THE DIAMOND NECKLACE AND MIEABEAU BY THOMAS CARLYLE CHICAGO, NEW YORK, AND SAN FRANCISCO: BELFORD, CLARKE & CO., Publishers. SUMMAET OF OOOTE^TS. THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. Chap. I. The Age of Romance. The Age of Romance can never cease : All Life romantic, and even miraculous, (p. 3). — How few men have the smallest turn for thinking! 'Dignity' and deadness of History : Stifling influence of Respectability No age ever seemed romantic to itself. Perennial Romance : The lordliest Real-Phantasmagoria, which men name Being. What fiction can be so wonderful, as the thing that is? The Romance of the Diamond Necklace no foolish brainweb, but actually ' spirit-woven ' in the Loom of Time. (8). Chap. II. The Necklace is made. Last infirmity of M. Boehmers mind : The King's Jeweller would fain be maker of the Queen of Jewels. Difference between making and ag- glomerating : The various Histories of those several Diamonds : What few things are made by man. A Necklace, fit only for the Sultana of the World, (p. 12). Chap. III. The Necklace cannot he sold. Miscalculating Boehmer ! The Necklace intended for the neck of Du Barry ; but her foul day is now over. Many praises, but no pur- chaser. Loveliest Marie -Antoinette, every inch a Queen. The Age of Chivalry gone, and that of Bankruptcy is come. (p. 15). ChAp. IV. Affinities : the Two Fixed-ideas. A man's little Work lies not isolated, stranded ; but is caught-up by the boundless Whirl of Things, and carried — who shall say whither ? Prince Louis de Rohan ; a nameless Mass of delirious Incoherence?, held-in a little by conventional Politesse. These are thy gods, O France \ Sleek Abbe Georgel, a model Jesuit, and Prince de Rohan's nursing- mother. Embassy to Vienna : Disfavour of Maria Theresa and of the fair Antoinette, (p. 21). — Hideous death -of King Louis the Well-beloved. Rohan returns from Vienna ; and the young Queen refuses to see him. Teetotum-terrors of life at Court. His Eminence's blank despair, and desperate struggle to clutch the favour he has lost. Give the wisest of .us a ' fixed idea,' and what can his wisdom help him ! (26) — Will not her Majesty bay poor Boehmer's Necklace ? and oh, will she not smile once more on poor dissolute, distracted Rohan ? The beautiful clear- hearted Queen, alas, beset by two Monomaniacs; whose 'fixed-ideas' may one day meet. (27). iv SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. ■ N Chap. V. The Artist Jeanne de Saint-Remi, a brisk little nondescript Scion -of-Royalty : Her parentage and hungry prospects. Her singularly undecipherable character. Conscience not essential to every character named human. A Spark of vehement Life, not developed into Will of any kind, only into Desires of many kinds : Glibness, shiftiness and untamability. (p. 31). — Kittenness not yet hardened into cathood. Marries M. de La- motte, and dubs him Count. Hard shifts for a living. Visits his Emi- nence Prince Louis de Rohan ; his monomaniac folly now under Cag- liostro's management. The glance of hungry genius. (33). Chap. VI. Will the Two Fixed-ideas meet? The poor Countess de Lamotte's watergruel rations ; and desperate tackings and manceuvrings within wind of Court. Eminence Rohan ar- rives thitherward, driven by his fixed-idea. Idle gossiping and tat- tling concerning Boehmer and his Necklace. In some moment of inspir- ation, a question rises on our brave Lamotte : If not a great Divine Idea, then a great Diabolic one. How Thought rules the world ! (p. 36). — A female Dramatist worth thinking of. Could Madame de Lamotte have written & Hamlet ? Poor Eminence Rohan in a Prospero's grotto of Cagliostro magic ; led on by our sprightly Countess's soft- warbling deceitful blandishments. (37). Chap. VII. Marie- Antoinette. The Countess plays upon the credulity of his Eminence : Strange mes- sages for and from the innocent, unconscious Queen. Frankhearted Marie-Antoinette ; beautiful Highborn, so foully hurled low ! The • Sanctuary of Sorrow ' for all the wretched : That wild-yelling World, and all its madness, will one day lie dumb behind thee ! (p. 40). Chap. VIII. The Two Fixed-ideas will unite. Further dexterities of the glib-tongued Lamotte : How she managed with Cagliostro. Boehmer is made to hear (by accident) of her new found favour with the Queen ; and believes it. Drowning men catch at straws, and hungry blacklegs stick at nothing, (p. 43). — Can her Maj- esty be persuaded to buy the Necklace ? Will her Majesty deign to ac- cept a present so worthy of her ? — Walk warily, Countess de Lamotte, with nerve of iron, but on shoes of felt ! (44). Chap. IX. Parh of Versailles. Ineffable expectancy stirs-up his Eminence's soul: 1 This night the Queen herself will meet thee ! ' Sleep rules this Hemisphere of the W r orld ; — rather curious to consider. Darkness and magical delusions : The Countess's successful dramaturgy. Ixion de Rohan, and the foul Centaurs he begat, (p. 47). Chap. X. Behind the Scenes. The Lamotte all-conquering talent for intrigue. The Demoiselle d'Oliva ; unfortunate Queen's Similitude, and unconscious tool of skil- ful knavery, (p. 50). SUMMARY OF G OF TENTS. V Chap. XI. The Necklace is sold. A pause : The two fixed-ideas have felt each other, and are rapidly coalescing. His Eminence will buy the Necklace, on her Majesty's ac- count. O Dame de Lamotte ! — 'I? Who saw me in it?' (p. 53). — Rohan and Boehmer in earnest business conference : A forged Royal approval : Secrecy as of Death. (54). Chap. XII. Tfie Necklace vanishes. The bargain concluded ; his Eminence the proud possessor of the Dia- mond Necklace. Again the scene changes ; and he has forwarded it — whither he little dreams, (p. 57). Chap. XIII. Scene Third : by Dame de Lamotte. Cagliostro, with his greasy prophetic bulldog face. Countess de La- motte and his Eminence in the Versailles Gallery. Through that long Gallery, what Figures have passed, and vanished ! The Queen now passes ; and graciously looks this way, according to her habit : Dame de Lamotte looks on, and dextrously pilfers the royal glances. Eminence de Rohan"'s helpless, bottomless, beatific folly, (p. 59). Chap. XIV. The Necklace cannot be paid. The Countess's Dramaturgic labours terminate. How strangely in life the Play goes on even when the Mover has left it ! No Act of man can ever die. His Eminence finds himself no nearer his expected goal : Un- speakable perturbations of soul and body. (p. 61). — Blacklegs in full feather : Rascaldom has no strong-box. Dame de Lamotte gaily stands the brunt of the threatening Earthquake : The farthest in the world from a brave woman. (62). — Gloomy weather-symptoms for his Eminence : A thunder-clap {per Countess de Lamotte) ; and mud-explosion beyond parallel. (64). Chap. XV. Scene Fourth : by Destiny. Assumption -day at Versailles; — a thing they call worshipping God to enact : All Noble France, waiting only the signal to begin worshipping. Eminence de Rohan chief-actor in the imposing scene. Arrestment in the King's name : There will be no Assumption-service this day. The Bastille opens its iron bosom to all the actors in the Diamond-drama, (p. 65). Chap. XVI. Missa est. The extraordinary 1 Necklace Trial,' an astonishment and scandal to the whole world. Prophetic Discourse by Count Arch-Quack Cagliostro: — Universal Empire of Scoundrelism :. Truth wedded to Sham gives birth to Respectability. The old Christian whim, of some sacred covenant with an actual, living and ruling God. Scoundrel Worship and Philosophy : Deep significance of the Gallows. Hideous fate of Dame de Lamotte. Unfortunate foully-slandered Queen: Her eyes red with their first tears of pure bitterness. The Empire of Imposture in flames. — This strange, many-tinted Business, like a little cloud from which wise men boded Earthquakes, (p. 77). THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/diamondnecklacemOOcarl THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. 1 [1837.] CHAPTER I. AGE OF ROMANCE. The Age of Romance has not ceased ; it never ceases ; it does not, if we will think of it, so much as very sensibly de- cline. "The passions are repressed by social forms; great passions no longer show themselves ? " Why, there are pas- sions still great enough to replenish Bedlam, for it never wants tenants ; to suspend men from bed-posts, from improved-drops at the west end of Newgate. A passion that explosively shivers asunder the Life it took rise in, ought to be regarded as con- siderable : more no passion, in the highest heyday of Romance, yet did. The passions, by grace of the Supernal and also of the Infernal Powers (for both have a hand in it), can never fail us. And then, as to ' social forms,' be it granted that they are of the most buckram quality, and bind men up into the piti- fullest straitlaced commonplace existence, — you ask, Where is the Romance ? In the Scotch way one answers, Where is it not ? That very spectacle of an Immortal Nature, with facul- ties and destiny extending through Eternity, hampered and bandaged up, by nurses, pedagogues, posture-masters, and the tongues of innumerable old women (named ' force of pub- lic opinion ') ; by prejudice, custom, want of knowledge, want of money, want of strength, into, say, the meagre Pattern, Figure that, in these days, meets you in all thoroughfares : a 'god-created Man,' all but abnegating the character of Man ; 1 Frasek's Magazine, Nos. 85 and 86. 4 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. forced to exist, automatised, mummy-wise (scarcely in rare moments audible or visible from amid his wrappages and cere- ments), as Gentleman or Gigman ; 1 and so selling his birth- right of Eternity for the three daily meals, poor at best, which Time yields : — is not this spectacle itself highly romantic, tragical, if we had eyes to look at it ? The high-born (highest- born, for he came out of Heaven) lies drowning in the despica- blest puddles ; the priceless gift of Life, which he can have but once, for he waited a whole Eternity to be born, and now has a whole Eternity waiting to see what he will do when born, — this priceless gift we see strangled slowly out of him by in- numerable packthreads ; and there remains of the glorious Possibility, which we fondly named Man, nothing but an in- animate mass of foul loss and disappointment, which we wrap in shrouds and bury underground, — surely with well-merited tears. To the Thinker here lies Tragedy enough ; the epitome and marrow of all Tragedy whatsoever. But so few are Thinkers ? Ay, Reader, so few think ; there is the rub ! Not one in the thousand has the smallest turn for thinking ; only for passive dreaming and hear saying, and active babbling by rote. Of the eyes that men do glare withal so few can see. Thus is the world become such a fearful con- fused Treadmill ; and each man's task has got entangled in his neighbour's, and pulls it awry ; and the Spirit of Blindness, Falsehood and Distraction, justly named the Devil, continu- ally maintains himself among us ; and even hopes (were it not for the Opposition, which by God's grace will also main- tain itself) to become supreme, Thus too, among other things, has the Bomance of Life gone wholly out of sight : and all History, degenerating into empty invoice-lists of Pitched Battles and Changes of Ministry ; or still worse, into ' Con- stitutional History,' or 'Philosophy of History,' or 'Philosophy teaching by Experience,' is become dead, as the Almanacs of other years, — to which species of composition, indeed, it bears, in several points of view, no inconsiderable affinity. 'Of all blinds that shut-up men's vision,' says one, c the 1 * I always considered liim a respectable man. — What do you mean by respectable V He kept a Gig.' — ThurteWs Trial. AGE OF ROMANCE. 5 worst is Self.' How true! How doubly true, if Self, assum- ing her eunningest, yet miserablest disguise, come on us, in never-ceasing, all -obscuring reflexes from the innumerable Selves of others ; not as Pride, not even as real Hunger, but only as Vanity, and the shadow of an imaginary Hunger for Applause ; under the name of what we call ' Kespectability ! ' Alas now for our Historian : to his other spiritual deadness (which however, so long as he physically breathes, cannot be considered complete) this sad new magic influence is added ! Henceforth his Histories must all be screwed up into the £ dignity of History.' Instead of looking fixedly at the Thing, and first of all, and beyond all, endeavouring to see it, and fashion a living Picture of it, not a wretched politico-meta- physical Abstraction of it, he has now quite other matters to look to. The Thing lies shrouded, invisible, in thousandfold hallucinations, and foreign air-images : ( What did the Whigs say of it ? What did the Tories ? The Priests ? The Free- thinkers ? Above all, What will my own listening circle say of me for what I say of it ? And then his Kespectability in general, as a literary gentleman ; his not despicable talent for philosophy ! Thus is our poor Historian's faculty directed mainly on two objects : the Writing and the Writer, both of which are quite extraneous ; and the Thing written-of fares as we see. Can it be wonderful that Histories, wherein open lying is not permitted, are unromantic ? Nay, our very Bi- ographies, how stiff- starched, visionless, hollow ! They stand there respectable ; and — what more ? Dumb idols ; with a skin of delusively painted wax- work ; inwardly empty, or full of rags and bran. In our England especially, which in these days is become the chosen land of Respectability, Life-writing has dwindled to the sorrowfullest condition ; it requires a man to be some disrespectable, ridiculous Boswell before he can write a tolerable Life. Thus too, strangely enough, the only Lives worth reading are those of Players, emptiest and poorest of the sons of Adam ; who nevertheless were sons of his, and brothers of ours ; and by the nature of the case, had already bidden Respectability good-day. Such bounties, in this as in infinitely deeper matters, does Respectability 6 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. shower down on us. Sad are thy doings, O Gig ; sadder than those of Juggernaut's Car : that, with huge wheel, suddenly crushes asunder the bodies of men ; thou in thy light-bob- bing Long -Acre springs, gradually winnowest away their souls ! Depend upon it, for one thing, good Reader, no age ever seemed the Age of Romance to itself. Charlemagne, let the Poets talk as they will, had his own provocations in the world : what with selling of his poultry and pot-herbs, what with wanton daughters carrying secretaries through the snow ; and, for instance, that hanging of the Saxons over the Weser- bridge (four thousand of them they say, at one bout), it seems to me that the Great Charles had his temper ruffled at times. Roland of Roncesvalles too, we see well in thinking of it, found rainy weather as well as sunny ; knew what it was to have hose need darning ; got tough beef to chew, or even went dinnerless ; was saddle-sick, calumniated, constipated (as his madness too clearly indicates) ; and oftenest felt, I doubt not, that this was a very Devil's world, and he, Roland himself, one of the sorriest caitiffs there. Only in long sub- sequent days, when the tough beef, the constipation and the calumny had clean vanished, did it all begin to seem Roman- tic, and your Turpins and Ariostos found music in it. So, I say, is it ever ! And the more, as your true hero, your true Roland, is ever unconscious that he is a hero : this is a condi- tion of all greatness. In our own poor Nineteenth Century, the "Writer of these lines has been fortunate enough to see not a few glimpses of Romance ; he imagines his Nineteenth is hardly a whit less romantic than that Ninth, or any other, since centuries began. Apart from Napoleon, and the Dantons, and Mirabeaus, whose fire-words of public speaking, and fire-whirlwinds of cannon and musketry, which for a season darkened the air, are per- haps at bottom but superficial phenomena, he has witnessed, in remotest places, much that could be called romantic, even miraculous. He has witnessed overhead the infinite Deep, with greater and lesser lights, bright-rolling, silent-beaming, hurled forth by the Hand of God : around him and under his AGE OF ROMANCE. 7 feet, the wonderfullest Earth, with her winter snow-storms and her summer spice-airs ; and, unaccountablest of all, him- self standing there. He stood in the lapse of Time ; he saw Eternity behind him, and before him. The all-encircling mysterious tide of Force, thousandfold (for from force of Thought to force of Gravitation what an interval !) billowed shoreless on ; bore him too along with it, — he too was part of it. From its bosom rose and vanished, in perpetual change, the lordliest Real-Phantasmagory, which men name Being ; and ever anew rose and vanished ; and ever that lordliest many-coloured scene was full, another yet the same. Oak- trees fell, young acorns sprang : Men too, new-sent from the Unknown, he met, of tiniest size, who waxed into stature, into strength of sinew, passionate fire and light : in other men the light was growing diim the sinews all feeble ; then sank, mo- tionless, into ashes, into invisibility ; returned back to the Unknown, beckoning him their mute farewell. He wanders still by the parting-spot ; cannot hear them ; they are far, how far ! — It was a sight for angels, and archangels ; for, indeed, God himself had made it wholly. One many glancing asbes- tos-thread in the Web of Universal-History, spirit-woven, it rustled there, as with the howl of mighty winds, through that c wild-roaring Loom of Time/ Generation after generation, hundreds of them or thousands of them from the unknown Beginning, so loud, so storm ful-busy, rushed torrent-wise, thundering down, down ; and fell all silent, — nothing but some feeble re-echo, which grew ever feebler, struggling up ; and Oblivion swallowed them all. Thousands more, to the unknown Ending, will follow : and thou here, of this present one, hangest as a drop, still sungilt, on the giddy edge ; one moment, while the Darkness has not yet engulphed thee. O Brother ! is that what thou callest prosaic ; of small interest ? Of small interest and for thee ? Awake poor troubled sleeper : shake off thy torpid nightmare-dream ; look, see, behold it, the Flame-image ; splendours high as Heaven, terrors deep as Hell : this is God's Creation ; this is Man's Life ! — Such things has the "Writer of these lines witnessed, in this jDOor Nineteenth Century of ours ; and what are all such to the 8 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. things he yet hopes to witness ? Hopes, with truest assur- ance. £ I have painted so much/ said the good Jean Paul, in his old days, £ and I have never seen the Ocean ; the Ocean of Eternity I shall not fail to see ! ' Such being the intrinsic quality of this Time, and of all Time whatsoever, might not the Poet who chanced to walk through it find objects enough to paint? What object soever he fixed on, were it the meanest of the mean, let him but paint it in its actual truth, as it swims there, in such environ- ment ; world-old, yet new and never-ending ; an indestructi- ble portion of the miraculous All, — his picture of it were a Poem. How much more if the object fixed on were not mean, but one already wonderful ; the mystic £ actual truth ' of which, if it lay not on the surface, yet shone through the surface, and invited even Prosaists to search for it ! The present "Writer, who unhappily belongs to that class, has nevertheless a firmer and firmer persuasion of two things : first, as was seen, that Romance exists ; secondly, that now, and formerly, and evermore it exists, strictly speaking, in Reality alone. The thing that is, what can be so wonderful ; what, especially to us that are, can have such significance ? Study Reality, he is ever and anon saying to himself ; search out deeper and deeper its quite endless mystery : see it, know it ; then, whether thou wouldst learn from it, and again teach ; or weep over it, or laugh over it, or love it, or despise it, or in any way relate thyself to it, thou hast the firmest endur- ing basis : that hieroglyphic page is one thou canst read on forever, find new meaning in forever. Finally, and in a word, do not the critics teach us : £ In ' whatsoever thing thou hast thyself felt interest, in that or in 6 nothing hope to inspire others with interest ? ' — In partial obedience to all which, and to many other principles, shall the following small Romance of the Diamond Necklace begin to come together. A small Romance, let the reader again and again assure himself, which is no brainweb of mine, or of any other foolish man's ; but a fraction of that mystic £ spirit- woven web,' from the 'Loom of Time,' spoken of above. It is an actual Transaction that happened in this Earth of ours. THE NECKLACE 18 MADE. 9 Wherewith our whole business, as already urged, is to paint it truly. For the rest, an earnest inspection, faithful endeavour has not been wanting, on our part ; nor, singular as it may seem, the strictest regard to chronology, geography (or rather in this case, topography), documentary evidence, and what else true histori- cal research would yield. Were there but on the reader's part a kindred openness, a kindred spirit of endeavour ! Beshone strongly, on both sides, by such united two-fold Philosophy, this poor opaque Intrigue of the Diamond Necklace might be- come quite translucent between us ; transfigured, lifted up into the serene of Universal-History ; and might hang there like a smallest Diamond Constellation, visible without tele- scope, — so long as it could. CHAPTER II THE NECKLACE IS MADE. Herr, or as he is now called Monsieur, Boehmer, to all ap= pearance wanted not that last infirmity of noble and ignoble minds — a love of fame ; he was destined also to be famous more than enough. His outlooks into the w r orld were rather of a smiling character : he has long since exchanged his gut- tural speech, as far as possible, for a nasal one ; his rustic Saxon fatherland for a polished city of Paris, and thriven there. United in partnership with w T orthy Monsieur Bas- sange, a sound practical man, skilled in the valuation of all precious stones, in the management of workmen, in the judg- ment of their work, he already sees himself among the high- est of his guild : nay, rather the very highest, — for he has se- cured, by purchase and hard money paid, the title of King's Jeweller ; and can enter the Court itself, leaving all other Jewellers, and even innumerable Gentlemen, Gigmen and small Nobility, to languish in the vestibule. Witli the cost- liest ornaments in his pocket, or borne after him by assiduous shopboys, the happy Boehmer sees high drawing rooms and sacred ruelles fly open, as with talismanic Sesame ; and the 10 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. brightest eyes of the whole world grow brighter : to him alone of men the Unapproachable reveals herself in mysteri- ous negligee ; taking and giving counsel. Do not, on all gala- days and gala-nights, his works praise him ? On the gorgeous robes of State, on Court-dresses and Lords' stars, on the dia- dem of Eoyalty : better still, on the swan-neck of Beauty, and ■ her queenly garniture from plume-bearing aigrette to shoe- buckle on fairy- slipper, — that blinding play of colours is Boeh- mer's doing : he is Joaillier-Bijoutier de la Reine. Gould the man but have been content wdth it ! He could not : Icarus-like, he must mount too high ; have his wax- wings melted, and descend prostrate, — amid a cloud of vain goose- quills. One day, a fatal day (of some year, probably among the Seventies of last Century l ), it struck Boehmer : Why should not I, who, as Most Christian King's Jeweller, am properly first Jeweller of the Universe, — make a Jewel wiiich the Universe has not matched ? Nothing can prevent thee, Boehmer, if thou have the skill to do it. Skill or no skill, an- swers he, I have the ambition : my Jewel, if not the beautiful- lest, shall be the dearest. Thus w T as the Diamond Necklace determined on. Did worthy Bassange give a willing, or a reluctant consent ? In any case he consents ; and cooperates. Plans are sketched, consultations held, stucco models made ; by money or credit the costliest diamonds come in ; cunning craftsmen cut them, set them : proud Boehmer sees the work go prosperously on. Proud man ! Behold him on a morning after breakfast : he has stepped down to the innermost workshop, before sallying out ; stands there wdth his laced three-cornered hat, cane under arm ; drawing-on his gloves : with nod, with nasal- guttural word, he gives judicious confirmation, judicious ab- negation, censure and approval. A still joy is dawning over that bland, blond face of his ; he can think, while in man} 7 a sacred boudoir he visits the Unapproachable, that an opus 1 Except that Madame Campan (Memoires, tome ii.) says the Necklace 4 was intended for Du Barry,' one cannot discover, within many years, the date of its manufacture. Du Barry went ' into half-pay ' on the lOtli of May 1774,— the day wheu her king died. THE NECKLACE IS MADE. 11 magnum, of which the world wotteth not, is progressing. At length comes a morning when care has terminated, and joy can not only dawn but shine ; the Necklace, which shall be fa- mous and world-famous, is made. Made we call it, in conformity with common speech : but properly it was not made ; only, with more or less spirit of method, arranged and agglomerated. What spirit of method lay in it, might be made ; nothing more. But to tell the various Histories of those various Diamonds, from the first making of them ; or even, omitting all the rest, from the first digging of them in the far Indian mines ! How they lay, for uncounted ages and seons (under the uproar and splashing of such Deucalion Deluges, and Hutton Explosions, with steam enough, and Werner Submersions), silently imbedded in the rock ; did nevertheless, when their hour came, emerge from it, and first beheld the glorious Sun smile on them, and with their many-coloured glances smile back on him. How they served next, let us say, as eyes of Heathen Idols, and received worship. How they had then, by fortune of war or theft, been knocked out ; and exchanged among camp-sutlers for a little spirituous liquor, and bought by Jews, and worn as sig- nets on the fingers of tawny or white Majesties ; and again been lost, with the fingers too, and perhaps life (as by Charles the Kash, among the mud-ditches of Nancy), in old-forgotten glorious victories : and so, through innumerable varieties of fortune, — had come at last to the cutting-wheel of Boehmer ; to be united, in strange fellowship, with comrades also blown together from all ends of the Earth, each with a history of its own ! Could these aged stones, the youngest of them Six Thousand years of age and upwards, but have spoken, there were an Experience for Philosophy to teach by ! — But now, as was said, by little caps of gold, and daintiest rings of the same, they are all being, so to speak, enlisted under Boehmer's flag, — made to take rank and file, in new order, no Jewel ask- ing his neighbour whence he came ; and parade there for a season. For a season only ; and then — to disperse, and enlist anew ad infinitum. In such inexplicable wise are Jewels, and Men also, and indeed all earthly things, jumbled together and 12 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. asunder, and shovelled and wafted to and fro, in our inex« plicable chaos of a World. This was what Boehmer called making his Necklace. So, in fact, do other men speak, and with even less reason. How many men, for example, hast thou heard talk of making money ; of making, say, a million and a half of money : Of which million and a half, how much, if one were to look into it, had they made f The accurate value of their Industry ; not a sixpence more. Their making, then, was but, like Boehmer's a clutching and heaping together ; — by-and-by to be followed also by a dispersion. Made ? Thou too vain indi- vidual ! were these towered ashlar edifices ; were these fair bounteous leas, with their bosky umbrages and yellow har- vests ; and the sunshine that lights them from above, and the granite rocks and fire-reservoirs that support them from below, made by thee ? I think, by another. The very shilling that thou hast was dug, by man's force, in Carinthia and Paraguay ; smelted sufficiently ; and stamped, as would seem, not with- out the advice of our late Defender of the Faith, his Majesty George the Fourth. Thou hast it, and holdest it ; but whether, or in what sense, thou hast made any farthing of it, thyself canst not say. If the courteous reader ask, What things, then, are made by man ? I will answer him, Very few indeed. A Heroism, a Wisdom (a god-given Volition that has realised itself), is made now and then : for example, some five or six Books, since the Creation, have been made. Strange that there are not more : for surely every encouragement is held out. Could I, or thou, happy reader, but make one, the world would let us keep it unstolen for Fourteen whole years, — and take what we could get for it. But, in a word, Monsieur Boehmer has made his Necklace, what he calls made it : happy man is he. From a Drawing, as large as reality, kindly furnished by ' Taunay, Printseller, of the Bue d'Enfer ; 1 1 and again, in late years, by the Abbe Georgel, in 1 Frontispiece of the 1 Affaire clu Collier, Paris, 1785;' wherefrom Georgel's Editor has copied it. This 1 Affaire du Collier, Paris, 1785,' is not properly a Book; but a bound Collection of such Law-Papers (Ale moires pour, &c.) as were printed and emitted by the various parties in tha* THE NECKLACE IS MADE. 13 the Second Volume of Lis Memoires curious readers can still fancy to themselves what a princely Ornament it was. A row of seventeen glorious diamonds, as large almost as filberts, encircle, not too tightly, the neck, a first time. Looser, grace- fully fastened thrice to these, a three-wreathed festoon, and pendants enough (simple pear-shaped, multiple star-shaped, or clustering amorphous) encircle it, en wreath it, a second time 0 Loosest of all, softly flowing round from behind, in priceless catenary, rush down two broad threefold rows ; seem to knot famed ' Necklace Trial. ' These Law-Papers, bound into Two Volumes quarto ; with Portraits, such as the Printshops yielded them at the time ; likewise with patches of Ms. , containing Notes, Pasquinade-songs, and the like, of the most unspeakable character occasionally, — constitute this 1 Affaire du Collier ; ' which the Paris Dealers in Old Books can still pro- care there. It is one of the large-st collections of Falsehoods that exists in print ; and, unfortunately, still, after all the narrating and history there has been on the subject, forms our chief means of getting at the truth ol that Transaction. The First Volume contains some Twenty-one Me- moires pour : not, of course, Historical statements of truth ; but Culprits* and Lawyers' statements of what they wished to be believed ; each party lying according to his ability to lie. To reach the truth, or even any honest guess at the truth, the immensities of rubbish must be sifted, con- trasted, rejected : what grain of historical evidence may lie at the bottom is then attainable. Thus, as this Transaction of the Diamond Necklace has been called the ' Largest Lie of the Eighteenth Century,' so it comes to us borne, not unfitly, on a whole illimitable dim Chaos of Lies ! Nay, the Second Volume, entitled Suite de V Affaire du Collier, is still stranger. It relates to the Intrigue and Trial of one Bette d'Etienville, who represents himself as a poor lad that had been kidnapped, blind- folded, introduced to beautiful Ladies, and engaged to get husbands for them ; as setting out on this task, and gradually getting quite bewitched and bewildered ; — most indubitably, going on to bewitch and bewilder other people on all hands of him : the whole in consequence of this ' Neck- lace Trial,' and the noise it was making ! Very curious. The Lawyers did verily busy themselves with this affair of Bette's ; there are scarecrow Portraits given, that stood in the Printshops, and no man can know' whether the Originals ever so much as existed. It is like the Dream of a Dream. The human mind stands stupent ; ejaculates the wish that such Gulf of Falsehood would close itself, — before general Delirium supervene, and the Speech of Man become mere incredible, meaningless jargon, like that of choughs and daws. Even from Bette, however, \>y assiduous sifting, one gathers a particle of truth here and there. 14 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. themselves, round a very Queen of Diamonds, on the bosom ; then rush on, again separated, as if there were length in plenty ; the very tassels of them were a fortune for some men. And now lastly, two other inexpressible threefold rows, also with their tassels, will, when the Necklace is on and clasped, unite themselves behind into a doubly inexpressible sixfold row ; and so stream down, together or asunder, over the hind-neck, — we may fancy, like lambent Zodiacal or Aurora-Borealis fire. All these on a neck of snow slight-tinged with rose -bloom, and within it royal Life : amidst the blaze of lustres ; in sylphish movements, espiegleries, coquetteries, and minuet- mazes ; with every movement a flash of star-rainbow colours, bright almost as the movements of the fair young soul it em- blems ! A glorious ornament ; fit only for the Sultana of the World. Indeed, only attainable by such ; for it is valued at 1,800,000 livres ; say in round numbers, and sterling money, between eighty and ninety thousand pounds, CHAPTEE III. THE NECKLACE CANNOT BE SOLD. Miscalculating Boehmer ! The Sultana of the Earth shall never wear that Necklace of thine ; no neck, either royal or vassal, shall ever be the lovelier for it. In the present dis- tressed state of our finances, with the American "War raging round us, where thinkest thou are eighty thousand pounds to be raised for such a thing ? In this hungry world, thou fool, these five hundred and odd Diamonds, good only for looking at, are intrinsically worth less to us than a string of as many dry Irish potatoes, on which a famishing Sansculotte might fill his belly. Little knowest thou, laughing Joaillier-Bijou- tier, great in thy pride of place, in thy pride of savoir-faire, what the world has in store for thee. Thou laughest there ; by-and-by thou wilt laugh on the w r rong side of thy face mainly. THE NECKLACE CANNOT BE SOLD. 15 While the Necklace lay in stucco effigy, and the stones of it were still ' circulating in Commerce/ Du Barry's was the neck it was meant for. Unhappily, as all dogs, male and fe- male, have but their day, her day is done ; and now (so busy has Death been) she sits retired, on mere half pay, without prospects, at Saint-Cyr. A generous France will buy no more neck-oi'iiaments for her : — O Heaven ! the Guillotine-axe is already forging (North, in Swedish Dalecarlia, by sledge-ham- mers and fire ; South too, by taxes and tallies) that will shear her neck in twain ! But, indeed, what of Du Barry ? A foul worm ; hatched by royal heat, on foul composts, into a flaunting butterfly ; now diswinged, and again a worm ! Are there not Kings' Daughters and Kings' Consorts ; is not Decoration the first wish of a female heart, — often also, if such heart is empty, the last ? The Portuguese Ambassador is here, and his rigor- ous Pombal is no longer Minister : there is an Infanta in Por- tugal, purposing by Heaven's blessing to wed. — Singular ! the Portuguese Ambassador, though without fear of Pombal, praises, but will not purchase. Or why not our own loveliest Marie-Antoinette, once Dau- phiness only ; now every inch a Queen : what neck in the whole Earth would it beseem better ? It is fit only for her. — Alas, Boehmer ! King Louis has an eye for diamonds ; but he too is without overplus of money : his high Queen herself answers queenlike, "We have more need of Seventy-fours than of Necklaces." Laudatur et alget ! — Not without a qualmish feel- ing, we apply next to the Queen and King of the Two Sicilies. 1 In vain, O Boehmer ! In crowned heads there is no hope for thee. Not a crowned head of them can spare the eighty thou- sand pounds. The age of Chivalry is gone, and that of Bank- ruptcy is come. A dull, deep, presaging movement rocks all thrones : Bankruptcy is beating down the gate, and no Chan- cellor can longer barricade her out. She will enter ; and the shoreless fire -lava of Democracy is at her back ! Well may Kings, a second time, c sit still with awful eye,' and think of far other things than Necklaces. 1 See Mewoires de Campari, ii. 1-26. 1$ THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. Thus for poor Boehmer are the mournfullest days and nights appointed ; and this high-promising year (1780, as we la- boriously guess and gather) stands blacker than all others in Lis calendar. In vain shall he, on his sleepless pillow, more and more desperately revolve the problem ; it is a problem of the insoluble sort, a true 'irreducible case of Cardan :' the Diamond Necklace will not sell. CHAPTER IV. AFFINITIES : THE TWO FIXED-IDEAS. Nevertheless, a man's little Work lies not isolated, stranded ; a whole busy World, a whole native -element of mysterious never-resting Force, environs it ; will catch it up ; will carry it forward, or else backward : always, infallibly, either as liv- ing growth, or at worst as well-rotted manure, the Thing Done will come to use. Often, accordingly, for a man that had finished any little work, this were the most interesting question : In such a boundless whirl of a world, what hook will it be, and what hooks, that shall catch up this little work of mine ; and whirl it also, — through such a dance ? A ques- tion, we need not say, which, in the simplest of cases, would bring the whole Royal Society to a nonplus. — Good Corsican Letitia ! while thou nursest thy little Napoleon, and he answers thy mother-smile with those deep eyes of his, a world-famous French Revolution, with Federations of the Champ de Mars, and September Massacres, and Bakers' Customers en queue, is getting ready : many a Dan ton and Desmoulins ; prim-visaged, Tartuffe-looking Robespierre, as yet all schoolboys ; and Marat weeping bitter rheum, as he pounds horsedrugs, — are prepar- ing the fittest arena for him ! Thus too, while poor Boehmer is busy with those Diamonds of his, picking them 'out of Commerce,' and his craftsmen are grinding and setting them ; a certain ecclesiastical Coad- jutor and Grand Almoner, and prospective Commendator and Cardinal, is in Austria, hunting and giving suppers ; for whom mainly it is that Boehmer and his craftsmen so employ them- AFFINITIES: THE TWO FIXED-IDEAS. 17 selves. Strange enough, once more ! The foolish Jeweller at Paris, making foolish trinkets ; the foolish Ambassador at Vienna, making blunders and debaucheries : these Two, all un- communicating, wide asunder as the Poles, are hourly forg- ing for each other the wonderfullest hook-and-eye ; which will hook them together, one day, — into artificial Siamese-Twins, for the astonishment of mankind. Prince Louis de Rohan is one of those select mortals born to honours, as the sparks fly upwards ; and, alas, also (as all men are) to troubles no less. Of his genesis and descent much might be said, by the curious in such matters ; yet perhaps, if we weigh it well, intrinsically little. He can, by diligence and faith, be traced back some handbreadth or two, some cen- tury or two ; but after that, merges in the mere * blood-royal of Brittany ; ' long, long on this side of the Northern Immi- grations, he is not so much as to be sought for ; — and leaves the whole space onwards from that, into the bosom of Eter- nity, a blank, marked only by one point, the Fall of Man ! However, and what alone concerns us, his kindred, in these quite recent times, have been much about the Most Christian Majesty ; could there pick up what was going. In particular, they have had a turn of some continuance for Cardinalship and Commendatorship. Safest trades these, of the calm, do- nothing sort : in the do-something line, in Generalship, or such like (witness poor Cousin Soubise, at Rosbach they might not fare so well. In any case, the actual Prince Louis, Coadjutor at Strasburg, while his uncle the Cardinal- Arch- 1 Here is the Epigram they made against him on occasion of Rosbach — in that ' Despotism tempered by Epigrams,' which France was then said to be : 4 Sonbise dit, la lanterne a la main, J'ai beau cheroher, oh diable est mon Armee V Elle etait la pourtant hier matin : Me l'a-t-on prise, ou l'aurais-je egaree ? — Que vois-je, 6 ciel ! que mon ame est ravie! Prodige heureux! la voila, la voila ! — Ah, ventrebleu ! qu'est-ce done que cela ? Je me trompaiX e'est PArni 'e Ennemie ! ' Lacretelle, ii. 206. 2 IS THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. bishop has not yet deceased, and left him his dignities, but only fallen sick, already takes his place on one grandest occa- sion : he, thrice-happy Coadjutor, receives the fair, young, trembling Dauphiness, Marie -Antoinette, on her first entrance into France ; and can there, as Ceremonial Fugleman, with fit bearing and semblance (being a tall man, of six-and -thirty), do the needful. Of his other performances up to this date, a refined History had rather say nothing. In fact, if the tolerating mind will meditate it with any sym- pathy, what could poor Eohan perform ? Performing needs light, needs strength, and a firm clear footing ; all of which had been denied him. Nourished, from birth, with the choicest physical spoon-meat, indeed ; yet also, with no bet- ter spiritual Doctrine and Evangel of Life than a French Court of Louis the Well-beloved could yield ; gifted more- over, and this too was but a new perplexity for him, with shrewdness enough to see through much, with vigour enough to despise much ; unhappily, not with vigour enough to spurn it from him, and be forever enfranchised of it, — he awakes, at man's stature, with man's wild desires, in a World of the merest incoherent Lies and Delirium ; himself a nameless Mass of delirious Incoherences, — covered over at most, and held-in a little, by conventional Politesse, and a Cloak of prospective Cardinal's Plush. Are not intrigues, might Rohan say, the industry of this our Universe ; nay is not the Universe itself, at bottom, properly an intrigue ? A Most Christian Majesty, in the Parc-aux-cerfs ; he, thou seest, is the god of this lower world ; in the fight of Life, our war-banner and celestial En- touto-nika is a Strumpet'^ Petticoat : these are thy gods, O France ! — What, in such singular circumstances, could poor Eohan 's creed and world-theory be, that he should * perform ' thereby ? Atheism ? Alas, -no ; not even Atheism : only Machi- avelism ; and the indestructible faith that ' ginger is hot in the mouth.' Get ever new and better ginger, therefore ; chew it ever the more diligently : 'tis all thou hast to look to, and that only for a day. Ginger enough, poor Louis de Rohan : too much of ginger ! Whatsoever of it, for the five senses, money, or money s worth, AFFINITIES: THE TWO FIXED-IDEAS. 19 " or backstairs diplomacy, can buy ; nay for the sixth sense too, the far spicier ginger, Antecedence of thy fellow-creatures, — merited, at least, by infinitely finer housing than theirs. Coad- jutor of Strasburg, Archbishop of Strasburg, Grand Almoner of France, Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, Cardinal, Commendator of St. Wast d'Arras (one of the fattest benefices here below) : all these shall be housings for Monseigneur : to all these shall his Jesuit Nursing-mother, our vulpine Abbe Georgel, through fair court-weather and through foul, triumph- antly bear him ; and wrap him with them, fat, somnolent Nursling as he is. — By the way, a most assiduous, ever-wake- ful Abbe is this Georgel ; and wholly Monseigneur s. He has scouts dim-flying, far out, in the great deep of the world's business ; has spider-threads that overnet the whole world ; himself sits in the centre, ready to run. In vain shall King and Queen combine against Monseigneur : " I was at M. de Maurepas' pillow before six," — persuasively wagging my sleek coif, and the sleek reynard-head under it ; I managed it all for him. Here too, on occasion of Keynard Georgel, we could not but reflect what a singular species of creature your Jesuit must have been. Outwardly, you would say, a man ; the smooth semblance of a man : inwardly, to the centre, filled with stone ! Yet in all breathing things, even in stone Jesuits are inscrutable sympathies : how else does a Reynard Abbe so loyally give himself, soul and body, to a somnolent Monseign- eur ; — how else does the poor Tit, to the neglect of its own eggs and interests, nurse up a huge lumbering Cuckoo ; and think its pains all paid, if the sootbrown Stupidity will merely grow bigger and bigger ! — Enough, by Jesuitic or other means, Prince Louis de Rohan shall be passively kneaded and baked into Commendator of St. Wast and much else; and truly such a Commendator as hardly, since King Thierri, first of the Faineans, founded that Establishment, has played his part there. Such, however, have Nature and Art combined together to make Prince Louis. A figure thrice-clothed with honours ; with plush, and civic and ecclesiastic garniture of all kinds ; but in itself little other than an amorphous congeries of con* 20 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. tradictions, somnolence and violence, foul passions and foul habits. It is by his plush cloaks and wrappages mainly, as above hinted, that such a figure sticks together ; what we call ' coheres,' in any measure ; were it not for these, he would flow out boundlessly on all sides. Conceive him farther, with a kind of radical vigour and fire, for he can see clearly at times, and speak fiercely ; yet left in this way to stagnate and ferment, and lie overlaid with such floods of fat material : have we not a true image of the shamefullest Mud-volcano, gurgling and sluttishly simmering, amid continual steamy in- distinctness, — except as was hinted, in ^'mdi-gasts ; with oc- casional terrifico-absurd mud -explosions ! This, garnish it and fringe it never so handsomely, is, alas, the intrinsic character of Prince Louis. A shameful spectacle : such, however, as the world, has beheld many times ; as it were to be wished, but is not yet to be hoped, the world might behold no more. Nay, are not all possible delirious incoherences, outward and inward, summed up, for poor Rohan, in this one incrediblest incoherence, that he, Prince Louis de Rohan, is named Priest, Cardinal of the Church ? A debauched, merely libidinous mortal, lying there quite helpless, dissolute (as we well say) ; whom to see Church Cardinal, symbolical Hinge or main Corner of the Invisible Holy in this World, an Inhabitant of Saturn might split with laughing, — if he did not rather swoon with pity and horror ! Prince Louis, as ceremonial fugleman at Strasburg, might have hoped to make some way with the fair young Dauphin- ess ; but seems not to have made any. Perhaps, in those great days, so trying for a fifteen-years Bride and Dauphiness, the fair Antoinette was too preoccupied : perhaps, in the very face and looks of Prospective-Cardinal Prince Louis, her fair young soul read, all unconsciously, an incoherent Boue-ism, bottomless Mud-volcanoism ; from which she by instinct rather recoiled. However, as above hinted, he is now gone, in these years, on Embassy to Vienna : with ' four-and-twenty pages ' (if our remembrance of Abbe Georgel serve) ' of noble birth/ all in AFFINITIES: THE TWO FIXED-IDEAS. 21 scarlet breeches ; and such a retinue and parade as drowns even his fat revenue in perennial debt. Above all things, his Jesuit Familiar is with him. For so eve^where they must manage : Eminence Rohan is the cloak, Jesuit Georgel the man or automaton within it. Rohan, indeed, sees Poland a-partitioning ; or rather Georgel, with his £ masked Austrian ' traitor £ on the ramparts,' sees it for him : but what can he do ? He exhibits his four-and-twenty scarlet pages, — who, we find, ' smuggle ' to quite unconscionable lengths ; rides through a Catholic procession, Prospective-Cardinal though he be, because it is too long and keeps him from an appoint- ment ; hunts, gallants ; gives suppers, Sardanapalus-wise, the finest ever seen in Vienna. Abbe Georgel, as we fancy it was, writes a Despatch in his name ( every fortnight ; ■ — mentions in one of these, that ' Maria Theresa stands, indeed, with the ' handkerchief in one hand, weeping for the woes of Poland ; 1 but with the sword in the other hand, ready to cut Poland 6 in sections, and take her share.' 1 Untimely joke ; which proved to Prince Louis the root of unspeakable chagrins ! For Minister D'Aiguillon (much against his duty) communi- cates the Letter to King Louis ; Louis to Du Barry, to season her souper, and laughs over it : the thing becomes a court- joke ; the filially-pious Dauphiness hears it, and remembers it. Accounts go, moreover, that Rohan spake censuringly of the Dauphiness to her Mother : this probably is but hearsay an(J false ; the devout Maria Theresa disliked him, and even despised him, and vigorously laboured for his recall. Thus, in rosy sleep and somnambulism, or awake only to quaff the full wine cup of the Scarlet Woman his Mother, and 1 Memoiresde I 9 Abbe Georgel, ii. 1-220. Abbe Georgel, who has given, in the place referred to, a long solemn Narrative of the Necklace Busi- ness, passes for the grand authority on it : but neither will he, strictly taken up, abide scrutiny. He is vague as may be ; writing in what is called the ' soaped-pig ' fashion : yet sometimes you do catch him, and hold him. There are hardly above three dates in his whole Narrative. He mistakes several times ; perhaps, once or twice, wilfully misrepre- sents, a little. The main incident of the business is misdated by him, almost a twelve-month. It is to be remembered that the poor Abba wrote in exile j and with cause enough for prepossessions and hostilities. 22 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. again sleep and somnambulate, does the Prospective-Cardinal and Commendator pass his days. Unhappy man ! This is not a world which was made in sleep ; which it is safe to sleep and somnambulate in. In that 6 loud-roaring Loom of Time ' (where above nine hundred millions of hungry Men, for one item, restlessly weave and work), so many threads fly humming from their c eternal spindles ; ' and swift invisible shuttles, far darting, to the Ends of the World, — complex enough ! At this hour, a miserable Boehmer in Paris, whom thou wottest not of, is spinning, of diamonds and gold, a pal- try thrum that will go nigh to strangle the life out of thee. Meanwhile Louis the Well-beloved has left, forever, his Parc-aux-cerfs ; and, amid the scarce-suppressed hootings of the world, taken up his last lodging at St. Denis. Feeling that it was all over (for the small-pox has the victory, and even Du Barry is off), he, as the Abbe Georgel records, ' made the amende honorable to God 5 (these are his Reverence's own words) ; had a true repentance of three days' standing ; and so, continues the Abbe, c fell asleep in the Lord.' Asleep in the Lord, Monsieur l'Abbe ! If such a mass of Laziness and Lust fell asleep in the Lord, who, fanciest thou, is it that falls asleep — elsewhere ? Enough that he did fall asleep ; that thick- wrapt in the Blanket of the Night, under what keeping we ask not, he never through endless Time can, for his own or our sins, insult the face of the Sun any more ; — and so now w r e go onward, if not to less degrees of beastli- ness, yet at least and worst, to cheering varieties of it. Louis XVI. therefore reigns (and, under the Sieur Gamain, makes locks) ; his fair Dauphiness has become a Queen. Eminence Rohan is home from Vienna ; to condole and con- gratulate. He bears a letter from Maria Theresa ; hopes the Queen will not forget old Ceremonial Fuglemen, and friends of the Dauphiness. Heaven and Earth ! The Dauphiness Queen will not see him ; orders the Letter to be sent her. The King himself signifies briefly that he 6 will be asked for when wanted ! ' Alas ! at Court, our motion is the delicatest, unsurest AFFINITIES: THE TWO FIXED-IDEAS. 23 We go spinning, as it were, on teetotums, by the edges of bottomless deeps. Rest is fall ; so is one false whirl. A mo- ment ago, Eminence Rohan seemed waltzing with the best : but, behold, his teetotum has carried him over ; there is an inversion of the centre of gravity ; and so now, heels upper- most, velocity increasing as the time, space as the square of the time, — he rushes. On a man of poor Rohan's somnolence and violence, the sympathising mind can estimate what the effect was. Con- sternation, stupefaction, the total jumble of blood, brains and nervous spirits ; in ear and heart, only universal hubbub and louder and louder singing of the agitated air. A fall comparable to that of Satan ! Men have, indeed, been driven from Court ; and borne it, according to ability. Choiseul, in these very years, retired Parthianlike, with a smile or scowl ; and drew half the Court host along with him. Our Wolsey, though once an Ego et Rex mens, could journey, it is said without straight-waistcoat, to his monastery ; and there telling beads, look forward to a still longer journey. The melodious, too soft-strung Racine, when his King turned his back on him, emitted one meek: wail, and submissively — died. But the case of Coadjutor de Rohan differed from all these. No loyalty was in him, that he should die ; no self-help, that he should live ; no faith, that he should tell beads. His is a mud-volcanic character ; incoherent, mad, from the very foun- dation of it. Think too, that his Courtiership (for how could any nobleness enter there ?) was properly a gambling specu- lation : the loss of his trump Queen of Hearts can bring nothing but fiat unredeemed despair. No other game has he, in this world, — or in the next. And then the exasper- ating Why f The How came it ? For that Rohanic, or George- lie, sprightliness of the c handkerchief in one hand, and sword in the other,' if indeed that could have caused it all, has quite escaped him. In the name of Friar Bacon's Head, what was, it? -Imagination, with Desperation to drive her, may fly to all points of Space ; — and returns with wearied wings, and no tidings. Behold me here ; this, which is the first grancl certainty for man in general, is the first an