“Done it in high style, and made a speech.”
About a year and a half ago poor Ben-Salem was found a drowned corpse, in the Loire; he is supposed to have perished while bathing, but the writer recollects at the time, to have heard it whispered that despair had caused him to commit suicide.
The attachment of the Arabs to their chief is intense; an instance of this excited immense interest in Paris some time since. A young man who had belonged to Abd-’el-Kader, was detained at Toulon, from whence he escaped, but instead of endeavoring to regain his own country, his sole desire was to behold his chief once more, and to die at his feet. He arrived at Amboise, no one knew how, having traversed France to its centre, and there, his clothes in tatters, his feet bleeding, and fainting with hunger and fatigue, he was overtaken, secured, and forced back again to his prison at Toulon, without having gained the object of so much energy and resolution.
How could the most severe guardians of the safety of France drive back such a servant from his master?
In the month of August, 1850, a party of the Arabs received permission to return to Africa. After extraordinary struggles between their love of country and of their master, forty men, women, and children, consented to profit by this clemency. Their parting was, however, a scene of desolation, agonizing to witness.
The railroad was to take back these sons and daughters of the Desert partly on their way, and a carriage filled with pale emaciated women, holding their children in the folds of their ample garments, bore them from the castle walls. The men pursued their journey on foot, a cart containing their wretched goods followed, and the patriarch of the tribe accompanied them to the station, where he took leave of them with sighs, tears, and exhortations, mixed with embraces. At the last moment a young woman, who was probably related to the patriarch, lost her presence of mind entirely—her veil thrown back in despair, she cast herself upon his bosom, concealing her face in his venerable white beard, and uttering cries that melted the hearts of the bystanders to hear.
One feature of this parting was remarkable; a young peasant woman of Amboise had been the wet-nurse of a little Arab child, and was now to take leave of the helpless infant whom she had tended till, from a half dying plant, it had become strong and healthy, and full of life. For more than a quarter of an hour the mother of the babe and its nurse remained in an agony of grief, mutually embracing and consoling each other, while the innocent object of their care wept for company. At length the poor sobbing Frenchwoman tore herself away, and the train moved off bearing away forever her cherished nurseling and its grateful but sorrowing parents.
Many of the children in Abd-’el-Kader’s suit died soon after their arrival, and the influence of the moist climate on all the attendants was felt severely by persons accustomed to go half clothed and with naked feet. The sisters of charity of Amboise and the medical men had many mournful scenes to go through, as the little Arab burial-ground, near the “Gate of Lions” of the castle, attests but too clearly.
The health of the Emir himself has, it is said, of late given way, and he has had to deplore the loss of several of its nearest friends. The tenderness and feeling shown to these conquered enemies, proves, it must be confessed, that there is no want of kindliness in the hearts of at least the country people of France, whose impulses are generally for good, as we have every reason to acknowledge in the charitable promptitude and active benevolence shown to the unfortunate survivors of the Amazon, by the whole of the inhabitants of Brest from the highest to the lowest.