BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE •> SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Dlenrg M. Sag« 1S91 .fi..2>.^f'g,n '■'"■iig.Q- 9306 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 082 196 803 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924082196803 MEMOIRS OF "MALAKOFF WORKS BY R. M. JOHNSTON THE ROMAN THEOCRACY AND THE RE- PUBLIC, 1846-49. London, Macmillan and Co. 1901. NAPOLEON, A SHORT BIOGRAPHY. Lon- don, Macmillan and Co. ; New York, Barnes and Co. 1904. THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE IN SOUTHERN ITALY AND THE RISE OF THE SECRET SOCIETIES. London, Macmillan and Co. 2 vols. 1904. MEMOIRS OF "MALAKOFF" BEING EXTRACTS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE AND PAPERS OF THE LATE WILLIAM EDWARD JOHNSTON EDITED BY HIS SON R. M. JOHNSTON VOL. I LONDON HUTCHINSON & CO. PATERNOSTER ROW TO MY MOTHER PREFACE ' I ""HE material for these Memoirs of my father is derived to some extent from his papers, but for the most part from his correspondence from Paris for the New York Times during the reign of Napoleon III. I have to express my thanks to the Editor of that newspaper for permission to reprint the extracts here given. In preparing them for the press I have allowed myself a moderate latitude, realising that my father would have wished many corrections made before letting his work appear in book form, and trusting that he would have con- fided in my judgment to that extent which I have thought proper to use. I have, however, made as few corrections as possible, and especially tried to preserve a certain western raciness of observa- tion and statement wherever present. The mass of material was large enough for many volumes, and the necessary process of selection might have been carried out so as to present the reader vii Preface with one of those catalogues raisonnes of fashionable society that offer the maximum number of references to persons of title with the minimum amount of valuable information. My aim has been different. It has been to construct a book that shall be readable, but that shall also, even in its lightest passages, convey to the reader some real sense of that curious page of the history of France of which, I venture to think, there have been few more acute and dis- passionate observers than my father. Of my own I have added only what appeared strictly necessary to keep the narrative together. It was over the signature " Malakoff " that my father won reputation in the years between the Crimea and the liberation of Italy, so the name now stands appropriately as warrant for his Memoirs. Cambridge, Mass. June, 1906 Vlll CONTENTS CHAPTER I Introductory . . ... 3 PAGE CHAPTER 11 Southern Diplomats and Other Americans . 19 CHAPTER m The Crimean War . . • • 55 CHAPTER rV The Fall of Sebastopol . . . . 89 CHAPTER V Literature and Crinolines . . .121 CHAPTER VI Orsini . . ... 161 CHAPTER VII What Followed Orsini's Attempt . .179 Contents CHAPTER Vin PAGE SOLFERINO . . . . . 199 CHAPTER IX ViLLAFRANCA, AND AfTER . . . -237 CHAPTER X Frivolities Once More . ... 259 CHAPTER XI Heenan v. Saters . . . . 291 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY TTT'ILLIAM EDWARD JOHNSTON was born on '' the 1st of February, 1823, at Sidney, Ohio. He came of a family closely identified with the political and social evolution that America stands for. The first American Johnston was a Scotch Presbyterian from the Borders, who followed the cause of the Commonwealth and became connected by marriage with some of its leading families. After the Restoration he emigrated, and settled in New Jersey. One of his descendants, my father's grand- father, Francis Johnston, became Treasurer of the Colony and, in 1776, of the State. When the British troops occupied New Jersey he joined Washington's army. Francis Johnston later moved out from New Jersey to the good farming country now opening up in the West and settled at Sidney, where a clan of Johnstons flourishes to this day. There he practised as a doctor, the profession of his father, of his son, and of his grandson William Edward, the subject of this Memoir. There was not much scope for a man of active intelligence in the Ohio of the first half of the nineteenth century. My father's mind had two strong bents: one for medicine, which he pursued throughout his life, the other for every- thing connected with the printing press. Those were the 3 Memoirs of " MalakofF" days when the tradition of Benjamin Franklin was still green in the hearts of aspiring young Americans. Every boy learned instinctively how to set up type and smudge himself with printer's ink. At the age of sixteen my father produced his first literary work — written, set up, printed and published by him. It was on one sheet, and so characteristic of the period that a facsimile of it is here given. Not long after this first reconnaissance in the field of literature, he proceeded to New York to study medicine, and there eked out the small allowance he received from home by working odd hours in a printing office, — I believe in that of the New York Tribune; in that way he acquired a good knowledge of the mechanical side of newspaper making. In due course he obtained his medical degree and returned to Sidney, where for a while he assisted his father in his practice. But Ohio could not keep him long. Very many years later, when I was a boy of sixteen, I remember that he and I went to the opera in Paris together one night and saw Fra Diavolo, — my first experience of opera ; and during one of the entractes he told me, stroking his moustache with a retrospective smile, that Fra Diavoh had been his first opera also, and that he had seen it more than once from the topmost gallery when he was studying medicine in New York. Fra Diavolo would seem rather thin food for the educated imaginations of the present generation, but it seems probable that this and other stray whifFs of Europe, wafted across the Atlantic to the neighbourhood of Broad- way and Fifth Avenue, inspired him with an irresistible desire to go abroad. It must also be added that he was anxious to perfect his knowledge of medicine. For these 4 09 H ® n sf 9 t> (B <« » « CO •3 ^c g a°i» 2. •a S3 ® oq t» ». a" • o o c o 3 9 «" O r* 00 ^ 1 o ;e Co fA ^5 g ■« .O P ■ s s S ?3 O QD 1^ &q d" ^ g ^ H ^ •a a o *2. 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S a u "3 S V « '4>^ ja «-> *• 93 'C o •P $ £; s 4> t ■£8 s Jt J, a ^ J= ^.2 3 « p U3 O - § *" 2 toss's a a =33 S O CLi 55 3 s-';^ » 3- occasions, c 1 Congress, •y is twenty- sand dollars. § ? ? " hi •s resident, wh if service is f He is comm chief of the ivy, and mili Q,'on cxtrao ft 1 5> BQ ■< iT. a « » T H U. OS CJ ° •^ 0) a -^ .9 o Si2 S « •S S O iS eg Oi ■5:2 "3 OS J! £ S ? z; o -a a w S ti " o to <^ 53 n S "S. ™ fl> ii N^ « W c4 W o'«> ^•1 K' o 2. 8 _0 cr ST M 3 "^ " ■^ "*> "< 2. sera § t? 3 ? » 3 !> o C?3 o is S » -a »■ S «j « a o t; • 53 c^ a) ® 3 «j o 3 •" 10 ? > O n 'S *3 Uvg- c2 o » DO S O Introductory and similar reasons he decided to leave Sidney and to pro- ceed to Paris ; there he intended to go through the course at the Ecole de Medecine, and, as a means of partly supporting himself, he arranged to act as foreign correspon- dent of the Ohio State Journal, published at Columbus, the State capital. How remunerative this correspondence was cannot now be stated ; it is to be presumed, however, that payments came in some more negotiable form than barrels of apples, a form of honorarium which the doctors of Ohio often had to suffer from in those days. The weekly letters sent from Paris proved an immediate success, or, to quote the ingenuous editor of the State Journal: "The letters of our young friend are attracting much attention, and are really of a very superior character. They form a distinct feature in our paper, and we have reason to believe that they are duly appreciated." Doctor Johnston sailed from New York for Liverpool in the summer of 1852. He reached London in June, on his way to the Continent, and there began his experiences as a foreign correspondent. He visited the usual show places, wrote his impressions of them, and met his first celebrities — among them George Peabody. The famous banker and philanthropist had retained his American patriotism, with a bias towards international fraternisation, and showed kindness to the young journalist, as the following letter shows : — Warnford Court, July Jth, 1852. My dear Sir, In reply to your kind note dated yesterday, I will remark that it has always been my aim when bringing together my own countrymen and those of Great Britain, to 7 Memoirs of " Malakoff " cement the kind feelings which have for some time prevailed between the people of those great nations, and feeling that our meeting on Monday was in every respect satisfactory, I have not the least objection to your making any communi- cation for publication in the United States which your own feelings and judgment may suggest. I send you a list of the toasts with the names of the speakers. I left the list of the persons present at Blackwall, but may have it in a few days. Meantime if you wish to write on Friday, if you will present the enclosed card to Mr. Stevens ^ (agent to the Smithsonian Institute), who was present on Monday, I think he can give you much infor- mation regarding the company generally. Most of the States were represented, and probably in no part of the world were 120 Americans congregated together to cele- brate the 4th of July, 1776, who would carry with them more character and respectability than my guests on this occasion. There were present : — The American Minister (Abbott Lawrence) ; "Wm. Brown, m.p. ; Bishop of Western New York ; Rev. David Wainwright, New York ; Judge Kent, Philadelphia; Professor Jackson, Philadelphia; Professor Fowler, Philadelphia; Judge Josiah Randall; Rev. D. Bigelow, Boston; Col. Lawrence, Boston; Abbott Lawrence, Boston ; Mr. Gerrard, New York ; Mr. Grattan, formerly H. M. Consul, Boston ; Professor KofFman, Ind. ; Mr. Davis, Secy. Legation ; Major Schenley ; Geo. "Wood, Esq., New York, etc., etc. If you would like to go to the great Chiswick Horticul- tural Show on Saturday, and will call or send to me, I shall be happy to give you a card of admission. Very truly yours, To Doctor W. E. Johnston. George Peabody. 1 The late B. F. Stevens, famous as a bibliophile. 8 Introductory One month after the patriotic exercises at Blackwall under Mr. Peabody's hospitable auspices, at the beginning of August, 1852, Doctor Johnston reached Paris; he pro- bably little imagined that he was destined to reside there for thirty-four years, the remainder of his life, and that he was to witness the fall of the Second Republic, that of the Second Empire, and the first sixteen years of the Third Republic. His arrival at Paris was midway between two great poli- tical events. Eight months before, on the 2nd of December, 1851, Louis Napoleon, President of the Republic, had ac- complished his coup d'etat, and virtually restored the Empire. Although he still retained the title of President, he had so completely obtained control of the executive power that the official fall of the Republic could not be long delayed. Four months after Doctor Johnston's arrival, on the 2nd of December, 1852, the Empire was proclaimed. In August the position of Louis Napoleon appeared so secure that he thought he could bid for the support of the Liberals, and that he could now offset the severe repression that had marked the coup d'etat by measures of clemency. The Government has, within a few days, given new proofs of its confidence in its own strength and stability by reopening the territory of France to fifteen of the most prominent of those persons who were exiled by the decree of expatriation after the coup d'itat of the second of December. In the Cabinet Council in which the decree had been agreed upon, the President had placed first upon 9 Memoirs of " MalakofF" the list the name of Victor Hugo, notwithstanding his violent and obstinate resistance to the Govern- ment ; but within the two days intervening between the day of the council and the day of the publica- tion of the decree, it so happened that a new work from the able pen of that gentleman violently de- nouncing the Government, was issued from the press in the city of Brussels, where he resides, and the decree, so far as related to him, was consequently withdrawn. He announces his intention of " con- temptuously refusing any leniency which may be offered him by the bastard Government of France." This work of the republican poet was his famous Napoleon le Petit, a bitter, unscrupulous and virulent attack on the destroyer of the Second Republic. A functionary having carried a copy of this book to St. Cloud, Louis Napoleon examined it for a moment with a smile of contempt on his lips, and then turning to the persons present, said : " Look, gentlemen, here is Napoleon the Small by Victor Hugo the Great ! " Alluding to those staunch Republicans who yet remained in exile, he wrote : — They are men who are fortunate enough to have remained beyond the influence of the Napoleonic Introductory fever — a romantic, a strange hallucination which has seized on the minds of the great body of the French people, and from which they will arouse one of these days with a demoniacal shout that will cause the blood to cease to flow through the veins, and the world to stand aghast with aflFright. The Red Monster is not yet satiated ; for although the political horizon looks clear at present, and although we see extravagant and undoubted manifestations of attachment to the Government from large por- tions of citizens, there is yet a deep under-current perceptible in the faces of the people, an implacable and an irreconcilable hatred, which will, before many years, perhaps months, wipe itself out with a hand of blood, that will cause these oft crimsoned streets to flow once more with human gore. When- ever passing events shall develop a weak place in the Government, then will a deep revenge be gratified. This was a really remarkable forecast of the tragic close of the Empire for a young American fresh landed in Europe to make. He was already looking below the surface of things, and it was as well, for only a cool judgment was likely to measure correctly the apparently unanimous en- thusiasm France was showing for her new ruler. In September and October the Prince President made an extended tour through France. Demonstrations were II Memoirs of " MalakofF" organized at every point, and his speeches were punc- tuated by shouts of Vive rEmpereur ! At Bordeaux, on the pth of October, he at last pronounced the fateful word himself, and declared I' Empire c'est la paixl the Empire means peace ! His uncle, the great Napoleon, had Come to power, in Brumaire, 1799, on the same programme. The grand farce is over, and the people of France have acclaimed Louis Napoleon Emperor ! Nothing now remains but to pronounce the formalities, which will no doubt soon take place. The capital has capped the climax of this long procession through the provinces, by giving to the President a reception such as has never before been given to any man in Paris. The city had been dressed in her best attire, public buildings had been decorated, fourteen magnificent arches had been built along the line of the Boulevards through which the cortege passed, the whole National Guard of the Seine had been called out, numbering more than a hundred thousand men ; all the oflficers of State, Church and municipality, were on the ground, dressed in gold and silver, stars and stripes — the whole population of Paris, numbering a million and a quarter, were enjoying a beautiful holiday — country people had come in in cheap excursion trains from a distance of two hundred miles around, and numerous foreigners 12 Introductory helped to swell the mass of human beings that gorged the streets of Paris. A report had very generally gained credit that a regularly organised attempt at assassination and revolution was to be made, but not a single circumstance occurred to confirm the suspicion. It had the effect, however, of deterring many persons from approaching near the line of procession ; for there are too many wooden legs stumping around the streets of the city for people to forget the experience of the past. It is well known that the Prince has more enemies in Paris than anywhere else in his kingdom ; and the police had therefore taken every precaution against the building of infernal machines. The whole line of procession, five miles long, was protected by a file of National Guards stationed on each side of the space left for the cortfege to pass, besides the several miles of military that preceded and followed the Emperor. Every musket was loaded, every bayonet fixed, and every cartridge-box contained an abundant reserve of ball cartridge. Many of the triumphal arches were really mag- nificent. The first one, at the bridge of Austerlitz, was nearly a hundred feet high, about sixty feet wide, with three wide arches, croiyned with statues, Napoleonic emblems, figures crowning the Emperor, 13 Memoirs of " MalakofF" and bore the inscription, " The City of Paris to Louis Napoleon, Emperor ! " It was an imposing affair. These arches all bore, among other inscrip- tions, that of " Vive I'Empereur ! " and nearly all of them had suspended from their centre arches, directly over the Prince's head as he passed, an im- mense imperial crown of gold. Every banner, and they numbered many hundreds, bore the words " Vive I'Empereur ! " while on many of them, and on the arches, were also the words " To Napoleon III.," "The Saviour of Modern Civilisation," " The Protector of Every Interest," " France is Satisfied," " The Empire is Peace," " Confidence in the Present, Security in the Future," " Ave Caesar Imperator," " The Saviour of France," « The Elect of God." This triumphal reception was the prelude of the official comedy that was to place matters on a correct footing. In November committees of the Senate and Chamber gravely considered the Constitutional question. The Imperial Crown was offered to the Prince, and he accepted it with grateful modesty. On the 2nd of December, 1852, the Second Empire officially came into the world, and immediately afterwards the people of France ratified this act by an overwhelmingly favourable vote. But what was the reason why the plebiscite showed 7,824,189 votes for Napoleon's assuming the imperial dignity and only 253,145 against .■' 14 Introductory I asked our butcher — a jolly, red-cheeked, rotund, aldermanic-looking individual, how he was going to vote ? " I am going to vote for the Empire, to be sure,'* he said ; " because I want a government that will give me security and prosperity. When the people build barricades there is no money, and they live on vegetables. Now everybody eats meat, for money is plenty, and I am laying something by for a wet day. We are all republicans at heart, as much as you Americans ; but we have tried the republic, and it won't do for our country. Our people are so constituted that we must have something strong to strike them with awe, and something splendid to excite their admiration. Besides, what is the difference when taxes are always the same, and the restrictions upon one's liberty equally rigorous ? So I say we should not cavil at a name so long as we get peace and prosperity instead of bloodshed and bankruptcy ! " This man was himself concerned in the revolu- tion of 1848. A few weeks later he wrote on the same point : — The truth is, I never saw a satisfied Frenchman, and the only way to keep him still, is to keep a bayonet pointed at him. It will take fifty years 15 Memoirs of "MalakofF" at least of rapid progress in civilisation and re- publicanism, to put this country into a condition, no matter what the name of the Government may be, in which it will not require a standing army of 200,000 men to keep it quiet. 16 SOUTHERN DIPLOMATS AND OTHER AMERICANS CHAPTER II SOUTHERN DIPLOMATS AND OTHER AMERICANS Tj^OR twenty years of his life Louis Napoleon had been ■*■ an adventurer. He had unsuccessfully taken part in three desperate political gambles, had tasted the joys of im- prisonment, and had suffered the vicissitudes of the home- less exile. He was now, in his forty-fifth year, Emperor of the French, but childless and wifeless ; and one of his earliest steps was to provide himself with a consort. This at once brings us to an interesting side of Napoleon the Third's character, to a side that is very difficult to deal with. He had been brought up under conditions not calcu- lated to develop any sense of morality. His mother, Queen Hortense, was far from strict in conduct ; in fact, it is very doubtful whether her third son had any Bonaparte blood in his veins. His youth had been spent as an impecunious wanderer. Unlike the first Napoleon, he was very suscep- tible to feminine influence, and even in his later years could show devotion to several favourites at once. But scandal enough has been related concerning the Second Empire, and here it is not proposed to do more than to allude to such facts as are strictly necessary to the under- standing of the character of the man and of the period. When Napoleon found himself fairly settled on the 19 Memoirs of " MalakofF" throne and confronted by the dynastic and matrimonial question, his first thought appears to have been to seek a bride from among the Royal Houses of Europe. It was reported that the Emperor intended marry- ing a distant relation of the Beauharnais family, the Princess Caroline of Wasa. There can be no doubt that at one time this match was agreed upon ; but upon mature consideration, or as it is now thought, by the advice of the young Emperor of Austria, she declined the engagement.' The Em- peror of Austria is about to marry the sister of the gentleman who has succeeded to the affections of Caroline of Wasa, and it is said that the whole affair has been arranged by him. For this act the boy Emperor will no doubt receive a smart rap over the knuckles on the first opportunity that pre- sents itself to Louis Napoleon. It is said also, upon good authority, that others of the princesses of Europe have refused the hand of the French Emperor. The French ladies adore him, but it seems the infection is not widespread. The bloody history of France is too fresh in the memory of 1 She was the granddaughter of Stephanie Beauharnais, a cousin of the Empress Josephine, who married Charles, Grand Duke of Baden. The Princess Caroline married King Albert of Saxony on the 1 8th of June, 1853. The Emperor Francis Joseph mar- ried Elizabeth, daughter of Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. 20 Southern Diplomats and other Americans the European nations, the fearful precedent which has been established since 1789, of winding up every government with a revolution, and the melancholy histories of Marie Antoinette, of Jose- phine, of Marie Louise, and of Marie Am^lie of Orleans, have tended to take away the charms of a seat on the French throne, and rendered less inviting what would otherwise be much coveted. It might also be said that a man who was not only a political parvenu, but a notorious viveur, and physically far from attractive, was difficult to find a wife for. His mar- riage was eventually arranged very suddenly, and the com- paratively humble rank of his wife was not viewed favourably by many Frenchmen. Mademoiselle Marie-Eug6nie de Montijo, Com- tesse de T6ba, now Empress of France, is un- doubtedly the most beautiful woman in the kingdom over which she has been called to preside. She is twenty-four years of age, and of that style of beauty which the French term spirituelle. She is somewhat tall, of a faultless mould of figure, majestic and commanding, and moves with that grace and ele- gance peculiar to Spanish women. Her hair is auburn, while her eyes, which are deep blue, the cast of her features, and her expression, disclose her Andalusian origin. The first time I ever saw 21 Memoirs of " MalakofF' her was about three weeks ago at a ball at the Tuileries, before any one dreamed that she was the future Empress, and I thought I had never seen so captivating an expression of countenance. She is full of spirit, of vivacity, and is said to have an excellent heart. She has a finished education, and speaks Spanish, French, and English perfectly. She, as well as her sister, the beautiful Duchess of Berwick, was educated at Bristol, in England. The Empress, like her husband, has spent much of her time in England, and they can therefore con- verse together in English as well as in French. The Empress Eugenie was destined to prove a beautiful figurehead for the endless round of Court entertainments that now began at the Palace of the Tuileries. The Court was brilliant and extremely easy on all questions of mor- ality and finance. Many are the anecdotes that have been told about it. Some of these turned on the natural ignorance of Court fashions and manners of that class of Americans who accounted a presentation to the Im- perial couple at the Tuileries one of the chief rewards of European travel. At a recent levee our good-tempered Minister at the head of some thirty or more of his countrymen said to the Emperor as he stepped before the group, "Permit me to introduce your Majesty to my countrymen ; they are all Americans." This Southern Diplomats and other Americans turning of the tables by introducing the Emperor only created a smile ; but one of the group made a much more unfortunate error. He was a New Yorker, and had been, it appears, personally ac- quainted with Louis Napoleon when in former days the latter was in that city. Of this, in very bad taste, he reminded the Emperor, and then added, " I hope to have the pleasure of again seeing your Majesty in New York ! " This was almost as bad as the declaration of a lady to George III. " that the thing she most wanted to see was a coronation." Another class of Americans, small let us hope, but un- fortunately conspicuous, was that which was represented by Count Joannes. I have already told you of the scramble of Americans for the title of Chevalier de la Legion cTHomeur. The flunkeyism of Americans in Europe is an old story of which, perhaps, your readers are tired. But I will venture to give them one more instance, so absurd that I am sure I will be excused for relating it. The individual who merits this notice is an American, whose name figured conspicuously in former times in the journals of the United States, but who has resided 23 Memoirs of " MalakofF" for some time in Europe. For the sake of his friends, certainly not for his own sake, I shall place him under the disguise of simple George Jones. George Jones then was determined, Yankee-like, not to do things by halves. It did not suffice him to fall in as the courtier or the appendage of a decayed Count ; he must be a Count himself; any- thing short of that would not satisfy his great ambition. In effisct, nothing is impossible to a Yankee, but how do you suppose George Jones made himself a Count ? I was seated the other day in the office of the American Legation, when a gentleman rang and was ushered in. He was middle-aged, and his shoulders were garnished with one of those tra- ditional blue cloaks so dear in times gone by to Members of Congress. It was seedy, and might have gone through several stormy sessions ; but it was clean, and looked respectable. The rest of his toilet, which was irreproachable, declared clearly enough that the old blue was clung to from some vague idea of its respectability, or from some souvenir of past greatness. In his buttonhole he carried one of those many-coloured decorations which come from towards the Rhine, and which 24 Southern Diplomats and other Americans one encounters so often at Paris at the restaurants at " fixed price." He had the obsequious air which becomes neither an American nor a Count, but which sits very well on an American Count. He bowed low, and in a patronising tone demanded of Mr. Wilbur : " Is His Excellency at home ?" " Mr. Mason, you mean ? " inquired Mr. W., who had already recognised his man, and saw a mystification in the ribbon. "Yes, His Excellency the American Minister." " Yes, sir ; he is at home ; allow me to send in your card ? " George Jones drew from his waistcoat pocket a gold-mounted tortoiseshell card-case, and presented to the astonished Secretary an elegantly engraved card of which the following is a facsimile : THE COUNT JOANNES Count palatine. 16 Sue de The Secretary took the card between his fingers, ran his eye over it, then placed it on a silver tray, Memoirs of " Malakoff " and sent it to the Minister. He invited the Count to be seated. The valet soon returned to the Secretary with the message that the Minister would attend in a moment in the office. The card of a Count, with a foreign name, and printed in the English language, looked suspicious, and sad experience had taught the Minister that it was easier to rid himself of an annoying visitor in the office than in his own apart- ment. The Secretary, who in the meantime had been scanning the Count's visage, and who was now well satisfied that he had recognised a familiar face, said to him, after the valet had delivered his message : " His Excellency will see Mr. Jones in a moment." Whereupon George Jones turned red, and treated the Secretary's mistake with silent contempt. Mr. Mason entered, and the Count rose from his chair. As the Minister cast his eyes on his visitor, his countenance changed : he, too, had recognised a familiar face. He asked to know what he could do for the gentleman. George Jones bowed low, and desired to know if he had the honour of addressing His Excellency the American Minister. On being satisfied on this 26 Southern Diplomats and other Americans point, he said that he had come for a passport for himself and his Countess, to enable them to go to London, where (and here he dropped his eyes, placed his hand on his heart, and looked melan- choly) their only daughter, a lovely child, the Lady Eugenie, was suddenly taken ill, and where they had been summoned in haste by their medical at- tendant. Sir James Clark. "Yes, but you are aware," said the Minister, " that we only give passports to American citizens ?" " Your Excellency, I am an American citizen." " Ah ! and may I ask how you came by the title and decoration which you carry ? " Hesitation on the part of George Jones, with slight suffusion of countenance. "They were conferred on me by the reigning house of a German Duchy." " And what house ? " demanded the Minister. Second hesitation — face red. "By an ancient house, descended from Charles the Fifth." " You don't know the name of the house .'' " Third hesitation — face scarlet. " No ; the last member of it became extinct in the early part of the century." " Ah ! Then who was it, Mr. Jones, that pre- 27 Memoirs of " MalakofF" sented you your titles, since you have only been in Europe a few years ? " Here the Count Joannes, Count Palatine, grew livid ; and gathering the old Congressional blue around him, he left the office in a towering rage. And that is how George Jones got the title of Count. Since this occurrence, George Jones has returned to the Legation, but this time accompanied by his Countess, a brilliant representative of the quartier Brida — -premiere catigorie. The Secretary, either from sympathy at Mr. Jones' former rebuff, or from the presence of the Countess (for the Secre- tary is not insensible to the charms of beauty), treated their Highnesses with much consideration, and kindly asked after the health of the lovely Lady Eugenie. The Lady Eugenie was declared to be dead, but somehow neither the Count nor Countess was in mourning. The Count and Countess sent in their cards to the Minister. Madame's card was a facsimile of the Count's, and bore the words, " The Countess Joannes, Countess Palatine." And what do you suppose George Jones wished this time } There was no longer any necessity for a passport to go to London, but he wanted a private audience with the Empress for 28 Southern Diplomats and other Americans his Countess ! The Minister was obliged to refuse the modest request. Six weeks later George Jones reappears in the corre- spondence : — When I wrote to you a few weeks ago the history of an American flunkey in Europe, whom I placed under the nam de plume of George Jones, I little dreamed of the storm I was raising over my head. I could not foresee that it would be overlooked that George Jones was not the name of the indi- vidual in question, nor that there were many patriotic gentlemen in Paris bearing the veritable name of George Jones, ready to repulse with indig- nation any such charge as that of being a Count, much less trying to pass for one on fictitious capital. I could not foresee that editors in the United States, supposing it was their George Jones, absent in Europe, who was playing such foolish tricks, were going to say naughty things on the account of an innocent man ; that they were going to hazard the belief that George had always had a leaning towards courtly titles and courtly things, and to bless their stars and the good of the commonwealth that so disreputable a citizen had been got rid of. After clearly stating that the name " George Jones " 29 Memoirs of " MalakofF " was adopted to conceal the real name of the indivi- dual, I thought I should have been free from recla- mations from any quarter ; but such an immunity I was not destined to enjoy, as the reader will see. Now that the Times is again admitted into circu- lation in France, it is much sought after and extensively read in Paris ; and on the morning of the day after the arrival of the number which con- tained the history of George Jones' performances, my bell rang and the boy brought me a card bearing the name of George Jones, of . I repaired to the parlour, met the owner of the card, and was greeted with the following question : " Are you the author of the MalakofF letters in the New York Times ? " " I am." " I presume you did not mean me by the history you have there published .'' " " By no means, sir ; the name of that individual is not the same as that I see on your card ; there- fore it could not have been intended for you." " But an editor, in my native place, has stated that the history was pointed at me ; he seized the occasion to make disagreeable reflections on my character, and I have called to ask you to make an explanation." 30 Southern Diplomats and other Americans " Willingly, sir " ; and the explanation is now made. The same day, and not long after the retirement of the first visitor, the bell rang again, and the boy brought me another card, bearing the name of George Jones, of ! The affair commenced to grow serious. I waited upon George Jones No. 2, went through another interrogatory, and terminated with the promise to secure him, in the columns of the Times, against the misconception of his friends at home. But the affair was not to stop here. Later in the day I was handed the card of George Jones No. 3 ! Much the same interrogatories were made, and the same assurances given as in the case of Nos. I and 2, and I began to regret having chosen for the pseudo Count a name of such general popularity. The eagerness with which these gentlemen sought an explanation which would relieve them from mis- conception, does honour to their patriotism, and carries with it the assurance that no true-born American ever desires to renounce his country for the sake of a hollow title ; for I should mention that the individual to whom I gave the name of George Jones, and who professed to bear the title 31 Memoirs of " MalakofF" of Chevalier and Count, was born in England, of English parents, and is only a naturalised citizen of the United States. One of the most amusing anecdotes of the Tuileries was one my father used to tell, though it is not, I believe, to be found in print. Mr. Washburne, American Minister, did not believe in fancy diplomatic dress, but in the plain black evening coat and long trousers of the self-respecting American citizen. Thus attired, he attended his first dinner at the Tuileries, Doctor Johnston being also invited that evening. The Emperor and Empress sat side by side at the head of a long table, and etiquette required that when they had finished dinner they should pass down opposite sides, between the guests and the table, and thus out of the room. Mr. Washburne was a large man of florid aspect, a sturdy Westerner, and somewhat impatient of formality. He found the elaborate menu and choice wines of the Tuileries rather heating — and his shoes a trifle tight. He quietly slipped off these uncomfortable articles, and was still enjoying the last item of the dinner when there was a strong pull at his chair from behind. The foot- men standing behind each guest, seeing that the Emperor and Empress were rising, were drawing the chairs back so that the space between the table and the guests might be cleared. Mr. Washburne clutched his chair, made one desperate scramble for his shoes, but failed to find them. The servant was now puUing desperately hard, and there was nothing for it but for our Minister to rise. He did, and shuffled back awkwardly. But when the Empress came down that side of the table, glanced down the row of 32 Southern Diplomats and other Americans neat silk-clad diplomatic calves, and in the midst of them caught sight of Mr. Washburne's republican black trousers, virtuously finished off by a pair of large and conspicuous white socks, her face suddenly disappeared behind her fan ! It is curious to reflect that the question of trousers, culottes or sans culottes, should have loomed so large in modern history. Even at the present day American diplomacy has been known to elaborate some of its most refined and hair-splitting arguments on the question. But generalities on the sartorial aspect of history must be left to Herr Teufelsdrockh ; here it will suifice to allude only once more to this controversy -engendering point. Mr. Washburne was Minister to France in the last days of the Empire, at a time when our representatives abroad held with- out exception that the black coat and trousers was the only dress in which an American diplomat could appear. A few years earlier, before the Civil War, this was not the case. Our diplomatic corps was then mostly made up of Southern Democrats who, on the luciis a non lucendo principle, thought it becoming to assume fancy copies of the liveries whereby European diplomats indicate that they are the servants of their sovereigns. It was a period, now long happily past, when the bitterness of feeling between Democrats and Republicans was extreme. Dr. Johnston was a Republican, and so was Mr. Sandford, of Connecticut, who arrived in August, 1853, to take charge of our legation at Paris. Mr. Sandford, reversing all precedent, determined to attend a function at the Tuileries in the same dress he would have worn at the White House. Of the three thousand persons present, every individual wore official costumes except Mr. Sand- D 33 Memoirs of " MalakofF" ford ; or rather a decorated costume, for Mr. Sandford's is as much official as anybody's. The order was imperative, and no private individual could have been admitted upon any other condition. It was even a question among the officers of the Tuileries whether, the ball being an unofficial occasion, Mr. Sandford should not be rejected unless in Court costume. It was known, however, that Mr. Sandford would not yield on this point, and that if rejected he would protest. He was ad- mitted without murmur, and was treated with the usual consideration which is paid to the American representative. The Moniteur, with a delicate courtesy which can well be appreciated, in its ac- count of the ball next morning, said that " every individual of the three thousand present wore either the Court or a national costume." In the course of the evening the Turkish Minister, Omar Pasha, a man held in high respect, took occasion to seek Mr. Sandford's company, and said to him with an air which illy concealed his displeasure : "Eh ! QjCest ce que cest ! Vous avez Fair d'un corbeau dans cette foule d'oiseaux d'or ! " ... Mr. Sandford was talking with the Princess Mathilde, the Prussian Minister, and two or three others, concerning his dress, when the Emperor 34 Southern Diplomats and other Americans entered. The latter, upon seeing Mr. Sandford, crossed over to him directly, gave him his hand, talked to him a few moments, requested him to remember him to a mutual friend in America when he wrote, and returned again to the Empress — thus signifying in the most delicate, unmistakable, and frank manner that the representative of the Govern- ment of the United States was welcome at his Court in whatever dress his Government indicated to him. This was quite a triumph for Mr. Sand- ford in presence of those who had condemned his course. But it must be remembered that Louis Napoleon is a man of more general intelligence — more knowledge of the world, than any of those who surround him. Mr. Sandford's example was not destined to bear im- mediate fruit. He was only charge d'affaires, and was soon relieved by the newly-appointed Minister, Mr. Mason, of Virginia. Unfortunately, the sartorial difficulty was to divide them. It is understood that Mr. Mason asked Mr. Sandford to remain as his First Secretary ... at the same time complimenting him on the part of the Government at "Washington for the ability with which he had conducted the business of the office as chargd d'affaires. Mr. Sandford is 35 Memoirs of " MalakoiF" reported to have asked Mr. Mason if he was going to Court in costume, and on Mr. Mason's replying in the affirmative, Mr. Sandford answered, " Then I resign on the instant." In fact, he could do nothing else. Mr. Sandford has worn the black suit on all occasions, and so frequently that the matter was no longer a question at the Tuileries. All Americans were proud to see their representa- tive at Court in so distinctive and so decent a dress. The fact was that Mr. Mason was only one among a number of prominent southerners sent abroad by President Pierce, nearly all of whom had strong proclivities for diplomatic livery. Among the lot of diplomatic and consular agents just arrived, three of them, strong Demo- crats, and issuing from under Mr. Marcy's new order as it may be said, have brought uniforms to wear at Court. One of them I met this morning, Mr. De Leon, formerly editor of the Southern Press at Washington, who goes to Alexan- dria as Consul-General, uniting diplomatic with consular duties, who has a coat made in PFashington, which has three golden stars on each collar, and an eagle on each breast ! 36 Southern Diplomats and other Americans One of these new-comers was Mr. Soule, a French republican exile, who had settled at New Orleans and become naturalised. Mr. Soule's proceedings at Madrid caused some stir at the time, and his doings may as well be recorded in this place. A most painful sensation has been created in Paris by the varied accounts which have arrived within the last few days on the subject of the Soul6 duels at Madrid. No event of a personal nature has been known to cause so general a state of excitement in Paris for a long time. One hears of it in restaurants, in public offices, in omnibuses, and in all tongues. Some of the rumours are so absurd, especially those published by the Ind^pen- dance Beige, by the Paris journals, and by one, at least, of the London journals, that a detailed history, drawn from a source which places all doubt of its correctness out of the question, will no doubt be acceptable to you. When Mr. Soule and his family arrived at Madrid, steps were immediately taken to bring about his reception by the Queen. In the interim which occurred between his arrival and his reception at Court, the Countess de Montijo, mother of the Duchess of Alba and the Empress of France, left the sick bed of her daughter the Duchess of Alba, 37 Memoirs of "MalakofF" and came to Madrid to intrigue against the recep- tion of Mr. Soule in his oiEcial capacity. The Countess de Montijo's influence and pretensions at the Court of Spain, since the accession of her daughter Eugenie to the throne of France, have been so great, and her mingling in politics so notorious, that she has earned the reputation of being the bona fide Minister of France at Queen Isabella's Court, while the Marquis de Turgot remains ostensible Minister only. Her efforts against Mr. Soul6 failed. Mr. S. learned subse- quently, from authority on which he relied, that these intrigues were carried on at the house of the Marquis de Turgot, the French Ambassador. Soon after his reception at Court, a ball was given at M. de Turgot's in honour of the Empress Eugenie's f^te-day. Mr. Soul6 and his family were invited and were present. Mr. Soule and his son Neville were both dressed in the evening dress common to civilians both in Europe and the United States. Mrs. Soule wore a dress of blue velvet, high in the neck, with her hair and dress otherwise trimmed plainly but richly. Her dress is repre- sented from more sources than one as having been simple, elegant, and as having set off her fine person to great advantage. Her dress did not 38 Southern Diplomats and other Americans represent Marguerite de Bourgogne, as has been stated. When the American Minister and family were announced, a great sensation was manifested by the persons present at the ball. The impression which their entrance made was favourable, and under all the circumstances flattering. During the course of the evening, while Neville Soul6 was promenading with Mrs. Perry, wife of the Secretary of Lega- tion, he saw the Duke of Alba (brother-in-law of the Empress Eugenie) quite near him, point to his mother, Mrs. Soule, and say aloud to the per- sons who stood nearest him : "Voyez Marguerite de Bourgogne ! " Young Soule, believing that it was a sneer intended for his ears, conducted Mrs. Perry to a seat, walked up to the Duke of Alba, and with a menacing air, said to him : " Vous ^tes une canaille ! "^ Persons interfered, and young Soule retired. Seeking his father, he told him what had occurred. Mr. Soul6*s first movement was to protect his son, and take the affair into his own hands. He took his son's arm and promenaded for a moment, dis- cussing the best course to pursue. It was finally concluded, owing to the official position which Mr. 1 Best translated as " You are a blackguard ! " 39 Memoirs of " MalakofF" Soul6 held, that Neville should be allowed to demand satisfaction for the insult offered his mother. They walked arm-in-arm into another room, where the Duke of Alba was standing in the midst of several persons, near a buffet, and talking of the affair which had just occurred. Mr. Soul6, sen., touched the elbow of the Duke and gave him a contemptuous, significant look, and passing on, retired with his family from the ball. The next morning Neville Soule addressed a note to the Duke of Alba (a manuscript copy of which I have seen), which demanded first, in respectful terms, that the Duke should explain and retract the offensive words uttered against his mother ; in de- fault of such retraction he demanded satisfaction. Mr. Perry, Secretary of Legation, and Mr. Milans, a Spanish gentleman, were the bearers of this letter. The Duke at once disavowed all intention to wound the sensibilities of young Soule, and apologised. Mr. Perry demanded that he should write his apology. The Duke did so. The next day some persons of distinction, feeling that the Duke had not acted with the necessary courage, sought to draw a paper from young Soul6 which would ap- parently deny the fact that the Duke had been challenged. Several other notes passed, but the 40 Southern Diplomats and other Americans matter was understood by the Soul6s, and no advantage was gained. For twenty days the Soules heard no more of the affair, and considered it settled. But in the mean- time the Duke was " snubbed " by all the honourable men of his acquaintance ; they considered that a gentleman should have replied to young Soule, in apologising — that if he had insulted a lady, one of' the distinguished guests on the occasion, he was sorry for it, and disavowed his language. Instead of that, he had asked young Soul6's pardon, and said nothing about the lady. When an article appeared in the London papers about the affair, the Duke was goaded on to open the wound afresh. He then wrote to young Soul6, after the lapse of the twenty days referred to, demanding a disavowal of the truth of what had appeared in the London journals and in Galignan?s Messenger. Young Soul^ replied that he was not responsible for what had appeared in the papers ; that it did not appear by his authority; and that he had nothing to disavow, for all that he had observed in the journals was true. The Duke then accepted the former challenge, and they fought the next day with small swords. The contest lasted thirty minutes, without either receiving a flesh wound, when the seconds, seeing 41 Memoirs of " Malakoff " them both much fatigued, interfered ; they shook hands, agreed to return letters, and separated. In the meantime, Mr. Soule, sen., had become confirmed in the belief that there was a kind of con- spiracy or league to destroy him socially and politi- cally at the Spanish Court and in the Spanish capital, and that the French Minister was taking a leading part with the Montijo family to effect this object. He was even informed upon respectable authority, that M. de Turgot had first uttered the language which the Duke afterwards used. On the morning that the Duke and Neville were to fight, — con- sequently before their duel, and not after, as most of the accounts assert — Mr. Soul6, sen., sent the following note to the Marquis de Turgot : — " Monsieur le Marquis, "The difference which has arisen between the Duke d'Alba and my son had its origin in your apartments. It was in your house of which I and my family were the guests, and on the occasion of a f6te of which, by a sort of representation, the Duke d'Alba might consider himself the hero, that the latter permitted himself to insult Madame Soul6, and nothing so far has come to me to ex- onerate you from the liability {la solidarite) which this circumstance places upon you. " I am assured even, that from your mouth must 42 Southern Diplomats and other Americans have first proceeded the ofFensive word afterwards pronounced by the Duke d'Alba, and so nobly taken up by my son. "This being the fact, M. le Marquis, I have a right to go back to the true source of the affair which has put the sword into the hands of the Duke d'Alba and of my son, and to make it mine in all that concerns you, and to demand of you person- ally a satisfaction which you cannot refuse me. " Mr. Perry, an American citizen, and my friend, is charged to receive your reply. " I have the honour to be, M. le Marquis, " Your very humble servant, " Pierre Soule, Citizen of the United States." The Marquis de Turgot replied briefly that he had never made use of any such language, and that therefore he had nothing to apologise for. The Marquis named Lord Howden, British Ambassador, and General Callier, a Frenchman, as his official friends. . . .When the seconds of the Marquis waited on Mr. Soule with the view of arrangir^^ the matter, and after Mr. Soul6 had again reiterated his reasons for believing that the Marquis ought to explain, and after again being denied any explanation from the Marquis, there was no alternative but a duel. The friends of Mr. Soule were General Valdes, former 43 Memoirs of "MalakofF" Governor-General of Cuba, and M. Gamind^s, a late member of the Spanish Cortes. Pistols were the weapons chosen, and the choice of distance was made by Mr. Soul6 at ten paces or under. Lord Howden peremptorily objected to that distance as murderous and brutal, and de- manded forty paces as the only distance at which they could agree to fight. If this distance was not accepted, he declared his intention to withdraw from the contest and declare the honour of his principal satisfied. Mr. Soule replied that it was not the habit in America to fight at such safe distances, and that such a duel would be ridiculed as a mere farce. After considering the matter. Lord Howden pre- sented his ultimatum at twenty paces. It was accepted, and they fought on the second or third day after the duel between the son and the Duke of Alba. At the first fire both pistols went off at the same moment, without any result. The second time Mr. Soule's bullet lodged in the thigh of the Marquis, about four inches above the knee. The Marquis exclaimed, " I am hit ! " when General Vald^s, Mr. Soul6's principal second, hastened to him and caught him in his arms as he was falling. Mr. Soul6 took the hand of the Marquis, and expressed satisfaction that the affair was no more serious. 44 Southern Diplomats and other Americans The ball could not, at first, be found, but they have succeeded in extracting it, and the Marquis is reported as doing well. The French Ambassador at the Court of Madrid is about sixty-five years of age. He has been a peer of France, a Senator, and for eight months Minister of Foreign Affairs. He is not regarded as a brilliant man, but has always sustained the reputation of being a good man. The affair, during its progress, produced a prodigious sensa- tion in Madrid. Meetings of the diplomatic corps were held, and the Spanish Cabinet is said to have been in session on the subject, at the moment the duel was taking place. A part of the anxiety, perhaps, grew out of the fact that Mr. Soul6 was known to be a good shot, and that he insisted on a short distance. The Marquis de Turgot eventually recovered from his wound. Mr. Soule, whose policy of Cuban annexation and participation in the Ostend Conference belong to another chapter of history, did not remain long at Madrid, Mr. Augustus C. Dodge, of Indiana, succeeding him in 1855. Before closing this chapter, two dancing experiences of Doctor Johnston, one at the Tuileries, one elsewhere, must be given, after which more serious matters must receive attention. 45 Memoirs of " MalakofF" Your correspondent had the honour of receiving the following note from the Grand Chamberlain the other day : — "By Order of the Emperor. " The Grand Chamberlain has the honour to in- form Monsieur that he is invited to pass the evening at the Palace of the Tuileries, Monday, 23rd of January, at nine o'clock. " Duke de Bassano. " You will please remit this card on entering. " IN UNIFORM." This note reads very well until it arrives at the last two words— the terrible uniform ! But if one wishes to see sights, he must follow the regulations ; and it is certainly no greater injustice for the Emperor of France to make a man spend seventy- five dollars for a court dress, and ten dollars for a carriage, to see the inside of his official palace, than it is for American and other consuls to charge a man fifty dollars a month to look at his passport in Italy, under the pretext of preserving public order. Individual rights are certainly as sacred as State rights, especially inside the walls of a man's own house ; and although a Yankee, and especially a backwoodsman, feels as if he was seriously com- promising his dignity and his republicanism when 46 Southern Diplomats and other Americans he thrusts himself into the dress of a courtierj he is willing to sacrifice the appearance of his outward man three or four hours, for the sake of gratify- ing his eyes. Besides, according to the rule of European etiquette, an invitation from a monarch is equivalent to a command. In clearly acknow- ledging the right of the Emperor to impose what- ever restrictions he pleases upon persons desiring an introduction to him, I wish, at the same time, to place upon record the honourable fact, that the con- duct of the entire imperial family comprising the Bonapartes and the Murats, towards Americans, has been marked on all occasions by kindness and a familiarity of intercourse, more as if they were still the humble citizens of the country which had once been their refuge, than the reign- ing family of a powerful European nation. An example of the good feeling of the Emperor towards our country occurred on the occasion which I have commenced to describe. After all the foreign Ministers had sent in the lists of persons whom they wished to present, and after they had been accepted, they received a printed circular from the Duke de Bassano demanding that they be cut down one half. Mr. Sandford immediately wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs (through whom all 47 Memoirs of " MalakofF" envoys must act) refusing to cut down his list, saying that he could not say which persons should be struck off — that they were all the same in his eyes, and if the Grand Chamberlain wished the number curtailed, either he or the Foreign Minister must indicate the names to be withdrawn. The affair was carried to the Tuileries, and the reply came back to Mr. Sandford that all his list would be accepted ; and it was the only one that was. Doctor Johnston duly reached the palace. Some of his impressions follow. At the top of the stairs stood, at the right and left, two large halberdiers, each seven feet high, weighing perhaps four hundred pounds, and literally covered with gold, who demanded of each visitor as he passed between them, " Your card, sir, if you please." The card of invitation is taken by one of the halberdiers, who hands it to the chamberlain ; the latter looks at the name, and walking with the owner of it to the pillared archway leading into the large reception-room, screams out the name, which is his introduction. When my humble name was announced in the midst of this brilliant assemblage of princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, what do you suppose, reader, was the effect prO' 48 Southern Diplomats and other Americans duced ? Not the slightest movement of curiosity was perceptible, nobody fainted, the Emperor and Empress remained as immovable as if nothing had occurred ! Immediately in front of the Emperor and Em- press a space had been cleared where a dozen couples might engage in the dance. The belle in this room was a Miss Smead, an English lady, whose beauty attracting the attention of the Em- peror, he asked an introduction from Lord Cowley, and led her into the dance. This incident made her the point of attraction for the evening, the Emperor not dancing with any other lady except the Princess Mathilde, with whom he opened the ball. Dancing being an amusement for which I ac- knowledge a weakness, I asked a young lady seated by the side of her mother to join me in a quadrille. She assented, with the usual grace of French women, and placing my chapeau and sword in the safe-keeping of the aged dowager at her side, who must have been a duchess at least, judging from these two diagnostic signs, ugliness and a profusion of diamonds (two signs which I beg to inform the reader privately did not apply to the daughter), we took our places in the quadrille. Let not the reader imagine, however, that under such solemn E 49 Memoirs of " MalakofF" circumstances, under the eyes of the Emperor and Empress, and with a young duchess for a partner. Buckeye so far forgot himself as to attempt any of those fancy steps one learns dancing on puncheon floors out West, to the tune of the " Arkansaw Traveller," To tell the truth, the short breeches would not permit any of that kind of gymnastics without serious risk to their integrity. Yet with the glorious music of Strauss filling the air with melody, electrifying a man's muscles like the pile of Volta applied to a frog, and putting torment into his shoes, it was insufferably difficult to choke himself down into that respectable pace which the presence of the Court of France required. They almost walk through a quadrille, while the polkas and waltzes are much more lively. The ice once broken, more than one dowager during the course of the evening had the honour of taking charge of the said chapeau and sword, little suspecting, no doubt, that they were thus " giving aid and comfort to the enemy " in the shape of a red-hot republican. Doctor Johnston was evidently in the humour for dancing that evening. Leaving the Tuileries, he proceeded to another place of entertainment, similar in some respects, dissimilar in others. SO Southern Diplomats and other Americans The Masked Ball, which commences every Satur- day night during Carnival at twelve o'clock, and closes at six in the morning, was, at the hour at which we arrived, at the height of its fury. What a transition ! What a contrast between the genuine and the spurious ! From among true princes and princesses we suddenly fell in the midst of the counterfeit article. From the midst of a company regulated by the most refined proprieties of Paris society, we dropped suddenly into the midst of the wild bowlings of two thousand of the veriest devils this side the river Styx. From under the subdued and harmonious music of Strauss we sud- denly felt our ears assailed with the thunders of Musard's famous band. We take a position in a box and look down at the strange scene. Bacchus and thunder ! what a pandemonium ! Vive noise ! vive tumult ! vive the hoarse voices that howl, the arms that swing, the feet that stamp ! vive Musard ! Look at this immense, furious, medley sea, this sea where each wave is a human head, which rolls at our feet its multi-coloured billows. Look at those white pierrots with conical hats, at the savages, the debardeurs ; look at those crowds of little girls converted into boys — blue, green, and 51 Memoirs of " MalakofF" rose — shapeless masks, with graceful faces, supple waists, and body counterfeit. They all pass, re- pass, turn and return around us, throwing us a glance, a cry, an insult, a provocation, or a smile. Now the sea is calm for a moment, the confused mass forms itself into four long lines, the tempest growls, and is going to burst. The b^ton of Musard is raised high in the air, it falls, the orchestra thunders, and the sea moves with a sud- den start as if the pile of Volta had been applied to the living mass. 52 THE CRIMEAN WAR CHAPTER III THE CRIMEAN WAR npHE last chapter was chiefly concerned with the gaie- ties of life, but so was the Second Empire. Yet its record was chiefly to be one of wars and adventures, of which the first now comes on the scene. The Prince President's declaration at Bordeaux in October, 1852, that the Empire meant peace was soon to be belied. Such a theory was untenable for a Bonaparte. The army had placed him on the throne. Personal prestige was the only justification for his wearing the Imperial crown ; and this question of personal prestige, combining with his adven- turous, fatalistic, gambling temperament, soon led him astray. The army had to be humoured and kept con- tented; for the present the Corps Legislatif vras packed and subservient. But even in that body were smouldering embers of discontent. The Corps Legislatif^ as at present composed, contains many men of talent. It numbers 260 members, amongst whom are a more considerable number of noblemen than even under the reign of the last of the Bourbons. And although the free spirit and fiery energy which once distinguished 55 Memoirs of " Malakoff " this body have fled, although the eloquent voices of Guizot, of Thiers, of Lamartine and of Emile de Girardin, are no longer heard in those halls, there is yet a slumbering volcano of patriotism, of love of liberty, and I will venture to say of republican- ism, sleeping in that body, which needs but one encouraging shout to wake it up, I see it in every movement, in every day's proceedings which I have been permitted to see. And mark it, the Palais Bourbon has not yet seen its last scene of excite- ment. On entering, one is painfully impressed, however, with the idea that there is a power behind this power ; that there is a mind whose will sways by compulsion the acts of these men ; in fine, that they are mere moving automatons in the hands of a power not present. One can see it in the guarded expressions and subdued tone which pervades the whole house. It is amusing, and at the same time humiliating, to see how cautiously, and how seriously, the great questions of State are handled which are brought in from the Emperor ; and on the contrary, how the house fires up, and how real, genuine, pent-up eloquence flows, when some little bill for the relief of widows and orphans is brought in. Is it reasonable to expect that men of talent, of spirit, and of energy, will long bear such re- 56 The Crimean War straint, even at the risk of deluging their country in blood, and of losing their own property ? The withering hand that is spread out like a pall over the intelligent impulses of France has pervaded even the law courts, the lecture rooms of the school of medicine, and the pulpit. The schools of ora- tory have been smothered under those of artillery and infantry ! It may here be remarked that it would be useless to search the French press of that period for equally plain statements. Even in an American, whose interests required the continuance of his residence in Paris, they were bold, and the writer became a marked man with the police. The New York Times had secured Dr. Johnston as correspondent only a few months after his arrival at Paris, and was more than once seized by the Post Office in consequence of his articles. It may be, in fact, that he was lucky to escape, as the following paragraph, written on the 13th of February, 1853, wUl show. On Sunday morning thirty-six correspondents of foreign journals were arrested by order of the Em- peror. The reason assigned was, that these gentle- men had written articles for foreign journals grossly libellous of the Empress. 1 happen to know, how- ever, the real cause of their arrest. The French Bourse at the present moment is in a perilous con- dition, and this, taken in connection with the fact 57 Memoirs of "Malakoff" that England and all Europe are putting themselves in a menacing attitude towards France, has alarmed the Emperor. This fact alone is the reason why Louis Napoleon lately pocketed the direct and premeditated insult which the Emperor Nicholas, of Russia, offered him, and it is this which has stimulated him into a war on the foreign correspon- dents. At the time of the proclamation of the Empire, the funds were held up by the Government by fictitious means, to aid its cause, and now the reaction has come ; and these correspondents, by giving the true state of the case, have exerted a powerful influence in increasing the ruin that is im- pending over the French speculators. Government and the Bourse are one and indivisible, and its anxiety is, therefore, natural. Your correspondent has so far escaped any surveillance of which he has been aware. There are but few correspondents left, however, and they are all English or American. I have set my house in order for a moment's warn- ing, for there is no knowing to what mean acts this contemptible Government will be driven to sustain itself. A Government supported by half a million of soldiers that is afraid of a few newspaper writers, must be mean enough and rotten enough to do almost anything. S8 The Crimean War It does not seem improbable that the issue of the New York Times containing this rather heated paragraph was among those suppressed by the Imperial authorities ! The ambitious policy of the Tsar Nicholas aimed at ex- tending Russian influence over Turkey. England viewed this policy hostilely. Napoleon III., as sovereign of France, was protector of the Catholics in the East, and made this a reason for resisting the progress of the Greek Church. His policy was really inspired by other motives. Some new light has been thrown on the course which Louis Napoleon has traced out for himself. It is well known that he does not imagine that any attempt on his part to rival the military reputation of his uncle could be otherwise than a miserable failure. That reputation is too colossal for the nephew to attempt to follow in the same track. But he has a reputation and a revenge to gain, and he will adopt the next best course to gain them. When he was declared Emperor of France, liberal England called him a mushroom despot, while the continental powers tardily recognised his imperial dignity with a sneer. Louis Napoleon pocketed these insults at the time, and determined on revenge. Since that time his policy is tolerably clearly seen through the secrecy which he has 59 Memoirs of "MalakofF" thrown around it. He has endeavoured to produce quarrels in those quarters where he could be the gainer. It was his Minister, M. de Lavalette, who tried to magnify into a national quarrel the Bank loan affair at Constantinople last year ; and it was this same M. de Lavalette who produced, according to the English Minister, the quarrel with Russia, which brought the stubborn Prince Menschikoff and his ultimatum to Constantinople. When the flame was once started, Louis Napoleon, the parvenu, sets himself up as the arbiter — the mediator — among the great Powers who had sneered at his pretensions ; and he has undoubtedly secured his position. The growing hostility between France and Russia led to a corresponding rapprochement between France and Eng- land, a normal political phenomenon. The Eastern question grew more and more acute. The French and English Governments exchanged views, and arranged for concerted action in support of Turkey, but it was hard work to bridge the latent antagonism that had so long existed between Frenchmen and Englishmen. One of the national idiosyncrasies of a French- man is to hate an Englishman. It is as faithful to him as his shadow, and bursts forth whenever the slightest pretext for its manifestation exists. The 60 The Crimean War Englishman is to the French nation what the Irish- man is to ours — the standing butt for every variety of taunting squib and wicked epigram. He fills a vacuum in the literature of the country ; he keeps alive its wit, and serves to supply that " desideratum " which zealous authors are always in search of. In the reign of Louis Philippe, when a strong effort was being made by that monarch to effect an alliance with England, a baker in the Faubourg St. Antoine had a sign painted, representing a cat and a dog in an unmistakably hostile position over a bowl of milk and bread. Under these figures were the words, " A I'entente cordiale." The sign had an immense success during its few hours of existence, but the police soon ordered its removal. The baker's sign of the Faubourg St. Antoine represents precisely the position of the " entente cordiale" between France and England at this moment. In the autumn of 1853, hostilities broke out between Turkey and Russia, and the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Sinope, at the end of November, brought the English and French Governments up to war point. A combined fleet of the two countries was ordered into the Black Sea, and in the first week of February diplomatic relations with Russia were broken off. 61 Memoirs of " Malakoff " The war question, so long a drag on the public spirits, is at last growing exciting. When the diplomatists step out of the way and allow military men to take hold of the subject, there is sure to be a noise — a rattling of arms at least. For a week this rattling of arms has been heard throughout France, and it is to be hoped something is now to be done. Following the example of the London Cabinet, that of the Emperor has given to the public the entire diplomatic correspondence on this question, from the Menschikoff Invasion down to the recall of the French Minister from St. Petersburg a week ago, and including an autograph letter from Napoleon to Nicholas, dated the 29th of January. The most remarkable feature of this correspondence is its entire want of ideas. One would have imagined that upon so gigantic a question as that which now convulses Europe, a question which Lord Clarendon, the English Foreign Secretary, declared a few days ago in Parliament to be the most momentous which has ever engaged Europe, there would have been ideas, thoughts and proposi- tions worthy of the subject and the age. It is all as insipid as the most spiritless diplomacy can make it, and does not even betray acuteness in its en- deavours to be non-committal. Two things are 62 The Crimean War eminently proved by this correspondence, which are, that diplomacy has terribly degenerated since the days of the Schwartzenbergs, the Metternichs, the Talleyrands and the Wellingtons, and that from the first no intellectual efforts worthy of men who hold the destinies of Europe in their hands, have been made to stay the terrible carnage which is on the eve of commencing. The autograph letter of the Emperor of France to the Emperor of Russia, published this morning, forms no exception to these strictures, and is not worthy the reputation of the man who wrote it. The first Napoleon wrote a letter to Alexander of Russia when about to engage in a conflict with that monarch, and the second Napoleon, true to his instincts and to the super- stition which guides him, follows in his footsteps. The war brought about an immediate invasion of France, not by Cossacks, but by her new allies from across the Channel. Paris became busy in trade and in witticisms. A Frenchman was selling English pears in the Rue de Rivoli the other day. While an English- man was passing along with a lady on each arm, his wife and sister, the man of the pears looked to- wards them and screamed out : " Voila les belles Anglaises ! deux pour un sou 1 " (" Here are the 63 Memoirs of " Malakoff " lovely English ! Two for a sou ! " is the literal translation ; but in French it meant English pears instead of English ladies.) This was too gross an insult for the Englishman, and, without further ceremony, he left his ladies, and walicing up to the man knocked him down and beat him most un- mercifully. The crowd, which quickly collected, explained the matter, when the Englishman, amused and mortified at the mistake he had made, imme- diately gave the man twenty dollars. Ever since, it is said, that man has made his living insulting Englishmen ! The cry " The English are coming ! " has startled all Paris. One might suppose it was the Cossacks instead, from the noise they make about it. For the first time in the history of the nations a close alliance for defence against a common enemy has been entered into between England and France, and the event is so remarkable that the French people cannot yet realise it. The announcement that the soldiers of " perfidious Albion " are to be reviewed in the streets of Paris by the French Emperor conveys to Parisian ears something so startling that, in spite of the twelve months' co- operation on the war question, the gossips raise their hands with a " Did you ever ! " expression of 64 The Crimean War astonishment that plainly tells how deep must have been their conviction that such an event never could take place. All day yesterday a crowd was collected around the station of the Northern Railroad anxiously awaiting the "English Mission," while throughout the city scarcely any other subject found an audience. Hotel-keepers made pilgrim- ages into the Rue de la Paix in search of instruction on plum-puddings and the mysteries of 'alf-and- 'alf ; the " English spoken here " establishments began to rub up their knowledge of those two etymological efforts " Ver coot, sere" and " Tank you, sere." The " oldest inhabitant " declares he is going to shut himself up, for he remembers as vividly as though it were yesterday the famous review in the Champs Elys^es in 1815, and the association of ideas is not agreeable to his patriotism. He feels that in the presence of the red-coats he could not rid himself of the idea that they were going to shoot'. But the real scene of interest was in the East. The fleets and armies of France and England were threatening the Crimea. A landing was effected, and, on the 20th of September, Marshal St. Arnaud and Lord Raglan defeated Prince MentschikofF at the Alma, driving him into Sebastopol. F 65 Memoirs of " MalakofF" The different manner in which the news of victory has been received at Paris and at London is worth noting. If we are to credit the newspapers of the latter city, the staid, sober, impassive Englishmen grew noisy and frantic with expansive delight. Even the brokers on 'Change broke out in song — though, to be sure, "God save the Queen" is not a lively air — while others, in other places, sang the " Marseillaise," and in general demonstrated vivaciously and vociferously. The Parisians appear to have transferred their national character with their national hymn. They are forbidden to sing the latter, and they showed no inclination to sing anything else. The streets and the theatres were crowded last Sunday evening with quiet promen- aders and spectators. The outside of some of the theatres, and four windows in the Rue de la Paix, were illuminated. I caught in passing words that showed the news of victory was a topic of con- versation. And these are the sum of public demonstration on occasion of a national victory by the most emotional, sensitive, volatile, frisky people in the world ! Curious, is it not .? A victory like that of the Alma could not but cement the Anglo-French cordiality — witness the following : — Mr. Appleyard, a manufacturer of stockings at 66 The Crimean War Balbriggan, somewhere in the British dominions, has been appointed stocking maker to Her Majesty the Empress of France. The following is the decree : — Department of State, Paris, December 20, 1854. Sir, I hasten to inform you that after having received the orders of Her Majesty the Empress, I authorise you to take the title of " Furnisher of Stockings to Her Majesty." The patent which secures to you the authorisation shall be remitted in my office into the hands of the person whom you may delegate to receive it. I am, etc., AcHiLLE FouLD, Minister of State. Happy Mr. Appleyard ! The honour of being " Furnisher of Stockings " to the beautiful Montijo, which has long been sought for by gallant French- men, has at length descended on your inapprecia- tive, phlegmatic, English shoulders ! And what an unpoetic name to be placed in connection with so delicate an honour ! Of all the wonders of the wonderful alliance, surely this is not the least ! The Russophiles and the sceptics generally should no longer doubt after such a display of international sympathy. Appleyard and Balbriggan step out at 67 Memoirs of " MalakofF" once from obscurity, and take their place among the heroes and places which perpetuate in history the great alliance of 1854. Doctor Johnston was evidently no great believer in the establishment of a permanent friendship between France and England, and the breakdown of the latter's military organisation in the Crimea was the occasion for his writing the following paragraphs ; it was not very many months before they were amply justified. It was a great mistake for England to place her army alongside of, and in company with, the Imperial army of France, if she wished to preserve her reputation as a great military power, and avoid humiliating contrasts. The stubborn bravery and great fighting qualities of a handful of men do not constitute a nation a military power ; she must have a permanent military establishment, and an organisation that will meet with promptitude great emergencies. In this state of things, it is not surprising to hear Ministers avow that England has fallen to a secondary position among the nations of Europe ; or to hear from the nation a universal cry of despair and of revenge against the unfortunate Ministry that happened to be in power at the moment. The natural fear now is, that France, the 68 The Crimean War Bonaparte dynasty being in power, may take advantage of these circumstances ; and although the alliance will be maintained, a time is coming when she will be liberated, and then will revive all the old prejudices and hatreds which only lie dormant, but are not extinct. These developments of England's weakness only serve powerfully to consolidate and strengthen Napoleon's power ; and it may well be feared that at a proper moment this power will be put in operation against England, and the cause of liberty as well. The exultation in France, taken in connection with the fact that France is materially stronger at this moment than she ever was, while England is avowedly weak, furnishes an omen which does not carry with it a bright future. The early victories of the Allies before Sebastopol were followed by a long period of uncertain success. At times it appeared as though the siege must end in failure. Rumours of success and of disaster alternately stimulated or depressed the Bourse. Even the capture of the great Russian fortress was several times announced. It seems that the Government is unfortunate in all the retractations which it has lately been compelled to make. It backed out awkwardly from the celebrated Prise de Sebastopol; it backed out awk- 69 Memoirs of " Malakoff " wardly from the Soul6 affair, and equally awkwardly from V affaire Cruvelli. The Emperor has seriously compromised his reputation for impassibility, for decision and obstinacy of character, and for love of secrecy. The result is that since the announcement of the taking of Sebastopol before the French army and the world on the heights of Boulogne, this man of boasted caution and imperturbability has returned to St. Cloud, and has not once appeared at the theatres or even in the streets of the city, as is his custom when residing in that palace. His drives are now confined to the park of St. Cloud and the Bois de Boulogne. For the last two days he has been closeted with Lord Palmerston, who, with Lady Palmerston, is on a politico-social visit, by invitation, to the imperial pair. Last night there was a rush to the Grand Opera to see the entree of Mademoiselle Cruvelli after her stampede. The new director (acting for the Government) had the bad taste to state on the bills : " The Huguenots, for the rentree of Made- moiselle Cruvelli, after her indisposition^ So direct an insult, so direct a defiance of truth thrown into the public teeth, was naturally expected to create a row ; for whether she ran away because her name was not in large letters on the bills, or whether M. Achille 70 The Crimean War Fould, Minister of State, and manager of the opera, was too assiduous in his attentions to the great cantatrice, or whether she fell in love with a certain Count, who used to take photographic likenesses (only as an amateur), it is at least certain that " indisposition " corporeal had nothing to do with the affair ; for we heard of her in all the cities through which she passed in a flying visit toward Italy. As she descended the wide stairway in the second act, her first appearance, the only movement per- ceptible in the house was a slight buzz proceeding from a suppressed laugh. As she advanced towards the footlights, the closest scrutiny could not detect any movement on her impassive face, and yet she saw a storm gathering. She opened her mouth to sing, and then a general laugh and remarks of dis- approbation were heard all over the house, loud enough to drown the notes she uttered. A few hisses were heard, but not a solitary clap, nor a cheer ; even the paid claqueurs were silent. Soon, however, this was changed; after showing its dis- pleasure once, the house was satisfied; no sub- sequent acts of disapprobation occurred. She sang and acted magnificently, and so soon and so com- pletely conquered the audience, that at the end of 71 Memoirs of " Malakoff " the third act she was called out in a perfect fury of enthusiasm. I thought I could see in the determined expression of her face, as she made her appearance, that she had made up her mind to conquer the public, whatever might be the manner in which she was received. And she did conquer completely. It was a fair victory of the artiste over the prejudices which the caprices of the woman had raised against her ; the speedy forgetfulness of the audience under the influence of her voice was a silent but a glorious tribute to the child of genius, and another proof of the power which beauty and youth and talent may exercise when backed by a powerful will. At the end of the piece she was again called out in another storm of enthusiasm, and everybody went away with the praises of Cruvelli on his lips. Never did Cruvelli sing so well. The reason for Cruvelli's disappearance will appear from the following anecdote : — There remains a story of the Cruvelli which will amuse the reader, and clear up a whole cloud of mystery which hung over the singular conduct of the great singer. Four weeks ago a journal published the following story (as near as I can 72 The Crimean War remember) which I did not then understand, and which perhaps not ten persons in the city did under- stand. The journal said : — One evening this week on which the Vepres Siciliennes was to be played at the Grand Opera, two men, simply dressed, presented themselves at the box office. " The Emperor's box ? " said one of them. " How ! The Emperor's box ? Do you think we give the Emperor's box to the first comer ? " " You will not give it to me ? " The clerk, without doubt, was going to answer in the negative, when one of the persons who was in the office, perceiving the second personage who stood behind the first, immediately took off his hat, and giving the clerk a jog of the elbow, whispered — *' It's the Emperor." All hats were off in an instant, for it was really he, who, accompanied by the Duke of Montebello, gave himself the pleasure of being present incognito at the performance of the Vepres Siciliennes. That was the story. It was told by a journalist who knows all the tittle-tattle of the stage inside out, and he meant something which does not appear on the surface. The Emperor was not seen by the audience that evening. He only went into the 73 Memoirs of " Malakoff " back part of his box, from which there is a door and a short stairway leading on to the stage ; and it was there that he went on that evening, and many- other evenings when the same lady played. It was the flattering attentions and brilliant offers that were made her that caused the confusion apparent in her conduct during the last few weeks of her engage- ment: and it was to escape importunities from various quarters that the fair cantatrice was chased out of town the day after signing her contract with Baron Vigier. And thus Paris went on, ever gay, ever amusing itself, while at the other end of Europe the French and English soldiers were dying in hundreds in the trenches before Sebastopol. Cruvelli, Penco, Mario, Frezzolini, Rachel, struggled with as much energy for a few bouquets and cheers as Raglan, or Pelissier, or Mentschikoff for a gun- lined earthwork. A few evenings ago Madame Penco, one of the three stars of the Italiens this winter, was suddenly seized with one of those indispositions, traditional in Italian opera companies that do not harmonise. The notice to this effect was not handed to the manager until late in the afternoon, when there was no longer time to change the piece. In this dilemma the manager hastened to the residence of 74 The Crimean War Mademoiselle Frezzolini, the prima donna of last season, and begged her to take Madame Penco's place in the Trovatore. Frezzolini, whose voice is failing, and who had not been engaged for this season, was only too glad to get an opportunity to satisfy her revenge against the manager, as well as against Penco, and consented. But she was determined not to play second, that is, to fill up " sick vacancies " for any artiste she considered no more than her equal, so she arranged a coup d'etat on a small scale. She was in her dressing-room and carefully dressed for the part ; the orchestra was ready, the curtain about to rise, when the manager was summoned to Made- moiselle Frezzolini's dressing-room. There he was shown by that lady a paper to which she demanded his signature, which assigned to her, and to her alone, the rdle in the Trovatore for the entire season ! The manager had but a moment to con- sider, the call-boy's voice was heard at the door, and the manager signed. Mademoiselle's coup had car- ried. When Penco heard of it she was furious, for it was her finest part ; but it was too late ; and she will learn another time not to take liberties with the public for the sake of a little opposition to her manager. But really M. Calzado would 75 Memoirs of " Malakoff " have been sustained if, when Frezzolini presented him the paper in question, he had carried it for- ward to the footlights, read it to the audience, claimed their indulgence, and sent Mademoiselle Frezzolini home. Another glimpse of the theatrical world may be taken, the heroine this time being a young American girl, Miss Hensler, of Boston, who eventually married Ferdinand, Regent of Portugal during the minority of Dom Pedro V. The annual trials of skill at the Conservatoire are now in progress. One day is devoted to each specialty — to singing, to opera comique, comedy, tragedy, and to each different branch. Saturday was the day appropriated to singing, and, for a reason which I shall mention in due time, I spent five hours of it in the theatre of the Conservatoire, at first anxiously expectant, then interestedly listening, and finally vigorously applauding. A young American girl was making her d^but before a French audience ; and some dozen of her countrymen and women, braving the suffocating heat of the last day of July, clustered in a solid square, directly under the chandelier. The claque is sometimes a very commendable in- stitution ; and I think that we deserved unhesitating 76 The Crimean War approval for our foregone conclusion to applaud. A young lady from Boston, but seventeen years old, on a Parisian stage, alone, is an object, I think, worthy of support, and such moral encouragement as the sight of a row of friendly faces can inspire. We sought, too, to interest others in her success ; and while Mr. , of Boston, undertook to make friends of some gentlemen in front, and induce them to espouse our cause, I ingratiated myself into the favour of a party of ladies at my left. So that when the time arrived, we had increased our numbers to eighteen ; and such a determined set you never saw. However, our pains were thrown away — our applause was lost in that of the thousand persons present. We were but the needle in the bottle of hay. We had spent an hour or two in winning over some half a dozen listeners ; the de- butante convinced them all, in the time necessary to sing the grand air of " La Sonnambula " — ten minutes, at the outside ! The young lady in question was Miss Hensler, whom some music-loving Bostonians sent to Paris about six months ago to perfect her musical educa- tion. She passed her examination for admission easily, and made such progress that M. Auber advised her to sing at the Concours trial, of which 77 Memoirs of " MalakofF" I am speaking. This was a rare proof of confidence, for she had been in the institution less than four months, and there are few instances of competing after so brief a period of study. It was, of course, out of the question for her to win a prize. The judges are nine in number : Auber, Adam, Halevy, Carafa, etc. ; they sit in a large box in the first tier, directly in front of the stage. They make no allowances for anything^ — neither for fear, for youth, for failure of memory ; the examination is purposely made severe, and is surrounded with as many circumstances of awe as possible. It is thought, with reason, that persons who are to con- front audiences of many thousand persons, and obtain their bread before the footlights, must be trained early to forget their apprehensions, and devote all their energies to the purposes before them. There is no orchestra — the accompaniment is that of a simple piano. The singer's voice is alone in the theatre, with the compact audience, the frown- ing judges, and its friends under the chandelier, if it has any. Our prot6g6e was the twenty-fourth upon the list — the turn had been decided by drawing numbers from a hat — Auber's hat. If she were frightened (and she says she was) it did not appear in her 78 The Crimean War voice. She overcame the thickly sown difficulties of her air easily, and struck into the trill towards the end, which waylays the singer like Hellgate in smooth water, with decision and effect. The audience listened better than they had listened lately, and were evidently riveted by the exceeding beauty of the voice, though they had just heard more brilliant execution. The success was better than we had dared to hope, and we agreed that if there were six prizes, we might venture to claim one. When the Concours was over, the contestants were called upon the stage, and the voting began in the jury box. Casta Diva, which had been most ad- mirably sung, won the first prize ; and M. Auber communicated the gratifying fact to the smiling Mile. Girard. The laureate rose, and curtsied to the jury ; and the audience applauded a outrance. This prize was granted unanimously. For the second prize there was a dissenting voice — one vote was given for Miss Hensler. We under the chan- delier exchanged wondering glances, and supposed we had misunderstood. The voting continued — four votes for Miss Hensler, for the first accessit ! Why, what does this mean .'' said Mr. , of Boston. Why, it means, said Mrs. — - — , of Phila- 79 Memoirs of " Malakoff " delphia, that we shall have the second accessit, sure. Great agitation ensued under the chandelier. The voting began again. Nine, a unanimous vote, for us and our candidate ! This result, utterly un- expected and unhoped for, was the cause of con- gratulations on all sides. Perhaps the most pleased was Bordogni, the Professor, who confesses now that he had aimed at the third accessit, but not at the second. Paris was already in those days beginning to attract a large number of Americans. Not least among those who visited the French capital in the year 1855 was Horace Greeley. The adventure that befell him there is not gener- ally known, and is certainly worth repeating. The American population of Paris was thrown into consternation last Saturday evening by the announcement that Mr. Greeley, who had been associating so freely with his countrymen for the last few weeks in this city, had been arrested and thrown into prison. At first it was supposed that the Government, perfectly acquainted as it was with the virulence with which the Tribune pursues it, had sought some pretext for making a demon- stration by way of retaliation against its responsible editor ; but when the truth was known a general feeling of indignation was manifested. 80 The Crimean War Mr. Greeley was arrested as one of the directors of the New York Crystal Palace, on the complaint of a French artist residing in Paris, who demands the sum of twelve thousand francs as the value of a statue in marble which he sent to the Exhibition, and which was broken to pieces while in charge of the company. The statue represented a mother sleeping, while an eagle was carrying off her infant. The New York Crystal Palace Company professed to be responsible for all articles sent to them for exhibition. French exhibitors assert that, believing their goods safe under this promise, they have lost more than a hundred thousand dollars by the care- lessness or bad faith of the company. Under the law of the State of New York, it appears that they have been unable to recover anything. One of the directors of that company is found in Paris, and the French exhibitors, putting forward one of their number to test the case, Mr. Greeley is seized and thrown into prison. Mr. Greeley appreciates fully the force of the difficulties into which he has fallen, and although he has no fear of the final issue of the process, he feels that he is in a fair way to be annoyed by a long and costly suit. The incidents of the arrest, although calculated by its injustice and the abruptness with which it was G 8i Memoirs of " MalakofF" accomplished to excite the utmost indignation, possessed also its ludicrous side, Mr. Greeley was in the act of dressing to attend a big dinner given that evening at the Trots Freres Provencaux by Mr. Field, President of the American Board of Com- missioners to the Great Exhibition, to his col- leagues. The dinner party embraced, besides the American Commissioners, eighteen in number, several invited guests, among whom were Mr. Greeley, Mr. Mason, Mr. Piatt, and the other members of the American Legation at Paris ; General Thomas, just appointed Under-Secretary of State ; Mr. Belmont, Minister at the Hague ; Mr. Theodore S. Fay, Minister to Switzerland ; Mr. O'Sullivan, Minister to Portugal ; Mr. Charles Astor Bristod, Mr. Corbyn. A speech was ex- pected from Mr. Greeley on the occasion, and after half an hour's waiting it was discovered by the arrival of Mr. Piatt, that the editor of the Tribune was in Clichy ! After the first feeling of surprise at this unex- pected event had subsided, the Ministers present held a consultation to devise means for his imme- diate release. But it was soon discovered that the case was beyond their reach ; since, being a civil matter, and Mr. Greeley having refused to give 82 The Crimean War security for the money, there was no alternative left. Mr. Greeley had been mixing lately so gene- rally with his countrymen in Paris that his absence at the dinner party was seriously felt. Then the abruptness, the singular nature of the arrest, and the fact that other directors of the Crystal Palace have been in Paris and escaped arrest, did not fail to claim the attention of the company, and excited amongst them exclamations of indignation and all sorts of bans mots at the philosopher's mis- fortune. At an advanced hour an attach^ of the American Legation entered, who had been providing Mr. Greeley with the necessaries which he required for his prison residence, and who threw the whole company into laughter by the comic manner in which he compared the princely dinner he saw before Mr. Greeley's vacant chair at table, and the bowl of transparent prison soup which he saw served to him a few minutes before. Mr. Belmont, who was also a director of the New York Exhibition, did not escape the jokes of the company. On Sunday I paid a visit to Mr. Greeley at the prison. Clichy is classic ground ; since the closing of Ste. P^lagie it is the only prison for debt in Paris, and will accommodate four hundred 83 Memoirs of " MalakofF" persons. Its walls contain all classes of persons — the rich and the poor, the learned and the un- educated, men and women. The rich, for there are many such, who remain in prison from obsti- nacy, live in the same luxurious style as under their own roof, while the poor are limited to the one franc per day allowed by the law and paid by the creditor. On entering the front office of the prison, we were requested to send in our names to " the prisoner," and to the officer in charge. While waiting the return of the keeper, who was executing this duty, we heard in the conversation of the employees of the establishment frequent allusions to the " great lord " from America, whom they had caught. After being conducted through numerous halls and rooms, and after passing through the hands of several guards, one of whom examined us to see if we had no brandy or cigars on our persons (luxuries which are not allowed to any one, and a trouble which they might have spared themselves, if they had known their prisoner was a Maine Law man), we finally reached the saloon or " parloir." The parloir is a dark, dirty, un- ventilated room, to which prisoners may come to receive their friends. It is about twenty feet square, and furnished only with chairs. Here we found 84 The Crimean War about thirty persons — men and women, visitors and the visited — weeping, kissing, embracing, recount- ing their tales of suffering, and giving exhibitions of French human nature in general. In the midst of this little school of French character we found the philosophic editor of the Tribune, quietly seated on a chair, over the back of which was carefully spread the immortal white coat — that coat which has given so much renown to its wearer, which has made interminable journeys through the sun, mud and rain of its native country, and two journeys to Europe ; which has made a sensation alike on the prairies of Iowa, on the Birdcage Walk of St. James's Park, and on the Avenue des Champs Elysees of Paris ; which has been oftener apostrophised, oftener ridiculed, oftener abused than any other coat in the history of broadcloth literature — the immortal white coat was at last in prison ! In one hand the prisoner held the summons, and in the other the laws of the State of New York ! Notwithstanding the gloominess of the surround- ings, we found Mr. Greeley amiable, good-natured, and resigned, as he always is, and full of anecdote and philosophic reflection on his position, and on the new phase of French character which accident 85 Memoirs of " MalakofF" had exposed to him. He had already made the acquaintance of some titled gentlemen, inmates like himself of the prison, and of two American gentle- men, whose names are tolerably well known to the public, and who are supposed to be in Egypt or the Crimea. Mr. Greeley found Clichy the only place where the exhibition had not put up the price of board and lodging. Since writing the above, I learn that on Monday Mr. Vattemare found in his library a copy of the charter of the Crystal Palace Company in New York, the only one no doubt in France, and dis- covered that it contained a clause which declares that no individual director shall be held responsible for the debts of the company. In the afternoon of Wednesday, Mr. Greeley had a hearing, and on the strength of this clause was at once discharged. 86 THE FALL OF SEBASTOPOL CHAPTER IV THE FALL OF SEBASTOPOL ' I "'HE long drawn out operations in the Crimea proved a severe ordeal for the patience of the Emperor, and drove his cousin Prince Jerome, otherwise known as Plon- plon, and the Duke of Cambridge from the allied camp. The two princes, who have just arrived in Paris, are both, it is said by those who have seen them, in a perfect state of health; and it is difficult to imagine why it is that the Government persists in magnifying a temporary derangement of health into an affair of such gravity as to require the presence of these gentlemen at home. Of course, there are other reasons than this ; but there has been too much transparency in conducting the affair to give it even the consistency of a successful farce. For the honour of the Duke of Cambridge, it should be said that, personally, he does not claim to be ill. A little later, in March, 1 855, strong hopes of peace were excited by the death of the man whose ambition was the chief cause of the Crimean war. 89 Memoirs of "Malakoff" The death of the Emperor Nicholas, coming as it did, suddenly and without premonition, produced as great an effect and as much joy in Paris as the celebrated " taking of Sebastopol." On Friday night last, at ten o'clock, a rumour ran through the French population of Paris like wildfire, that a despatch had been received at the foreign office after nightfall saying that the Emperor of Russia was dead. The next morning, on going into the street early, the first words that saluted my ears, coming from a shop-woman who was taking down her shutters to a neighbour similarly employed, were — " Dites-donCy voisin ! Nicolas a creve, done I " A little further on, a company of shop-women were dis- cussing the " caving in " of the great Nicholas, and were evidently disposed to attribute the important event to the cares which France had placed on his shoulders. I purchased a copy of the official journal, and found that the great Nicholas had actually creve. It was not till the occurrence of this event that strangers in France could appreciate the power and the magic which surrounded the Tsar in Europe. The fear which his name had inspired could be well measured by the joy which his death produced, and it was clear to see that it was not so much Russia that was feared as the name 90 The Fall of Sebastopol of Nicholas; for the impression was, at first, that peace would follow the accession of Alexander to the throne. But once more disillusion followed. The apparently futile operations in front of Sebastopol dragged fruitlessly on for many weeks more before the end was reached. In the summer of 1855 was held the first of the long series of Exhibitions that have attracted so many visitors to Paris and driven so many Parisians out of it. Doctor Johnston was one of the American Commissioners, and in that capacity attended the closing ceremony at which Napoleon III. pronounced a noteworthy speech. His Majesty had a political speech to make which he intended should make an impression upon those who were to hear it. The Ministers of every important Government in Christendom were to stand near him. His audience was to be composed of the elite of his own people and the intelligent of other nations. The occasion was propitious for a demonstration. So His Majesty, with the pre- caution which is usual to him, went to the Palais de rindustrie the day before, and directing men to stand in each corner of the immense nave, he took his place on the platform in front of the throne and tried his voice. He was as much astonished, per- haps, as any one to find that he was distinctly heard 91 Memoirs of "Malakoff" in the most remote parts, and so he resolved to try the experiment next day of delivering a speech to the crowd. He had never attempted such a thing before, and except the few persons who heard him trying the experiment, no one anticipated such a re- sult. His public speeches had always been delivered in a low tone of voice, and were only heard by those in his immediate vicinity. Prince Napoleon's speech, which preceded that of the Emperor, was not heard at all. 1 stood within sixty feet of the throne and almost in a direct line in front of it, and did not catch a word, and yet the Prince is a very large, robust man, and offers in his person all the requisites of a good voice. When the Emperor pronounced the word " Gentlemen," it was in a tone so loud and clear that the whole house was startled ; it was evident he was going to try to be heard all over the building, and at once every other voice was still. At the end of the first sentence such a shout arose as never before greeted the ears of Louis Napoleon ; and as the sentence contained nothing remarkable, it was clear enough that it was surprise at his declamation that called it forth. The surprise and the delight around the throne were equally great ; the Empress whispered to the Duke of Cambridge ; Prince Napoleon to 92 The Fall of Sebastopol his father ; the Ministers to one another, and all with a look of astonishment. As he progressed the enthusiasm increased, for the speech was not only beautiful and ultra-political, but it was well de- claimed, and was terminated in a storm of enthusi- asm which would have done honour to the Empire Club in its palmiest days. The English, who occu- pied a prominent place in front, and numbered, perhaps, three thousand persons, stormed with a vehemence that astonished the throne, and must have been suggestive of curious souvenirs and agreeable political reflections. The French do not understand it, and from that day to this the frantic applause of the English has not ceased to be the talk of the streets. Of all the successful demagogues of modern times, Napoleon is the type, the chief, before whom all others are as nothing. His speech, beautiful and able from beginning to end, proves it. His recognition of the power of public opinion was intended for effect alone, and he prejudged well his audience, for no part of his speech was received with such a storm of applause. Politically, his speech was so well balanced between peace and war, that the bulls and bears of the Bourse did not know how to take it, and although it was posted at the 93 Memoirs of " Malakoff " Bourse during the hours for the transaction of business, no change whatever was eifected by it. As soon as the Emperor's speech was finished, an extraordinary movement was observed amongst the chiefs of the diplomatic corps. Without wait- ing for the balance of the ceremonies, these gentle- men seemed occupied with one thought only — that of making good their retreat without attracting too much attention. The clear open space in front of the throne, by which they entered, was not to be thought of as a route of escape ; neither were the two lateral aisles, for they were conspicuous, and contained no moving object — so that their Excellencies, seen moving off through this route, would have been the centre of all eyes. Count Hatzfeldt, however, whose countenance looked clouded, did not hesitate long as to the route he should take ; and giving a nod to Baron Habner, who did not seem so much troubled under his dissembling smile, started off over barriers that would have intimidated anybody but a German diplomat with grave affairs of State on his mind. By climbing over seats and disarranging the care- fully laid folds of diplomatic ladies' dresses. His Excellency succeeded in getting to the rear of the seats on the stand occupied by the official bodies of 94 The Fall of Sebastopol State ; and thus, by gliding along the wall and climbing at last a four-foot barrier, he found an exit into a part of the palace piled with boxes of goods, but where his ^^passe-partout" removed all serious obstacles to further progress. Baron Hilbner, more polite and more diplomatic, made adieus to those around him, and taking up the route of the now escaped Prussian Minister, went about the work of getting out as if it was the most natural thing in the world. M. Lichtenfeldt, Baron Liebaca, and Baron Waechter soon followed ; while the others remained a little while longer, till the confusion attendant upon the presentation of medals offered a chance of escape, when they, too, retired. No doubt the Prussian and Austrian Ministers arrived first at the telegraph office ; and from that time till night there was a monopoly of the telegraph by the diplomatic corps, sending home to their sovereigns Napoleon's speech and comments upon the impression which it made. Lord Cowley and the Pope's Nuncio, who had been holding a quiet tite-k-tete for the last half- hour preceding the delivery of the speech, and were now standing together on the front of the platform, viewed the scene I have just described with a good deal of relish. The British Ambassador no doubt 95 Memoirs of " MalakofF" knew in advance that His Majesty's speech would eschew art for politics, perhaps even knew its con- tents, and he was therefore in a position to enjoy the consternation of his colleagues of the German States. Three of the American Commissioners received from the Emperor, by the hands of Prince Napoleon, the title of Chevalier in the Legion of Honour, "for services rendered to art and science in the Palais de V Industrie ." I met a friend the morning after the presentation of these honours, who ex- claimed to me, with a perfectly serious air, "Do you know there are three American ' Chevaliers d' Industrie'^ in town ? " I said, " No ! " very ener- getically, when he horrified me by pronouncing the names of my three friends — Valentine, Woods, and Vattemare ! One of these gentlemen, whom I was congratu- lating on his new honour, had an odd way of explaining how he happened to wear the precious toy. He said, " I was coming out without it, but my wife came after me with it in her hand and begged me so persistently to put it on, that (to use his own phrase)yW du cider I " Modest man ! After the presentation ceremonies, the Emperor 1 Pickpockets. 96 The Fall of Sebastopol and Empress, accompanied by the Prince Napoleon, the Duke of Cambridge, and other persons of their suite, descended from the platform and made a tour of the lateral aisles to inspect the objects which had gained the prize medals. Arrived in front of the American department, where Mr. Goodyear had tastefully displayed a variety of household furniture, musical instruments, and toilet articles made of vulcanised india-rubber. Her Majesty turned to Prince Napoleon, who was cicerone on the occasion (His Highness having made two scientific voyages through the Palace), and demanded : " Qu'est-ce que c'esi que cela ? " " Out." " Cest de VAmirique." " Mais^ qu'est-ce que c'est que celuy done ? " " Cest du . . . c'esi la derniere invention de ce pays fertile ! " Oh, Prince ! Just then, to the Prince's relief, a little dried-up old woman, in the gallery overhead, cried out in a shrill child's voice, when all else was still, " Vive r Impiratnce I Vive V Imperatrice ! " Every one, their Majesties included, suddenly turned their faces upward to see where the shrill apostrophe H 97 Memoirs of "MalakofF" came from. A smile spread over the countenances of the party, when the old woman, encouraged by this evidence of her success, drew triumphantly from her pocket a yellow handkerchief, and waving it in the air, continued her ludicrous exercise till " the pit " whistled her down. In the confusion, the Prince (who had made the two scientific voyages through the Exhibition) escaped an explanation on the beautiful collection of Mr. Goodyear, and the little old woman, in consequence, will receive, with the man who certi- fied to the Erince's bad health in the Crimea, and the two elephants who stand on their heads at the circus, and the giraffe at the Garden of Plants, who had four young ones in a year, the decoration of the Legion of Honour ! As a result of the alliance between France and England, visits had been exchanged between the sovereigns of those countries. That of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to Paris had been of the staid and decorous character that might have been expected. It was soon followed, however, by another state visit of which the outward aspect was far different. The little kingdom of Sardinia, crushed by Austria in 1849, was now raising its head again under Victor Emmanuel. Cavour was initiating the vigorous policy that was to make Sardinia the successful flag- bearer of the cause of Italian unity. A step in that 98 The Fall of Sebastopol policy came in the early part of 1855. when Sardinia joined France and England, and sent a small army to the Crimea. This was followed by a visit of Victor Emmanuel to Paris and London. The future King of Italy was the enfant terrible of the European sovereigns, as the following anecdote will show. You will read this week at New York many panegyrics on the character, the achievements, and the future of the Prince who is at this moment occupying the attention of the Londoners, You will read of his brilliant reception at the Courts of Paris and London, and wonder perhaps what it is that has elevated Victor Emmanuel all at once to a position which gains him honours only the right of sovereigns of the first class. You know that he is an ally of these Courts, and that his soldiers fought bravely at Traktir Bridge and at the Central Bastion ; you know that he was excommunicated by the Pope for a really commendable opposition to the encroachments of Rome ; that he has done much for the material progress of his people, and that he is a daring soldier on the field of battle. You know that the Emperor of France makes use of his name as a standing menace to Austria (with- out, however, producing any effect), and that great hopes are built upon him as an ally in future operations, when his territory shall have been 99 Memoirs of " MalakofF" enlarged, his power and his national resources increased. But you do not perhaps know the sacrifices which these Courts have made to this king, the insults which he has offered them, the indifference, the hauteur, the want of respect which he has paraded before them. Many of your readers, no doubt, know the history of Madame de Solms.^ Some of them know more than her history ; they know the individual as well. She is a young woman of great personal attractions, not more than twenty-four years of age, who has already seen enough of the world to publish an autobiography which, if not so elabo- rate, would be quite as piquant as that of C61este Mogador. She is the daughter of Mr. Wyse, British Ambassador at Athens, who is the husband of the Princess Letitia Bonaparte, daughter of Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino ; and thus Madame de Solms is second cousin to the present Emperor of France. A few years ago this lady married a wealthy Jew at Strasbourg, whose name she yet bears, but whose house she soon left for a gayer life at Paris. Here her conduct was so bad, (and it must have been very bad), that the Emperor and his family felt themselves seriously compro- mised. 1 Who became afterwards Mme. Rattazzi. lOO The Fall of Sebastopol A rupture took place, and the lady was excluded from the Palace and the imperial families. To revenge herself, she was in the habit of taking a box opposite their Majesties at the opera, and there to introduce gentlemen whose relations to her were worse than ambiguous. In despair, Napoleon called in the aid of M. Pietri, Prefect of Police, who soon discovered a method of getting rid of the difficulty. He found, or at least declared, that M. de Solms was not a French subject ; and as Madame was English by birth, the case was made out. Madame received three days' notice to quit the soil of France, She protested ; but it did not avail. So she was conducted by the police to the frontier, while M. de Solms took immediate steps to rehabilitate himself in rights which he had before believed valid. This lady, who has been living for the last few months at Nice, entered Paris a few days ago as the mistress of the King of Sardinia ! The King was the guest of the French nation, and courtesy for- bade the officers at the frontier from examining the passports of the royal party. This King, whose licentious (and I am justified by respectable Sar- dinians in saying brutal) conduct was the chief cause of his wife's death a year ago, did not lOI Memoirs of " Malakoff " hesitate to bring into the very bosom of the Court, whose hospitality he was going to enjoy, this woman, who had been expelled the country for her scandalous insults to that Court. Too glad to get back to the gay capital of France, she refused to accompany the King to London, and awaits his return to Paris. So the good Queen Victoria was thus saved an insult, of which she might, perhaps, have for ever remained ignorant, but which would have been none the less culpable on the part of him who offered it. At last, in September, 1 855) Sebastopol fell after Mac Mahon's brilliant storming of the Malakoff. An immense load was lifted from Napoleon's shoulders, and the prospect of an honourable peace opened. But the war had not re- sulted in materially increasing the prestige of the new Empire. At one time the soldiers in the trenches before Sebastopol openly sang the forbidden " Marseillaise." The cadets of the Ecole Polytechnique were evidently much of the same mind. Nothing further is known in regard to the Poly- technic School. It is said that the Emperor, finding opposition in the army in certain quarters where he did not expect it, has ordered an investi- gating committee ; and this committee will, without doubt, determine on a compromise which will save The Fall of Sebastopol the school in name but change it in form. General Morin is loud in his demands for the abolition of the school. It was this General who commanded the cadets on the day of the entry of the soldiers from the Crimea, and it is he who feels particularly the sting of their conduct on that day, for as the Emperor appeared in front of them the General rode out, and raising his sword towards his com- mand, with the cry of " Vive VEmpereur I " he was mortified and enraged to see that every cadet stood as mute and as calm as if he and the Emperor were not there. The General rode along the lines after- wards and ordered the boys to do better when they arrived at the Place Vendome, where they would be placed again in front of His Majesty ; but the same thing was here repeated. The General rode out in front, and raising his sword high in the air, shouted to his cadets in a menacing tone, " Vive VEmpereur I " but he only met with the same calm silence as at the Bastille. Among the students of the Latin quarter disapproval was more explicitly proclaimed. I mentioned to you, some three weeks ago, that at the burial of David d'Angers a considerable num- ber of young men, principally artists and students, 103 Memoirs of "MalakofF" made a demonstration somewhat political around the person of the aged poet B6ranger. The cries " Vive Beranger !" " Vive la Liberti !" were heard by the police, and some arrests were made. M. Goudouneche, editor of UAvenir, was distinctly heard shouting " Vive la Liherti ! " and for this he was three days ago tried before one of the Paris tribunals. In order that you may have some idea of the progress of liberal ideas under the Empire, I give you, in a condensed form, the judgment of the Court : "(i) Inasmuch as any shout uttered in public, no matter what may be its isolated significa- tion and its grammatical sense, may be considered as a seditious cry if it appears from the circum- stances that the one who uttered it designed to provoke disorder and to instigate a manifestation hostile to the Government ; (2) inasmuch as the shout of ' Vive la Liberti ! ' may, more than any other, possess the character of a seditious shout, since it may be interpreted in the most diverse and culpable ways, according to the political doctrines and the passions of the one who professes it and in presence of whom he utters it ; (3) inasmuch as, proffered under these circumstances, the shout of ' Vive la Liberie I ' cannot be explained, as the prisoner urges, as a homage rendered to an indi- 104 The Fall of Sebastopol vidual (B6ranger), but rather as a seditious manifes- tation, sufficiently indicated, furthermore, by the antecedents of the prisoner " ; the Court condemns Goudoun^che to three months' imprisonment and two hundred francs fine. About this time, too, began that series of attempts on Napoleon's life that was to culminate in Orsini's terrible explosion. The attempts, or reported attempts, on the life of the Emperor have become so frequent within the last six months, and the subject is so delicate a one, that I would not dare, nor indeed wish, to make statements based simply on public rumour. It is but a few weeks since a man was arrested, fined, and imprisoned for propagating a report that the Emperor had been fired at by one of the Cent- Gardes. A year or two of prison for simply re- peating what one has heard is not an agreeable perspective, and this rigorous execution of justice not only serves to prevent the circulation of false news, but it serves also to limit the circulation of news that is not false. Within six months five attempts, or reported attempts, have beeti made upon the Emperor's life — that of Pianori, that of the Cent-Garde, that at the Italian Opera, and two others which occurred last week. 105 Memoirs of " MalakofF" The last and most dangerous attempt was made two days after the aifair at Fontainebleau station ; but as it occurred in the Bois de Boulogne, where few people were present, it was possible to cir- cumscribe the publicity of the event, and thus no public notice has been given it. My authority for the report is so reliable that I cannot refuse it credence. It is said that as the Emperor and Empress entered the Bois in the evening in their carriage coming to town, they were fired at from a thicket by a Mini6 rifle, and that the bullet passed through and through the carriage just behind their backs, tearing in its course enormous holes in the body of the carriage. The nature of the gun was divined from the force of the bullet, and from the report. The person who fired was neither seen nor arrested. There are reasons for believing that these lawless attempts against the Emperor's life will be con- tinued ; and each attempt must lessen the number which he is yet to escape. There is at this moment a vast amount of exasperation in the Republican party, on account of the expulsion of the Jersey refugees; for this act is charged directly on Napoleon. If Victor Hugo and ' his confreres are compelled at last to go to the United States, io6 The Fall of Sebastopol their exasperation will be Increased, and the attempts upon Napoleon's life will increase in proportion. It was not only in the danger he ran from assassination that the events of the reign of the third Napoleon recalled those of the first, but in many other details, and towards the close of 1 855 a^n event was foreshadowed strongly reminiscent of another and greater that had occurred the year after the great Napoleon's marriage with Marie Louise of Austria. It has been observed lately that the Empress, when riding out with the Emperor, contrary to her custom takes her seat at the right instead of the left of His Majesty in the carriage. This little remnant of ancient etiquette, descended from the royal customs of Kings and Emperors, is only ob- served when the Queen or Empress gives hope of the birth of a future sovereign — the only circum- stance which entitles her to this favour. The Moniteur lately mentioned an impending event, which is to consolidate " our institutions," and for the successful realisation of which — from a political point of view — everybody in France will offer prayers and thanksgivings to Heaven, The other day, forty-eight hours after the announcement, two Frenchmen met at the Bourse. Both were 107 Memoirs of " MalakofF" decorated. Said one to the other, "£A bien, mon cher^ as tu fait ta prihe, comme le Moniteur te le com- mande ? " " Mon Dieu, out," said the other, "fai prii qui ce soit une fille, pour les vexer ! "^ The King of Rome, son of Napoleon I., was born on the 20th of March ; the King of Algiers, son of Napoleon III., is expected to be born the same day. Paul Dubois was the accoucheur of Marie Louise ; Paul Dubois, junior, is the ac- coucheur of Eugdnie. Paul Dubois, father, slept in a certain room and bed adjacent to the room of the Empress Marie Louise for two weeks before and two weeks after the birth of the King of Rome; Paul Dubois, junior, is now sleeping in the same room and on the same bed as were occupied by his father forty years ago ! Can imitation further go ? The journals publish this week the ceremonial that is to be observed on the occasion of the birth of the imperial infant. It fills the whole side of a journal, and looks like the programme of a national fete, or a holiday show. When symptoms of the important event declare themselves, all the great bodies of State are to rush immediately to the ^ (Well, sir, have you said your prayers as the iMoniteur directs? Oh yes, I prayed it might be a girl, to aDnoy them.) 108 The Fall of Sebastopol palace in official costume. The number of in- dividuals to be summoned cannot be less than fifteen hundred. So many are to be admitted to the bedroom of Her Majesty at the happy moment; so many in the green-room adjoining; another portion in the blue-room ; and still another in the grand salon. The official programme states that no one shall be admitted to the bedchamber of Her Majesty but His Majesty, the mother of the Empress, the Grand Mistress of the Household of Her Majesty, the Governess and the Lady of Honour of the Empress. But further on, the programme adds, that " at the moment the last pains are felt, their Excellencies the Minister of State and the Keeper of the Seals shall be informed and shall enter the chamber. The Princes and Princesses whom His Majesty may think right to admit, will also be called in." The child will be first presented to the Emperor and Empress, and the Ministers of State, its birth then officially registered, and then, traversing the crowd in the outer rooms, a grand procession, headed by the Emperor and the child, will conduct the young prince to the apartments assigned to him. The Emperor will then return to receive the congratula- tions of the bodies of State. 109 Memoirs of " MalakofF" On the r6th of March, 1856, the Prince Imperial, Eugene Louis Jean Joseph, was born, with all due cere- monial. The Empress remains with the Imperial Prince at St. Cloud, where, if we are to believe certain rumours, Her Majesty is for the first time since her marriage indulging in a little of the freedom which she enjoyed as the Countess de T6ba. It is true that His Majesty left his relative, the old Prince Baciocchi, to stand guard, and to see that nothing unreasonable was allowed to the thought- less Eugenie ; but then it appears that Prince Baciocchi is not exactly the man to judge of what is and what is not reasonable. When one reflects that Her Majesty is particularly fond of the largest liberty of action, — without meaning by that to impute to her improprieties of conduct, — that she has been buried to the real pleasures of this world for three years, that she is the Empress of a great nation, and has at last fulfilled the object for which she was called to the throne in giving to the nation an heir to the crown, it is easy to understand that she should now wish to assert her right to a little of that liberty of action which characterised her life before marriage. Prince Baciocchi evidently reasons in the same way, and thus we have heard of The Fall of Sebastopol several pleasure parties lately organised and carried out by Her. Majesty, which remind one of the rollicking incognito parties of queens of less modern times. The young Prince, who was to come to such a tragic end, was early initiated into the disagreeable mysteries of the royal state. I have already spoken of the absurdities of Court etiquette. Here is an example, the most absurd of all, which came near being the cause of a revolution in the palace. Certain rules, deemed compatible with the imperial dignity, had been decreed to govern the intercourse between the nurse and the young Prince. Among these rules was one which forbade the nurse from kissing the child, or from calling him by abbreviated titles, or from addressing him by any of those endearing but ungrammatical abbreviations in so common use between fond mothers and their pets. When the poor Burgundy nurse assumed her duties, the responsibilities appeared so terrible in her eyes, the distance be- tween her and the nursling seemed so great, that she willingly subscribed to these restrictions, not dreaming that she could ever be anything else to the little Prince than a kind of official " fountain of III Memoirs of " Malakoff " State." But the nurse soon found that her charge was an ordinary child of flesh and blood, that it had a heart and instincts like another, that it made no pretensions to the dignity which others gave it, and with this discovery the good woman found that she too had a heart and a woman's instincts. How was it possible, therefore, not to infringe little by little the rude restrictions that etiquette de- manded .'' The nurse did infringe them, and from the moment she was first caught in the act a state of open war grew up between her and Madame Bruat, the governess, which came near, as already stated, making a revolution in the palace. On the day of the return of the Emperor from Plombiferes, in company with the Empress, who had gone from St. Cloud to the Tuileries to meet him, the Emperor, on arriving, immediately asked for the child. The child was found, but the nurse was not there to bring it to its parents. A search was instituted, and she was discovered in her room sobbing violently. She declared it impossible longer to support the tortures she was enduring ; that Madame Bruat had reproached her in the most peremptory terms for doing what she could not help ; that it was impossible for her to restrain her love for her nursling, and that she saw no means of The Fall of Sebastopol living longer in so cruel a position. She was brought to Napoleon, who said to her, " Listen, nurse, to what 1 say, and calm yourself, I am going to offer you a compromise. You can kiss your child as much as you wish, but you must not give him names unworthy of his rank." The kind- hearted nurse was only too glad to accept the com- promise offered, and her tears were dried up at once. On the occasion of the departure for Pau, two days ago, however, it was remarked that Madame Bruat did not accompany the imperial party. Her place was supplied by Madame Ducos. The change of rulers in Russia and the fall of Sebasto- pol quickly brought peace within sight. The news which will reach you by this steamer will tell you the joy which the Peace prospect has produced in France, but it will not tell you, per- haps, all the reasons why there should be such an excess of joy. Undoubtedly, the most prominent reason is that the people, not knowing why they were engaged in this war, and having gained mili- tary glory by it, are anxious for the re-establishment of a flourishing commerce. But there are other reasons. You know what a mania has sprung up I 113 Memoirs of " MalakofF" in France lately for stock-jobbing operations. Ex- travagant ideas have taken the place of a healthy- judgment, and the country is ready for another Law and another Mississippi bubble to teach it a lesson of prudence. Thus it is that the Paris Exchange has become the country ; the Bourse is France, not Paris. Before the news of the adhesion of Russia to the peace propositions had reached the extremities of the capital a Bankers' banquet was organised in honour of peace. At this banquet most of the financial celebrities of the day were present. Toasts were drunk to Russia, and why ? Because Russia wants railroads, gas, omnibuses, canals, maritime and real-estate loan companies, credits mobiliers, fire and life insurance companies, and the rest of the inventions of modern civilisation. Toasts were drunk to Russia, because it is hoped to bring her vast and unsophisticated population into the vortex of European speculation, in which, while she is being inducted into the mysteries of modern progress, she will be plucked to pay the price of her education. Toasts were drunk to Alexander, the great and powerful monarch raised up by Providence to give to the world a true translation of the testament of 114 The Fall of Sebastopol Peter the Great, that mysterious document which no one had truly understood to this day ! But as for our new community, with its new views of progress and destinies, and civilisation in general, what does it care for Constantinople, or Turkey, or universal dominion ? The essential is to cover Russia with a network of railroads and to fill its cities with joint-stock companies. They wish the Russian Tsar to call foreign capital to his aid, and to burn the testament of Peter the Great. Nothing can be done, as they say on every exchange in every country, without " foreign capital." The moment is not far distant when they will quote the Muscovite Railroads at the Bourse of Paris just as they now quote the Austrian, Russia open to Western Europe, what an immense field for speculation ! Already our friends of the ban- quet saw (through their wine-glasses) shares in the mines of the Caucasus and Siberia, partnerships among the Laplanders, Kamschatkans and Esqui- maux, and even a branch of the Credit MoMlier, that cbef d'csuvre of modern Israelitish genius, at the North Pole. They do not call themselves specu- lators ; they are missionaries — missionaries of civilisation. This great truth has at last penetratea the mind of Alexander, and he feels that the only "5 Memoirs of " MalakofF" means of quieting the old Russian Party is to call to his aid the bulls and the bears. The Bourse will convert these old Muscovites to peace and civilisation, and cure them of their miserable crotchet about Constantinople. Did I not tell you that the time for the advent of a second Law had arrived ? France wants the Russian's money, and Russia wants Paris to spend it in. Paris will again be- come the El Dorado of Parisians, the Paphos, the private boudoir of Europe, where swarms of travel- lers will come to wreck their fortunes and their health as of old. Vive la paix ! Finally, on the 1st of May, 1 856, the treaty that closed the Crimea "War was given to the public. This was the treaty that closed the Bosphorus to Russia; and in the course of the discussions of the Congress, a few days later, Cavour raised the Italian question, and placed Sardinia in the position of the militant champion of Italian inde- pendence. The treaty of peace and the debates by which it was concluded are at last before the public. The last of the protocols was published in the Govern- ment journal this morning, and millions of readers are at this moment discussing the various phases through which the Conference passed. 116 The Fall of Sebastopol The announcement of the new maritime laws which are to govern a state of war will naturally provoke serious attention in the United States. The whole discussion, however, will turn upon the first clause, which abolishes privateering ; for the other clauses have been long sustained and urged by the United States. It was to have been expected that Lord Clarendon would be the initiator of this action of the Conference on the subject of privateer- ing, as I learn he really was. The twenty-second protocol is the one which has excited and will excite the most attention. It is in this protocol that the maritime treaty was proposed and discussed, that the discussion on the Belgian press took place, and that the Italian question was brought forward. The free press of Belgium, England, and America is indebted to Lord Clarendon for the ready and decided stand which he took against the designs of the despotic Governments of France, Austria, and Prussia, in regard to the Belgian press. When but one journal in Belgium, the Indipendance Belge^ is admitted to a free circulation in France, and that journal is bought in the interest of the present Government of France, where can be the excuse for the outrage which the propositions of 117 Memoirs of " Malakoff " Count Walewski would have committed upon the entire free press of Belgium ? In a conference which established so magnanimous, honourable, and civilised a treaty as that just published, such a proposition is inexplicable. It is a shame and a disgrace to the French Government, and will never be forgotten. Not satisfied with crushing out the press in all other parts of the Continent, it insists on annihilating the few quasi-free journals which exist in this little corner, under the benign protection of the Belgian Government ! Count Walewski even descended to making a threat against that Government. I repeat that Lord Claren- don is entitled to the thanks of the whole civilised world for the rebuke which he paid the miserable minions of despotism in the conference, who wished to strangle the only journals of continental Europe that dare to speak otherwise than as they are bid. u8 LITERATURE AND CRINOLINES CHAPTER V LITERATURE AND CRINOLINES Tj^ROM the close of the Crimean War in 1856 till -*■ Orsini's attempt in January, 1 858, from which moment the Italian question will suddenly become of iirst-rate im- portance, there is a lull in the affairs of the Empire. This may as well be utilised for a chapter of gossip and anec- dote. And first something will be said of five conspicuous literary figures : Heine, Dumas, Lamartine, Beranger, — and Cham. Soon there will be no more poets in France. After Gerard de Nerval, after Madame Emile de Girardin, it is the turn of the German poet, Henry- Heine. He died Sunday last, at Paris, "after a long and painful illness," as reads the necrologic formula ; but his pains, those cruel stations on the road to death, were but too real, and he finished by succumbing at last. For several years Henry Heine has been afflicted with that frightful malady which has carried off in these latter days so many men of letters — softening of the spinal marrow. Extended for eight years on a bed of pain, struck Memoirs of " MalakofF" with paralysis and blindness, suffering with a mild patience the keenest agonies " of a death," as he said, " less the repose," Henry Heine has only existed for all that time by thought. Life had taken refuge in his brain, which remained active, ardent, indefatigable. Only two days before his death, he sent to his publisher the last proofs of a new edition of the Reisebilder (Pictures of Travels), and not long before, he moved the hearts of his French readers with the strophes translated from Lazarus, his last and most melancholy vision. The poor poet compared himself to a leper of the Middle Ages, whose songs were repeated by the world, while he relapsed from heat to cold in the desolate solitude of a forsaken bed. Now, all is finished ; the angel of death has placed his hand on the poet's heart to arrest its painful beatings, and the solitude of a bed of suffering has given place to the eternal solitude of the tomb. Heine was conducted to his last resting place without honour and without pomp, followed by a small number of writers, of artists, and of un- known friends. It is thus that they bury poets nowadays. The most insignificant civil or military functionary, so that he be decorated, is carried pompously to the cemetery with the rolling of Literature and Crinolines drums, on a hearse embroidered in silver with caparisoned horses, followed by soldiers in mourn- ing and a wondering crowd ; but the marshal of letters, the warrior of thought, the poet, goes to his long home without official cortege, and often all alone like the poor. In olden times, among the pagans, great honours were rendered the dead poets ;- we have changed all that, and we call it progress. A certain journal, in giving the other day the details of a funeral ceremony, said : " The crowd which assisted at this melancholy scene was not numerous." In seeing pass the funeral of Heine, I thought of this naive expression of the journal. There, too, the crowd was not numerous. But yet, in the number of the faithful few, I could count some whose names are known even beyond the Atlantic, names illustrious in letters and arts. Among these were M. Mignet, of the Academic Fran9aise, Th6ophile Gautier, Alexandre Dumas, Paul de Saint Victor, Alexandre Weil, Ernst, and Escudier. Since Heine made his residence in Paris, he has been acknowledged the first poet of France. Wit and sarcasm never failed him to the last moment. M. Thiers called him the most spirituel 123 Memoirs of " Makkoff " Frenchman since Voltaire. His works are highly prized in France, and his reputation has only commenced. Heine's is one of the names that will live, I have a friend who knows Cham, the great caricaturist of the Charivari. He tells an anecdote of this artist which is worth repeating. One day he was breakfasting with a company of twenty of his friends and acquaintances, literary men and artists like himself Cham was overflowing with wit during the repast, and at the end of it offered to bet the price of a dinner for the twenty that, inas- much as they all, or nearly all, had to cross the Pont des Arts, which was at that time a toll bridge, he would take them all across for one sou, the price for one person. The proposition was deemed an impossibility and the bet was accepted. The com- pany locked arms in couples and advanced towards the gatekeeper, Cham taking the lead. Arrived within the gate, Cham withdrew his arm from his companion, wheeled to the side of the gatekeeper, and commenced counting with the latter the number of his companions as they passed. When they had all passed, Cham commenced fumbling in his pockets, an exercise which he continued till he 124 Literature and Crinolines saw his companions at the end of the bridge. He then drew from his pocket a sou, and handing it to the gatekeeper, started on. The latter, of course, stopped him and demanded the toll for the whole company. Cham replied, " Not at all ; I am not responsible for those gentlemen. I have paid my toll, and I have a right to pass on." And he again started. " But wait," said the man, " why did you stop and count the company as they passed ? " " I did it to amuse myself," replied Cham ; " and as I saw you doing the same, I supposed you knew your own business." And Cham left the poor man bewildered to join his vanquished companions. While on the subject of literary men and their habits, it will not be mal apropos to mention that nearly all the present distinguished writers of France accomplish their daily task in the morn- ing. Thus Thiers is always up and ready for work at six o'clock in all seasons. Scribe, like Lamartine, works from six to twelve. Victor Cousin only works before breakfast. Mignet works till two in thp afternoon. George Sand is an exception ; she writes, by preference, at night. Alexandre Dumas, pere, works by paroxysms. He may remain four days without touching a pen. Memoirs of "MalakofF' and then he writes forty-eight hours without stop- ping. If Dumas was not built in cut stone, like a cathedral, he would have been dead long ago. This year, the son, having taken a country house at Saint Apice, on the banks of the Seine, his father went from time to time to pass a few days there, but, as usual, spent most of his time, and especially the nights, in writing. Whenever Dumas fils found that his father was working too hard on " copy," he had but one way to win him from it. The father piques himself on his knowledge of sauces — it is one of his vanities, " 1 should like to taste one of your sauces," says the son. Down goes the pen, and three by three the elder Dumas descends the kitchen stairs, his red dressing-gown streaming behind him. By the aid of a variety of unheard-of ingredients he compounds one or more sauces, such as never figured on the menu of the best of restaurants. If Alexandre Dumas were not the greatest of novelists and dramatists, he would, unquestionably, be the greatest of cooks. Lamartine had, in 1 856, already outlived his great liter- ary and political reputation. There is much food for reflection in the position of this great man. While he stands a melancholy 126 Literature and Crinolines souvenir of political greatness, struggling, with a vanity perhaps excusable in him, for the popular praise, as well as for bread, it is easy to perceive that there is in his self-imposed seclusion as much of vexation at the world's forgetfulness as of the real necessities of his situation. Lamartine blames the public for the loss of the brilliant position he once held ; the public, in turn, blame Lamartine himself for the loss of that position. Lamartine's writings no longer possess the brilliancy of former years, a fact which his spoiled appreciation does not allow him to see, and he reproaches the public for its feeble applause. Still the public is in the wrong, for they who spoiled him still live, and ought to lend him a friendly hand in the hour of need. B6ranger lives comfortably on one-sixteenth of the sum which Lamartine requires, and Beranger is happy, and would be ashamed to utter such lamen- tations as are heard from Lamartine and his friends. Lamartine is a gentleman, and passes for a repub- lican. Let him follow two illustrious examples. Walter Scott bravely earned a fortune to pay the debts of Constable, his publisher, who had failed : that was the act of a gentleman. Bdranger did not accept from M. Perrotin till after a long contest, and then by the sale of his Memoirs, an augmenta- 127 Memoirs of " MalakofF" tion of six hundred francs on his life pension of twelve hundred francs : that was the act of a republican. Another example : Ballanche at one period of his life was so poor that, at the request of some friends who knew his position, the Minister of the Interior granted him a pension of fifteen hundred francs a year. Very soon after the French Academy elected this illustrious pauper one of its members. The day after, Ballanche wrote to the Minister : " Monsieur Montalivet, I learn that I have a hundred francs a month as Academician. I therefore beg of you to dispose of the pension which you have heretofore paid me in favour of some necessitous writer." Not long after this was written Beranger became seriously ill, and soon the people of Paris learned that the aged poet was on his death-bed. The people of the Quartier St. Antoine have appointed a committee to watch night and day in the street before his house, in order that the Government shall not secretly convey him away after death so as to avoid a popular demonstration. The Government has been warned by this circum- stance of the danger of attempting such a course as was adopted at the funeral of Lamennais, two 128 Literature and Crinolines years ago, where the people were pushed back by the soldiers, and no one was allowed to follow his remains to the tomb, with the exception of the soldiery, whose duty it was to keep away the people rather than to pay respect to the dead. Bdranger is eminently the friend of the people, as he has said himself, " Le peuple c'est ma muse" He is the people's poet ; he is their ideal of an honest man, and in these times of despotism and political venality they look upon B6ranger as their only friend, as the only impersonation of that spirit of true liberty which has been their lifelong dream. To attempt to suppress a popular demonstration on the day of the illustrious poet's funeral, therefore, would be too dangerous an experiment, and the Government understands this. But B^ranger sang the victories, the glories, and the triumphs of the first Empire ; and this will be seized as a pretext on the day of the funeral for an official demon- stration. B^ranger disliked public notice, and had left many localities because of the unwelcome honours paid him. He at one time removed to Passy. One day, the municipal council, impressed with the honour which thereby fell upon the place, solemnly drew up a resolution which was unanimously K 129 Memoirs of " MalakofF" adopted, magnificently engrossed, signed, flourished, sealed, ribboned, and officially remitted, with a speech, into the hands of the poet. In this docu- ment it was said that on account of the glory which was reflected on Passy by such a presence within its walls — hyperbolic walls ! — the municipal council, with the Mayor at its head, had decided to concede to B6ranger gratuitously and for ever — the finest place in its cemetery ! The poet, touched by this attention of the municipal council, decamped as quickly as possible. He fixed himself anew in the quarter of the Luxembourg, Rue d'Enfer. One evening, accompanied by Mile. Judith, his old housekeeper, B^ranger was taking the air and a bottle of beer at the well-known dancing garden of the Latin quarter. La Closerie des Li/as, when sud- denly he was recognised by a student, who ex- claimed to his partner : " There's B^ranger ! Run and kiss him ! " The grisette did not need to be told twice. She ran, and all the rest after her. The old poet was surrounded, f^ted, acclaimed, by the whole crowd ; half a hundred girls kissed him ; he lost his hat, and almost his good temper. Mile. Judith, alarmed and excited, at last extricated him from his admirers. They left the garden to the sounds of the chorus of Le Dieu des Bonnes 130 Literature and Crinolines Gens, thundered in their ears by more than two hundred voices : — II est un Dieu : devant lui je m'incline, Pauvre et content, sans lui demander rien. De I'univers observant la machine, J'y vois du mal, et n'aime que le bien. Mais le plaisir a ma philosophic RevMe assez des cieux intelligents : Le verre en main, gaiment je me confie, Au Dieu des bonnes gens. For the author of Les Dieu des Bonnes Gens there was no longer any repose in the Quartier Latin ; the Rue d'Enfer had become for him a veritable enfer ; it was impossible to be both illustrious and un- disturbed, so he removed to the Quartier Beaujon, in the Champs Elysdes, where there are only financiers, foreigners, and fashionable people — people who ought not to know him ! There, without any known neighbours other than the eccentric Duke of Brunswick and the American Minister, B^ranger thought himself safe. But not so ! He had fallen into a neighbourhood where curious Englishmen and Americans abound, and where more than once the indignant Lisette had a napoleon thrust into her hand to shpw up her friend like a curious animal. B6ranger stayed but a few months in the Champs 131 Memoirs of " MalakofF" Elysdes, and on the ist of April last moved to 5 Rue de Vendome, near the Boulevard du Temple. It was just before this last change of residence that he lost his faithful companion, and this stroke, as he said himself, the most serious of his life, no doubt contributed largely to the rapid development of the disease which has brought him to the edge of the grave. It is as much the honest man that France fears to lose as the poet. There are no honours, no emolu- ments, no bribes that he has not refused. He would not accept the Legion of Honour, for ten times M. Thiers insisted upon decorating him ; nor a place in the French Academy, for, especially in 1850, when the seat of M. Droz became vacant, he was offered a dispensation of the usual formal visits, which he refused, and it fell by political intrigues to the Count de Montalembert. Neither would he accept a place in the Cabinet, for he has been offered that of Minister of Public Instruction and refused. He was offered the direction of the National Printing Oflice, a high post in France, and refused. He was offered the direction of the Mont-de- Pi6t6 and refused. He twice declined the vote of a hundred thousand electors who sent him to the Constitutional Assembly ; and last of all he refused 132 Literature and Crinolines to be rich, for M. Laffitte offered him over and over again a position in which he was sure to make money, but he refused ; and more recently he has refused large pensions from the Empress Eugenie and from other friends who take an interest in his almost destitute condition. On the 17th of July, 1857, Beranger died. At the moment I was folding my last letter to the Times, Bdranger, the national poet, was breathing his last. I propose to give you a brief history of the interesting events which attended his funeral. Bdranger died between four and five o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday. During the greater part of the day the street in front of the dying poet's house had been filled with people anxious to be present even thus near during his last moments. But in this crowd of people there were various elements ; there were others than sympathisers and curious ; there was a committee, referred to in my last letter, which was posted there, en permanence, by an organisation that meant mischief for the Govern- ment. The authorities knew of the existence of this committee, and therefore concealed the death of Beranger from all persons outside his apartments until the following morning. The evening journals 133 Memoirs of " MakkofF" were forbidden to mention the fact, and even the second edition of La Presse, issued at eight o'clock, contained the doctors' bulletin of three p.m., which simply stated that the condition of the illustrious patient was very grave. The first the people knew of the sad event was by a decree of the Prefect of Police posted about day- light next morning on the walls of the city an- nouncing the death, and at the same time the funeral programme. The excuse of the Government was that repre- sentations had been made to them that the occasion was to be seized upon for an armed demonstration. Several manufacturers declared to the Government that their workmen openly avowed their intentions, and if precautions were not taken there would be serious trouble. This was the feeling before the death of B6ranger. The Prefect's proclamation in- creased uneasiness tenfold. B^ranger died at five o'clock in the afternoon, and the decree fixed his funeral for twelve o'clock on the next day, an in- decent haste which is not practised even among the poorer classes in France, where the law requires a delay of twenty-four hours. The notice of the Prefect was preceded by a paragraph which declared that, in consideration of 134 Literature and Crinolines the glory shed upon the country, and particularly upon the first Empire, by Bdranger, his funeral would take place at the expense of the State. In this paragraph the hour of the funeral was fixed. On seeing this proclamation at seven o'clock in the morning posted at prominent points on the Boulevard, the first movement of all who ap- proached it was one of deep indignation at so direct and violent an outrage upon public senti- ment. Here was a man whose whole life had been an opposition to despotism, who despised the ex- isting Government, who was essentially a man of the people, and adored by the people as the highest and most complete illustration of their principles, their aspirations and their hopes — and this man was to be buried surrounded by the bayonets of a power he hated ; the last, the closing scene of his long and brilliant life, was to be desecrated by a demon- stration of soldiery armed with ball cartridge and fixed bayonets. The people, whose friend and defender he was — the people who adored him as an honest man and a true patriot — were to be prohi- bited from even approaching near enough to raise their hats in silent respect to the passing bier ! At this early hour in the morning crowds were collected around the Prefect's proclamation. People 135 Memoirs of " MalakofF" did not appear surprised at B^ranger's death, for it had been anticipated ; but they were surprised that the funeral had been fixed at so indecently early an hour, and indignant that they were not to be per- mitted to pay their homage to the poet of their hearts. I passed on to the rue de Vendome, and there, in front of the deceased poet's house, was already collected a considerable crowd of people belonging to the working classes, kept at a distance by a company of policemen. At eight o'clock the rolling of drums and the marching of soldiers com- menced, and when at ten o'clock I passed the Place de la Bastille, I found the whole Place crowded with soldiers standing at ease in immense hollow squares, one inside the other, up to the base of the Column of July. This was a reserve, to be called on in case of necessity, and at the same time to keep the Place de la Bastille clear. In attempting a little later to approach the rue de Vendome, I found every street so blocked with people, that I was obliged to get out of my carriage and walk. Within from two to four blocks all around the residence of the deceased, and in all the distance that intervened between the poet's house and the church of St. Elizabeth, where the services were to be performed, the circulation was cut off by 136 Literature and Crinolines a double military cordon, as well as all around the church. Through this cordon, that guarded all the approaches, only those were allowed to pass who had received invitations signed by the Prefect of Police. About fifteen thousand soldiers were called out on Friday morning and distributed over the route, or near it, over which the procession would have to pass. There were ten Generals on duty. Two thousand policemen were detailed to preserve order in the crowd. Besides these, all the soldiers re- maining in the barracks of Paris, and all those in the neighbourhood of Paris as far off as Fontaine- bleau, a distance of forty miles, were ready to march at a moment's warning. A Minister said that he had no fear of serious trouble, for they could bring to the city in one hour's time fifty thousand men. The Cabinet sat the whole day at Count Walewski's, The principal Foreign Ambassadors sent despatches at frequent intervals to their respective Govern- ments. On the wide Boulevard, in the vicinity of B6ranger's house, at noon, there were not less than two hundred thousand persons. These were mostly men and boys in caps and blouses. They were constantly kept in motion by lines of cavalry, who 137 Memoirs of " Malakoff " massed and deployed every minute, and in every direction, so as to prevent conversation in the crowd ; for among Frenchmen, and in such a pro- miscuous assemblage, no matter what may be the incentives to revolt, the first and most important principle of tactics in preventive measures is to interrupt conversation. While the crowd was thus moving about on the Boulevard waiting to see the funeral pass, the bier was quietly taken into a by-street, and, following a secluded route, escaped to the cemetery without the knowledge of any but those who happened to find themselves near. To deceive the people more completely, the soldiers cleared a way in the midst of the crowd on the Boulevard for the procession to pass, thus fixing the masses to the spot, while the procession was given time to creep away through a private street ; and this ruse, after it was found out, was treated by the police as a good joke! In crossing the Boulevard a considerable crowd fell into line in the rear of the long hollow square of soldiers that surrounded the bier and the few official persons who accompanied it ; but the General who was in command of the funeral cortege put in operation a stratagem to get rid of this extra official procession which ought to entitle him to promotion 138 Literature and Crinolines in the Legion of Honour. They were then near the Canal St. Martin, and what did the General do the minute his own procession was over the canal, but draw up the bridge and leave a watery chasm be- tween his soldiers and their unwelcome addition. At the cemetery a strong military force was posted on the outside of the gate, and guarded all its approaches. A still larger force occupied the interior. The corpse was deposited in the tomb of Manuel, the intimate friend of the deceased poet, and no speech was pronounced over the tomb, con- trary to custom, but in accordance with the decree of the Prefect. The official mourners who followed the bier were Messrs. Perrotin, B^ranger's publisher, and Ben- jamin Antier, his two most intimate friends; and his two cousins, the only relatives he had at Paris, one a journeyman printer, and the other sub-con- ductor of a band of military music. The Emperor was represented at the funeral by one of his aides-de-camp. General de Cotte. The French Academy was represented by Messrs. Thiers, Villemain, Cousin, Mignet, M^rim6e, de Vigny and St. Marc Girardin. An officer of the Empress's household, a considerable number of legislative and municipal officers, a few journalists and representa- 139 Memoirs of " MalakofF" tives of scientific bodies, completed the attendance — all of whom were present on the invitation of the Government. None of the leading Republicans, if we except Messrs. Cousin and Havin, were present. How these two gentlemen could have reconciled their consciences in associating them- selves with the Government in the performance of a ceremony which by its manner did great violence to the class, or to the party, if you choose, to which they belong, it is difficult to understand. Lamar- tine, although a regular visitor at the bedside of Bdranger during his illness, abstained from the funeral, no doubt feeling that if the poorer classes, who were as much the friends of the illustrious poet as himself, were to be kept away from the funeral by bayonets, that he, who was favoured with an invitation, would be doing them an injustice to attend. The number of persons in the cortege did not exceed one hundred. On the route, the people everywhere showed the greatest signs of respect. " Honour to Bdranger ! " and " Vive B6ranger ! " were repeatedly cried by the crowd. The cry of " Five B6ranger ! " would seem paradoxical, if not taken with the latitude which the French often give it. On the Boulevard, the Place de la Bastille, and at 140 Literature and Crinolines the cemetery, the troops stacked their arms and remained till an advanced hour of the night, although the funeral ceremonies were finished at three o'clock. This fact demonstrates still further that the Government must have had serious grounds for its fears. From such dramatic events as the death of Beranger, let us now turn to a lighter subject — the advent at this period of the ridiculous crinoline. France is pre-eminently the country of ideas and of abstractions ; but while her great ideas are great failures, her small ones are perfect successes. Thus in the articles of ladies' toilet she reigns the queen of taste and elegance. Her inventions in this line are bizarre and unique. The provincial or the stranger as he passes through the streets of the capital at this moment must be not a little intrigued at certain white pyramid- shaped objects which he sees moving in all directions through the streets, and which conceal behind them a man or a woman ; most likely a woman, for a man, although a washer of linen, would be ashamed of the parade he was making. At a distance you might take the object in question for a second Joan of Arc, banner in air, or a half-distended parachute, or an itinerant 141 Memoirs of " Malakoff " sandwich board, or what you please ; but you would never guess the truth. As you approach you see it is one of the new petticoats in crinoline, mounted on a broomstick, to prevent ruffling, till it arrives in the boudoir of the fair owner. But what a petticoat ! Gummed, starched, inflated, super-inflated like the balloon of M. Godard ! For at the hour I write the increasing ambition of feminine haunches no longer permits the washer- woman to avail herself of the primitive and less conspicuous means of conveyance respected in the time of our mothers. The fearful " upwards and onwards " of the crinoline respects neither boxes nor baskets. Nothing but a broomstick will pre- serve their starched integrity ! From the common starched crinoline we have passed to crinolines with rings of whalebone, then to the rings of whalebone without crinoline, and now, within the last month, all our belles have adopted steel rings — the new invention. Imagine a lady in her most intimate garment alone, standing upright within the hoops of a hogshead from which the staves have been removed and the hoops fixed in position, and you will have a tolerably clear idea of the new invention. The steel rings are small, almost like the mainspring of a watch, and are 142 Literature and Crinolines wrapped with strong cloth. They commence small in diameter at the waist and go on enlarging in regular proportion to the feet. They are thus healthy, and as a hygienic invention are worthy of all praise. As the wearer sits down they fold up with ease — this is, from bottom to top, not in diameter. But they present this inconvenience, that when they are pressed on either side at the bottom, the opposite side is elevated into the air to an embarrassing distance. Before the steel rings were introduced, a few crinolines were made to dilate by means of air- compartments, like life-preservers. They possessed this convenience, that more than one person could mount into the same carriage at a time, for they did not need to be blown up till the party arrived at the ante-room of the apartment to which they were going. The pipe by which they were blown up was of rubber, and lay concealed under the dress. It was only necessary to have for cavalier a good blower ; but the tableaux presented by the ante-room of a soiree were too ridiculous ; the gentlemen went on strike, and the air crinolines collapsed. At the last ball at the Hotel de Ville, given in honour of the King of Bavaria, the public were 143 Memoirs of " MalakofF" spectators of a singular circumstance in the onward and upward progress of crinoline. The husband and wife were almost in every carriage separated : the husband on the box beside the coachman, the wife occupying the interior alone. But it was not this fact that excited the ridicule of the crowd : the hoops were so enormous and the dresses so precious, that their wearers could not sit down. So that when the doors were opened, the ladies were found stand- ing up in the carriage, the body bent forward, the hands clasping the supports, offering a side view that resembled a jockey at the outcome of a race. It was hard work, for the queue of carriages was long and the halts frequent, so that they arrived with faces the colour of a boiled lobster ; but they were amply compensated for their perseverance by immaculate skirts and faithful hoops. As a consequence of the crinoline increased quantities of material had to be used in dressmaking. Do you know, you transatlantic mortals, how many yards of silk enter into a Parisian dress with flounces .■' Twenty-three yards — no more than that. Someone has taken the pains to calculate how much goods in totality enter into a lady's toilet. Add to the twenty-three yards of silk above, 144 Literature and Crinolines five skirts (which is the least they carry in the beau- monde^ in the demi-monde they attain seven), at five breadths each, which would make an average of six yards to the skirt, and you arrive at the formidable figure of fifty-three yards, or a hundred and fifty-nine feet ! — fifteen feet higher than the column of the Place Vendome, the statue of Napo- leon included. Doubtless the American women in Paris were not slow to follow the crinoline fashion set by the Empress, and the American ball described below was probably an extremely crowded function. Charles Dickens was in Paris, but was not in favour among Americans at that time, and so was not invited. Mr. Dickens, a friend informs me, would have been pleased to have received an invitation, but the committee did not see fit to invite him. The " Boy Ball " and " American Notes " are not yet for- gotten. Count de Morny, half-brother of the Emperor, President of the Corps L^gislatif, and after Pereire the greatest railroad speculator in France, came in early, and paid much attention during the course of the evening to one of the Misses Hutton, of New York. It was this circumstance, no doubt, that gave rise to the story published in the London L 145 Memoirs of " Malakoff " Globe of Monday, that the Count was about to marry this young lady. The two sisters are very young, and besides having an ample fortune, are very handsome. The Count will never do better. After Lord Cowley had entered and had got as far as the entrance from the foyer to the grand salon, he was seen suddenly to drop the arm of Lady Cowley and rush back to the door. In a state of great excitement he asked the man who received the cards to allow him to look over those which had just been handed in. It appeared that in handing his card of invitation, he had included a highly important despatch he had just received from his Government, and which was in the same packet with the card. The lost despatch was soon found, greatly to his lordship's relief. Lord and Lady Cowley and Lord and Lady Clarendon remained quite late, and seemed disposed, as well as the large number of distinguished English people present, to prove that they at least did not wish other than good feeling to reign between the people of the two countries. I thought they seemed as proud of the brilliancy of the ball and of the distinguished assemblage it had collected as the Americans themselves. About one half of the company on this occasion 146 Literature and Crinolines was American ; the rest were, for the most part, diplomatic people. On entering and passing the compliments of the evening with Mr. Mason, who seemed in excellent health and spirits, my eye first fell on the forms of two tall, white-haired men, standing by the chimney in close conversation, whom it was not difficult to recognise at once as Mr. Buchanan and Lord Clarendon. Were they talking about Central America, or the Enlistments, or the treaty of peace ? That is none of my busi- ness ; but this much I do know, that the best feeling exists between these two gentlemen, notwith- standing the sharp nature of their late official correspondence, and that both have expressed, to other parties, a feeling of friendship for each other which must last during life. The diffisrence in their personal appearance is striking. Mr. Bu- chanan has a large frame, a monstrous head and face, and a pair of English whiskers, which give a rough and unfinished cast to his features. He looks like a statesman, however, and would pass anywhere as a man hard to head. Lord Clarendon, on the contrary, is a thin, polished man, with a handsome face, and frank, pleasing manners. He laughs gaily in conversation, but when not occupied looks grave and careworn, as the man must neces- 147 Memoirs of "MalakofF" sarily be who supports, at this moment, the cares of the English Foreign Office. And there comes little Baron ManteufFel, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Prussia, who en- gages quietly in conversation with Lord Clarendon, while Mr. Buchanan seeks other company. There seems more coldness, more reserve in his conver- sation with Lord Clarendon than between the latter and Mr. Buchanan. There is cause. And there goes Count Cavour, a good-looking man, on whose arm leans the Countess de Montijo, mother of the Empress Eugenie, a tall and now thin lady of fifty, who yet bears many traces of the queenly beauty which marked her youth, and who seems delighted to talk English to her American acquaintances. The Committee of Arrangements certainly deserve great credit for the complete success which they achieved. Every one seemed disposed to give them a full meed of praise, and I should not omit to mention a curious fact, which was observed by many, that the committee, although composed of twenty men, were all strikingly handsome. They could not boast one ugly man. I should not like to particularise, but when we have such an avant- poste as that which received the company in the 148 Literature and Crinolines foyer^ composed of Messrs. Mason, Monroe, Corbyn, and McRae, there is no danger but that the visitors will enter with a good opinion of the rest. It is no secret, even in New York, that the Count de Morny, President of the French Corps Legislatif, is the son of the Count de Flahaut and Queen Hortense. He is thus half-brother of the Emperor, and is two years his junior. The Count de Morny, besides being a man of talent, is much esteemed by the public. He has the rare quality of being able to assimilate himself to the world, and of engaging its sympathies. He is admired as well politically as socially, and, thus far, has been gladly accepted in whatever post he has filled. To the Emperor he is especially dear, dearer than any member of the imperial family; and the project of elevating him to the dignity of prince of the imperial blood has long been an object of His Majesty. But as an official recog- nition of his blood would involve a slur on the memory of Queen Hortense, their mother, Napoleon has till now hesitated at so questionable a step. But Napoleon is beginning to feel his position a strong one at home as well as abroad. He knows 149 Memoirs of " MakkofF" de Morny to be popular. He has confidence in his devotion. He feels that he is a man upon whom he can rely even against his Ministry. With the army, Napoleon will allow no interference ; that he must direct himself; no man with the same talent or the same ambition as dead St. Arnaud will ever again hold the portfolio of war under his administra- tion. De Morny's talent runs in another vein. Although a Frenchman and born of a military family, he has no aspiration in that way. The Count de Flahaut, who, I ought to say by way of parenthesis, was a General under the Empire, aide-de-camp to Louis Philippe, since married to a Scotch lady and residing in Scotland, has lately appeared in French society, where he is usually met in company with the Count, his son. The attentions paid to the Count de Flahaut, and his anomalous position at the French Court, naturally awaken suspicion and surmises as to the intentions of the Emperor. In none is this suspicion more lively than in the other members of the imperial family ; for it must be remembered that there has always existed an opinion that Louis Napoleon had no Bonaparte blood in his veins, while it is not pretended that the Count de Morny is anything more than a Beauhar- 150 Literature and Crinolines nais. The jealousy of the real Bonapartes is, there- fore, easily appreciated : a man of doubtful parent- age, on the strength entirely of the Bonaparte name, ascends the throne of France. Once seated, and fairly in power, he attempts to extend favours to others than the Bonaparte family, and directly to their prejudice. There is, therefore, good ground for their jealousy. It was not till Saturday last that Prince Napoleon heard of the intentions of the Emperor in regard to the Count de Morny. The Prince, who has never been liked by the Emperor, nor, I believe, by anybody else, and who felt sore enough over the birth of a direct heir to the throne, could not stand this last stroke. The Emperor's favour- itism of de Morny aroused his jealousy against that gentleman to a point that must find vent, and the Prince at once repaired to the Tuileries and demanded to see his cousin. An audience was granted, and it was not long before the orderly who stands at the door of the Emperor's study heard a violent altercation within. After hesi- tating a moment, the officer, who knew well the irritability and the violence of the Prince, deter- mined to enter, and as he opened the door he heard the Emperor say to him — Vous avez Men fait d'en 151 Memoirs of " MalakofF" finir, car autrement je vous aurai montri la porte." " You did well to stop, or otherwise I should have ordered you to leave." The Prince left in a high state of excitement. Napoleon had always been long-sufFering wherever Jerome Bonaparte and his son were concerned, or if he did rebel against their insatiable greed and constant interference it was by a witticism. On one occasion when the ex-king of "Westphalia so far forgot himself as to declare that the Emperor had nothing of the first Napoleon but his name, he replied : " Yes, I have one other thing — his family ! " Napoleon III. had no false pride on the score of his friends and adventures of less prosperous days. One day he thus playfully recalled his long imprisonment after the failure of his attempt at Boulogne. After a long interview between His Majesty and Count OrlofF, in which the conversation had taken a wide range, the Count expressed surprise at the vast general information displayed by His Majesty. " Ah ! " replied Napoleon, " that was because I studied four years at the University of Ham ! " It was really remarkable how serene the outward aspect of affairs remained, when in reality Napoleon sat with a volcano beneath his feet. It is evident that the Emperor does not feel easy about the attitude of the poorer classes at Paris. He 152 Literature and Crinolines has never before exhibited this feeling so palpably as now. The precautions which he takes for the protection of his person are remarkable, so notori- ously suspicious of danger is he ; and this proves that there must be a cause of sufficient gravity to render such precautions necessary. We know that, as already stated, a large number of arrests have been made within three weeks of persons said to be dangerous to the security of His Majesty's per- son ; but at what period since the coup (Titat have we been without political arrests .'' The impression is general, therefore, that the trials will bring out facts of a highly exciting character. On the day of the return of the imperial family to Paris not a journal spoke of the event. No one knew the hour of the arrival, nor by what route it would be made. After an absence of a month it is customary in Paris to make a certain parade on the occasion of a royal or imperial return, a parade in which the citizens take part by decorating their houses and by turning out to cheer the cortege. If it is a fine day, the imperial party occupy open carriages. But on the occasion of the late entree, they were received, surrounded and conducted by a squadron of Guides ; they occupied close carriages, followed the quays instead of the 153 Memoirs of " MalakofF" Boulevards, as is customary, and drove at a rapid rate, directly through the city to St. Cloud. The whole circumstances showed that there was fear of an attempt against His IVIajesty's life. Since his arrival he has gone once to the opera, and on this occasion, although the evening was mild and pleasant, he rode in a close carriage, drove at a furious rate, and was surrounded closely by a double escort of Guides, each carrying a loaded and cocked pistol in his hand. It is not unusual to see the Emperor go to the opera with Guides thus equipped preceding the cortege. But it is un- usual to see them surround the carriage in the manner mentioned. On this occasion no one knew that the Emperor was going to the opera, for the bills did not contain the habitual '■'■par ordre" nor was the fact mentioned in the journals. The police continue to find incendiary handbills on the walls of Paris, and as these bills are fre- quently posted during the day, a strict surveillance was ordered to detect the guilty parties. But for more than a month the efforts of the police were completely fruitless, and the greatest curiosity was felt to know how these bills were posted. During the first few days men were detected in the act lean- ing against walls as if resting ; but the tactics were 154 Literature and Crinolines soon changed, after several arrests had been made for this kind of offence, and since then the police were completely at fault as to the new method of proceeding. But they have at last made the dis- covery. A suspected chiffonnier was watched. He entered a street with his immense basket on his back, and for a while pursued his occupation of sorting out and placing in his basket the rubbish that these people collect. Half-way down the street he left the gutter, and approaching a wall, leaned his basket against it for a moment as if resting himself from the fatigue of his heavy burden. While standing in that position he did not move his hands, or make any suspicious move- ment whatever, and the men who were watching him were therefore the more surprised to find when he left his position that there was a bill on the wall. How did it get there .? The chiffonnier was arrested, and on examining his basket it was found to contain a partition half-way down, and under this partition was crouched a dwarfish boy of six years of age, who, through a sliding door in the basket, affixed with facility the bills to the walls. This was a new dodge for which the police were not prepared. Memoirs of " MalakofF" The Emperor either soon forgets or else takes little heed of the threats made against his life on the occasion of his return a few weeks ago from Biarritz. Lately he shows himself daily to the people in one way or another — sometimes on horse- back, sometimes in a carriage, and occasionally on foot. In the evening he is to be seen at the theatre or at a ball, and thus His Majesty keeps himself constantly before the people. One of his last feats — for it may be called a feat — was to ride on horse- back, at a walk, attended by only two gentlemen of his household, through the Rue MoufFetard and the quarter of the chiffonniers. I am told that the people seemed not more surprised than delighted at this visit, since for a century no monarch of France has ventured into that repulsive and dangerous part of the city. The boldness of Louis Napoleon, in walking his horse through this populous quarter, without escort, and speaking kindly to those who approached him, was an act which cannot fail to operate favourably on the minds of such people as are found in that locality. In the summer of 1857 an important trial was conducted in which Mazzini was implicated in an attempt against Napoleon's life. 156 Literature and Crinolines You will observe in the confession of one of the prisoners that he details a conversation in his pre- sence between Mazzini and Ledru RoUin at London on the Emperor's habits in going out in the even- ing incognito, and that in connection with these evening visits the prisoner was to watch for His Majesty at No. 53 of a certain street of which he had forgotten the name. As reported on the trial, all this looks unsuspicious enough, but behind there is an explanation that dare not appear even before a court of justice. At No. 53 Rue Montaigne lived the reigning beauty of the last two seasons at Paris, the Countess Castiglione. The Countess is a countrywoman of Mazzini's, who, perhaps, knew better than Ledru Rollin the nature of her relations at Paris. It was not bad judgment on the part of Mazzini to select this occasion for an assassination, because His Majesty would be un- attended by the armed men that usually surround him, and the assassin would thus have time for escape ; he would be easily approached so as to render the stroke more secure, and enable the assassin to use the dagger — the only deadly weapon in the hands of an Italian — and the effect on the public mind would be less than if the attack were made in public, or especially on a State occasion. 157 Memoirs of " MalakofF" But how was the prisoner's memory of the name of the Rue Montaigne crushed out ? Thus : the prisoners were first heard before a tribunal in private, and here they were instructed that before the public and the press they must forget the name of the street, a forgetfulness that, perhaps, did not strike the audience as remarkable since the men were Italians and strangers. It was perfectly just that, for the public good, such evidence as this against the Chief of State should be suppressed ; but why did they not go further in the secret interrogatory and instruct the prisoners to suppress their memory as well on the No. 53 ? The suspi- cions, then, of your correspondent and others who happen to know who lives at the number in ques- tion would have also been without serious basis. We are now getting very near the Italian question, which will be best dealt with in a new chapter. 158 ORSINI CHAPTER VI ORSINI TN the winter of 1830, when Louis Napoleon was but twenty-three years old, he had travelled to Italy with his mother. It was a time of political disturbance. At Rome, Queen Hortense and her son consorted with many of the Bonapartists and Liberals who were plotting against the Papal Government, and it seems probable that Louis Napoleon became affiliated to one of the secret societies that then formed the universal medium for political propa- ganda. Later in life he frequently denied that he had joined the Carbonari ; but that society was not particularly strong in the city of Rome at the period, and this denial does not exclude the possibility of his affiliation to one of the numerous kindred societies, such as the New Guelfs, the White Pilgrims, or perhaps even the portentously named. Spectres United around a Tomb! Finally, conspiracy resulted in revolt. On the 3rd of February, 1 83 1, Bologna took up arms and pro- claimed a constitution. Some old soldiers of Napoleon — Sercognani, Armandi, and others — took command. The secret societies enrolled their members for the defence of liberty. No sooner was the movement well pro- nounced than Louis Napoleon and his elder brother. Napo- leon Louis, joined the insurgents. They had espoused a M 161 Memoirs of "Malakoff" hopeless cause. The Austrian troops speedily marched against Bologna, and the insurrection collapsed. Retreat and disbandment followed, and in the rout, midway between Bologna and Ancona, Prince Napoleon Louis suddenly died. How he met his death still remains an historical problem. Scarlet fever, is the official and the generally accepted theory, but it can hardly be made to fit such scanty evidence as there is. Assassination by the secret society men, who found that the Princes were on the point of abandoning the lost cause, is a widely accepted hypothesis, though it reposes on nothing definite. Whatever the exact facts, and it probably depends on the ex-Empress Eugenie whether they are ever known, it may be said that Louis Napoleon had become pledged to the cause of Italian liberty under striking circumstances, and, what was more, that in the course of the retreat from Bologna to Ancona he had come face to face with the most dramatic, most typical figure among all the nineteenth-century Italian conspirators — that of Felice Orsini. Orsini was the relentless and indomitable plotter ; ever ready to risk his life, ever ready to stab the unfaithful. He had been among the subordinate leaders in 1 83 1. Later he had escaped from the dungeons of Mantua. He had played a part in the Roman Republic of 1849. He viewed Napoleon as a man pledged by inviolable oaths to the Italian cause, and when he found that France under his rule made no sign of driving the hated Austrians from Lombardy, when he found that neither the blandishments of Cavour and the Countess Castiglione nor the threats of Mazzini served to enlist a French bayonet for the Italian cause, he determined to act. That determination he carried 162 Orsini out by a stroke of terror on the night of the fourteenth of January, 1 858. It would be difficult to describe to you the con- sternation and the horror that reigned in Paris on the evening of the attempt on the life of the Em- peror. Their Majesties had of late attracted little public attention ; the politicians were quiet, and nothing foreshadowed the diabolical crime of which the Rue Lepelletier has just been the scene. I will try to give you a complete and connected history of this terrible affair from the commencement up to the present moment. The scene of the attempt was the portico, or covered way, at the side of the Grand Opera, or Academy of Music, on the Rue Lepelletier. The Opera House is only a block distant from the most crowded part of the Boulevard des Italiens, and, of course, when the Emperor is expected to visit the Opera the Rue Lepelletier is lined all the way down to the front of the theatre with masses of people of all conditions, who are kept back by the police from the carriage-way till the imperial carriages come up and pass by. Then they rush into the wake of the escort, and surge up to the space directly in front of the portico, at which point the street widens from about forty-five to 163 Memoirs of " MalakofF' sixty-five feet. Here the police are always more numerous, and the space is kept free by a line of cavalry. The houses of the Rue Lepelletier, like all Paris houses, are compact buildings of six and seven stories in height, and those immediately op- posite the theatre are occupied in their lower floors chiefly by restaurants, and the whole street is so brilliantly illuminated on the occasion of a State visit, that every face can be recognised as plainly as at noon. On the night of the fourteenth, their Majesties were to alight at the furthest door under the portico. The imperial carriage was preceded, as usual, by a mounted picket of the Guard, and by the carriage of the Grand Chamberlain. Just as the Grand Chamberlain's carriage arrived in front of the theatre, and before it passed under the portico, his horses were impeded by the crowd — it is supposed Intentionally — and it was only by whipping up that he got out of the way of the imperial carriage. Just at that moment a man in white gloves, standing conspicuously on the steps of the Opera, raised his hat high in the air and shouted " Vive PEmpereur ! " This man was Orsini, and his shout was a word of command. A second later, when the imperial carriage had reached the point at which the Chamberlain's car- 164 Orsini riage had been stopped, the first explosion was heard. The imperial carriage was still about twenty feet from the portico, and two other explosions took place in rapid succession before it drew up against the curb-stone. One of the bombs fell at the side of the carriage, the other two under the horses. One of the discharges killed one of the horses in- stantly, and wounded the other. The wounded horse, leaping on the pavement with great force, broke the pole of the carriage against the project- ing pavilion of the Opera House, and then fell. All this took place so rapidly that their Majesties and the aide-de-camp, General Roguet, who was in the carriage with them, had not time to move from their seats. The scene which ensued can be more easily imagined than described. It was a confusion of horror and excitement. The explosions were loud, deafening, and shook the very earth ; the paving stones on which the bombs exploded were driven into the ground, the gas lights were extinguished, and for a moment all was darkness ; the glass was broken in all the windows of the neighbourhood, and fell crashing on the pavements and on the heads of the frightened people ; the wounded groaned with agony, and women and children ran about in every direction, screaming with fright. 165 Memoirs of " MalakofF" The horses of the cavalry plunged forward at the noise of the explosions into the midst of the vast crowd, terrifying still more the frightened people, but by driving the multitude back, served, no doubt, to prevent the throwing of more bombs. One of the under-chamberlains was the first to reach the door of the Emperor's carriage. The Empress sat on the side next the theatre, and the Emperor had some difficulty in passing by her. The Emperor had received a piece of one of the bombs through his hat, a piece of glass from the carriage window had cut. the side of his nose ; the Empress had also been struck by a piece of glass on the temple near one of her eyes, and General Roguet was wounded more severely by the pieces of the exploded shells. The Chamberlain, seeing blood on His Majesty's face, and his hat torn, put out his arms to receive him, but the Em- peror, with perfect coolness, said, " Will you, man cher, let down the carnage steps, so that I can descend ! " The Empress, much frightened, next got out, and then General Roguet, who, although wounded and in pain, uttered no complaint. At the same moment as the Chamberlain, ap- peared at the door of the carriage to assist their Majesties a detective named Heb^rt, and the i66 Orsini inspector of police, Alessandri, both wounded in several places, and their faces covered with blood. This Alessandri, who is a Corsican, and who seized and arrested Pianori as he was firing at the Emperor two years ago on the Champs Elys^es, held in his hand a revolver, and the Empress not recognising him from his blood-smeared face, thought him at first one of the assassins, and shrank back into the carriage. With these came up a crowd of functionaries, officers of the suite, and others, all more or less blood-stained and con- fused, crying loudly to. save their Majesties. On the steps of the portico, by which their Majesties had to enter, lay two of the Guard mortally wounded and in convulsions ; all around the ground was covered with the wounded ; five horses had been killed, and many others were wounded and lay struggling on the ground, mingling their horrible cries with the screams that filled the air. Through this hideous scene their Majesties made their way into the theatre. Within, the anxiety caused by the explosions was intense. At first it was supposed to be an explosion of gas, an accident to which the people are some- what accustomed ; and it was, no doubt, in conse- quence of this impression that no rush took place 167 Memoirs of " Makkoff " in the building itself, for the house was crowded from pit to dome, the occasion being the retiring benefit of Massol, one of the oldest and most popular singers of the opera. Madame Ristori was to play Marie Stuart, and the stars of the opera and the ballet were to appear in the course of the evening. You can judge of the disadvantage under which the actors laboured during that evening's performance, for nobody paid any attention to them, and not a single critic has attempted to say what he saw on the stage. When their Majesties appeared in their box, the news of the attempt had already run through the audience. An immense and prolonged cheer received their Majesties at their entrance, and the applause was several times renewed during the evening. They sat the play out, but frequently retired to receive reports of the number and condition of the wounded, and the pro- gress of the arrests that were going on. At mid- night, when they left the opera, they found an immense and compact crowd lining the Rue Le- pelletier and the Boulevards towards the palace, and the route was illuminated spontaneously by the citizens. Their return to the palace was a triumph. Numerous arrests immediately took place, and i68 Orsini the conspirators were soon in the hands of the police. The principal prisoners are four in number — Count Orsini, Fieri, Gomez, calling himself the servant of Orsini, and Da Silva. This latter, how- ever, is suspected of being a Venetian, by name Count Rudio. Count Orsini is about thirty-six years of age, and was born in the Roman States. In 1849, owing to his known energy of character, he was delegated by the Government of the triumvirs of Rome, as magistrate of Ancona, to put an end to the numer- ous assassinations which were daily committed at and near that city ; and the vigour of the measures he adopted was such that the bandits were soon overcome by terror and an end put to their crimes. A few years ago this same Count Orsini was in- carcerated by the Austrians in the citadel of Mantua, whence he effected his escape in a manner so miraculous that the journals were filled with the story. The cause of his imprisonment is differently explained. According to some he was suspected of participation in the murder of the Duke of Parma, and according to others it was owing to his having attempted to seduce some Austrian soldiers from their duty. In London, Orsini gave public lectures, mixed up with commentaries borrowed 169 Memoirs of " Malakoff " from the programme of Mazzini, and in this way he earned, it is said, in one year twenty thousand francs. Orsini had been in Paris about six weeks. He lived at No. lo Rue Monthabor, in the rear of Meurice's Hotel. He passed himself off as an officer in the English army, and called himself Sir Thomas Alsopp. He owned a horse on which he frequently rode to the Bois de Boulogne. Three days before the attempt, a pretended servant, Gomez, came to attend him. As Gomez could not be ac- commodated in the house for want of room, he lodged near by in the Rue St. Honore. During the day he came to the Count's room in the Rue Monthabor, and while pretending to wait on Orsini, did very little, and was very lavish in giving brandy and cigars to the servants of the house. On Thursday evening, the night of the attempt, he was sitting in the porter's lodge, when suddenly rising he said, " It is time for me to attend my master, who is going to the theatre." He crossed the passage and went into the apartment of Orsini on the ground floor, and soon after left with him and a third person, a friend of his master, and a fourth, the servant of the last-named — Gomez and this man walking behind the other two. The concierge, seeing two men carrying large packages 170 Orsihi wrapped up in pocket-handkerchiefs, thought it strange they should be thus loaded when going to the theatre, and followed them out to the gateway, when he observed that the two pretended servants, no doubt thinking they were not seen, had thrown off their assumed character and were walking side by side with the other two. After the attempt, and while the doctors were attending to the injuries of a large number of the wounded who had been carried into the grand restaurant of the Rue Lepelletier, a man was ob- served seated who held his head in his hands and seemed to be much oppressed or overcome. They thought him wounded, but on examination no wounds were found. The police became suspicious owing to the singular movements of this man, and questioned him. He said that he was English, and that he did not know what had become of his master. They asked him where he lived, and he said in the Rue Richelieu. The policemen con- ducted him to the house indicated, and there both he and his master were entirely unknown. He then gave his right address in the Rue St. Honor6, and there the officers found that a servant had lodged for several days under an English name, whose master, named Alsopp, lived in the Rue 171 Memoirs of " Malakoff " Monthabor. The police then went to the Rue Monthabor, and there they found and arrested Count Orsini, who was wounded and in bed with his clothes on, and who was known in the house under the name of Alsopp. Six or eight thousand francs in English money were found in his belt. The arrested men were soon brought to trial, and the trial was marked by Jules Favre's eloquent appeal on behalf of the leader of the conspirators. Orsini was content, now that he had failed, to get in return for the sacrifice of his life all that was possible for Italy. He appealed to Napoleon by a personal letter to secure his throne and to redeem his pledges, by fulfilling his sacred duty to the Italian people. Jules Favre struck the same note. He read Orsini's letter before the tribunal, and, more striking still, he read it with the permission of the Government. Orsini may be acquitted from any imputation of viewing this attempt at disguising the nature of his criminality as a possible road to an acquittal. That was obviously out of the question from any point of view, and Orsini, with two of his accomplices, was sentenced to the death penalty. Just two months after the explosion of the Rue Lepelletier, Orsini and Fieri went to the scaffold ; Rudio's sentence was commuted at the last moment. In peace, as in war, France is the country of tragedy and of surprises. In her displays she studies tragic effect, and she never misses a detail even of minor importance. When you go to the 172 Orsini theatre, they do not give you an analysis of the piece, because for a Frenchman that would destroy all the illusion ; you have only the names of the actors and the roles. So, too, with an execution ; it is conducted with all the regulations of a tragic display, secrecy of time, place, and even of in- dividuals. It professes to be public, and yet this is only a technicality ; it is in the street, but all care is taken that no one sees it. The night scene at the execution of Orsini and Fieri was more tragic, if possible, than the execu- tion itself. The working population, greedy for this kind of entertainment, were on the alert ; for several nights they had watched the Place de la Roquette in large numbers, sure not to be tricked by the authorities. The morning was chilly and the ground damp, and the number of those on the watch larger than any previous night. When we arrived at four o'clock, several thousand persons were already collected, and the soldiers had formed lines which excluded the crowd entirely from the little square and threw them back into the adjoining streets. We had paid for a window In an old house that overlooked indifferently well the place of execution ; but the police, who had not forgotten the bombs of the Rue Lepelletier, prohibited the 173 Memoirs of " MalakofF' occupation of the few houses that overlook the square except by their ordinary residents. We were thus thrown into the crowd, and such a crowd ! If a man wishes a full appreciation of the very expressive word canaille^ he must see the Faubourg St. Antoine on the morning of an execu- tion. If he desires a living impersonation of the sans-culottes of the revolution, he will find it here. In the 50,000 people who were at the execution of Orsini and Fieri, perhaps there was not one drunken man, and not a single man disposed to fight or disturb his neighbour purely for the sake of disturbing him ; but it was a mob, never- theless, which had a terrible physiognomy, and one which belongs only to the canaille of Paris. Its recklessness in the presence of death was the most marked characteristic ; the wit of the masked ball was the most in vogue, and but for the absence of masks and dominoes one might have imagined him- self suddenly transplanted to the lobby of the Grand Opera. Howling, shouting, badgering the officers, trials of wit, puns on the guillotine and on the un- fortunate criminals about to pass through its fatal notch, formed the budget of the morning's amuse- ment till the guillotine had accomplished its work. The mob was composed principally of very young 174 Orsini people, who certainly did not wear on this occasion either their Sunday blouses or Sunday caps. The reputed cleanliness of the Paris mob was for once contradicted, but it is probable that the people we saw here never leave their workshops on Sunday; it was, in fact, a class of people never seen in the better parts of the city, and not even in the Fau- bourg, where they live after night — a sort of coal- mine population, only called out by revolutions or an important night event, such as an execution. At six o'clock day began to appear, and at seven the execution took place. It was not known that Rudio had received a commutation of his punish- ment, and the crowd anticipated the execution of three men instead of two. At six o'clock Orsini and Fieri were awakened and informed that their time had come; Fieri was much excited at this news, but en- deavoured to show courage by loud talking and meaningless gesticulations. Orsini, on the con- trary, was calm, and manifested the same firmness of character he has shown through the whole affair. Fieri attempted to jest, but Orsini begged him to be calm. The former asked, while they were pre- paring him for the guillotine, the privilege of singing the " Marseillaise," a favour which was granted, and 175 Memoirs of " MalakofF" he continued to sing it with a broken voice until his words were extinguished by the fatal knife. Orsini remained silent until he gave himself up to the executioner on the scaffold, when he shouted, " Vive r Italic ! Vive la France I " The two men were led to the scaffold together, barefooted, dressed in white robes, and with black veils over their faces. Fieri was pushed on to the bascule first, whilst Orsini stood at his side awaiting his turn. As soon as the knife fell he turned round and gave himself into the executioner's hands. But few of the audience saw Fieri passing under the knife, as Orsini stood up in front. Not a minute elapsed between the two executions, and Orsini stood alone while his fellow-culprit was in the hands of the executioners. There was the most marked difference in the conduct of the two prisoners, and they have left behind them the impression that, while Orsini was a man of character, with the education and the refinement of a gentleman, the other was a scoundrel of which the earth was well rid. Orsini has left many regrets behind him, and his letter to the Emperor is said to have excited an immense feeling in the Lombard and Venetian provinces. 176 WHAT FOLLOWED ORSINI'S ATTEMPT CHAPTER VII WHAT FOLLOWED ORSINI'S ATTEMPT TT /"HAT was the connection between Orsini's attempt ' ^ and the war for the liberation of Italy into which Napoleon III. plunged twelve months later ? The usual answer of serious writers has been to minimise the influence of the terrific explosion of the Rue Lepelletier. The ex- planation is not hard to find. The trained historian has had developed in him a sense of strict accuracy, and is always looking for precise facts on which to base every judgment on which he ventures. He can find no precise facts showing that it was because of Orsini's attempt that Napoleon did this, that, or the other thing, and he therefore rejects the supposition as unfounded. But this is one of those excep- tional cases where such safe and generally commendable methods are, perhaps, not best fitted to elucidate the truth, and it is only by viewing the trend of events broadly, and by considering Napoleon as a psychological subject, that one can arrive at a true appreciation. After all, Napoleon III. was not a lay figure in the events of his reign ; far from it, he was a personality, a remarkable personality. There are certain salient features of his in- tellect, plain and intelligible, that proved factors of immense importance in the political evolution of his day. One of these was his extraordinary obstinacy or tenacity. An idea 179 Memoirs of " MalakofF" once formed was never dislodged from his mind. For years, in spite of reason, he had clung to the belief that he would some day be Emperor, and no sooner had a first successful step been taken than that ridiculous, incredible faith began to make converts, and eventually helped to make possible what with a saner man would never have been more than a fantastic vision. His imagination and his tenacity had helped to make an Emperor of him, yet his intellect and his heart were not those of a despot. The political conditions of his early youth, when the name of Bonaparte was nearly proscribed, and when the Holy Alliance ruled Europe, had thrown him into the democratic ranks, and, by a curious in- congruity, he remained in theory an inveterate democrat through life. The man of the 2nd of December and of the deportations to Cayenne was in truth a Liberal, but a Liberal whose mind was irrevocably set on being Emperor of the French, and who was bound to subordinate some considera- tions to others. This is not an apology for Napoleon IIL ; it is merely an attempt to convey the working of his mind. Just at the most impressionable age, when he was twenty- three. Napoleon had actually taken part in a Liberal revolu- tion, had borne arms in the cause of Italian independence. The events of 183 1, the current of fervent sentiments into which he was then thrown, left an indelible impress on his mind ; and more than one Italian who had known him in the early days, and Orsini was among them, felt assured that the cause of his country had acquired a strong supporter when the Prince mounted the French throne. In politics, however, sentimental aspirations and practical opportunities rarely coincide. From the day of his election to the presidency of the Republic in 1848, the Italian ques- 180 What Followed Orsini's Attempt tion was ever present with Louis Napoleon, but never on the only basis that could please Italian patriots — one that meant a conflict with Austria and her expulsion from Italy. That was always among those remote possibilities that had never come within the range of practical politics. It was one result of Orsini's terrible crime that it shook Louis Napoleon's imagination and gave lurid prominence in his mind to the great question of the liberation of Italy. For many months the ghastly scenes of the Rue Lepelletier haunted him, and he began to revolve a scheme that should free him from the repetition of such scenes, that should liberate Italy, and that should also restore the so- called natural boundaries of France and annul the treaties of 1 8 15 that had marked the final catastrophe of the first Napoleon. With Napoleon III. we have to deal with a man who, whatever his faults and weaknesses, did at times direct political events, and also with a man of highly im- pressionable temperament ; and there seems no other judg- ment possible than that Orsini's attempt moved him profoundly, and was the immediate cause that led to his forcible intervention in Italy twelve months later. The astute Cavour realised at once all the possibilities of the situation, and took full advantage of the opening made by Orsini. Napoleon made overtures, and in the summer of 1858 the Sardinian statesman spent thirty- six hours with him at Plombieres, and there settled the basis of an alliance of which the express purpose was to pick a quarrel with Austria, to drive her out of Italy, and then to make territorial readjustments for the mutual advan- tage of the two allies. This fact was long kept profoundly secret, and six months passed before its existence was 181 Memoirs of " MalakofF" generally suspected. In the autumn of 1858, there were indeed one or two alarms as to the relations of France and Austria, but the 1st of January, 1859, was reached, with only a very few persons in Europe cognizant of Napoleon's warlike intentions. On that day, however, diplomacy was suddenly startled and alarmed. On Monday last the world of politicians and speculators was thrown into consternation. A per- fect panic was observable at the opening of the Bourse, and the whole city was soon let into the secret. It was nothing less than an impending war with Austria. The report was based on the words pronounced two days before, on the occasion of the New Year's reception at the Palace by the Emperor. His Majesty, address- ing himself to M. de Hdbner, Austrian Am- bassador at Paris, is reported to have said : " I regret exceedingly that the relations between France and Austria are not this year all that I could desire. Nevertheless, I beg of you to trans- mit to your sovereign my personal sentiments of affection and esteem." In this remark will be seen an entire justification of the panic which seized the city. The Bourse went down the first day a franc, and has continued to fall every day since. The Three per Cents closed 182 What Followed Orsini's Attempt last evening at 71, although but three weeks ago they were at 75 ; while the Credit Mobilier, which was at 1 040, went down to 900. A week later he writes : — We are decidedly in the midst of a war panic. All the efforts of the Government, in the shape of communicated notes to its organs, fail to restore quiet to the public mind. It is in vain that we are assured that France is at peace with all Europe and desires to remain so, that she has no subject of quarrel with Austria, and does not desire one. The panic only grows in intensity. Three events have principally contributed to this alarm. In the first place, the Emperor's remarks to M. de Htlbner, on New Year's Day ; in the second place, the sudden despatch of large bodies of troops from Austria into Italy ; and lastly, the speech of Victor Em- manuel on the opening of the Piedmontese Chamber four days ago. Taken together, these are signs well calculated to create a war panic. But to these a new element has been added by the projected marriage of Prince Napoleon with the daughter of Victor Emmanuel. People may well exclaim. What does all this mean if it be not war ? The Prince left Paris yesterday 183 Memoirs of " MalakofF" for Turin, to pay his respects to his future bride ; and in a second visit, which will quickly follow the first, the marriage is to be celebrated. It will be hardly necessary to say here that this project took the French people more by surprise than the speech of the Emperor on New Year's Day. The Prince has already had several projects of marriage in view, each of which has failed. Until lately the public had ceased to regard him as a candidate for this kind of social and political alliance. Under any circumstances it was not in that direction that such an alliance was looked for, and following upon the heels of a supposed offensive alliance with Piedmont against Austria, the astonishment was increased tenfold. The marriage of Prince Jerome and Princess Clotilde took place on the 30th of January at Turin, whence the newly- wedded pair proceeded to Paris. The papers will tell you that the reception of the Prince and Princess Napoleon, on Thursday, was a brilliant affair, that vast crowds av/aited their coming and vociferously cheered them as they passed. I regret that the sacred rights of history demand that I should throw the smallest bucket of cold water on this appreciation. It is true that one 184 What Followed Orsini's Attempt journal, whose news-collector had some pangs of conscience in repeating the stereotyped phrases of the Government papers, without daring to say that there was no enthusiasm, yet ventured to hint that the populace were restrained in their cries for fear of giving the impression that they were in favour of war, the Princess Clotilde being Italian ! You see how difficult it is to edit a paper in Paris and remain an honest man. The Government certainly did its part in making the Prince's reception brilliant, for there were plenty of soldiers who had nothing else to do, and were only too glad to get a sight at the young Sardinian Princess — or, as the badauds of Paris call her. La fleur des pois-Sardes — while the railroad company, who have always ready for imperial emergencies an indefinite length of green velvet with golden bees, were on their part only too glad to spread their carpets and interrupt the labours of destructive vermin. Coming out from the railway station the imperial party were loudly cheered, because at that point the secret police and the employes of the rail- road were collected in large numbers. But on the rest of the route not a sound of welcome was heard except from the mouths of the soldiers. On the Place de la Bastille, where an immense crowd of i8s Memoirs of " MalakofF" workpeople were stationed, the silence was un- broken during the passage of the cortege, but as the last carriage rolled by an ouvrier in the crowd yelled out " Bis, bis ! " The cry was responded to by another ouvrier across the road, " Ca ne vaut pas la peine, mon ami ! " At another point, a solitary indi- vidual, better dressed than the rest, shouted out a viva in the rear, when the crowd, with a simul- taneous "O-o-h !" turned towards him and laughed derisively in his face. The enthusiast walked away with the air of a man who had " put his foot in it." The cortege proceeded first to the Tuileries, entering through the courts of the old and new Louvre, so as to astound the young Princess with the grandeur of that magnificent pile of buildings. At the foot of the great stairway the newly-arrived were received by the Emperor, surrounded by the officers of his household. The Empress, sur- rounded in like manner, received them at the head of the stairway. After presentation to the different households and a short conversation, the Prince and Princess proceeded to their future residence at the Palais Royal. There they were received by the Prince's father, the ex-king Jerome, and dined that evening en famille. The next day the Prince and Princess proceeded to the Tuileries on foot to pay 1 86 What Followed Orsini's Attempt an informal visit to their Majesties, and the next day dined there with the whole Bonaparte family and the high officers of the Crown. The young Princess, with all respect be it said, is neither a beauty, nor has she the gaiety of her age. She looks, indeed, like a lamb being led to the slaughter ; she scarcely smiled during the whole evening, and it did not require much penetration to discover that her heart was neither in France nor in the dazzling scene around her. She had no business to be born a Princess ! The marriage of Princess Clotilde was a precursor of the storm that was about to burst over Italy. Cavour, the only statesman of Europe as old Prince Metternich declared, steadily drove events towards war, and before many weeks it was clear that the armies of France were once more to descend on the plains of Lombardy, where General Bonaparte had led them sixty years before. Paris quickly assumed a martial aspect. The station of the Lyons Railway, from which nearly all the soldiers start, is the scene, from morning to night, of a perpetual ovation. In the evening, when the workmen are released from their shops, the crowd at this station is numbered by thousands, and as the regiments arrive to take their places in the long trains, the shouts, the yells, the 187 Memoirs of " MalakofF" sobs of parting friends, make up a scene of confusion quite unusual in this well-regulated city. As the trains go oiF, the shrill bugles ring out, and the soldiers shout in chorus : " En avant pour Vltalie ! Vive VEmpereur I " So many railways converge at Paris, that from three-fourths of the Empire the soldiers can arrive soonest at the seat of war by passing through the capital. Thus we can form some idea of the number of men detailed for active service, and judging from these imperfect data, it would seem that Napoleon intends to make short work of it, for the stream of soldiers through the city is con- tinuous, and yet there must be more than a hundred thousand men already on or within the frontiers of Italy. Within the last half-hour, three regiments of 3,000 men each have passed my windows on their way from the Western Railway station to that of Lyons on the other side of the town. The bands were playing " Partant pour la Syrie" the soldiers had their knapsacks and canteens on their backs, and over these were strapped their tent poles, on the end of which they had placed the national flag. They were all in high spirits, and were fol- lowed and cheered by crowds of people. Many officers and soldiers had brothers, sisters, or other 188 What Foilowed Orsini's Attempt relatives who had waited to catch a last adieu as they passed through the city, walking at their sides from one railway station to the other. It was only thus that a parting could take place. The Emperor had decided to take personal command of his army, and made his preparations for the campaign. The camp tent of the Emperor Napoleon, which has preceded him to Italy, is in white and blue striped tent cloth, lined. Its height is about fifteen feet. The interior is divided into three compart- ments — a salon, bedroom, and dressing-room. Doors in the canvas throw the rooms together, and windows are pierced for ventilation. An iron bed, folding seats, and three small tables make up the furniture of this imperial residence. The tent is remarkable for its perfect finish, the facility with which it can be put up and taken down, and its general adaptation to the purpose for which it is destined. It was made five years ago for the war in the Crimea, and started on its journey as far as Marseilles, but the Emperor changed his mind then, and the tent has lain ever since in the flag-room of the Tuileries. The iron bed now in this tent together with the toilet furniture and the silver table service belonged to the first 189 Memoirs of " Malakoff " Emperor, and accompanied him in nearly all his campaigns ; and as these campaigns were so many victories, Louis Napoleon is going to throw himself upon the destiny of those victorious wash- basins and saucepans. He hopes, on the fields of Marengo and Lodi, to sleep upon, and draw inspira- tion from, the same bed on which dreamed and schemed his great uncle, and on which he planned the glorious battles that have made the name of Bonaparte illustrious. The campaign of Italy of 1859 was marked by two great battles, Magenta and Solferino, and Dr. Johnston had the good fortune to witness the latter. The early events of the war he was only able to report at second hand as the news of them reached the French capital. It would be difficult for you to picture the ani- mation that reigns at Paris since the battle of Magenta and the liberation of the capital of Lom- bardy. To see the Boulevards in the evening is worth a trip across the Atlantic. There is none of that yelling, shouting, drunkenness and extrava- gance of joy which would be manifested in Broad- way if the American arms on some part of the frontier were to gain a great battle ; there is the same animation here, but it is manifested differently. The streets are illuminated, all countenances are 190 What Followed Orsini's Attempt animated, everybody talks of war, but it is done quietly and with decorum. When Paris is excited there is no rushing from place to place ; there are none of those always-out-of-breath people who alarm and inflame the rest ; but instead, they repair in a mass to the favourite public promenades, and there, by looking in their neighbours' faces and see- ing that they are no more excited than themselves, they promenade out their excitement. In conversation every word pronounced has some connection with the war ; every mind and nearly every heart, unfortunately, is fixed on the plains of Lombardy. In the family circle the conversation rolls but upon one subject — the battle fought or the battle to be fought. At the cafe the only words that strike the ear are, the Austrians, the Piedmon- tese. Garibaldi, the Quadrilateral, the Ticino, the Po, the Zouaves, the Turcos. In the street it is still the same song ; the air and the words are changed, but it is the same theme. There the Austrians, from Autrichiens, become " Autrichemards " ; Garibaldi, " Garibalduche " ; the Zouaves, " Zouzous" and Victor Emmanuel the " Caporal" The theatres are preparing military plays, in which, you will hardly need to be assured, the poor Austrians will be kicked, dog-baited, jilted in love, Memoirs of " MalakofF" laughed at, and otherwise ill-treated, in mass and in detail. But in mounting these pieces the managers meet with a serious difficulty ; none of their actors, even to the most insignificant of the super- numeraries, are willing to take the part of the Austrians, unless with double pay, and even then reluctantly. The result is unfortunate for those who accept, because the number being limited on account of the cost, their kicks, cuffs, and misfor- tunes are increased in proportion. It is a fact that actors sometimes, by consenting to assume these ungrateful parts, fix upon themselves a public dis- like which clings to them for years. The supreme insult just now among the gamins in the street is, " Fous etes un Autrkhien I " Gyulai, the Austrian commander-in-chief, who was per- haps not altogether responsible for the Austrian failure in the first part of the campaign, was unmercifully ridiculed both in France and Italy. The illustration on the opposite page reproduces an Italian lampoon found among Dr. Johnston's papers. The Patrte relates the manner in which the King, Victor Emmanuel, was dubbed Corporal, an honor- ary title, the reader will understand, in the Third Zouaves, after the battle of Palestro. The Zouaves had been interring their dead comrades. A deep 192 •ojiBUi oisnS an ^ ojjbjiui ui 3\{^ oijEjju ons jE apoj eis g 'ojwpajEui EijSBnEO pnQ 03J3gB jpp JOUIEIZBjSai^ j ossauiip Ei3 ojsod ons [eq ossapE ^ ijSg ^:jd ajspaA uo|^ 'OUUEJIJ EIS p IEJIIjCq 3l{;^ OUUBJlod UOU tjld Jip EJQ ( isoD vao i laij 3A0 oi[3o3jo onj jy j 3[IA IJSOJ ojQBnb EpjBng '3JUJ38 Qld JI 5 OUIOn JPP 3^3 ajEiuiUEj qs3nb f i|3g ■oajo^iJ onj JE ^ ojEiujojsEjjL opoEmsB^p osnui an aj oajoiS an Eduiod qs3j mo iq 0133BSIA onj oqj3dns pnQ IHS VSOD VN^OJLra HHO IViriAO GTULAI CHE VA ALLA GUERRA Ah Gyulai cos' hai tu fatto Coir andar altiero^in guerra, II tuo onore hai cimentato, La tua forza ti tradi. Memoirs of " Malakoff " trench was dug on an eminence, and when the bodies had been deposited and the trench filled up, all present went on their knees, and after a short prayer retired, bidding adieu to their dead brethren in arms. " Comrades ! " exclaimed a sergeant, as a funeral oration, " may God receive you ! It was your turn to-day — to-morrow it may be ours ! " After this short and touching ceremony the Zouaves, abqut four hundred in number, gathered at a farmhouse and were enjoying themselves with the abundant provisions they always know how to procure for themselves independently of their ordi- nary rations. The King's great bravery during the battle naturally came up for discussion, and various suggestions were put forward for properly inform- ing His Majesty of their high appreciation of his valour. At last the proposition was made that he should be made Corporal of the Third Regiment of Zouaves. This was unanimously agreed to, and then the nomination was made with great formality. The oldest sergeant, standing up, solemnly pro- claimed in a loud voice, " In the name of the Third Zouaves, Victor Emmanuel, King of Sardinia, is promoted to the rank of Corporal in the said regi- ment ! " The next day a memorandum of these proceedings was drawn up, signed by all the 194 What Followed Orsini's Attempt Zouaves, and sent to the King, who accepted the title as a high compliment. It was just as these descriptions were being written that Mr. Henry Raymond, the talented and energetic editor of the New York Times, reached Europe. He decided to proceed at once to Italy to follow the French army, and proposed to Dr. Johnston to accompany him as special correspondent of the paper. The offer was immediately accepted. I9S SOLFERINO CHAPTER VIII SOLFERINO Tp\R. JOHNSTON secured the necessary permits from ■*-^ the French Government, and he and Mr. Raymond travelled to Italy so rapidly that they had the good fortune to reach headquarters the day before the great battle of Solferino. At ten o'clock on the following evening, Friday, the 24th of June, 1859, after a day spent in the saddle, weary and without food, he found a table and a candle in the corner of a peasant's cottage near Castiglione, where he sat down and wrote the following despatch : — ^ Francis Joseph has commanded and lost to-day his first battle. His army, concentrated at leisure within the last fortnight, was the most formidable in number of modern times. It was stationed at a point chosen by himself, where he had the ad- vantage of a superior position, and yet he has been beaten completely from the field. We were fortunate enough to arrive on the ^ This book being in the nature of personal memoirs, Mr, Ray- mond's doings and interesting despatches are of necessity not alluded to. They were certainly of no less value and interest to the readers of the New York Times than those of Malakoff. 199 Memoirs of " Malakoff " ground at the beginning of the fighting, and during a portion of the time were stationed on a hill, at the very spot occupied by the Emperor Napoleon. From this point we could take in with the eye the whole field, and notwithstanding the great extent of the ground fought over, were able to comprehend the ensemble of the battle. The two armies had been gradually approaching each other for several days, and it was generally understood, as well in the army as in the country near the scene of the great conflict, that a battle was imminent. The army of the Emperor of Austria, which had gradually retreated from the fatal field of Magenta, halted, domoralised, at the Mincio. The Emperor, who had been collecting reinforcements — one might call it a new army — at Verona, advanced a week ago with this force, and, joining with the army which had fallen back from Magenta, moved to the encounter of the French, to seek revenge for the defeat of Gyulai. The French were only too well pleased to meet their enemy thus, and the encounter on the plain of Castiglione was as if by mutual agreement. Napoleon's headquarters on the 22nd were at Montechiaro. A part of the army, however, camped the same night at Castiglione, and on the 23rd the Solferino whole army was encamped, a portion at the farther border of the town of Castiglione, and the balance along the road to Montechiaro. A body of four hundred and fifty Austrians had been captured on the 22nd on the road to Castiglione, and the advanced posts of each army were constantly in the neighbour- hood of one another. Castiglione, a compact town of perhaps two thou- sand inhabitants, and almost two thousand years old, is built upon a slight elevation, which is actu- ally the termination at that place of the Lombard Alps. To the south and west of the town extends as far as the eye can reach the level and highly- cultivated country for which this part of Italy is so celebrated. To the east of the town there rises a range of hills, three or four hundred feet high, in a circular form, presenting their concavity to the south, and terminating at a distance from the town of perhaps six miles. Around this tongue of hills the plain extends to the north, where it terminates at the strongly-fortified town of Peschiera. On the night of the 23rd the whole Austrian army moved up to the vicinity of Castiglione, within a mile of the French outposts. They came up so noiselessly that the French supposed it to be their intention to sweep around and encircle the town. Memoirs of " MalakofF" No such attempt, however, was made, and at five o'clock this morning the battle commenced, but by which army the first shot was fired no one thus far has been able to inform me. The Austrian centre was on and toward the extremity of the long tongue of hills to which I have referred ; their right on the same range of hills, close up to the town of Castiglione, and their left extending directly out across the plain to the south of the termination of the tongue of hills. On these hills there were two villages occupied by the Austrians, and a high old tower overlooking the plain and the whole country around. The Austrian position was in a crescent (as at Magenta), about eight miles long, and was exceedingly strong in every way, since the French were obliged to attack from the plain, in full view, and in a con- centrated form. During the first hours of the battle the French were twice driven back by the Austrians. But this retrograde movement was not a repulse, and the ground lost was immediately regained. It was the First Regiment of Zouaves that suffered most at this moment. At one o'clock I saw two cart-loads of wounded men of this regiment as they came off the field, on their way to the hospital at Castiglione, 202 Solferino and they told me that at that moment not a single commissioned officer of their regiment was on his feet. Their brave Colonel, who had been promoted only three days before, in place of their Colonel killed at Magenta, had received three wounds, and I saw him carried from the field soon afterwards on a litter, covered with blood and dust. The two villages on the line of hills held by the Austrians offered the greatest resistance to the advance of the French. One of these, Solferino, was taken and retaken three times by Canrobert's division, and at this point the dead bodies actually concealed the ground from view. The Austrians were gradually driven back over the plain, and from their strong position on the hill- sides, till at four o'clock they made their last obsti- nate stand at the town of Volta, six miles east of Castiglione. An hour's work dislodged them from this place, and then, at five o'clock, a violent rain- storm coming up, attended with lightning and thunder, the retreat of the Austrians commenced. During this storm, which lasted nearly an hour, I took refuge in one of the divisional headquarters in the town, and there assisted in dressing the wounded as they were brought in. The storm, which seemed to have been sent expressly to cool 203 Memoirs of " Malakoff " the hot air and to lay the dust, had no sooner ceased than the thunder of the artillery was again heard, but this time around and to the north of the point of hills in the direction of Peschiera. I hastened to a high hill half a mile east of the town to a point near where the Austrian right rested at daylight in the morning, and at the very place on which Napoleon had stood during the first hours of the battle, and from this point could see distinctly what was going on. Away to the north-east, to- wards Peschiera, which was clearly in view, and apparently near the borders of the lake of Garda, the battle was raging with renewed fury. The Piedmontese, fifty thousand strong, commanded by the King, who had stopped the night of the 23rd in front of Lonato, had attacked the Austrians in the flank as they retreated. The scene at this moment was one long to be re- membered. Only a few miles north of us, and on the eastern and western shores of the lake, the Alps reared their snow-covered tops above the clouds. The storm had cleared away, and the sun- set was never more beautiful in this country of lovely skies. Nearer to us, on the south side of the lake, where the shore is nearly level, the battle was raging, and the movements of the batteries from 204 Solferino point to point could be perceived. The rays of the setting sun illuminating the snow-clad tops of the mountains rendered their sides dark and sombre, and threw a shade upon the water beyond the con- tending armies which brought these into strong relief. The Austrians- could be seen steadily re- ceding ; the batteries of artillery on both sides were constantly shifting from one little hillock to another, and as soon as placed in position a regular rolling discharge could be heard and a line of fire seen like a conflagration. The scene was alike picturesque and terrible. The Austrians continued to recede towards the Mincio at Peschiera, and it was reported in the French army that the bridge at that place had been broken down, some said by Garibaldi, some by the people, and that the Austrian retreat being thus cut off, they would be all surrounded. Others said that Garibaldi was on the other side of the lake awaiting the Austrians on their retreat, but all these statements were only surmises. At nine o'clock I left my look-out to hunt up a corner in which to write, and as I descended the ravine on the side of the town I still heard, although I could no longer see, the discharges of the guns, and knew that the work of death was still going on. 205 Memoirs of " Malakoff " At Mantua, which could be seen in the distance to the south-east, there was a great quantity of smoke, which gave rise to the supposition that Prince Napoleon with his division had arrived from the Duchies on that side and had commenced the siege of that fortress. But this is problematical. Other patches of smoke were seen nearer, which induced the belief that the French were pursuing the Austrians in the direction of Mantua. We shall soon know the truth on these points. This great battle, which will render Solferino and the 24th of June memorable in history, lasted from five o'clock in the morning till nine in the evening — a total of sixteen hours — and the pursuit is not yet suspended. It was a battle in which French skill in the art of war once more proved superior to that of Austria, her ancient enemy, and it would seem that she ought now to be willing to make peace. In its mode of expression this description sounds some- what mild when compared with the modern style of war correspondence ; yet in one respect Dr. Johnston did not lag behind the methods of a later day. By dint of energy and hard work his despatch, with that of Mr. Raymond, just reached the Saturday Liverpool mail steamer, and his news of the battle was the first to reach the United States. The New York Times effected with it what is known in 206 Solferino journalism as a scoop, which remained famous for many years. Even the London Times had no correspondent actually on the field, and was forestalled. On the day following the battle a curious incident occurred, which is thus related : — To-day your correspondent was in luck. War has its comedies and farces, as well as its tragedies and dramas. I have just been the witness of the most stupendous farce on record, but before I attempt its relation I must give a word of preface in order to render it intelligible. This morning, instead of returning to the battle- field of Solferino, I found it necessary to go to Brescia, fifteen miles away, to post letters. Leaving the rest of the party to go to the battlefield, I took our carriage and started towards Brescia. The road was crowded with wounded soldiers, and several attempts were made by officers in charge to press my carriage into service. But the American Legation at Paris, which is always liberal with sealing-wax, proved my salvation, for sealing-wax exerts a wonderful influence in Europe. The road from Castiglione to Brescia was one continuous procession of wounded. No five minutes passed without encountering wagon-loads of these poor fellows on their way to Brescia, 207 Memoirs of " MalakofF" Bergamo, or Milan. These wagons carried, pro- jecting over the wheels, a platform. On this plat- form was placed straw or hay, on which the wounded men reposed. The wagons had no springs, and yet there was no other conveyance, even for men with amputated limbs and deep-seated, bleeding wounds. The sun poured down with a heat of 88 degrees, the road was a cloud of dust, the flies settled upon their bloody clothes and bleeding wounds, men died and were left at the roadside to be interred by the peasants, and the living lay more like dead than living men in this long march in search of a resting- place. When they came fresh from the battlefield, as we saw them yesterday, they carried on their faces an expression of quiet determination, of stoical indifference to danger and suffering. To-day they had a look of utter desolation, the air of men abandoned by all the world to their miserable fate. Here and there women, boys, and priests ran out to hand them soup, wine or water, or branches of trees to form a shelter from the rays of the sun, or to keep the flies from their festering wounds. It was an aphorism of the ancients that a dead or badly wounded soldier is no longer of any value ; but the French, certainly a most compassionate people for the suffering, made all the preparations 208 Solferino in their power to avoid the reproach of cruelty to their wounded. Yet when such a battle as that of Solferino takes place, when the wounded left upon the hands of the victors number from twenty to thirty thousand, it is impossible to provide them with the necessary comforts. I know of nothing, and never conceived of anything so apparently cruel, so heartrending, as this long march of the deserted, forsaken, suffering men in search of a hospital. It brought home to the hardest-hearted the horrors of war in all their enormity, and ought to have been witnessed by the commanders in front rather than by the powerless in the rear. But the commanders only occupy themselves with what lies before them ; what falls behind is left to the mercies of others. Imagine as an example — one of many I saw — a poor Austrian soldier in the last agonies of death, who could no longer bear the joltings of the ox- cart, and who had made the French, his companions on the same cart, understand that he wanted to descend. Two of the French, wounded only in the arms, helped him from the cart and placed him sitting upright against a stone. The cart went on, for the driver was an Italian, and was working for money. There the Austrian was dying, and the p 209 Memoirs of " MalakofF" two French soldiers stood by him, utterly unable to give him other relief than their sympathy, and this they could only express by a mute respect. When he died he was, no doubt, rolled down the bank to be buried by the peasants, while the French soldiers made their way to Brescia as best they could. The Austrian, French, and Piedmontese soldiers were mixed promiscuously on the wagons, and everywhere the same attentions were shown to one as to the other. Men with amputated arms sat upright in order to give more room to those with amputated legs, and in these mutual kindnesses no regard was paid to nationality. This was the history of the whole journey from Castiglione to Brescia. But now comes the im- mense farce of which I have already spoken. I arrived at the head of the convoys of wounded, for these were the first to reach Brescia from the battle- field. A great crowd was collected at the eastern gate of the city to see them arrive and to obtain news. I was importuned myself for news by the citizens, and only extricated myself with difficulty from the crowd. I drove to the Post Office, then to the Albergo Reale, where I was just finishing the only regular meal I had had in several days, when I heard a great commotion in the street, and the 2IO Solferino cry of " Tedeschi ! Tedeschi ! " — the Germans ! the Germans ! — ^loudly shouted by the people. I ran out, and was the witness of a scene which, at this moment, I hardly know whether to cry or laugh over. Men, women, and children ran screaming through the streets shouting the fearful word " Tedeschi ! " The doors and shutters of the stores and houses were closed and barricaded in a twink- ling, the Sardinian flags disappeared as if by magic from the windows and balconies, and men and women hastily jerked the tricoloured ribbons from their buttonholes. Such a panic I never saw in my life. The r6veill6 was beaten for the National Guard, now the only defenders of the city ; the French and Sardinian reinforcements in town on their way to the army at Solferino were called on to assist, the gates of the city were closed, and each gate in ten minutes' time was bristling with the bayonets of the brave Brescians and their volunteer aids of the regular service. Consternation was depicted on every face. I was surrounded for information. I assured the people that such a report was simply absurd ; that the day before I had seen the Austrians defeated on all sides at the great battle and pushed back by the French to the Mincio. One huge, aldermanic in- 211 Memoirs of " MalakofF" dividual, apparently a wealthy proprietor, implored me In the best French he could command in such a solemn moment to reassure him. I did the best I could, but with indifferent success ; he was alarmed to the bone, and rushed away to the defence of his property, or more likely to hide himself. But for half an hour at least your correspondent was the lion of Brescia. All this was very well if it had gone no further. But now there came galloping into the town a string of frightened French soldiers, their horses covered with foam and exhausted with a fifteen miles gallop, themselves covered with dust, and like their horses, out of breath. They declared that the Austrian army, 1 50,000 strong, the remains of the army after the battle of Solferino, having been sur- rounded by the French, had escaped in the direction of Brescia, and that their cavalry was in close pur- suit of them ; that they were giving no quarter to whatever they found on their route, that they were killing the wounded, and that they would soon be at the gates of Brescia ! The whole of the reserve division stationed at Castiglione, numbering 20,000 men, were the subjects of this fright, and arrived in Brescia to confirm the news that had already thrown the town into a fever. When these soldiers assured 212 Solferino me, one after the other, that the Austrian cavalry was actually upon their heels, that they had even seen them, and that they were cutting everybody down on their route without mercy, I confess that, notwithstanding the conviction that the thing was impossible, I felt some misgivings as to the safety of my own skin, and, instead of returning imme- diately to join our company at Castiglione, as had been agreed upon, I ordered my baggage to be car- ried to a room in the hotel and the horses put up, determined, if the worst came to the worst, to fall back upon the American eagle for protection. This done, I determined to go into the street and resolutely to inspect the imminence of danger. I met first a crowd, of which the centre was a rich citizen, explaining that there was no danger, since the gates were closed and well defended against any attack of cavalry, and that before the Austrian artillery could arrive to batter down the gates the French would be upon them. The next group was composed of the new Governor of the city and his aides, just appointed by the King of Sardinia — a handsome man, the Governor, with a handsome uniform and fine teeth, which latter he appeared anxious to bring into evidence as to his incredulity at least, for he went sauntering along, with his 313 Memoirs of " MalakofF" sword upside down on his shoulder, with an air which plainly said, " Who's afeered ? It isn't I. But I'll go down and see all the same." I, too, went to the east gate, through which I had entered but an hour before, totally unconscious that the whole Austrian army was in the rear, cutting down everybody in their way. There I found the National Guard collected in large num- bers, so large as to be able to open the gates with security, having first, however, sent outposts up the road to give the alarm when they saw the enemy approaching. But no enemy arrived, and instead thereof we received positive intelligence that no Austrians had escaped through the French lines, and that in all probability they were all across the Mincio. When at last the conviction was forced on the Brescians that they had been the victims of an im- mense hoax — that, in fact, it was but a false alarm, without any basis whatever, they were the first to laugh at their own credulity. Unfortunately, the affair had a serious side to it. As already stated, the whole fifteen miles from Castiglione to Brescia was an almost continuous line of wounded soldiers lying upon open platforms or carts driven by natives of the country. The cavalry and artillery dashed 214 Solferino along the road at the top of their speed, crying to the wounded to save themselves, that the Austrian cavalry was coming, and was showing no quarter, even to the wounded. The result was that the drivers either discharged and abandoned their loads of wounded in the road, or abandoned their wagons and load, and hid themselves in the fields. Many of these unfortunate men were thus run over by the artillery and cavalry and killed, while others died by the roadside from their increased sufferings. A wounded General was abandoned by his two aides-de-camp in the middle of the road, and as the artillery flew past him he cried out that he would give a hundred francs to any one who would stop and take him up. No one appeared willing to stop for such a sum. The long and almost continuous train of carts and wagons loaded with provisions for the army were run into the canals which here border both sides of the public road for irrigating purposes ; the boxes were broken, and an immense quantity of the provisions, such as biscuit and flour, were lost. As horses fell, their traces were cut, and they were left to take care of them- selves. Several horses died on the road, and others after arriving at Brescia. But all these accidents were but trifles compared to the suffering of the 215 Memoirs of " MalakofF" poor wounded soldiers, distributed in mass and without mercy all along the roadside from Castig- lione to Brescia. To some of them it would have been a mercy if the Austrians had actually been there to relieve them of their sufferings. An old army surgeon who, with his staff, was on his way to join the army, met the flying artillery ten miles from Brescia. He rushed into a wheat field and hid himself, and then, after the first alarm was over, mounted his horse and hurried back to Brescia. If the spectacle on the road during the day had been a melancholy one, the arrival in the evening at the east gate of Brescia of these poor fellows was a still more moving scene. I stood for several hours watching the cart-loads of wounded as they arrived, fatigued, covered with dust, and thirsty, many of them with their wounds broken open afresh from having been thrown into the road, and all of them silent with suffering and fatigue — not a few of them dying. A captain died on his cart just inside the gate from a gunshot wound in the groin, while another captain by his side on the same wagon was groaning with pain, and shedding tears at the more miserable fate of his comrade. The starting-point of this munificent retreat of the reserve corps was variously stated by the men. 2l6 Solferino They said they were without ammunition, the Imperial Guard having borrowed that morning all their ammunition and guns, leaving in their place ten guns taken from the enemy, to be carried back as trophies. They were just mounting their horses to start back to Brescia for ammunition, and to place in safety the captured cannons, when their commander cried " Aux armes ! The Austrian cavalry is on us ! " And, sinking his spurs in his horse's side, he took the lead on the road to Brescia, and actually arrived here among the first ; but, instead of stopping when once within the gates of Brescia, he galloped straight through the town to the western gate, and, perhaps, is running yet ! After Solferino military operations flagged, and there was ample opportunity for war correspondents to make little excursions. One of these carried Dr. Johnston as far as Milan, whence he wrote on the 2nd of July : — One grows weary of the bustle of a military camp, and especially of the constant presence of wounded, suffering, and dying men. Moreover, one grows absolutely tired of eating nothing, or next to nothing, and of sleeping three in the already very lively beds of an Italian country tavern. They have an unfortunate habit in this country of build- ing their inns in such a way as to confound the 217 Memoirs of " Makkoff " stable with the dining-room; so that when horses arrive the diners must get up to let them pass, and when the table is set the horses must be pushed over a little. The horse is a noble beast, and Grandville, talking of the dog, says, " The best part of man is the dog that's in him." But this confu- sion of animals, no matter how noble, ought to have limits ; for some cuticles are more susceptible than others — and then habit goes a great way. They have another unfortunate habit at these inns, when you call for beef, mutton, or fowl, to reply, " Si, si, Signore," and then invariably bring you veal ! The Judge (Judge Forsyth, who had joined the little American party) generously attributes to this constant eating of veal the famous retreat from Castiglione. So to get a day's rest, to escape the horrible scenes that abound in the neighbourhood of Castig- lione, and to get something more fortifying to eat than veal, we took a run up to the Lake of Como, passing through Brescia, Bergamo and Lecco. Then follow various impressions of the country, and among them the following : — Every day brings new proofs of the universal admiration of the people for Garibaldi. The name 218 Solferino of Victor Emmanuel is everywhere on the walls, on proclamations and other official papers ; but where the name of the King is heard once, that of Gari- baldi is heard ten times. He is their god and their household worship. They never tire of recounting his exploits, and my own admiration for the man has been softened down by the surfeit I have received from other quarters. Next to Garibaldi in the affections of the people stands Count Cavour. The Count is a great man ; he is a Cardinal Richelieu, a Talleyrand, and a Nero — three high-sounding epithets to attach to any name of the present epoch. But he is a deep intriguer, a long-sighted politician, and a thorough despot. He is a polished courtier, and yet a high- minded statesman; intrigue is the foundation of his trade. He is having as much to do with the present events in Italy as Napoleon III. The two are doing all the work, and one is quite as essential to its success as the other. You will see what a page Cavour will one day fill in history. Victor Emmanuel passes as a bon garfon, if you know what that means as an idiom ; in other words, as a " good fellow." Add to this a chivalrous and dauntless soldier, and you have the total estimate of him by the Italian people. 219 Memoirs of " MalakofF" You may be curious, as I certainly was, to know how the people of this country think of Louis Napoleon, and the work he is doing for them. I have failed to find in the people that frank expres- sion of confidence in his promises I had anticipated. They admire him as a conqueror, and regard him and his army as invincible ; but they are either silent or ambiguous on the political phases of the question. He is showered with all the outward expressions of confidence on the part of the people and the journals, but this is not the intimate expres- sion of the popular mind. An extraordinary animation prevails in the town of Como. The visitors are few, but the people of the town are in a political ferment. Here, as in all the towns in Lombardy we have visited, a National Guard, or citizen soldiery, has been organ- ized to preserve order and public security — to which they, in their ardour, add " and to keep out the Austrians." These soldiers I can best describe to you by recalling souvenirs of our own cornstalk militia. Only these fellows have veritable muskets, with bright bayonets always fixed. Some of them are no bigger than their guns. They are totally innocent of uniform, with the exception of here and there a cap trimmed in red, and a grey-blue Solferino blouse similarly trimmed, which are the distinctive marks of the new National Guard. The whole guard will soon be thus uniformed ; we saw hun- dreds of girls at work on the blouses. The Guard is already stationed at all the public buildings, and patrols are constantly marching through the streets, which gives the town the air of being under martial law. A little bit of a fellow, without uniform, and with a big musket on his shoulder, which he holds awkwardly and certainly painfully, is posted at our hotel door, and paces up and down with as much importance as if the whole State instead of the heavy musket rested on his shoulders. We take the liberty of stopping in the door — our hotel door — and the little fellow makes an observation which is evidently an insult if we could only under- stand his frightful dialect. But there is nothing to be gained by remonstrating with a very little man backed by the law and a fixed bayonet, so we leave the defender of the liberties of the State to the satisfaction of, perhaps, his first success under arms. The citizens generally seem given up to great joy ; everybody is in the street, and everybody is talking Garibaldi. The Austrians are damned without stint, and people have found all at once that it is a glorious thing to speak one's mind on 221 Memoirs of " Malakoff ' politics, and enjoy a little freedom. So they make the most of it, and go yelling through the streets their Italian " Marseillaise"; boys whistle and scream after drums, and altogether it looks like general election day at home, only nobody is drunk. The trains from Camerlata (the Como station) to Milan have been restarted, and coming down here we had only one wounded soldier with us, and but few passengers of any kind. By way of a change it was quite a treat. There were six thousand wounded and sick soldiers at Brescia, ten thousand at Milan, eleven hundred at Bergamo, several hun- dred at Como, and all the villages over a space of forty miles had their proportion. We found Milan gayer still than when we left it ten days ago. More flags floated from the windows, whether because the supply was then not equal to the demand, or whether the multiplication is a consequence of the Austrians having been driven across the Mincio without prospect of return, I cannot say. Strangers are beginning to arrive in small numbers, but there is no difficulty in getting rooms at the hotels ; the preponderance of people at the dinner table are officers, either slightly wounded, or else on their way to the army. A few Americans and English are on their way to visit the 222 Solferino battlefield of Solferino. We met several American officers a few days ago at Brescia, on their way to the Sardinian camp, bearing letters from Count Cavour : Major Crittenden, Capt. Todd, and Lieut. Pegram. A son of Gov. Wright, of New Jersey, was also of the party. Capt. Towers and Lieut. Carr have been some days in the Piedmontese camp. Major Kearney, until now in the staff of Gen. Morris, in the French camp, left the hotel at which I write this morning for Paris. It is curious to observe how the French soldier is treated at Milan. Every rich family appears to have taken one or more of the wounded fellows into their houses and to treat them on the "footing of the most favoured nation." When they go out driving on the fashionable promenade the Zouave or Grenadier occupies the back seat with the Signora, while the Signor sits forward. The Milan- ese, however, it should be remembered, are, of all the people in Lombardy, the most enthusiastic for the war. Last evening a barber, taking me for a Frenchman, absolutely refused to take pay for cutting my hair ! From Milan Dr. Johnston returned to headquarters, visited once more the battlefield of Solferino, and took that occasion for correcting certain impressions of the battle then making their way in the European press. 223 Memoirs of " MalakofF" I have seen the ofBcial bulletins of the battle of Solferino, and give no credit whatever to their statements of the number of killed and wounded. They are simply impossible, unless explained to mean " killed and badly wounded." I have just seen a copy of the Indipendance Beige, which says that there were no Lombards or Hun- garians in the battle of Solferino — that the Emperor Francis Joseph was afraid to trust them after the experience of Magenta. Whatever may have been His Majesty's fears in this particular, he certainly did not withhold these men from the battle, for an immense majority of the seven thousand prisoners I saw were of these two classes. I passed through them all, spoke to them, heard them talk, and after- wards saw them in the Court of the Municipal Palace at Brescia, where I was permitted to con- verse with them and to offer them little presents in money and cigars. I have thus a right to judge of the nationality of the prisoners taken at Solferino ; and it is surely the most glaring comment upon the injustice of his cause when men, in the midst of a battle commanded by their sovereign, lay down their arms in a mass and forsake him. Francis Joseph went into the present war boasting not only of the fidelity of the Hungarians, but even of the 224 Solferino Lombards, and he constandy made use of this argu- ment in his diplomatic papers. He is now reaping his just retribution, for neither Hungarians nor Lombards have fought as they know how to fight if their cause was their own. It was the corps d" elite of the Austrian army, made up almost exclusively of Germans, that did the most harm to the French at Solferino. It has been a long time since I heard the boom- ing of guns on the 4th of July. Yesterday as I came on here (Valeggio), through the battlefield of Solferino, I could hear distinctly the cannon at Peschiera, and could see the smoke of the burning houses, so that by appropriating to myself the noise and forgetting the effects, I had my Fourth of July in this far distant country as completely as if I had been at home. The scene in the valley of the Mincio and in the village of Valeggio is beyond all ordinary descrip- tion. Valeggio contains at this moment more than a hundred thousand soldiers. The thermometer is at 96 degrees in the shade, the roads are two inches deep in dust, the fruit and mulberry trees are covered with those singing insects which only ap- pear in a seething hot atmosphere, the roads are so encumbered with infantry, cavalry, and especially Q 225 Memoirs of " Makkoff " cattle, wagons, and artillery, that to progress at all we are obliged to get out at every step to lift our carriage bodily out of the way, to save being literally crushed, and to find egress. The cavalry and ar- tillery, on account of the horses, are camped in the narrow valley, on the river's edge. The infantry are on the hills around the village. Other portions of the army are stationed several miles away toward Mantua, Verona, and Peschiera. As we look down in the valley we see thousands of soldiers, and other thousands of horses in the river bathing. They are marched down by regi- ments, soldiers and horses, and allowed to plunge into the river at discretion. Several soldiers were drowned yesterday, but more died from the effects of the intense heat, the almost total absence of food or water, and the hard labour they had to perform. After a long halt at the bridge of boats, we at last edged our way into the procession and got our car- riage over. At the other end stood a sentry, but whether he was there to guard the entrance to head- quarters or to preserve order I do not know, for he asked no questions, and my papers, which I had ready in my pocket, were absolutely of no use. Thus, for the third time, I have entered the French 226 Solferino headquarters without showing the shadow of a paper, and have been permitted to pass everywhere, meeting nothing but politeness and amiability from officers and soldiers. In the town of Valeggio every hotel and respect- able house had been seized by the officers, and we found it impossible, notwithstanding the high price we offered, to obtain a decent resting-place for the night. At last we found in the shanty of a hatter a large bed, which was to be secured by paying four swanzigers, and climbing a rickety ladder. Our horses and carriage were allowed to stand in the court, with the understanding that the man was to sleep in the carriage, and that the horses were to be fed on bread, // it could be had, for anything else was out of the question. After completing these ar- rangements we went out to find something to eat. Such a scene of confusion I hope never to pass through again. It was bad enough at Cavriana, the last headquarters, but it was ten times worse here. The streets were crowded to their last limits with soldiers on the same errand as ourselves. Nothing could be had at any price; the heat was over- powering; carriages and carts, whole regiments of soldiers or parks of artillery were squeezing their way through the crowd, to the danger of people's 227 Memoirs of " Malakoff " lives. The only thing we found on sale was vinegar and water, everything else having been exhausted. The town has half a dozen fountains, but around each of these stood at least fifty soldiers waiting their turns to fill their canteens, or to get a drink with their tin cups. The citizens are only allowed to take water from three to four o'clock in the morning — all the rest of the day is reserved for the soldiers. We searched for some bread and wine, for we hoped for nothing more, but even these were not to be found, and we at last were reduced to two glasses of water, for which we paid ten sous. With these to sustain us we started for the Emperor's quarters. I had a message for young Count ShouvalofF, and he not only told me where I could find something to eat, but sent his valet with me to indicate the spot.' The place was closed, as If there had been a death in the house ; but the valet made a cabalistic knock, a noise was heard within, soon the door was cautiously opened, and we were received by a mon- strous, burly fellow, who recognized the valet and smiled graciously on me. He knew what I wanted, and that I must be a better customer than the ' Count ShouvalofF, bearing an autograph letter from the Czar, arrived at Napoleon's headquarters on the 3rd of July. 228 Solferino soldiers, against whom he had closed his door. While he went to his cellar for a bottle of wine, his wife came in with a child in her arms, gravely ill with what is known in America as the summer complaint. It was comatose, with a swollen abdo- men and nervous twitchings, and was, in fact, on the point of passing into convulsions. I asked her why she did not send for a doctor, and she said there were none, they had been carried oflF by the Austrians several days before to attend to their sick. I told her to put mustard to the child's feet, and linseed poultice on its bowels, when she asked if the child was not to eat the mustard ? With such ignorance of the rudiments of materia medica, I concluded I should only be practising medicine under difficulties, and "withdrew from the case," as the doctors say, leaving the poor little sufferer to the category of victims of the war. Nevertheless, I hoped the mother would have the sense to apply the remedies recommended. I took my wine, con- cealed it under my coat, at the request of the man, in order that the soldiers around the door might not see it, and on this bottle of the common wine of the country my companion and I made our dinner. We did not sleep much ; our court, like all the 229 Memoirs of " MalakofF" others in town, was full of soldiers and sutlers sleeping, or trying to sleep, on the ground; all night long horsemen were galloping into or out of the town, carrying orders, and heavy wagons and troops were constantly in movement. This morn- ing my companion got up early to go out on a foraging excursion, and returned with twelve eggs and two loaves of bread, for which he had to pay a fabulous sum. But we fared sumptuously. What has struck me most at headquarters is the immense amount of suffering borne by the French soldier without complaint. I never went through more physical suffering in my life in the same space of time than during this day of broiling heat, star- vation and thirst, at Valeggio. For the soldiers lying in their camps around town, with nothing to do, and plenty of army biscuit and water, life was supportable ; but for those who were in movement with their knapsacks on their backs, and nothing to be had to relieve their hunger or thirst even for the money they had in their pockets, or those detailed in bringing up supplies and in the various duties of the camp, these were sufferings I had never before seen men submitted to. The Austrians had eaten everything in the country, and the French supplies were tardy in arriving ; but the noble fellows toiled 230 Solferino on and made light of their sufferings. We saw at Castiglione the horrible side of war ; we saw here its painful side. It was now generally known that there was little chance of further active operations, and Dr. Johnston abandoned Valeggio for more comfortable quarters at Desenzano. He was not to remain there long. We have orders in this hotel to evacuate to- morrow from top to bottom for the Emperor Napoleon and his suite, who are going to make this their first stopping-place on their way home. Fortunately for me 1 can leave when I please, and to-morrow evening, after I shall have seen the Emperor arrive and witnessed the move- ments of the day, I shall pack off to Brescia in advance of the imperial suite. My room has been seized — "expropriated" they say in Paris — for Mar- shal Vaillant ; Edmond Texier, of the Sikle^ and Meissonier, the artist, who occupy another room across the dining-room from me, give up theirs for the Emperor, while other journalists, MM. Emile Augier, of the Institute, Dr^olle, Dupont, Charles Marshal, etc. — for the whole corps of French jour- nalists who were following the campaign have col- lected at this place within the last four days, — have orders to quit the house. Even the landlord 231 Memoirs of " MalakofF" may be said to be turned out, for His Majesty's cooks are going to take possession of the kitchen. Another gentleman, who has been travelling with me to-day, the Baron de Faye, who wished to remain at this beautiful place for a few days, is going to be compelled to accompany me to Brescia in order to get a place to sleep, for the army has not only seized this, but every other good house in the town. It remains to be seen whether we will get anything better than a sofa at Brescia. My blaz6 American left me here three days ago to go back to Brescia, perhaps to Milan, to get something to eat. He could not stand the cooking in this country, and, to tell the truth, it is atrocious, even at this, the best hotel between Milan and the Mincio. Edmond Texier says that people may contest the superiority of France in her army, her fine arts, or her architecture, but her kitchen, he contends, is beyond discussion. On that subject he will not yield a point. It is curious to see how completely forgetful people are of the war in their scramble for the commonest and cheapest necessaries of life — for all others are out of the question. Men devour as luxuries here what they would not offer their ser- vants at home. The country — -never rich in 232 Solferino luxuries, although the loveliest and most produc- tive in the world — is now completely exhausted by the passage of two huge armies, and it is certainly provoking to pay a high price for an inferior article, and then only get the promise of that. Two army chaplains, who breakfasted at our table this morn- ing, declared they had eaten nothing solid for three days, and in that time had walked in the hot sun fifty miles. Their story moved the rest of us, who had certainly fared better than they, and Emile Augier actually took the landlord by the throat and threatened to throw him into the lake if he did not serve them immediately something to eat. This hotel will remain the headquarters of the Chief of Staff of the army. Marshal Vaillant, till the end of the armistice. All our journalists have left to-day in high spirits at the idea of soon tread- ing the asphalt of the Boulevards, while the unlucky Meissonier, who was sent out by Government to paint battle scenes, is obliged to remain to draw sketches of the ground at Solferino. He is very " down in the mouth " to-night. 233 VILLAFRANCA, AND AFTER CHAPTER IX VILLAFRANCA, AND AFTER ' I ""HE war was now over. The famous interview of ■*■ Villafranca between Francis Joseph and Napoleon had taken place, and peace was virtually settled. Napoleon was not superior enough in the field to venture on an attack of the Quadrilateral. Germany looked threateningly over the Rhine, and so the Emperor, who had set out for the liberation of Italy, was content to stay his hand at the price of the province of Lombardy, which Austria was prepared to abandon to Victor Emmanuel. The disillusion of the Italians, as the glorious national fabric their imagina- tions had built up toppled over, was bitter. Cavour, with tears of rage, refused to put his name to such a peace, and resigned. A violent reaction swallowed up the popularity of the French Emperor in a moment, and his return to Milan, which should have been a triumph, proved to be only a mortification. Milan to-day (July 13 th) is in a state of revolt. The news arrived this morning of the terms on which peace had been settled between the two Emperors, and it would be difficult to give you any idea of the indignation produced thereby. The 237 Memoirs of "MalakofF" news spread over the city with great rapidity, and soon the whole length of the Corso was crowded with anxious and inquiring faces. When at length the extras appeared with the outline of the agree- ment, but two words will express the sentiment of the people — despair and indignation. I saw a gentle- man in front of the Hotel de Ville, in the presence of fifty French officers, one of whom was chief of the Emperor's personal police, approach a boy who was selling extras, ask him the price for his bundle, buy them all, and tearing them up furiously, trample them under his feet with the exclamation, " There ! that's my opinion of such a peace ! " There were men who shed tears, and who seemed totally prostrated with astonishment and disappoint- ment. Groups gathered around the more demon- strative, who harangued their hearers, or discussed the probability of its truth with some one who disputed the credibility of the dispatch. I never saw a whole community so suddenly and so visibly struck with a great disaster. The French officers, while evidently sharing the general disappointment, either remained silent or endeavoured to quiet the people. The Milanese, they said, were themselves free, the power of the Pope over the new Confederation was but honorary, 238 Villafranca, and After and Venetia was to form a part of this Confedera- tion.^ But the Milanese disclaimed any selfish motives in the war of independence; their hearts and their desires extended to all Italy; they desired the complete liberty of their brethren in Venetia, for their sufferings from Austrian oppression had been as keen or keener than their own. More- over, with Verona and Legnago remaining in their power, the Austrians would not be long out of Lombardy. As the day wore on the impression became general that Napoleon must have been forced to make concessions by the pressure of foreign Powers, as a means of avoiding a European war, and the more moderate began to propose that it would be better to wait and see what were the motives of such concessions on the part of the Emperor. But among the more excitable part of the population, all sorts of wild schemes were proposed. In certain quarters there were shouts for the Republic, and propositions were made for a revolt. Some pro- posed that the Emperor should be assassinated as he passed through Milan, and the National Guard was consulted on the various propositions. The 1 The terms of peace were not very accurately reported at the first moment. 239 Memoirs of " MalakofF" Guards, in general, were as violent as the most violent, and individually promised to carry out any measure that might be proposed. It would not have been safe for the Emperor to have entered Milan to-day. Among themselves the French are as crestfallen as the Italians. They declare that it is a profound mystery, that they cannot comprehend it, and that there must be something extraordinary behind the scenes. No one, however, refuses to admit that the Emperor committed a great fault in proclaiming so highly the promise of liberation to all Italy, before knowing whether he was going to find an obstacle to the accomplishment of his promise or not. The French soldiers, now on such intimate terms with the Milanese, have had to-day the hardest time of it in explaining the enigma to their Italian friends. " Voyez-vouSy" says the soldier, and then he squares himself and gives a twist to his moustache, " d'abord la guerre n'est pas finie. Et puis soyez certain que FEmpereur tCaura pas fait cela sans quelque motif." — "You see, in the first place, the war is not finished. And for what the Emperor has done, rely upon it he had some reason." — The soldiers are unanimous in the belief that the war is not terminated, and the 240 Villafranca, and After reply, in regard to the Emperor's conduct in agree- ing to a peace, reminds me of the manner in which a well-known American phrenologist used to com- mence his examination of the heads of a certain class of his clients. " It is remarkable," he began, " but the first thing I discover in placing my hand on your head is, that when you are insulted you become exceedingly indignant — you could almost fight ! " It is probable that one reply went as far as the other in gaining the hearer's confidence. This evening King Victor Emmanuel arrived in the city, and stopped over night at the Royal Palace, lately occupied by the Grand Duke Maximilian. The population, seeing General de Beville in com- mand of the troops which formed the lines in front of the palace and along the street, supposed that it was Napoleon coming. The crowd, apart from the soldiers, was not great ; at the point where I stood, on the steps of the cathedral, at the corner of the Corso, there were a few shouts of Viva il Re ! and a few ladies at the windows waved their handker- chiefs. But the reception, while it was not exactly cold, was yet far from enthusiastic. The King himself was evidently displeased with his reception, for he looked from side to side with an air of defiant R 241 Memoirs of " MakkoiF" indifference, and did not bow or take off his hat. In the evening there was a great crowd on the square between the palace and the cathedral, but the King did not make his appearance. The guard at the door was kept by French, Piedmontese and Milanese soldiers — the latter National Guards. How much of the coldness manifested at the King's reception was due to the expectation that the car- riage contained Napoleon, and how much to the King's general unpopularity, I do not know. But this much is certain, that an immense abyss lies between this day and the day on which Napoleon and the King entered Milan after Magenta, which even the brilliancy of Solferino cannot cover up. Then they literally trod through the streets on a litter of roses ; to-day there are neither roses nor people, and yet Solferino has intervened. Rely upon it that the hearts of the people of Italy are more deeply wounded to-day than they were under the Austrian oppression. They look forward to worse trials and deeper complications than those that have gone before. They had hoped at last to unite in one kingdom with a constitutional govern- ment the heretofore divided sections, and thus to constitute a nation strong enough to protect for the future their own independence. Now they see 242 Villafranca, and After themselves again divided. They see nothing before them but internal dissensions, oppression, war and bloodshed, and the heart of Italy, healed for a day by the generous aid of the French army, bleeds afresh as freely as ever ! On the following day Napoleon arrived. It was curious to see the movements of the men composing the secret police of His Majesty, and more curious still to study the personages. The chief is a handsome man, about forty years of age, decorated with the Legion of Honour. He has a large, square-built, powerful frame, with dark hair and eyes, dark skin and ruddy cheeks. He wears a small moustache and imperial, and although he has a military air, might pass for a rich manufac- turer or the busy agent of some great company. Without any exaggeration, he is as shrewd a man as I ever saw ; his small dark eyes are constantly moving from side to side, under the shade of a hat with an unfashionably broad brim ; no man near the circle of his movement escapes his scrutiny. The secret agents which the chief has with him here are a study, on account of their multiform characters and faces. Not one of them looks like a French- man. One, a tall, elegant youth, with flaxen hair 243 Memoirs of " MalakofF" and moustache, might pass for a Russian or North German. He speaks a variety of languages. With him there sits an old farmer-looking individual, who, when he talks, convinces you very soon that you have fallen upon a shrewd politician and a cunning old fox. Then there is an enormously fat old man with grey hair, close shaven, on whose face the finer lines have become obtuse from obesity, and whose nationality is thus obscured. He is one of the most active men of the party. Then there are two men of thirty, with pale and clean-shaven faces, except side-whiskers, who do the Englishmen. The correspondent of the London Times, at this place, tells me that he addressed one of these men in perfect confidence in English, and was replied to in the same language, but with a German accent. There are still others of these men whose gentle- manly appearance and businesslike air would totally preclude a suspicion as to their true character. Alessandri, the Corsican, wears the livery of the Emperor, with a sword and two decorations — a strange conglomeration under the insignia of a servant, however imperial. When these secret protectors of the Emperor's person saw yesterday morning the feeling that was excited by the terms of the peace, and when they 244 Villafranca, and After heard the threats that were made against the Emperor, you can judge what was their emotion and their activity. All day they were running from end to end of the city ; the chief was constantly receiving and sending off messages ; occasionally he jumped into a carriage and hurried away himself to see that his orders were executed, and all this took place without exciting the observation of any persons but those who knew the men. The result was that the Emperor did not enter Milan with the King, as he should have done, but waited till to-day, and only made his entry four hours after the publication of a proclamation ex- plaining his conduct. The feeling of hostility was therefore much subdued, and his reception was not altogether cold. The King went to meet him, and the two made their entry seated side by side in the same carriage, the Emperor on the right, Victor Emmanuel on the left, while the front seat was occupied by Marshal Vaillant and General Delia Marmora. A long suite of members of the house- hold and of general officers, among whom was the new Duke of Magenta, followed in carriages. Flags were waved, and here and there flowers were thrown; but aside from these feminine demonstrations and the customary cheers of the soldiers, the reception 245 Memoirs of " MalakofF" was neither brilliant nor enthusiastic. When the ladies from the balcony of a French millinery estab- lishment threw some flowers into the carriage, the Emperor smiled with an expression of countenance which seemed to say that he regarded the whole affair as a good joke. Both the monarchs looked with curiosity at a group of strangers in civilian dress— English, Americans and French, who stood upon chairs in front of the Hotel de Ville. The chief of the secret police followed in a carriage with three of his men, and stopped at the hotel looking as pleased at the half success of the performance as a claqueur at a Paris theatre who has just made a first night go off well. Such was the reception of Milan. The next occasion on which Dr. Johnston was to see Napoleon in public was less chilling. The Emperor, on his return to Paris, passed his victorious army of Italy in review in the Place Vend6me_ The fete was a brilliant success, and Dr. Johnston thus records some of his impressions of it. The Marshals, as fast as they arrived opposite the Emperor at the head of their respective corps, saluted their Majesties, and with their staff wheeled and took position opposite them, so that the soldiers passed between. As soon as the corps had passed, they took their station behind the Emperor, and 246 Villafranca, and After almost beneath the stand on which the Empress and the Imperial household were seated. Marshals Pelissier and Randon were already in that position, so that at the end of the ceremony there stood .behind the Emperor, besides the two just mentioned, Marshals Baraguay d'Hilliers, St. Jean d'Ang^ly, MacMahon, Canrobert, Niel, and Magnan. I sat within five feet of the nearest of the line of Marshals, and was not a little amused at their various modes of passing the time. Canrobert talked constantly in the ear of the Minister of War (Randon), gesticulating violently and without cessa- tion, and one could easily imagine that the subject of his conversation was Niel's letter published that morning in the IndSpendance Beige. Randon, a tall, straight, active-looking man, with grey hair and moustache, listened and acquiesced as if he were exactly of his interlocutor's opinion. Next to Randon sat Marshal MacMahon, Duke of Magenta, on a horse as quiet as his master, neither moving nor showing any disposition either to talk or to hold any fellowship with those around them. Either MacMahon, as seen on this occasion, is a non-communicative individual, or else something is wrong to-day. He looked far more pleasant down at Solferino, within smelling distance of gunpowder. 247 Memoirs of "Malakoff" His appearance is not striking, although he is un- questionably the best soldier in the French army. His moustache is sandy, his hair the same colour, and cut close ; he is but little over the medium height, and slight ; his forehead is broad, his eye small, and he has the appearance of a thinker. MacMahon was born in the same year as the Emperor, 1808. Baraguay d'Hilliers sits next to MacMahon, and although he is a very old man, and has but one arm, he is the most playful of the lot. He takes off his cocked hat, finds a quantity of rain collected in the top of it, and, to amuse the Empress and the little Prince, who sit above, dashes the water on the officers of the Emperor's suite, all the time keeping one eye in front of him to see that the Emperor does not catch him at it. He is a tall, slight, straight old man, who commenced his military career under the first Napoleon, and he handles his drawn sword and bridle with one hand just as well as if he had two. Niel stands next to him, and appears more lively than MacMahon, although these two are set down as discontented at the termination of the war. They had only got a taste of human gore, and were drawn from the trail with reluctance. Niel has large, hollow cheeks, brown hair, and straggling beard. He 248 Villafranca, and After has an expression of immense energy, and is destined, with MacMahon, to take and keep the first rank in the army. Marshal Regnault de St. Jean d'Ang^ly, Commander of the Imperial Guard, is seventy-five years old, a man of middle height, straight, not heavy in person, with grey moustache, imperial and side-whiskers (the latter totally destroy the military character of his face), and has a mild, quiet air, calculated to mislead one as to his profession. Marshal Magnan was as fussy as his enormous size and a restless horse would permit, while the old Duke of MalakofF looked, I thought, with an eye of jealousy on a scene in which he had not been permitted to take a leading part. As one of the regimental bands took up its station on the Place Venddme in front of us, while its regiment marched past, it played the new Italian Marseillaise, or rather Milanaise, which annoyed the Austrians so much, and which they prohibited in their Italian provinces. It was the first tune I heard on arriving in Italy, and the last one I heard on leaving ; the Italians ate, drank, went to bed, got up, marched and fought their enemies in unison with its notes ; I did the same, all but the fighting, myself. It is one of those glorious tunes which raises a man's hair to the perpendicular, and sets his nerves 249 Memoirs of " MalakofF" in a tremor. It utters the plaintive cry pf the Italians struggling for liberty ; it calls them from their firesides and clusters them under the flag of independence ; it leads them to the midst of roaring cannon and flashing steel ; hushes to sleep the dying warriors on the field of battle, and then sounds aloud the note pf victory. I was always afraid when I heard this piece of exciting music that some one might come along and coax me into joining Garibaldi ! The campaign of Italy, which appeared so barren of results immediately after its conclusion, gave the initial momentum to the movement that placed, within a few months, nearly the whole of the Italian peninsula under the rule of the House of Savoy. Much tortuous policy and diplomacy underlay these events ; many declarations were made by Napoleon and by Cavour, of which the real significance was not at the time grasped by even the best-informed section of the public. Thus the fact that Napoleon had asked Sardinia a price for his intervention was long successfully kept secret. Not knowing that France was to acquire $avoy and Nice so soon as Sardinia annexed central Italy, the public failed to understand the sense of many of Napoleon's pubhc utterances. It has been the habit in times past to attach to the names of French sovereigns an afiix illustrative of their character or personal appearance ; thus we 250 Villafranca, and After liave had Louis U Debonnaire, Charles k Simple, Phillippe k Bely LiOU-is le B^gue, and Jean le Bon. Napoleon IIL will pass in futwre history as Napoleon the Astounding. He seems to delight in allowing events to drift along till certain contingencies are adopted by the public mind as fixed facts, and then in rising up with a direct and formal contradiction. Twice in two months has he astounded the world with his diplomacy — once with th§ peace of Villa- franca, and now with the manifesto of St. Sauveur. The publication of this document on Friday morn- ing last produced as much consternation in Paris as did the news of the peace of Villafranca at Milan two months ago. There was the same disappoint- ment, the same incredulous inquiry, the same utter prostration of hopes and aspirations. At Milan men looked you in the face and asked with anxiety : " Have you heard ? " and there they stopped, as if afraid to pronounce the words Peace and Villafranca. Here you are asked by every one you meet : "Have you seen the Moniteur?" and then the speaker hesitates and looks into your face with a point of interrogation which clearly says : " And what do you think of the infamous thing .? " The Bourse, which always goes down while making up its mind, fell forty-five centimes, and for one day at least HI Memoirs of " Malakoff" Louis Napoleon received the execrations of the whole nation. It was so easy, the comparison between the famous Milan programme and that of St. Sauveur ! At first view, people saw in the wake of this Napoleonic demonstration an opening of Pandora's box : a war between Austria and combined Italy ; a war between France and Austria combined and England ; all Italy under the yoke of Austria and Cardinal Antonelli ; England humbled and crippled, and the doctrine of the divine right of kings re- established on the Continent. For myself, if my opinion is worth writing down, I had no such impression on first reading this document. I regarded it as a " dodge " — as a last word from Napoleon to disengage himself from the responsi- bility entailed by the treaty of Villafranca. The thing is too monstrous not to carry behind it an afterthought, a mental reservation. This first impression, I am glad to see, is confirmed by the manner in which the document is received in Italy. It was supposed here that all Italy would be thrown into consternation, and with one voice would rise up with curses on the head of Napoleon. Not at all ! The Indipendente and the Opinione, the two leading journals of northern Italy, not 252 Villafranca, and After only declare that King Victor Emmanuel knew of the forthcoming document, but that he was satisfied with it ! "Why ? Because it contained for the first time an official notice from the Emperor of France that the Grand Dukes were not to be restored by foreign arms. All the rest of the document was no news to them — it was but the development into details of the engagements entered into at Villafranca. It was not till March, i860, that the secret leaked out. When it became known in Europe that France intended pushing back her south-eastern frontier to the Alps, the excitement was great. It was an undoing of the work accomplished by united Europe, when it pulled down Napoleon in 18 14- 1 5- It was a sign that in other direc- tions France intended to regain her lost territory. On the 29th of March, Dr. Johnston wrote : — A week ago there was no Europe ; the Emperor Napoleon and France were the only Power ; theirs was the only voice capable of dictating terms or of being heard above the confusion. Is the waking up which has just taken place in England and Switzerland but a dying kick, or is it the forerunner of a European coalition against France ? Nobody believes a coalition possible, because nobody is willing to take the lead. The Emperor Napoleon 253 Memoirs of " Malakoff ' tears up the treaties of 1815, throws the pieces in the faces of the great Powers, and nobody dares feply by a call to arms. According to the Gazette of Augsburg, " England will not, Russia does not wish to, Austria cannot, and Prussia will take good care not to do it." This phraseology of the German journal expresses exactly the shade of sentiment of the different Powers. Notwithstanding the efforts made in Germany, all attempts at a coalition have failed, and, we may safely predict, will fail. Certain Powers have no interest in protesting ; the others are afraid of the cost. But should they protest, France will do as the others Powers did, when she protested against the annexation of Cracow to Austria : she will take note of the act, but pay no attention to it. In the late events, it is now seen that Austria was the only Power that retired with honour, for she fought and bravely fought to pro- tect the line which is considered in Germany as German, while the rest have not even protested, much less taken up arms against France. The army in France, and not only the army, but a majority of the politicians, are in the firm belief to-day that before the expiration of a year Napoleon will be on the Rhine. So widespread is this belief, that the Germans are in a ferment, and they are 254 Villafranca, and After now, perhaps, regretting at this late hour their former indifference. In France it is believed pos- sible to move the frontiers to the Rhine without a war. Thus, it is said, the Emperor will oifer to Russia a slice on the Danube, to Austria the same, to Prussia Saxony, and perhaps other provinces ; to Bavaria a money indemnity, and to England Sicily. The nationality of the Belgians will be swallowed up with as little ceremony as that of the Savoyards has just been. The Powers will be offered this arrangement or war, and since the former will cost infinitely less than the latter, it is thought in France that the proposition will be accepted, and the proposed change of frontiers will take place without the least spilling of blood. You will appreciate the sudden alarm that has grown up within the last two or three days in England and Germany, when I tell you that this change of frontiers is talked of by men high in position as certain to take place. Here, in fact, was the germ of the Franco-Prussian war, which, ten years later, toppled Napoleon from his throne. 2S5 FRIVOLITIES ONCE MORE CHAPTER X FRIVOLITIES ONCE MORE "DLOODSHED, wars, and revolutions were only the -*^ interludes of the Second Empire, its normal attitude was one of frivolity. And so, before coming to the events of the American Civil War that followed so quickly, another glance must be taken at less serious matters. It was shortly after the return of the army from Italy that took place the famous GallifFet-Lauriston duels. The aristocratic world has had a fruitful subject of conversation for two days past, in a regrettable incident which took place on Monday evening last at the Grand Opera, between two gentlemen of the highest standing in society. I happened to be one of the half-dozen witnesses of the scene, and although the circumstance in itself was most unfor- tunate, and was entirely the result of one of those sudden bursts of passion to which men are some- times subject, yet the conduct of each was so gallant that there can be no indiscretion in mentioning the details. During the interval between the acts, a gentleman who sat next me in the orchestra stalls, 259 Memoirs of " MalakofF" as well as many other persons in the house, looked more or less at a very handsome young woman seated in a private box, at the side of and on a level with the orchestra seats. With her were her husband, her father and mother, her brother, and another gentleman. The husband took offence at what he deemed a too insistent use of the opera-glass by the gentleman sitting next to me, in view of the close proximity of the latter to the box, so that when, at the second fall of the curtain, this gentle- man went out into the lobby, he was there accosted by the husband of the young lady, who had come out of his box for the purpose. "Why do you stare, sir, so persistently at my wife ? " said the husband. " I did not stare at your wife, sir, more persis- tently than one is permitted to look at any lady in a theatre," replied the other. " But at that distance it is not proper [convenable was the word used] to stare as you did at a lady." " Do you pretend to say, sir, that I was not convenable towards your wife } " " I do." No sooner were these words uttered than the husband received in the face a tremendous blow from the hand of the other, and then a scuffle 260 Frivolities Once More ensued in which several blows passed, the gentleman who had struck the first blow receiving one which drew blood. The brother of the young lady, who had come out of the box, rushed in to separate the combatants, and M. de Villemessant, editor of the Figaro, who happened also to be in the lobby, assisted in separating them. Once separated, the husband said: " You will give me satisfaction for this, sir ; I will give you my card." " Most certainly," said the other ; "I am the Count de Lauriston." "Then I need not give you my card," said the husband ; " I am the Marquis de GallifFet." " Very well," said the Count. " This is the first time in my life that I was ever charged with a want . of politeness ; it is too serious a charge for a man of my name and rank to permit to go unpunished, and I am going to kill you, sir. I relaxed for one man in my life, but I shall not do it this time; I shall kill you, sir ! " " We shall see ! " said the Marquis; and then both gentlemen resumed their seats and sat the play out as quietly as if nothing had occurred. The Count de Lauriston is forty-five or fifty years of age, and is well known in French society 261 Memoirs of " MalakofF" for his good breeding, and as a man not likely to let his name suffer for want of courage. He has already had affairs of honour, and is considered a most dangerous antagonist. The Marquis de Galliffet is a young man under thirty, and is short and slim. He too has had affairs of honour, the last of which was with Mr. Charles Astor Bristed, of New York, at Baden- Baden, last summer. He is a lieutenant in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and was decorated by the Emperor for his brave conduct during the late campaign in Italy. He was married only three weeks ago to the daughter of the millionaire banker LafKtte, a most charming young person of eighteen years, and it was the Laffitte family who were in the box with M. de Galliffet at the opera. One can easily imagine the feelings of the young bride at this unfortunate occurrence. But a blow, in this country, cannot pass without a hostile meeting, more especially if the man who receives it is an officer of the army ; and accordingly the parties met, yesterday morning, in the suburbs, and fought with small-swords. Both fought with great determination and skill. The Count received a scratch, and then ran the Marquis through the shoulder, inflicting so dangerous a wound that, 262 Frivolities Once More although the two adversaries wished to continue the duelj the seconds thought it prudent to put an end to it by declaring the honour of both parties satisfied. The wound of M. de GallifFet, although not mortal, is a severe one, that will require some weeks of careful nursing. The fight lasted twenty minutes; the Count's sword was broken in two during the fight, and the Marquis' was bent so that they had to stop and go to a smith's shop to straighten it. They then tossed up for the damaged sword, having brought but three to the field, and it fell to the Count. When the fight was over, it is reported that M. de GallifFet said, " This is not finished." There seems to have been some ground for this report from the fact that, as we learn to-day, the Marquis, who is a staff officer of the Emperor, and a lieutenant of the Spahis, has been ordered by His Majesty to join his regiment in Africa. A second duel was fought as soon as the Marquis de GallifFet had recovered from his first wound. The same seconds and the same umpire were present at this as at the first fight. The duel was fought in an artist's studio, hired for the purpose on account of the cold. The fight lasted twenty-five 263 Memoirs of " MalakofF" minutes, and two swords had to be replaced on account of damage. As before, the young man was beaten by the old one, the Marquis receiving a somewhat severe wound in the groin. The seconds then declared that the quarrel must cease, and a reconciliation took place. The Marquis, although suffering from his wound, has left to join his regi- ment in Africa, Even this did not suffice the fire-eating young cavalry officer. He fought de Lauriston a third time, with equal ill success, at which the Emperor was so angered that he sent him off to Mexico to cool his ardour. There he distinguished himself, and was again wounded very severely at the storm of Puebla. De GallifFet's name occurs again in the following descrip- tion of a day spent at the races of Chantilly. A charming autumnal sky on Sunday last took all the beau monde out to Chantilly, to the first Fall meeting of the " Society for the Amelioration of the Chevaline Race"; in other words, to the races. Since 1836 and the sporting days of the Duke of Orleans, this magnificent residence of the Mont- morencys and the Cond6s has been the favourite resort of the Jockey Club. It is hardly necessary to say that this kind of sport was introduced from the other side of the Channel. The fact is, English 264 Frivolities Once More habits, or affectations of English habits, were never more the rage in France than they are to-day. A fashionable man, if he does not wish to lose caste on the promenade, must wear a hat, coat, pantaloons, shoes and collar of English cut ; he must keep English horses for himself and English dogs for his wife or mistress; he must have an English groom, whom he calls " John," even if his name be Nehemiah ; he must be prepared to offer his friends a cup of tea at eight o'clock in the evening, be he single or married ; he must use English stationery, shave himself with English razors, wear mutton-chop whiskers, admire the belles blondes of Regent Street, try to read the Times, and to pro- nounce turfy sport. Jockey Club, and God Save the Queen. For the first time at Chantilly, English horses were entered for one of the stakes — the Emperor's prize of 10,000 francs, with 500 francs entry ; and the fact that Fisherman, Life Boat, Gaspard and Jac\ Spring, all English horses, were to run, brought together a large number of English and American, as well as French sporting men. Here, to-day, instead of the pushing, swearing, swaggering and fighting one sees at home, or in England, he sees on the contrary an assembly of well-dressed people, 265 Memoirs of " Malakoff " walking about in quiet conversation, taking off their hats to each other, and showing in all their acts the same good breeding as if at an evening soiree in town. More than twenty titled members of the Jockey Club, who went through the late Italian campaign, are in the company, and demon- strate by their wounds their personal bravery. Here is the young Viscount de Talon, who, in the last famous charge of the Chasseurs d'Afrique into the Austrian squares at Solferino, galloped forward alone towards an Austrian column, and was struck by several bullets at once, one of which was dis- charged from an officer's pistol, held almost against his forehead, which passed, by an extraordinary chance, around his head instead of through it, tearing the skin up and leaving a trace like that of lightning. He was rescued by his men, and is now recovered from his wounds. He owns fast horses and rides them himself in steeplechases. Here, too, is the Marquis de GallifFet, lieutenant of African Spahis, who distinguished himself in the late war, and who is about to marry Mile. Laffitte, a niece of the great banker ; and here is the Marquis de Larochejaquelein, his arm yet in a sling from wounds received in a hand-to-hand fight at Solfe- rino. These men go to war for the love of it, and 266 Frivolities Once More are most of them in the condition of the young patrician in the ranks of Garibaldi, who said he received four sous a day from the Sardinian Govern- ment and a hundred and thirty-three francs from his estates. Not far from the racecourse are the stables of the Chateau, which Dr. Johnston visited. As one emerges from the forest road that leads to the railway station, the first thing that strikes the eye at the other end of the parade ground is an immense stone palace, about five hundred feet square, in the centre of which there is a handsome dome. The building is highly decorated in the style of the epoch in which it was erected, and, as it has been respected in the various revolutions, is now in a good state of preservation. It houses 240 horses, together with their grooms and other attendants. One day the Prince of Cond6 invited some foreign princes out from Paris to dinner. He caused the central rotunda of his horse palace to be hung with costly Gobelin tapestries, and to be decked with flowers. The princes supposed them- selves to be in their host's palace, and made fre- quent compliments on its magnificence, " Walt till the dessert," said the Prince, " and I will show 267 Memoirs of " MalakofF" you a sight." At the proper moment a shrill whistle was heard, the rich decorations fell to the floor, and exposed to the view of the astonished princes more than two hundred horses, with their grooms employed in rubbing them down ! In this same rotunda the Prince of Cond6 dined the Czar Alexander in 1 8 1 5 ; but on that occasion it is said that, a storm coming up, the guests were obliged to finish their dinners under umbrellas. It was during one of the famous dinners of the great Cond6, at Chantilly, that Vattel, the celebrated cook, ran his body through with a sword because the fish did not arrive in time. But the day of these princely grandeurs is gone ; the Chantilly of the Mont- morencys and the Cond^s no longer exists ; the Chantilly of the Orleans lasted but a moment ; there remains to-day but the Chantilly of the Jockey Club ! The other chief racing centre of Paris was at Long- champs, which Dr. Johnston wrote about as follows, in May, i860. The luxury displayed in Paris this spring is more frightful than ever. If anyone doubted heretofore that Paris was the centre of the fashionable world, a few walks on our public promenades would soon 268 Frivolities Once More convince him of his error. Such a parade of elegant carriages, high-bred horses and smart liveries, of superb toilets and costly jewels, is without parallel in any modern city. But the magnificence of the carriages is no more wonderful than their number; it seems as if all Paris rolled on wheels. In one feature of this extravagance, however, there is progress ; the gaudy and the extraordinary have given place to the useful, the handsome, and the coquettish ; there are fewer ten thousand dollar turn- outs, and more three and five thousand dollar ones. The great cumbersome carriage of olden times, covered with gold inside and out, the appearance of which in public was an event, is no longer to be seen. It belonged to that period when European communities still built cathedrals — which are now the wonder of the world, — in little filthy towns, surrounded by hovels, poverty and dirt ; when titheless and ragged kings sat upon thrones built of pure gold and rubies. These remnants of barbarous ages have disappeared ; the proprieties, like every- thing else, have entered a period of civilisation ; there Is now a greater harmony between things, and the general public are the gainers. It Is no longer necessary for a nobleman to make a greater show than his neighbour, the dry-goods man ; and thus 2d9 Memoirs of " MalakofF" carriages and comfort, beauty and elegance, have become general, while the gaudy, the exceptional, and the barbarous have disappeared. We are indebted for most of this progress to- wards complete democracy to that greatest of modern levellers, the Bourse. It is the Bourse which takes the starch out of big men and puts it into little ones, and which thus sets up a sort of social equilibrium. Then, again, a certain amount of influence is due to the foreign population. More than a hundred thousand strangers are now in the city, and these are the wealthy men and women of all nations, who seek Paris as the place at which to melt their gold most rapidly and most agreeably. Men go to London on business, and to Rome and Naples to see the sights, but it is only at Paris that the nabobs of the earth seek their pleasure and an outlet for their millions. The Spring race meeting at the Bois de Boulogne was an excellent occasion for passing in review all the elegances of this monster city of fashion. Nothing could be more curious, indeed, than these Sunday assemblages of the wealth and fashion of Paris on the turf of Longchamps. No notability of either sex dare allow his or her absence to be noted at these reviews of fashion, and one here meets all 270 Frivolities Once More the eccentricities and all the absurdities of the Parisian world. Every form of vehicle — and there were eighteen thousand of them last Sunday ! — passed in review before the crowds of people who lined every avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, and hemmed in the field of Longchamps. There were magnificent coaches-and-four, caleches, brakes, Vic- torias, Amiricaines^ broughams, dog-carts — chefs d'oeuvre of Bender and of Ehrlher; there were tandems, and cavaliers, and cavalieres. The carriages occupy the inside of the ropes. They number several thousand, and attract more attention from a certain part of the spectators than the races. There goes the magnificent coach-and- four of the Count and Countess de Morny; following it comes the costliest coach-and-four in Paris, that of the Errazu family, the well-known Mexican millionaires ; then that of Baron Hauss- mann. Prefect of the Seine, and another con- taining the Count Aguado and family ; then two other coaches-and-four, belonging to the Court, and containing the reigning Duke of Oldenburg and suite ; and still another, belonging to the Princess Clotilde. But the coaches are not all monopolised by people of this respectable class ; the demi-monde also shines in this category of 271 Memoirs of " MalakofF" brilliancy, and we see here the famous Madame de PaTva, the owner of the porphyry and malachite palace on the Champs Elys^es, which lately pro- gresses very slowly towards a termination, because, perhaps, there are no more titled " pigeons " from beyond the Rhine to pluck ; and there also is the no less famous AdHe Courtois, accompanied by two lovely children, which give her superb caliche an air of respectability that makes one look twice to be assured of the identity of its owner. But there is no mistaking those four brown bay horses, and the outriders dressed in white buckskin breeches, maroon velvet jackets and gold-tasselled caps. It would not be safe to attempt to class the thousands of beautiful turnouts in the order of their respectability. It would be difficult to indicate how many were there at the cost of starvation at home, how many represented baronial estates, and how many a flourishing trade in dry and wet goods ; nor how many descended from Mount Brdda, the classic quarter of Lorette-dom. It is a little singular that in the caleches and coupis of this latter class one never sees a man — the happy individual who pays for the machine does not dare show himself in it. In the Jockey Club's stand, and within the limits of the weighing enclosure, were collected the beau- 272 Frivolities Once More ties of the official world, each with her separate court of admirers. Here was the Countess de Morny (Princess Troubetskoi), a slight, pale blonde from the banks of the Neva ; the Marchioness de GallilFet (Mile. Laffitte), with a toilet that would have been an event anywhere else than in a city and in a circle where superb toilets are common ; Madame and Mile. Errazu ; Princess Metternich, dark brown hair, dark eyes and skin, and red cheeks ; the youthful and magnificent blonde, the Viscountess de Dreuze ; several Russian and Polish beauties with names ending in off and ski^ and here and there an English or an American beauty, who was either a Catholic or did not fear a violation of the Sunday commandment. The Emperor and Empress, with General Fleury and the Count de Montebello, and Mme. Fleury and Mme. de Montebello, occupied the imperial stand. The Emperor wore the grey overcoat for which he has taken such a passion during the last year ; but no one who sees it and him would ever suspect that it was an imitation of the famous grey of the "Little Corporal." His Majesty bows to the right and left, and then moves about the stand with that slow, measured walk, which is peculiar to him, taking off his hat now and then to gentlemen T 273 Memoirs of " Malakoff " and ladies he recognises. The Empress, looking pale, but charming as she always does, seats herself after a bow to the crowd, and looks wistfully and mournfully at the gay groups of aristocratic ladies in front of the Jockey Club's stand, and no doubt wishes she were a girl again, or a woman of lower degree. It was hard to be obliged to sit there all alone to be stared at, while all her friends, seated around in groups below, were chatting with each other, shaking hands with their acquaintances, betting a few louis, "just to make it interesting," and amusing themselves generally. Another centre of the fashionable world, or of that part of it that belonged to the Court, was the imperial chateau of Compiegne. The country chateau season is about over, and that of the city drawing-room is about to com- mence. Fashionable people begin to show them- selves in the streets without blushing. The courts of justice, the schools and colleges, even diplomacy, follow the fashionable world into the country at the end of July, and do not ap- pear again till the end of October. Criminals, or supposed criminals, so unfortunate as to fall athwart the law just before the commencement of 274 Frivolities Once More vacation, are obliged to wait three months, till the judges and lawyers have finished their season at the watering-places, and their vintage. Students go home and aid in the gathering of the harvest which is to pay their next year's tuition. Diplomats nurse their gout at mineral springs, and between paroxysms write testy memorandums and verbose protocols. Fashionable people, glad to escape for a time from stifling gas, whalebones and patent- leather, fall exhausted into a life more or less Arcadian, in order to recruit for the repetition of the next season's sufferings. If what we hear from Compifegne be true, the imperial revels are but stiff, almost lugubrious affairs. The fact is that the days of frank gaiety are over for the class of people who live in palaces. There is no room for the expansion of the heart where the whole mind is concentrated on the pre- servation of the chair one sits upon. And when the great central luminary shines dimly, the lesser lights must needs pale. Moreover the Court in- trigues of to-day are no longer those of the time of Madame de Maintenon or Madame du Barry ; those were days of love and gallantry, of romance and chivalry ; to-day all that is submerged beneath the chilling clink of dollars and the imperial race 275 Memoirs of " Malakoff " after Three per Cents. We are far removed from the time when the King assumed the debts of his frolicking nobles ; '89 and the Terror have in- tervened, and the abyss is too deep ever to be filled up. Whether at the Tuileries or at Compiegne, at St. Cloud or at Biarritz, the Court now swings to a metallic thread which terminates at the Bourse ; the heart of France, whether for courtiers around the throne or merchants in their counting-rooms, is this same Bourse ; the wires which radiate from it are the nerves of life and motion. Intrigues and liaisons of a tender nature are now too facile in the great city for men of steam and stocks to go playing knight-errant around a Court and wasting Bourse hours on sighs and bouquets. So the Court f^tes and Court hospitalities are reduced to an affair of grim formality ; gentlemen and ladies are invited out in sets to stay a week ; each set has the same routine of stiff etiquette to go through — an eti- quette as far removed from fun as a funeral is from a frolic ; each one has to dress a certain number of times daily, eat a certain number of solemn dinners at the palace, attend a certain number of soirees, and are treated each to one grand hunt in the forest, on which occasion a melancholy deer is led out solemnly in front of the party by a groom, 276 Frivolities Once More who lets him go with a kick and a kindly hint to take care of himself. The whole set return to town together on a train furnished by His Majesty, and this seems to be the only piece of genuine pleasure in the trip. The reason for this will readily sug- gest itself. It cannot be said, however, that an attempt is not made to instil a little life into the party, for in each set, numbering about fifty persons, they usually invite three or four artists and men of letters, renowned for their conversational qualities. But whether these gentlemen refuse to fill the functions of Court fool, or feel too much out of their element when out of their slippers and dress- ing-gown, they have at best but a sorry time of it. M. M6rim6e, of the Academy, is the only gentleman who succeeds in the soirees intimes of the palace in the way of tale-telling ; but unfortunately this gen- tleman's talent runs in the current of that of Edgar Poe ; his tales are of the sombre, horrificating sort ; he treats of ghosts and the dead, and manages by the time the clock sounds midnight to put his listeners into a disagreeable state of nervousness. Octave Feuillet and Edmond About are among the invited of this year. At the present moment the second set are at Compifegne, and in this list we find 277 Memoirs of " MalakofF" the names of the Prince and Princess Metternich, Lord and Lady Stratford, the Duke of Magenta, and General Forey. The only peculiarity in this list worth mentioning is that the Austrian Ambassa- dor is invited alone of the Diplomatic Corps, so that there shall be no one at the Court during his stay to take precedence of him. Among the Am- bassadors there are those of Rome, England, Spain, Russia, Turkey, and Persia, who, by seniority of appointment, would stand before Austria ; but these are invited in other sets, so as to enable His Majesty to show special favour to Austria. A certain portion of the guests stay through the whole season, as for instance the Count and Countess Walewski, the Duke and Duchess d'Albe, and the various members of the Murat family. The Court f^tes at Compiegne have naturally brought up again the perplexing question of crino- line. For three long years have we been told that feminine rotundity had attained its extreme limit, and that any change must be in the way of collapse ; and for three long years have we been entrapped into this illusion so far as to impose it repeatedly on your readers. When, therefore, one of the im- perial chroniclers announced a few days ago from Compiegne that Her Majesty the Empress had, or 278 Frivolities Once More was going to, discard crinoline and in its place adopt woollen stuffs for dresses cut short enough to show the ankles, I confess that I determined not to make use of this incredible piece of intelligence ; but here it is, after all — the power of crinoline is strong even in articulo mortis. Another fashion, however, adopted by the ladies at Compiegne, and for anything the writer knows, in the city also, is that of high gaiters. For some time we have remarked these elegant inventions exposed in the shop-windows without exactly com- prehending the honour and the delight that awaited them. They are made of black, straw-coloured or check cloth, are lined interiorly with silk, are pro- vokingly graceful and symmetrical in form, and are intended to embrace hermetically from the ankle to the knee the aristocratic limbs of the amazons and huntresses of Compifegne. The fashion will cer- tainly take, and for a reason which is well explained by a witticism that occurs in a piece now the vogue at the Palais Royal Theatre. Ravel is made to say to his intended bride, a tall, gaunt, portentously thin personage, whom he is forced to marry, that he will take her to America to live. "Oh, America ! " exclaims the spectre ; " pronounce again that dear word ! " " Ah 1 And why, I beg 279 Memoirs of " MalakofF" of you," says Ravel in astonishment, " such enthu- siasm for America ? " " Oh, mon cher, it is the country of cotton ! " While Napoleon entertained at Compiegne, his cousin Jerome did the honours in Paris in a house long known to Parisians, but which a few years ago was pulled down, to be succeeded by the inevitable apartment building. Prince Napoleon has built in the Avenue Mon- taigne, in honour of antiquity, a house in the style of that of Diomede at Pompeii. In this magni- ficent architectural resurrection the Prince and Princess Clotilde have just given a f^te in the manner of those which charmed the refined Romans of ancient times. The decorations were in a style corresponding to the architecture ; even the dresses of the host and hostess were borrowed from the epoch of the fatal eruption of Vesuvius. To the assemblage, numbering three or four hundred per- sons, including the Emperor and Empress, were distributed on entering programmes announcing that the object of the meeting was the reopening of the Theatre of Pompeii, closed for eighteen hundred years to undergo necessary repairs. A prologue, written by Theophile Gautier, and recited by Mademoiselle Favart, of the Theatre Fran^ais, opened the pro- 280 Frivolities Once More ceedings. Arria, the wife of Diomede, who speaks, awakes after a sleep of eighteen hundred years, to find her house occupied by statues of unknown gods. But soon the truth flashes upon her ; she is on the banks of the Seine, and not on those of the Mediterranean ; the statues represent the Napoleons, and not the Caesars. Declaimed in the most charming manner by the distinguished soci^- taire of the Theatre Fran9ais, the verses of M, Gautier met with the greatest success. Then fol- lowed a play by M. Emile Augier, entitled Le Joueur de Flute, a comedy in one act, and in verse, of which the scene is set in Pompeii, played by the leading actors of the Theatre Fran9ais. At the foot of the programme occurred the following words : " Napoleon III. Aug, coss. non designatis. Censore invito." The last two words of which were malici- ously translated by some people " The censors not invited." The Prince of the Moskowa has also just given a ball at his house in this same Avenue Montaigne, which for its novelty was not behind that of his neighbour. Prince Napoleon. The Prince of the Moskowa (Edgar Ney) is Grand Huntsman to the Emperor, and his ball recalled the chase in all its characteristics. The guests did not number more Memoirs of " MalakofF" than a hundred and fifty. The vestibule, the stairs, the antechamber, were ornamented with hunting trophies. On all the steps of the grand stairway were servants dressed in hunting costume. The music was a confusion of hunting cries and of notes recalling the chase. Hidden singers helped out the orchestra with barks, yelps, and growls. There were also accompaniments of hunting horns, dis- charges of guns, and the cracks of whips. Fifteen minutes before midnight the horns of the ante- chamber and the stairway sounded the hallali, or the call to the death ; at midnight they sounded for the feeding of the dogs, and then, to the con- sternation of the assembly, there bounded into the ball-room a group of imitation wild animals, who threw themselves on the master of the house to devour him. There were deer, wolves, foxes, hares, pheasants, woodcocks, partridges, all bent upon taking vengeance on His Majesty's chief hunts- man. The costumes were admirably imitated, and the scene altogether was a most strange and amusing one. No one anticipated it, and its success was therefore the greater. The actors were mostly young attaches of Embassies. At a grand masked ball at M. Fould's, Minister of State, on Saturday night, at which their Majes- 282 Frivolities Once More ties were present in disguise, the costume which produced the greatest sensation was that of Mme. de Fontenay, who wore the dress of the ladies of honour to the Empress Josephine, as shown in the Coronation picture at Versailles. At a time when it is a question of returning to the dress of the First Empire, it will be easily understood how such a costume would be remarked and criticized. But the distance between hoops and the next to no dress at all of the First Empire is very great, and it will require time to prepare the way for so radical a change. So far for Court circles ; unfortunately, the life of France, and especially the France of the Second Empire, cannot be truly drawn without an excursion into the pre- cincts of the demi-monde. So this chapter must close with a few lines devoted to the greatest of Parisian celebrities about the years 1 859 and i860 — the famous Rigolboche, or Marguerite la Huguenotte. Silence a Vorgie I The famous cry of M. de Cassagnac was hurled at the Bohemians of the gutter Press, the sans-culottes of literature, for their revelry in obscenities and their clamouring after personalities. We in turn may hurl it at the orgies of the carnival, the revelries of the masked ball, the debauches of the cabinet particulier. Even 283 Memoirs of " MalakofF" in high places the noisy riot goes on. At the Palace, at the Ministries, noble ladies in flesh- coloured tights represent half-clothed Bacchantes with flowing bowls and festive songs, Venuses with voluptuous poses and amorous jests, false Vestals outraging the memory of their ancestors, and Dianas more resembling her of Poitiers than that other one of the woods. These same noble ladies seek out the costumes in which the charms of their person can be the most exposed. The shoulder- piece of a soiree dress, that last vestige of modesty, that transparent bit of muslin that stood allegori- cally between decency and a blush, is disappearing, and dresses have been seen in public places cut horizontally across from armpit to armpit, leaving the entire arm and shoulder absolutely free. We have returned to the time when the favourite Bac- chante of the Palace is f^ted and envied by the feminine world. May we not then cry. Silence h Vorgie F On Tuesday morning last, at six o'clock, at the doors of the Grand Opera, the carnival stopped its revelry for a short breathing spell and for a season of mortification on fish and bread. We are to have a sort of quasi peace till the arrival of Mid-Lent, that half-way house between soupe-maigre and soupe- 284 Frivolities Once More grasse. One of the events of this year's carnival was the discovery of a new terpsichorean queen. Since the days when Nadaud sang the glories of Pomare, C61este Mogador, and Clara, the Olympius of the Grand Opera has been vacant ; for Rigolette is but a faint shadow of these — Nini, Fifine, Pol- kette, and Souris the most vulgar of imitators. All these, and the trinity of Nadaud beside, are replaced in the sole person of the new divinity. This goddess of the cancan is called Marguerite la Huguenotte, on account of her predilection for the costume of the ancient Protestants. Where she came from or what her condition in life is, no one knows. But she is not a woman — she is a volcano. The man who has not seen her pink gaiters vault toward the ceiling has seen nothing. Imagine a laughing, nervous, rollicking creature of twenty-two, with a figure over the medium height, straight and well formed, a rather long and dis- tinguS face, hair brownish red, light eyes, light complexion, and fine teeth. Her face is pleasing, but it is not handsome. It is the dancing, the movement of the woman, that charms and electri- fies. When she moves over the floor the crowd opens to the right and left, and allows her and her escort to pass in triumph. When she 285 Memoirs of " MalakofF' dances, it is a succession of flashes of lightning — of congreve rockets. In looking at her one would think her possessed of devils. She quivers, and trembles, and bounds as if she were a ball of india- rubber that had trouble to keep in contact with the floor. As the quadrille progresses she grows more and more excited until she arrives at the " forward one " of the pastourelle. Then the crowd closes in, and the excitement runs up to white heat. The turn of Marguerite comes, and she starts ofi^ with a series of inflammatory movements, perfectly in- describable, in which her whole body takes part, and which is the personification of poetry and grace- fulness. Then she brings her body into a straight line, and quick as thought throws one foot into the air above her head to a most astonishing height, and soon follows it with the other, keeping time with the music in this most daring of gymnastics. She finishes her figure with a queenly pose that Rachel or Ristori might have envied. The guardians of public decency kindly supplied by the Government see in the most daring of her gymnastics nothing to call for repression. What she dares is marvel- lous ; what she saves by her rapidity is more marvellous still. Any other sylph would be marched off to the calaboose for each of her steps. Mar- 286 Frivolities Once More guerite la Huguenotte is chaste by force of multi- plying her traits of boldness. When the quadrille is finished, a thousand voices in the boxes cry his at the top of their lungs, and Marguerite is seized by the frantic chicards and mousquetaires — her admirers — and carried around the theatre h la Musard, to be tumbled at the end of this triumphal march into the private box which clamours most loudly for the honour. There you may see her drinking champagne and eating ice- cream with the first princes and lords of Europe, who vie with each other in showing her attention. While the Huguenotte is there, if a score of Orsini bombs were to explode at the door no one would turn round to see what the matter was ! The popularity of this new Parisian deity grew so rapidly that soon we find that she has ceased to appear on the stage of the Delassements Comiques, where she drew crowds nightly to see her throw her feet once or twice in the air in a quadrille, and she now favours the public but with one dance in the course of the evening at the masked ball. But what a crowd, what pushing and shoving, what an excitement to see her perform ! The boxes are taken weeks in advance by ladies and gentlemen of the highest society. For this one dance Strauss 287 Memoirs of " Malakoff " reserves his most diabolic quadrille, and when Marguerite gets to the " cavalier seul " the excited audience is treated to a specimen of graceful "ground and lofty tumbling" that will mark an epoch in the history of the cancan. On these triumphal occasions Rigolboche is dressed en gamin de Paris — striped satin trousers reaching just below the knee, flesh-coloured silk stockings, red cashmere shirt, curled and powdered wig, a crushed hat on the side of her head. Two years ago this girl was a poor seamstress at the barriere — she now drives more than one carriage of her own, has her ser- vants in livery, a handsome house, and gives soir6es that bring together the noblemen of the four quar- ters of the globe. A few weeks ago she permitted herself the luxury of making a certain well-known movement with the thumb on the nose to the Princess Mathilde while driving in the Bois de Boulogne. The reason for this movement was none other than that, of the two, Rigolboche drove the better team. For this oiFence she has been obliged to reside in the prison of St. Lazare for a fortnight. HEENAN V. SAYERS CHAPTER XI HEENAN V. SAYERS TN the spring of i860 came one of Dr. Johnston's most -*■ remarkable journalistic experiences. Yielding to the repeated requests of the editor of the New York Times, he crossed the Channel to witness the great prize fight between the American and English champion pugiUsts, John Heenan and Tom Sayers. How strongly patriotic enthusiasm had been aroused over this encounter may be judged by the fact that Oliver Wendell Holmes composed an ode in honour of the American champion, an ode of which he did not acknowledge the authorship, and that is not to be found in any collection of his poetical works. It is, how- ever, far too witty to be lost in oblivion, and at the risk of shocking some of his admirers it shall be afforded shelter and hospitality here. The excitement of the week in London, I need hardly tell you, is the great international " mill " between Heenan and Sayers. 1 found the excite- ment so disproportionate to the subject that I was at a loss to comprehend it. The Volunteers, that last love of the nation, the French invasion, cheap silks and wines. Savoy, Mr. Kinglake and his in- 291 Memoirs of "MalakofF" terpellations, all give place in the public thought to the Yankee, Heenan, and England's favourite boxer, Tom Sayers. And yet it could scarcely be other- wise in a country which is the home of boxing, horse-racing, and the chase, where physical beauty in man and animal is so much admired, and where pistols and knives are never used in self- defence. The morning papers quote the betting on the fight at 7 to 4 against Heenan, The fact is, every Englishman I meet appears just as certain of Heenan's defeat as if the thing were done. One man said to me, " You are going to beat us in the Derby, sir, but your man Heenan hasn't the shadow of a showing ! " The truth is, England has never had a middle-weight champion equal to Tom Sayers, and he is much loved, because he is an agreeable and gentlemanly fellow, as well in as out of the ring. But the rate at which the papers announce the betting is not exactly correct, as I found last even- ing by a peep at the various rendezvous of the bruisers. In some places they are offering 2 to i ; I heard of several large sums taken at this rate ; and then again the smaller people, the Third Estate of the Fancy, who have seen Heenan and naturally 292 Heenan v. Sayers admire his fine proportions, are afraid to risk their small sums at more than 6 to 4 against him. I have heard the money staked on the fight at London variously estimated at from three to five hundred thousand dollars. My visit to the various rendezvous of the Fancy last night was a novel and curious experience. The physiognomy of these places was new to me, or rather I should say the physiognomies, for such a lot of broken mugs, battered noses, and crooked eyes I never saw before. The favourite resorts were a series of hotels and porter-houses running through from Leicester Square to St. Martin's Court, and embracing among other famous places Owen Swift's, Nat Langham's, Ben Caunt's, and the Round Table. At these places I also saw the per- sons who came over from the United States to see the fight — John Morrissey, who whipped Heenan ; the famous Billy Mulligan, a most determined- looking little man ; Mr. Moore, an uncle of Heenan's ; Captain Martin, and others. Morrissey bets against Heenan, and, I am told, has gone to see Sayers to instruct him in Heenan's mode of fighting. The other Americans, of course, are op- posed to him, and he is thus isolated. The Ameri- cans were lions everywhere, for instead of a hundred 293 Memoirs of " Malakoff " and fifty they do not number more than fifteen or twenty, all told. I paid a visit to the establishment of Ben Caunt, who was in the United States in 1843, and who was for a long time champion of England. I assured him of the great pleasure I had experienced in my student days at seeing him knock into a cocked hat all the best boxers of New York on the Bowery stage, whereupon Ben expressed his satisfaction. I asked him to take something, since it was in his own shop, but he said, " I never dnn\s anything stronger than lemonade," which gave me the im- pression that Ben was still stronger in the muscle than in the King's English. Ben invited me to his best room upstairs, and there I found a lot of the " roughs " sitting around long tables, each with an exactly similar clay pipe in his mouth and a mug of ale before him on the table. There were men there I should prefer not to meet alone in a secluded place at any hour of the day or night. Perhaps I am mistaken, and if I am, I ask pardon ; but I don't think I am. The walls were decorated with pictures representing Ben in the various epochs of his pugi- listic glory. There was also a handsome marble bust of the champion. Then there were pictures of other famous pugilists with whom Ben fought 294 Heenan v. Sayers for the belt — Bendigo and the Tipton Slasher. In this room there were two waiters whom Eugene Sue, who invented Chourineur, never dreamt of. Their mugs were indescribable — something between the bulldog and the monkey. In instinct they were their master personified, minus the heart. While the visitors called loudly for more beer, the waiters amused themselves showing two French artists the favourite positions of " the Governor " when en- gaged in the manly art of self-defence. What " the Governor " could not do in the glorious art could not be done, and the satellites conceded only to him what they could not do themselves. The French artists were going to sketch the great fight of to-morrow. In the course of the evening's ramble among the haunts of the bruisers and the shoulder-hitters of London, the reflection recurred often that it was not exactly the most profitable way of spending an evening ; but then I was going to see the great mill on the morrow, and a little preparatory harden- ing of the conscience would not be out of place. Moreover, London is always a mystery ; one never learns it to the bottom ; no matter how many one may have seen, there are always still other phases in the life of this monster city. '95 Memoirs of " Malakoff " Some persons who are, according to the Fancy, actuated by a mistaken idea of public propriety, have been trying to prevent the great fight. Every railway station leading from town, and even the fields for a long way out of London, have been guarded for days by policemen on the look out for the arrival of the train containing the pugilists and their friends. An exception, however, should be made of one railway line, which announced to the public that they would never supply a train for such a purpose. But it was known all over London last night that the " Great International " was to come off this morning. The tickets for the excursion were put on sale at various places in the afternoon and even- ing, and all who wished could buy them. They announced simply that the company which fur- nished the train was the South Western, and that the holders must be at London Bridge station for the start. Of course, the point at which the train was to stop no one knew except the conductor of the train himself. The railway company furnished trains for one-half the proceeds, and for this they undertook to find a safe place for the fight and to pay all damages that might be done to the property selected. For the sum of 15 dollars each they 296 Heenan v. Sayers agreed to carry passengers to the fight, furnish the place, and then bring them back again to London Bridge. The price was fixed high, so as to make the affair as select as possible, for although Parlia- ment did not adjourn expressly, it was well known that this respectable body would be largely repre- sented on the occasion. It was expected that three thousand tickets would be sold, but the sale did not reach beyond two thousand. Great excitement pre- vailed last evening around the ticket-offices and the favourite resorts of the members of the P.R. At all of them several policemen were required to keep order in the street, for the swell-mob were out in all their glory, and such a mob ! That of the Faubourg St. Antoine is an aristocracy compared to it. At half-past three this morning we were at London Bridge, and there again we met the same swell-mob, but this time a mob of the most dan- gerous character. I can hardly tell how many times my pockets were percussed by the light-fingered gentry. No one thought of giving them in charge, for everybody knew beforehand what to look for, and left their money and watches at home. We only expected to be let through with our coats on our backs. It was, in fact, amusing afterwards to 297 Memoirs of " Malakoff " find in so large an assemblage of persons so many asking for the time of day and so few capable of giving it. Two trains, of about thirty-five cars each, were soon filled up, and at half-past four we were off. Day was just dawning, for the nights are already short in this high latitude, and the morning was as beautiful as smoky England ever sees. The two combatants had arrived just as the train was ready to start. We went out first towards Dover, and the great excitement was to know where we were going. To give interest to the journey, we had not gone more than eight miles when we began to en- counter policemen, who had been stationed to prevent the fight. They shook their clubs at us and laughed, our boys responding with the well- known thumb-and-finger movement on the nose. But they did not attempt to carry things to the length of the brigands on the Rome and Frascati Railway — arrest the train ! At Reigate our train turned suddenly to the west on to the Dorking track, and here we fright- ened a switchman nearly to death, who had only time to turn our switch thirty feet in advance of the train. We seemed, in fact, to be hunting for a place, and our arrival and departure at each station 298 Heenan v. Sayers was a matter of astonishment to the officials. But our conductor knew where we were going. We crossed the Brighton track — England, you know, is now a great network of railways — and arrived on a line joining, by a cross-country route, the South Eastern with the South Western railways. We passed the famous camp of Aldershot, crossed the Southampton Railway, and pulled up at an out-of- the-way place in the Basingstoke division of the county of Southampton, called Farnborough. We had travelled perhaps fifty miles, and yet we were not more than twenty-five miles from London. We had seen policemen waiting for us at all the stations on the way except the last two or three, and at each the same amusing scenes took place with these gentry. We tumbled out rapidly into some meadows alangside the railway, and the business of driving the stakes and putting up the ring was soon ac- complished. The crowd looked much more re- spectable than we had anticipated — in fact, the gentry largely predominated. Several members of Parliament were present, and among the " nobility and gentry," besides the noble owner of the pro- perty, we were shown the Duke of Sutherland, the Marquis of Stafford, and Colonel Peel. There were about two thousand persons, and in the crowd 299 Memoirs of " MalakofF" were very many of the London celebrities in the literary, artistic, and sporting world. It was re- marked that John Bright was not present. In a little less than an hour from the stopping of the trains the two men entered the ring. They shook hands and chatted pleasantly while the pre- parations were going on, each in the meantime scru- tinising his opponent. Both were in good condition and looked confident, Sayers appearing naturally the more at home in the ring. As they stripped, each man was loudly cheered, but the American had but fifteen or twenty voices against two thousand. These few, however, made no mean noise, you may be sure. Heenan threw up a penny, won the corner, and threw Sayers with his eyes to the sun. They shook hands and went to work warily, both men smiling and in good humour. I herewith send you the official report of the fight as published this afternoon in an extra of BelFs Life in London. It is fuller and more technical than my own notes. I stood next the ring. I saw the fight from beginning to end, and I have running remarks to make on this report. The end of the fight is not correctly reported in London, and perhaps will not be. I had been told by Englishmen before the fight that there was too much money bet at odds 300 Heenan v. Sayers in favour of Sayers for Heenan to be permitted to win. English gamblers are just as desperate as any other gamblers, and in the condition of speculation in which Heenan went to the field a fair showing could not be expected. The men appointed to take care of the ring and see a fair fight were men who had bet largely on Sayers, and the whole two thou- sand Englishmen present were yelling furiously for Sayers, an old fighter, while chaffing Heenan, a young and inexperienced one. While nothing could have been more admirable than the deportment and skill of Tom Sayers from the beginning to the end of the fight, I will ven- ture to say that from the end of the first round to the close, Heenan showed himself to be the superior man, as well in endurance as in strength of blow and skill. He was never knocked down once, while he sent Sayers to the grass fairly about twenty times. In all the clenched falls which took place Heenan fell under but once. Heenan came to the scratch every time first, and he did all the attacking, preserving a constant smile, and showing not only good humour, but a sort of honest love of the game. The Englishmen all declared that they never saw " so grit a man " for his age in all their lives. 301 Memoirs of " MalakofF" The fight had lasted about two hours, and had been thus far conducted perfectly fairly on both sides. There was not the slightest show of a " foul " during all this time on either side, and both men were yet firm on their pegs and capable of fighting half as long again. Heenan had the most marks, because he was young, his flesh was soft, and whenever Sayers touched his head it swelled out like a pufl^ ball. But of the two Heenan had yet much the most fight in him. One of his eyes was shut, and all Sayers' hope was to shut the other. Everybody saw that it was his only chance, and all his blows were directed at Heenan's remaining eye. Heenan being afraid of this game, determined to throw all his force into a few concluding rounds, which should finish Sayers. Heenan now went at Sayers most terribly, and succeeded in getting his head into chancery. In this position he held him hard against the stake within three feet of where I stood, and here the fight would have been ended if the English had not rushed in and broken up the ring. Sayers was black in the face, and by the time Heenan would have finished the round, if let alone, Sayers could not have come to time. The English say that Heenan was killing him in that position, and that 302 Heenan v. Sayers they were right in interfering ; but the fact is that Heenan was only trying to throw him, and in doing this his giant arm was stopping the circulation in Sayers' jugular veins. He would have got him down before he was totally suffocated, and the fight would have terminated by Sayers not coming to time. After this there were three rounds fought, in all of which Heenan had the advantage, and in one of which he held Sayers' head again a long time in chancery. Each time Sayers was much too slow to the scratch, and it was evident to everybody that the rest of the fight was Heenan's. Each time, too, the ring was broken up by the English, notwith- standing the efforts of the Americans to preserve it. The wildest confusion reigned, and it was evident to the most stupid looker-on that Heenan was not to be allowed to gain the money he had honestly won. At the end of these three rounds Heenan again came to time, and stood in the middle of the ring waiting for his man, anxious to finish the fight, but Sayers did not come to time. After waiting half a minute beyond the call, and Sayers still remaining seated, the Americans yelled triumph, and took away their man. But when they looked for the 303 Memoirs of " MalakofF" referee, Mr. Dowling, to obtain his decision, he was not to be found ! He had withdrawn at the round in which Heenan had held Sayers so long in chancery, and in which the ring had been broken in, declaring that he would not preside where he could not see what was taking place. The police also, who had interfered, ordered him to desist acting as referee, but this took place before the ring was broken in. Under any circumstances, however good Mr. Bowling's excuse may have been for leaving the place, it must be remembered that it was Sayers' friends who broke up the ring and rendered the termination of the fight impos- sible. Moreover, the police were not obeyed, nor was the ring broken down, till it was evident that Sayers was a beaten man. Heenan is blamed for showing his temper at the close towards Sayers and his seconds. But after what precedes, the reader will know how to excuse his momentary forgetfulness. Heenan ran to the railway station after the fight with as much activity as if nothing had occurred, while Sayers was sup- ported away from the place by his seconds. Mr. Dowling declares the battle a drawn one, the bets are to be cancelled, and if the fight is renewed it cannot take place for a month or more. 3°4 Heenan v. Sayers But the Benicia Boy is the Champion of the World ! After his return to Paris, Dr. Johnston wrote some fur- ther impressions on the same subject. I have a last word to say about the great prize- fight between Heenan and the English champion. The excitement which exists in England and the discussion which has already commenced warrant me in adding my mite of evidence as to the facts of the case. I saw everything that took place, from beginning to end. I watched the progress of the long struggle as calmly as any man could watch a scene of the kind, and I am sure that I am not mis- taken as to the manner in which the events passed. I desire to say, however, in the first place, that brutal as must be any prize-fight, this one agreeably disappointed me as to the extent of its brutality. The reader who has never witnessed a prize-fight cannot compare it to anything else he has ever seen ; there is about it nothing of the disgusting or terri- fying which belong to ordinary fights in the streets, or between men less scientific than the contestants of the other day. It had, in fact, none of the character of an ordinary fight between men in a passion. Here were two men who, by living for X 3°S Memoirs of " Malakoff " six months the life that all of us ought to live, had brought themselves to a point of physical develop- ment and physical health, which would enable them to kill with one blow one of us gluttons and daily violators of the organic laws of nature. The object of their training was to effect three things — endurance, great mobility of the person, and com- mand of temper — a trinity of virtues essential to the gladiator and most important for all men. To accomplish this they walked and ran twenty-five to thirty miles a day ; they fought every day for hours with hard indomitable sand-bags, and boxed and wrestled with their comrades and trainers ; they swung over their heads dumb-bells of unheard-of weight and fenced with heavy sticks, so as, by a variety of violent exercise, to give strength and rapidity of movement to every muscle and tendon of the body, and even to the most unused fibres of these muscles and tendons ; they lived regularly upon plain and digestible food, drank no spirituous liquors, and committed no excesses of any kind ; they went to bed early, rose early, bathed in cold water, and had their bodies roughly rubbed and shampooed daily. Thus were these men brought to the highest point of healthy physical develop- ment attainable, and it is scarcely becoming in men 306 Heenan v. Sayers who debase their physique, and what is nobler still, their mind, by gluttony and spirituous drinks and irregular living of every kind, to find fault at least with the example which is offered to other men in the persons of prize-fighters. Heenan in par- ticular, when he stripped for the fight, offered an example of muscular development it was well worth a trip across the Channel to see. He is without doubt the finest physical man that ever entered the prize-ring in either country. His deltoid, scapular, and pectoral muscles could be traced out with the eye as clearly as if divested of their tegumentary coverings ; the muscles of his arm and forearm could be traced with the same facility ; his skin was as white,- as pure, and as polished as marble ; his neck was strong and firmly set on his shoulders, and his head small. But his developments were not those of a Hercules ; neither his chest nor his limbs were what would be called very large — his height and weight indicate sufficiently indeed that he is not overgrown. Sayers also is a fine physical man ; but he has more symmetry, perhaps I ought to say more rotundity, in his muscular develop- ments ; the outlines are not so distinct as on Heenan, and his skin is olive colour. My first sight of him as he entered the ring recalled Tom 307 Memoirs of " MalakofF" Corwin — if that eminent statesman will pardon the comparison — the same size, the same dark skin, and much .the same form of face, barring the battered nose, and the scars. The fight itself inspired none of the horror nor of the disgust which imagination had created beforehand. It was a sort of friendly box — a gladiatorial contest between two men without a particle of personal enmity. When they entered the ring they shook hands and talked smilingly for some time about the weather and the efforts of the police to stop the fight. Heenan also excused him- self for having failed to meet Sayers two months previously at a rendezvous which was made at Owen Swift's. Then they stepped back to undress, and they surveyed each other curiously, much as one would a horse he was about to buy. When they advanced to commence the fight, they again shook hands in a friendly way and, with a smile on their faces, commenced sparring. Notwithstanding the feeling of hostility to Heenan, there was now a general murmur of admiration at his handsome figure, the activity and gracefulness of his move- ments, and the boyish good nature with which he seemed to go into the " mill." At the same time there was a something in his small grey eye which 308 Heenan v. Sayers indicated that we were now witnessing the sunny side of the man, and that behind this somewhere there lay an ugly customer. From the start Sayers attempted to fatigue Heenan by ineffectual sparring, and often Heenan, growing, in fact, tired of that sort of thing, let his arms drop by his side, drew himself up, and laughed, with an expression which said, " There's no use going on with such child's play " ; and then, when thus off his guard, Sayers would sometimes try to get in a blow, and it was beautiful to see the lightning-like rapidity with which Heenan would throw himself into position again and throw Tom's fists over his shoulders. But when Heenan did catch one of Tom's blows in the face, he would smile — to use the words of an Englishman on the occasion — " as if he rather liked it." On his side Tom also kept in a good humour, and one can conceive nothing more whim- sical than his melancholy attempts at a smile after Heenan had sent him to grass with one of his sledge-hammer blows. It was a clear case, if ever, of a man laughing from a sense of duty. Thus, throughout the whole fight, the men kept in good temper, and their politeness to each other went to such an extent that, in the middle of a long round, each allowed the other to stop and sponge, Heenan 309 Memoirs of " Malakoff " resorting to this oftener than the other. It was this attitude of the men which took from the fight much of its revolting character, and rendered it possible to be looked at by men unused to such sights. In this fight both men hit forward from the shoulder. To have attempted a full blow would have exposed the giver to his adversary, and he would have been the first one knocked down. Moreover, judging from the effects of the blows that were given, a full blow, accompanied with the weight of the body, might have produced death. Without seeing them in action it would be im- possible to imagine the power these men have attained by their long training. An ordinary man, however strong, would be but a child in their hands. Previous to the fight the English did not com- plain of the diiference in size of the two men. It was considered that Tom Sayers, by his superior science, his great experience, and well-known judgment, would make easy work of it. But now, since Heenan is shown to be the better man, we hear a most lamentable complaint from one end of England to the other — and the London Times is the principal echo of this complaint — that the one was 310 Heenan v. Sayers a pigmy and the other a giant. Now, Tom Sayers is not a small man, nor is Jack Heenan a giant ; the difference is not at all enormous between them, and in many memorable fights in England the difference has been much greater. Moreover, when Heenan is in position he stands low ; his head was not more than an inch higher than that of his adversary. But his arm is an inch longer, and this no doubt was a real advantage in the fight. On the other hand, Tom Sayers had an important advantage over Heenan, an advantage that certainly compensated for the difference in the size of the men, and one which no one seems thus far to have noticed. Heenan, from his youth and the very little battering his face has yet received, is soft, and every blow Sayers got in swelled him up like a puff ball, while Sayers, on the contrary, has the cellular tissue of his face completely consolidated by long bruising, so that Heenan's blows, which were powerful enough to knock him down with stunning effect, produced no more swelling of the face than if it had been marble. A scar cannot be made to swell, and Tom's face is one solid scar. Now, it is a fact, patent to every one who saw the fight, that for the last hour Tom's only chance of winning was in shutting up Heenan's good eye, and 3" Memoirs of " MalakofF" for this hour the whole fire of the enemy was directed to that one object. So that if Heenan had lost the battle it would have been from an acci- dent to his eye, and thus the result would have been no test of the two great qualities essential to a prize-fighter — endurance and science.' It was the constant exclamation of the spectators during the last hour of the fight, " Oh, if he could only- get that other eye shut, Heenan would be done for ! " But Heenan's eye was not going to shut as rapidly as his enemies hoped for, and if Mr. Dowling had consented to give him a few more minutes' fair play, the champion would have been knocked out of time. The London Times made a totally gratuitous assertion, intended to cover up the disreputable treatment of Heenan, when it de- clared that the latter was blind by the time he arrived at the train. The statement is totally un- founded. The fact that the Sayers party laid so much stress on the eye is sufficient evidence that they recognised Heenan to be otherwise the better man. At first three policemen arrived on the field and attempted to stop the fight. The leading one tried 1 It should be added in fairness that this form of argument tells the other way, for Sayers fought many rounds with virtually only one arm, the other having been disabled by Heenan. 312 Heenan v. Sayers to get to the ropes at the point where I stood. I said to him, " It's no use to stop the fight now ; Sayers is knocking the Yankee higher than a kite, and it'll soon be over." This evidently mollified him, and he said in my ear earnestly, " Is Tom a lickin' 'im ? " Of course, I replied in the affirma- tive, and then, perfectly satisfied with the result of his mission, he was about to retire, when he re- flected that he had not gone through the formality of asserting the majesty of the law. So he turned around again, and you are prepared to hear him call out, " You, Tom Sayers, and you, John Heenan, I command you in the name of the law to desist from your unlawful proceedings ! " or something of that kind. But not at all. He cried out, " Tom Sayers 1 You Tom Sayers ! Tom, do you hear me ? Now, you know who's a- talking to you ! " (Poor Tom all this time had his mouth and ears full of blood, and, of course, didn't hear.) " Now, Tom Sayers, I tell you to stop fighting that American ! " and this latter unusual formula he ejected three times, and then retired with his accompanying dignitaries, thoroughly satisfied that he had done his duty, and especially that the pre- sumptuous Yankee would soon be knocked higher than a kite ! 313 Memoirs of " MalakofF" Half an hour later twenty policemen came on the field, walking slowly two and two, with a sort of chief at their head. They made an apparent attempt to get at the ropes, but they were pushed back at all points, and told that Tom was whipping Heenan, which seemed to have the same magic eifect upon them as upon their predecessors, and after a while they ceased to push, and, with the ex- ception of expostulations, actually became like the rest of us — spectators of the scene. Their pre- sence was, therefore, simply a demonstration to save appearances — at the bottom there was no real opposition to the fight. Later on, however, when the fight was turning against Sayers, their presence was put to good account — it then became convenient to obey them. So great was the commotion that arose over this memor- able pugilistic event that even Paris showed interest in it. The French journals have at last got fairly at the prize-fight. Their appreciations are more amusing than instructive. An illustrated journal, thinking, no doubt, to be more exact than the Illustrated News and Frank Leslie^ makes of the combatants two burly fellows with long hair and whiskers, who are butting into each other, French fashion, like two 314 Heenan v. Sayers rams. But the most ludicrous part of the French account is the translation of the slang terms of Fistiana. The snorer is translated ronfleur, the mug, a pot ; and the potato trap, un pihge aux pommes de terre I Piege aux pommes de terre ! ! To conclude, here is Oliver Wendell Holmes' contribu- tion to this international episode : — A BATTLE HYMN IN HONOUR OF SIR JOHN HEENAN, Who recently appeared in a Thirty-seven Act Farce as the Lion Tamer, THIS ODE IS WRITTEN. Hail ! Heenan, hail ! Thou mighty Muscle King, Lord of the Cestus, monarch of the Ring ; Thine arm thy sceptre, and thy strength thy crown — Before whose might the Lion went humbly down. Behold, a bardling craves permit to sing A psean in thy praise, a rhyme to thy renown. Benicia Man — who hence dare call thee Boy ? — Quick tell thy friends, that all may share thy joy, The deeds that thou hast done ; For see, Columbia comes with ready grace To bind thy brows, to kiss thy battered face, And claim thee as her son. Stand up and answer : didst thou then Beard England's Lion in his den, And dare him in his pride ; 31S Memofirs of " MalakofF" And didst thou fight him forty bouts, And put him through a " course of sprouts," And " tan " his tawny " hide ? " Come, Heenan, boy, Tell how the hours of battle flew. And men and maids and matrons, too. Shall gather round the teller. Say, didst thou give his ribs a " hug," And strike him squarely on the "mug," And eke upon the " smeller ? " Say, didst thou wrap Columbia's flag Around thy loins — thou pleasant wag To fight behind such bars ; — And didst thou ply its many stripes. In what thy craft call " stunning wipes," Till Thomas saw its stars, — Eh, Heenan, boy ? And dost thou mean — excuse my pen For seeking of these things to ken — But dost thou mean to leave alarms. And rush to home and Ada's arms For balm and lint and rest ? Or wilt thou yield to Barnum's wish And take thy place among the fish And fowls and beasts ? "What crowds would visit If thou stood by the great " What is it ? " And bared thy brawny breast ! Now, Heenan, boy, I'll tell thee what to do ; Thou'st lammed the Lion — Challenge Orion, The Champion of the Blue ; 316 Heenan v. Sayers He wears a belt ; — So, as thy fame enjoins, Just take it from his loins. Or take his " pelt." But, Heenan, boy, I fear one day there'll be a " mill," When champions all will get their fill Of fight ; A sort of general grinding day — In thy quaint phrase, the devil to pay. With heavy weights and light. Oh, Heenan, boy. Within the bounds of this World Ring There walks a certain Champion King, With whom we all must tussle ; Perhaps thou knowest the wight I mean — He's queerly built, lank-jawed and lean, Without a sign of muscle. But yet, though his " condition's " poor As poor can be, one thing is sure — He makes his " mawleys " felt ; No fairness shows he to his foes ; He deals the foulest kind of blows. And strikes " below the belt." No " sparring," " stopping," " countering," then ; My shoulder-hitter " floors " his men With just a single pass : Yes, Heenan boy, when he " let drives," Before his bony " bunch of fives " Thou'lt surely " go to grass." 317 Memoirs of " MalakofF" Now, Heenan boy, With such a " lively mill " in view, A course of training to go through Were surely only right — Let me suggest that you leave strife, And for the balance of your life Just Pray instead of fight ; — Eh, Heenan, boy ? * * Published in the New York Times over the initial " W." Holmes' verses bear evidence of having been either written or set up somewhat hastily, and I have felt bound to make a few minor corrections that appeared absolutely indispensable. The authorship of this poem is vouched for by a manuscript note of Dr. Johnston, which the internal evidence amply confirms. END OF VOL. I PLYMOUTH WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS