In 1840 England, at the solicitation of France, suffered the remains of Napoleon to be brought to Europe. They were received in Paris with military pomp, and on the 15th of December were entombed in the chapel of the Invalides.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena. By General Count Montholon Vols. iii. and iv. London: H. Colburn.
JUANCHO THE BULL-FIGHTER.
M. Theophile Gautier, best known as a clever contributor to the critical feuilleton of a leading Paris newspaper, also enjoys a respectable reputation as tale-teller and tourist. His books—although for the most part slight in texture, and conveying the idea that the author might have done better had he taken more pains—have certain merits of their own. His style, sometimes defaced by affectation and pedantry, has a lively smartness not unfrequently rising into wit. And in description he is decidedly happy. Possessing an artist's eye, he paints with his pen; his colouring is vivid, his outline characteristic. These qualities are especially exemplified in a spirited and picturesque, but very French narrative, of an extensive ramble in Spain, published about four years ago. He has now again drawn upon his Peninsular experience to produce a tale illustrative of Spanish life and manners, chiefly in the lower classes of society. His hero is a bull-fighter, his heroine a grisette. Of bull-fights, especially within the last few years, one has heard enough and to spare, since every literary traveller in Spain thinks it incumbent on him to describe them. But this is the first instance we remember where the incidents of the bull-ring, and the exploits and peculiarities of its gladiators, are taken as groundwork for a romantic tale. The attempt has been crowned with very considerable success.
The construction of M. Gautier's little romance is simple and inartificial, the incidents are spirited, the style is fresh and pleasant. Its character is quite Spanish, and one cannot doubt the author's personal acquaintance with the scenes and types he sketches—although here and there he has smoothed down with a little French polish the rugged angles of Spanish nationality, and in other places he may be accused of melodramatising rather over much. Through the varnish which it is the novelist's privilege to lay on with a more or less sparing brush, we obtain many interesting and correct glimpses of classes of people whose habits and customs are unknown to foreigners, and are likely to continue so, in great measure, until the appearance of Spanish writers able and willing to depict them. The three principal personages of the tale—the only important ones—are, a young gentleman of Madrid, a bull-fighter named Juancho, and an orphan girl of humble birth and great beauty. The story hinges upon the rivalry of the gentleman and the torero for the good graces of the grisette. There is a secondary plot, associated and partly interwoven with the principal one, but which serves little purpose, save that of prolonging a short tale into a volume. It will scarcely be necessary to refer to it in sketching the trials of the gentle Militona, and the feats and misfortunes of the intrepid and unhappy Juancho.
It was on a June afternoon of the year 184—that Don Andrés de Salcedo—a cavalier of good family, competent fortune, handsome exterior, amiable character, and four-and-twenty years of age—emerged from a house in the Calle San Bernardo at Madrid, where he had passed a wearisome hour in practising a duet of Bellini's with Doña Feliciana Vasquez de los Rios. This young lady, still in her teens, moderately pretty and tolerably rich, Andrés had from childhood been affianced with, and was accustomed to consider as his future wife, although his sentiments towards her were, in fact, of a very tepid description. Betrothed as children by their parents, there was little real love between them: they met without pleasure and parted without pain; their engagement was an affair of habit, not of the heart.
It was a dia de toros, as Monday is called in Madrid—that being the day when bull-fights usually take place—and Andrés, passionately addicted to the Spanish sport, left the mansion of his mistress without any lover-like reluctance, and hurried to the bull-ring. Through the spacious street of Alcala, then crowded to suffocation with vehicles of every description, horsemen, and pedestrians, all hurrying to the point of grand attraction, the young man pressed onward with that alert and active step peculiar to Spaniards—unquestionably the best walkers in the world—joyfully fingering his ticket of Sombra por la tarde.[11] It entitled him to a place close to the barrier; for Andrés, despising the elegance of the boxes, preferred leaning against the ropes intended to prevent the bulls from leaping amongst the spectators. Thence each detail of the combat is distinctly seen, each blow appreciated at its just value; and in consideration of these advantages, Andrés willingly resigned his elbows to the contact of motley-jacketed muleteers, and his curls to the perfume of the manolo's cigar.