Such is an inkling of the life-histories wafted through our summer windows by the voices of the street. Well, the sun is brilliant, the Champs are crowded with the world, the jewelers of the Palais Royal are driving a thriving trade, the great boulevards are margined by long lines of absinthe drinkers. Who cares? Only it is a little disagreeable in the early morning to have one's sleep broken by the pathos of life. Let us sleep well on our wine, and dine to-morrow at the Grand Hotel. We shall forget the misery of these patient voices which visit us with their prayer for subsistence every day.
G. F.
THE ANGEL HUSSAR.
I think some of the best talks I have had in my life have been with chance companions on whom I have happened in the course of a roving life—sometimes in a restaurant, sometimes in the railroad-car or steamboat, and not unfrequently in the smoking-room of a hotel.
If you have ever been in Dublin, you know Dawson street, and in Dawson street the Hibernian Hotel. I am not prepared to endorse all the arrangements of that hostelry, nor indeed of any other in that part of the United Kingdom called Ireland: I have suffered too much in them. Still, I will say that the Hibernian is to be praised for a really comfortable and handsome smoking-room, containing easy-chairs deservedly so called, and a capital collection of standard novels. One raw evening in the spring of 1871 I sauntered in, and found some gentlemanlike-looking fellows there, who proved pleasant company, and presently a remarkably distingué-looking young man, with an unmistakably military cut, came in and sat down near me. We fell to talking. He was quartered at the Curragh, and was up in Dublin en route for the Newmarket spring meeting. He told me that he made some £700 a year by the turf. "I've a cousin, you see, who is a great sporting man, and thus I'm 'in with a stable,' and get put up to tips," he said. "But for this the turf would be a very poor thing to dabble in." And this led to a talk about officers' lives and their money-affairs. "Oh," he said, "you've no notion of the number who go to utter grief. Why now, I'll tell you what happened to me last season in London. I was asked to go down and dine with some fellows at Richmond; and being awfully late, I rushed out of the club and hailed the first hansom I could see with a likely horse in Pall Mall. I scarcely looked at the man, but said, 'Now I want to get down to the Star and Garter by eight: go a good pace and I'll pay you for it.' Well, he had a stunning good horse, and we rattled away at a fine rate; and when I got out I was putting the money into his hand, when he said, 'Don't you know me, B——?' I looked up in amazement, and in another moment recognized a man whom I had known in India as the greatest swell in the —— Hussars, the smartest cavalry corps in the service, and who, on account of his splendid face and figure, went by the sobriquet of 'the Angel Hussar.'
"Well, it gave me quite a shock. 'Good Heavens, H——!' I said, 'what in the world does this mean?' 'Mean, old fellow? It means that I'd not a farthing in the world, and didn't want to starve. It's all my own cursed folly. I've made my bed, and must lie on it.' I pressed a couple of sovereigns into his hand, and made him promise to call on me next day. He came and gave me the details of his descent, the old story of course—wine and its alliterative concomitant, conjoined with utter recklessness." "Well, and could you help him?" "I'm glad to say I could. I got him the place of stud-groom to a nobleman in the south of Ireland: he's turned over a new leaf, is perfectly steady, and doing as well as possible."
NOTES.
There is an old story that Augustus, being once asked by a veteran soldier for his aid in a lawsuit, told the petitioner to go to a certain advocate. "Ah," replied the soldier, "it was not by proxy that I served you at Actium!" So struck, continues the tradition, was Augustus with this response, that he personally took charge of the soldier's cause, and gained it for him. Possibly it may be on the theory that his subjects "do not serve him by proxy" when he needs their services that the Austrian kaiser even to this day holds personal audiences with his people regarding their private desires or grievances. Evidently traditional, this custom is so singular as to merit a more general notice than it habitually receives: indeed, its existence might be doubted by the foreign reader, did not a Hungarian journal, Der Osten, furnish a detailed description of it. The only prerequisite to an audience would seem to be the lodging of the subject's name and rank with one of the emperor's secretaries, who thereupon appoints the day and hour for his appearance at the palace. If the emperor has been long absent from Vienna, his next audience-day is always a trying one, as the waiting-room is then crowded with hundreds of both sexes, and all ranks and ages. They are in ordinary dress, too, so that the imperial ante-chamber presents a motley and picturesque scene—the gold-broidered coat of the minister of state and the brilliant uniform of the army mingling with the citizen's plain frock, with the Tyrolean or Styrian hunter's jacket, with the bunda of the Hungarian, with the long, fur lined linen overcoat of the Polish peasant; while the rustling silks of the elegant city lady are side by side with the plain woolen skirt of the farmer's wife. Each of these in regular turn, as written on the list from which he calls them, a staff-officer ushers into the emperor's study. There the petitioner states his case. The emperor listens without interruption, then receives the written statements and documents, sometimes asks a question, but generally dismisses the visitor with a simple formula of assurance that a decision will be duly rendered. There is evidently much form in the matter, as if it were but the empty perpetuation of some ancient ceremony designed to show that the monarch is the father of all his people, and hence is personally interested in their individual troubles. But yet it appears that the emperor does listen to the harangues, for he is occasionally known to affix his initials to some documents; which act is always interpreted as a good sign, it being equivalent to a special recommendation to the secretaries, indicating that primâ facie the cause has seemed to the sovereign to be just. However, the precaution of a written statement is always taken, because it would be impossible for him to remember all the oral explanations. Only a few weeks after each of these audiences the suitors are individually notified of the result. The emperor's sense of etiquette does not allow him to give any sign of impatience during the interview, though some of the visitors are as long-winded and importunate as Mark Twain pretends to have been at one of President Grant's receptions. The emperor answers the German, Hungarian, Tzech, Croat or Italian each in the suitor's own tongue. It is quite possible that in the preliminary registry of the names and condition of suitors care is taken that the emperor shall not be subjected to too great annoyance from any abuse of this curious and interesting privilege.
Among the canonizations of the past few months a notable place must be assigned to that of the beatified Benoît Labre. That he was faithful in doctrine needs hardly be said, but it was his manner of life which procured him this posthumous honor, in order that those who read of his career may rank him among those saints who, as in Tickell's line, have both "taught and led the way to heaven," and may seek to imitate his example. The decree of canonization, in reciting his characteristic virtues, says that though of very honorable birth, yet, scorning earthly things as dross, he clothed himself in rags, and ate and drank only what chanty gave him. His shelter was the Coliseum or the doorways or desert places of Rome. He washed not, neither did he yield to the effeminacy of the comb; his hair and nails grew to what length Nature wished: in short (for some of the additional details are better fancied than described), he so utterly neglected his person that he became an object of avoidance to many or all. But his neglected body was after death placed under a glass shrine in the church of the Madonna del Monti. The decree calls upon others to follow the example of the blessed Benoît, or at least as far as the measure of spiritual strength in each will allow; but we apprehend that many will modestly confess that the peculiar virtues of the saint are inimitable.