In the year 1775 the Emperor Francis I., when passing through the province, wished to see the famous predatory warrior of whom he had heard so much, and visited his humble abode at Grachaez. There he was so greatly struck with the simple dignity, the resolute but respectful demeanour of the white-bearded partisan, that he presented him with a handsome sum of money, and asked him to show his numerous wounds, and to detail the chief events of his life.
Socivisca did so, with so much simplicity and modesty that the Emperor, whom he pleased and amused, and who was looking forward to the capture of the Bukovine and other districts from the Turks, made him an offer of service, and assigned him an important military command upon the Hungarian frontier, opposed to the great pachalics of Bosnia and Servia.
In the exercise of this office* he was alive at Grachaez in 1777, after which year his name can no more be traced in the histories, papers, or periodicals of the time, so that we are unable to say when he died.
* "Arambassa of Pandonas" it is styled in the English newspapers—a title we frankly confess ourselves unable to understand.
Such was the wild, romantic, and singular story of a mountain robber, whose life ultimately became productive of public utility; who enjoyed the favour and protection of Francis I. and Maria Theresa; and whose career, in his unrelenting animosity to the Turks, presents a curious mixture of patriotism and ferocity, religious enthusiasm and the long-engendered rancour of rival and antagonistic races.
PAQUETTE.
AN EPISODE OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.
CHAPTER I.
In the spring of the year 1870, when my merry Paquette and I used to laugh at the cartoons of the Kladderadatch, representing King William lowering a mannikin in regimentals gently, by the spike of his helmet, into a huge chair, inscribed "Spanien," we little foresaw the horrors that were to come, or the days when we might tremble at the warlike news of the official Staatsanzieger.