Daybreak the next morning found them issuing forth from the ancient city of Tarifa on a couple of respectable-looking hacks, hired from the innkeeper. Frank had, with his accustomed generalship, managed to secure a position at the off-rein of the Señorita Juana, who was mounted on a beautiful little white barb. Under her side-saddle, of green velvet studded with gilt nails, was a Moorish saddle-cloth, striped with vivid red and white, and fringeddeeply. From the throat-lash of the bridle hung a long tassel, as an artificial auxiliary to the barb's tail in the task of keeping the flies off, further assisted by a tuft of white horse-hair attached to the butt of her whip. She wore a looped hat and white plume, a riding-skirt, and an embroidered jacket of blue cloth, fastened, as was the wrought bosom of her chemise, with small gold buttons. Frank could not keep his eyes off her, now riding off to the further side of the road to take in at once the whole of the beauteous vision, now coming close up to study it in its delightful details.
In front of the pair rode the little Governor, side by side with a Spaniard of about thirty, the long-betrothed lover of Juana—so long, in fact, that he did not trouble himself to secure his authority in a territory so undeniably his own, but smoked his cigar as coolly as if there were no good-looking Englishman within fifty miles of his mistress. He wore garments of the Spanish cut, made of nankeen—the jacket frogged with silver cords, tagged with little silver fishes—the latter appended, perhaps, as suitable companions to the frogs. A hundred yards ahead was an escort of four horse-soldiers with carbines on their thighs, their steel accoutrements flashing ruddily in the level sunlight. Behind Frank came Major Flinders, clean shaved, and with jack-boots and regimental coat restored to something like their pristine splendour; by his side rode another lady, the Señorita Carlota, Juana's aunt, somewhere about thirty years old, plump and merry, her upper lip fringed at the corners with a line of dark down, quite decided enough for a cornet of eighteen to be proud of—a feminine embellishment too common for remark in these southern regions, and, in the opinion of some connoisseurs, rather enhancing the beauty of the fair wearers. She talked incessantly, at first, to my grandfather, who did not understand a word she said, but whose native politeness prompted him to say, "Si, Señorita," to everything—sometimes laying at the same moment his hand on his heart, and bowing with considerable grace. Behind this pair came another interesting couple—viz., two servants on mules, with great saddle-bags stuffed to extreme corpulence with provisions.
It was a glorious morning—a gentle breeze sweeping on their faces as they mounted the hills, but dying into silence in the deep valleys, fresh, and glistening with dew. Sometimes they rode along a rocky common, yellowed with a flowering shrub like furze—sometimes through unfenced fields—sometimes along broad plains, where patches of blossoming beans made the air rich with scent, and along which they galloped full speed, the Governor standing high in the stirrups of his demi-pique, the Señorita's white barb arching his neck till his muzzle touched his chest under the pressure of the long bit, and my grandfather prancing somewhat uneasily on his hard-mouthed Spanish entero, whose nose was, for the most part, projected horizontally in the air. The Major was not a first-rate seat—he rode with a long stirrup, his heel well down, his leg straight, and slanting a little forward, body upright, and elbows back, as may be seen in the plates to ancient works on equitation—a posture imposing enough, but not safe across country: galloping deranged it materially, for the steed was hard-mouthed, and required a long, strong pull, with the body back, and a good purchase on the stirrups. The animal had a most voracious appetite, quite overcoming his sense of what was due to his rider; and, on seeing a tuft of juicy grass, down went his nose, drawing my grandfather, by means of the tight reins, well over the pummel. On these occasions, the Major, feeling resistance to be in vain, would sit looking easily about him, feigning to be absorbed in admiration of the prospect—which was all very well, where there was a prospect to look at, but wore a less plausible appearance when the animal paused in a hollow between two hedges, or ran his nose into a barn-door. But whenever this happened, Carlota, instead of half-smothering a laugh, as a mischievous English girl would, ten to one, have done, sat most patiently till the Major and his steed came to an understanding, and would greet him, as they moved on again, with a good-natured smile, that won her, each time, a higher place in his estimation.
Thus they proceeded till the sun rose high in the heavens, when, on reaching a grove on the edge of one of the plains, they halted under a huge cork-tree, near which ran a rivulet. The cavalcade dismounted—the horses were tethered, the mules disburthened of the saddle-bags, and the contents displayed under the tree; horse-cloths and cloaks were spread around on the ground and a fire of dry sticks was lit on the edge of the stream with such marvellous celerity that, before my grandfather had time to take more than a hasty survey of the eatables, after seating himself on the root of a tree, a cup of steaming chocolate was placed in his hand.
"Confess, Major," said Garry, speaking with his mouth full of sausage, "that a man may lose some of the pleasures of existence by leading the life of a hermit. Don't you feel grateful to me for dragging you out of your cobweb to such a pleasant place as this?"
"'Tis an excellent breakfast," said my grandfather, who had just assisted the Señorita Carlota to a slice of turkey's breast, and himself to an entire leg and thigh—dividing with her, at the same time, a crisp white loaf, having a handle like a teapot or smoothing-iron—"and my appetite is really very good. I should be perfectly easy if I could only understand the remarks of this very agreeable lady, and make suitable replies."
"Let me interpret your sentiments," said Garry; "and though I may not succeed in conveying them in their original force and poetry, yet they shall lose as little as possible in transmission. Just try me—what would you wish to say?"
"Why, really," said my grandfather, pondering, "I had a great many things to say as we came along, but they've gone out of my head. Do you think she ever read Shakspeare?"
"Not a chance of it," said Owen.
Here the Señorita laughingly appealed to Frank to know what my grandfather was saying about her.
"Ah," quoth my grandfather, quoting his friend Shakspeare—"'I understand thylooks—the pretty SpanishWhich thou pourest down from these swelling heavensI amnotperfect in ——'She's an extremely agreeable woman, Frank, I'll be sworn, if one only understood her," quoth my grandfather, casting on her a glance full of gallantry.
The Ensign was not so entirely occupied in prosecuting his own love affair as to be insensible to the facilities afforded him for amusing himself at the Major's expense. Accordingly, he made a speech in Spanish to Carlota, purporting to be a faithful translation of my grandfather's, but teeming, in fact, with the most romantic expressions of chivalrous admiration, as was apparent from the frequent recurrence of the words "ojos," (eyes,) "corazon," (heart,) and the like amatory currency.
"There, Major," said the interpreter, as he finished; "I've told her what you said of her."
The Major endorsed the compliments by laying his hand upon his heart, and bowing with a tender air. Whereupon Carlota, laughing, and blushing a deeper red, made her acknowledgments.
"She says," quoth Frank, "that she knew the English before to be a gallant nation; but that if all the caballéros (that's gentlemen) of that favoured race are equal to the present specimen, her own countrymen must be thrown entirely into the shade."
"Delightful!" cried my grandfather; but it is doubtful whether this expression of pleasure was called forth by the sentiments attributed to the Señorita, or by the crisp succulent tenderness of a mouthful of sucking-pig which was at that moment spreading itself over his palate.
Following up his idea, the mischievous Ensign continued to diversify the graver pursuit of prosecuting his own suit with Juana, by impressing Carlota and the Major with the idea that each was favourably impressed with the other. In this he was tolerably successful—the speeches he made to Carlota, supposed to originate with my grandfather, had a very genuine warmth about them, being, in fact, very often identical with those he had just been making, under immediate inspiration, to his own divinity; while as for the Major, it would have been an insult to the simplicity of that worthy man's nature to exert anygreat ingenuity in deceiving him; it would have been like setting a trap for a snail. So they journeyed on, highly pleased with each other, and occasionally, in the absence of their faithful interpreter, conversed by means of smiles and courteous gesticulations, till my grandfather felt entirely at his ease, and was almost sorry when on the evening of the second day they got to Cadiz.
A whole city full of people condensed into one broad amphitheatre, all bearing a national resemblance to each other in countenance and costume, all apparently animated by the same spirit—for nothing could be more unanimous than the applause which greeted a favourite smilingly crossing the arena, the abuse which overwhelmed an object offensive to the eye of the many-headed, or the ridicule which descended in a joyous uproarious flood on the hapless individual in whose appearance, dress, or manner, anything was detected calculated to appeal to the highly-sensitive risible faculty of a Spanish assembly;—a gay and picturesque mixture of colours, waving and tossing like a garden in a breeze, as the masses of white mantillas, heads black as coal, decorated with flowers and green leaves, red sashes, tufted sombreros, and yellow gaiters, with here and there a blue-and-white soldier standing stiffly up, were agitated by each new emotion—such was the scene that met the eyes of our travellers on entering the bull-ring at Cadiz before the sport commenced.
My grandfather had made his entry in spectacles—appendages highly provocative of the public mirth—and had looked wonderingly for a minute or two through the obnoxious glasses on a sea of faces upturned, sideturned, and downturned, all looking at him, and all shouting some indistinguishable chorus; while the men beat time, each with the long, forked, painted stick, without which no Spaniard possessing sentiments of propriety ever comes to a bull-fight, in a manner most embarrassing to a somewhat bashful stranger, till their attention was luckily diverted to an unhappy man in a white hat, in derision of whom they immediately sang a song, the burden of which was "El de sombrero blanco," (he of the white hat,) the multitude conducting itself throughout like one man.
My grandfather and his friends occupied a distinguished position in a box high above the multitude, and near that of the alcalde. The Señorita Juana looked more lovely than ever in a white dress, over which flowed a white gauzy mantilla, giving a kind of misty indistinctness to the wavy outlines of her figure, and the warm tint of her neck and arms. From her masses of black hair peeped one spot of vivid white, a rosebud; and a green plumy leaf, a favourite ornament with Spanish girls, drooped, bending, and soft as a feather, on one side of her gold-and-tortoiseshell comb. The Major sat beside Carlota, who, naturally frank, and looking upon him now as an old acquaintance, would tap his arm most bewitchingly with her fan, when she wanted to direct his attention to any object of interest. So the Major sat by her, all gallantry and smiles, gazing about him with wonder through the double gold eyeglass, which still, in spite of the late expression of popular feeling, bestrid his nose. He looked with the interest of a child at everything—at the faces and dresses around him, distinct in their proximity, and at those, confused in their details by distance, on the opposite side of the arena. He shared in the distress of an unfortunate person (a contractor for bulls, who had palmed some bad ones on the public) who tried, as he walked conspicuously across the ring, to smile off a torrent of popular execration about as successfully as a lady might attempt to ward off Niagara with her parasol, and who was, as it were, washed out at an opposite door, drenched and sodden with jeers. And when the folding-gates were opened, and the gay procession entered, my grandfather gazed on it with delight, and shouted"Bravo!" as enthusiastically as if he had been a habitual frequenter of bull-rings from his earliest youth. First came the espadas or matadores, their hair clubbed behind like a woman's, dressed in bright-coloured jackets, and breeches seamed with broad silver lace, white stockings, shoes fastened with immense rosettes, and having their waists girt with silk sashes, bearing on their arms the blood-coloured cloaks that were to lure the bull upon the sword-point. Next followed the chulos, similarly attired; then the picadores, riding stiffly, with padded legs, on their doomed steeds; and mules, whose office it was to drag off the dead bulls and horses, harnessed three abreast as in classic chariots, and almost hidden under a mass of gay housings, closed the procession. Marching across the middle of the ring to the alcalde's box, they requested permission to begin, and, it being granted, the picadores stationed themselves at equal distances from each other round the circumference of the arena. Then, at a signal from the alcalde, two trumpeters in scarlet, behind him, stood up and sounded—a man, standing with his hand ready on a bolt in a door underneath, drew it, and pulled the door swiftly back, shutting himself into a niche, as the dark space thus opened was filled by the formidable figure of a bull, who, with glancing horns and tail erect, bounded out, and, looking around during one fierce brief pause, made straight at the first picador. The cavalier, standing straight in his stirrups, his lance tucked firmly under his arm, fixed the point fairly in the shoulder of the brute, who, never pausing for that, straightway upset man and horse. Then my grandfather might be seen stretching far over the front of his box, his eyes staring on the prostrate picador, and his hands clenched above his head, while he shouted, "By the Lord, sir, he'll be killed!" And when a chulo, darting alongside, waved his cloak before the bull's eyes and lured him away, the Major, drawing a long breath, turned to a calm Spaniard beside him, and said, "By heaven, sir, 'twas the mercy of Providence!"—but the Spaniard, taking his cigar from his mouth, and expelling the smoke through his nostrils, merely said, "Bien está," ('tis very well.) Meanwhile, the bull (who, like his predecessor in the china-shop, seemed to have it all his own way) had run his horn into the heart of a second horse, and the picador, perceiving from the shivering of the wounded creature that the hurt was mortal, dismounted in all haste, while the horse, giving one long, blundering stagger, fell over and died, and was immediately stript of his accoutrements. This my grandfather didn't like at all; but, seeing no kindred disgust in the faces round him, he nerved himself, considering that it was a soldier's business to look on wounds and death. He even beheld, with tolerable firmness, the spectacle of a horse dashing blindfold and riderless, and mad with fear and pain, against the barrier—rebounding whence to the earth with a broken shoulder, it was forced again on its three legs, and led stumbling from the ring. But when he saw another horse raised to its feet, and, all ript open as it was, spurred to a second assault, the Major, who hadn't the heart himself to hurt a fly, could stand it no longer, but, feeling unwell, retired precipitately from the scene. On reaching the door, he wrote over the same, with a bit of chalk, part of the speech of Henry V., "the royal imp of fame," to his soldiers at Agincourt:—"He that hath not stomach for the fight,Let him depart——"to the great astonishment of the two Spanish sentries, who gazed on the words as if they contained a magical spell.
Frank sat till it was over—"played out the play." Not that he saw much of the fight, however; he had eyes and speech for nothing but Juana, and was able to indulge hispenchantwithout interruption, as the little Governor took great interest in the fight, and the lover with the silver fishes was a connoisseur in the sport, and laid bets on the number of horses that each particular bull would kill with great accuracy. So the Ensign had it all his own way, and, being by no means the sort of person to throw away this or any other opportunity with which fortune might favour him,got on quite as well, probably, as you or I might have done in his place.
Leaving Cadiz next morning, they resumed the order of march they had adopted in coming—Don Pablo riding, as before, in front with the knight of the silver fishes, discussing with him the incidents of the bull-ring. The old gentleman, though very courteous when addressing the two Englishmen, had but little to say to them—neither did he trouble himself to talk much to the ladies; and when he did, a sharp expression would sometimes slip out, convincing Owen that he was something of a domestic tyrant in private—a character by no means inconsistent with the blandest demeanour in public. The Ensign was at great pains to encourage the Major to be gracious to Carlota. "Get a little more tropical in your looks, Major," he would say; "these Spanish ladies are not accustomed to frigid glances. She's desperately in love with you—pity she can't express what she feels; and she mightn't like to trust an interpreter with her sentiments."
"Pooh, nonsense, boy," said the Major, colouring with pleasure, "she doesn't care for an old fellow like me."
"Doesn't she?—see what her eyes say—that's what I call ocular demonstration," quoth the Ensign. "If you don't return it, you're a stock, a stone." Then he would say something to Carlota, causing her eyes to sparkle, and canter on to rejoin Juana.
It was genial summer-time with Carlota—she had passed the age of maiden diffidence, without having attained that of soured and faded spinsterhood. She had a sort of jovial confidence in herself, and an easy demeanour towards the male sex, such as is seen in widows. These supposed advances of the Major were accordingly met by her rather more than half-way. None but the Major was permitted to assist her into the saddle, or to receive her plump form descending from it. None but the Major was beckoned to her rein when the path was broken and perilous, or caught on his protecting arm the pressure of her outstretched hand, when her steed stumbled over the loose pebbles. None was repaid for a slight courtesy by so many warm, confiding smiles as he. These, following fast one on another, began to penetrate the rusty casing of the Major's heart. On his own ground—that is, in his own quarters—he could have given battle, successfully, to a score of such insidious enemies: his books, his flowers, his pipe, his slippers, and a hundred other Penates would have encircled him; but here, with all his strong palisading of habit torn up and scattered, all his wonted trains of ideas upset and routed by the novelty of situation and scenery, he lay totally defenceless, and open to attack. The circumstance of himself and Carlota being ignorant of each other's language, far from being an obstacle to their mutual good-will, rather favoured its progress. In company with an Englishwoman, in similar circumstances, my grandfather would have considered himself bound to entertain her with his conversation, and, perhaps, have spoiled all by trying to make himself agreeable—it would have been a tax on the patience of both: but being absolved from any such duty in the present instance, he could without awkwardness ride onward in full and silent communion with his own thoughts, and enjoy the pleasure of being smiled upon without being at any pains to earn it.
His note-book, containing an account of the expedition, which I have seen—and whence, indeed, the greater part of this chronicle is gathered—exhibits, at this period of the journey, sufficient proof that the Major enjoyed this new state of being extremely, and felt his intellect, his heart, and his stomach at once stimulated.
"Spain," says my grandfather, in a compendious descriptive sentence, "is a country of garlicky odours, of dirty contentment, of overburthened donkeys, and of excellent pork; but a fine air in the hills, and the country much sweeter than the towns. The people don't seem to know what comfort is, or cleanliness, but are nevertheless very contented in their ignorance. My saddle is bad, I think, for I dismounted very sore to-day. The Señorita mighty pleasant and gracious. I entertain a great regard for her—no doubt a sensible woman, as well as a handsome. A pig to-day at breakfast, the best I have tasted in Spain."
The desultory style of the composition of these notes prevents me from quoting largely from them. Statistics, incidents of travel, philosophic reflections, and the state of his digestive organs, are all chronicled indiscriminately. But, from the above mixture of sentiments, it will be perceived that the Major's admiration for Carlota was of a sober nature, by no means ardent or Quixotic, and pretty much on a par with his passion for pig.
This was far from being the case with Garry, who became more and more enamoured every hour. The Spanish lover continued to conduct himself as if he had been married to Juana for twenty years, never troubling himself to be particularly agreeable or attentive, for which obliging conduct Garry felt very grateful to him. The Major had been too long accustomed to witness Owen's philanderings to see anything peculiar in the present case, till his attention was attracted by a little incident he accidentally witnessed. After the last halt they made before reaching Tarifa, Garry was, as usual, at hand, to assist Juana to her saddle. The strings of her hat were untied, and he volunteered to fasten them; and, having done so, still retaining his hold of the strings, he glanced quickly around, and then drew her blooming face towards his own till their lips met—for which piece of impudence he only suffered the slight penalty of a gentle tap with her whip. My grandfather discreetly and modestly withdrew his eyes, but he was not the only observer. He of the silver fishes was regarding them with a fixed look from among some neighbouring trees, where he had tethered his horse. Probably the Spaniard, with all his indifference, thought this was carrying matters a little too far, for, after conversing a moment with the Governor, he took his place at Juana's side, and did not again quit it till they arrived at Tarifa. Then both he and the Governor took leave of our travellers with a cold civility, defying all Garry's attempts to thaw it, and seeming to forbid all prospect of a speedy renewal of the acquaintance.
At the inn, that night, the Major betook himself to rest early, that he might be ready to start for Gibraltar betimes in the morning, for on the following day their leave was to expire.
He had slept soundly for several hours, when he was awoke by Owen, who entered with a candle in his hand. The Major sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes.
"Time's up, my boy, eh?" said he, with a cavernous yawn. "I should have liked another hour of it, but it can't be helped," (preparing to turn out.)
"I didn't want to spoil your rest last night," said Owen, seating himself on the edge of the bed, "so I said nothing about a mishap that has occurred. That smuggling villain, Francisco, took advantage of our absence to fetch a contraband cargo in the boat from Gibraltar, and has been caught in attempting to run it here."
"God bless me," said my grandfather, "who would have thought it!—and he such a capital cook! But what's to be done? where's the boat?"
"The boat is, for the present, confiscated," said Garry; "but I daresay the Governor would let us have it in the morning, on explaining, and perhaps release Francisco, with the loss of his cargo; but—but—in fact, Major, I don't want the Governor to know anything about our departure."
My grandfather stared at him, awaiting further explanation.
"Juana looked pale last night," said the Ensign after a pause.
The Major did not dispute the fact, though he could not, for the life of him, see what it had to do with the subject.
"She never liked that dingy Spanish lover of hers," said the Ensign, "and her father intends she shall marry him in a month. 'Twould make her miserable for life."
"Dear me," said my grandfather, "how do you know that?"
"She told me so. You see," said Owen, shading the candle with his hand, so that my grandfather couldn't see his face, and speaking hurriedly,"I didn't intend we should start alone—in fact—that is—Juana has agreed to fly with me to Gibraltar."
"Agreed!—fly!"—gasped my grandsire: "what an extraordinary young fellow!"
"She's waiting for us now," resumed Garry, gathering courage after the first plunge into the subject; "we ought to be off before daylight. Oblige me, my dear sir," (smiling irresistibly,) "by getting up immediately."
"And how are we to get away," asked my grandfather, "supposing this insane scheme of yours to be attempted?"
"I've bribed the sentry at Francisco's place of durance," returned the Ensign. "We shall get out of the town the instant the gates are opened; and the boat is tied to the steps, as before, only under the charge of a sentry whom we can easily evade. Every guarda costa in the place was sent out last night to blockade a noted smuggler who has taken refuge in Tangier; so, once out, we are safe from pursuit: I found it all out after you had gone to bed."
The disposition of Major Flinders, as the reader knows, was the reverse of enterprising—he wouldn't have given a straw to be concerned in the finest adventure that ever happened in romance. He paused with one stocking on, inclined, like the little woman whose garments had been curtailed by the licentious shears of the pedlar, to doubt his own identity, and wondering if it could be really he, John Flinders, to whom such a proposition was broached, requiring him to assist in invading the peace of a family. As soon as he recovered his powers of speech, of which astonishment had for a moment deprived him, he began earnestly to dissuade the Ensign from the enterprise; but Owen knew his man too well, and had too much youthful vivacity of will to allow much time for remonstrance.
"Look you, Major," said he, "I'm positive I can't live without Juana. I'll make a bold stroke for a wife. The thing's settled—no going back now for me; and I shall go through with it with or without you. But you're not the man, I'm sure, to desert a fellow in extremity, at a time, too, when the advantages of your experience and coolness are so peculiarly needed. 'Call you that backing of your friends?'"
The compliment, or the quotation, or both, softened the Major. "'Would it were night, Hal, and all well,'" said he, half mechanically following the Falstaffian train of ideas Owen had artfully conjured up, and at the same time drawing on the breeches which that astute youth obsequiously handed to him.
It was still dark when they issued forth into the narrow and dingy streets of Tarifa. My grandfather, totally unaccustomed to visit the glimpses of the moon in this adventurous fashion, was full of strange fears—heard as many imaginary suspicious noises and voices as Bunyan's Pilgrim in the dark valley—and once or twice stopt abruptly and grasped Owen's arm, while he pointed to a spy dogging them in the distant gloom, who turned out to be a door-post. But Owen was now in his element; no tom-cat in Tarifa was more familiar with housetops and balconies at the witching hour than he, and he stepped gaily on. Presently they were challenged by a sentry, to whom Owen promptly advanced and slipped into his itching palm a doubloon, when the trustworthy warrior immediately turned upon his heel, and, walking to the extremity of his post, looked with great vigilance in the opposite direction.
Owen advanced to a grated window and tapped. Immediately the burly face of Francisco showed itself thereat, his white teeth glancing merrily in a glimmer of moonshine. A bar, previously filed through, was removed from the window, and Owen, taking him by the collar to assist his egress, drew him through as far as the third button of his waistcoat, where he stuck for a moment; but the substance was elastic, and a lusty tug landed him in the middle of the narrow street. Receiving Frank's instructions, given in a hurried whisper, to go at once to where the boat lay, and cast her off, ready to shove off on the instant, he nodded and disappeared in the darkness, while Owen and the Major made for the Governor's house.
Arrived near it, Owen gave a low whistle—a peculiar one, that my grandfather remembered to haveheard him practising to Juana on the previous day—when, to the unutterable surprise of the Major,twoveiled figures appeared on the balcony.
"Why, Owen, boy, d'ye see!" quoth the Major, stuttering with anxiety, "who can the other be?—her maid, eh?"—indistinct stage recollections of intriguing waiting-women dawning on him.
"Ahem!—why, you see, Major," whispered Owen, "she wouldn't come alone—couldn't manage it at all, in fact, without the knowledge of her aunt, who sleeps in the next room; so I persuaded Carlotato come too, and gave her a sort of half promise thatyouwouldtake care of her." Here, wishing to cut short a rather awkward explanation, he ran under the balcony—one of the ladies dropped a cord—and Owen producing from under his coat a rope ladder, (he had sat up all night making it,) attached it, and, as soon as it was drawn up, ascended, motioning to my astounded grandfather to keep it steady below. The Major, after a moment's desperate half-resolve to make a hasty retreat from the perilous incidents which seemed momentarily to thicken round him, and leave his reckless friend to his fate, yielded to the force of circumstances, and did what was required of him. Then Owen lifted the ladies, one after the other, over the railing of the balcony, and they swiftly descended. First came Juana, who, scarcely touching the Major's offered hand, lit on the pavement like gossamer; then Carlota descended, and making, in her trepidation, a false step near the bottom, came so heavily on the Major, that they rolled together on the stones. By the time they were on their feet again, Owen had slipped down the ladder, and, taking Juana under his arm, set off rapidly towards the bay.
If anything could have added to the Major's discomfiture and embarrassment, it would have been the pressure of Carlota's arm on his, as she hung confidingly on him—a pressure not proceeding from her weight only, but active, and with a meaning in it; but he was in that state of mental numbness from the successive shocks of astonishment, that, as with a soldier after the first two dozen, any additional laceration passed unheeded. He was embarked in an adventure of which he could by no means see the end; all was strange and dark in the foreground of his future; and if he had been at that moment tried, cast, and condemned for an imaginary crime, he would have been too apathetic to say anything in arrest of judgment.
Silently and swiftly, as a forlorn hope, they passed through the town and along the sandy causeway. The succession of white rolling waves on their left, where extended the full breadth of the Straits, while the bay on their right was almost smooth, showed the wind to be still against them; but it was now so moderate that they might safely beat up for the Rock. Arrived at the head of the stairs leading to the water, they paused in the angle of the wall to reconnoitre. Francisco was lying coiled up in the head of the boat, his hand on the rope, ready to cast her loose, and the boat-hook projecting over the bow. Above them, and behind the wall, at a little distance, they could hear the measured tread of the sentry, and catch the gleam of his bayonet as he turned upon his walk: a few vigorous shoves would carry them outside the sea-wall and beyond his ken. All depended on their silence; and like two stealthy cats did Owen and Juana descend to the boat—the Major and Carlota watching the success of their attempt with protruded necks. Cautiously did Owen stride from the last stair to the deck—cautiously did he transfer Juana to the bark, and guide her aft. The Major was just preparing to follow, when a noise from the boat startled him: Juana had upset an unlucky wine-jar which Francisco had left there. The sentry put his head over the wall, and challenged; Francisco, starting up, shoved hastily off; the sentry fired his piece, his bullet shattering the wine-jar that had caused the mischief. Juana screamed, Owen swore in English, and Francisco surpassed him in Spanish. There was no time to return or wait for the other pair, for the guard was alarmed by the sentry's shot, and their accoutrements might be heard rattling near at hand, as they turned hastily out. Before they reached thewall, however, the boat had disappeared.
Major Flinders watched it till it was out of sight, and, at first, experienced a feeling of despair at being thus deprived of the aid of Garry's boldness and promptitude, and left to his own resources. Presently, however, a gleam of comfort dawned upon him—perhaps Carlota would now abandon the enterprise, and he should thus, at any rate, be freed from the embarrassment her presence occasioned him. In this hope he was shortly undeceived. To have added the shame of failure and exposure to her present disappointment, while an opening to persevere still remained, did not suit that lady's ardent spirit; and whether it was that the unscrupulous Garry had really represented the Major as very much in love, or whether such an impression resulted from her own lively imagination, she certainly thought her companion would be as much chagrined at such a denouement as herself. She displayed a prompt decision in this emergency, being, indeed, as remarkable for presence as the Major was for absence of mind. Taking the Major's arm, she caused him swiftly to retrace his steps with her to the inn where he had slept. As they retreated, they heard the boom of a gun behind them, fired, doubtless, from the Point, at the Fair Unknown. At Carlota's orders, a couple of horses, one with a side-saddle, were speedily at the inn-door; they mounted, and, before the sun was yet risen, had issued forth from the gate of Tarifa, on the road to Gibraltar.
The Major rode beside her like a man in a dream—in fact, he was partly asleep, having been deprived of a large portion of his natural and accustomed rest, and partly bewildered. A few days before he had been the most methodical, unromantic, not to say humdrum, old bachelor in his Majesty's service; and here he was, how or why he did not well know, galloping away at daybreak with a foreign lady, of whose existence he had been ignorant a week before, with the prospect of being apprehended by her relatives for her abduction, and by the Government for assisting in the escape of, a smuggler. When at length roused to complete consciousness by the rapidity of their motion, he positively groaned in anguish of spirit, and vowed internally that, once within the shelter of his own quiet quarters, nothing on earth should again tempt him forth on such harum-scarum expeditions.
It was near noon when they reached Algeçiras, where they stopped to breakfast, both of them rather exhausted with fatigue and hunger. This town stands just opposite Gibraltar, across the bay—the road they had come by forms the base of a triangle, of which Cabrita Point is the apex, the bay washing one side of the projecting coast, the Straits the other. The Major was reserved and embarrassed; there was a tenderness about Carlota's manner that frightened him out of his usual gallantry, and, to avoid meeting her glance, he looked steadily out of the window at the rock of Gibraltar, casting wistful glances at the spot where his quarters lay hidden in a little clump of foliage. Immediately after the meal he quitted the room, on pretence of looking after the horses. He determined to protract their stay in Algeçiras till late in the afternoon, that they might enter Gibraltar in the dusk, and thus avoid awkward meetings with equestrian parties from the garrison, who would then be hastening homewards, in order to be in before gun-fire, when the gates are shut.
On returning, still out of temper, to the room where he had left Carlota, he found her, quite overcome with fatigue, asleep on the sofa. Her head was thrown a little back on the cushion; her lips were just parted, and she looked in her sleep like a weary child. The Major approached on tiptoe, and stood regarding her. His ill-humour melted fast into pity. He thought of all her kindness to him, and, by a sudden soft-hearted impulse, took gently one of her hands projecting over the side of the sofa. Carlota opened her eyes, and squeezed the hand that held hers; whereupon the Major suddenly quitted his hold, and, retreating with great discomposure to the window, did not venture to look at her again till it was time to resume their journey.
At a little distance from Algeçirasis the river Palmones, called by the English the Second River. This was crossed by a floating bridge, pulled from shore to shore by a ferryman warping on a rope extended across. They had just reached the opposite bank of the stream, when Carlota noticed two horsemen galloping fast along the road they had just traversed. A second glance showed them to be Don Pablo and the lover of Juana. The first inquiries of the Governor had led him to suppose that all had escaped in the boat, and it was not till some time after that he had learned the true state of affairs.
The fugitives now hastened on in earnest, and roused their horses to a steady gallop, never pausing till they reached the Guadaranque, or First River, about a mile nearer Gibraltar than the other, and furnished with a similar bridge. The delay of the pursuers at the former ferry had thrown them far in rear; and my grandfather, inspired by the imminence of the peril, now conceived a bright idea—the brightest, probably, that ever flashed upon him—by executing which they might effectually distance their pursuers. Dropping his glove at a little distance from the shore, he sent the ferryman to fetch it, and then pushed off, (Carlota having already embarked,) and warped the bridge to the opposite bank, heedless of the frantic gesticulations of the proprietor, who screamed furiously after them to stop. When he reached the opposite side, he took out his pocket-knife and deliberately cut the rope. Having thus, as it were, blown up the communication in his rear, my grandfather, without the loss of his baggage, continued his retreat to the fortress; while the little Governor, who galloped up just as they were disappearing, was, like Lord Ullin, left lamenting.
The sun was already declining, and threw their shadows far before them on the sands, as they rode along the beach close to the water. The bay at this inner extremity makes a great circular sweep—radii drawn from the rock to different distant points of the arc would be almost equal; and for half an hour they continued to see Gibraltar at nearly the same distance to the right and in front of them, holding itself aloof most provokingly. Twilight descended as they passed the Spanish lines and entered on the Neutral Ground. The Major glanced anxiously at his watch—in a few minutes the gun from Middle Hill would give the signal for shutting the gates, and doom them irretrievably to return into Spain for the night. For the first time in his life Major Flinders really punished his horse, lifting the tired beast along with whip and rein. Carlota's kept easily beside him under her lighter weight, and they rapidly neared the barrier. Just as they passed it, a stream of flame shot from the rock, illumining objects like a flash of lightning;—then came the heavy report of the gun—another minute and the drawbridge at Landport would be lifted; but they were upon it. They dashed across somewhat in the style of Marmion quitting Douglas's castle, "just as it trembled on the rise," and were safe in Gibraltar.
After life's fitful fever, the Major did not sleep well. He had left Carlota comfortably established at the inn; and he now lay nervously thinking how his embarrassment with regard to her was to terminate, especially if Owen did not shortly make his appearance. Then he was worried by doubts as to the fate of the Fair Unknown and her passengers. They might have been recaptured, as escaped smugglers, by a guarda costa—they might be detained in the Straits by adverse winds or calms—they might have run ashore into some bay, and come on overland. This last supposition haunted him most pertinaciously, and he resolved to go up the rock as soon as it should be daylight to look out for them along the road from Spain. He lay tossing restlessly till the morning gun gave the signal of the approach of dawn, and before the echoes died away he had his breeches on.
Night was at odds with morningmy grandfather, with a telescope under his arm, sallied forth and began the ascent. Silence was over the rock, except an occasional sighing of a remnant of night wind that had lost itself among the crags. At first, the only clear outline visible was that of the rugged edge of the rock above against the colourless sky; but as he toiled up the steep zig-zag path, the day kept pace with him—each moment threw a broader light on the scene—blots of shadow became bushes or deep fissures, and new shapes of stone glided into view. The only symptoms of animal life that he beheld were a rabbit that fled silently to his hole, and a great white vulture that, startled from his perch on a grey crag, sailed slowly upward on his black-tipped wings, circling higher and higher, till his breast was crimsoned by the yet unrisen sun.
The path led diagonally to the summit; and, turning a sharp level corner, my grandfather looked perpendicularly down on the Mediterranean, whose lazy waves, sending up a gentle murmur, rippled far below him. On his left, also steep down below him, was the Neutral Ground, level as the sea itself, extending northward into sandy plains, abruptly crossed by tumbled heaps of brown mountains. A reddening of the sky showed that the sun was at hand; and presently the glowing disk came swiftly up from behind the eastern hills; the pale earth shared in the ruddiness of the sky, and a long rosy gleam swept gradually over the breadth of the grey sea, like an unwilling smile spreading itself from a man's lips to his eyes and forehead.
Conspicuous on the highest point in the landscape stood my grandfather, panting with his exertions as he wiped his forehead. After standing for a moment, bronzed in front like a smith at the furnace, face to face with the sun, he turned and swept with his telescope the road into Spain. Early peasants, microscopic as ants, were bringing their fruits and vegetables into the fortress—a laden mule or two advanced along the beach over which the Major had last night galloped—but nothing resembling what he sought was in sight. Then turning completely round, with his face to the path he had just ascended, he gave a long look towards the Straits; and as he did so, the wind, which had shifted to the south-west towards morning, blew gently on his face. A sail or two was discernible in the distance, outward bound, but nothing resembling the cutter. As the Major looked, a signal was made from Cabrita, and directly two feluccas left their station at Algeçiras, and swooped out, like two white birds, as if to intercept some bark yet hidden by the Point. Again my grandfather looked out to the Strait, and presently a small white sail came in sight near Cabrita. For a quarter of an hour he stood steadily, with levelled telescope, and then he was almost sure—yes, he could swear—that he saw the small English ensign relieved against the sail; and above, at the mast-head, the yellow-striped flag that Francisco hoisted before as the mark of a yacht. It was the Fair Unknown—and my grandfather at once comprehended that the pursuers, whom he had escaped the night before, had, on returning to Algeçiras, made arrangements for her capture as soon as she should appear.
The breeze was on her beam, and much fresher with her than farther in the bay, so that the feluccas steered slantingly across her course as she made for the rock. They held on thus, the pursuers and pursued, till within a mile of each other, when the cutter suddenly altered her course to one nearly parallel with that of the feluccas. The latter, however, now gained fast upon her, and presently a puff of smoke from the bow of the foremost was followed by the report of a gun. My grandfather could look no longer through his glass, for his hand shook like a reed, but began, with huge strides more resembling those of a kangaroo than a quiet middle-aged gentleman, to descend the rock. Breathless, he reached his quarters, had his horse saddled and brought out, and galloped off towards Europa.
Europa Point is at the southern extremity of the rock, and commands at once the entrance of the bay and the passage of the Straits. The road to it from the north, where the Major was quartered, affords, for the mostpart, a view of the bay. Many an anxious glance did he cast, as he sped along, at the state of affairs on the water. The feluccas fired several shots, but all seemed to fall wide, and were probably intended only to frighten the chase, out of consideration for her fair freight. Still, however, the English colours floated, and still the cutter held her course.
Some artillerymen and an officer were assembled at the Point as the Major galloped up.
"Can't you fire at 'em," said he, as he drew up beside the battery.
"Too far off," said the Lieutenant, rising from the parapet on which he was leaning, and showing a drowsy unshaven countenance; "we should only frighten them."
"By heavens!" said my grandfather, "'tis horrible. I shall see the boy taken before my eyes!"
"Boy!" quoth the Lieutenant, wondering what particular interest the Major could take in the smuggler. "What boy?"
"Why, Owen of ours—he's running away with a Spanish lady."
"The devil!" cried the Lieutenant, jumping down. "What, Garry Owen!—we must try a long shot. Pull those quoins out," (to a gunner.) "Corporal, lay that gun; a dollar if you hit the felucca. I'll try a shot with this one." So saying, he laid the thirty-two pounder next him with great care.
"Fire!" said he, jumping on the parapet to see the effect of the shot. At the second rebound it splashed under the bows of the leading felucca, which still held on. She was now scarcely three hundred yards from the cutter.
"Why, d—n their impudence!" muttered the Lieutenant, on seeing his warning pass unheeded, "they won't take a hint. Corporal, let drive at 'em."
The Corporal earned his dollar. The shot went through the side of the felucca, on board of which all was presently confusion; in a few minutes it was apparent she was sinking. The other, abandoning the chase, went to the assistance of her consort, lifting the crew out, some of whom were evidently hurt.
"A blessed shot!" cried my grandfather, giving the lucky Corporal a bit of gold; "but I'm glad they're picking up the crew."
The cutter instantly stood in for the harbour, and half an hour afterwards the Major bade his young friend and Juana welcome to Gibraltar.
Carlota was beside herself with joy at seeing the wanderers safe. She first cast herself upon Juana, and cried over her; then embraced the Ensign, who made no scruple of kissing her; lastly, threw herself tenderly upon the Major, who gazed over her head as it lay on his shoulder with a dismayed expression, moving his arms uneasily, as if he didn't know what he was expected to do with them. Every moment it was becoming clearer to him that he was a compromised man, no longer his own property. On his way through the streets that morning he had passed a knot of officers, one of whom he overheard describing "Old Flinders" as "a sly old boy," for that he "had run away with a devilish handsome Spaniard—who would have thought it?" "Ay, who indeed!" groaned the Major, internally. But the seal was put to his doom by the Colonel, who, when he went to report himself, slapped him on the shoulder, and congratulated him on his happiness. "Fine woman, I hear, Flinders—didn't give you credit for such spirit—hope you'll be happy together." The Major, muttering an inarticulate denial, hastily retreated, and from that moment surrendered himself to his fate an unresisting victim.
About dusk that night, Owen came to him.
"By heavens!" the Ensign began, throwing himself into a chair, "I'm the most unlucky scoundrel! Nothing goes right with me. I promised myself that this should be my wedding-night—and here I am, as forlorn a bachelor as ever."
"What has gone wrong?" inquired my grandfather, removing his pipe from his mouth.
"I pressed her with all my eloquence," said Owen; "reminded her of her promise to marry me the day we should arrive here—of the necessity of caring for her reputation, after leaving her father's house and coming here under my protection," (here mygrandfather winced;) "talked, in fact, like an angel who had been bred a special pleader—yet it was all of no use."
"Deliberating about marriage!" said the Major, "after leaving her father and lover for you! What gnat can she be straining at, after swallowing a camel of such magnitude?"
"A piece of female Quixotry," returned Owen. "She says she can't think of such selfishness as being comfortably married herself, while Carlota is so unhappy, and her fate so unsettled." Here he made a significant pause; but my grandfather was immovably silent, only glancing nervously at him, and smoking very hard.
"In fact, she protests she won't hear of marrying me, till you have settled when you will marry Carlota."
"Marry Carlota!" gasped the Major in an agonised whisper.
"Why, you don't mean to say you're not going to marry her!" exclaimed the Ensign, throwing a vast quantity of surprise into his expressive countenance.
"Why—why, what should I marry her for?" stammered the Major.
"Oh, Lord!" said Garry, "here will be pleasant news for her! Curse me if I break it to her."
"But really, now, Frank," the Major repeated—"marriage, you know—why, I never thought of such a thing."
"You're the only person that hasn't then," rejoined Owen. "Why, what can the garrison think, after the way you smuggled her in; what can she herself think, after all your attentions?"
"Attentions, my dear boy;—the merest civility."
"Oh,—ah! 'twas civility, I suppose, to squeeze her hand in the inn at Algeçiras, in the way she told Juana of—and heaven knows what else you may have done during the flight. Juana is outrageous against you—actually called you a vile deceiver; but Carlota's feeling is more of sorrow than of anger. She is persuaded that nothing but your ignorance of Spanish has prevented your tongue from confirming what your looks have so faithfully promised. I was really quite affected to-day at the appealing look she cast on me after you left the room; she evidently expected me to communicate her destiny."
My grandfather smoked hard.
"Lots of fellows would give their ears for such a wife," pursued the Ensign. "Lovelace, the Governor's aide-de-camp, bribed the waiter of the hotel to lend him his apron to-day, at dinner, that he might come in and look at her—swears she's a splendid woman, and that he'd run away with such another to-morrow."
Still my grandfather smoked hard, but said nothing, though there was a slight gleam of pride in his countenance.
"Poor thing!" sighed Garry. "All her prospects blighted for ever. Swears she never can love another."
At this my grandfather's eyes grew moist, and he coughed as if he had swallowed some tobacco-smoke.
"And as for me, to have Juana at my lips, as it were, and yet not mine—for she's as inflexible as if she'd been born a Mede and Persian—to know that you are coming between me and happiness as surely as if you were an inexorable father or a cruel guardian—worse, indeed; for those might be evaded. Major, major, have you no compassion!—two days of this will drive me crazy."
The Major changed his pipe from his right hand to his left, and, stretching the former across the table, sympathetically pressed that of the Ensign.
"Do, Major," quoth Garry, changing his flank movement for a direct attack—"do consent to make yourself and me happy; do empower me to negotiate for our all going to church to-morrow." (My grandfather gave a little jump in his chair at this, as if he were sitting on a pin.) "I'll manage it all; you shan't have the least trouble in the matter."
My grandfather spoke not.
"Silence gives consent," said the Ensign, rising. "Come, now, if you don't forbid me, I'll depart on my embassy at once; you needn't speak, I'll spare your blushes. I see this delay has only been from modesty, or perhaps a little ruse on your part. Once, twice, thrice,—I go." And he vanished.
The Major remained in his chair, in the same posture. His pipe wassmoked out, but he continued to suck absently at the empty tube. His bewilderment and perturbation were so great that, though he sat up till two in the morning, during which time he smoked eleven pipes, and increased the two glasses of grog with which he was accustomed to prepare for his pillow to four, he was still, when he went to bed, as agitated as ever.
In this state of mind he went to the altar, for next day a double ceremony was performed, making Owen happy with Juana, and giving Carlota a husband and me a grandfather. The Major was more like a proxy than a principal in the affair; for Owen, taking the entire management upon himself, left him little more to do than to make the necessary responses.
Carlota made a very good-tempered, quiet, inobtrusive helpmate, and continued to be fond of her spouse even after he was a gray-headed colonel. My grandfather, though credulous in most matters, could with difficulty be brought to consider himself married. He would sometimes seem to forget the circumstance for a whole day together, till it came to be forced on his recollection at bed-time. And when, about a year after his marriage, a new-born female Flinders (now my venerable aunt) was brought one morning by the nurse for his inspection and approval, he gazed at it with a puzzled air, and could not be convinced that he was actually in the presence of his own flesh and blood, till he had touched the cheek of his first-born with the point of his tobacco-pipe, removed from his mouth for that purpose, making on the infant's countenance a small indentation.
The little Governor, Don Pablo, was subsequently induced to forgive his relatives, and frequent visits and attentions were interchanged, till the commencement of the siege put a stop to all intercourse between Gibraltar and Spain.
I have often, on a summer's evening, sat looking across the bay at a gorgeous sunset, and retracing in imagination the incidents I have related. My grandfather's establishment was broken up during the siege by the enemy's shells, but a similar one now stands on what I think must have been about the site of it. The world has changed since then; but Spain is no land of change; and, looking on the imperishable outline of the Andaluçian hills, unaltered, probably, since a time to which the period of my tale is but as yesterday, it is easy for me to "daff aside" the noisy world without, and, dropping quietly behind the age, to picture to myself my old-fashioned grandfather issuing forth from yonder white-walled town of Algeçiras with his future bride.
German Professors are altered men since those joyous days when we drank chopines and swang the schlaeger in the thirsty and venerable University of Saxesaufenberg. We remember them studious bookworms, uneasy when removed from library and lecture-room, their meerschaum their only passion, knowledge their sole ambition, beholding the external world through "the loopholes of retreat,"—the said embrasures being considerably obscured by tobacco-smoke and misty philosophy. Such is the portrait our memory has preserved of them; and we doubt not that its fidelity will be recognised by our brother-burschenof bygone days. But great has been the change. The quality of a German professor now suggests the idea of a red-hot democrat, fanning revolution, pining in prison, or fugitive in foreign lands. The smoking-cap is exchanged for thebonnet rouge, and the silence of the sage for the clamour of the demagogue. This may not be true of all, perhaps not even of a majority, but it is true of a pretentious and prominent minority. The busy, bustling multitude knows nothing of the others.
Professor Stahr, of the University of Oldenburg, is a gentleman chiefly remarkable for his democratic tendencies, and for the fluent correctness of his literary style. Few men write better German, or profess doctrines more revolutionary. His reputation as a literary man rests principally upon a work on Italy, published after a twelvemonth's residence in that country.3As a critic of fine art, he is not without merit. As a politician he is wild and speculative. The revolutionary coterie to which he belongs reckons amongst its members Fanny Lewald, the lively Hebrew socialist, and Moritz Hartmann, the bitter radical. Both of these, especially the former, are his intimate friends, and appear to have been his constant companions during two months of last autumn, spent by him in Paris, and which have given occasion and a title to his latest book. With Mr Hartmann he forgathered at Brussels, early in the month of September, and together they proceeded southwards. In consideration of Professor Stahr's acknowledged abilities, we will not apply to him a common rule, and judge him by the company he keeps. But, in spite of his well-turned periods and general moderation of expression, his book is not pleasant to read. There is an ill-conditioned tone about writers of his political class, extremely trying to the patience and temper of the reader. Convinced of the general unfitness of existing human institutions, and of the necessity for radical changes, they inevitably fall into a cavilling and censorious strain. Viewing the condition of society with a jaundiced eye, they adopt the maxim that whatever is, is wrong. Mr Stahr has hardly entered the railway carriage that is to transport him to Paris, when he shows himself querulous and a grumbler. He hoisted his colours before leaving Brussels. Had we never before heard either of him or his principles, we yet should have been at no loss to discover the latter by certain passages in his very first chapter. Sitting in his inn at eventide, after visiting the monument to the slain of 1830, he reads an account of the Belgian revolution. The Dutch troops, he finds, made but one hundred and twenty-two prisoners, whilst the insurgents captured four hundred and ninety-five. On the other hand, the Belgian killed and wounded exceeded by three hundred those of their opponents. Mr Stahr is ready with an inference from these statistics. It takes the form of a slur upon the soldiers who were doing their duty to their king and country. "The inequality in the number of prisoners may well arise from the circumstance that the Dutch, as fighters for loyal tranquillity and order, were least disposed to give quarter. And soldiers against men without uniform—one knows that!" Then he falls foul of the writer of the narrative, for attributing to Providence the preservation of the royal palace, and other public buildings, to which the Dutch attempted to set fire; and, gliding thence into religious speculations, he gets very profound, and rather profane, so that we are not sorry when the current of his ideas is diverted into a more commonplace channel, by the visit, at Valenciennes, of the French customhouse officers, on the look-out for Belgian cigars and reprints. He is sore at this irksome visitation—wonders that powerful France so long endures the literary piracies of her little neighbour—and finally prophesies the abolition of all customhouses. "A time will come," he says, "when this system of legally privileged waylaying will appear just as fabulous to the people of Europe, as do now to us the highway depredations of the robber-knights." Pending the advent of that desirable state of things, he revenges himself on a fellow-traveller for his customhouse annoyances. A German book which he had left in the carriage on alighting had disappeared, and could not be recovered. Adouanierhad perhaps taken it for a contraband commodity. He should have declared it, opined a fat Frenchman in the same carriage. Mr Stahr was indignant. It was a German book, he tartly replied, and was not printed at Brussels, but at Leipzig—a place, he added, which must still be pretty well rememberedin France! A polite and tasteful allusion which did the German radical infinite credit, and to which the fat Frenchman might fairly have retorted, "Jena," and half a dozen other significant names, instead of holding his tongue, and leaving his fellow-traveller to digest at leisure his loss and his ill-humour.
Mr Stahr's volumes, composed of letters to friends, are desultory, and for the most part slight. Picture galleries are favourite haunts of his: now he criticises a pamphlet, now a play; he moralises, after his own peculiar fashion, in deserted palaces, assists at a banquet of workmen, witnesses extravagant dances at Mabille, sits by the bedside of the infirm and suffering Heine. His first walk in Paris was to the Palais Royal, after nightfall. "Stahr," said his companion to him suddenly, on the way, "this is the Place de Grève!"—"Were I to live a century," exclaims the impressionable professor, "I should never forget the shudder that came over me at these words." And he breaks into a tumid rhapsody about the lava-streams of the great European volcano, talks of the guillotine, tells the well-known story of Favras, and proceeds to the Palais Royal, where, at ten o'clock at night, he is unable to obtain a beef-steak for supper, and whose glory he accordingly declares departed. Returning to their quarters, at a hotel beyond the Seine, the two Germans get bewildered in the labyrinth of the Quartier Latin, and are indebted for guidance to some artisans, whose "Good night,citoyens!" at parting, again thrills the sensitive Stahr. The historical and fanciful associations that crowd upon his mind are of a less practical nature than the reflection suggested to his companion by the Republican mode of address—"We must exchange our grey Calabrian hats" (the sort of bandit sombreros affected by travelling students and red republicans) "for the loyal hats of order, or soon we shall have Louis Napoleon's police at our heels." Thus spoke Mr Hartmann—who has a natural aversion to all police, and who gladly sneers at the party of Order, and at Louis Napoleon as its representative. Mr Stahr professes no great liking or tenderness for the chief of the Republic—the first gendarme in France, as he calls him, meaning thereby to cast opprobrium on the President, gentlemen of his political complexion having an instinctive detestation of gendarmes. He saw him for the first time at the celebrated review held at Satory, on the 10th October 1850. On his way thither, Mr Stahr joined in conversation with peasants, who were flocking from all the country round to see the President and the military pageant. Many of them had sons in the regiments that were to be reviewed. They made no mystery of their political creed. It was simple enough: "Peace and moderate taxation," said they, "is what we want. He who gives us those two things is our man, whether as King or President matters not." The review over, the throng of spectators drew up to see Louis Napoleon. After the Minister of War, d'Hautpoul, and the then-all-powerful Changarnier, had passed, each with his staff, "there came by, mounted on a tall gray horse, the elect of six millions of voters. Judiciously-distributed adherents waved their hats and shouted, at the top of their voices, 'Long live the Emperor! Vive Napoleon!' The people were mute. It was a laughable farce. The hero of Strasburg and Boulogne, mounted on a tall charger, in a brilliant general's uniform, the broad riband of the Legion of Honour over his shoulder, in plumed hat and jackboots, was the very model of a circus equestrian." An air of helplessness and exhaustion, according to Mr Stahr, was the main characteristic of the President's appearance. "I stood near enough," he continues, "to see him well, and never did I behold a more unmeaning countenance. An unwholesome grey-brown is its prevailing tint. Of likeness to the great Emperor there is scarcely a trace." There is no chance, Mr Stahr declares, of such a person as Louis Napoleon putting the republic in his pocket. Having given his opinion of the President's exterior, he proceeds in the next chapter to sketch his character, as described by a person who had known him from his youth. "He is naturally goodtempered and harmless," saidthis anonymous informant, "and by no means without ability. But he is tainted with the moral corruption of all European societies, Italian, French, and English. He has thepourritureof the drawing-room education of all nations. Still he is not devoid of sense, nor of a certain goodness of disposition. He can weep, unaffectedly weep, over a touching case of wretchedness and misery, and he willingly shows clemency, when asked, even to political opponents. But no reliance can be placed in him. In a word, his character is that of a woman. As a result of his wandering and adventurous existence, he appears to-day as a German, to-morrow as a Frenchman, and the day after to-morrow as an Englishman or Italian. He is wholly without fixed principles, and without moral stay. If one represents to him the immorality of an act, he will laugh and say, 'Bah!what is that to me?' But the very next day you shall find him as much oppressed with moral scruples as any German candidate. He has the physical courage of his unusual bodily strength—corporis robore stolide ferox—supported by a fatalist belief in his star; and this belief, which has lately acquired increased strength by his extraordinary vicissitude of fortune, blinds him to his real position, and renders him deaf to the warning voices of his few honest friends. In this respect his mother, who unceasingly stimulated his ambition, did him much harm. Personally he is modest and unassuming, but he is madly vain of his name and of his legitimate claims. That he has done and continues to do himself grievous harm, as it is universally said, by excesses of the most unrefined description, and by opium-smoking, seems unfortunately to be only too true. For the change in him since his youth has been altogether too great. Nevertheless, he is much less the tool of others than might be supposed. He has a way of half-closing his inexpressive light-blue eyes, which he has adopted to prevent persons from reading his thoughts. His chief delusion is that the army is unconditionally devoted to him. This is by no, means the case." We give this curious sketch, in which truth and malignity are ingeniously blended, for no more than it is worth. The reader will have little difficulty in sifting the grain from the chaff, the idle or malicious gossip from the well-founded observations. Mr Stahr supports the assertion of the indifference of the French army to the commonplace nephew of their great idol, by anecdotes derived from personal experience. After the review, he dined for some days in company with three hussar officers, quartered in the house he lived in. His account of them hardly agrees with the popular notion of French officers. "They are modest, reserved, and serious in manner. Nowhere in Paris have I found a trace of that overweening presumption by which German officers, especially cavalrymen, seek to give themselves importance attables d'hôteand other public places. We spoke of yesterday's manœuvres, and I paid them a compliment on the really splendid bearing of the troops and the capital equipments. There are no longer grounds to depreciate the French cavalry. Africa has been an excellent school for them. 'But there was one thing wanting,' I remarked—'namely, enthusiasm.' 'You are quite right, sir,' replied one of the officers; 'but there is not much to be enthusiastic about in the position in which we are.' The speaker was a thorough soldier, and anything but an upholder of revolutionary or socialist-democratic ideas. The supporters of the latter he invariably spoke of as 'les Voraces,' and bitterly complained that for years past he and his comrades had had nothing else to do than to 'faire la chasse aux voraces!' But with the 'Nephew of the Uncle' none of the officers showed the least sympathy. Concerning him they all observed a very eloquent silence." In contrast to the ridicule and censure levelled by Mr Stahr at the more recent portion of Louis Napoleon's career, are some anecdotes he tells us of his earlier years. "In his youth," he says, "he must have been very amiable. I have had opportunity to look through a collection of letters written by him to a friend of his family, and extending over more than twenty years. It included even noteswritten when he was a boy of eleven, some of them in the German language and character. Louis Napoleon is known to be a perfect master of German. The most pleasing and amiable of these letters were a series written from his prison at Ham. Good feeling, hearty gratitude for proofs of faithful adherence and for affectionate little services, and a deep dejection at his lot, were the characteristics of these letters. He read and studied a great deal at Ham, especially military science, but also poetry and literature. Within those prison-walls he now and then began to distrust the 'star' of his destiny." These letters were doubtless the same spoken of elsewhere by Mr Stahr as filling several volumes, and as having been addressed to Madame Hortense Cornu, a well-known writer on fine art, who was long attached to the household of Queen Hortense. She had known Louis Napoleon from his childhood, and retained sufficient influence over him to obtain the rescue from the hands of the Roman priesthood of the Italian republican Cernuschi. The letters, says Mr Stahr, abound in evidence of the esteem and gratitude entertained by the French President for the staunch and trusty friend of his youth. "This correspondence, fragments of which I was favoured with permission to read, includes all the epochs of his adventurous life. It ceases with the day when the infatuated man, having attained to power, laid hands upon the right of universal suffrage which had raised him from the dust. Madame Cornu's last letter was a solemn exhortation to abstain from that step. She laboured in vain, for fate is stronger than humanity. But it is an honourable testimony to the originally good disposition of the blinded man that he did not withdraw his favour from his tried friend. A proof of this is to be found in Cernuschi's deliverance."
During a visit paid by Mr Stahr to Alexander Dumas, the French romance-writer told the German professor an anecdote of Louis Napoleon and the late Duke of Orleans, which is curious, if true. Perhaps it is as well to bear in mind, whilst reading it, that its narrator is a story-teller by profession, and the most imaginative and decorative of historians. Dumas, it appears, had been long acquainted with the imperial pretender and his mother; was aware of the rash schemes of the Prince, then meditating the Strasburg expedition; and advised him, by letter, to abandon them, or at least to adopt a totally different mode of carrying them out. If he would uproot (deraciner) the dynasty of Louis Philippe, wrote Dumas, he must try very different means. He must endeavour to obtain the revocation of his sentence of exile, get himself elected member of the French Chamber of Deputies, and so follow up his plans in opposition to the ruling dynasty. Deaf to this advice, which was certainly sensible enough, Louis Napoleon made his ridiculous attempt at Strasburg, and was taken prisoner. Thereupon his mother, Queen Hortense, hurried to the neighbourhood of Paris under an assumed name, and with one confidential attendant. This person she sent to Dumas, to entreat him to apply to his patron, the Duke of Orleans, to know what the Court had decided with respect to the prisoner's fate. Dumas wrote forthwith for an audience; the Duke received him with a smile. "Well!" he said, "so yourprotégéhas not succeeded inuprootingus?" "Prince, you know——?" stammered the terrified novelist. "Do you suppose we are so badly served for our money as not to know what brings you here, and where Queen Hortense is at this very moment?" After a short pause, during which he enjoyed the embarrassment of Dumas, the Duke continued, "Tell Madame Hortense," he said, "that the Orleans do not yet feel themselves strong enoughto have their Duke d'Enghien."
"It is a bitter answer, your royal highness," replied Dumas, taking his leave, "but still it will console the mother's heart."