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MEMOIRS (VIEUX SOUVENIRS) OF THE PRINCE DE JOINVILLE

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY LADY MARY LOYD

CHAPTER I

1818-1830

I was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, on the 14th of August, 1818. Immediately after my birth, and as soon as the Chancellor of France, M. Dambray, had declared me to be a boy, I was made over to the care of a wet nurse and another attendant. Three years later I passed out of female hands, earlier, somewhat, than is generally the case, for a little accident befell my nurse, in which my eldest brother's tutor, an unfrocked priest, as he was then discovered to be, was also concerned. My earliest memory, and a very hazy one it is, mixed up with some story or other about a parrot, is of having seen my grandmother, the Duchesse d'Orleans-Penthievre, at Ivry. After that I recollect being at the Chateau of Meudon with my great-aunt, the Duchesse de Bourbon, a tiny little woman; and being taken to see the Princesse Louise de Conde at the Temple, and then I remember seeing Talma act in Charles the Bold, and the great impression his gilt cuirass made upon me.

But the first event that really is exceedingly clear in my recollection is a family dinner given by Louis XVIII. at the Tuileries on Twelfth Night, 1824. Even now, sixty-six years after, I can see every detail of that party, as if it had been yesterday. Our arrival in the courtyard of the Tuileries, under the salute of the Swiss Guard at the Pavillon Marsan and the King's Guard at the Pavillon de Flore. Our getting out of the carriage under the porch of the stone staircase to the deafening rattle of the drums of the Cent Suisses. Then my huge astonishment when we had to stand aside halfway up the stairs, to let "La viande du Roi," in other words, his Majesty's dinner, pass by, as it was being carried up from the kitchen to the first floor, escorted by his bodyguard.

At the head of the stairs we were received by a red-coated Steward of the Household, who, as I was told, bore the name of de Cosse, and, crossing the Salle des Gardes, we were ushered into the drawing-room, where the whole family soon assembled: to wit, Monsieur, who afterwards became Charles X., the Duc and Duchesse d'Angouleme, the Duchesse de Berri, my father and mother, my aunt Adelaide, my two elder brothers, Chartres and Nemours, my three sisters, Louise, Marie, and Clementine, and last and youngest of all, myself. There was only one person present who did not belong to the Royal House of France, and that was the Prince de Carignan, afterwards known as Charles Albert, a tall, thin, severe-looking person. He had just served in the ranks of the French army, with all the proverbial valour of his race, through the Spanish campaign of 1823, and he wore on his uniform that evening the worsted epaulettes given him on the field of battle by the men of the 4th Regiment of the Guard, with whom he had fought in the assault on the Trocadero. Presently the door of the King's study opened, and Louis XVIII. appeared, in his wheeled chair, with that handsome white head and in the blue uniform with epaulettes which the pictures of him have rendered so familiar. He kissed each of us in our turn, without speaking to any of us except my brother Nemours, whom he questioned about his Latin lessons. Nemours began to stammer, and was only saved from disgrace by the opportune entrance of the Prince de Carignan.

At dinner the Twelfth Night customs were duly observed, and when I broke my cake I found the bean within it. I must confess the fact had not been altogether unforeseen, and my mother had consequently primed me as to my behaviour. This did not prevent me from feeling heartily shy when I saw every eye fixed on me. I got up from the table, and carried the bean on a salver to the Duchesse d'Angouleme. I loved her dearly even then, that good kind Duchess! for she had always been so good to us, ever since we were babies, and never failed to give us the most beautiful New Year's gifts. My respectful affection deepened as I grew old enough to realize her sorrows and the nobility of her nature, and I was always glad, after we were separated by the events of 1830, to take every opportunity of letting her know how unalterable my feelings for her were. She broke the ice by being the first to raise her glass to her lips, when I had made her my queen, and Louis XVIII. was the first to exclaim, "The Queen drinks." A few months later the king was dead, and I watched his funeral procession from the windows of the Fire Brigade Station in the Rue de la Paix, as it passed on its way to Saint-Denis.

Then came the echo of the excitement caused by the coronation of Charles X., that great ceremonial of which the Cathedral of Rheims was the scene, and which, coming as it did after all the horrors of the Revolution, gave rise to the sanguine hope that the ancient monarchy would repair every disaster now, just as it had in the time of Charles VII. But our childish ideas were not of so far-reaching a nature. It was the splendour displayed that interested us—the dresses, the carriages, and so on, of the princes and ambassadors who came from all parts of the world to greet the opening of the new monarch's reign. Numbers of artists solicited my father's permission to do his portrait, in the gold and ermine robes of a prince of the blood which he wore at the coronation, and our pet amusement at the time was to go and see papa "sitting as Pharamond." I said Pharamond, like my elders, although my own historical knowledge was of the most elementary description. To be frank, I was exceedingly backward, and have always remained so. My mother had taught me to read, but beyond that I had reached the age of six knowing nothing or hardly anything. But I was a very good rider and went out alone on a pony Lord Bristol had given my father, which I rode boldly, and I might even say recklessly. The pony's name was Polynice. He and I understood each other perfectly, and I was his friend to the last. I took care he should end his days in the park at St. Cloud, where he roamed in freedom, with a stable of his own to retire into if the fancy took him. Often and often I have been to see him, in that same stable, which he ended by never leaving except to come and greet us, and warm himself in the sunshine. He died, there, fortunately for himself, full of years, just before the pleasant revolutionary occurrences of 1848, in which he would certainly have had his share. But my father desired me to be something more than a mere horseman. He got me a tutor, and from that day out, for several years, my recollections are divided, to the exclusion of everything else, between my education and my life with my family. My tutor was called M. Trognon, and his name brought many a jest upon him, amongst others a line of Victor Hugo's in Ruy Bias about that

Affreuse compagnonne,
Dont la barbe fleurit et dont le nez trognonne.

[Illustration: Looks a little like a courtroom unfortunately without a caption.]

"Fleurit" was an allusion to Cuvillier-Fleury, my brother Aumale's tutor, and Victor Hugo thought he owed both the gentlemen a grudge. M. Trognon, a distinguished pupil of the Ecole Normale, had begun his teaching career as professor of rhetoric at the college at Langres, where, coming in one day to take his class, he found his desk occupied by a donkey, which his pupils had established in his seat "Gentlemen," he said as he went out, "I leave you with a professor who is worthy of you." Soon after, he was recalled to Paris, as assistant to M. Guizot in his courses of historical lectures at the College of France.

He was not only an accomplished university man, but something else besides, as we learnt from a copy of the Figaro, which our eldest brother brought back from college. In this newspaper we read, in fact, a set of verses by Baour-Lormian, beginning thus:—

Que me veut ce Trognon, pedagogue en besicles,
Dans la fosse du Globe enterrant ses articles!

There was no doubt about it. My tutor was a journalist, and these lines a revengeful answer to an article of his in the Globe, a newspaper which, as we soon learnt, he had founded in concert with Pierre Leroux, Dubois, Jouffroy, Remusat, and some others. We discovered too that our journalist was a freethinker as well, and author of a thick octavo book which had been condemned by the Index at Rome, a fact which did not prevent his dying in the most religious frame of mind possible, well nigh in the odour of sanctity. My tutor was, in truth, of too lofty an intelligence to persevere long in that religious nihilism, that denial of the existence of a future state, which, spreading from religion to family life, and from thence again to the affairs of the State, ends by leaving nothing standing but animal man and his animal passions and appetites. The long death-struggle of a passionately loved sister, who was supported by the constant ministrations of the Bishop of Beauvais, M. Feutrier, and her calm end, of which he was an eyewitness, began the change within him. When, in later years, the Abbe Dupanloup, then Vicar of the Church of the Assumption, was charged with the care of my religious education, he and Trognon became very intimate, and death alone interrupted the close communion then established between these two great minds.

The first years of my education were very happy. Anything dry about it was liberally compensated for by the constant intimacy of the family circle. We were three sisters and six brothers (this last number soon reduced to five by the death of my brother Penthievre), all living together, eating together, often doing lessons together, together always in all games and pleasure parties and excursions. What a joyous band we were may easily be guessed. Each boy had his own tutor, and two governesses were in charge of my sisters. So long as tutors and governesses only had to deal with their own pupils, all went well, but when the brothers and sisters were all together, and influenced by the spirit of insubordination and love of playing pranks which the elder ones brought back from school, we made life hard and sour to the preceptorial body. But they got on, somehow. The GRANDSPARENTS, as we called our parents, taken up as they were by their social engagements, left all initiative to the tutors. Each of these was only expected to enter daily in a book his report and opinion of the pupil committed to his care. This book was seen by my father, and he added his own remarks and orders, and then returned it.

Our day generally began at five o'clock in the morning. The elder ones went to school to attend their classes, took their meals and played with the boarders, and came home after evening school. The boys who were not at school and the girls spent the day doing their lessons. In the evening, pupils and teachers of both sexes all dined together, and then went to the drawing-room, where there was always company, for my parents received every evening. Thursdays and Sundays, which were school holidays, were given up specially to lessons in what were known as accomplishments: drawing, music, physical exercises, riding, fencing, singlestick, dancing, &c. On Sundays, every one, great and small, dined at "THE GREAT TABLE," and this life of ours was as regular as clockwork summer and winter alike.

In winter time we lived in the Palais-Royal, which then was not at all what it is nowadays. Where the Galerie d'Orleans is now to be seen, there were hideous wooden passages, with muddy floors, exclusively occupied by milliners' shops, and peopled, it was said, by thousands of rats. To get rid of this collection of shanties, they were sawn through below, and allowed to come down with a crash. Crowds of people came to witness the collapse, in the hope of seeing the expected multitude of rats rush out. There was not a single one! They had all cleared out in good time. Such is the wisdom of the brute creation!

When I first lived at the Palais-Royal, I had a room in the Rue de Valois, which overlooked the Boeuf a la Mode restaurant, and opposite there dwelt an old lady, always dressed in black, who regularly every day, at the very same hour, placed an indispensable article of domestic use upon her window-sill, so that it was as good as a clock to us. Later on, I changed my room for one looking over the courtyard, facing the rooms occupied by an actor at the Comedie-Francaise named Dumilatre, and his daughters; Dumilatre, whom I knew well, having seen him play those small tragedy parts which consist in making a dignified exit and saying, "Yes, my lord," had the same habits as my black lady, and the same object used to appear upon his window-sill with equal regularity. I had only changed my clock!

It was during the winter sojourn at the Palais-Royal, too, that our masters and their lessons multiplied. And several of these masters were oddities, amongst others our professor of German. Picture a little bland-mannered old man, dressed all in black, with satin breeches, woollen stockings, enormous shoes, and a broad-brimmed hat. He had been tutor to Prince Metternich in his youth. I know not what chance had later driven him into France—where, during the Terror, he became one of the secretaries of the much-dreaded Committee of Public Safety at Strasbourg. He lived alone with his daughter, whom he often sent to Germany, not by the ordinary means of communication, but concealed in the van which was sent periodically into Hungary to fetch supplies of leeches for the hospitals, which circumstance made us conclude that the simple name of "Herr Simon" by which he called himself probably concealed some deep mystery. Nothing, alas! remains to me of his German, nor of that of a valet of the same race, who had been put about me, so ill adapted has my mental constitution always proved to any foreign language.

Another oddity was our dancing master, an Opera dancer, named Seuriot. What a fine presence that man had! His lesson, which we all took together, like a little corps de ballet, was a great amusement to us, especially because of the theatrical stories we used to make him tell us. One day he arrived in a great state of excitement, and addressing the governesses he said, "Ladies, you see before you a man who had a remarkable escape yesterday. The ballet called Les Filets de Vulcain was being danced, I was playing Jupiter, and I was just going to ascend in my glory, with Mercury beside me, when I felt that same glory was out of order, and I had only just time to jump off, and to shout to Mercury, 'Jump, my friend, jump, don't lose an instant!' Well, well!" During the pauses in the lesson, when his fiddle ceased, and while he wiped the perspiration from his brow, we used to crowd round him and ask him questions. The elder ones always tried to get him on the subject of a danseuse named Mademoiselle Legallois, one on which he would descant unendingly. This was the lady who on one occasion appeared in a ballet as the allegorical representative of Religion, which fact caused it to be said of a certain [Illustration: Man and woman dancing.] Marshal of France "qu'il s'etait eteint dans les bras de la religion" (that he had passed away peacefully in the arms of religion). But the moment we were seen crowding round and whispering with the old dancer, the governesses would charge down upon us with their "What is it? What is it?" and we began our BATTEMENTS and our steps again. Personally I owed one of the earliest successes in my life to old Seuriot. I had profited so much by his lessons, that I appear to have danced the minuet in a quite remarkable way, so much so that my parents had a complete crimson velvet dress in the style of the last century made for me, with the indispensable three-cornered hat and a sword with knots of ribbon. Thus accoutred, with powdered head and pigtail, I had to give several performances of my minuet, which I danced with my sister Clementine, both of us displaying all the airs and graces of bygone times. My marquis's dress, of which I was excessively proud, served me also for a fancy dress ball given by the Duchesse de Berri, at which, identifying myself too much with my character, I had a quarrel with a Cossack of my own age, young de B— about a partner. In my fury I drew my sword, he did likewise, and we were just falling on each other, when the Duchesse rushed up crying, "Stop, you naughty children! Take their swords away, M. de Brissac!" As for my sister Clementine, who was at the ball too, wearing her minuet gown, and looking utterly bewitching in her powder and her looped-up dress, she attracted the notice of Charles X., to whom she doubtless brought back memories of his own youth. He came to her and kissed her, and gazed at her for a long time, holding her hand. Then, turning to my father, he said, "Monsieur, if I were forty years younger, your daughter should be Queen of France," whereupon he kissed her over again.

Our dancing lessons, which were looked upon as recreation, alternated with walks about Paris. The girls went in one direction, and the boys in another. When we went out thus, one tutor alone took the extra duty of looking after us. When it was Trognon who came out, we always expected to be taken to Sautelet's, a bookseller in the Rue de Richelieu, whose establishment became, I recollect, in later days, the head office of the NATIONAL. There Trognon would hold forth amongst the journalists, while the clerks talked to us. I remember their showing me the splendid manuscript of the Memoirs of Saint-Simon, which Sautelet was then publishing. When, on the other hand, it was Cuvillier-Fleury who marshalled us, the objects of our walks became more varied, and we soon began to discover that there was not unfrequently a petticoat somewhere about. Yet I owe to him the precious memory of a visit to the studio of Eugene Delacroix; and also of one to M. de Lavalette, Postmaster-General under the first Napoleon, a most interesting man, well known for his celebrated escape on the eve of the day appointed for his execution, after the Hundred Days, when his wife came and took his place, and brought him garments to escape in. But oftenest of all we used to go to a bookseller's in the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, who was a great friend of Fleury's, and we were always sure to find either him or his charming wife at home.

Fleury's friendship for this bookseller was indeed the cause of a comical adventure. In the confusion of the first few days of the Revolution of 1830, the gentleman in question appeared before us with white belt and a sword over his civilian's dress. "Look here, Fleury," said he, "what use can I be to you today?" Fleury considered for a minute, and then he said he really didn't quite see, but that after all he thought nobody had troubled their heads about the Prefecture of Police. "I'll be off there," said my bookseller, and off he went, appointed himself Prefect of Police, and performed all his functions for several days. I have never heard of him since.

Turn about with these walks, too, we had lessons in gymnastics, of which science a certain Colonel Amoros was the apostle. This worthy colonel gave prizes to everybody, so as to make his classes popular. These prizes took the form of collars, inscribed in large painted letters with the particular merit of the pupil rewarded, such as agility, courage, strength, &c. One pupil was given a prize for "hidden virtue." After the gymnastic lessons came riding lessons, for which we were taken to the Cirque Olympique, I and my two elder brothers being always put in the charge of a single tutor. But as he invariably found the riding school too cold, he used to go and shut himself up in the manager's room, and leave us to the tender care of Laurent Franconi and the rough riders, which amounted to leaving us to ourselves. This icy cold arena, in the Place du Chateau-d'Eau consisted of one immense hall, where the place of the pit was taken up by the circus or riding school for all sorts of horsemanship, which circus was connected with the stage by inclined planes, whenever a military piece with battles in it was performed. In this circus Laurent Franconi made us practise "la haute ecole," and his assistants. Bassin and Lagoutte, taught us to vault on horseback, astride and sitting, and standing upright—after every fashion, in fact. And to our great amusement, too, these lessons, falling as they did on Sunday afternoons, generally coincided with the rehearsals on the stage, in which we joyfully took our share during the intervals we were allowed for rest, scaling the practicable scenery, or taking part with the artists in certain interludes not mentioned on the programme. This was not indeed our only initiation into theatrical art, a career bearing so much analogy to that of every prince. Taking advantage of the close proximity of the Palais-Royal to the Comedie-Francaise, my father had added a regular course of dramatic literature to the educational plan he had laid out for us. So very often when the old stock plays were being given at the Francais, he would take us by a door leading from his drawing-room into the passage which separates the side scenes from the artists' green-room, and leave us in his box—the three centre ones on the grand tier thrown together—returning to fetch us at the end of the performance. Those evenings at the Comedie-Francaise were our greatest joy, and taught us many a useful lesson, filling our heads with classic literature far more efficiently than all the reading and courses of lectures in the world. But those unlucky classics were very much neglected. They were not a bit the fashion. There would hardly be two hundred people in the theatre, and all the boxes were empty. A wretched orchestra, conducted by a stout man of the name of Chodron, squeaked a tune that set everybody's teeth on edge. Up would go the curtain, without any warning, in the very middle of some phrase in the music which would break off with a sigh from the clarionet, and drearily the play would begin. We were all eyes and ears in spite of that, and nothing in the play of the tragic actresses—Madame Duchesnois, Madame Paradol, and Madame Bourgoin—ever escaped us. I can see and hear yet all Corneille's plays, and Racine's too, and Zaire, and Mahomet, and L'Orphelin de la Chine, and many more. But what we longed for most impatiently were Moliere's plays. They were our prime favourites, and what actors too! Monrose, Cartigny, Samson, Firmin, Menjaud, and Faure, whose appearances as Fleurant in Le Malade and Truffaldin in L'Etourdi we always greeted with delight, on account of the properties he carried in his hand. This same Faure, an old soldier of 1782, never failed to say to my father, as he escorted him to the door, taper in hand, "Ha, Sir! this is not the camp at la Lune!" referring to a bivouac just before the battle of Valmy. It was always a great amusement to us to go along the passages behind the scenes, especially when the classic Roman processions were being formed up there for the tragedies, for among the lictors and the other Romans we recognized many of the clerks and workmen employed about the Palais-Royal, and we used to bid them good day, and call them by their names, and be very proud indeed of speaking to artists, and we went home to our own fold, imitating the call in the theatre: "On va-a commmencer! On co-mmence!" (Going to begin, just beginning).Sometimes too we were taken to see modern plays, but that did not happen often. Yet even now I seem to hear the actor Armand, just before 1830, talking thick behind his Directoire cravat, in TOM JONES:—

Point d'amis, point de grace,
A la session prochaine il faudra qu'on y passe!

and the whole house rose at him! I remember also being taken to the first night of Henri III., and being very much amused by the cups and balls and the pea-shooters. I was much affected too by the death of Arthur, a charming page in a violet dress, played by Mile. Despreaux, who afterwards became Madame Allan. I had no eyes for anybody else. As we were going away, my father leading me by the hand, we found the Duchesse de Guise, Mademoiselle Mars, panting, and wrapped in a rose-coloured satin cloak lined with swansdown, waiting for the compliments which my father showered on her. She had not impressed me nearly so much as the page in violet.

Talking of Henri III., a play we took great interest in, because its author, quite unknown at the time, belonged to our household, I will recall here a recollection connected with the name of Alexandre Dumas. Everybody knows he began life as a clerk in my father's library at the Palais-Royal. The chief librarian was Vatout, whose works, and perhaps too some well-known songs, have gained him a seat in the Academy. But Vatout was never in the library by any chance. The real librarian, and a very worthy fellow he was, was a man of the name of Tallencourt. He was an old soldier, and this caused him to be elected captain of a grenadier company in the Citizen Guard—a position to which, in the first blush of his enthusiasm, he attached an exaggerated importance. Well, some time after Dumas had resigned his position in the library, in the midst of the riots which occurred so frequently about that period, we saw Tallencourt come home one day in full warlike attire, with his bearskin cap and his cloak, and a very gloomy countenance. "What do you think has just happened to me? I was in command of a patrol in my ward—as we had heard several shots, we were advancing with the greatest caution, in double file, keeping close to the walls, with our eyes and ears open. All at once I heard a shout—'Here's for you, de Tallencourt!' and then a shot. Well, the shout—that voice—it was Alexandre Dumas' voice!" "Oh, nonsense!" we all cried. But he stuck to it—and we resisted the violent inclination to laugh that assailed us, convinced as we were that if the worthy man really had recognized the voice, he had been the victim of a prank of Alexandre Dumas, who had doubtless enjoyed the fun of seeing the rout of his former chief and his brave "guernadiers"!

When our father did not take us to the Theatre Francais, we spent our evenings in those beautiful rooms in the Palais-Royal where he had gathered together so many admirable pictures and works of art, plundered and dispersed since by the revolutionists and their tribe, together with the splendid furniture which was used to burn a detachment of the 14th Regiment of the Line alive, on the 24th of February, on which day it was on guard at the Palais-Royal. And to think that a French Chamber actually voted national rewards to people who had made an AUTO DA FE of French soldiers who were guilty of defending till death the post which duty and honour at once made sacred to them! But let that pass; worse things happen nowadays, but at the happy time I speak of nobody thought of the possibility of such shameful doings. This is what men call progress! As far as we ourselves were concerned, we spent our evenings in all the carelessness of our youth, playing together merrily and noisily in the family drawing-room, a large gallery running from the courtyard to the Rue de Valois. The games were liveliest on Sundays and Thursdays, because, those days being school holidays, our merry band was reinforced by my brothers' class-mates, MM. de Laborderie, Guillermy, d'Eckmul, Albert, &c., &c., and by Alfred de Mussetas well, whom I still seem to see, with his blue coat and gilt buttons, his fair curly hair, and his melancholy and somewhat affected ways. We generally played "prisoners' base"—a game to which the great gallery was very well suited. Sometimes there was dancing, and then my mother's eye was always on de Musset, who seemed to scorn our games and to be inclined to pay assiduous court to my big sisters.

Our games never interfered with the coming and going of visitors and habitual guests and old friends of my father's, who had been his friends before the Revolution. There was the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, "the good Duke," as he was called, very much dreaded by us children because he was always kissing us, and smelt so strongly of tobacco; and M. de Lally-Tollendal; and then friends of more recent date, General Gerard, Raoul de Montmorency, Madame de Boigne, the Princesse de Poix, the Princesse de Vaudemont, besides many others, soldiers, artists, diplomats, and ladies—every one, in fact, who was distinguished either by their personal charm, by mental qualities, or by the brilliancy of their career. Some amongst the number were more congenial to me than others; such as Francois Arago, the astronomer, inexhaustible in wit and humour, whether he was recounting his adventures when he was in captivity in the Barbary States, or the way he plagued his colleague Ampere, a soldier like himself in the regiment of the "Parrots in mourning," as he dubbed the Institute, in his southern accent, because of its green and black uniform. And then Macdonald, Marmont, Molitor, and Mortier, the four Marshals whose name began with M, the heroes of a hundred fights, the living embodiment of the renown our arms had won. We used all of us to try and hear whatever they said, whatever stories they told, and to gather up any information or anecdote touching the military glory of our country.

The diplomats interested us less—I will not speak of M. de Talleyrand, whose face and figure were striking enough, though they made but little impression on our uninformed imaginations. Yet I remember the fits of laughter we went into one day, when my father, in a fit of absence, aped the great man's limp as he crossed the drawing-room to receive him. We delighted in Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian Ambassador, because as soon as his burly presence appeared his jokes and witty sallies and his stories provoked loud and inexhaustible shouts of laughter. All children love cheery people. There was another diplomat whose arrival we always looked forward to, the Bailli de Ferrette, Minister of the Grand Duke of Baden—and this for two reasons. First of all because of that title of "Bailli," which seemed to belong to another world, or at all events to a harlequinade, and then on account of the extraordinary appearance of the man—he looked like a skeleton in powder. We were quite ignorant in those days, it is needless to remark, of the fact that this cool, proper-looking Bailli was a great musician, a first-class performer of the STABAT MATER, whose inspiration however depended on his having the shoulders, very DECOLLETEE ones too, of a charming nightingale, over whom the Opera and Opera-Comique fought for many a day, as the desk he laid his music on. Sometimes when the evening was half over a bell was heard like the one in the fourth act of the HUGUENOTS. "There's the big bell," we would cry. It was the signal that Madame la Dauphine or Madame la Duchesse de Berri was coming to pay us a visit, and my father would tear off, with all of us after him, to receive the visitor on the staircase. But our season at the Palais-Royal closed with the winter, and the first fine days saw us migrate to Neuilly, to the general delight.

Neuilly! I can never write the word without feeling moved, for it is bound up with all the happiest memories of my childhood, and I salute that name with respect akin to that which I would show a dead man! Those who never knew the Neuilly of which I would speak must imagine to themselves a very large country house, of no architectural pretension, consisting almost exclusively of sets of ground-floor rooms, tacked one on to the other on much the same level, with delightful gardens, and standing in the middle of a very large park which stretched from the fortifications to the Seine, just where the Avenue Bineau now runs. Within the park walls there were fields and woods and orchards, and even islands, the chief of which was called the "Ile de la Grande Jatte," and the whole of one reach of the Seine, the whole within a quarter of an hour's journey from Paris. This beautiful demesne, the favourite residence of my father and mother, who had made it, and were always adding new beauties to it, and who lived there in those days, far from political cares, and surrounded by their many children, who were all devoted to them, was also the place that we loved best. We were so near town that our education, our masters, our lessons at home or in school, went on just as if we were in Paris, while we had the advantage of fresh air and country life, with all its liberty and its natural and spontaneous exercise. At five o'clock in the morning, before lessons or school began, we were galloping about in the big park. In play hours, and on the Thursday and Sunday holidays, the whole troop of children roamed the fields, almost unaccompanied, the older ones looking after the youngest. We used to make hay, and get on the hay-cocks, and dig potatoes, and climb the fruit-trees, and beat the walnut-trees. There were flowers everywhere, fields of roses, where we gathered splendid bouquets every day, without their ever being missed even. Then we used to go boating and swimming. Boys and girls, equally good swimmers all, would plunge in turn into the little arm of the Seine enclosed within the park, and nothing more delicious can be imagined than to cast oneself into deep water near the bridge at Neuilly, and to let oneself drift down almost as far as Asnieres, under the great willows, returning afterwards on foot by the "Ile de la Grande Jatte."

This island, laid waste now and turned into a slum, was covered then with venerable trees, and intersected by those "shady paths" sung by Gounod, in which we loved to lose ourselves in all the carelessness of our childhood, and perhaps too in the first awakening instincts of our youth. Nothing but a memory remains of that enchanting spot. It was confiscated by Napoleon III. on some flimsy pretext or other, and forthwith cut to pieces, so as to destroy every trace of those who had owned and lived in it. It is as much as I can do, as I drive along the Avenue Bineau, to find, among the villas which have been built all over it, some well-known tree or other, behind which I used to lie in wait to shoot the hares, which a big dog I had trained to the work used to put up for me As for the house itself, after being the scene of a terrible orgie, it was sacked and burnt down by the conquerors in the glorious fight of February 1848. Not a stone of it remains. All the works of art within it were destroyed But I know of one stray bit saved from the wreck. The traveller who goes to see the museum at Neufchatel, in Switzerland, may observe, alongside of the picture which represents M. de Montmolin, an officer of the Swiss Guard, allowing himself to be murdered on the 10th of August, sooner than give up the flag which was intrusted to his loyal care, a very small canvas, carefully mended up. That fragment is the principal figure in Leopold Robert's first picture, and his masterpiece, L'IMPROVISATEUR, which used to hang in the billiard-room at Neuilly. Either a salvage man, or a looter of enlightened taste, cut it out with a penknife, in the midst of the conflagration, and it is the only thing that was saved.

But let me come back to my story.

In my father's sitting-room at Neuilly, and the billiard-room more especially, with the doors on the terrace open, the evenings used to be spent, in a circle of neighbours, friends, and habitual visitors.

These evenings had such a decisive influence on my future destiny that
I cannot do otherwise than speak of them.

That billiard-room is before me now, with the pictures that adorned it, all of them masterpieces—L'Improvisateur, by Leopold Robert; La Feeme du Brigand, by Schnetz, Faust and Marguerite, by Ary Scheffer; Venice, by Ziegler—hanging round.

I see the most frequent guests too. First two abbes, whose names—the Abbe de Saint-Phar and the Abbe de Saint-Albin—were a significant inheritance due to the frailty of their great-grandparents many years before the Revolution And yet another abbe, with powdered side curls, L'Abbe de Labordere, a former Grand Vicar of Frejus' who somehow or other, I know not how, had become mayor of Neuilly. Then there was the Marechal de Gouvion de Saint-Cyr, our near neighbour, who always had a circle round him; and admirals too, the Comte de Sercey, with his pigtail—an Indian veteran, Admiral Villaumetz; and generals and officers besides, whose stories of their campaigns used to fill us with enthusiasm. Amongst the generals who were friends of the family there was General Drouot, who was very fond of me, and would take me on his knee and tell me stories. I had seen Horace Vernet's picture, La Bataille de Hanau, which represents Drouot on foot amongst his guns, just as the Bavarian Cuirassiers are charging through them. That had been quite enough to fire my ardour, and I wanted to be an artilleryman too. Just about the same time, my father was presented with a twelve-pounder howitzer by the Vincennes artillery, and Colonel de Caraman came to try it with us. We fired shots in the park, at the rising ground near Villiers, and my military enthusiasm was wrought up to the highest pitch. I tormented my mother till she had an artillery uniform made for me, and when I had it on my back I thought my fortune was made. After having been taken to the fair at Neuilly, and seeing the non-commissioned officers of the Regiment of the Guard quartered at Courbevoie dancing with the pretty laundresses belonging to the village, I tried hard to force my sisters to join me in imitating the particular style of dance I had seen them perform. I have heard it said that my choregraphic performance was fairly successful, but there my fancy for the military career ended. General Drouot went back to Nancy; I did not see him again, and I soon fell under other and more lasting influences.

Among my father's aides-de-camp there was a young cavalry lieutenant-colonel, the Comte d'Houdetot, who had begun life as a midshipman. He was a very clever man, and one of the most delightful story-tellers imaginable. By birth a creole, from the Mauritius, he and his family had happened to come back to Europe on board the corvette La Regeneree, commanded by that same Admiral Villaumetz, our neighbour and constant visitor in the billiard-room. At the time of the voyage D'Houdetot was a baby in arms, and in an action between the Regeneree and the English, at the Loos Islands, his wet nurse was cut in two by a round shot, which gave rise to a saying of his, "I have more right to promotion than anybody. Lots of people have had horses killed under them, but I'm the only man in the French army that ever had a woman killed under him."

Mutually attracted by this common memory, the former middy and the old admiral used to spend their evenings relating their adventures to each other and their stories, which had begun by interesting, ended by fascinating me. It was worth while to hear D'Houdetot tell about the battle of Trafalgar, at which he had been present as a midshipman on board the Algesiras, commanded by his uncle Admiral Magon, how, as he lay on the poop, with both his legs broken by the bursting of a shell, he saw his uncle the admiral receive his death-blow, at the very moment when, wounded already, and his hat and wig carried away by a shot, he had thrown himself on to the nettings, shouting to his crew, "The first man who boards that ship with me shall have the Cross;" and how too, the boarding party having been driven back, the mizzen-mast of the Algesiras, cut through by a round shot, fell across the British ship, throwing a comrade of D'Houdetot's, the midshipman of the maintop, beyond it, into the sea, and how that middy swam back to the Algesiras. And then came the story of the tempest after the battle, in which victors and vanquished alike struggled together to escape shipwreck, under the command of Lieutenant de la Bretonniere, in later days my own commanding officer, who succeeded in bringing the ship into Cadiz. There D'Houdetot was lying upon the mole, under a burning sun, feverish and exhausted with pain, when the hand of a woman, whom his youth had touched, spread a fan over "the poor little fellow's" head, to protect him from the blaze. He drew the ministering hand to him, and kissed it, and to that simple act he owed his escape from the horrors of an overcrowded hospital, teeming with typhus. He recovered, re-embarked on board the frigate Hermione, and was wrecked with her. "Trafalgar and a shipwreck in the space of two years," he used to say, "gave me enough of a seafaring life." He got leave to be transferred to the cavalry, and covered himself with glory in the heroic charges at the battle of the Moskowa; but his heart always remained with his old sailor comrades, and he never tired of talking about them.

As for old Villaumetz, his whole life had been spent on board ship. He had gone with M. d'Entrecasteaux to search for La Peyrouse; he had commanded the squadron from which Prince Jerome Bonaparte deserted with his ship the Veteran, and his stories of sea fights and adventures were endless. Listening to them first inspired me with that longing to enter the naval career which never left me again.

My first attempts at seafaring were made at Treport, during the short holiday trips we used to take to the Chateau d'Eu. I was dreadfully sea-sick every time, but that did not dismay me; and then the honest sailors, with their simple, open, resolute faces, attracted me irresistibly I used to envy them their risky life, as I watched their boats from the jetty at Treport, running in before the gale. That settled the matter; I was regularly fascinated, in short. And that love of my life will last as long as I do. Besides the sailoring charm which Treport had for me, many a pleasant memory of my life is bound up with Eu and Randan. My parents were accustomed in holiday times to take us for a little trip either to Eu or to Randan, a large property in the Auvergne belonging to my aunt. During these journeys, lessons and school hours and study of every kind were intermitted, and this alone sufficed to give them a sovereign charm. It should be added that in those days travelling was not what it is now, and that these trips gave rise to many little adventures, for which we were always on the look out. My father had had a big carriage built with room for twelve people in it, which held the whole family, and which, with all due deference, was very like a travelling menagerie-van. A courier used to ride on ahead to order post horses; another rode just in front of the carriage. When each stage was finished, the six horses that were to draw us for the next were led up: wicked, cross-grained stallions they were, that squealed and bit and kicked. They got harnessed somehow or other; and then out came the dapper postilions, with their hats trimmed with gay ribbons, cocked on one side, some of them still wearing powder and with their hair tied in a club. They had waistcoats trimmed with dozens of silver buttons, and close-fitting pantaloons covered their legs. Margot would bring out the great iron-bound boots, into which they shoved those same legs; they were hoisted laboriously on to their horses; the postmaster shouted, "Now then, in with your spurs, and let them go!" and off we went full tear, bells jingling and whips cracking, to the admiration of the women and children of the village gathered round to see the show. Once we were off, things calmed down; but the postboys had no control whatever over their horses, who knew the road, and did the stage, from force of habit, at their own pace. If we came across other carriages or wagons on the road, it was just a question as to whether our team would take us too much out of their way, or not enough. Such meetings were proclaimed by yells from the postilions. If the horses did not go far enough to one side, there would be a terrible collision, and a volley of oaths, together with a clashing of lanterns and a clatter of broken windows. If the horses got too far out of the way, the carriage would first of all tilt towards the sideway, slope more and more, and frequently end by turning over gently into the ditch. Then a clamour would rise from the menagerie, everybody first feeling themselves all over, and then laughing, while the great machine was being lifted up, preparatory to a fresh start. A little farther on, it might be, another accident would occur. We would be passing through a village, and, to create a sensation, the postboys would begin cracking their whips in concert. The horses would get excited, and the pace would increase. It was all very well if the village street was a straight one, but if there was an angle in it the horses would take it too short, and there would be a violent collision with the kerbstone at the corner. Then all the wheelwrights and all the innkeepers, ever on the watch for such mishaps, would hurry up. The repairs would take four hours perhaps, whereat the GRANDSPARENTS would storm, but we children were jubilant. Confusion reigned supreme, and we could write to our little friends, "We were upset at such and such a place; we broke down at such another." We got lots of copy out of it.

There was no great interest about our visits to Randan. We used to leave the high-road at Aigueperse. Six or eight pairs of oxen were harnessed to the carriage, and Auvergnats in their costumes and broad-brimmed hats (there were still costumes there, in those days), with goads in their hands, drove the team, the carriage swinging backwards and forwards on the muddy roads, up hill and down dale; it was hard work getting there, but we did get there at last. The great entertainment of the visit was to go and see Madame la Dauphine, who went through a cure at Vichy every year.

It was far pleasanter to stay at Eu. The old castle of the Guises was a mere tumbledown barrack at the time I speak of. The passages had waves in them like the sea. When there was a storm the whole house shook, and the smaller children used to feel quite frightened, when, after listening to Anatole de Montesquiou's ghost stories, of an evening, they had to go through the Guise Gallery, with all its dreadful portraits which seemed to step out of their frames to the dreary whistle of the sea-wind. But all the same we loved the old place. It was quite out of the common run. Just as we used to go and see Madame la Dauphine at Vichy from Randan, we used to go from Eu to see Madame la Duchesse de Berri, at Dieppe, which she had made her summer residence. We accompanied her once to the lighthouse at Ailly under the escort of her guard of honour, a squadron of Cauchoise women on horseback. In illo tempore—those days; all Norman women, and those of the Caux district especially, did their errands and their marketing on horseback. There were very few vehicles to be seen. The prettiest of the peasant girls had been selected; and it was really a pleasure to see them prancing, to the number of forty, round the Duchess's carriage, with their captain and lieutenant riding at each door, all dressed alike, in white, in the full Cauchoise costume, chignon and cap with lace lappets, each on her pacing hack, which she managed to perfection. When a halt was made, the squadron dismounted, each girl holding her horse—a most charming effect it made in the Norman landscape. I never heard where the guard was quartered, but I am quite convinced there never can have been any difficulty about finding the necessary billets. I M de Murat, Prefect of the Lower Seine, was the originator of this idea. He was a charming fellow, but so absent, that one morning, when the Duchesse de Berri sent for him, he hastily put on his sword and his smartest uniform, and hurried in his three-cornered hat to wait on Madame, without discovering, till he got there, that he had forgotten his breeches!

[Illustration: Ladies and men on horseback.]

A great change came into my life in 1828. I was ten years old; my turn had come; I was sent to school, and entered the College Henri IV. Ay di me! as the Spanish lament has it. When I pass by Saint-Etienne du Mont, and look at the Tower of Clovis, and the great walls of that learned prison in which I spent three years, the memories that come back to me are not pleasant—far from it. My life there was mortally tedious, and I did no good whatsoever. My whole education has been gained by reading (I was and I have always remained passionately fond of reading), by observation, and by listening to those people who know how to hold my attention. I listened with all my ears and all my heart to the Abbe Dupanloup, when he gave me religious instruction; to Pouillet, when he taught us physical science; to the great Arago, when he put a sextant into my hands for the first time in my life. Later on, to Michelet, when I attended the course of historical lectures he gave to my sister Clementine; and later yet, to the lessons on law which were given us by M. Rossi, the minister of Pius IX. But Greek and Latin, and hours spent over an exercise or a translation with a fat dictionary to keep me company! Oh, mercy on me! From the scholastic point of view I was simply a DUNCE, nothing but a dunce. Yet I managed to scramble one prize—the shabbiest of them all—the second for Latin versions in the seventh class! I was presented with my reward at the prize distribution, to the tune of "Vive Henri IV." Vive ce roi vaillant, ce diable a quatre . . .! "At the same moment I received, from a stout red-faced gentleman, a wet kiss—much too wet a kiss—which gave me no pleasure whatsoever. I recollect the porter at the college was nicknamed "Boit-sans-soif"; that my greatest joy was to go out by his door, after evening school, and go down the Rue de la Montagne or the Rue des Sept-Voies playing a thousand pranks as I went, and that my grief used be keen indeed when I had to go back the next morning. Yet some good comrades I had whom I dearly loved, and amongst whom I improved in playing various games, and learned the art of both giving and receiving kicks and cuffs. But, take it all in all, my schooldays are, as they say in mathematics, "a minus quantity" to me.

CHAPTER II

1830-1833

[Illustration: Boy waving flag and shooting a gun.]

The Revolution of 1830 broke out during my schooldays. I was twelve years old—too young therefore, by far, to estimate its character, political or social, correctly. I only remember that it filled me with the deepest astonishment. Never having witnessed any kind of disturbance, I had not the faintest notion what a revolution might be like. I had always seen the King and the Royal Family treated with a respect which, indeed, they have never forfeited, and I was a hundred miles from the thought that they could possibly be banished. It is a fact, nevertheless, that the beginning of 1830 differed from other years, and that something seemed to be brewing. Strange remarks were made at school, over and over again, even among us little ones; our tutors, all of them connected with the press, were what was called in those days "dans le mouvement"—abreast of the times, and they never stopped talking politics. Where were they not talked, indeed? It was a downright disease. The speech of M. de Salvandy, on the occasion of the fete given by my father at the Palais-Royal in May, that year, in honour of the King of Naples, my uncle and godfather, may be called to mind. "A real Neapolitan fete indeed, Sire!—for we are dancing on a volcano."

And a truly Neapolitan fete it was, not only on account of the presence of the sovereigns of the two Sicilies, and of the ideal beauty of the night, but also by reason of the tarantella, a sort of ballet, which was danced in the middle of the evening, by Madame la Duchesse de Berri and thirty of the most beautiful young ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, in Neapolitan costume, among whom I think I still see, compact of grace and elegance, the lovely Denise du Roure, soon to become Comtesse d'Hulst. The tarantella was followed by a polonaise, led by Comte Rodolphe Appony and the Duchesse de Rauzan, resplendent in blue and gold. A more sedate dance, this, performed by noble lords and ladies, all in Hungarian costume, and escorted by pages, bearing their respective banners. It would have been hard to say which of the ladies taking part in these two dances bore off the palm for aristocratic beauty. They were worthy representatives of their race.

The Royal Family, headed by Charles X., was present at this fete, whereat pre-eminence of every kind was gathered together and every class represented, and where cordiality seemed universal. After the entrance of the two sets of dancers in costume, the King went out to walk on the terrace which runs along the top of the Galerie d'Orleans. The night was so warm and lovely that the ladies were walking about in their low gowns, and the dazzling illuminations made it as bright as day. The courtyard of the Palais-Royal was closed, but an immense crowd filled the gardens, trying to see as much as possible of the gay doings. I was running in front of Charles X. as he walked along, and I saw his tall form advance to the parapet of the terrace on the garden side, with that truly royal air he had about him. He waved his hand several times in greeting to the crowd, which at that short distance, and under that brilliant light, must have recognized him perfectly, not by his features only, but by his full uniform of Colonel-General of the Guard, and also by the retinue that followed him. But there was no shout of "Vive le Roi!" nor any hostile one either. The surging crowd only seemed to be rather more stirred, and the same uproar rose from it as one may hear on a firework night, when some fine set-piece is set alight. One last wave of the hand, with a "Bonjour, mon peuple!" which the King spoke half in jest and half in earnest, and Charles X. departed. I was never to see him again. Immediately afterwards, or nearly so, the crowd laid hands on the chairs in the garden, piled them up on the grass plots where the midday gun stood, and set them on fire. The troops had to be called out to clear the garden, and that first scene of public not, so new to me, filled me with astonishment and rage as well.

Shortly after this fete came the taking of Algiers—a Proof of the national strength, of political courage and foresight—a brilliant military exploit, performed under the "drapeau blanc," which might well have roused the enthusiasm of the nation, tightened the bond between France and her king, and reconciled the people to their ancient flag. It did nothing of the kind. The taking of Algiers was received like an ordinary piece of news, and the tricolour flag was regretted as deeply as ever. For the platform and the press—but especially the press, the mightiest instrument of destruction of modern times—had done their work. The days of the Government of the Restoration were numbered. Not that it had been blameworthy. Both at home and abroad it had certainly been the best of all the administrations that had succeeded each other since 1789. But it had endeavoured to govern like a patriarch, for the present good and the future greatness of France, and to withstand the assaults of those unprincipled individuals who looked on their country simply as a farm to make money out of. So bit by bit it had been demolished, just as everything has been demolished these past hundred years, in the name of laws and principles which dissolve every kind of government, and which will soon make it absolutely impossible for society to exist. The hour when the words, "Get out of that, and let me take your place," the real and only object of our successive revolutions, should resound, was on the very stroke.

On the 25th of July we had all been dining at Saint-Leu with M. le Duc de Bourbon, an old cousin of ours, who never meddled with politics, and led a leisured and delightful life between Chantilly and Saint-Leu, never coming to Paris except to pass through it, although the beautiful palace there which bears his name, the Palais Bourbon, belonged to him. His great passion was for sport, in which he excelled; and my father had made a friend of him by giving him the hunting in all his forests. There was another reason too, and perhaps after all it was the chief one, for this cordiality, that my parents had consented to receive the Baronne de Feucheres, who held great sway over the Duke, but who had never been admitted to Court. I can see the handsome old man yet, laconic in speech, his profile of the most strongly marked Bourbon type, his hair and pigtail white, with his tightly buttoned blue coat, from which a lace frill escaped, and his trousers, which were always much too short, showing his white stockings underneath. On the evening I speak of there had been a great gathering at Saint-Leu—a big dinner, then a drawing-room play, acted by Madame de Feucheres and the Duke's gentlemen. In the audience were many officers of the Royal Guard, and numerous other persons, whose names were known to me from having heard them quoted as being amongst those ardent Conservatives called at that time the "Ultras." One of them, a M. de Vitrolles, attracted my attention by holding a long conversation with my father in one of the intervals between the acts. He has since related this conversation in his Memoirs, and also the conviction it gave him of the horror with which the idea of a fresh revolution filled my father. Their only disagreement was as to the means to avert it. Which of the two was in the right?

That evening we went back to Neuilly, and the next morning, 26th of July, as we were just getting ready, Nemours and I, to start for school, somebody opened the door and launched the remark to our tutors: "The coup d'Etat is in the Moniteur!" "What!" "Yes! The Decrees." Whereupon the tutors rushed to the family drawing-room, whither we followed them. There sat my father, thunderstruck, the Moniteur in his hand. When he saw the tutors come in, he threw up his arms in despair, and let them fall again. After a silence on his Part, during which my mother rapidly acquainted the gentlemen with the state of affairs, my father said: "They are mad!" That was all, and after another silence, a long one—"They will get themselves banished again. Oh! for my part, I have been exiled twice already. I will not bear it again: I stay in France!"

I heard no more, for it was schooltime, and we had to get into the carriage; but those words and that first impression remain graven on my memory.

That day at school was just like any other, but the next, the 27th, as we came back from the College Henri IV, it was easy to see that there was a great stir in Paris Deligny's swimming school, at the corner of the Quai d'Orsay, where we went after school, according to custom, to take our bath, was full of young men discussing and holding forth, and relating incidents, true or not, which had occurred during the day. The Place Louis XV., now the Place de la Concorde, was occupied by the troops. There was a regiment of Foot Guards, a battalion of the Swiss Guard, the Lancers of the Guard, the Artillery of the Military School—magnificent troops all of them, the finest I have seen in any country, and of which the English Foot Guards alone in these days give any idea. Officers inspired in the highest possible degree with esprit de corps and chivalrous devotion, old non-commissioned officers, many of whom had seen the wars of the Empire, commanding seasoned soldiers, young in years but old in discipline and instruction, and all proud of the splendid uniform they wore—such was the Royal Guard. And what shall I say of the superb Swiss battalions, acknowledged by ancient tradition to be the finest infantry in the world? These splendid troops, which might have rendered such great service to France on the battlefield were to disappear within two days. Upon them too I had looked my last. Close to the Porte Maillot we met the Duchesse de Berri, riding amongst a numerous group of equerries. We exchanged friendly greetings. No doubt her instinct as a woman and a mother led her to try to keep in touch with passing events.

The next morning, the 28th, we knew Paris to be in open revolt. Cannon boomed, the great bell of Notre-Dame sounded the tocsin, and naturally we did not go to school. But the masters who gave my sisters lessons came out to Neuilly, and from them, in turn, we learnt what was going on within the capital—barricades in all the streets—the troops on the defensive—the tricolour hoisted everywhere.

On the 29th, the struggle grew closer to us. A bullet fell whistling in the park. According to the fugitives from Paris, the insurrection had triumphed, the troops of the line were fraternizing with the rebels, and the Guard was retiring on Saint-Cloud to gather round the King. I pass over all the rumours and false reports accompanying this news, which was all too true. And what were we doing during these anxious hours? We obeyed various impulses. The first, a fervent sympathy with our soldiers, who were engaged in the struggle—ces pauvres soldats, the real France, the real PEOPLE, obeying the noblest motives—honour—duty opposing the POPULACE, whose envy and evil instincts had been let loose by a handful of ambitious men. And we knew no rest till the whole staff of the household had repaired to the various gates of the park, to open them to the soldiers, separated, dispersed, threatened with massacre as they were. They were brought in and fed, and given caps and blouses instead of their uniforms, and put across to the other side of the Seine in boats. And with all that, so full is the heart of man, and yet more that of the child, of contradiction, that we followed the current and made tricolour cockades, my sisters and I, and all of us! There is no doubt the fascination of the tricolour flag had a good deal to do with the rapidity with which the Revolutionary powder-train took fire.

As there must always be a laughable side, even to the grimmest events, the comic element was supplied in this case by our professors of languages, drawing, and so forth, who had not dared to go back into Paris after leaving it on the 28th, on account of the fighting. When they had made up their minds to return on the 29th, we persuaded those of them who wore moustaches that they would run very great risks, and even be taken for soldiers in disguise. Whereupon the schoolroom was at once turned into a barber's shop, where a general shaving was performed, with the inevitable change of appearance resulting there-from, which increased the alarm of the individuals operated upon tenfold.

While our professors were shaving off their moustaches, our father was disappearing from Neuilly. His movements were rigorously concealed from us, and I never learnt what they really were even in later days. So I will not attempt to speak of them. We were soon aware of the bare fact that he was in Paris, exercising public functions which were somewhat ill-defined as yet; and on the evening of the 31st my mother informed us that we were going to join him at the Palais-Royal. [Footnote: It is not for me to pass judgment on my father's conduct in accepting the crown in 1830. There is no doubt the July Revolution was a great misfortune. It gave a fresh blow to the monarchical principle, and it unfortunately encouraged those who speculate in insurrection. But I know as a fact that my father never desired it, and indeed watched its approach with the deepest sorrow. When the throne of Charles X. collapsed without his being able to defend it in any way, he certainly felt the most passionate desire to escape the common exile and to continue living a life which was to him the happiest of lives in France. The struggle one over, and the country in revolt from end to end, he realized that the only way in which he could escape exile was to associate himself with the movement, and at the outset he certainly did it solely in the hope of bringing back Henri V. to the throne. When this hope failed him, he yielded to the entreaties of those persons who implored him as the only person in a position to do it, to check France on that fateful descent which must bring her from the Republic to a Dictatorship, and so on to invasion, and to mutilation. He delayed that disastrous succession of events for eighteen years, at the risk of his own life, which was incessantly threatened, and history will do him honour for it in spite of the injustice of human nature.]

We started about eight o'clock at night, my mother, my aunt Adelaide, and we children, in an omnibus, so as not to attract notice. We began to come to barricades at the Barriere de l'Etoile, but openings had been made in them already, large enough for carriages to pass through, all which openings were watched by guards of armed people—I beg their pardons, I was mistaken—armed CITIZENS, playing at soldiers and police, who stopped and cross-questioned everybody in the most childish fashion. The omnibus could not get beyond the Place Louis XV., so many obstacles did we find in the way. We got out, and my mother divided us into twos, and told us to scatter and meet again at the Palais-Royal.

Paris was a curious sight that night, lighted up everywhere with lamps, and tricolour flags at every window. How people found time to make up so many emblems in those two days is a mystery! The streets were all torn up, and the paving-stones piled into the barricades, mixed up with overturned carriages, casks, and rubbish of all kinds. Behind these barriers were extemporized guardians, passers-by, people walking about with guns and firing them off every minute, and everybody, man, woman, and child, wore huge tricolour cockades in hats and caps or bonnets, or in their hair.

In the centre of a great crowd on the Place du Palais-Royal there was one of the Laffitte et Caillard diligences, which had been used as a barricade, and set up again. It was full of people inside, and they clustered on the roof like bees, all of them singing in chorus. Between the choruses, sharp volleys of musketry rang out, and the vehicle, drawn by three or four hundred people holding on to ropes, tore round the square, amid a concert of varied yells. Though it was very late when we reached the palace, it was all lighted up, and every door stood open. Anybody who chose could go in, and when we went up the stairs we found many people already settled on the steps, prepared to spend the night there. We saw my father in his study, and then we were sent to bed, or rather to camp out in the rooms we usually slept in. The next day the firing slackened, but the general idleness continued; everybody was walking about. Soon the question of food began to press, for all supplies and trade were stopped by the universal barricades. Everybody asked everybody else what was going on, a subject upon which every one except the leaders was profoundly ignorant. The multitude was just like an immense flock of sheep, whose shepherds had been driven away, and who seemed to wonder why the new dogs who were to herd them did not make their appearance. There was no bad feeling; now and then there would be a panic, everybody taking to their heels, nobody knew why, and then stopping again and bursting out laughing. Sometimes a noise arose, and swelled as it drew nearer. It was some popular leader going to the Hotel de Ville or the Palais-Royal, with two or three claqueurs before him, to stir up an enthusiasm in which everybody shared, without having a notion of the name of the hero they were acclaiming, yet glad to be able thus to show off their civic rights. Then there would be a fit of general tenderness. Everybody kissed everybody else vehemently. In some cases a transport of patriotism thus calmed itself; in others perhaps it was the effect of the extreme heat, and the consequent thirst, which had not gone unquenched, and in others, again, it was merely the relaxation of morals an era of universal brotherhood brought with it. The hero of this general and infectious kissing match was Lafayette. Everybody wanted to kiss him. A great rattle of drums having announced his arrival at the Palais-Royal one day, he had to take his stand in one of the drawing-rooms, in front of me, and be kissed by thousands of persons of all ages. I did it, like all the others, but I saw people I knew come up again many times over to be kissed by the illustrious veteran, and each time their agitation seemed to increase.

Every one went in and out of the Palais-Royal as they chose. It was a strange march past, of people of all sorts, who came to take notes, see how the wind blew, and give in an adhesion which might be more or less disinterested. Some of them, inspired by real devotion, came to try if they might even yet serve a cause that was so dear to them. Thus I saw M. de Chateaubriand led into my mother's drawing-room by Anatole de Montesquiou. And, on the other hand, I saw Savary, Duc de Rovigo, notorious in connection with the Duc d'Enghien, in full uniform, booted and spurred, leave the study, whither he had gone to offer my father his services.

One evening, as we were all gathered together, we heard a great noise coming from the staircase. We hurried towards it. A crowd of armed men, with lighted torches, were coming up, shouting loudly and waving flags. At their head came five or six pupils of the Ecole Polytechnique, with their three-cornered hats cocked and swords drawn. Behind them a woman in man's attire, red belt and close-fitting pantaloons, was being borne in triumph. She was a heroine of the barricades, whom the yelling crowd desired to introduce to my father, and he had to receive her. This scene filled me with disgust, and it was soon followed by another, no less painful. The leaders of the Revolution had sent an army of volunteers to dislodge the old King and his Guard from Rambouillet. They did not turn him out, first of all because the King himself had decided to disband his guard and retire to Cherbourg with no escort but four companies of his bodyguard; and, secondly, because these same volunteers, numerous as they were on leaving Paris, melted away rapidly on the road, and above all things took good care not to venture within range of the Guard's fire. Nevertheless, they returned in triumph from Rambouillet, bringing back the royal horses and carriages, which they had seized without striking a blow. I was horrified to see the great carriages, with six or eight horses, still driven by the wretched coachmen and postilions, in their state liveries, enter the Place du Palais-Royal—believing as I did that they were bringing back the King and his family as prisoners, into the very jaws of the Revolution. But, happily, this was not the case. The only people in the carriages were some young blackguards, dressed up in extraordinary garments, dressing-gowns and cotton caps, and I know not what other masquerading trash, intended to call forth the ribald jokes of the multitude. It was a disgusting scene. The days passed on, and by degrees Paris returned to its ordinary life. The streets were repaired, vehicles began to circulate again. Soldiers, gendarmes, policemen, were to be seen once more, and a certain sense of security revived. At all events the eternal struggle of order against disorder began afresh. Those who formed the most turbulent element of the Revolutionary party were induced, by degrees, to engage in the army, and were drafted off to Algiers, under the title of "Regiments de la Charte." It was less easy to get rid of a Guard of Honour, numbering some two or three hundred men, which had formed itself on its own responsibility, nominally for the protection of my father and of the Palais-Royal. This guard was always in the vestibule and on the staircase, night and day alike. It was an omnium gatherum of vagabonds, prowling ruffians of the vilest kind, ragged scamps, all carrying arms, stolen from every sort of place, among others from the Musee d'Artillerie, whence some had gone so far as to borrow cuirasses and helmets that had belonged to the warriors of the League. Of course they all had to be fed and paid. The chief of the band was a midshipman in the navy, on leave in Paris at the time the Revolution broke out, of the name of Damiguet de Vernon, who died afterwards with the rank of general in the army. Whenever my father went out, to go to the Chamber of Deputies or elsewhere, this rabble turned out and saluted after a fashion of its own, with drums beating and trumpets blowing. It was a scene quite worthy of Callot's pencil. To get rid of this worthy set, the midshipman was at once given a lieutenant's commission in the mounted Municipal Guard, under pretext of a reward from the nation, and clothes were bestowed on his band, wherewith they hastened to decamp on the first sign of the introduction of anything like discipline into their ranks.

Our regular routine began again too. After over a week's holiday, I was put back to school, where we immediately made a revolution of our own, by insisting that the bell which rang for class and mealtimes should be replaced by a drum. If, as I went into school with my folding desk under my arm, I came across the column of big boys coming down from their class-rooms, I used to get many a cuff to the tune of "Take that, your young Majesty!" or the slang saying of the day, "Have you seen Leontine?"—this last from the name of Leontine Fay, a favourite actress with young people. But, apart from that, my life was as monotonous as ever it had been. The riots and attempts at insurrection which succeeded each other with something very like regularity seemed to diversify it but very little. Yet I did feel a certain excitement the first time I witnessed one of these attempts at sedition. Our evening was just over at the Palais-Royal, and I had gone up to my room, when loud shouts, and an ejaculation of "Oh, good gracious!" from my valet, made me run to the window. The Court of the Palais-Royal was closed, but all the galleries were filled with a surging, yelling crowd, the more violent of whom were battering at the staircase door facing Chevet's shop. "They are going to break it in and come upstairs: they'll be here in another moment," we said to ourselves. "What is to be done?"

Amidst the general shouting, yells of "Death to Louis Philippe!" were to be heard. Then, all at once, in the gaslight, I saw the policemen's swords twinkle, pinking people in all directions. Soon the troops came hurrying up with fixed bayonets, and the rabble took to their heels at the sight of them. This crowd had just come back from Vincennes, whither it had gone to demand the heads of Charles X.'s ministers, who were shut up in the fortress, from General Daumesnil, "the man with the wooden leg," and having failed in that attempt it wanted to have my father's instead.

So that affair ended; but fresh opportunities for creating disturbances soon occurred, and were as eagerly seized upon. One was during a great diplomatic dinner given by my father in the dining-room of the Palais-Royal, which looks out on the Cour des Fontaines. I was sitting by Lord Granville's daughter, and doing my best to make myself pleasant, when the uproar of the riot burst upon us suddenly and interrupted all the talk. Everybody looked at everybody else, and then down at their own plate, and everybody looked very sorry to be where he was at that moment. Then the noise of a great trampling of hoofs on the pavement revealed the fact that the cavalry was charging, whereupon the sky cleared, and conversation began again, though not without some appearance of effort.

Another time, again, matters became more serious. The riot—I don't remember which it was now, there were so many of them!—became very threatening at one moment. I see my father still, taking Casimir Perier by the arm, and shouting in his ear, "Tell them to serve out ball cartridge, ball cartridge, do you hear?" Casimir Perier, as excited as himself, was rushing away, when he was stopped by an officer, who said, "There are three students of the Ecole Polytechnique, sent to parley, waiting below."

"Parley for whom? For the rioters? For the insurrection? Lay hands on them! Lock them up in prison."

"But, sir," said the officer, himself a former student at the Ecole Polytechnique, "I can't: I've given them my word!" But Casimir Perier was not there to listen even just then I observed a man of woebegone appearance, sitting in a corner of the drawing-room in which the foregoing scene had taken place. One of my eldest brother's aides-de-camp, General Marbot, was walking up and down in front of him, never taking his eyes off him. "What are you doing there?" I asked the general.

"I'm keeping my eye on that gentleman you see there."

"Who is he?"

"The Prefect of Police."

"Really?"

"They say he is playing us false"

And there you see a specimen of the plight you find yourself in on the morrow of a revolution, when order needs restoring not only in the open streets but in the highest quarters in the State.

For my own part, I was always delighted to hear the drums call the National Guard—and consequently all our masters, tutors, and professors, who served in it—to arms, at each fresh outbreak of disturbance.

It meant interrupted studies, and, above all, interrupted attendance at school, where, however, luckily for me, I was not to stay much longer. Seeing that I did no good there whatever, my father decided, in the spring of 1831, to remove me altogether, and as my taste for a naval career was growing stronger and stronger, he resolved to make a sailor of me But before I seriously entered the profession he wished me to make a sea-voyage. So I was sent to Toulon, to be shipped as volunteer pilot's apprentice, on board the Arthemise frigate, commander Latreyte. I was barely thirteen I could not have begun at a better age.

After bidding the tenderest farewell to my father and mother, my aunt, and my brothers and sisters, from whom I had never been parted before, I was packed into a post-chaise with Monsieur Trognon, and off we started.

As far as Lyons our journey was uneventful, but when we got there M. Paulze d'Ivoy, the prefet, and M. Vitet, author of Barricades des Etats de Blois, took possession of me, nominally to show me the town—in reality to make me the pretext for certain demonstrations in favour of the new order of things. I was driven about, to Fourvieres, to La Croix-Rousse, and so forth, and had the best of receptions from their sturdy inhabitants. Thirteen-year-old lad as I was, I had to receive the officers of the National Guard—very military indeed they were, with their uniform with its white facings, copied from that of the Imperial Guard. And these receptions and official entertainments, which were not at all to my personal taste, were repeated all along the road till we got to Toulon, marked by increasing animation and fervour as we got farther south, and as the population through which we passed became more and more divided by political passions. At Valence I found an enormous crowd of people, and the garrison and National Guard both under arms, while a tall lieutenant-colonel, of the 49th Regiment of the Line, insisted on my inspecting the troops in person.

He took my hand with one of his, with the other he waved his sword, and led the plaudits. His name was Magnan, and he was a Marshal of France before he died. At Mornas, the native place of the famous Baron des Adrets, the reception took a very original shape. As we drove up to the posting-house, I saw a great crowd, and the National Guard drawn up in two ranks, on the right and left of the postilions who were to take us on. The carriage pulled up between the ranks, and I fancied I saw a sort of suppressed smile on the countenances of the National Guard. It did not last long, for the commandant in the wildest excitement rapidly gave the words of command: "Present arms—Fire!" And they were followed by the most abominable noise, every man having presented arms with his finger on the trigger of his musket. The crowd cheered tremendously, the horses plunged and reared, and there was a terrible disturbance, which seemed to afford the keenest joy to the officer in command. There was nothing very striking at Orange, nor at Avignon. Speeches by the authorities, visits to the public buildings, very much the same routine as that which official receptions have nowadays made so familiar to everybody. But at Orgon, between Avignon and Aix, it was a very different matter. An immense and excited crowd awaited our arrival, shouting all manner of things. Then the carriage was seized upon by people who looked drunk, but who were drunk with political passion alone. It seems the town of Orgon was not reckoned to favour the regime of 1830. So from every side I was greeted with shouts of "We are Cavaillon's men! … We've come down from the mountains so that you may tell your papa there are no Carlists in Provence." And then they sang the Marseillaise The horses were taken out of the carriage, the crowd surrounded it, climbing on the steps, the wheels, the fore-carriage, the roof. I was like a prisoner in a cage; all I could see out of the window was the boots of the people who were sitting on the top. They sang all the verses of the Marseillaise, and bawled between them. A gentleman contrived to slip up to the carriage door, gave himself out to be the mayor, and tried to rescue us, calling out: "Gentlemen, this really is not decent behaviour." All he got for his pains was a shout of "What the devil do we care about a mayor like you?" I don't know how long it would have gone on, if a detachment of the battalion of Government workmen quartered at Orgon, which had been sent for, had not come to our rescue.

Between Orgon and Marseilles we met the "Regiment de la Charte" marching from Paris on their way to Algiers, and their passage through the country did not a little to excite the inhabitants. At Marseilles the National Guard lined the Allees de Meillan, each man with a bouquet stuck into the muzzle of his rifle, which he took out and threw into the barouche in which I sat with General Gazan, so that I was soon fairly buried, with nothing but my head sticking out, while the crowd shouted at the top of its voice: "Vive le Prinnche!—Long live the Prince!" and I heard women's voices adding, "Que sis poulid! Qui est si joli!"

I had hardly reached Toulon, ere the frigate I had joined put to sea, my apprenticeship began, and I soon made myself at home among our sailors, who all of them, officers, petty officers, and seamen alike, not only showed me an affection which won my heart from the very outset, but took every pains to make my stay amongst them a pleasant one, while each in his own special sphere initiated me into all the details of my duty.

The Arthemise was a fine sailing frigate, of fifty-two guns, with huge spars—one of the most elegant types of the old-fashioned ships, but an old-fashioned ship she was indeed. We even had hempen cables instead of chain ones! The crew, drawn almost exclusively from the lists of registered seamen, was active and bold on the rigging, but somewhat insubordinate. The words of command were given amidst volleys of oaths, and carried out under a hail of blows dealt by the petty officers. The superior officers, who had all belonged to the old Imperial Navy, clung to that detestable habit, which has cost us so many reverses, of completely neglecting the military side of the ship's drill. The only thing they looked to was navigation. There was indeed a routine of regulation practice carried out, but it was utterly ridiculous. The ne plus ultra of perfection in artillery drill, for instance, was supposed to be when at the word "Ram" all the thirteen rammers of the ship's battery struck the bore of the guns with irreproachable simultaneity! Now and then there was a rehearsal of the drill book, but it was always done amidst universal sleepiness and inattention. There never was one day's practice, nor even one shot fired, during the whole cruise.

The commander gave me boatswains and sailors to teach me the various details of my duty, and I soon learnt to give things their right names, to tie knots, and to climb about the rigging too, though I did not manage that, the first time, without being horribly frightened. I remember, when I got as far as the topgallant crosstrees, clinging on, and not daring to come down till I was driven to it by the jeers of the on-lookers. But I learnt most of all by observation, and from the outset I had that indescribable thing that nobody can teach another, the seafaring instinct. Our cruise was a pleasant one, and our stays in port were interesting. At Ajaccio I came upon more public functions, and was the hero of a Bonapartist demonstration. I was borne as though in triumph to the house where Napoleon was born, where I was received by a very old Signor Ramolino, brother to Madame Letitia. In common with my sisters, who drew pictures of Napoleon all over the place, I professed the greatest admiration for the great warrior. So I asked his uncle for some souvenir of him, and he presented me with a red armchair, out of the room in which he was born.

After a visit to the Dey of Algiers, the last representative of those Barbary Moors who were the "Terror of the Seas," as the Muette de Portici has it, I received at Leghorn an invitation from the Grand Duke of Tuscany to come to Florence, and was taken thither by the French Minister, M. de Ganay, a charming man. There was nothing that excellent good Grand Duke and his family did not do for me while I staid at the Pitti Palace, and the only acknowledgment I could make of it all was to turn my schoolboy talents to constructing a jointed jumping jack, that turned head over heels, for one of the young princesses whom we used to call the Archduchess Mimi, and who afterwards married Prince Luitpold of Bavaria. I returned on board the Arthemise full of gratitude for my reception, and of admiration for the monuments and artistic marvels I had seen at Florence and Pisa and Pistoja, and in which, in spite of my youth, I had taken the deepest interest.

At Naples I found fresh delights in the midst of my mother's family and my young cousins, of both sexes, one of whom, Antonietta, an admirably beautiful girl, later became Grand Duchess of Tuscany in her turn. Nothing indeed could have been more charming than the Naples of those days. I do not speak of that wondrous setting which will last to all eternity, but of the Naples of the Neapolitans, gay, noisy, and teeming with wit, as it was before the plague of politics fell on it, bringing divisions and gloom, and despoiling it of all its charm of originality; Naples, with its lazzaroni and its macaroni, and its "corricoli" tearing along with tinkling bells, crammed with monks and women in their costumes—the Naples, in fine, of Pulcinella and of Leopold Robert.

After Naples came Palermo, and then Malta, where we found the magnificent British squadron, and received the most hospitable of welcomes from General and Lady Emily Ponsonby, the governor and his charming wife.

Our stay at Malta ended with a disagreeable incident, hardly conceivable in these days, when naval discipline may be held up as a model to every one. On the evening of the day before that on which we were to weigh anchor, our whole crew deserted in a body. In spite of the efforts of the officer of the watch, and some others of inferior rank, who were present, over 300 men seized the boats and dories that lay alongside of us, and took "French leave" on shore. The next day we could not start, for we had no crew. We had to apply to the police and the English garrison, who sent out pickets, collected our rovers, and brought almost all of them back in the course of the evening, and we started somewhat humiliated at having given the English such a sad specimen of the insubordination which always follows on revolutions. The English have had their revolution too, but they have taken good care to have no more than the one, and above all not to make laws which render a periodical recurrence of revolution inevitable. As we had over 300 delinquents, it was impossible to punish them. The men felt this, and, with the evident intention of setting their officers at defiance, they spent the next few evenings singing revolutionary songs, some verses of which they came and yelled on their knees on the quarterdeck. The firmness of the commanding officers got the better of these saturnalia, by degrees.

Storms delayed us in the Maltese waters, and we only just missed being on the spot on the very day when an eruption threw up an island and a volcano from the depths of the sea, to which they have now returned. After a long passage, the frigate anchored at Algiers, which in 1831 was still the city of the Deys. Not a street had been widened, nor a European house built. It was still inhabited by a numerous native population. The Rue de la Marine, which was like a narrow winding staircase, was crowded with negro women street sellers, the cafes filled with Moors wearing huge turbans. To increase the picturesqueness of the situation, there was fighting going on at the city gates. Berthezene, the Governor-General, had just been forced to beat a retreat from Medeah. I could see the firing on the slopes of Kouba from the frigate, and a column had to be sent out to revictual the Maison-Carree! Under these circumstances, the Governor bethought himself that it would be a good thing to show "the King's son" to the troops, and settled to hold a review the next day. The troops were to be withdrawn for the moment from the line of defense, and the review was to be held at Mustapha. I had ventured to suggest that I might go and see the soldiers in their own lines, hoping thus to get near the firing, a natural desire enough, seeing I wore a volunteer uniform in spite of my thirteen years, but nobody listened to me, and to Mustapha I was taken, mounted on the ex-Dey's white mule, which an artilleryman persisted in leading by the bridle, in spite of all my indignant protests.

A real downright review that was! The men had been fighting all the morning, and Zouaves and linesmen alike looked fierce indeed, with tanned faces, eyes reddened by the smoke, and a black mark at the corner of every mouth, from biting off the ends of the cartridges. The Zouaves had only just been raised, and were not a bit like the Zouaves of the present day. The ranks consisted mostly of Arabs, who wore almost the same uniform as the present one, only with bare legs and slippers on their feet, mingled with Parisian roughs, drafted out of the "Regiments de la Charte," most of them wearing blouses and caps. Many of the non-commissioned officers had come from the Royal Guard, and still wore their blue cloaks. The excessively whimsical get-up of the officers put the finishing touch to this motley show. Most of them had adopted the Mameluke dress—white turbans, huge trousers, yellow boots, a sun embroidered on their backs, and a scimitar. After the Zouaves I saw the squadron of "Chasseurs Algeriens," the nucleus of the future "Chasseurs d'Afrique," march past. They wore Turkish dress and turbans too, all but their commanding officer, a big bearded artillery captain, who wore a burnous and Arab pistols over his uniform. His name was Marey-Monge, and he was a general of division when he died.

After the review I was taken back to my ship. The frigate sailed for Port Mahon, where we underwent a long quarantine, and thence to Toulon, where we arrived just as the squadron which had forced the mouth of the Tagus, under the orders of Admiral Roussin, returned, I went over those fine ships, and especially the Algesiras, with many a regret that the Arthemise had had no share in the fray. The commander of the Algesiras, M. Moulac, a tall, strongly built, grey-headed man, the bravest of the brave, who had fought boldly in all our naval struggles with England, told me a story which impressed me deeply, and which I here transcribe just as it remains fixed in my memory:—

"It has been blowing great guns, as you know, all the last few days. The ship was running under easy sail when I heard a shout of 'Man overboard!' The lifebuoy was thrown, and, looking astern, I saw the man had caught it. But it was a raging sea—I saw and felt that to try and lower a boat to save the poor wretch must expose the men who manned it to the greatest danger. The crew read in my face the fearful struggle going on within me, and twenty, thirty, perhaps forty volunteers, headed by officers and midshipmen, crowded round me, beseeching me almost on their knees: 'Let us save our comrade, sir! we can't desert him!' I was weak enough to yield. By unexpected good luck, we managed to lower a boat without accident, and she started manned by a dozen men. We saw her, by still greater good fortune, get to the poor fellow and save him, and I was steering about so as to make it easier for her to get back, when a huge wave broke over her. A shout of horror went up from her, and then silence. In another minute I saw my boat capsized, on the crest of a wave, with two or three men, one of them a midshipman, clinging to the keel. To shorten their agony, I made as though I was going ahead. The middy understood that I was forced to abandon them, for he waved a farewell and let himself go. I had been weak, but I was cruelly punished. Thirteen men drowned instead of one, and by my fault!"

I shall never forget the severe expression that came over the commander's face as he added, laying his hand on my shoulder, "Some day, boy, you may be in command. May the thought of me remind you always that duty is inexorable!"

After this final episode in my first cruise I went ashore, but I went ashore a sailor to the core, and my one idea, when I got back to Paris, was to acquire the technical information needed for my profession. To this the years 1832 and 1833 were devoted. M. Guerard, a charming fellow, universally liked and an incomparable instructor, was my mathematical teacher. A lieutenant in the navy, M. Hernoux, put me through the course of study of the Naval School. At the same time I set assiduously to work to learn drawing. My first master in this line was M. Barbier, the father of Jules Barbier, the poet and librettist, who, with Emile Augier, was a class-mate of my young brothers. I did watercolours too, under an Englishman, William Callow, and oils in Gudin's studio. But my real master, who taught me to draw, and led and guided me, and gave me my taste for things artistic, was Ary Scheffer, with whom I remained on terms of the closest intimacy until his death.

It was somewhere about this time that a French army entered Belgium, and besieged and took the citadel of Antwerp, and during this campaign my elder brothers first had the honour of leading our soldiers under fire. Antwerp once taken, the French Government, content with having given a proof of activity to Europe, and shown everybody what our legions could do, at once recalled the army, and my father went to review it in the cantonments on the frontier where it lay. I made this journey with him. The troops were splendid, full of zeal and confidence. I was shown one infantry brigade, which at the time of mobilization had done marches of sixty to seventy kilometres, so as to reach the given point at the hour fixed upon. It was an interesting journey, though a very trying one. Every day there was an entry into some town, and a partial review, in Siberian cold. And every evening there was a banquet, and every night a ball. The chief review was held at Valenciennes. The troops looked magnificent, drawn up on the snow, and, though it was so terribly cold, a brilliant sun lighted up the splendid military scene. It was enlivened by a little incident. The commandant of the fortress of Valenciennes was an old colonel, who had re-engaged in 1830, after having dabbled somewhat in conspiracy, under the Restoration. His name was M. de la Huberdiere, and he had had himself a hat made exactly like Napoleon's, and wore it just after the same fashion.

During the march past, either from sheer keenness or because he wanted to attract attention to himself, he edged himself gradually in front of the staff, on the side where the troops advanced, till at last he was abreast of the King, so that the troops appeared to be marching past him. This provoked one of my father's aides-de-camp, Heymes, who went up to him, and said, saluting, "It seems to me, Colonel, you would be better placed still if you were on the King's horse!" The shriek of laughter which greeted this remark may be imagined.

This same Heymes, one of the few survivors of General Leclerc's expedition to St. Domingo, had, on leaving that charnel-house, become aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney. He it was who, during the famous retreat from Russia, was sent to ask the general who was blowing up the Beresina bridges to suspend the work of destruction, so as to allow of the passage of the column with the wounded, who must otherwise be doomed to death. It was worth seeing the expression of his face, severe enough already, when he repeated the answer the general in question gave him, with the most southern of accents, "What, my dear fellow! The wounded! The Emperor has decided to sacrifice them!"

The worthy Heymes did my father a great service a short time after the review which has led me to mention him. It was at the moment of the insurrection in June 1832. We were at St. Cloud. It was well known that the agitators of every description intended to make a demonstration on the occasion of General Lamarque's funeral, but the demonstration was not expected to be of any importance. However, at about five in the evening, we beheld Heymes, in plain clothes, gallop into the courtyard, on a dragoon's charger, covered with foam. He had just come from the demonstration, and had witnessed that ordinary prologue to revolutions, pillage and massacre—pillage of gunsmiths' shops, and massacre of the officers of the 6th Dragoons, shot down with pistols, without any provocation whatever, at the head of their squadrons in line.

"You must come to Paris, Sire," he said, as he dismounted. My father did not wait for him to say it twice, and an hour later he was at the Tuileries, thence giving the impulse which nipped the revolutionary attempt in the bud. The next morning he was on horseback amidst the troops and the National Guard, which hemmed the rioters into the ward of St. Merri. An incident occurred there which was highly characteristic of that Parisian population, in whom a generous chord will always thrill, even in its maddest moments. The King, with my brother Nemours and his staff, had gone down the Rue des Arcis, at the end of which lively firing was heard. The troops who were massed in the street greeted the sovereign with cheers, and he, going forward, reached a square in which the fighting was actually going on. The cheering ran from one to another, the soldiers who were engaged ceasing their fire to join in. This change in the music struck the insurgents also at last. They stopped firing too, and were to be seen appearing at the windows, rifle in hand, taking off their caps to the plucky King, whom they would not have hesitated to shoot at a minute before.

I need not say that as soon as the King and his escort disappeared down a side street the fight began again, merrier than ever, and the 42nd Regiment of the line carried the monastery of St. Merri. An historic regiment that 42nd! After having fought against the "White" insurrection in the Vendee and the republican insurrection at the St. Merri monastery, caused the breakdown of Prince Napoleon's Boulogne adventure, occupied the Chamber of Deputies on the 2nd of December, and heroically lost its whole strength twice over in the siege of Paris, it has had the good fortune of being almost the only one of our regiments to keep its arms and its colours amidst all our mishaps.

There was no further interruption to the course of my studies, except a journey of the King's to Normandy, on which I accompanied him. The official object of this journey was to hold a review, at Cherbourg, of the squadron which had operated, in concert with an English one, in the North Sea, during the arrangement of the Belgian question. But its chief end was to go through the Departments in Normandy and enter into relations with the honest folk who populated them.

The trip was fruitful in incident. The first happened at Bernay, the native town of the virtuous Dupont de l'Eure, one of those virtuous individuals who would virtuously have your head cut off sooner than drop the smallest iota of their vulgar and utopian ideas. The prefect, M. Passy, had warned the King that amongst the addresses that would be read to him on his arrival there would be one which would give him a lecture. Thus warned, we arrived, and having mounted a platform in the open air, with a verdant dome above it, the reception and the addresses began. There was nothing very particular at first; at last a "President de Tribunal" advanced, and the way he made his bow with his prim look, and the curiosity which stretched every neck, told me at once that the King was to get the promised lecture. It came, indeed, very studied, and very impertinent too. Everybody listened in silence. It was all about courtiers, the danger of listening to flatterers, and so forth. As it ended, the heads of the president and his friends all came up with a "Take that, my fine fellow" look.

Then the King replied with the utmost politeness, thanking M. le President for the advice he had been good enough to give him. "Flatterers and courtiers," he said, "have indeed done much mischief, and, sad to say, the race is not yet extinct, for nowadays there are courtiers who are far more dangerous than the flatterers of princes and of kings—those courtiers and flatterers of the people, who to buy a vain and contemptible popularity suggest to them dreams which are unrealizable and which bring them to misfortune," &c. On this head my father bestowed a well-directed hiding on the president, which was constantly interrupted by a running fire of applause, so that the worthy gentleman ended by not knowing which way to look. Amongst other eminently French qualities, my father possessed the gift of repartee to the highest degree. He always knew how to use it, though with a politeness and good nature which softened whatever might be too sharp about its sting. This time the blow went home. Our journey, thus begun, was continued amid constantly increasing cordiality and success. It was a somewhat tiring manner of life. We went by short stages, from one reception to another. Everywhere the National Guard and the troops were under arms. When they were in considerable numbers, we mounted horses, either lent or requisitioned beforehand. In the evening, wherever we slept, there would be a great banquet, and generally a ball as well. It was the duty of us young folk to lead the dancing—a pleasant task enough, if we could have chosen our partners among the pretty women whom I was beginning to notice, in spite of my being only fourteen, and of whom there were many, especially at Grandville and St. Lo. But our partners were given to us officially, and were chosen from the families of the authorities. We exerted ourselves to be pleasant in spite of that. I do not know whether I was succeeding too much or too little at a ball one night, but I saw the husband's head suddenly appear between my partner and myself, with the observation, "Well, my wife's not bad-looking, is she?" and he smacked his lips like a man who has eaten a good thing.

Falaise was the culminating point in our journey as far as incidents went. We were to make a halt there, and, as fifteen battalions of the National Guard were collected, the aide-de-camp, who did duty as quartermaster too, had seen to getting suitable mounts for the King, for us, and for Marshals Soult and Gerard, who accompanied us. The famous fair at Guibray, near Falaise, was just over, and a circus which had come to enliven it was still there. The circus horses were laid hands on, and when we arrived we were agreeably surprised to find fine white horses awaiting us instead of the ordinary nags and troop-horses we generally had to ride. So we got into the saddle, and the review began. Just as the King reached the right flank of the line, the band began to play, and then an unforeseen event occurred Our proud coursers, thinking that they were at a performance, set each of them to do his own particular duty. The King, Marshal Soult, and two others of our party were riding the horses who did that trick called the "Grand-Ecart," in which all four horses draw together at the same moment. When their riders pulled at their bridles, the four horses, feeling themselves reined up, instantly fell into the usual circus canter. Another horse kept wheeling round and round, and confusion became general, nobody guessing what had happened until the aide-de-camp smote his brow, and stopped the band.

The trouble did not end there. The National Guard was in proud possession of one gun, which it had horsed somehow or other. A jolt broke the axle-tree, just as it was going past. Then there was a half-squadron of cavalry mounted on stallions or geldings. But the trumpeter was on a mare, which fact brought difficulty on poor Rosinante during the march past. In the evening there was a great ball in a huge temporary shed, with tiers of seats all round it. All of a sudden half the tiers collapsed, like cards, and all the ladies were to be seen, though almost unhurt, on their backs with their legs in the air, amidst a most awful dust! I must confess we ungallantly seized the opportunity of the confusion to go off to our beds. The King, too, did the same, thus escaping from the persecutions of the Polish refugees, interned at Falaise, who had come to the ball in lancer uniforms worthy of the merry-andrews at the opera balls, to pester him with their petitions.

CHAPTER III

1834-1836

My technical education recommenced more vigorously than ever when this journey was over. It had been decided that before being definitely placed on the Navy List I must pass my public examination as a first-class pupil at Brest. So I was prepared accordingly, and received those successive doses of instruction which the English designate by the characteristic word "cramming," for which the only French equivalent I can find is "gaver." My mathematical teacher held a class for a limited number of youths in a house in the Rue Git-le-Coeur, and thither I went, to gain the habit of speaking the language of algebra in public. In contrast to my memories of school lessons, I have the pleasantest recollections of those I received in that den—for den it was! This, perhaps, is on account of the good fellows I met there, and who have been my friends ever since, and also owing to the charm our kindly instructor wielded over us all. I do not believe there is a single one of his pupils, from the illustrious Marshal Canrobert down through my contemporaries, Excelmans, Bonie, Morny, Daumesnil, the Greffulhe brothers, Friant, Baudin, Valbezen, and many more, to the younger generation that came after me, who does not cherish the most grateful and affectionate feelings for the worthy Guerard. When we were close on the time for my examination, he had me questioned several times over by the official examiners of the Ecole Polytechnique and others, so as to accustom me to the surprises of public examinations. I thus passed through the hands of Baron Reynaud, and of Messieurs Bourdon, Delille, and Lefebure de Fourcy. This last inspired me with downright terror, on account of his reputation for methodical brutality. One of my class-mates had reported to me that well-known colloquy between him and a candidate who got confused, at he stood chalk in hand before the black board, and who heard M. Lefebure de Fourcy's voice saying calmly, "Waiter, just bring a bundle of hay for this pupil's breakfast." To which the indignant pupil promptly added, "Waiter, bring two: the examiner will breakfast with me." At length, crammed to the muzzle with nautical and astronomical calculations, and all the other sciences the official programme demanded, I started for Brest, kept up even as I drove along, in the highest state of preparation. There were a few interludes during the journey. Certain spots in Brittany were still, early in that year 1834, disturbed by the consequences of the rising in 1831, and my passage was the signal in several places for what we call, in parliamentary language, "mouvements en sens divers," conflicting emotions. Sometimes I saw white handkerchiefs waving or twisted round hats, doing duty for cockades. At other points the tricolour demonstrations took a quaint form. I remember at one place where we changed horses my carriage drew up between two rows of National Guards, who were keeping back a considerable crowd of people. At the carriage door appeared the Mayor with his scarf round his waist, saluting me with this remark: "Sir, this place is but a hole, but it is a hole in which hearts devoted to your august family are throbbing;" while at the other the village priest and his clergy, all in surplice and alb, struck up

Soldats du drapeau tricolore
D'Orieans toi qui la's Porte,

and so right through the Parisian to a brass accompaniment.

My examination was held in the great hall of the Prefecture of the Navy at Brest, before a board of officers, engineers, and professors. It was a public one; but what alarmed me most at its outset was the presence of all the pupils of the Naval School, who riled the tiers of seats on one side of the hall. Luckily the sight of some old chums amongst them cheered me up, and as the examination went pretty well I soon saw on their youthful faces, just as actors, they say, read their coming success on their audience at the theatre, that my cause was won, and that I was accepted, not only by the scientific big-wigs but by the universal suffrages of my contemporaries. Yet I was rejoiced when the sitting was over!

Some days later, at L'Orient, I joined the Sirene frigate, Commander d'Oysonville, as midshipman, and started on an ocean voyage. This cruise was uneventful, except for a few little incidents such as always occur in a sailor's life.

Thus, being in the maintop one day, when topsails were being reefed in a strong breeze, a rope chanced to break, twisted round my legs, and carried me into mid air, head downwards. If the sinewy arms of the captain of the maintop and one of the top men had not caught me as I passed, I should have fallen into the sea or on the deck, and either alternative would have been disagreeable. Later on, at the end of the cruise, we re-entered Brest in a south-westerly squall, under circumstances which made a very useful impression on me.

We had bad weather for some days, no reliable observations had been taken, and we were very doubtful as to the frigate's position. Driving as we were at a great rate, before the gale, we were reckoning on the occasional partial lightening of the fog to catch sight of and recognize some point of land or rock, according to which we might steer our course amongst the reefs which swarm at the entrance of Brest harbour. We had to be ready to change our course and go about at any moment. Everybody was on deck, straining his eyes to try and see something, cool, and steady in nerve, as a well-disciplined body of men is in face of any danger. But one man was not present, our commanding officer, whose prompt judgment and word of command alone could bring us from perilous uncertainty into safety. Our commander was below, in his cabin, and there he persisted in staying, in spite of the indirect efforts made by the officer of the watch, the second in command, and the navigating officer to get him out of it. It was incomprehensible, and at the same time very alarming. Commander d'Oysonville, who was churchwarden of St. Roch when he died, was a kind and very honourable man, but nobody could possibly have been less of a sailor. He was a first-class organizer, and he carried his theories to the extremist possible limit. He had one, amongst others, that the captain of a ship ought to command her from his cabin, so as never to appear before his crew except on the most solemn occasions, and it was for the sake of being true to this principle that he refused to show himself in the circumstances I speak of. His obstinacy very nearly cost us dear, for on the earnestly longed-for break in the fog suddenly taking place a point of land was seen. We thought we recognized the Island of Molenes: the commander was hurriedly informed, and he sent an order to change our course. A lightening at another point in the horizon showed us some rocks. "The Pierres Vertes ahead!" sang out a coasting pilot specially shipped for the voyage, who was looking out from his perch on the foreyards, and the navigating officer tore off again to warn the commanding officer. During all these comings and goings the curtain of fog came down again, and we went driving on towards the reefs at the rate of twelve knots an hour. It could not be allowed to go on! With or without leave the second officer took the command, and put an end to an impossible situation. Our worthy commander only appeared just as we were dropping anchor in the roadstead, when all uncertainty was over, and I seem yet to see the looks that greeted his tardy appearance. Everybody's anxiety had been increased by knowing how he had lost the ship Le Superbe, seventy-four guns, off the Island of Paros, some years before, and under very peculiar circumstances. For my own part, I learnt on this occasion what everything has confirmed me in since—the danger of uncertain and divided authority either at sea or elsewhere.

When I got back to Paris, having finished the technical portion of my education, I went on with a course of history, with my sisters, especially my sister Mary, I applied myself with the utmost fervour to my drawing. I worked with her daily, under the direction of Ary Scheffer, and I recollect our grief one morning on finding the Jeanne d'Arc she was modelling in wax for Versailles, melted by an overheated stove, had collapsed the whole length of its framework, to such an extent as to become the merest cripple. By dint of lowering the temperature, and the use of a screw-jack applied in a peculiar manner, and vigorously turned by Ary Scheffer and myself, Jeanne d'Arc rose up again upon her framework, and the damage was soon made good.

About that time too, influenced by the genius of Victor Hugo, my sister Clementine and I were seized with a perfect passion for old Paris, that delightful Paris of ancient story. We had Sauval's thick volumes, we had searched all the old books for traces of the ancient legends, and we used to spend our afternoons going to see the sites and hunt for the remains of the places we had read about, There is not a church or a monument of which we did not know every detail, nor an alley or a corner in the quarters of the Halles, the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, the Temple, and the Pantheon that we had not carefully explored with the most fervent interest. What joy it was to us one day when we were trying to trace the Hotel St. Paul, the old palace of our kings, to come upon a course of masonry which had undoubtedly belonged to it!

Although I was on shore, I was still devoted to my profession. I used to see almost all the naval officers who passed through Paris, and tried to push forward those whom the general body of the profession singled out as being likely commanding officers. These matters of promotion, as well as any others that affected naval interests, brought me into daily touch with the ministers, and my relations with M Theirs date from that time. Yet, oddly enough, it was riding on horseback that brought us together! During the King's stays at Camping and Fontainebleau, and his country trips to Versailles, St. Cloud, and Raunchy, when he used to invite foreign visitors and his ministers, and great personages in general, to join in his excursions, M. Thiers was as much bored as I was at having to go in the carriages and chars a bancs which drove in a long line one behind the other. We much preferred accompanying them on horseback, and nothing delighted the little minister more than to let his mount tear along full gallop with a loose rein. He had a very firm seat, and was very plucky, especially on a horse of ours called "Le Vendome," which in his southern accent he pronounced "Le Vanndomme." I remember one day, at Fontaineblean, as he was galloping along beside me on that same "Vanndomme," we passed by a young fagot-gatherer, bending under her load. She straightened herself at the noise; it was very hot, her jacket had come unbuttoned, and showed a bare white very well furnished bust. She smiled to M. Thiers, who pulled his horse up short, turned back to thrust a handful of small change into the young woman's palm, and started off again full tear, as if he had had an electric shock, jumping the fallen trees with a resolution and energy which I had never known him show before.

On another occasion he proved himself a less brilliant horseman. The statue of Napoleon, that statue which is put up and taken down in every Revolution, was to be ceremoniously replaced on the top of its column. The troops and the National Guard were under arms, with their bands and drums, headed by a splendid drum-major, massed at the foot of the column. We arrived in state by the Rue Castiglione, so that the column surmounted by the statue, covered by a veil that was to drop at a given signal, faced us just as we came out upon the square M. Thiers, in full uniform, with his minister's hat and feathers, and again riding "Vanndomme," struck in his spurs, left the procession at full gallop, and passed before my father, shouting at the very top of his falsetto voice, "I take your Majesty's pleasure" the words being accompanied by a wave of his hat which ill-natured people might have said was copied from General Rapp's gesture in Gerard's picture of the Battle of Austerlitz at the Louvre. On this signal the drums beat, the bands played, the statue was unveiled—but M. Thiers had lost control of "Vanndomme," who, wild with enthusiasm, bolted head down, overthrowing drums and drum-major, while the little minister clung to his back like a monkey in a circus. It was a comical sight! But far from laughable under this same ministry of M. Thiers were the perpetual attempts upon my father's life. The speculators in revolution, who had been encouraged by their easy success in 1830, grew discouraged after several like essays at risings had been severely put down. They then fell back on assassination. The most serious attempt was Fieschi's, on July 28, 1835. Together with my two eldest brothers I was to accompany the King to a review of the National Guard and the regular army, drawn up on the Boulevards. All of us who were to take part in the procession, princes, marshals, generals, and aides-de-camp, were assembled in the drawing-room at the Tuileries, next to the Throne Room, when the Minister of the Interior, M. Thiers, burst in like a whirlwind, and, beckoning to my two brothers and me, led us into the embrasure of a window. "My dear princes," said he, looking at us over his spectacles, "it is more than likely there will be an attempt on the life of the King, your father, to-day. We have been warned from several quarters. They say there will be an infernal machine somewhere near the Ambigu Theatre. It is very vague, but there must be something at the bottom of it all. We have had all the houses near the Ambigu searched this morning to no purpose. Should the King be warned? Should the review be put off?"

We answered unanimously that the King must be warned but that, brave as he was well known to be, he would never consent to having the review put off. So it turned out.

"Look well after your father," repeated M. Thiers, and we mounted our horses. The review went on well enough, except that we all remarked the presence of a large number of insolent-looking individuals, with red carnations in their button-holes—the members, evidently, of the secret societies, who had not been warned of what was going to happen, but to be ready for anything that might happen We had not been able to take any precautions, beyond dividing the care of watching over the King's person between my brothers and myself and the aides-de-camp on duty One of us with an aide-de-camp, was to take it in turn to keep just behind his horse, with our eye on the troops and the crowd, so as to interpose if we noticed any suspicious gesture. My turn had come to take the post of watcher, with General Heymes, aide-de-camp in waiting, on my right. On my left I had Lieutenant-Colonel Rieussec, commanding the legion of the National Guard before which we were passing. Close to the Ambigu, not the present theatre—the neighbourhood of which had been searched—but a former Ambigu, which had been shut up, opposite the Jardin Turc cafe, we heard a sort of platoon firing like the discharge of a mitrailleuse, and raising my eyes at the noise I saw smoke coming from a window which was half closed by an outside shutter.

I had no time to notice more, and at the moment I did not perceive that my left-hand neighbour, Colonel Rieussec, was killed, that Heymes' clothes were riddled with bullets and his nose carried away, nor that my own horse was wounded. All I saw was my father holding his left arm, and saying to me over his shoulder, "I'm hit!" And so he was: one bullet had grazed his forehead, another spent one had given him the blow of which he complained, and a third had passed through his horse's neck. But that we only knew afterwards, and it was only afterwards too that we learnt the instrument of the crime had been an infernal machine. Our first thought was that the firing would go on, so I struck spurs into my horse, and seizing my father's by the bridle, while my two brothers struck it behind with their swords, we led him swiftly through the scene of immense confusion that ensued—horses riderless, or bearing wounded men, swaying in their seats, broken ranks, and people in blouses, who rushed upon the King, to touch him or his horse, with frantic shouts of "Long live the King!" As we retired, I just saw the taking by assault of the house whence the discharge had come. The young aides-de-camp had dismounted, leaving their horses loose, and with the Municipal Guards and the police they scaled the house and the one next door (the Cafe Barfetti), climbing on to the verandah and smashing in the windows. Then the review began again. We had ascertained the King was not wounded, nor we ourselves, but we were not aware as yet either of the great number or of the names of the victims. Hereupon M. Thiers appeared beside us, with his white kerseymere trousers covered with blood. All he said to us was, "The poor Marshal!"

"Whom do you mean?"

"Mortier! He fell dead across me, crying out, 'Oh, my God!'"

We reckoned ourselves up as we went along. Forty-two dead or wounded: dead—Marshal Mortier, General Lachasse de Verigny, Colonels Raffet and Rieussec, Captain Willatte, aide-de-camp to the Minister of War, seven others, and two women; wounded—Generals Heymes, Comte de Colbert, Pelet, Blin, and many more. The Due de Broglie was hit full in the chest by a bullet that flattened out on his star of the Legion of Honour.

It was not far from the scene of the crime to the farthest end of the line of troops, so the procession soon retraced its steps. The roadway where the blow had been struck was nothing but a pool of blood. The wounded and almost all the dead had been carried away, and I only saw one corpse, flat on its face in the mud, among the dead horses, but all the blood about frightened our horses so that we had hard work to get on.

On the square of the Chateau d'Eau a huge and furious crowd surging round the station house, which was protected by numerous Municipal Guards, showed us the assassin, or one of them, had been arrested. The review was concluded, and my father's self-control was sorely tried by the unanimity and fervour of the acclamations of which he was the object from all sides, from soldiers and civilians alike. It is unnecessary to add that we did not see any more red carnations.

The march past was to take place in the Place Vendome, and the chancellor's offices were full of ladies of the official world, gathered round my mother. We dismounted for a moment to go and speak to them, and here again a moving scene took place. We had been able to send on an aide-de-camp to assure my mother and aunt and my sisters that we were safe and sound, but our messenger had not had time to learn the names of all the victims. So when we mounted the stairs of the chancellor's offices, some of us all bespattered with blood, all these women, their brilliant dresses contrasting sadly with their terrified eyes, rushed upon us to see whether those they loved were amongst us. Some of them were never to see their dear ones again!

Shortly after this bloody episode in our national history I joined the Didon frigate, Captain de Parseval, as enseigne de vaisseau. My new commanding officer, who had joined the navy at a very early age, had served as a midshipman on board Villeneuve's vessel, the Bucentaure, at Trafalgar. He was in command of the mizzentop, and saw Nelson's ship, the Victory, pass slowly astern of the Bucentaure—so close that her yards caught the other's ensign—while the fifty guns of the British ship poured their fire one after the other into the stern of the French one, sweeping her gun-deck from end to end, and laying low four hundred of her crew. After this commencement of his career, Commander de Parseval had spent his whole life in fighting and adventure. He had been in three shipwrecks, one specially terrible one on the Isle de Sable, near the coast of Nova Scotia, in which (he was a lieutenant at the time) he swam ashore to get help and save the crew of his frigate. He died with the rank of admiral, after having had the chief command of the Baltic Fleet during the Crimean War. He was a charming fellow, slight and smart-looking, very carefully dressed, as resolute in command as he was formal as to politeness, a consummate seaman, managing his ship in first-rate style. I sailed a great deal with him, and learned much from him, and from the very first I felt a personal affection for him, which was never belied, and which he reciprocated. An extra bond of sympathy existed between us—when I was just becoming deaf, he was deaf already.

We made a cruise for drill, on the Didon, doing a deal of navigation in all sorts of weathers, and I performed the duties of captain of the watch—my first attempt at command, my first trial in a responsible position.

The winter season of 1836 found me back in Paris, where I began my classes again, and gave myself up in particular to my passion for the fine arts. This taste of mine was the cause of a terrible blowing up I got from my father. The jury of the Salon of 1836 refused a picture of Marilhat's—I think it was his first. Some of the artists who had seen the young painter's work thought this decision unjust. They grumbled, and their grumbling got as far as the newspapers. I was curious enough to go and see the picture at Durand-Ruel's. It was a view of Rome by twilight, seen between great umbrella pines, I thought it a splendid picture, and spurred somewhat, I confess, by a spirit of contradiction, I was seized with an eager desire to acquire it. But I had not a halfpenny of my own, there was my difficulty! To overcome it, I laid siege to my aunt Adelaide, who doted on her brother's children as if they had been her own, and who never (and well the rogues knew it!) could resist their wheedling. I succeeded, as I had hoped, and Marilhat's picture became my property. But certain of the jury went and complained to the King, and I was greeted with, "Oho! so you are going to set yourself up in opposition! I've trouble enough already with those artists! It's the Civil List (that means it's me) that takes them in at the Louvre. I can't be the only judge as to what is accepted and what isn't. I have to have a jury, the Institute is good enough to undertake the job—all its members are dying of fright, and I shield them under my own responsibility, just as I do my ministers, although it's contrary to the letter of the law—and it's you, one of my own sons, who comes and sets an example of insubordination! Much obliged to you, sir!"

My picture was inspected all the same I need hardly say the grand-parents pronounced it frightful, a regular daub. I hung my head under this double-barrelled censure, and drooped my ears like a whipped spaniel, but I stuck to my opinion, and likewise to my Marilhat. I think it was shortly after this little adventure that I added another "daub" to my "gallery." One morning as I was busy modelling (for I dabbled in sculpture too) in my sister Marie's studio, Ary Scheffer came in, and began telling me about an unknown artist he had met, quite young, a man of undoubted talent, who was in a terribly poverty-stricken condition. Six hundred francs would take him out of his difficulties, and he would give two small pictures, pendants, which he had just finished, in exchange.

"What do they represent?" I inquired.

"They are both landscapes, connected with episodes in Walter Scott's novels. One represents the charge of Claverhouse in the Covenanters, and the other the Army of Charles the Bold crossing the Alps. Come!" added Scheffer, turning to me. "Be good-natured. If you have six hundred francs, give them to me!"

I chanced to have the money, and gave it him. "What's your protege's name?" asked I.

"Theodore Rousseau." Fancy that great artist selling his pictures in pairs, as furniture, in fact—for bread!

In 1836, too, on February 28, I was present at the first performance of Les Huguenots, an opera which enchanted me. The action, the music, the stage setting, the interpretation, made an ensemble that was unique, a work of art that defied comparison. Nothing on the stage to my mind, has ever surpassed the duet in the fourth act as created and sung by Nourrit and Mlle. Falcon. Inspired by the musical and dramatic situation, these two artists were completely carried away, and their emotion was as infectious as it was apparent. Mlle. Falcon had a way of interrupting her singing, to speak the words, "Raoul, ils te tueront!" with an expression into which her whole soul was thrown, which was the very embodiment of passion. Ah! Passion indeed! Passion it is that thrills in every page of that admirable book of Merimee's, La Chronique de Charles IX., which has given birth in succession to those two masterpieces, Le Pre aux Clercs and Les Huguenots. And what indeed would life be without passion? If Fieschi's crime marked the year 1835 with a crimson letter, 1836 was the year of Alibaud's attempt. The history of my father's reign is nothing but an innumerable succession of such attempts, some of which came to the birth, while others, again, miscarried. Alibaud, as my readers are aware, fired point-blank at the King with a walking-stick gun, which he steadied on the door of the carriage, as it passed slowly through the Tuileries archway, and missed him, except that his whiskers were singed by the wad. Neither my father's courage nor that of my mother and aunt, who were with him, failed them for a moment. I saw them get out of the carriage at Neuilly, without for an instant suspecting the risk they had run.

But the time soon came for me to go to sea again, and I was ordered to join the frigate Iphigenie, of which my old captain, M. de Parseval, had taken command, as full lieutenant, and we started for the Levant station. The recollection of a very extraordinary accident which occurred during this cruise remains with me. We were in the Archipelago, off the Island of Andros. I had just come off the first night watch, at midnight, and had got into bed, when I heard somebody say our consort, a twenty-gun brig, the Ducouedic, Commander Bruat, was making signals of distress, I got back on deck without delay. The brig's lights had disappeared. Nothing could be seen of her. It was blowing great guns, with a heavy sea. We continued in a state of great anxiety till morning. At last, by the first rays of daylight, we saw our consort dismasted. She signalled to us for a tow, which was quite impracticable in the state of the sea. All we could do was to stand by her, while she tried to get to Syra with her foresail, the only one left her. This she succeeded in doing. But the extraordinary thing is that what dismasted her was the contrary action of a tremendous roll, and a heavy squall, which came just at midnight, when the whole crew was mustered on deck, to change the watch, and that the mainmast with all its spars and gear and the maintopmast as well, fell on to the deck without hurting anybody.

Except for this one accident, all the interest of this fresh cruise of mine lay on the side of the picturesque. Greece with her mythological, poetic, and historical memories, and the great severe outlines of her landscapes, struck me with admiration. But this was quickly overshadowed by the impression made upon me by my first glimpse of Asia—the Mussulman East, which Lamartine's Voyage and Decamps' pictures had made me long so eagerly to know. My joy, therefore, may be conceived, when I saw, as I landed at Smyrna, the living image of Decamps' masterpiece, La Patrouille de Smyrne, now at Rotterdam, passing by me—the very same police officer trotting along on his hunched-up Turcoman horse, surrounded by his policemen, regular bandits, running beside him, covered with brilliant rags and glistening weapons. This worthy police agent, whose name was Hadgy-Bey (which we promptly turned into "Quat'Gibets"), very soon became our ally. I did his likeness. He was all smiles whenever we met, and he winked at all our young midshipmen's pranks One they played was rather too strong, and roused the fury of the Turks. Smyrna was at that time the most Eastern of Eastern towns, full of tortuous bazaars, and narrow alleys winding in and out, in which circulation, difficult enough at all times, sometimes became impossible for hours, when long strings of camels, fastened together with ropes, were going along them. Nothing could have been more vexatious than these blocks, which man and beast alike seemed to take pleasure in prolonging, whenever the Giaours seemed annoyed by them.

What, think you, did our middies do? A great many of them together (for we had a very strong naval squadron at Smyrna just then) hired donkeys, tied them together with long cords, mounted them, each rider with a long pipe in his mouth and affecting a quiet Eastern gravity of demeanour, and off they started.

This farandole, which was quite a kilometre long, went round and round the bazaars all day, up and down and in and out, stopping all the traffic, as if a real caravan was passing' through. At first the "true believers" were puzzled, but when they realized they were being laughed at they grew furious, and rushed off to get "Quat'Gibets," who held his fat sides and roared with laughter when they told him what was amiss. Our midshipmen gave him a regular ovation. We were avenged on camels and camel men alike. The neighbourhood of Smyrna was delightful, and brigandage quite unknown. Civilization had not yet taught that refinement of the art, as practised nowadays, whereby people are carried off and called upon to get themselves ransomed, on pain of having their noses or ears, or finally their heads, cut off. It was quite safe to go anywhere, to canter far along the road to Magnesia, or to stop and take coffee beside some cool spring in the shadow of the huge plane-trees, and watch the whole East pass by—caravans from Diarbekir, half-wild Turcoman tribes, bashi-bazouks from the four corners of Asia, all of them worthy subjects for an artist's pencil, and I never stopped drawing them. Coming back to the town, which had been cooled by the sea-breeze, the "Imbat," we used to spend our evenings in the Levantine or Armenian society of the place, amongst grandfathers who were still faithful to their old costume, wrapped in kaftans, and charming young ladies, with Tacticos on their heads, and their beautiful figures, which no stays had ever tortured, draped in half-oriental costumes. Native music, soft and plaintive, sounded, as we would watch Mademoiselles Peiser, Athanaso, Fonton, Tricon, &c., dance the Romaika. Nothing exists, nowadays, of what was so seductive then. The Orient has kept its sunshine and its colouring, but that horrible cosmopolitanism has invaded everything. Everywhere there are stays! and stays steal charm away!

We were young and gay at the time I speak of, and passionate too! Two of my brother lieutenants fought a duel, much more serious than those pin-prick encounters which are now the fashion. They fought with pistols, on the very marine promenade where they had been joking with young ladies the evening before. Just as the seconds gave the signal to fire, the sun rose on the horizon. Its first ray glinted on a breast button on the uniform of one principal: the other man's bullet, as though drawn by some fatal attraction, struck the button, and killed our unhappy comrade dead. A midshipman carried off a charming Greek lady, who was discovered in his cabin after his ship had got out to sea. And many another strange incident occurred! On leaving Smyrna, the Iphigenie cruised all about the Archipelago, and along the Anatolian, Caramanian, and Syrian coasts. Whenever I was not on duty my pencil was in my fingers, for I had the most enchanting and picturesque of models under my hand. From Tripoli in Syria I climbed to the top of Mount Lebanon, whence I saw an immense panorama, with the ruins of Baalbec and the Desert. We picnicked with the patriarch of the Lebanon and his monks, under the world-famed cedars, and Bruat had a perfect duel of jokes there with a witty ship's surgeon named Camescasse, who was one of our party. I remember a funny saying of this same Camescasse, about a brother medico of his who retired into Brittany, where his practice was specially among the local aristocracy. He always called him "The Avenger of the People."

At Eden, the chief town of the Maronites, the old shiek Boutrouss-Karam received me with the greatest honours, and I was half drowned with sprinklings of rose-water, the smell of which I detest. Apart from my presence, there was a great fete going on at Eden for the marriage of Boutrouss-Karam's daughter, and the whole Maronitenation had hurried to it in their best clothes. Such handsome types, such costumes, such turbans! I was one of the bride's witnesses: she and I had each to keep a bracelet balanced on our heads during the whole of the ceremony. The bride shook, and her bracelet fell down. After the ceremony she received me unveiled. She was a fine tall dark girl, but not a pretty woman. From Jaffa I journeyed to Jerusalem, and travelled all through the Holy Land, with a feeling of deep emotion, which was only disturbed by one vexatious incident. On the day I was to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a great crowd had got there before me, and a quarrel, which degenerated into a general melee, forthwith arose between Greeks, Jews, and Armenians. It was only by dint of hard knocks that the Turkish police made way for me to enter the Holy Place, and to crown the scandal, just as I knelt in deep devotion, before the altar, the organ began to play the Marseillaise. There was yet another episode during my stay at Jerusalem. The Governor of the Province waited upon me to say he had Mehemet Ali's orders to place himself at the disposal of the son of the King of France, and to do whatever he desired. I caught the ball on the hop, and replied he was just in time, for I had just been going to ask his leave to enter the Mosque of Omar, which stands on the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon. It should be added that this fine mosque, which is next in holiness in Mussulman eyes to that at Mecca, and which is now open to all the world, had at that date never been seen except by the famous traveller Ali Bey.

Governor Hassan Bey tugged his beard when he heard my request, and seemed very much put out indeed. After a moment's silence he made up his mind, and said, "Come to-morrow: I'll take you there myself." The next day I kept my appointment, bringing Bruat and two or three officers who were making the same trip with me. We entered the mosque, which is really very beautiful, and went all over it. The Imaums and Softas, the priests and students, had cast horrified glances upon us from the moment of our entry. Suddenly one of them began to intone in a falsetto voice a sort of Litany, to which the crowd replied in chorus. Soon the Litany turned into angry shouts, and the crowd, led by an old Negro Imaum, in a yellow robe, who seemed to have worked himself into a perfect paroxysm of fury, rushed at us with threatening gestures. This was by no means reassuring, but Hassan Bey was equal to the emergency. Seizing me by the arm, he put me behind him, with Bruat and the other gentlemen grouped round me. Then he ordered a dozen Kavasses he had brought with him to charge, which they did, laying out heavily with their sticks. Not content with that, he had the most turbulent of the Softas seized, thrown down at his feet, and beaten without mercy. The blows hailed down on the poor wretch as if they had been beating a carpet. This determined attitude cowed the crowd, which fell back to the far end of the mosque, grumbling. "We will go now," said the Bey. Once we were outside, he shut us up in a neighbouring mosque, which was empty, begging us to wait there for him. Soon we heard a great noise and yelling outside. Presently Hassan Bey reappeared smiling, and let us out. The crowd had disappeared, and a battalion of Egyptian infantry had taken its place. Advised by the Bey, we left Jerusalem a day after this scuffle, with much regret on my part. The sight of all the spots which are glorified by the splendid stories of our religious history had impressed me deeply. My imagination had conjured up the very pictures in Royaumont's illustrated Bible, out of which I had learnt both the Old and the New Testament. And just as I was about to start, when I opened the window of the room I occupied in the Latin convent, I saw just in front of me the picture in that same Bible which represents David, with hands uplifted in admiration, as he gazes at Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. I was the David, and Bathsheba was a woman, looking really magnificent in her eastern robes, who was sitting on the terrace facing me. Only she was not combing out her hair like the woman in the Bible picture: she was hunting it for vermin!

I returned from Jerusalem by the Dead Sea, Nazareth, and Acre.

As we were riding along one night, to escape the heat, not far from Nazareth, we met a troop of horsemen headed by an individual in Egyptian dress, who announced himself as Ibrahim Aga, sent by Soliman Pasha to meet me. Just as I was calling up the dragoman to translate what I had to say to him, Ibrahim Aga said to me in a drawling voice, "Don't give yourself that trouble, it isn't the least necessary. I am the Marquis de Beaufort, captain on the staff." He was in fact one of the very many French officers, who were detached to the Egyptian army then lying in cantonments in Syria, after its victories over the Turks at Homs and Konieh. I had seen and greatly admired these troops all over Syria and at Acre. I was soon to see Soliman Pasha—in other words, Colonel Selves, a Frenchman, who had organized them, and under the energetic and iron-willed son of Mehemet Ali, Ibrahim Pasha, had led them to victory. I beheld a little man, whom long residence in Egypt had quite orientalized in appearance but who had preserved all the vivacity of his Gallic wit. The Iphigenie returned to France by Malta, where I made the acquaintance of Lord Brudenell, since celebrated under the name of Lord Cardigan, for his famous Balaclava charge and of Major Rose, a charming fellow, who later became the Sir Hugh Rose of the Crimean War, and after that Field-Marshal Lord Strathnairn of the Indian Mutiny. At that moment Major Rose commanded the 42nd Highlanders, the famous "Black Watch," a splendid regiment, especially so then, when it consisted of nothing but veterans of Herculean build. It furnished the Guard of Honour that received me at the Palace of the Grand Masters when I went to pay my respects to the governor, and the salute of that splendid body of men in full-dress uniform and feathered bonnets, with their colours lowered to the ground, their band playing God save the Queen, and their bagpipes shrieking under the arches of the palace, was a most striking sight. That was the first time I heard the bagpipes of the Highland regiments. I have often heard them since, and they always remind me of that wonderfully dramatic incident in the great Indian Mutiny, the relief of Lucknow. In Lucknow, the capital of the kingdom of Oude, a handful of British soldiers, with the women and children who had escaped the massacre, had taken refuge in a huge and strongly built place called the Residency. Isolated in the heart of India, besieged for months on end, without any outside news, starving, decimated by sickness and the enemy's fire, women and soldiers alike, with true British pluck, and having lost all hope of succour, had no thought but to sell their lives as dearly as possible. All at once the noise of the daily cannonade and the rifle fire seem to be doubled, and unaccustomed shouts are heard, like the national "hurrah." The cheering seems to get nearer, but the Sepoys have so often cheered derisively! Suddenly another sound strikes on the ear of the besieged. The bagpipes! The bagpipes! And soon they make out the famous Highland march, The Campbells are coming! Reinforcements they were, collected from all quarters, English and Scotch, soldiers and sailors too, commanded by old Lord Clyde of Balaclava fame. By main force they carried the works the mutineers, tenfold their strength, had thrown up round Lucknow, bringing unhoped-for succour from the mother country, nay, bringing actual salvation with them. A wonderful moment!

I got back to Paris to hear the news of the failure of the first expedition against Constantine, and the brilliant part my brother Nemours had played in that terrible business. I never doubted that signal revenge would soon be taken for the check, and I was in despair that my being a sailor stood in the way of my asking to be allowed to have a share in it.

Meanwhile, I was present at a fresh attempt on my father's life. A man of the name of Meunier fired a pistol at him the day the Chamber of Deputies was opened. Some movement in the crowd shook the would-be assassin's arm, but the bullet came into the carriage, smashing the front window, and my brothers and I were all cut with the broken glass. I remember a very characteristic remark by one of the Deputies on this occasion. After the King had departed, as the Members of the Chamber were talking over the attempt, one of them said, "Ought we to congratulate the King?"

"Certainly," was the reply; "we always do it."

Shortly afterwards an emulator of Fieschi invented a perfected machine which should have mowed us all down at the earliest opportunity, but he was discovered, and destroyed himself, just as he was going to be arrested, carrying the secret of his accomplices with him.

Amidst political agitation and ministerial ambitions, with which I troubled myself but very little, the marriage of my eldest brother, the Duc d'Orleans, and its attendant festivities, took place. The wedding was at Fontainebleau; there was a great fete at the Hotel de Ville in Paris, and the formal inauguration of the Museum at Versailles.

The marriage was settled without my brother and Princess Helene ever having seen each other. Impatient to know her, and anxious to be the first to greet her on French soil, my brother went to meet her at Nancy, where she was to arrive with her mother and a lady in waiting. He rushed forward, saw three ladies, caught his fiancees hand and carried it to his lips. Not at all! It was the lady-in-waiting's. This momentary hitch was soon forgotten, and when the Princess entered the Cour du Cheval-Blanc at Fontainebleau, in her state coach and eight, amidst the roar of cannon and the beating of drums, we all went down the great staircase to receive her, with the King at our head, just like the great lords going down the staircase at Chenonceaux in the second act of the Huguenots. It was Champs-Elysees, and through the Gardens to the Tuileries, we on horseback and the Princesses in the state carriages, with the Orleans state liveries, surrounded by an immense multitude of people, all the women in brilliant spring toilettes, and in the loveliest weather, was a splendid sight too. Then there was a very fine ball at the Hotel de Ville—rather clouded, though, by a prediction coming from all quarters, that it would be the occasion of another attempt on my father.

Old Prince Talleyrand, who was almost dying, begged my eldest brother to go and see him, so that he might add his warning to all the others. Raising himself to a sitting posture, and with death in his face, he said: "It won't be a knife or a pistol, it will be a hail of paving-stones thrown from the roofs, which will crush you all!" We were grateful for the warning, and we were glad it did not come to pass. Nothing happened, either in the street or at the ball, where we were surrounded by an army of chosen 'guests,' and from which we were driven back at a great pace, escorted by squadrons of cuirassiers, who glittered in the torchlight. But the crowning point of the fetes was the inauguration of the Versailles Museum, that museum and dedicated by my father "To all the Glories of France!" Others besides himself have given the sadness of irony to that inscription! Every revolution must be paid for with a price!

On the occasion of this inauguration the King gave a dinner to twelve hundred people in the galleries of the Palace. Each of us had to preside over a table, and I should have found mine a somewhat tiresome task, if among my guests I had not met some very clever men, whose conversation amused me much. Such were Alphonse Karr, Leon Gozlan, Nestor Roqueplan, &c.

After dinner there was a theatrical performance—the Misanthrope, given for the first time with Louis XIV. dresses, acted by Perrier, Provost, Samson, Firmin, Menjaud, Monrose, and Regnier, with Mmes. Mars, Plessy, and Mante; and then one act of Robert le Diable, with Duprez, Levasseur, and Mile. Falcon—and the ballet.

After the performance there was a general promenade in the galleries, which were lighted up brilliantly. I lay claim to two good ideas, which came to me during the evening. The first was to plague the King and the ministers to such an extent, after the act out of Robert le Diable, that Meyerbeer, whom I fetched, was then and there nominated an officer of the Legion of Honour, a commonplace distinction enough nowadays, but which at that time was very exceptional. The second was to ask the King, also, if he would graciously permit the artists who had taken part in the performance to join the guests in the promenade in the galleries. Of this permission I was myself the bearer, and I naturally extended it to the corps de ballet. When all these young ladies in their morning dress, and many of them bandbox in hand, appeared walking about amongst the gaily bedizened folk, some of the fine ladies turned up their noses. But the medley was a charming one, nevertheless.

CHAPTER IV

1837-1838

After the wedding festivities I went back to sea, a lieutenant still, on board the Hercule, 100 guns—Captain Casy. Captain, petty officers, crew, all hands in fact save a few officers, were Provencal. Before a week was out I caught myself talking with their accent!

We were bound for South America Gibraltar was our first port, and our reception by the governor, Sir Alexander Woodford, Lady Woodford, and their charming children was of the kindest. I have a recollection of it which I treasure all the more in that later in the day I had to do with another governor with whom I had no cause at all to be satisfied. From Gibraltar we went to Tangier, the Moorish town I was to bombard some years afterwards, but where on this occasion I fought with wild boars only under the guidance of that first-class sportsman, Mr. Drummond Hay. The beauty of the eyes and colouring and the originality of the costume of the Jewish girls at Tangier delighted me, but not to the extent of chasing a certain melancholy from my heart, which had clung about it ever since the beginning of my cruise, through the long night watches, and even amidst the amusements of our stays in port. I was thinking of HER! There always is a HER when one is only twenty! After Tangier the ship stopped at Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, to take in water, and during this operation I organized a scientific expedition to the famous Peak of Teneriffe, which is nearly twelve thousand feet high, and from which my professor M. Pouillet had asked me to take some scientific observations. My brother officer, Rigaud de Genouilly, one of the ship's lieutenants, accompanied me. After two days climbing and bivouacking for one night at a great height, we were only about five or six hundred feet or so from the summit, when we were caught up by a messenger bringing us the captain's orders to get back as fast as we could. A despatch boat had just anchored at Santa Cruz bringing news that in consequence of some foreign complication a French squadron had been ordered to Tunis, and would probably go on to the East. The Hercule was to join it immediately. We tore down the mountain, rejoicing in the thought that we were most likely going to do some firing, and after a passage of twenty days, spent in all sorts of fighting drill, we cast anchor in the Bay of Tunis, only to have a bucket of cold water thrown over our heads. The complications on which we had built a whole structure of danger and glory had passed away. The squadron we were to have joined had departed, and orders awaited us to resume our interrupted cruise, and bear away for South America. One piece of news was we were told was that the expedition which was to go and avenge our last year's defeat at Constantine was fitting out at Bona, and that my brother Nemours commanded one of the brigades. Now my big ship was to revictual at Algiers, and I besought the captain, who had a free hand, to touch at Bona and give me a chance of seeing my brother. The passage from Tunis to Bona was delayed by calms, and when we got in, I found to my great regret that the expedition had started, but that a small column was being formed which was to join it, starting on the following morning. At this news I rushed to my captain, and calling all the resources of persuasion and every wile of diplomacy to my aid, I strove to convince him that there would be time for me, during his revictualling, whereat I should be practically useless, to make a rush to the expeditionary force and get back again, and that if the King, my father, knew I had happened to be where I was, he would be much displeased at my turning my back on an enterprise which was to avenge our national honour. There were no telegraph wires in those days, and I contrived to get the desired permission. Twenty-four hours later I turned soldier for the nonce, and started off, mounted and accoutred and full of fresh dreams of glory, destined once more to disappointment—a disappointment shared by various engineer and artillery officers and three Prussians, Messieurs von Willisen, [Footnote: H. de Willisen, aide-de-camp to the Prince of Prussia, who afterwards became the Emperor William, was in chief command of the Holstein army.] von Noville, and Oelrichs, who had arrived too late to start with the expeditionary force, and, like myself, were endeavouring to rejoin it. What shall I say about the march of the column to which I was attached upon Constantine? It lasted over twelve days of fearful weather, during which no discomfort was spared us. Torrents of rain, rivers in flood, snowfalls, men dying of cold, stragglers whose shouts for help only brought us to them to find them lying headless on the ground, and last of all, a terrible outbreak of cholera, which one of the regiments in the column brought with it from France. And we had the mental agony to boot of being kept ever so long at the foot of a mountain, the Raz el Akbah, which was so sodden that no gun nor vehicle could get up it, even with triple teams, and listening to the firing of the attacking batteries before Constantine without being able to get there.

One day, during this delay, the chief medical officer, by way of consolation, greeted us with these words at breakfast: "Bad news, gentlemen; we have just discovered that the cesspools of the hospital (a miserable hut) have burst, and for the last twenty-four hours they have been leaking into the spring where we get our drinking water."

"Hang it all, doctor, you really might have kept that to yourself," we all cried in a breath!

Amid all this suffering and discomfort, physical and moral, the courage, spirits, good humour and downright gaiety of the soldiers never failed for a single moment. I had never seen them before under such trying circumstances, and I thought them quite admirable, and their officers too,—the very embodiment of devotion. One day, the rear guard detachment had dropped some way behind the main column, and found itself stopped by an impetuous torrent, which was swelling visibly under a deluge of rain. The first men who tried to cross were carried off their feet, thrown down, and only pulled out with great difficulty. Without a moment's hesitation all the officers plunged into the water, though it was up to their arm-pits, and holding on to each other's arms they formed a sort of animated dam, above which they made their men cross over, and it was all done in the simplest way. Frenchmen of all classes, soldiers, sailors, what-not, a splendid race they are, when the spirit of obedience and discipline inspires them with a sense of duty! At last we came in sight of Constantine, and shortly after of a body of cavalry, the Third Chasseurs d'Afrique, sent out to meet us. From an officer detached in advance we learnt the place had been taken by assault three days previously, and that the Comte de Damremont, general in command, had been cut in two by a round shot, while he was talking to my brother Nemours. Very soon, galloping up to the Coudiat-Ati, I was in the arms of that good brother, who had behaved so brilliantly during the whole campaign. He was in the act of inspecting his brave little army, and we finished the inspection together. Then he scanned me from top to toe, and the smart soldier spoke instead of the brother "You can't go about like that, haven't you anything else to put on?"

"I'm afraid I haven't," I sadly replied, with a humiliated glance at my short jacket, my trousers turned up with a bit of gutta percha, and my straw hat covered with waxed cloth, none of which had been improved by camping out in the mud. The only soldier-like things about me were my sword and my lieutenant's epaulettes. But they manufactured me a cap, a naval lieutenant, Fabre Lamaurelle, who had come up with me, lent me his coat, and so I became presentable.

The sight of the breach excited me greatly, and my first care was to mount it. If my readers will call up the appearance of the buildings pulled down when a new street is opened in Paris, they will get some idea of the picture the top of the breach presented. It was a chaos of ruins, caused by cannon shot and explosions, without any apparent way out. The ground was like the moraine of a glacier, scattered over with caps, epaulettes, and human remains. A soldier of the 2nd Light Infantry was standing sentry beside a big stone.

"What are you doing there?"

"Do you see that bit of a blue cloak down that hole? The colonel is underneath that stone, and the bayonets sticking out of the rubbish belong to the men he was leading. The explosion buried them all alive!"

A terrible trial that explosion was for assaulting columns scattered through a labyrinth of ruins, and barricaded lanes, and fired at from all sides by an invisible foe.

But nothing dismayed our brave fellows for an instant. I was told that at the moment of the catastrophe, when the staff, which was following the progress of the fight with anxious ears, for there was no seeing anything, saw the cloud caused by the explosion shrouding the neighbourhood of the breach, and hundreds of wounded and burnt and maimed men coming down it, they thought the assault had been repulsed and that the game was up.

Lamoriciere, commanding the first attacking column, was carried back blinded, and to everybody's astonishment the commanding officer of the 2nd column, Colonel Combes, was seen returning also. He advanced, sword in hand, to the General commanding, over whose face an expression first of wonder and then of anger spread, at the sight of a commanding officer quitting his post. Nothing daunted, the colonel informed him, in a few curt sentences, of the state of the fight, and of his own confidence in its success, ending with these words: "It will be another glorious day for France and for those who live to see the end of it." He saluted, tottered—he was dead! No sign of his had betrayed that he was mortally wounded.

As I listened to the tale I asked General Vallee,—"But what would you have done, General, if the assault had been repulsed?"

"We should have begun again." As he said it he pressed his lips together with that fearfully stern expression which, with his short stature, had earned him the nickname in the army of "Little Louis XI.," and an officer behind me who wad heard my question and the answer, added in an undertone, "And he had taken all his precautions."

"What do you mean?"

"When he was told, the night before the assault, that the ammunition was giving out, he ordered one round to be kept in reserve for the battery that played upon the breach—"

"Well?"

"Don't you understand? He meant to fire on the attacking column if it gave any sign of wavering. He did it once in Spain at the siege of Tarragona."

There was another scene of war at the opposite end of the town from the breach at the Kasbah. During the assault all the non-combatant Mussulman population had taken refuge there, crowding and cramming it up to the very edge of the ramparts that crowned the precipices of the Rummel, and either from sheer terror or by dint of the pressure of the crowd, a cascade of human beings fell from the ramparts on to the rocks and terraces of the precipice. Heaps of corpses, men, women and children, but especially women, were caught here and there, and on one of the heaps an old white-bearded Arab was turning over the dead, one by one, seeking doubtless for some one who was dear to him.

Having no official position in the army, and as I could not well rest on laurels I had not won, I spent my time sketching. I began, of course, with the breach, and installed myself, for that purpose, beside a human head severed from the trunk, which lay on the ground alongside of a dead horse in the torn open belly of which a dog had made its lair. While I was drawing, I heard a bugle sounding a march and soon I saw the bugler coming out. Upon the breach; behind him marched a sub-lieutenant, sword in hand, and then in place of men, a string of donkeys, led by about a dozen Zouave irregulars. Puzzled, I went up to the bugler and, stopping him, I asked what he was blowing for. "Why," he replied rocking from one foot to another with his bugle on his hip, "this is the volunteer company from Bougie going back to headquarters."

"What?"

"Those are the rifles on the donkeys, there—everybody killed in the assault; there is nobody left but us." He began blowing again. The donkeys passed on and I bared my head to them.

Confident in the impregnability of his town, the Bey of Constantine had left his harem there and the ladies of it were shut up in the palace, which had been turned into head-quarters, and where I was living with Nemours. As may be imagined, this harem gave me subjects for many sketches, which disappeared, unluckily for me, in the sacking of the Tuileries on February 24th, 1848. In one of the courtyards, planted with orange-trees and roses, and surrounded by the elegant Moorish balconies of the Bey's Palace, there was a little door, which had been confided to the care of the vivandiere of the 47th Regiment and of a sergeant major of spahis, of the name of Bel-Kassem. It was the door into the harem and gave access to several courts, surrounded by galleries, both on the ground floor and first story, on which opened spacious rooms carpeted with divans and cushions and with shelves all round piled with quantities of things, knick-knacks, and, above all, stuffs, especially silken ones. The women—there were over two hundred of them—spent their lives night and day alike, squatting or lying on the cushions in these apartments. They were divided into two categories. The negresses, who formed the great majority, occupied two court-yards, and these courts exhaled a fetid odour which poisoned the whole of the Bey's palace, whenever the wind blew from that quarter. The white and sallow-complexioned women all lived together, they all wore Arab dress, with more or fewer trinkets, and there were some pretty women among them. Two were Greeks and there was one really beautiful Moorish woman, called Ayescha. I did her likeness, and that of the chief eunuch as well. He was a negro, growing grey, with a deceitful hypocritical eye all muffled up in very fine haiks which showed nothing but the tip of his nose, and legs which were entirely guiltless of calf. That sitting would have been a good subject for a picture—I drawing, the ladies of the harem hanging over me watching me work, and the negro standing and swearing as he stood, while Ayescha went to and fro lavishing the quaintest caresses on him, to keep him in good temper.

One evening, General Vallee had an entertainment got up for him in the harem. There were great illuminations, singing, music with tambourine accompaniment and the danse du ventre. Amongst those present was General de Caraman, who commanded the artillery. He was seized with cholera just as he was going away, and was dead by six o'clock the next morning. Such is life! Several adventures arose out of the fact of the harem's presence. One fine night, when everybody was asleep, two of the officers of infantry irregulars on guard took it into their heads to knock at the door, and were filled with delighted surprise on hearing the gentle voice of the good-natured cantiniere reply, "Is that you? Well upon my word," and the door opened. But within less than two minutes the frightful uproar caused by two hundred women shrieking at once roused the whole of head-quarters, and our two officers tore full pace back to the guardroom and got the men under arms. This scare, and it may be some others too, added to the pestiferous smell from the negresses' quarters, made the authorities resolve to get rid of all this human cattle and distribute it amongst the most well-to-do of the Mussulman population. I went to look on at their departure, which was presided over by a major on the staff, assisted by a detachment of irregulars. The women had been warned the evening before, and leave had been given for each to take away as much as she herself could carry. So they had spent the whole night rolling as many precious stuffs round their waists as they could support the weight of, and we found ourselves face to face with human balloons, like monstrous gourds. They could hardly walk, even when held up by the soldiers, and getting through the doorways was more difficult still. Some of them, hauled at in front and pushed from behind, shot through like the cork of a champagne bottle. Others, who could not squeeze through at all, were made over to the soldiers to be reduced to the necessary size, the whole thing accompanied by a chorus of shouts and objurgations of every kind. But to pass from the harem to graver subjects. On October 18th, I was present at the military funeral of the Comte Damremont. It was a moving sight. Some few hundred yards from the spot where he had been killed, just at the foot of the breach, a cenotaph had been built of sand-bags, on which the coffin, with his General's cloak, and his sword and white feathered hat laid on it, had been placed. The weather had gone into mourning too, for the occasion. It was a very gloomy day. The whole Arab population was looking on, squatting on the walls. On the top of the breach were planted the colours of the 47th Regiment. Below it the Zouaves' drums rolled a funeral march, while the officers did obeisance for the last time to the remains of their former general. And what officers they were too! How many future men of mark there were in that assemblage, which, not to mention its chiefs, numbered Captains Niel, Canrobert, MacMahon, St. Arnault, Le Boeuf, Ladmirault, Morris, Leflo, and many another in its ranks!

The army left Constantine in two detachments. I returned with the second, which escorted the general in command, who had fallen sick, and an enormous convoy of fever patients and cripples of all sorts. It was a dreary journey back, for the column was decimated by cholera, and the road was strewed with corpses. Every minute soldiers were to be seen dropping their muskets and writhing in the most awful convulsions. My brother, who commanded the rear-guard, spent his whole time having the poor wretches picked up and tied into mule litters. They were thence drafted into the ambulance wagons, which were crowded already, and there they died like flies. As soon as a man died, the other occupants of the wagon united their efforts and heaved him overboard. When the convoy started every morning a row of corpses marked the spot the wagons had been on during the night. A detachment of engineers covered them over with a little soil, but we had hardly moved off before the Arabs swooped down from all directions and uncovered and stripped them.

I was ill myself by the time the columns got to Bona—fever had me in its grip, but thanks to severe physicking I was almost my own man again by the time I rejoined my ship at Algiers. She went to sea almost at once. I had a relapse at Senegal, but the ocean passage completely cured me, and I was quite in smooth water by the time we reached the South American coast. Rio de Janeiro was our first port. I need not enlarge on the magnificent view presented by the Bay of Rio, which has been so frequently described by travellers. It was during this stay in harbour that I first saw the young princess who was later to become the Princess de Joinville, the devoted companion of my whole life. During this stay, too, I made an expedition to Minas, the gold mine country, a long journey on mule-back, through the magnificent monotony of the virgin forest. One of the mines I went to see, called Gongo-Soco, was worked by the labour of four hundred slaves, and owned by an English company who made an enormous profit out of it. I went down it, and, under the guidance of some Cornish miners, I had a try with a pick and succeeded in getting out several nuggets as thick as my little finger. As the vein was principally manganese, we were black all over when we came out of the mine, but a body of negresses came at once to wash us. Another expedition I made into the "camp" initiated me into a sort of sport which was new to me—hunting wild horses with a lasso. After having admired the extraordinary skill of the camperos in doing this, I tried it myself, and that not altogether unsuccessfully—it is a fascinating occupation.

To finish up our stay at Rio, we gave the emperor and his family, and the whole of society both foreign and Brazilian, a ball on board our ship. Towards the end of the evening, I turned a young lion I had been given in Senegal loose in the ball-room, and his appearance somewhat disturbed the figures of the cotillon.

From Rio the Hercule called in succession at Guiana, Martinique and Guadaloupe. The low shores of Guiana are clothed with mangrove swamps, the trees of which seemed scarlet, so covered were they with red ibises! Nothing more gay-looking can be imagined than the Cayenne River, and the pretty town standing on its banks—the wooden houses all separated from each other by gardens in which the tropical vegetation displays an unexampled luxuriance and variety. Flowers of every hue, set among huge calabash trees, gigantic palms of every kind, such as the traveller's palm with its immense fan-shaped leaves, bread-fruit trees, and many more, charm the eye with a wealth of colour which must be seen before it can be realized. Though the Cayenne River may be charming, the other arms of the Guiana delta, great rivers, hedged in by thick dark forest walls, are far gloomier to the sight. But those magnificent forests, peopled with creatures of all sorts, and especially with an infinite number of birds, of the most varied and dazzling plumage, have the irresistible attraction that hangs about life in the wilds.

I went up several of these rivers, such as the Aprouague and the Mana River, and visited the carbets, or villages, of several Indian tribes, the Norags, and the Galibis, which last were still quite savage at the time of which I write, armed with bows and arrows, and obtaining a light by rubbing two bits of stick together—a thing I actually saw them do. Men and women alike were red-skinned, tartar-eyed, their smooth hair dyed with "rocou," a sort of madder, and with a small strip of cotton passed between the legs as their only garment. The women were particularly frightful. Almost all of them had huge stomachs, which they held up with their hands just like a monkey's pouch, and all wore a kind of tight bracelet above and below their knees and ankles, which caused the intervening parts to swell, and gave their legs the appearance of skewers with Dutch cheeses on them. Apart from the savages, the general impression of Guiana remaining with me is that of a great hot-house, in which everything was as improbably huge as in one of Gustave Dore's illustrations—where I came across apricots as big as my head, and caimans ten yards long. As regards the inhabitants, I recollect Creoles, enervated by the climate, who were as kindly as they were intelligent; pale-faced women, languorous and seductive, with soft low murmuring voices; and lastly, just as I passed through, a negro drum-major of the National Guard, with a great big busby and a plume that was a dream!

My recollection of Martinique and Guadaloupe bring them back to me as lovely green islands of volcanic outline. The former especially struck me as being exceedingly picturesque, its hills covered with pleasant-looking habitations with the peaks of the Carbet veiled in the dark clouds brought by the trade winds, for background. I had to review the troops on the Savana, the promenade of Fort Royal, but I confess I took more interest in the costume of the beautiful quadroons, or quarterbred mulatto women, than in the review itself. This costume is worth describing. A brilliant-coloured bandanna, knotted round the head in the most fanciful manner, no stays of course, nothing but an embroidered chemise, showing a magnificent outline, and a bright-coloured skirt, yellow or rose-coloured, trained at the back, but gathered up on one side, to show a beautiful bare leg. When I add that these women often have a creamy white complexion which many a European would envy, the proud exclamation of the old householder, dragged I know not why before a court of justice, will be appreciated. To the Judge's question "What is your profession?" he replied "My profession! I keep up the supply of Mulattos!" "Je fais des mulatres!" It was in the days of the greatest prosperity of our beautiful Antilles that the old boaster spoke. When I arrived, this was already on the wane, and it really was tiresome not to be allowed to talk about anything but sugar and emancipation by the Creoles.

Nowadays what we call progress has done its work, and these colonies, which used to be an element of national wealth, employing a whole navy of merchantmen, and which served as nursery for the sailors of our warships, are now no more than machines for electing Radical Deputies, and thus increasing the number of agents of the national destruction.

At Martinique, we joined the flag of the admiral in command of the station. I have served under many admirals, one more eccentric than the other. One of the first, an excellent seaman, had one passion only, music—and his instrument was the double bass. He spent his time performing solos on this cumbrous instrument, which he would then put away in a small apartment known in the old-fashioned navy as la bouteille. Sometimes the sea-water came through the port, and flooded everything. When the admiral fetched his double bass out, and began his tunes, he would notice from the sound that the body was full of water, and then every sort of dodge would be resorted to, to get the liquid poured out by the sound holes. The poor admiral! There is a story that his double bass was victim one day of the spite of certain seamen, who marked their displeasure by pouring something less clean than sea-water into the big fiddle. This same gallant admiral having gone ashore once upon a time, at St. Louis in Senegal, and finding the bar there continued so impassable that he could not rejoin his ship, sent her round to Goree, and went there himself overland slung under a camel's belly, and armed with an umbrella,—which proved his complete ignorance of the miracles of the Prophet Mohammed.

My commanding officer at the time of which I write was another oddity. Imagine a thin little man, as hot as pepper, adorned with a hooked nose and chin, one as huge as the other. A real old-fashioned gentleman, always tightly buttoned up in the most irreproachably correct of garments, and with all the exquisite and formal politeness of the old school. Everybody was fond of the good old fellow, who heightened the oddity of his appearance on board his own ship by wearing a huge straw hat like the bell-crowned hat Eugene Sue puts on the head of M. Pipelet in the Mysteres de Paris, and a song had been composed about him, which we used to sing together and the chorus of which began "Bon! bon! de la Bretonniere! Bon Bon!"—la Bretonniere being his name. This same officer saved Admiral Magon's ship after Trafalgar, and later on he commanded the Breslaw at Navarino and showed the most consummate bravery there. His flagship was the Didon, which ship, having run aground several times, had earned the nickname of "Dido the touching" (la touchante Didon). Poor old Didon! I had sailed with her before and the sight of her gave me the same feeling of grateful recollection that stirs within a man who meets an old love. After a short cruise with the whole squadron the admiral led the way to the British island of Jamaica.

*******

We had hardly cast anchor before he sent to ask the British Governor when he would receive him, and, the appointment duly made, he sent for me to go with him. An aide-de-camp received us at the landing-stage, silently pointed to the governor's carriage, which awaited us, and disappeared. The carriage in question was a phaeton with room for two people in it, and a little seat behind for the groom, who was standing at the horses' heads with true British correctness. Says the admiral to me, "Are we to go in that?"

"Yes, sir."

"But," and he took two steps to the rear, "there isn't any coachman."

"You are to drive yourself, sir."

With a half turn to the right he replied, "I! Impossible! I've never been able to get a horse to go in my life. Do you know how to drive?"

"A little, sir."

"Then take the reins, sir!"

Into the carriage then we got, to the great satisfaction of the groom, who had guessed rather than understood the misgivings of the French admiral in the cocked hat. At first, things went pretty well. The groom showed me the way to Spanish Town, saying "left" or "right" as the case might be, when, presently we came to a great market crowded with negresses with blue cotton stuffs twisted round their haunches, all screaming at the top of their voices. The horses in our phaeton took fright at the noise, their alarm communicated itself to the negresses, who ran away, upsetting everything. I lost command of the horses, which swerved to one side, knocking over the heaps of gourds and water melons and bananas. There was a terrible scene of confusion. The admiral clung on with both hands, never stopping shouting "Oh the devil! the devil! the devil!" However we got through without any serious accident. On the return journey, conscious of my own incapacity, I offered to give up my place as whip to the admiral, but he refused with a most determined "No, no, no; oh NO!"

At the time of my visit, Jamaica was still celebrated for its rum, and my father had charged me not to forget to bring him a barrel, a commission I did not fail to execute. But a lamentable accident happened in connection with that same barrel. It was brought back to France and duly placed in the cellars at Neuilly, and had been forgotten for ever so long, when one fine day the King, recollecting it, ordered some of the contents to be handed round at the end of dinner. All the guests smacked their lips before-hand; but disappointment awaited them, and the first taste was followed by a general grimace of horror. It was simply beastly. Enquiries were set on foot and here is their result! A distinguished mental specialist, who had been ordered to take a sea voyage for the benefit of his health, which had broken down, had got leave from the Minister for Naval Affairs to sail on board the Hercule. Deeply interested as he was in his own special subject, he had occupied himself during all our stays in port in collecting brains, both human and animal, which he immediately labelled and shut up in a barrel of alcohol, which was exactly like my barrel of rum. The two barrels had got mixed and my father and his guests had been drinking rum flavoured with brains!

Our squadron dispersed on leaving Jamaica. The admiral, I think, was to go to San Domingo, we ourselves to Havana. One of our ships, a beautiful despatch boat, the Fabert, bore us company the first day. In the evening, the weather being calm, her commander, a lieutenant, M. de Pardeillan, came on board us to dine. Little did we think, as we accompanied him to the head of the companion, that we were bidding him an eternal farewell. The ship, the crew, and their young captain all disappeared, and have never been heard of again. The sea swallowed them all up, and the sea has kept the secret.

As we entered Havana, I was struck by the sight of a whole fleet of strange-looking ships which lay at anchor under the Morro citadel. They were long boats, built for speed, with immense sloping spars, like racing yachts. They were not warships, though they were heavily armed. They were slavers, for the negro trade was still in full swing in Cuba. The demand for black labour being constantly on the increase, the slavers went to fetch it from Africa, and brought it back at all risks, in spite of the British cruisers. But this importation of black cattle, which had been humane and kindly enough while it was free, had grown frightfully barbarous since the successful landing of each cargo had been exposed to every chance imaginable. The trade, nevertheless, fed the extraordinary prosperity of the fair Spanish colony, Queen of the Antilles, and especially that of her capital town, the Havana. The stir in the port itself was prodigious, and how shall I describe the animated appearance of the streets, the splendid houses, and the innumerable churches that met my gaze, and the evidence of luxury betrayed everywhere, and by everything I saw?

In the days of his wandering exile, my father had sojourned at Havana, and my first care was to seek out the friends he had left behind him there. Thanks to them, I soon found myself at home, in the Montalvo, Penalver, Arminteros, Arastegui, O'Reilly and de Arcos families, whose charming companionship formed the chief delight of my own stay. My cousinship with the Queen of Spain caused me to be received with great honour, also, by the authorities, especially by the Captain General, Espeieta. A review was arranged for me on the Paseo Tacon, and of that same review I have an undying recollection. Let my readers imagine a line formed by the Espana, Barcelona and Habana regiments, the artillery, and a lancer regiment, splendid troops all of them, under the command of General Count de Mirasol, with his baton slung at his buttonhole. And, facing this line, another of the most exquisitely charming aspect. All the volantes in Havana drawn up in battle array! The said volantes, peculiar to the place, are gigs without hoods or aprons, perched on two huge wheels, and each drawn by one horse in silver-mounted trappings, ridden by a calassero or negro postilion in flaming livery, laced on every seam. In each volante two ladies lounged, in evening dress, low-necked, bare-headed, and armed with fans. Every pretty woman in Havana was there, talking to the occupiers of the next carriage, looking on and being looked at, and all under a lovely tropical sunset, which lighted up the sea, whence a soft refreshing breeze was blowing, on one side, and on the other a forest of cocoa palms with the fortress of Principe rising above them. The ensemble of the picture and its details were alike charming, and to us sailors, just off the sea, it was heightened by contrast. These Havana ladies add all the charm of Spaniards to a mingling of Creole indifference with the confidence of well-born women. Their eyes and complexions are magnificent, their wrists and ankles exquisitely delicate, and their feet! I never saw anything like them—the feet of a Chinese woman, only natural, not produced by torture, I brought away a precious souvenir from Havana, in the shape of a shoe which I knew to be genuine, but which never met with anything but incredulity till the sacking of the Tuileries in 1884 bereft me of it altogether.

I remember yet a beautiful excursion in the interior of the island, partly by rail, partly by volante, along splendid avenues of palmettos, and thick shady mango trees, to the country house belonging to Dona Matilda de Casa Calvo, Marquise de Arcos, where I spent two days in the pleasantest of company, and where Lord Clarence Paget, who was of the party, astonished us by his talent as a singer. Our delightful stay in port was brought to a close by a ball given to me by the town of Havana at the Societad Philarmonica. I had just been dancing that pretty dance, a sort of slow valse, which is called the Habanera, and I was walking with my partner, a beautiful Spanish Mexican, with tiny feet, under the arcades which ran round the patio, when she pulled a straw-covered cigarette out of her pocket and lighted it. "Don't you smoke?" she enquired.

"No, Mademoiselle."

"Oh, but yes, I'm sure you will smoke," and she took her cigarette from her pretty lips and gave it to me to smoke, which I did without hesitation. That sudden conversion has been a durable one. But I have often regretted that I could not begin it all over again!

Twenty-four hours later, at two o'clock in the morning, I was wakened in my cabin by a violent shock. The Hercule had just run aground in the dangerous waters of the Bahama Channel. Whatever the weather may be, the running aground of a huge body like a hundred gun ship is a serious matter. To crown our disgrace, the corvette La Favorite, which sailed in company with us and had followed us blindly, ran aground at the same instant. Luckily it was almost calm, and the great Hercule lay quietly on the sand like a stranded whale. Whenever the least suspicion of a swell came, she gave a shudder, a sort of wag of her tail, which was very alarming. If the swell increased she would soon go to pieces, and every boat we had to launch would never be enough to save the crew. It was one of those anxious moments in a sailor's life when each man makes it his business to conceal his own feelings. We set hard to work to get down a big anchor on the deep-water side. Once it was down and the cable taut, we began to lighten the ship, pouring all the water overboard, and getting ready to put the guns over the side. Then daylight came, and showed us our real position. A long way off we could see a low island on the coast of Florida, called Looe-Key. The dawn also showed us, in the offing, the British corvette Pearl, commanded by our pleasant comrade of some days before, Lord Clarence Paget, who had sailed from Havana at the same time as we ourselves. As soon as he perceived our position he hurried to our assistance, and steering with all the decision and seafaring good sense of the British sailor, he got as close as possible to us, put down his two anchors at once, and came to us, saying, "I bring you the only thing I can, a fixed point to work on."

We thanked him cordially, but, just at that moment, thanks to our having lightened the ship, and also to the tide, which fortunately began to rise, the Hercule swayed for a few minutes on her sandy bed, and then began to float. A sigh of relief broke from every breast, especially from those of the captain and the unlucky officer of the watch, whose carelessness had been the original cause of the accident.

A few hours more, and everything but a trifling leak had been put to rights, and we were on our way to the United States—to a new country, a young nation, which attracted me as by instinctive sympathy. On our very arrival in the Chesapeake river, I came across a characteristic trait. "Can you speak French?" I asked the pilot who hailed us. Instantly he answered me, in English, "No, I only speak American!" The claim to separate nationality extended even to the language.

Shortly afterwards I went ashore, and, armed with an itinerary, kindly drawn up for me by Michel Chevalier, in which he had mentioned all he advised my seeing, both as to men and things, during the short time at my disposal, I started on a hasty tour through that splendid country. That first glimpse of America fulfilled all my expectations, and delighted me. A young country it was in very deed. Nature itself, to my European eyes, had a pureness of atmosphere, a richness of vegetation, a freshness, a general air of youth, unknown in our older countries. Man too, in his gait, in his independence of mind, and his boldness of enterprise, betrayed an exuberant vigour of which our populations, enervated by disappointing experiences, and crushed by routine as they are, have grown incapable.

As I desired to get from Norfolk in Virginia to Washington, I started by the Roanoke Railway, on the first day of my trip, and thus crossed an immense marsh, the "Dismal Swamp." The rails we ran on being laid open-work fashion on huge piles fifteen feet above the marsh, the whole road rocked under the weight of the engine, so much as to disturb the waters of the swamp and startle the numberless snakes and turtles inhabiting it. It was a most novel sensation. Further on, betwixt Baltimore and Philadelphia, the train having to cross an arm of the sea, steamed on full pace; the engine, uncoupling itself, ran ahead on to a siding, while our train was carried by its own impetus on to the upper deck of a steam ferry-boat, moored at the end of the line. It stopped exactly at the right spot, and while the boat crossed the arm of the sea, we went below and dined at a splendid buffet on the lower deck, waited on by the prettiest of barmaids.

Further on yet, between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in that rich Allegheny country where the coal-beds lie on the surface, and coal costs five francs a ton, and whence petroleum oil was soon to gush forth, the travelling was done by canal in the flat country, and by funicular railways in the mountains, by means of boats built in sections which hooked together on the water, and were taken apart when there was a question of climbing up inclined planes. All public works and means of communication were full of daring things like these, while in Europe (I speak of the year 1838) we were still at our first timorous essays at railway travelling.

I travelled through Virginia, passing by all those spots where four and twenty years later I was to watch the bloodiest battles of the War of Secession, that first and awful convulsion of the great Republic's manhood. Reaching Washington, I was most courteously received by President Van Buren. How often since then I have been back at the White House, under Presidents Tyler, Buchanan, and Lincoln! How many a curious scene I have witnessed there, under the rule of the last-named President, rich as it was in dramatic incident! During that first stay of mine at Washington I made the acquaintance of three of the greatest men in the United States—Calhoun, Webster, and Clay—Calhoun of Carolina, the impassioned Southerner; Webster, the eloquent representative of New England Puritanism; and Clay of Kentucky, with his angular face and powerful frame, and a curious mixture of extreme gentleness and energy in his manner and ways—the very type of the Western population, the advance-guard of civilization. I was present at several sittings of the Senate, and heard these gentlemen speak with an authority which seemed to fascinate their auditors. Washington as a city, did not interest me at all—bits of town, scattered about in an ocean of dust, which later on I knew as an ocean of mud; hotels crowded with canvassers, all devouring so hurriedly at table d'hote time, that the first arrivals were rising from table when the last ones were sitting down, and all this amidst a noise of jaws that reminded me of the dogs being fed in a kennel; the whole population, whether politicians or canvassers, chewing and spitting everywhere; little society or none at all, save that formed by the foreign diplomats, most of them clever men, but bored by their isolation, and consequently disposed to see everything around them with unfavouring eyes. One of the chief members of this society at the time of my sojourn was the British Minister, Mr. Fox, a diplomatist of the old school, past master in forms, and proprieties, and social refinements—everything that the English sum up in the word "proper." I was told that one day as he was leaning against the chimney-piece in a drawing-room where dancing was going on, in deep conversation with I know not what other personage, an American couple came and stood just in front of him in a country-dance. Soon the young man began to show signs of anxiety; his voice grew thick, his cheeks swelled alternately, and he cast anxious glances at the chimney-piece. At last he could hold on no longer, and with the most admirable precision, he shot all the juice of his quid into the fireplace just between Mr. Fox and his interlocutor. "Fine shot, sir!" the old diplomat contented himself with saying, with a bow. It may have been that little incidents of this kind cast a chill on international relations!

[Illustration with caption: southern scout]

Philadelphia delighted me. It is a cheerful town, with streets planted with fine trees. The prison there, the first built on the solitary system, occupied me for a whole day. I went over every corner of it, in the company of the directors, and of any other officials who could inform me on the subject. It will be known to my readers that the system in this prison, at the time of which I write, was that of absolute seclusion in cells—complete isolation in fact—during the whole term of sentence. Soon afterwards I visited Auburn Prison, in New York State, where the condemned person was subjected to a different regime,—cells at night, but work in common, though in silence, during the day. I have been over many prisons since, for I have always held that the management of such places is a pretty reliable thermometer of the moral condition of the country to which they belong. I know of some foul ones in states which set up to be very civilized. In France we are lamentably behindhand in the matter. Though we have some prisons which are model, we have a great many more which are shamefully behind the times. For my own part, I have come to the conclusion, from all I have seen and heard, that seclusion in cells at night, with work in common during the daytime in small easily managed workshops, or better still, in the open air as at Portland Prison in England, is the penitentiary system which offers the fewest drawbacks. I say drawbacks, for no such system can offer advantages. All the holding forth of philanthropists about the sad fate of criminals is empty noise. A prison must be a place of punishment; it can never be an abode of reformation, nor of reclamation.

Let us pass, from the prisons, to Mr. Norris's great steam engine, and especially locomotive engine works, which Michel Chevalier had told me to be sure to go and see; and most interesting, truly, they were. Great improvements in the construction of locomotives originated in these works. Mr. Norris had also had a very original and exceedingly American idea—to make a great orchestra of musical instruments played by steam instead of by human lungs. I heard, or at all events I was told I heard, the "Hunting Chorus" in Robin Hood performed by this orchestra, in which the conductor's baton was replaced by a tap. It was horrible!

After Philadelphia came Niagara, wonderful and peerless. I admired its picturesque grandeur, but I admired the rapids before the fall every bit as much. The mighty power of the huge river, the overflow of all those great lakes, pouring in foaming fury over its rocky bed, for such a distance and through such splendid scenery, is indescribably striking. In the midst of the lovely country of the Hudson Highlands, stands West Point, the famous military school where all the officers of the American army are educated. I was the guest, while there, of Colonel de Russy, who was in command, and my stay was full of interest. There is a curious point about the school, and it is not the least of the surprises reserved for us by the American democracy. The cadets do not enter by examination, but by favour. The Senators, or representatives of each State in the Union, have a right to a certain number of nominations. The President has the same. Their choice, as a rule, falls on lads of intelligence, and the only thing asked of them on joining, is to give proof of a healthy constitution. They know nothing, and have to learn everything in the school, at which they consequently spend four years. Well, in spite of the absence of selection or competition for entrance, the result is quite excellent. The knowledge, spirit of discipline and duty of the American officer, and his adaptability to no matter what task, leave nothing to be desired.

Everybody knows New York, that huge cosmopolitan city, the commercial capital of the New World, where colossal fortunes are made and lost with the giddiest rapidity. Its position as being the chief artery of human activity, is incomparable, but the town—qua town—has this point in common with all huge agglomerations of commercial buildings. It is utterly commonplace. I merely passed through it on my way to rejoin my ship at Newport, but with me there came on one of those splendid steamers, veritable floating palaces indeed, which the Americans excel in building, a huge picnic, at which 150 New York ladies were present. The night passage across Long Island Sound in lovely weather, with all this gay party dancing and supping, was most delightful.

I left the United States with a feeling of the deepest gratitude for the sympathetic, almost affectionate, welcome I had everywhere received, and the most sincere admiration for that great democracy, ambitious without being envious, where shabby class rivalry is unknown, where each man endeavours to rise by his own intelligence, worth, and energy, but where no one desires to drag others down to the level of his own idleness or mediocrity.

A great community, in which nobody would for a moment suffer the State to take to itself the right to interfere between father and child by denying the free disposal of his property, and thence his paternal authority to the parent.

A great community, where no man need be a soldier unless he chooses, and where all are free to bring up their children as they think fit, to practise the religion that pleases them best, and to combine in perfect freedom for the endowment of church or school. What an example, in many matters, the young nation sets the old! We left Newport on our return to France, and after a quick passage of nineteen days, the Hercule anchored in Brest Roads, on July 10th, 1838.

CHAPTER V

1838

Before six weeks were out, I was at sea again, on my way to Mexico. My orders to sail reached me at Luneville, where my brother Nemours had taken refuge, with a cavalry command, from the desperate endeavours of the grand-parents to get him married, and whither I had followed him with the same object. Thanks to my brothers, my memory is crowded with recollections of Luneville and the camp there, beginning with that of an unlucky captain who ruined his career by stopping his squadron at galloping drill, before the prostrate form of General Comte de M—commanding the division, stretched on the broad of his back by a lively charger with the ringing word of command—"Obstacle!"

During my short visit I lived with my brother in the Chateau, where one general whiled away his sleepless hours by playing the French horn, much to the enjoyment of everybody else! Our evenings were spent at the theatre, where there was a ballet A corps de ballet at Luneville! The wily manager had got out of the difficulty by composing a choregraphic scenario called Les Sabotiers, in which the only sign of skill asked of the lady performers was to swing the sabots on their feet in cadenced time. A great noise they made, which did not, however, prevent the Mayor of Luneville from falling asleep regularly every evening in the municipal box, where he sat enthroned perched on a curule chair as high as that of Thomas Diafoirus. He even fell off it, during a performance at which I was present, and so noisily that the shock interrupted the evolutions of the ballet; and all the officers of the garrison who filled the stalls, rose with an anxiety which may have been somewhat affected, and would not be reassured until Mr. Mayor had been fished up out of the depths of his box, and replaced upon his perch. I recollect, too, an ascent of the Donon, one of the peaks of the Vosges, with a charming family of the name of Chevandier, and in the loveliest weather What a view there was! All Lorraine, all Alsace, with the spires of Strasbourg—that beautiful country which my forefathers of the old monarchy had made so truly French. Alas! Alas!

I went back to my duty. I sailed from Brest on the 1st of September, under the orders of Admiral Baudin, a man who had a whole career of valiant deeds behind him. One-armed, tall in stature and energetic in countenance, he straightway inspired respect, and one soon learnt to recognize him as a commander as intelligent as he was resolute, and even impassioned. His flag was hoisted on the frigate Nereide. I followed, with a small corvette of which I had been given command, and which I had hastily commissioned. Except for the torpedo-boats, and such small flotilla craft, I do not believe the whole of our present navy contains such a small vessel as she was She was armed with four thirty-pounders, and sixteen carronades, mere children's toys, and her crew amounted to 100 men. But how pretty she was, careening over, level with the water, with her huge spars sloping backwards; and how charmingly she was named—La Creole! She was my first command, and I was twenty! We were bound on an expedition which might give us a chance of fighting, and I hoped in my turn to follow the example of my elder brothers, who had so well upheld the honour of our race at Antwerp and in Africa.

My emotion on leaving France under such circumstances will be readily understood. My old aide de-camp Hernoux, and Bruat, escorted me outside the entrance to the port, and returned in the pilot's boat. The last link with the soil of the mother-country was broken, Forward then, my boy!

In a few days we were before Cadiz, that lovely Andalusian city. An African sun had come to heighten its beauty, and it looked like some exquisite carving in the whitest marble, rising fairylike out of a sapphire sea. My landing in the evening was just as full of charm. I hurried to the Alameda, the public promenade, where the silence was unbroken, save by the plash of the waves breaking at the foot of the ramparts, or the whisper of the breeze amongst the palm-trees. I caught sight of mysterious couples sitting in the shadows of the alamos, black dresses and mantillas blending with the men's "capas," and from these formless groups a stifled murmur rose, with the noise of fans, like the beating wings of an imprisoned bird. I wandered through the streets and the Plazo Santo Antonio. I saw delightful balconies and glistening eyes that shone behind the lattices; exquisite forms glided over the white flags on which the moonlight fell. I saw, in fine, a city, a whole population, instinct with the breath of love, and I caught the complaint myself. I dreamt of scaling balconies, and of kisses and tender words, jealous rivals draped in black cloaks, and knife-thrusts at street corners under the lamps, and all the struggle and danger and triumph without which life is not life at all.

There happened to be a bull-fight, during our short stay in this port, at the Puerto de Santa Maria—one of those bull-fights celebrated in that famous song that every Spaniard hums even nowadays, "Los Toros del Puerto." I took good care not to miss it, and I will take still better care not to describe it, although the chief "espada" was Chiclanero, the handsomest of all those handsome fellows, and the one who was said to have roused the most violently passionate fondness in the fair sex. Fifty years ago there were no railroads in Andalusia, nor carriages either. Majos and Majas (Goya's Majos and Majas still existed in those days) arrived on horseback from all quarters under the burning September sun, and no words of mine can give any idea of the motley crowd in the most brilliant costumes, the perfect orgie of colour presented by the neighbourhood of the plaza, on which, as a finishing touch to the quaintness of the scene, a squadron of yellow dragoons did duty as police! From Cadiz we sailed in company with the frigates La Gloire and La Medee and two steam corvettes which we had found there, and reached Cape Saint Antonio, the most westerly point of Cuba, after a thirty-six days' passage. Once there, the admiral took all the water and provisions out of the Gloire and the Creole, and sent us to revictual at Havana, while he went on his way to Mexico and Vera Cruz. With my habitual extreme indifference to politics (having, in fact, always hated them), I have forgotten to say WHY we were going to Mexico. It was the eternal old story. Demands timidly made and then spurned, insufficient force for action merely increasing the insolence of our opponents, and then the necessity for sending a large and expensive expedition to finish up with. A score of war-vessels, including four frigates and two bomb-vessels, were soon to be collected before Vera Cruz, with a certain number of troops to be landed, and to deal authoritatively with the Mexican Government. Meanwhile we were to go, Captain Laine and I, to Havana, to lay in provisions, take everything we could to the squadron on board, and also, so the admiral had told me confidentially, I was to endeavour personally to get together all the plans and information possible concerning the towns on the Mexican coast and the fort of Saint Juan d'Ulloa, which had all once been Spanish. Nothing could have suited me better than this run to Havana, where we anchored four days later, and of which place I had carried away such pleasant memories seven months before. And as soon as I had paid and returned my official visits, I hurried to the Tacon Theatre, where, in a stage box that I knew right well, I beheld the charming woman who had begun my education as a smoker so prettily during my first visit.

We got the worst of news from Mexico. While Admiral Baudin was hurrying thither by forced marches, as it were, the ships that had got there before us had well-nigh raised the blockade. The frigate Herminie had started for France, which she never was to reach. She was wrecked at the Bermudas. The Iphigenie, which Captain de Parseval still commanded had been obliged to depart too, with nothing but a remnant of her crew, the yellow fever, which was then raging, having made terrible ravages on board. I heard of the death of many a good friend. Captain de Parseval had only one officer left (Kerjegu, who in later days was my colleague in the National Assembly) and one cadet, to help him to get his frigate away. There had been a tempest too, which had done a great deal of damage to our cruisers. I saw two come in, the Eclipse, Commander Jame de Bellecroix, and the Laurier, Captain Duquesne, which had been dismasted in the gale, and which had rigged up temporary spars, by means of which they had contrived to crawl into port. All the sails of the Laurier had been carried away, and she was quite helpless in the storm, so her captain, Duquesne, and his second officer, Mazeres, lashed themselves on deck, after having sent the crew below. The violence of the wind laid the ship so completely over on her beam ends that Lieutenant Mazeres, who was carried overboard by a wave, caught hold of the maintop and managed to get back on deck. A moment later the two masts of the brig were broken by the fury of the sea, and thus she regained her balance and was saved.

Leaving all these cripples to patch themselves up as best they could, Captain Laine set sail with his frigate and gave me orders to follow. We reached Sacrificios, the nearest anchorage to Vera Cruz, after a rapid passage. Here we learnt that the captain of the Medee, M. Leray, had been sent on a mission to Mexico. Then the admiral himself went off to Xalapa, to confer with the Mexican ministers. Meanwhile the blockade went on, enlivened by privations of every kind, short rations of water, yellow fever, and so forth. Our water was brought from Havana; it came in barrels, and was frequently black and nauseous when it came out of them. Yellow fever stalked abroad. I lingered one night, fishing over the side of the ship, until eleven o'clock, with a strong, healthy, first-class cadet, who had been under me in the watch on board the Didon. A foreboding of some sort seemed to weigh on his mind. I tried to cheer him up, but all in vain. By six o'clock next morning the terrible "vomito" had carried him off. Poor Gouin! I was very fond of him. We buried him on the Sacrificios islet, that gloomy cemetery which later on the Zouaves christened the "Jardin d'Acclimatation."

But little happened to vary the monotony of those weeks of waiting. I had gone in my boat one day to take soundings in shore, along the coast stretching from Vera Cruz to Anton Lizardo, when I saw a squadron of Mexican Lancers in their great white hats, looking like a squadron of picadors from a bull-ring, come galloping over the sand-hills. It was more than likely these gentry might fire their carbines at us, and we had no arms to reply with. So I bethought me of an expedient, which turned out quite successful. Instead of retiring as fast as we could row, I ordered my crew to lie motionless on their oars, while with the help of two men I made as though I were carefully preparing, loading, and laying a heavy gun, which was nothing more than a large-sized telescope with which I happened to be provided. The effect was electric. We saw the Mexican squadron make off full tear in every direction, to the delight of my crew. One night we had another adventure. The admiral sent me, with Messrs. Desfosses and Doret, and two engineer officers, Commandant Mangin-Lecreux and Captain Chauchard, to make rather an odd sort of reconnaissance. To understand its nature, my readers must know that the fort of Saint Juan d'Ulloa is set on a great reef, separated from Vera Cruz by a narrow arm of the sea. On the edge of the reef looking towards the town, the walls of the fort, into which huge iron rings for mooring big ships are built, go perpendicularly down into the sea. On the opposite side the glacis runs into a sort of large lake formed by two arms of the reef, level with the surface of the sea. The admiral wanted to know whether the bed of this lake was level, whether it was fordable, and whether, in case of necessity, the glacis and the walls of the fort could be reached from it, after they had been gutted by the big guns.

We started, then, one fine night, reached the belt of reef far away from the fort, landed, and walking through the water, which was half way up to our thighs at the start, we bent our course towards the fort, taking soundings before us, as we went, with long sticks. We found much the same depth everywhere, and a sandy bed covered with short seaweed. The sea had doubtless cast all the sand by degrees over the coral reef, and the currents had levelled it. After a long and tiring march through the water, during which we had to stop and take breath every now and again, whispering to each other, like Raffet's engraving of a similar reconnaissance, "Smoking is forbidden, but you can sit down if you like," we had got quite close to the glacis when we heard a shout of "Alerta!" from the sentries. Commandant Mangin, who was determined to touch the glacis with his hand, was a few steps ahead of us. Suddenly a noise arose within the fort, and in the twinkling of an eye we saw about fifty soldiers appear on the crest of the glacis, with their musket barrels glancing. They rushed down at full speed and sprang into the water after us. We of course made off as fast as ever we could. For some minutes it was a downright trial of speed, and Commandant Mangin was all but caught. But though hostilities were imminent, they had not yet actually begun. So the soldiers did not fire, and they soon tired of pursuing us. We got back without any difficulty, except that great fishes, whose every movement was visible in the phosphorescent water, would rush between our legs. Sharks, perhaps! There were numbers of them in those parts.

The admiral had learnt what he wanted to know. A few days more and the ball opened. The admiral brought the three frigates, Nereide, Gloire, and Iphigenie (this last came back from Havana with her crew completed by that of Duquesne's brig), and the two bomb-vessels, broadside on, and attacked the fort. I had asked leave to share in the fun, and, to my great grief, he had refused it. He considered my ship too small and insignificant. "I can't possibly take you. I have put the frigate Medee aside too, for I don't consider her guns heavy enough." He sent me to watch the firing of the bomb-vessels, and rectify it if necessary.

Before the firing began an incident occurred in which I was directly concerned. As the attack appeared imminent, the ships anchored or moored close to the fort hastened away, and they all passed close to the point where I was posted. At that moment the admiral signalled to me, "Ship in sight looks suspicious; stop her" Ambiguous as our signalling code is, this order seemed evidently to point to seizing one or several of the vessels just leaving the port. Of these there were four, to wit, a Belgian ship, chartered by the admiral to take off the French subjects resident at Vera Cruz if they should be threatened. It could not be that one. Then there was an American vessel, a quasi warship, flying a pennant and armed, what is called a revenue schooner. Thirdly, the British steam-packet Express, also armed and flying a pennant, commanded by a lieutenant in the British Navy, and borne on the Navy List as a ship of war. It could be neither of these two, to my thinking. There only remained a Hamburg vessel, which I ordered to go and anchor under the guns of the corvette Naiade. But at this instant a lieutenant in one of the Nereide's boats came to me and shouted, "The admiral desires you will take the Mexican pilots off all ships going out of port."

"Off the English packet too?" I inquired.

"The admiral gave no details, he said all pilots."

Though it seemed a serious matter to me, considering the touchiness of the English, to take a man off one of their warships, I had no course but to act. The Express had passed astern of me, and I had exchanged friendly greetings with her captain, Lieutenant Cooke, with whom I was acquainted. She was far away already. I hoisted the British flag, and backed my action with a shot across her bow. She brought to, waited for the boat and officer I sent, and the following conversation ensued:—

My Officer.—"My orders are to ask you for your pilot."

Lieutenant Cooke.—"I want him to get to Sacrificios."

My Officer.—"It isn't a mere request I make you."

Lieutenant Cooke.—"If I don't give him up, shall you take him by force?"

My Officer.—"We trust you will give him up with a good grace, and that we need have no recourse to violence."

Lieutenant Cooke.—"That's very well, sir," and the conversation closed with a shake of the hand, once the British commander had cleared himself of responsibility. So the pilot entered my boat, whence the admiral instantly had him fetched. The American revenue schooner gave hers up without making any difficulty, only declaring the admiral responsible for any accident that might happen to the ship for want of a pilot.

I have related this incident of the pilot of the Express in detail because it gave rise to a heated discussion in the British Parliament, during which I was personally taken to task and made responsible for a "violation of international law."

But the admiral gives the signal to open fire, and the cannonade begins. In one moment I am wrapped in smoke. I not only cannot see to watch the firing, I cannot even see where I am going. The lead gives very little depth, and I see the mud disturbed by my keel rising on the surface of the water. I cannot stay where I am, so I crowd on sail and get out of the smoke. I repeat my petition for leave to take part in the fight to the admiral by signal. His heart is touched, and he answered by the welcome word "Yes," and then I go down the line of frigates, all hotly engaged, especially the Iphigenie. Every minute or two I saw splinters of wood flying into the air, cut out by the shot striking her. She had a hundred and eight in her hull, without counting her spars. There were eight in her foremasts alone. It was a perfect miracle everything did not come by the board. That gallant old fellow Parseval kept walking up and down the poop, rubbing his hands whenever a shot struck near him. It was really a fine sight. We waved our hands to each other, and I went and took up my position at the end of the line of frigates. There I stayed, going to and fro under sail, amid a little racket of my own making.

There were hard times within the fort. There had been several explosions already, and it occurred to me to load al my guns with shell and turn them on a sort of tower, called in fortification a cavalier, whence the fire was particularly lively. I had very good gunners, but from my place as commanding officer I could not see where the shots took effect for the smoke. My second officer who was forward, could judge better than me. At the first shot he shouted to me "Good! in the cavalier." The second, "In the cavalier." The third, "In the cavalier." The fourth—nothing was to be seen. A huge cloud of smoke white above, black below, rose from the fort, slowly to a great height above it. When it cleared a little, driven by the wind, there was no cavalier at all. The whole thing had blown up. My crew shouted with delight, and the captain of one of the guns performed a brilliant hornpipe. Was it my shells? Or did the bombs from the bombship do the job? Not one of my brave fellows on the Creole have the shadow of a doubt. Every man has a right to his own opinion.

The fire slackened, and I went to take the admiral's orders. The fort surrendered during the night. The garrison, two thousand strong, evacuated the place, and a convention was concluded with the general in command at Vera Cruz for the abstention of both sides from further hostilities. We then occupied the fort, and the admiral gave me orders to moor the Creole under its walls, and together with Comte de Gourdon, commanding the Cuirassier, to put prize crews on board the vessels of the Mexican Navy lying there. With the exception of one pretty corvette, the Iguana, which has been incorporated with our own navy, these prizes were not worth much.

The unlucky fort was in a terrible condition. Shot and shell and explosions had destroyed everything. A horrible smell rose from the numerous corpses buried everywhere under the rubbish. Wherever battle had not done its work the most revolting filth reigned supreme, and all this under an equatorial sun and in the midst of the yellow fever. The crew of the Creole was at once set to sanitary work, in company with the detachment of engineer sappers attached to the expedition. We dug out the corpses and towed them out to sea, and several very meritorious instances of self-sacrifice occurred which were duly and publicly recognised by the admiral.

My aide-de-camp, M. Desfosses, had drawn up a little code of signals, by means of coloured shirts, with the house of our consul at Vera Cruz, in case of any emergency. Within five days of the taking of the fort we learnt by these signals that the French subjects within the town were in great danger. We immediately sent all our boats to the mole, which was thronged by a distracted crowd of men, women, and children, all of whom we received and transferred to the fort.

At the same time our consul informed us that Santa Anna, who had been appointed generalissimo, had just arrived with troops, that he had declared the convention null and void, &c., &c., and that we must be prepared for anything. The admiral, who was some way off, with the squadron, at the Green Island anchorage, was at once warned. Luckily it was fine. If it had not been, no communication with him would have been practicable The admiral himself came that very night, and took up his quarters on board the Creole. In his usual resolute way, he had at once decided to forestall the enemy's action, and, taking advantage of its surprise, to execute such a coup de main with the feeble means at his disposal, as would make it impossible for the city and forts of Vera Cruz to harm us for some time to come at all events. Our night was therefore spent in preparation. The boats of the squadron came in one after the other without any mishap, bringing all the men who could be landed. Counting the three companies of artillery holding the fort, these amounted to about eleven hundred men. We set out between four and five o'clock in the morning in a thick fog. A portion of the troops disembarked, commanded by Captain Parseval, were to scale the small fort on the left of the town with ladders, and then go round the ramparts, spiking the guns, and destroying everything they came across. Another body, under Captain Laine, was to do the same thing on the right-hand side. And a third column in the centre was to land on the mole, blow up the sea gate, and march on General de Santa Anna's headquarters to try and seize his person. My own company, numbering about sixty men, formed the advance guard of this last column, the bulk of which consisted of the three companies of artillery.

We started then, with our oars muffled to deaden the noise. We could hardly find our way in the twilight, and had to strain our eyes to see the mole through the mist. The great gate of the city was closed, no sentry outside it. Everything was asleep. We landed in dead silence, and the column formed up. The sappers ran on ahead, laid the powder bag, and masked it, then a sergeant of sappers lighted the match and shrank back behind a projecting bit of wall. Bang! The mask of the petard just grazed our heads, and one side of the gate lay on the ground. At the same moment firing began in the direction of Parseval's column. "Forward! God save the King!" We caught sight of the guard at the gate bolting off, and then lost it in the fog. There wasn't a cat in the streets. The noise of the musketry fire had driven in anybody who might have been out. Led by a guide we passed at a swinging pace down a street which brought us to the Mexico gate. Here the fog lifted a little. A few shots and bayonet thrusts got rid of the guard at the gate. Just at this moment a barouche galloped up from within the town. It was drawn by six mules with picturesque-looking postilions, in broad-brimmed hats. It was the barouche which had brought Santa Anna, trying to get into the open country. We shot down two or three of the mules, but the carriage was empty.

We then received a heavy discharge of musketry from about a hundred and fifty soldiers who forthwith disappeared down a side street. They were the headquarters guard. Off we tore after them, and were just in time to see the last of them go into a big house which my guide informed me was the headquarters of the military governor. A huge court with galleries running round it, and above them on the first floor more arcades, adorned with flowers in pots and climbing plants, met our gaze when we entered. A sharp fire poured from the first floor the instant we appeared in the courtyard. Hesitation would be fatal. We must get upstairs and bring those folk to their senses. A narrow stairway was the only road. Well, every man must own to some weakness! When I saw that staircase, up which I should have to go first, and receive the first volley alone when I got to the top, I wavered for a moment, and waving my sword, I shouted, "Volunteers to the front!" My quartermaster, a Parisian, rushed to the staircase, and the sight brought me back to a sense of my duty. I rushed after him. We raced against each other, and I had the satisfaction of getting to the top a good first, followed indeed by my whole company. There was nothing so very terrible about it after all. At first we found ourselves in a sort of vestibule; an ill-directed fire, which wounded two of our officers only, pouring on us through the doors and windows. Then each of us set to work on his own account. A second boatswain, of the name of Jadot, and I threw ourselves against a door and broke it in with our shoulders. When it gave, I was shot forward by my men pushing on behind me, and hurled into a room full of smoke and Mexican soldiers. One of them, in a white uniform and red epaulettes (I see his straight Indian hair and wicked eye yet), was aiming at me with the barrel of his musket close to my face. I had just time to say to myself, "I'm done for." But no, there was no shot, the gun fell on my feet, and I saw my gentleman roll under a sofa carrying the sword with which Penaud, my lieutenant, had run him through as quick as lightning, stuck between his ribs.

I believe I rid myself of another great big fellow next, and then, the first start having been given, there was a general rout, and I found myself in another room at the end of which I saw several officers, one a general, standing together very calmly, with their swords sheathed. I rushed forward with the boatswain Jadot, to protect them from my men, who were somewhat excited, and the fight was over. The name of the general, a tall fair handsome fellow, was Arista. In later days he became President of the Mexican Republic. He surrendered his sword to me, and I had him taken downstairs, and left him in the hands of artillery Commandant Colombel, who sent him to the fort. As for Santa Anna, we could not find him, though his bed was still warm. We took his epaulettes, and his commanding officer's baton, and Jadot the boatswain, who had lost his own straw hat in the scuffle, put on his gold tipped one.

I lost no time in quitting the house, which was full of blood, and where I was sickened by the sight of the bodies of two wretched women who had been killed by the fire through the doors Once outside I met Captain Laine, coming by the ramparts, and carrying out his task of destruction as he went. He urged me to march with my company on a point in the town where Parseval's column was keeping up a steady fire, keeping an eye meanwhile on the churches, the towers of which were reported to be armed with cannon. I set out on this true "course au clocher" and presently got to a large building from which we were fired upon.

We entered. It was the hospital. There was another shindy in a big room on the ground floor, full of sick, standing up or kneeling on their beds, scantily covered with red blankets, and all shouting "Gracia!" "Mercy!" It was a horrible sight. All the poor wretches were more or less far gone in yellow fever. We went in at one door and hurried out at the other, and at last we got into a long straight street, at the end of which we saw a large house with musketry fire crackling from every window like a great set piece of fireworks. This huge and solid building, set astride on the ramparts, with doors on to the town, and doors into the country, was called the "la Merced barracks. Full of troops as it was, and with reinforcements constantly coming in from outside, it had stopped Parseval's column ever since the morning, and was soon to stop Laine's as well. One great door faced the street up which we were going. Of course it was shut. We brought a gun to bear on it, and sent a shell into it. Amid the smoke of the discharge, mingled with the sort of fog that was still hanging, we thought the door was broken in, and rushed forward. But when we got near we found the cursed thing was intact, and we were forced to throw ourselves back into the side streets for shelter, for in one instant the whole head of our column, six or seven being officers, had been killed or wounded. We then set to work, sappers, artillerymen, sailors, and all, to throw up a barricade across the street, so as to bring up a battery of guns, and break that door right down before beginning the attack afresh. But just on this the admiral arrived and the chiefs in command took counsel with him. Considering half our crews were on shore and that the slightest change in the weather might prevent their getting back on board ship, and considering too that the admiral's object had been attained, he gave orders for us to re-embark. The return journey offered no difficulty, except at the very last moment, when nobody was left on the mole but the admiral and a few officers. Then, a great sound of cheering and of warlike music was heard in the town. It was Santa Anna coming to drive the Frenchmen into the sea. Out he came, on horseback, on to the mole, at the head of his men, but the launches from the frigates which were still lying on each side of the jetty fired grape shot into the head of the column, and laid everybody low,—Santa Anna and the rest of them. Some fanatics rushed to the end of the mole in spite of this, to try and shoot the admiral point blank, and he was in great danger. His coxswain and the midshipman on duty, Halna Dufretay (an admiral and a senator when he died), covered him with their own bodies and were both severely wounded. His secretary, who was with him, and who carried a double-barrelled rifle, killed two Mexicans in two shots. A great friend of mine was killed there too, a charming young fellow who had a great future before him—Chaptal, a first-class cadet. It was known that I was much attached to him and I was given his aiguillettes (which I sent to his family) as a remembrance of him. When I got back to the Creole, bringing two of my midshipmen, Magnier de Maisonneuve and Gervais, with me, both severely wounded, the admiral sent me orders to fire a shell into the "la Merced" barracks every five minutes. This closed the day of my baptism of fire. The military operations of the campaign were over. The fort of Saint Juan d'Ulloa remained in our hands in pledge. It was the diplomats' business to complete the work. The admiral dismissed the greater number of his ships and soon sent me off to Havana, which place I did not reach without falling in with two of those violent squalls which are called norte in the Gulf of Mexico. I was to lie there on the watch, ready to attack privateers if the Mexican Government should resort to that form of warfare—the fleetness of the Creole fitting her specially for such service. Meanwhile my visit was very pleasant to me, after the horrors of Sacrificio and the yellow fever. The commander of an English corvette, the Satellite, gave a dinner to M. de Parseval, two other captains and myself, which was so cordial that towards dessert one of the captains, who shall be nameless, passed his hand gently across his brow and, murmuring "I don't feel very well," sank straightway underneath the table. We took him by the legs and shoulders, Parseval and the English captain and I, but Parseval and the Englishman laughed so much that we had some trouble in getting him to a bed, on which we laid him and where he slept till morning. I know not whether it was for this wound and feat of arms that his native town raised a statue in his honour.

Of course I sought and found all my former Havanese acquaintances. One alone was invisible, the lady of the cigarette. In vain I placed myself night after night before her box. Nobody there! In vain I paid visits to houses I knew she frequented. The covers were all blank. I was sorely grieved. So then I bethought me of a stratagem. The Creole set sail hurriedly, with much bustle, to go and look for a Mexican ship, reported, so they said, to be at sea. As soon as the day closed in I made all sail for the port, and leaving my second officer in command, with orders to pick me up at four o'clock next morning at a certain distance and in a certain line from the harbour lights, I jumped into my boat and went ashore. With a bound I was in the theatre. There she was! And I laugh still when I think of her grandparents' faces when they saw me appear; but they raised the quarantine forthwith, and when, soon after, I gave a ball on board the Iphigenie, that charming young lady was its chief ornament. Beautiful and quaint that ball was, breezy with victory and duty well performed, the glorious scars of the old Iphigenie mingling with the splendour of the flowers and the lights.

After staying a month at Havana, as there was no question of pirates, I was ordered to take the Creole back to Brest, where I arrived in March, 1839. My monkey was the first to see and point out the land from the top of the rigging. I had hardly got into the roadstead before the maritime prefect boarded me to tell me I was made a knight of the Legion of Honour. The worthy admiral insisted on receiving me as such before the guard, which had been turned out. He drew his sword to give me the accolade, and made me a little speech, under the fire of which I did not flinch, though he was deeply moved.

CHAPTER VI

1839

Scarcely had I landed from the Creole when I received the distressing news of the death of my sister Marie, Duchess of Wurtemberg. It was the first mourning in our family, the first break in that numerous circle of tenderly attached brothers and sisters. I adored my sister, who was a most remarkable woman, witty, as passionate in her antipathies as in her affections, an artist to the very tips of her fingers. Her death was a deep sorrow to me, and it saddened my short stay among my own people. A short stay it was indeed, for I only came ashore in March, and June found me at the entrance of the Dardanelles, attached to the staff of Admiral Lalande, commanding our squadron in the Levant.

I had rather a funny little adventure on my way to take up my duty. I had asked the then Minister of the Interior, M. Duchatel, to give orders that there should be no official reception when I passed through Toulon—no firing of guns, nor authorities waiting at the city gates, nor troops drawn up, all that wearisome and commonplace ceremonial which I had been through I know not how many times already. The minister had given his promise, and, strong in his assurance, I was just getting there quietly in my travelling-carriage, when the sight of a mounted gendarme, who galloped off the moment he caught sight of us just after we got through the pass of Ollioules, made me suspect some treachery or other. Without a second's hesitation I jumped out of the carriage, the moment the gendarme was out of sight, and desiring my valet to go on with it, struck across the fields on foot to the harbour. I had not been mistaken, for soon I heard twenty-one guns greeting the entrance of my empty vehicle into Toulon, doubtless amid what the stereotyped official phrase would call, and with good reason this time, a scene of indescribable enthusiasm.

Important events were occurring in the east in rapid succession at the time I joined Lalande's squadron. The recommencement of the struggle between ancient Turkey and that youthful Egypt which the genius of Mehemet Ali had created, had just ended in the final defeat of the Turks in the battle of Nezib—a defeat which was closely followed by the death of Sultan Mahmoud, the last of the determined autocrats of the race of Othman. Action on the part of the European fleet might arise at any moment, owing to these complications and the rivalries thereby excited between England and Russia—great Eastern powers both of them. Our sole preoccupation therefore during our cruise in the Dardanelles was to get our ships into such condition that they might make a good show in the event of anything of the kind occurring. I have related elsewhere how we succeeded, under the powerful will of Admiral Lalande, in reconstituting such a fighting fleet as we had never possessed since the Revolution swept away at one fell swoop the whole of the navy of Louis XVI., with its body of first-class officers, and all that collection of traditions both as to discipline and knowledge which it had gradually acquired.

The admiral's great merit lay in reconstituting these traditions, which have taken deep root and are carefully treasured still. And the curious thing, the peculiar trait, about him was that, though he desired certain results, he would have nothing to do with the means to attaining them. This state of warlike efficiency was not obtained without trouble. Constantly under sail, and overtaxed with rough and unaccustomed forms of drill as the crews were, demoralized too by accidents—men killed or arms and legs broken—the result insisted on by the chief in command was only reached by treating them with extreme severity. On board the Jena, the flagship, corporal punishment—nowadays found useless, and therefore very properly abolished—was of daily occurrence. But the admiral ignored it, never would have it even mentioned to him. He left all that to his flag captain, my friend Bruat, a most energetic officer. I never heard one word of reprimand from Admiral Lalande's lips, and once I saw him get into a fury with one of his captains, who had appealed to his disciplinary authority. The scene is worth describing.

This worthy captain (his name was Danican) commanded the ship Jupiter, on which I had taken passage from Toulon to join the squadron, and one of my earliest duties was to present the new comer, with his staff, to the admiral. These gentlemen stood in a circle in the great cabin round Captain Danican, armed to the teeth, cocked hat in hand, and his sword-belt buckled high up round his little body. There they waited. "Pere Danican,' as he was familiarly called, a veteran sailor, whose name is borne by one of the streets in St. Malo, had the most splendid service record, with this item in particular, that he had been reported as killed in a fight with the English. He had been struck in the belly by grape-shot, lost consciousness, and laid out with the rest of the dead, of whom a list was being made before throwing them overboard one after the other, when the battle was over They were actually swinging him backwards and forwards to heave him over the side, when one of his comrades called out, "Hold on. Let Danican alone. We'll give him a funeral"—to which ceremony the old Breton owed his life, though it did not soften the by no means placid character of the strict old disciplinarian.

And accordingly, something in his eye, when the admiral came skipping in smilingly, with a commonplace "Good-day, Danican" "Good-day gentlemen," warned me we were going to have a scene. "Admiral," he shouted in a voice of thunder, "I have the honour to present the staff of the ship Jupiter to you—and I take this opportunity, Admiral, of telling you that it would be impossible to be more dissatisfied with these gentlemen than I am!" This tirade concluded by a violent wave of his cocked hat, while the officers stood motionless and stared at the deck. A thunderbolt falling out of heaven would not have startled the admiral more than this speech. I never saw any man so put out of countenance. He shuffled his feet, gave a forced laugh, and not finding anything to say, stammered some disconnected words, "I trust . . . my dear. . . Danican …. a regard for duty . . . these gentlemen ….!" We put a stop to the distressing scene by low bows of dismissal, and everybody went off in a rage—the officers with their captain, the captain with the admiral for not supporting discipline, and the admiral with everybody, including, it may be, his own self.

Nobody was satisfied, which is indeed the invariable consequence of weakness, for the love of vulgar popularity was the weakness of our eminent chief, so deeply respected on other accounts. This same weakness caused him to end his days as a Deputy of the most colourless opinions.

I cruised for six months outside the Dardanelles, first with the Iena and afterwards with the Belle-Poule, which had joined the squadron and of which I had been given command—six months which offered nothing in the way of wild gaiety, beyond the routine of my duty. True, we saw the sun rise over Mount Ida every morning, but we never saw the shadow of a goddess. The utmost we did in the short breathing spaces between our drills and cruises between Cape Baba and the Isles of Tenedos, Lemnos and Imbro, was to land at the slaughter-house of the contractor to the squadron, irreverently styled Charognopolis, for an excursion to the ruins of Troy, to shoot snipe in the marshes of Simois, or get a hare on the tomb of Patroclus.

This monotony was broken, however, by the appearance of the Turkish fleet, which we saw issuing, forty strong, from the Dardanelles, sailing along in confusion, driving before a strong breeze—altogether a most stately sight.

We took station abreast of the squadron, saluting the Capitan Pasha, who on his side ordered his fleet to heave to—a manoeuvre which was performed amid a fine confusion. A steam launch at once came towards us. It bore the second in command of the fleet, Osman Pasha, sent by the Capitan Pasha to request an interview with Admiral Lalande. He consented and boarded the Turkish ship, taking me with him.

During our passage to the Capitan Pasha's flag-ship, Osman Pasha led us below, closed all the cabin doors with an air of mystery, and with the help of a young Armenian dragoman he told us a long story, which I will sum up in a few words. Constantinople, so he said, was being laid waste by fire and sword. On the death of Sultan Mahmoud, Kosrew Pasha, who was no better than a Russian agent, had seized the reins of power. He stuck at nothing, so long as he kept them. The real Turks, the faithful Mussulmans, were losing their heads by the hundred; the head of the faith himself, the Sheik el Islam, had not been spared. He refused to consecrate the new Sultan until he wore the venerated turban of Othman upon his head instead of the revolutionary fez, and for this he was strangled at midnight, with great pomp it is true, and amid the salvos of artillery due to his exalted rank (a poor consolation, I thought to myself!). The lives of Osman Pasha himself and of his chief, the Capitan Pasha, hung by a thread. Wherefore they had both resolved, instead of fighting against Mehemet Ali, as everybody believed they would, to make common cause with him, so as to unite all the Mussulman strength in one single alliance, and make one of those concentrated efforts which have been the dream of every period and every country which has been torn by revolution. In plain English, the two chiefs in command were carrying the unconscious fleet into an act of defection which was intended to save their own heads. They wanted the admiral's approbation, which he refused. Then they asked for a French warship to go with them as a sort of lifeboat, which he promised them, and above all, they begged that no word, glance, or gesture of ours, during the visit we were about to pay, might betray the secret confided to us. We then boarded the Capitan Pasha's flagship, where we had a reception that was truly oriental in its mingled pomp and duplicity—we alone, amidst the crowd of courtiers, officers, and foreign representatives surrounding this commander-in-chief, about to turn traitor, being possessed of his secret. Not to mention that as we went along the gun decks, we saw the Turkish gunners smoking their pipes beside the heaps of cartridges piled between the guns. A highly oriental sight also, and far from tranquillizing!

By evening the Turkish fleet had disappeared over the horizon, and the only other recollection my memory holds of this period is that of a reconnaissance along the northern coast of the Dardanelles, and the peninsula between Gallipoli and the Gulf of Saron, which reconnaissance I made with several other officers, under colour of a sporting expedition in a Turkish boat called a sakoleve and with a view to an ultimate military occupation of the peninsula. Mayhap the notes made during this expedition were of use when Gallipoli was occupied in 1854, at the beginning of the Crimean War.

In the course of the autumn, I beheld Constantinople, that most wonderful of landscapes, for the first time in my life. And to begin with, the thing which struck me most were the sunsets over the huge city. Nothing can give any idea of how magnificent they are, with the towers and thousand mosques of Stamboul standing out like a mysterious vision in the misty golden haze, an enchanted city of aerial palaces hanging in mid-air. In those days the soft evening mists I speak of were ideal in their transparence, which no smoke ever dimmed, for the factories and steamboats which now hang their black plumes over Constantinople were then unknown. Instead of steamers, there were only those delightful caiques, laden with brightly-dressed passengers, gliding silently along in their thousands, and leaving as it were tracks of glistening spangles in their wake. Nothing can ever efface that sight from my recollection.

Among the caiques, which are quite peculiar to the Bosphorus, was one I met many a time, and which was indeed well known to everybody. It belonged to a sister of the late Sultan Mahmoud, celebrated in Constantinople for her love affairs—a sort of Marguerite de Bourbon, for whose fleeting favours several people had paid with their heads. Three oarsmen, splendid white-skinned fellows with long fair moustaches, and athletic frames scarcely concealed beneath their white drawers and striped silk gauze shirts, sent their mistress's caique flying through the water. She was a tall woman, with piercing eyes and an aristocratic air—always seated between two lovely maids of honour. I say lovely, for the Turkish woman, when she is unobserved, when she knows her own beauty and meets eyes whose admiration she desires to rouse, always finds means of permitting her veil the most delightful if indiscreet revelations. Consequently I was always on the look-out to try and get a sight of the Sultana's caique. It must be remembered I was just off a cruise after long months spent in warlike solitude on board ship. So, though St. Sophia, with its size and its legend, had struck me as being the most profoundly devotional edifice I had ever seen—an impression which the sight of St. Peter's at Rome and of the Cathedral of Seville has never removed—my attention and curiosity were much more drawn to the earthly representatives of the houris promised to the faithful, than to the monuments of the Faith.

The curiosity I speak of led me on a certain Friday to the Sweet Waters of Asia. I found the loveliest of scenes lying before my eyes that delicious afternoon towards the end of August. Imagine an immense meadow, broken up by clumps of trees, sloping down to the swift blue waters of the Bosphorus, on the other side of which ran wooded hills dotted with mosques and minarets and gaily painted country houses. Close to the edge of the water stands a kiosk, and an elegantly-carved marble fountain. And around the kiosk is a sort of promenade shaded by huge plane-trees. Under these plane-trees a hundred, or thereabouts, gaily adorned and plumed arabas, now standing unharnessed in the meadow, had deposited an army of the smartest Turkish ladies. Some of them sat beside the water, others round the fountain, others again followed little pashas mounted on ponies led by eunuchs. What with the richness of the landscape, the truly oriental light, and the variety and splendour of the dresses, the whole sight was really fairy-like. We were very desirous of studying it in detail, and at close quarters. A line of soldiers cut off the portion of the grove of plane-trees reserved to women only. But our ambassadress and her daughters, who had come at the same time as ourselves, had a right to enter it, and we hurried after them. At first the officer commanding the guard tried to stop us. However, after a colloquy with the dragoman of our Embassy, he contented himself with begging us to go through quickly. The ladies of the Embassy having seated themselves among the Turkish ladies, we did likewise, and, in spite of the angry glances of the eunuchs, by dint of mutual curiosity and a little flirtation we spent several hours quite delightfully. Lots of pretty women, and forbidden fruit into the bargain. No more veils, no more feredjes. We could scrutinize the exquisite costumes at our leisure.

When I say "No more veils" I ought rather to say nothing but an excuse for a veil—a gauze chin covering leaving nose and eyes and eyebrows bare, and so transparent across the mouth, that where that mouth was a pretty one, to cover it at all was but an extra piece of coquetry.

All these women were chatting, eating, amusing themselves, some sitting, some lying down, going and coming, hanging about near the ladies of the Embassy, to examine the details of their dresses too. If instantaneous photography had existed in those days, what an infinity of charming and picturesque groups might have been snatched. I did venture to make one or two rapid sketches on the sly; but there were too many eyes upon me, and besides it was an abuse of the toleration which was being shown us. I could not tear myself away from this most exceptional sight, which will never be seen again, now the Turkish ladies have adopted European fashions—boots and petticoats, and stays, deceiving stays!

But every good thing comes to an end, and besides, as the day wore on, a great cloud of smoke rose over Constantinople, and steadily increased in volume. It was evidently a fire. In that country, where all the buildings except the mosques and a house here and there are wooden—a fire is a terribly serious thing. Was it Stamboul, or was it Pera, and with Pera our hotel, that was blazing? Carried along by the sinewy strokes of our caiqchis, and aided by the current, we went swiftly down the Bosphorus, landed at Dolma-Batche, and rapidly climbed the Cemetery Hill. Thence I saw a striking sight. The whole quarter below, called Kassim Pasha, lying between Pera and Galata, was in flames. Over three hundred houses were sparks, already burnt out. The wooden houses, kindled by falling crackled like faggots, and we could see the conflagration spreading like a spot of oil. Fifty houses away from those actually on fire, people were turning out, throwing doors and windows and furniture into the streets, without warning of any kind. Drawing nearer the scene of the fire, we came upon a troop of vile-looking fellows, the rioters of our country, grafted onto the Mussulman fanatic—kavasses were raining blows with their sticks on this crowd of volunteers (or thieves); firemen, bare-armed and turbanless, hurried along, with their fire pumps on their shoulders, shouting shrilly and knocking over people as they went; troops kept coming up from all quarters, horsemen trotted up at full speed, and packs of terrified dogs tore wildly through the streets, howling with pain. It was a singular sight indeed.

Seeing the flames kept gaining ground, and were already licking the first houses in the European quarter in Pera, I sent orders for the crews of two of our ships, anchored at Tophana, to land, slipped on my uniform, and put myself at their head, resolved to try and save the Frank town. Luckily it was calm, or the attempt would have been quite hopeless. But the sun had set red, and that presaged wind. There was no time to be lost. I hurried up with a hundred and fifty sailors. The first houses on each side of the street of Pera were in flames, but a spot was pointed out to me, twelve or fifteen houses off, where, the street narrowing between a stone mosque and some gardens, one might hope to clear a space to stop the fire, by pulling down the five or six intervening houses. I had no hesitation in giving the order for this, my men set eagerly to work, and all the active portion of the Frank population of Pera were seconding our efforts, when one of the generals of the garrison, Selim Pasha, came up with his men, and fell into a fury at the sight of what we were doing. I forthwith seized him by the hand and dragged him, the dragoman of the Embassy, M. Lauxerrois, following us, to the top of the minaret of the mosque. Here I said to the dragoman, "Do show this fool of a pasha that the clearing we are making is our only chance of saving Pera;" and as M. Lauxerrois began to translate this into Turkish, "Don't trouble," said Selim Pasha, in very good French, "I understand." I begged his pardon for the epithet, but he had passed suddenly already from rage to enthusiasm. He tore down stairs four steps at a time, and I shortly saw him without his coat, in trousers and list braces, helping us to pull down the houses, and setting an example of the utmost activity to his own men.

Down came the houses, one after the other. Our sailors behaved splendidly. They climbed up on to the roofs and fastened ropes, to which we harnessed the whole of the population, while the frameworks were being sawn through below till the whole thing came down with a crash. Indeed I saw one house come down with five or six sailors perched on its roof. I rushed forward in horror, thinking they must all be maimed or killed. Not a bit of it! Only a few hands and feet torn by nails! Truly God watches over the brave! The fall of one Turkish house caused a pretty scene! The proprietor was determined to prevent it. He struck and swore at us,—pulling out his beard. The anticipation of the destruction of his property drove him wild. Finding nobody paid any attention to him, he called his women folk to his assistance. They hastened up like furies, at first. Then, changing their tactics, they cast themselves on my officers, clasping them in their arms, covering them with kisses and caresses, and trying "the power of their charms on them in every imaginable way. It was a curious sight truly to watch by the light of the flames, and amidst such a cacophony of races, a handful of sailors stopping the passers-by, Turks as well as the rest, setting them to work, snatching the fire-pumps from the firemen, carrying soldiers and generals too along with them, and in fact ruling the roast in the very middle of Constantinople.

At last, thanks to the fire-pump and thanks to our own selves, the fire stopped just where we had fought it. I went off then towards the cemetery, where it was still burning, and where the sight was most singular. An immense crowd of people, the whole population of the burnt-out quarters of the town, in every imaginable costume, and silent like true fatalists, herded on the hill and the plateau, together with whatever had been saved out of the disaster. Under the red light of the conflagration, the flames of which shot up in great jets into the skies, the huge bivouac made a splendid picture, reminding one of the works of the English painter Martyn, the Last Judgment, Belshezzar's Feast, and so forth. Stamboul, with her forest of minarets and her thousands of lights, stood out on the horizon against a lovely starry sky, and in the foreground the Seraskier sat in a big armchair, surrounded by an immense staff, seeming very philosophically resigned to the catastrophe over which he appeared to be presiding. In one hand he held his pipe, and in the other a slice of melon. We were already well acquainted, and when he saw me coming up, all blackened with smoke and ashes, he roared with laughter. But he gave me a slice of his melon, and very grateful it was to my parched throat.

The fire was under control—that is to say, there was only one block of houses left burning, and this had no communication with either Galata or Pera. But the disaster was a great one. Over fifteen hundred houses had been burnt. The exact number was never known. First because nobody counted them—that would have been quite contrary to oriental indifference and fatalism—and then because it would have been excessively difficult to make them out, in the confused ash heap which had taken their place. The number of families reduced to destitution must have been very considerable, but individual charity is very liberal amongst the Mussulmans, as indeed amongst all people possessed of religious faith. I got home, at one o'clock in the morning, worn out. Shortly afterwards the wind rose. If it had begun to blow a little earlier, nothing would have remained of Pera, of the Frankish town, nor of the Embassies.

A very few days had gone by when I was bidden to quite a different sort of entertainment. After the disease of adopting the Gentile's trousers and frock-coat, yet another disease seized upon Turkey—that of having a constitution in imitation of the constitutions in vogue amongst the Giaours, and the Sultan had the kindness to ask me to see one proclaimed. Concerning the constitution itself, which bore the altogether Turkish name of "Hatti Schereef de Gulhane," I will say nothing. First of all because I never read it, and secondly because I have been told it was "liberal," that is to say, fitted, like M. Prudhomme's sword, to organize government, and if necessary to destroy it, this last more frequently—and that is quite enough for me. But the proclamation ceremony was likely to be curious. So on the appointed day I started forth in full uniform, to be present at it. It was to take place within the Seraglio. The first incident in the day was that my boat met the Russian Minister's caique at the landing-stage, and as neither of our coxswains would yield to the other there was an awful bump, which damaged the dignity of our attitudes by knocking us down like card houses. Then we had to ride rather frisky horses in Turkish saddles, and this, what with our cocked hats, dangling swords, and unstrapped trousers, was yet another trial to the dignity of some of my sailor comrades. Nevertheless, we got without hindrance to a kiosk, the upper story of which was to be occupied by the Sultan and his harem, and the lower by the diplomatic corps. A special window had been reserved for me. Bands began to play, loud shouts were heard. The Sultan was coming, on horseback, preceded by a crowd of officers and pashas, in full dress. Between him and them, dressed in a sort of blue blouse with epaulettes, hobbled a little lame man with a big red head, a white beard, and a spiteful-looking face. It was Kosrew Pasha, the Grand Vizier, he who had caused so many heads to fall, the strangler of the Sheik el Islam. He bowed low several times as he passed me. After him came the Sultan's pages, handsome young fellows, carrying halberts and wearing gilt shakos with immense plumes of peacocks' feathers, aigrettes, or birds of Paradise. In the centre of them was the Sultan himself, almost hidden by their plumes. He kept his head thrown back and wore a black cloak trimmed with diamonds and a fez with an aigrette adorned with the same stones. He dismounted. The Grand Vizier and the new Sheik el Islam held up the corners of his cloak, while a hideous negro, with hanging lips and haunches like a woman, covered with embroideries, advanced to receive him. This was Kislar Aga, chief eunuch and governor of the harem.

And now everybody has come, "Let the sport begin." From my window I look out on a broad space, surrounded by beautiful umbrella pines and sloping gently down to the sea. Beyond is the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus and the pretty village of Kadi-Keni. This space is full of troops, twelve splendid battalions of the Imperial Guard, Lancers and Artillery. These form a circle, in the centre of which rises a pulpit covered with some yellow stuff, and around it the pashas and the whole body of Ulemas and Mollahs, wearing the ancient costume—coloured kaftans, and big white or green turbans crossed with broad gold bands—shortly collect. The chief dervishes and the heads of all the religious sects are there also. All this clergy stands there motionless, impassive, with lowered eyes, not over pleased, I fancy, at bottom. Then the crowd makes a rush, which infuriates the Grand Vizier. He makes towards it, lifting his little leg very high and waving his handkerchief. At the very sight of him everybody flees, and retires humbly within bounds. Then the manuscript of the Hatti-Schereef is brought to him. He carries it respectfully to his lips and forehead, and hands it over to Reschid Pasha, who ascends the pulpit and reads it out. That over and finished midst the deepest silence, an Imaum takes Reschid Pasha's place in the pulpit. He stretches out his arms. All present do the same, the soldiers stretching out but one on account of their weapons, and he intones the prayer for the Sultan, which every one repeats in chorus. After which every man passes his hand across his eyes and beard and the troops shout "Allah" three times, with unequalled fervour and passion. Hundreds of cannon are fired in all directions, and the beautiful sight, lighted up by the most brilliant of sunshine, has come to an end. The Sultan has departed. The Sultana Valide sends me a posse of officials, bearing cakes and sweetmeats. I take leave of Kosrew Pasha and depart also, thinking sadly that if this Turkish people, so brave on the field of battle and apparently still so devoted to its sovereign, and so firm in its religious faith, is truly, in spite of all, a rapidly decaying nation, the miserable rag of paper read out this day will certainly not save it.

The Sultan gave me an uninteresting audience in the pretty Top-Kapou Palace—now burnt down, I believe—which stood on the extreme end of the Seraglio point. I had visited the palace, which was then unoccupied, with a very witty Pasha who spoke French admirably well—and whom I had known in Paris—Namick Pasha, commander of the Imperial Guard. We had gone over all the rooms in the harem, and this visit, with the explanations and commentaries given me by such a guide, had been most interesting. One room was a perfect gem, and I cannot resist the pleasure of describing it. It was very large, circular, the floor covered with very fine matting. All round it was a little raised platform, covered with divans. The walls were entirely formed of great mirrors, in splendid rococo frames of carved wood, gilt. It was evidently the room in which the harem festivals were held. Between the mirrors were eight little doors, every one leading to a small apartment for one woman, fitted with mirrors and divans and each hung with a different stuff. To complete the whole thing, there was a passage leading to a bath-house, consisting of several very pretty marble bath-rooms. The master of all this must have had a good time! All sorts of details were given me while I was there. The Sultan had no legitimate wives except those who bear children—so the competition may be imagined. Mahmoud had had thirty-five children, but only five were left, two sons and three daughters. The rest had died in infancy. The actual Sultan, Abdul-Medjid, who was very young at the time of my visit, had only one wife with child, but his mother, the Sultana Valide, had just presented him with six young ladies, said to be charming, as an encouragement. Besides this, every year, at the Feast of Bairam, the Sheik el Islam gives the Sultan a beautiful slave to whom he is compelled by the Law and the Prophet to give proofs of his affection, that very day, on pain of incurring the wrath of Allah. Only nobody knows whether Allah, up in his celestial home, has reason to be pleased or not.

Having still a few spare days before I rejoined the squadron, I took advantage of an Austrian steamer to cross the Black Sea as far as Trebizond, whence I gazed admiringly on the splendid chain of the snowy Caucasian peaks. I should much have liked to get as far as Erzeroum, in the heart of Asia Minor. But as time failed me I contented myself with travelling at full speed for one day, along the road leading thither, with the Tartar or postman who carried the mails, so as to obtain some idea of the country. When I say road I speak figuratively. It was not even a path. It was a mere track across the woods and rocks and ravines of that mountainous region, but along that track the Tartar galloped imperturbably, never stopping however terrible the ground might be. When the post-carrying experience was over, my comrades and I were more done up than we had ever been in our lives. The least weary of the party was the son of our consul at Trebizond, Maxime Outrey, a charming lad, brought up and dressed a l'orientale, whom we had taken with us as our dragoman, and who vied with the Tartar in speed and boldness the whole day long like one possessed. On the way back from Trebizond our steamer was crammed with passengers coming from every corner of Asia, the strangest medley of Circassians, Persians, and cat merchants, and one pasha. I bought a splendid Angora during the passage, and the pasha bought himself a wife. The whole of the negotiations for the latter acquisition, the discussions, the examination and verification of the merchandize, took place in our cabin, and very amusing it was. The young lady belonged to a Tcherkess family which had eluded the Russian cruisers, and come alongside of us at Trebizond in big boats with triangular sails, spotted like a tiger's hide. The head of the family, a tall old man, was going to Mecca, to seek a cure there for the horrible agony caused by a Russian bullet which was still in his head. His sons, handsome fellows in splendid costumes, with fine features and shoulders broad out of all proportion to waists that were like girls', were going with him. There were a dozen women besides, and do you know, my reader, what that pack of women was? Letters of credit, bank notes, by means of which the old man with his wound expected to pay the expenses of his journey! Having no cash, he had brought the twelve best-looking girls in his family with him. He had just disposed of one on board, and he reckoned on doing the same with the rest all along the road. We soon made the acquaintance of the party. The girls were huddled together on deck in a sort of cage or trelliswork, where they remained, drenched by the sea, four days and three nights, without their chatter and their outbursts of merriment ever ceasing for a single instant. They all dreamt of becoming the wives of sultans or pashas and of living in palaces. As the old man fed them with nothing but millet, to fatten them, we used to bring them our dessert after each meal, and so we were soon good friends. Thanks to some trifling service I rendered the old man, he consented to bringing the prettiest girl into my cabin, and allowing her to unveil, so that I might do her picture. I thought the model and her costume both equally lovely, but the sitting was a very short one. Whether it was shyness or sea-sickness I know not. But she complained of the heat, began to cry, and I had to send her away.

I merely passed through Constantinople on my way back. It was the middle of Ramadan, all the mosques lighted up at night, and the women promenading in the square of the Seraskier in the daytime—a regular persil. I went there one day with Paul Daru, Lavalette and Cyrus Gerard, all members of the embassy M. de Sercey was taking to Persia. They came from Paris and told me the news from there. In my turn I told them all about the battle of Nezib, a very interesting description of which I had had the good luck to hear from two young Prussian officers, eye-witnesses of it, one of whom became the celebrated Marshal von Moltke; and also all I learnt about the Eastern question on my visits to the Embassies, to Therapia and Buyukdere. There I had met all the chief members of the diplomatic corps, which consisted during my stay of two French ambassadors, succeeding each other, both of them instability personified—one was Admiral Roussin, a distinguished sailor, the other M. de Pontois, a professional diplomat—both of them very kind, but neither, as a result of their instability, having any real influence. Beside them two men of tenacity and steadfastness admirably personified two great powers. Lord Ponsonby, a tall, blunt, haughty, unsociable old man, represented British perseverance and Lord Palmerston's prejudices, while M. de Boutenieff, a charming, kindly, and witty man, liked by everybody and making game somewhat of all, stood for the great destinies of the Russian people, and the mighty will of the Emperor Nicholas. An armed Russian intervention in the Bosphorus was no longer in question, but it was unforeseen as yet that Russia and England would agree to ruin the work of Mehemet Ali, the last strength in reality of the Mussulman world, and that the whole of Europe would join these two powers in their willing alliance for the isolation and humiliation of France, revolutionary France! No more allies for us, since we have gone into that mill! We sacrificed 200,000 men in the Crimea. What did we get by it? The garter for Napoleon III. One word or deed of sympathy for all our reverses? Not the shadow of one! Revolutionary France has been asked for help. But none has ever been given her. Would it be rendered her now? God grant it!

CHAPTER VII

1840-1841

I left Constantinople with a farewell glance, full of pleasant memories, over its forest of minarets, over the Bosphorus and the smiling Princes Islands, and at the snowy peak too of Mount Olympus, which, with my taste for mountaineering, I had climbed but a short time previously. An interesting ascent it had been, first of all through that Eastern Switzerland around the pretty town of Broussa, and then over the snow and rocky debris to the summit, whence a matchless panorama is to be seen. The squadrons, one French and one English, forming a strong force of ships, were at that time on guard at the mouth of the Dardanelles. I went back to my duty in ours, which was still as active and incessantly drilled as ever. The English squadron, commanded by Sir Robert Stopford, a handsome white-haired old man, was less restless. But the fleets dispersed before long. Ours sailed for Smyrna, whence the Admiral sent the Belle-Poule under my command, and the Triton, Captain Hamelin, back to France. We sailed in company, and after a somewhat lengthy winter passage, we got to Toulon only to find ourselves put into thirty-five days of quarantine. Five and thirty days of prison and solitude and uselessness imposed on a crew without a single sick man, which was daily inspected by its officers as to cleanliness, whose health was looked after by three doctors, and which had just gone through the best and safest of purifying operations—a long sea voyage. Five and thirty days during which 400 men ate and drank and lived at the expense of the National Budget without doing the smallest work for the country—the whole thing inflicted by the Sanitary Board—a purely local and irresponsible body, with its eternal round of red tape. A good thing it is indeed that such a monstrous and intolerable abuse should have been abolished! The only reason it lasted so long is, that it brought in a revenue to the members of the board. To begin with, they filled the inn they kept under the title of "Lazaretto" by force, and then they sold the disinfectants. "Gentlemen," the sanitary officer would say, with his provencal accent—"Nous allons faire le parfum." The crew were shut up below, the officer lighted a sort of pastille which made a great smoke, everybody pretended to sneeze at once … and we were disinfected! The farce was over! There was a great dinner too, which the board gave itself at Saint Roch, at the expense of the persons in quarantine, which put the finishing touch to the scandal. Wherefore, during my own detention, I always had the band on deck as soon as the boat belonging to the board appeared in the port, and greeted it with the most horrible and discordant of music. Further, I asked guilelessly for leave to carry on my ship's firing drill in the Lazaretto Bay, and I took care to open fire so close to the Lazaretto itself that I heard all the glass in the windows fall out with a crash. As I expected, I was forbidden to do it again, the board being furious, and having lodged a complaint, stating that I used bad cartridges, but I had a delicious moment of vengeance all the same.

The quarantine came to an end at last, I was given leave, and once more, with joy, beheld my family, and Paris too. I had spent the greater part of my existence for the past four years at sea, and I confess I thirsted somewhat for Paris, dear unrivalled Paris! I got there in the heart of the winter of 1839, and left it in the first days of June of the same year. What recollections have I of those four months of repose? In vain I tax my memory, I can find nothing, or hardly anything at all. As far as exterior events go, none but the most infinitesimally small—the eternal wearying struggle between ministers in esse and in posse, which left the bulk of the public exceedingly indifferent. If the situation from the external point of view had grown more serious, at all events it did not inspire anxiety. The strength of the monarchical principle still made itself felt, in spite of the hitch in 1830. People reckoned on the King, on his wisdom and farsighted patriotism, to ward off the dangers, present and future, with which the ambition of the permanent and persevering governments around us threaten us, but of which our short-sighted democracy takes so little account. The King was indeed shortly to justify this confidence by saving France from a war with a European coalition, about the Eastern question—a war into which we were being led by the imprudence of M. Thiers and the bragging of our press and which could have ended in nothing but disaster.

The governmental machine worked meanwhile, as a whole, with tolerable smoothness. The House of Peers, the members of which were permanent, and therefore strangers to electoral compromise, discussed with weight and authority laws which were really progressive, respecting as they did the interests and liberties of all concerned; while the Chamber of Deputies, consisting of unpaid members, voted with much more care for the public weal than is possible in an assembly of men enslaved by their election committees, and perpetually haunted by the nightmare of re-election. An independent magistracy, according to President Seguier's fine expression, gave sentences, not services, "rendait des arrets, et non pas des services" while the administration, which was almost as permanent as the magistracy, had time to do good work and did it. In short, except for the criminal classes, and those incorrigible revolutionists who ask perpetually for the impossible, everybody felt that his security, his liberty, and his faith, were well protected, and, as I heard said on all sides when I came back from my voyages, people felt they were well governed. It is true that if I opened the newspapers I generally read to the contrary in them—but if there were some few serious organs of public opinion among these journals, edited by courageous and talented men, who did their best to serve their country by their writings, whatever their opinions might be, how many more had editors who were mere slander-mongers, and columns all the more eagerly read, the more calumnious they were, and the more they pandered to every envious and subversive passion. Such men were the spokesmen of that increasingly numerous class of speculators, who relinquish any useful career to seek fortune in the chances of politics. According to them, oppression and corruption had grown intolerable, and would never cease until power passed into their own immaculate hands. They alone possessed the secret for turning France into a terrestrial Paradise, by applying in all SINCERITY the great and high-sounding principles, liberty, equality and fraternity. This SINCERITY of application, which has been so frequently announced, dallies somewhat in its coming, especially as regards equality, which to so many people merely means, "That which I have not nobody else shall have." The word equality is seductive truly, and in every self-respecting community equality before the law must be utterly absolute for all men. But so long as science discovers no means for making all men equally intelligent and all women equally beautiful, I shall continue to look upon universal and blind equality as the most absurd and the most dangerous of chimeras. These reflections did not occur to me at the period I speak of. I was far too careless in the year 1840 to bother my head about the conundrums set by our office-seekers, "place-hunters" as the Americans call them. While they were amusing themselves with the fancies, envious, irreligious, unhealthy, and above all self-interested, which they posed as deducing from the principles of 1789, a far more terrible revolution than the French one—for it was to strike the poor as well as the rich—was shortly to burst upon us; the revolution brought about by the use of steam and electricity and rapidity of communication. Few people in those days foresaw the complete subversion of all the conditions of labour and food supply and life itself, which was to overtake all the peoples gathered together in old-established communities on worn-out soil, a subversion which is only in its beginning as yet, and the remedy for which we cannot discover.

One of the first results of the use of steam was to make it essential for all nations having war fleets to transform their arsenals and their naval stores. It was absolutely necessary to be able to oppose an enemy, whose means of attack could overcome wind and tide, with defensive means of equal power. That was as clear as A B C. This transformation interested me keenly—for the future of the arm of the service to which I had fervently devoted my whole life, and which I desired to see become once more a redoubtable weapon of our country's power, was bound up with it. But, to carry it through, we had to war with routine, with the obstinacy bred of old habit, and with the narrow ideas which were taught in the naval schools. It was a continuous daily struggle in which I bore an assiduous part.

Apart from this naval question, my time was spent between my home life, my worship for the fine arts, and the theatre, and also in boar-hunting, of which I grew passionately fond; and what makes this curious is that before I tried it I scorned the idea to such an extent that my brothers tied me up and took me by force the first time. Every incident of the hunt, the attack, the pursuit, all the unforeseen occurrences of the chase, leading you nobody knows whither, so that you even lose yourself in the dark sometimes in strange places, has still all the charm of struggle and action to me. And what a pleasant party of sportsmen we used to be, during our visits to Compiegne, to Chantilly, and above all to Fontainebleau! My brothers and I, the two Greffuhles, Caumont, Morny, Valewski, Edgard Ney, La Rochette, Casimir Perier, d'Albufera, Wagram, the de l'Aigles; foreigners too, Bedmar, d'Ossuna—and officers—and some ladies,—amongst these the beautiful Duchess of Somerset, who always hunted in a mask, and was invariably escorted by the charming Prince Labanoff. There were painters too amongst the most assiduous sportsmen—Jadin and Decamps. Decamps, of whom I was a fanatical admirer, was just in his best period—so too were Delacroix and M. Ingres; and all that pleiad of great artists, young then and in the full flush of their powers—Leopold Robert, Horace Vernet, Delaroche, my own master Ary Scheffer, Flandrin, and the landscape painters Marilhat and Corot—this last, in his first manner, dry and rectilinear, like that of Poussin. Nobody nowadays has any idea of the eager discussions aroused by the opening of the Salon and the superior merit of such a picture or statue. Nobody was indifferent: everybody was either for or against; each man either attacked the artist or lauded him to the skies. Works of art bring more money now, according as they are produced by this man or that, but they are less discussed. Which is the best inspiration for an artist, money or passion?

The theatres too, the Vaudeville, Varietes, Francais, the Opera, were delightful. At the Vaudeville, which had migrated after the fire in the Rue de Chartres to the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, Arnal, the inimitable, quaintest and cleverest of comic actors, was playing. At the Varietes they were acting the Saltimbanques, a play every line of which has passed into proverbs, which all my generation have been repeating for the last forty years. A woman of genius, Mademoiselle Rachel, had brought back its long forgotten glory to the Theatre Francais. For my part I never saw anything so absolutely perfect on the stage. With hardly any gesture, simply by the play of her countenance, her expressive glance, and the intonation of her voice, she expressed all the passions with an intensity that affected all her audience. She had a genius for dress and drapery. In her peplum she might have been taken for an antique statue, and she knew how to endue herself with the most incomparable womanly charm in all her parts, even the most savage ones. If she had committed murder you would have loved the murderess, and, strangely enough, this extraordinary woman was never witty except with her pen.

As for the Opera, the production of the great composers who had made its glory some years before had ceased. Of that trio of wonderful artists, Nourrit, Levasseur, and Mdlle. Falcon, only one, Levasseur, remained. The art of music was taking a rest. To make amends for this, the opera shone in ballet, fairy-like performances in which pantomime and trap-doors played as important a part as the actual dancing. Nothing could have been more enchanting than the Diable Boiteux with its many and various tableaux and its dresses, and Fanny Elsler dancing the "cachucha," or the Sylphide or the Revolte du Serail with Taglioni. I saw my brother Nemours in great danger during a performance of this last-named ballet. At a certain point the dancers, representing the revoltees, armed themselves with bows and shot a cloud of arrows into the wings. Now in the heat of action one of these arrows, launched with extraordinary vigour but uncertain aim by a charming young lady, one of the principal dancers, Mcllle. Duvernay, stuck in the column which separated the Royal Box in the old Le Pelletier house from that of the Marquis du Hallay, only a few inches from my brother's head. There was an exclamation from all parts of the house, great confusion on the stage and many comments made. But "all's well that ends well." That happy time of youth and carelessness and hunting and theatre-going was not to last long. Two of my brothers started for Africa—Chartres (as we always called our eldest brother the Due d'Orleans) was to take over the command of a division in the column which, under the orders of Marshal Vallee, was to check the rising prestige of Abd el Kader for ever at the Mouzaia Pass. My younger brother Aumale, was to have the opportunity during this expedition of breaking his first lance right brilliantly. I saw them depart with envy, and to add to my annoyance I shortly fell ill of a violent attack of measles. One day, as I lay in high fever, I saw my father appear followed by M. de Remusat, then Minister of the Interior. This unusual visit filled me with astonishment, and my surprise increased when my father said, "Joinville, you are to go out to St. Helena and bring back Napoleon's coffin." If I had not been in bed already I should have fallen down flat, and at the first blush I felt nowise flattered when I compared the warlike campaign my brothers were on with the undertaker's job I was being sent to perform in the other hemisphere. But I served my country and I had no right to discuss my orders. And there were two sides to the question, besides. Above Napoleon, the enemy of my house, the murderer of the Duc d'Enghien, who at his fall had left that dangerous game of chance wherein the ignorant herd is so often the dupe of the political croupier—universal suffrage—as his legacy to ruined and dismembered France,—there was the matchless warrior whose genius, even in defeat, had shed immortal glory on our arms. To fetch his ashes from a foreign land was in a manner to wave the flag of vanquished France aloft once more—that at least was what we hoped for—and this view of the case reconciled me to my mission. As soon as I was on my legs again I started for Toulon, provided with full orders and instructions, both royal and ministerial, and re-took command of the Belle-Poule, a command I was to hold in many seas, during three consecutive years. I felt some regret at leaving Paris, but the delight at being back amongst the faithful and worthy fellows who made up my crew, my second family, soon made me forget what I had left behind me. Presently a certain number of passengers came on board. They formed what was called the St Helena Mission. Almost all of them had been comrades of Napoleon in his greatness and in his misfortunes. There were Generals Bertrand and Gourgaud, M. de las Cazes, &c., &c. During the long passages of the voyage, the conversation of these gentlemen, who had been present at so many events and followed the Emperor through so many adventures, was most deeply interesting. Every day there was a running fire of anecdote and traits of character, much closer to the truth doubtless than many a leisurely prepared history. I have often regretted we had no shorthand writer with us.