of Napoleon in 1806, Stein, so early as 1780, entered the Prussian service as director of the mines (Bergrath) at Wetter, in Westphalia. In 1784 we find him ambassador at Aschaffenburg. He was then made president of all the Westphalian chambers, and in active connexion with this province we find him remaining till 1804, when, on occasion of the death of Struensee, one of the Prussian ministers, he was called to Berlin, and made minister of finance and of trade and commerce by Frederick William III. In this capacity he remained till the opening of the year 1807, when, as the Conversations Lexikon asserts, being at Königsberg with the king, after the battle of Jena, "on account of some differences with the cabinet" he resigned his situation, and retired to his estates in Nassau. We notice this retirement and the alleged cause of it particularly, because, as will appear in the sequel, Stein, with all his talent, seems to have been a man of a peculiar temper, and not so easily to be managed on many occasions as he was both willing and able to manage others. However, whatever the cause of the resignation might be, Frederick William had sense enough to see that these were not times when Prussia could want the services of any man of real talent and energy; and accordingly, (some say on the recommendation of Napoleon,) so early as the harvest of that same year, he called the baron back and made him prime-minister. Here was a situation worthy of a great man; Prussia, after the battle of Jena, overthrown, prostrate, and bleeding beneath the iron tramp of insolent France. How to convert this Prussia into the Prussia that in a few years afterwards was destined to be a chief instrument employed by Providence in the overthrow of the general European tyrant—here was a problem!—one worthy of the worthiest man that the kingdom of the Great Frederick could find; and most worthily did the Baron von Stein execute the mission. The reforms which he boldly planned, and no less boldly executed, in that critical year 1808, followed out as they were by his able successor, Count Hardenberg, are sufficient to place him in the very first rank of modern statesmen. He actually changed a nation of serfs, by a single bloodless blow, into a free people; he did that for Prussia, morally and socially, which Frederick the Great had done only geographically; he caused it to rank side by side with the more civilized and advanced, as opposed to the semi-barbarous (Russia) and stationary or retrograde (Austria and Spain) powers of Europe. To detail at large the important social changes thus effected in a single year by this most energetic man, would lead us too far from our biographical purpose here, and prevent us from making such a free use as we should desire of the correspondence published by Von Gagern and Hormayr. We shall therefore content ourselves with a short quotation from Mr Alison's sixth volume; and may refer the reader, at the same time, to the more detailed and yet succinct statement of the same matter given by Mr Russell—Tour in Germany, vol. ii. p. 116.

"So clearly were his ideas formed, and so decided his conviction as to the only means which remained of reinstating the public affairs, that he commenced at once a vigorous, but yet cautious system of amelioration; and, only four days after his appointment as Minister of the Interior, a royal decree appeared, which introduced a salutary reform into the constitution.

"By this ordinance, the peasants and burghers obtained the right, hitherto confined to the nobles, of acquiring and holding landed property, while they in their turn were permitted, without losing caste, to engage in the pursuits of commerce and industry. Landholders were allowed, under reservation of the rights of their creditors, to separate their estates into distinct parcels, and alienate them to different persons. Every species of slavery, whether contracted by birth, marriage, or agreement, was prohibited subsequent to the 11th November 1810; and every servitude, corvée, or obligation of service or rent, other than those founded on the rights of property or express agreement, was for ever abolished. By a second ordinance, published six weeks afterwards, certain important franchises were conferred on municipalities. By this wise decree, which is in many respects the Magna Charta of the Prussian burghs, it was provided that the burghers should enjoy councillors of their own election, for regulating all local and municipal concerns: that a third of the number should go out by rotation, and be renewed by an election every year; that the council thus chosen should assemble twice a-year to deliberate on the public affairs; that two burgomasters should be at the head of the magistracy, one of whom should be chosen by the king from a list of three presented, and the other by the councillors; and that the police of the burgh should be administered by a syndic appointed for twelve years, and who should also have a seat in the municipal council. The administration of the Haute Police, or that connected with the state, was reserved to Government. By a third ordinance, an equally important alteration was made in favour of the numerous class of debtors, whom the public calamities had disabled from performing their engagements, by prohibiting all demand for the capital sums till the 24th June 1810, providing at the same time for the punctual payment of the interest, under pain of losing the benefit of the ordinance. Thus at the very moment that France, during the intoxication consequent on the triumphs of Jena and Friedland, was losing the last remnant of the free institutions which had been called into existence during the fervour and crimes of the Revolution, Prussia, amidst the humiliation of unprecedented disasters, and when groaning under the weight of foreign chains, was silently relaxing the fetters of the feudal system, and laying the foundation, in a cautious and guiltless reformation of experienced grievances, for the future erection of those really free institutions which can never be established on any other bases than those of justice, order, and religion."

But Stein was too fierce and fiery a spirit, not merely too ardent, but too open and reckless a "French-hater," to remain long as prime-minister of Prussia under such a suspicious and jealous-eyed master-general of continental police as Napoleon. An intercepted letter revealed Stein's sentiments to the French; and by order of Napoleon, Hardenberg, a man of a more smooth and polite exterior, (though as true a German at heart,) was nominated in his place. The reforming baron, after felling a few gigantic trees, was obliged to surrender the work of perfect clearing of the social forest to a not unworthy successor, himself retiring, or (to speak more properly) being banished to Prague. There he lay in a convenient central position, like a lion nursing his wrath, ready to start off in any direction—back to Prussia, south to Vienna, north to Petersburg, or wherever any thing substantial, by word or deed, was likely to be done against the man whom his soul hated with an intensity of moral indignation truly grand, even out-Bluchering Blucher. Stein indeed hated Napoleon, not for one good reason only, but for four: first, as he was a Frenchman, vainglorious and false; second, as he was a conqueror; third, as he was a tyrant and an oppressor; fourth, as he was a godless man and a heathen. In Prague, therefore, Stein remained, in company with Justus Eumer, the banished Elector of Hesse-Cassel, Karl von Nostez, and many French emigrants, as it were in a secret-burning focus, and hidden metropolis of anti-Gallican spirit,[18] for a few years, waiting not patiently, but, in his fashion, with extreme impatience, for the coming of the great day of political retribution, in which he believed as firmly as in God, and in the last judgment. German writers speak with patriotic enthusiasm of the "noctes cænæque deûm"—"diegöttlichen Abende," which, with Pozzo di Borgo and other choice spirits, Stein spent in this important period, when events no less unexpected than great were knocking at the door. It must have been a god-like treat, indeed, in these terrible times, when a man in Germany could hardly draw his breath for fear of Davoust, to have seen launched from the dark, fiery, Saracenic eyes of Deutschland's political Luther, those "thundering fulgurations"[19] of indignant German hate, which were soon to be followed by a tempest of more indignant cannon-balls; but few and feeble, amid the barrenness of German political literature, are the voices from those prophetic times that have been wafted to British ears. The following short notices from Varnhagen von Ense are all that we have been able to recover.

"Stein lived at Prague in a very retired manner; for though on familiar terms with the most noble families, by ancient family connexions, and by social position, he made great demands on those whom he admitted to his intimacy. German truth and honour, scientific culture, decision and firmness of character, and, if possible, talent and wit, were qualities not easily found combined; but such a combination he required to secure his friendship and respect. He was often forced, indeed, to content himself with some one of these qualities separately; and for myself, my principal recommendation to his notice consisted, I suppose, in my having travelled a good deal in Germany, in my having been at Paris and seen Napoleon, and, more than all, in my having fought against the tyrant. When introduced to him first, I was at once struck by something abrupt in his manner; it seemed to me he was a person who in every thing he did or said, asserted his own superiority to the mass of mankind, and was accustomed to work in all things without respect for time, place, or person. There was at the same time an unconstrained simplicity about him, and an utter want of pride and pretence in his manner. In conversation on public affairs, and matters of social economy, he was most animated and most instructive; once started on a subject of this kind, he was carried along irresistibly by his own enthusiasm; and any ignorance displayed, or doubt expressed, by those with whom he agreed, only served as a spur to set his ideas more on the gallop. And he would go with the most admirable patience into long details of fact, in order to bring round his adversary to his opinion. I was struck particularly by the decidedly polemical character of his remarks: ever and anon he drew this or the other Prussian statesman into the argument, and in criticising severely their conduct, seemed not seldom to give as much ease to his own heart as instruction to me. His whole manner was such as in the Opposition side of a British Parliament might have produced the most extraordinary effects. In his extreme fits of eloquent indignation, a sort of convulsive tremor would seize his whole voice and movements; he would shut his eyes, and could scarcely bring out his words with the due articulation. But immediately thereafter he would become calm again; and with what a breadth and penetration of glance did he then look through his adversary, reading every secret objection on his countenance, and preparing a new and more terrible onset to carry the citadel of his doubts by storm! To converse with him was indeed to carry on a continued battle; for it pleased him, even when the person with whom he conversed for the moment agreed with him, to consider him as an adversary, and to argue with him as in all points a decided opponent of his views: always, however, without any ill-will or the least personal feeling. This sort of animated irritation gave a peculiar charm to Stein's conversation; the Emperor Alexander, in particular, was quite charmed with the roughness and bluntness of his manner; for, except by a slight admixture of humour, Stein never attempted to tame the rudeness of his address, even in the presence of the most august personages.

"In literature, his taste was decidedly anti-speculative, although rather practical. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were the men of his heart; he had a high opinion of Niebuhr, both as a historian and as a practical statesman: Heeren he praised and recommended as the rough and practical: Fichte gained his good opinion by his patriotic addresses to the German people; but for philosophy in general he had no taste: Schleiermacher's philosophical religion was too subtle for him, and, in respect of orthodoxy, more than suspicious; and the most famous recent German speculators he declared plainly MAD. But of all the writers of the time, his sympathies drew him most strongly towards Arndt. When the second part of this writer's Spirit of the Age appeared, I found him continually (on the eve of the Russian expedition) in a state of the most violent irritation and excitement. He would seize the sheets as they were lying beside him, and read out the most violent passages to me, always with increasing vehemence. But seldom could he finish a whole page continuously, so strongly did the fit of mingled indignation and exultation seize him, so necessary was it for him to give vent to his own boiling feelings by irregular interjections. 'Since Burke,' said he 'no such genuine political eloquence has appeared, no truth that so cuts its way to the heart!' He then recommended Arndt's style to my imitation.' In this way you may attempt something—facts!—facts!—and not speculative phrases! Do you understand me, Herr Metaphysics?'

"It is worthy of remark how intimately Stein's impetuousness and violence of disposition were connected with his bodily organization. He asked me once what was the number of my pulses; and, on hearing my answer, held out his hand to me, and with a smile requested that I would count his. There were about a hundred in the minute. This number, he assured me, was the common rate of his pulse when in perfect health: and it seemed to me that he looked on this gallop of his blood as a sort of charter from nature, entitling him to be more passionate and violent, without offence, than other men."

This is a most characteristic passage, and introduces us into the inner nature of the man more than a whole chapter of dissertation. Verily, a Luther in every line!—a fitful, impulsive, and tempestuous—a glowing and a volcanic spirit—a most decided, despotic, and iron-willed German—a man altogether worthy to hate Napoleon with a perfect hatred, as Luther did the Pope, and to march to Paris as the true heart's brother of that hot old septuagenarian hussar, Marshal Blücher. One thing we have omitted in the above extract for the sake of brevity, and yet we must allude to it with a passing word. During the three ears of his residence at Prague, Stein employed himself assiduously in the study of the French Revolution, following it minutely through all its phases, through the columns of the Moniteur. His opinion, therefore, on this subject, is well worth registering; and we give the following two sentences on the subject, not from Varnhagen, but from Von Gagern's correspondence, (8th June 1825.)—

"Mounier wrote on 'Des Causes qui ont empéché les Français d'être Libres.' To me they seem very simple. Inconsiderate minsters, who called together an assembly of 700 Frenchmen, without having arranged the form of their deliberations, the organization of the persons who were to deliberate, or their respective rights. Then shallow, inexperienced, vain talkers, Lameth, Lafayette, and Barrère, &c., often abused for the worst purposes by persons of the most abandoned character, formed the first Assembly—murderers and robbers were dominant in the second."

But we must proceed in our history of Stein's outward fates. When Napoleon, in the culminating point of his vainglorious exultation, had assembled the monarchs of Germany around him at Dresden in the summer of 1812, Stein was still at Prague, and not without apprehensions for his personal safety. Napoleon had laid violent hands on, and butchered many less dangerous enemies in Germany—witness Palm the bookseller, and honest Andrew Hofer; and a German like Stein at the ear of Alexander in the year of 1812, was equal to an army of 60,000 men. However, by a lucky negligence of the French spies, the baron escaped to Russia, whither he had been invited by the emperor, and was in Petersburg during that eventful winter; a much more dangerous enemy to the French invaders than the cautious Kutusoff at Moscow. Here he was immediately followed by a no less fiery French-hater—the man whom we have seen him compare with Burke, and who was henceforward to act as his secretary—Ernest Maurice Arndt, the author of the well-known national song "Marshal Blücher," and of some admirable historical sketches. From his "Reminiscences" we extract the following few but marked lines of portraiture:—

"I arrive at Petersburg on the 26th of August, and proceeded immediately to the minister. On entering, I was immediately struck by his likeness to my old philosophical friend Fichte. The same figure, short, broad, and compact—the same forehead, only broader, and more sloping backward—the same small sparkling eyes, the same powerful now—the words racy, clear, decided, and going, like arrows from the bow, directly to the mark. And I soon also found the same inexorable moral sternness of character, only with the difference that always must exist in the whole manner of being between a practical statesman and a speculative philosopher. In Stein's face there were two distinct worlds, different and contrary. In the upper part dwelt the bright and serene gods, with an almost uninterrupted sway. His magnificent broad forehead, his keen and yet kindly eyes, his powerful nose, proclaimed conjoined depth and command. A strange contrast to this was offered in the lower part of the face: The mouth was too small and delicate for the upper region; the chin also was weak. Here common mortals had their haunts—here anger and passion sported terribly—here those sudden fits of impetuousness would rage, which, however, (thank God,) only required to be firmly met, that they might be soothed. Strange, truly, was it to behold the lower part of his face quivering with excitement—the little mobile mouth, with fearful celerity, brimming with indignant indignation—and yet, at the same time, the upper region remaining a sunny Olympus, and even his lightning eyes flashing no fear: one part of his face freeing the beholder from the terror inspired by the other. On other occasions, when no violent excitement moved him, every feature, every gesture, and every word of this noble man breathed honesty, courage, and piety. He was a man that brought from his mother's womb the instinct and the necessity to command. He was a born prince and king. He was one of those who must be first, or he could do nothing. His whole character was so peculiar and so powerful, that he could not adapt himself to other people, much less subordinate. Many noble men have been able to do this, but Stein decidedly could not."

These notices from Arndt and Varnhagen will, we hope, serve to bring the reader into some personal familiarity with the man; in what follows, the patriot and the statesman will demand our exclusive attention. The correspondence with Count Münster, published by Baron Hormayr it the second volume of the Lebensbilder, commences with a letter dated 6th October 1811, when Stein was still in Prague. From it we shall make a short extract, putting in a strong light the state of public feeling in Germany produced by the insulting despotism of Napoleon, and which was the main cause that ultimately led to his overthrow.

"Every thing here is based on mere force and oppression of every kind. Napoleon's endeavour is not, like that of Augustus Cæsar, to bewitch the world into the belief that a universal monarchy is the best thing for Europe; but, on the contrary, he seems anxious to seize every occasion, by haughty demeanour, rude despotic forms, and needless irritation of every noble feeling, to make the weight of the tyranny which he has superinduced as intolerable as possible. This conduct has a most beneficial effect, for it keeps alive in the breasts of men a constant indignation—a striving to break the bonds that confine them. Had his despotism been more mild, Germany might have slept the sleep of death.

"But the spirit of indignation thus awakened, acts not only against the foreign tyrant, but against the native princes, in whom the German people now see either dastardly poltroons, who, intent only on their own preservation, and deaf to every feeling of honour and duty, seek safety in their heels; or titled slaves and bailiffs, who, with the substance and the life-blood of their subjects, purchase a few years' lease of a beggarly existence. From this arises a general wish for a constitution based on unity, energy, and nationality; and any great man who should be able to give, or rather to restore us such a nationality and such a constitution, would be sure of a hearty welcome from the great mass of the people. Nor is there any thing in the character of those who now fill the petty thrones of Germany, calculated to react against this feeling of dissatisfaction; on the contrary, every sort of extra vileness, weakness, and low sneaking selfishness prevails."

The contempt here expressed for the German princes was (as we have said) very characteristic of Stein—an old, free baron of the Empire; and the important matter of German unity and nationality here touched on is more decidedly brought forward in the following extract from a letter to the same person, dated Petersburg, December 1, 1812:—

"I am sorry that your Excellency should see only a Prussian in me, while, at the same time, you reveal yourself to me in the character of a Hanoverian. I have only one fatherland, and that is Germany; and as, according to the ancient constitution, I belonged only to my whole country, and not to any particular part of it, so my heart is given still to the German fatherland, and not to this or that province. In this moment of important development, the dynasties are in fact quite indifferent to me; I view them only as instruments. My wish is, that Germany should become great and strong, and regain its ancient integrity, independence, and nationality; and that it should attain and firmly maintain this position, between France on the one hand and Austria on the other, is as much the interest of Europe in general as of this particular part of it; and it seems to me equally plain, that this great European object cannot possibly be attained by means of the present rotten and crumbling old machinery. This were to erect the system of an artificial military boundary on the ruins of the old baronial castles, and the walls and towns of fortified cities, and to throw aside altogether the ideas of Vauban, Cohorn, and Montalembert.

"My confession of faith in this matter is contained in one word—Unity. And if my plan does not please you, take another: Put Austria in the place of Prussia, and make it lord of Germany—if this be practicable—only don't bring back the old Montagues and Capulets, and the halls of the old barons. If the bloody contest which Germany has already stood for twenty years, and is now called upon to undergo again, be to end in a FARCE, ('mit einem possenspiel endigen,') I for one shall prefer to have nothing to do with the matter, and will take myself back into private life with all possible speed and comfort."

In this letter we see applied to the political constitution of Germany, as it was to be arranged at the peace, all that comprehensive grandeur of idea, combined with decision and despotism (it would be false to use a milder word) of execution, which had, in the single year 1808, done such wonders in reconstructing the social fabric in Prussia. But it was one thing to deal despotically with the internal government of one state—especially after a battle of Jena!—and another thing to apply the same over-riding principle to the complex relations of many states. It was one thing to say to the debased aristocracy of Prussia, Thou shalt admit the poor into the participation of thy privileges; the serf shall be a free man, and the merchant shall shake hands with the noble: quite a different thing to say to the King of Bavaria, in the spring of 1813, after the peace, Thou shalt be swallowed up in Austria; and to the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, Thou, who didst in 1807 flee from Jerome, shalt in 1813 flee to Frederick William III., who, like mighty Brahma, (in the Hindoo history,) shall absorb thee quite into his Prussian godhead. The eager and impetuous old Freiherr, with his racing pulse, had manifestly been anticipating a few centuries, and attempting to dictate to necessity here. He wished a good thing, perhaps, and a great thing; but a thing that, in the circumstances, could not possibly be. Hear how sensibly the calm, cool, and moderate Hanoverian, Graf Münster, argues the matter. 'Tis plain that our brave Luther is getting too violent, and will require a Melancthon and an Erasmus to keep him in order.

"London, 4th January 1813.

"With regard to the future arrangements of the German states, you yourself say, we should invite the expelled princes to join our cause; and we cannot do this surely, if we intend, after the risk is over, to throw them overboard: or is it likely that they will resign of their own accord, and offer their thrones to either of the two masters of whom we may give them the option? The peace of Westphalia you call an abortion. Be it so; but it was better any how than a thirty years' war; and I see nothing more likely than such war to arise from any project to conquer Germany, and to make a violent subjugation of Bavaria, Saxony, Hessia, Baden, Brunswick, &c. In the most of these lands, the princes themselves will have the chief voice in determining what side their subjects shall take in the approaching struggle. I do not speak particularly of the Confederation of the Rhine, or of the state of things introduced in 1802; but from the days of Monbod and Hernam until now, Germany has always been divided, except, indeed, for one short period, during which the country suffered much misery. It is plain enough, I grant, that the constitution of Germany was not the work of an enlightened national will—did not proceed from any clear consideration of the best interests of the country—but what constitution in the world is there that has not been the work, in a great measure, of accidental circumstances? Since Solon and Lycurgus, only the Constituent National Assembly in France, and the stupid Cortes in Spain, have dreamed of such a thing as constitution-making, and the work of both has been blown, as we see, to the four winds. 'Tis true England is trying something of the same kind just now in the Sicilies; but God preserve us from such a mistaken course! Your criticism on our constitution is, indeed, altogether too severe; from the principles of the Teutonic constitution, all public liberty in Europe originally sprang. The contest in which we are engaged will certainly not end in a 'farce;' but why you should go back into private life, preferring to be rather the grave-digger than the physician of our present political state, I really cannot conceive. Let us rather endeavour after what is practically attainable, than grasp at splendid theoretical possibilities. You are fond of English authorities; let me, therefore, remind you of him who said—the practice of a constitution is frequently very different from its theory. There is much that I like in Arndt's book, and its author I highly esteem; but the way of amelioration (Verbesserung) which I propose to follow, seems to present some prospect of success, where your revolutionary projects bring with them a risk of losing all.

"You say that the dynasties are a matter of indifference to you. To me they are not. There lives in them a spirit which one can trace through ages. Read only what Müller in his Fürstenbund says of the Guelphs. 'Need I mention the fame of the Guelphs, whose spirit of unbending independence has made their name a watchword for liberty?' Even England has never been so free as under the three Georges, and the fourth George brings the same sentiments with him to the throne. Compare with this your slavish Prussian system! I respect Frederick the Great, but he caused the ruin of Germany by his aggrandizement, and the ruin, let me add, of his own state too, by creating a body that only his great soul could animate, and which, after his death, lay helpless. When I showed the Prince Regent your remarks on the dynasties, he exclaimed—If Stein is quite indifferent to them, why does he not name us (Hanover) instead of Prussia? I feel inclined to put the same question. Let us be content if we can do the best with the materials given us for our own age. ('Lassen sie uns doch auch für unsere eigene Lebenszeit sorgen.') Why think particularly of the King of Prussia, a man whom, with the same breath that you exalt him, you put under three subjects,[20] and take at the same time his army into your own hands, to keep him from doing harm? I pray your Excellency to observe, that while my proposal leaves us free hands for any possible future improvement, your two plans will offend all parties: your first plan, to make Austria swallow up Germany, will offend all Europe, and Germany to boot; your second plan, to divide Germany between Austria and Prussia, will excite the opposition not only of Russia, England, and Sweden, but of all those North Germans who are not prepared to receive as a boon, the Prussian system with cell its machinery of boards and councils, of auscultants and assessors, and its hereditary incapacity to understand that old maxim of political philosophy—GOVERNA MEGLIO CHI MEN GOVERNA—He governs best who governs least.

"Neither am I at all prepared to agree with what you say on the subject of the German courts. I have lived long in great courts, and I know not a few small ones; and I can honestly say, that the state of morals among the peasants in country villages has always appeared to me more corrupt than in the highest circles of polite and cultivated society; and I can find little difference in principle between the case of one man intriguing in high circles for grandes entrées, and that of another setting a similar machinery to work to obtain the presidency in any church meeting of a small parish, or a union of parishes; between one who, to attain a selfish object, flatters a prince, and another who flatters the prefect of a department. If a difference is to be made, the higher object which excites the higher passions seems rather entitled to a preference.

"Again, I do not see why we should put altogether out of view, how much science, civilization, and wealth, have gained by the multiplication of central points, where all these things may be cherished, and whence, as from so many life-giving fountains, they may be beneficently dispensed. What country is there that can compete with Germany in respect of scientific culture?—and have the courts of so many princes not contributed to this result? And in ancient Greece was it not a similar state of things, that, as one great element at least, produced a similar result? But I will not attempt to discuss this subject in all its bearings. Enough, if you will believe me, that in the arrangement of the future political state of Germany, I do not look for a mere FARCE; while, at the same time, I feel obliged to protest decidedly, in present circumstances at least, against your project of uniting Germany under one or two masters."

There are many admirable points in the above letter; and after pondering it well, no intelligent reader will doubt for a moment that the schemes of Stein with regard to German unity, were not only impracticable in their main scope, but, in some respects, of very questionable propriety. It were necessary, however, to have had the experience of a Prussian, and the heart of a Stein, in the year 1813, if one would fully understand how imperatively these practical impossibilities must have presented themselves to the earliest and patriotic minds of those days. Convinced that the cool Hanoverian is right, we still feel inclined to sympathise with the hot Prussian, who is in the wrong. "Malo cum Plutone errare." Stein followed Alexander into Germany, witnessed the battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, disheartening as they were, like all true Germans, undismayed: and on the 23d August 1813, shortly after the resumption of hostilities, we find him a second time in Prague, and writing most characteristically as follows:—

"The spirit of the people here is by no means what it was in 1809; and for this plain reason, that the government does nothing, and will do nothing, to rouse it. At that time (1809) the Stadions held the helm, and they used every means to waken the nobler feelings of human nature, and they attained their object. Now, at the head of affairs, we have a cold, scheming, shallow, calculating man, who is afraid of nothing so much as an energetic measure—loves nothing more than a goal at the nearest possible distance from his nose—and is always ready to help himself out of a scrape with any miserable patchwork that may serve for the nonce. Hence the marriage introduced by a divorce, the foolish hope of a partial peace, the childish congress, the wretched ultimatum, and so forth."

And on the 14th September, after the war was fairly broken out again, we find the following remarks occasioned by the untoward battle of Dresden:—

"The latest events have taught us what to think of our new allies, and their commander, (Schwartzenberg.) We have gained an increase in mass, not in insight, nobility of sentiment, or vigour; we now understand what the fruits are of the new system pursued in Austria since 1810. From 1806 to 1809, the two Stadions gave all their energy to the great work of elevating the spirit of the nation, and at the same time strengthening and fully equipping the army; and they succeeded in both points; the nation was animated by the most devoted enthusiasm, the army fought with true valour. Since the peace of Vienna, on the other hand, the new ministry has been concerned only to purchase a beggarly peace, to disorganize the army, to cripple the public spirit, and to solve the great problem of European regeneration by the miserable arts of diplomacy. This also has succeeded. The nation has become lukewarm, and the army fight with no very remarkable display of soldiership. * * * The man who calculates, but without depth, may be a very good book-keeper, but is no mathematician.

"The result, as we have hitherto seen, is, that we have fought EVERY WHERE with distinguished success, except where the grand army was present, that between Russia and Austria no very friendly feelings prevail, ('eine grosse Abneigung herrscht,') made worse, of course, by the well-known lukewarmness of the latter power. Over and above all this, Metternich aims at a preponderant influence such as neither his talents, his character, nor the military position of the Austrian empire entitles him to. The Emperor Alexander sees all this clearly, and will very probably undertake the command of his own and the Prussian army in person; and the movement of masses thus animated, will then communicate itself to the inert Austrians.

"It is of the utmost importance that some conclusion should be come to about the settlement of Germany. From * * * expect no comprehensive views; he seeks for nothing but the shortest and most comfortable road, and will content himself with respectable vamping in any shape. The history of the negotiations proves this; and had it not been for the madness of Napoleon, we should unquestionably have had for the third, fourth, and fifth time, a ruinous and wretched peace."

The person so severely handled in two places of these letters where he is not named, is plainly enough Prince Metternich; a statesman who, whatever may be his abilities, and whatever may have been his merits—and merits in the management of German affairs—from the peace of Vienna in 1809, to that of Paris in 1815, (and it were out of place to attempt discussing these points here,) was plainly in every respect the antipodes of Stein; and a man whom the hot Prussian baron could no more form a just judgment of, than Martin Luther could of Erasmus. Diplomatists and mere politicians, even the best of them, are seldom—to say the least of it—the most noble specimens of human nature: there are bad and good amongst them of course; but Stein, in his despotic sweeping style, was fond of classing them all together, as in one of his letters to Gagern; where, after expressing his confident reliance on "Providence, and the hand of a loving Father who guides all," he adds, but "from the sly crafty animals called politicians—(the original is English)—from these homunciones I expect nothing."

The official position which Stein occupied during the eventful year 1813, was that of Supreme Director of the Interim Central Board of Administration (Central Verwaltung) of the conquered provinces of Germany, till arrangements should be made for their final disposal in a general congress. When that congress came to do its work, of course he had nothing more to do; and it will be pretty evident to the reader, from the temper and opinions of the man, as above exhibited, that he was in nowise calculated to work efficiently with such men as Metternich, Talleyrand, and Lord Castlereagh, at Vienna. The very composition of the congress, made up of every possible complex and contending interest, rendered from the beginning the realization of Stein's patriotic views, with regard to German unity, impossible. In such congregations of working and counter-working diplomatists, not the triumph of any great principle, but the compromise of a number of petty claims, is generally the result; but compromise and patchwork of every kind were, to a man of Stein's temper, only another name for the Devil. The congress of Vienna, so far as Germany was concerned, ended, according to his views, in a "Farce;" for not only were the other German states, great and small, left entire, but Saxony also—Napoleon's centre and base in the late war—was preserved, only a half (instead of the whole) of it being cut off for the great German object of forming "a strong Prussia." And with regard to this point, we must confess we feel, in some respects, inclined to agree with the Prussian baron. If Saxony was to be made an exception to the general rule, it would have been better, for many reasons, to have handed it over undivided to the great Northern power. If neither one strong German empire, nor an equally-poised federal system, was any longer possible, a strong Prussia was certainly a thing imperatively called for. But congresses are congresses; and we must even content ourselves with the most convenient adjustment of contending claims that was found practicable at the time; and if the result seems unsatisfactory, we may turn away our eyes from it; occupy ourselves with the best business that offers itself, and let God work. So at least Stein did. He kept his word to Count Münster most faithfully; and, after the decisive thunders of Leipsig and Waterloo, having done his part to bring the great European tragedy to a worthy catastrophe, he retired from witnessing the "farce," with all convenient speed, into private life, and was heard of no more in court or cabinet in Berlin, from that day till his death. In the spring of 1816, we find him, in his own ancestral castle in Nassau, addressing a fiend as follows:—"Yes, dear friend, we have won much; but much also should have been otherwise. God governs the world, and abandons no German; and if we remain true and German, (treu und Deutsch,) we shall take up the matter some other day with the French again, and settle the account more satisfactorily. For myself, I long to depart; this world is, once for all, so constituted, that a man cannot walk on the straight path, and yet ought not to walk on the crooked. 'Tis even so; circumstances and relations drive and force men. They act, and think they are the doers; but it is God that decides." This most characteristic passage expresses only Stein's feeling, that the French had been allowed to escape so cheaply, by the generosity of the Allies, at the peace of Paris; but he had much more substantial grievances to vex him nearer home; and, next to the feeble machinery of the diet at Frankfort, that which hurt him most was the political reaction at Berlin that commenced immediately after the peace, and threatened to undo that great social work which he had so boldly begun in 1808. However much a Prussian in his political sympathies, Stein was essentially an Englishman in his principles; the tendency of all his measures, as they were introduced by himself, or followed out by Hardenberg, was to temper the military and bureaucratic despotism of Frederick the Great by a wise admixture of popular influence; he wished a "constitution" after the English model, as much as circumstances might permit, not in form merely but in deed; he was not afraid of free discussion among a well-educated people like the Germans, and was too noble-minded to imitate, in Berlin or Maine, the spy-system on which Napoleon had based his immoral monarchy of physical force at Paris. It was not to be expected, however, that in a country hitherto governed solely by the Court and by the Bureau, these English views of Stein should not have met with sturdy opposition; in fact it was mainly by help of the battle of Jena, that he was enabled to do what he did for creating a Prussian PEOPLE in 1808. Now that terrible shock had passed; and the host of defeated bureaucratists and court minions, after the battle for the liberation of the fatherland had been fought by others, now began to crown into their old places, and to occupy the ears of a king more honest to promise what was right than strong to do it. Accordingly, instead of "freedom of the press" and "constitution" in Prussia, we have heard no sound, since the year 1815, but that of prohibited books, imaginary conspiracies of beer-inspired Burschen, deposed professors, and banished old Luther; and every thing, in short, except what the pious old Frederick William III. promised, or was made to appear to promise, with such gracious, popular, and constitutional phrases at Vienna, in the year 1815. Whether the military and bureaucratic despotism of Germany may not, after all, be a better system of government on the whole than our strange system of local and corporate influence of all sorts, of fermenting acids and alkalis, here is a question which some persons of a speculative disposition may consider open enough; but that the supreme power having once pledged itself to give a people a free constitution and freedom of the press, should act with honour, and do what was promised, seems, (if there be any such thing as public morals at all,) under any form of government, nothing more than what common policy as well as propriety would dictate. Those who bear the rule in Germany, however, have, for the last thirty years, done every thing that they possibly could do to make the royal word a public mockery, and a shame; one cannot review the well-known despotic proceedings of the German diet, first in 1829, and afterwards in 1832, without subscribing a most full assent to the sentence of the Baron von Stein, when he says, in reference to those very matters—"the falsehood that prevails in our age is deserving of the most serious reprehension." And again, "Our German government sink more and more daily in public estimation by their timidity and perfidy." With regard to the whole system, indeed, of Prussian government, the system of doing every thing by official men, and nothing by voluntary movement of the people, and apart from this special matter of the "constitution," Stein was accustomed to use the strongest language of reprobation; witness the following letter to Von Gagern, dated 24th August 1821. Coppenberg was a favourite seat of the Baron in Westphalia.

"In the lonely woody Coppenberg, I live so remote from the world and its doings, that nothing can disturb me in the enjoyment of nature and a country life, except bad weather, which happily has left us a few days ago, and is not likely soon to return. In Westphalia here, my friends are more concerned about the new tax, and the new edict about the peasants, (which satisfies no party,) than about the schemes of Metternich on the banks of the Danube, and the great events in Greece. For myself, I can say nothing more about public affairs, than that, while I have little confidence in the present leaders, I have an unbounded trust in Providence; and that, necessary as a Constitution is to Prussia, and beneficial as it would be if fairly worked, I expect nothing from any machinery which will necessarily be opposed by the persons who have possession of the king's ear, and the court influence generally: and I see plainly that we are still, as we have hitherto been, to be governed by salaried persons, equipped with mere book-learning, without any substantial interest in the country, without property, by mere bureaucratists—a system which will last so long as it can last—'Das geht so lange es geht!' These four words contain the soul of our and suchlike spiritless (geistlos) government machines:—in the first place salaried—and this implies a tendency to maintain and to multiply the number of salaried officials; then book-learned—that is, living in the world of the dead letter, and not in the actual world; without interest—for these men stand in no connexion with any class of the citizens, which are the mass of the state; they are a peculiar caste, these men of the quill, ("die Schreiberkaste;") lastly, without property—this implies that they stand unmoved by all changes that affect property, in sunshine or in rain, with taxes high or low, with old chartered rights maintained or destroyed, with independent peasants or a rabble of mere journeymen, with a dependence of the peasants on the proprietors, or of all on the Jews and the bankers—'tis all one to the bureaucracy. They draw their salary from the public purse, and write—write—write on—secretly—silently—invisibly with shut doors—unknown—unnoticed—unnamed—and bring up their children after them, to be what their fathers were—very serviceable writing-machines.

"Our machinery—the old military machinery—I saw fall on the 14th October 1806; possibly the machinery of the desk and the quill and the red tape has a 14th of October already doomed for it in Heaven."

These are serious words; and though Stein was one of those intense and strongly accentuating minds that never could state a truth without overstating it, (as Martin Luther also was continually doing,) they are not wise who would treat the hard blows from the cudgel of such a man as if they were puffs and whiffs of angry smoke from some wrathful Heine, or other furious poetical politician in Paris. Stein was the most practical of men; he had lived all his life amid the details of practice; and, like all practical men, in the midst of his violence knew how to preserve certain sobriety and moderation, without which no such thing as governing is possible. There is nothing, in our opinion, that any King of Prussia could do better than seriously to ponder the passage we have just quoted, and also the few short sentences that follow:—

Nassau, Sept. 29, 1819.

"I expect nothing satisfactory and substantial from the assembling together, and the deliberations, of mediocre and superficial men.

"The most important thing that could be done for the preservation of the public peace in Germany, were to put an end to the reign of arbitrary power, and, in the place of it, to commence a system of constitutional law; in the place of the bureaucratists and the democratic pamphleteers—of whom the former oppress the people by much and bad governing, and the other excite and confound it—to place the influence and the activity of the proprietors of the soil."

With these memorable words we are willing that the character of Stein, as an English statesman in Prussia, should grave itself deep in the hearts both of Englishmen and Prussians. We have only to add that, in his latter years, Stein occupied himself in organizing a society at Frankfort for publishing the original documents of German history, which are best known to the English historical student in connexion with the name of Perz; and that he took an active share in the business of the provincial states of Westphalia. He was also (since 1827) member of the council of state in Berlin; but this dignity, conferred at so late a period, seems merely to have been intended as a sort of unavoidable compliment to a person of his rank and standing. It certainly did not imply that his well-known English principles were intended to assume any greater prominency in the conduct of Prussian and German affairs than they had enjoyed since the peace.

Baron Stein died on the 29th June 1831, in his castle of Coppenberg in Westphalia.

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