As you walk away from this busy scene, you meet in every street barrows and costers hurrying home. The pump in the market is now surrounded by a cluster of chattering wenches quarreling over whose turn it is to water their drooping violets, and on the steps of Covent Garden Theatre are seated the shoeless girls, tying up the halfpenny and penny bundles.
THE HORRORS OF WAR.
In a work recently published in London, entitled "Lights and Shades of Military Life," M. de Vigny, the author, gives incidents from his own experience which place in a striking light some of the unutterable horrors of war.
In his first march, with his ambition glowing as brightly as his maiden sword, and his hopes yet fresh as his untarnished epaulets, he falls in with an old chef de bataillon. He was a man of about fifty, with mustaches, tall and stout, his back curved, after the manner of old military officers who have carried the knapsack. His features were hard but benevolent, such as you often meet with in the army, indicating, at the same time, the natural goodness of the heart of the man, and the callousness induced by long use to scenes of blood and carnage. This old soldier of the Empire is marching along beside a little cart, drawn by a sorry mule, in which sits a woman—a maniac—whose story he tells with a soldier's frankness, as a part of his own history. The old man had been a sailor in his youth, and at the time of the Directory was captain of a merchantman. From that situation he was promoted, aristocracy being at a discount, to command the Marat, a brig of war, and one of his first duties was to sail with two political prisoners, a young Frenchman and his wife. He supposed that he was to land them at Cayenne, to which place other exiles had previously been dispatched in other vessels; but he carried sealed orders from the Directory, which were not to be opened till the vessel reached the Equator. On the passage, the captain and his young passengers became greatly attached to each other, so much so that he wished to leave the service, and, with what fortune he had, share and alleviate their fate. In their youth and innocence, and earnest love for each other, the young unfortunates had twined themselves about the rough heart of the sailor, and he regarded them as his children. But there was the ominous letter, bearing the red seals of the Directory, which was to decide their fate—and the time arrived for it to be opened. The seals were broken, and what was the captain's horror to find that it contained an order for him to have the young husband shot, and then to return with the wife to France. After he had read the paper, he rubbed his eyes, thinking that they must have deceived him. He could not trust his senses. His limbs trembled beneath him. He could not trust himself to go near the fair young Laura, who looked so happy, with tidings that would blight her existence. What was he to do? He never seems to have thought of leaving the order unexecuted; the iron of unreasoning obedience had seared his soul too deeply for that. The horrid task, revolt at it as he might, was a duty, because he had been ordered to do it. He communicated the order to his victim, who heard his fate with a stoicism worthy of an old Roman. His only thought was for his poor young wife, so fair, and fond, and gentle. He said, with a voice as mild as usual, "I ask no favor, captain. I should never forgive myself if I were to cause you to violate your duty. I should merely like to say a few words to Laura, and I beg you to protect her, in case she should survive me, which I do not think she will." It is arranged between the victim of slavish obedience, and the victim of the cruelty of the Reign of Terror, that poor Laura should know nothing of what was to be her husband's fate. She is put into a boat at night and rowed from the ship, while the tragedy is being acted out; but she sees the flash of the muskets, her heart tells her too plainly what has happened, and her reason fails under the shock. "At the moment of firing, she clasped her hand to her head, as if a ball had struck her brow, and sat down in the boat without fainting, without shrieking, without speaking, and returned to the brig with the crew when they pleased and how they pleased." The old captain spoke to her but she did not understand him. She was mute, rubbing her pale forehead, and trembling as though she were afraid of every body, and thus she remained an idiot for life. The captain returned to France with his charge, got himself removed into the land forces, for the sea—into which he had cast innocent blood—was unbearable to him; and had continued to watch over the poor imbecile as a father over his child. M. de Vigny saw the poor woman; he says, "I saw two blue eyes of extraordinary size, admirable in point of form, starting from a long, pale, emaciated face, inundated by perfectly straight fair hair. I saw, in truth, nothing but those two eyes, which were all that was left of that poor woman, for the rest of her was dead. Her forehead was red, her cheeks hollow and white, and bluish on the cheek bones. She was crouched among the straw, so that one could just see her two knees rising above it, and on them she was playing all alone at dominoes. She looked at us for a moment, trembled a long time, smiled at me a little, and began to play again. It seemed to me that she was trying to make out how her right hand beat her left." It was the wreck of love and beauty, torn by the blind slave obedience, at the bidding of vengeance and hate. M. de Vigny was a young and thoughtless soldier; but young and thoughtless as he was, the phantom glory must have beamed brightly indeed, to prevent him from seeing the gloomy darkness of such a shade of military life as this, and keep him from shaking the fetters of blind obedience from intellect and mercy. He never saw the old chef and his charge again; but he heard of them. In speaking to a brother officer one day of the sad story, his companion in arms replied, "Ah, my dear fellow, I knew that poor devil well. A brave man he was too; he was taken off by a cannon-ball at Waterloo. He had, in fact, left along with the baggage a sort of crazy girl, whom we took to the hospitable of Amiens on our way to the army of the Loire, and who died there and raving at the end of three days."
If in this story we recognize the goodness, the true nobility of heart of this old soldier, we can not fail to see in all its hideousness, the horrors and evils of a system which deadens intellect, paralyzes virtue, and dims the light of mercy—the system of slavish obedience, crushing out all individuality, and making the good and the bad alike its subservient instruments.
As a pendant to the above we take a few extracts from the story of Captain Renaud, once a page to Napoleon, of whom Byron truly says:
"With might unquestioned—power to save—
Thine only gift hath been the grave,
To those that worship'd thee."
And so poor Renaud found. He had the misfortune to fall under the displeasure of the Emperor, and was sent from the army to serve on board that abortive flat-bottomed-boat armada, which threatened a descent upon the shores of England. Here he was taken prisoner, and, after a long captivity, being exchanged, hastened to Paris to throw himself at the feet of the conqueror. The reception was a strange one. It took place at the Opera, and we quote a description of it. "He (Napoleon) placed his left hand upon his left eye to see better, according to his custom; I perceived that he had recognized me. He turned about sharply, took no notice of any thing but the stage, and presently retired. I was already in waiting for him. He walked fast along the corridor, and, from his thick legs, squeezed into white silk stockings, and his bloated figure in his green dress, I should scarcely have known him again. He stopped short before me, and speaking to the colonel, who presented me, instead of addressing himself direct to me, 'Why,' said he, 'have I never seen any thing of him? Still a lieutenant?'
"'He has been a prisoner ever since 1804.'