In their mails were found eighteen thousand sequins—an unexpected but most seasonable accession of fortune. The brothers quickly buried the bodies and all their habiliments. Save the gold, which was carefully concealed, there remained no trace of the terrible deed, and as it occurred unknown to all save themselves, in that solitary little farm amid the savage mountain solitude, no suspicion of the circumstance fell on them.
Thus, instead of taking to flight, the Greeks remained quietly where they were. The Pacha of Bosnia made every inquiry after the three missing Turks, who were his friends. Suspicions somehow fell on other parties, who were dragged to Traunick, and executed with great barbarity, while Socivisca wedded the girl he loved, and lived with his father and brothers in comparative ease and comfort.
About a year after the triple assassination, some imprudence of Socivisca, in displaying the latent pride and ferocity of his character, together with the unusual amount of money the family were enabled to spend, excited the surprise and then the ready suspicions of the pastoral people around them.
Some whisper of these suspicions reached Socivisca; so by his advice the whole family abandoned the farm in the night, and, taking with them only their gold and their arms, departed from the mountains towards the Venetian territory.
The weather was severe, the roads were rough, and the elder Socivisca, unable to sustain privations so unwonted at his time of life, expired of toil by the wayside, and was hastily buried by his four sons in a wild and solitary place.
Entering the territories of the republic, where they were in safety, in the year 1745, they took up their habitation in the town of Imoski, which is now in what is termed Austrian Dalmatia, and on the borders of Bosnia; but in those days the old fortress on the hill—the site of the ancient Novanium—bore the flag of Venice.
Here they gave themselves out to be traders, and opened a bazaar, which they stored with rich merchandise; they built a large house, and soon became almost wealthy; but the easy life of a merchant by no means suited the temperament of Socivisca and his brethren,—for the warrior shepherds pined for their mountain home and the forests of the Illyrian shore.
They sold their house, the bazaar, and its goods, and attended by stout fellows, whose spirit was something like their own, they returned again to Montenegro, and commenced a series of those forays and surprises (against the pacha) in which the Black Mountaineers delight, and in the conduct of which they peculiarly excel; and during the ensuing summer they contrived to massacre, in various ways, about forty Turks, as it was against them, and them only, that all the hatred of Socivisca was directed.
The habits to which he had been accustomed from infancy pre-eminently fitted him for the life of a wandering guerrilla. "A Montenegrin," says Broniewski, a Russian traveller, "is always armed, and carries about, during his most peaceful occupation, a rifle, pistols, a yataghan, and cartouch-box. They spend their leisure from boyhood in firing at a target. Inured to hardships and privations, they perform, without fatigue, long and forced marches, climb the steepest rocks with facility, and bear with patience hunger, thirst, and every kind of privation. They cut off the heads of those enemies whom they take with arms in their hands, and spare only those who surrenderbeforebattle."
Seeking no mercy, they yielded none; and if one of their number was wounded severely, his comrades cut off his head; and when not tending their flocks, like the Circassians, they spent their whole time in forays against the invaders of the Black Mountains. But after a time Socivisca grew weary of slaughtering and beheading the Turks, and returned once more to his wife and children at Imoski, where he remained till 1754, engaged in trade, though now and then he slung his long rifle on his shoulder, stuck his dagger and pistols in his girdle, and crossed the Bosnian frontier to indulge in his favourite pastime of slaying the Turks.
In all his dealings and adventures, whether as a merchant or guerrilla robber, it could never be discovered that he wronged in the least degree any subjects either of the Austrian empire or of the Venetian republic.
Meantime, two of his brothers married, and Adrian, the youngest, joined the Aiducos, a band of Morlachians, who had leagued themselves together for the express but hazardous purpose of preventing the Turks from crossing what they considered the frontier of their own country; in short to defend the wooded passes of the Black Mountains. Brave, rash, cunning, treacherous, and cruel, these Morlachians are a mixture of Hungarian, Greek, and Venetian blood, and their religion is a mere mass of superstition, partly Christian and partly Oriental.
The youth became the comrade of a Morlachian of the Greek church, and chose him for hisprobatim. This choice of friendship was always consecrated by a solemn ceremony at the altar of the nearest church, before which they knelt, each holding a lighted taper, whilst the priest sprinkled them with holy water and blessed the compact.
United thus, theprobatimsare bound for life to assist each other in war or peace, in danger or adversity, against all men whatsoever. The young mountaineer, however, made an unfortunate choice of a friend, for the probatim lured him to his own house, gave him drugged wine, and for a sum of money delivered him over, bound hand and foot, to the Pacha of Traunick, which is one of the six military pachalics into which Bosnia is divided.
After exposing the poor youth, who was a model of manly beauty, stripped and nude before the people, the pacha put him to death, amid the most exquisite tortures that the Oriental mind can suggest.
On hearing of this atrocity Socivisca was filled with rage and grief; but dissembling, he armed himself fully, and travelled without stopping until he reached the residence of the false probatim, whose father, a subtle old Morlachian, received him with an air of such grief and commiseration that he succeeded completely in making our mountaineer believe that the son was innocent of the crime laid to his charge by common rumour. The probatim next appeared, and actedhis partso well, and shed so many tears, that Socivisca, confounded and convinced, gave him his hand, and consented to dine with the family. Then the young Morlachian said that, "in honour of such a guest, he would kill the best lamb in his flock;" and he went forth, but instead of going to his pastures, he rode on the spur twelve miles to have a conference with the mir-alai who commanded a body of Turkish horse on the bank of the Danube, and to inform him of where Socivisca was to be found, receiving from the officer a handsome sum for his second act of treachery.
The day wore on, and evening came without either the lamb or the probatim appearing. The wily host, who knew what was on thetapis, left nothing unsaid to satisfy the doubts of Socivisca, who, after night-fall, retired to his bedchamber, but not to repose; for strange and unbidden forebodings of coming evil tormented him. He dared not sleep, and he seemed to hear the voices of his wife and children mingling with the wind that shook the woods, and with the tread of coming enemies. His dogs, also—two of that Molossian breed which is unsurpassed for strength and ferocity—warned him by their snorts and restlessness of approaching danger,—for dogs at times are said to have strange instincts. At last, unable to endure the suspicions of peril and treachery, he sprang from bed, dressed himself in the dark, and sought for his arms, butthey had been removed!
Musket, pistols, yataghan, and all were gone. He called on his host repeatedly, but without receiving an answer. Then, inspired by rage and the conviction that, like his brother, he had been snared to his doom, with a flint and tinder-box, he lighted a lamp, went forth to search the house, and soon appeared by the bedside of his host.
"Wretch!" he exclaimed as he seized him by the beard, "my arms—where are they? Speak ere it be too late for us both!"
Every moment expecting to hear his son return with a party of Turks, the Morlachian attempted to expostulate and to temporize; but Socivisca's eye fell on a small hatchet that lay near, and snatching it up, with a terrible malediction, he cleft the old traitor's skull to the chin.
On this a female servant, dreading her master's fate, gave Socivisca his arms, and he fled into the woods close by, where he lurked long enough to see the probatim arrive with a party of Timariots, who surrounded the house. On this the fugitive withdrew and retired towards the mountains, swearing by every saint in his church to have a terrible revenge!
Assembling his followers, he descended in the night, and guarding all the avenues to prevent escape, he set fire to the house of the probatim, who perished miserably with sixteen of his family, all of whom were burned alive, save a woman, who was killed by a rifle-shot when in the act of leaping from a window with an infant in her arms.
After these affairs the Pacha of Bosnia, a three-tailed dignitary who resided at Traunick, scoured the country with his Timariots, and made such incredible efforts to capture Socivisca, that though the latter multiplied his slaughters, raids, and robberies, he was ultimately driven, with his brothers, his wife, and two children (a son and daughter), over the Montenegrin frontier to Karlovitz, a small place in the Austrian territory, famous only as the scene of Prince Eugene's victory over the Ottoman troops in the early part of the last century. The Hungarians being, like the Illyrians, of Slavonian blood, there he found a comfortable shelter for three years under the protection of the Emperor Francis I. and the Empress-Queen, and during that time his conduct and life were alike blameless and without reproach. One of his brothers, however, having strayed across the frontier, fell into the hands of the Turks, and would have died a miserable death, had his escape not been favoured by one who proved friendly to him, a Timariot named Nouri Othman.
In October, 1757, Osman III. died, and was succeeded by Mustapha, son of the deposed Sultan Achmet. Karlovitz is only forty miles from the Bosnian frontier; so the pacha, who never lost sight of Socivisca, anxious to please the new sovereign and display his activity, by a lavish disposal of gold, and by the aid of some person or persons unknown, had the exile betrayed and made prisoner. He ordered him to be conveyed at once to Traunick, and to be placed in the same prison where his younger brother perished so miserably.
Though elaborately tied and bound, by some of that skill which the rope-tricksters display in the present day, he contrived,en route, to get free, and, escaping, reached Karlovitz, where he had the unhappiness to find that, by a singular stroke of misfortune, his wife and two children had in the interim fallen into the hands of the pacha, that in his flight he had actually passed them on the road, and that they were now in the strong prison of Traunick, from which escape or release seemed alike hopeless.
By messengers from Karlovitz he strove to negotiate for their release, but the pacha was inexorable. He then wrote the following letter, which appeared in a newspaper for March, 1800, where it was given "as a curious specimen of social feeling operating on a rugged and ardent disposition;" moreover, it is no bad specimen of the outlaw's literary power:—
"I am informed, O Pacha of Bosnia, that you complain of my escape; but I put it to yourself, what would you have done in my place? Would you have suffered yourself to be bound with cords like a miserable beast, and led away without resistance by men who, as soon as they arrived at a certain place, would put you to death?
"Nature impels us to avoid destruction, and I have acted only in obedience to her laws.
"Tell me, Pacha, what crime have my wife and little children committed that, in spite of law and justice, you should retain them like slaves? Perhaps you hope to render me more submissive; but you cannot surely expect that I shall return to you and hold forth my arms to be loaded with fresh bonds.
"Hear me then, Pacha! You may exhaust on them all your fury without producing the least advantage. Onmy part, I declare I shall wreak my vengeanceon all Turkswho may fall into my hands, and I will omit no means of injuring you!
"For the love of God restore to me, I beseech you, my blood! obtain my pardon from my sovereign, and no longer retain in your memory my past offences; and I promise that I willthenleave your subjects in tranquillity, and even serve them as a friend when necessary.
"If you refuse this favour, expect from me all that despair can prompt! I shall assemble my friends, carry destruction wherever you reside, pillage your property, plunder your merchants; and from this moment, if you pay no attention to my entreaties, I swear that I will massacre every Turk that falls into my hands."
As Socivisca had been doing this for so many years past, perhaps the pacha thought compliance would not make much difference; so this letter, like its preceding messages, he received with contempt, swearing by the "beard of the sultan to listen neither to the threats nor entreaties of a common robber." So Socivisca performed to the full all that he had named and threatened. At the head of a body of Greeks and Montenegrins he ravaged all the Bosnian frontier, slaying and decapitating every Mussulman who fell into his hands. Seeking no quarter and giving none, as before, flames and rapine marked his path wherever he went.
Many of his forays were made near the Lake of Scutari, in concert with the Montenegrins, whom the Russians supplied with arms and artillery to add to the troubles of the Pacha of Bosnia, whose people ere long on their knees besought him to yield up the wife and children of Socivisca, and save them from a scourge so terrible.
Still the pacha refused; but suddenly the indomitable Socivisca appeared with his hardy Aiducos before the walls of Traunick, and, by a wonderful combination of force and stratagem, the gates were stormed, the guards dispersed, and he carried off his wife, his son, and daughter to a place of safety beyond the frontier.
In retiring from Traunick, at a wild place near Razula, his people captured one of the Turkish Timariots, in the service of the pacha, and would instantly have put him to death had not the brother of Socivisca recognized in him the man who had favoured his escape a short time before,—Nouri Othman. These Timariots were soldiers, who clothed, armed, and accoutred themselves out of their pay, and were under the immediate command of the sanjiac or bey, and each maintained under him a certain number of militiamen, as they were, in fact, high-class Turkish cavaliers. Those on the Hungarian frontier had each an income of 6000 aspres, a coin then worth one shilling and threepence British money.
In gratitude the mountain warrior permitted Othman to escape; and while Socivisca was at prayers—a duty which he never omitted before a meal—the prisoner was set at liberty, a fleet horse was given him, and from the camp of the outlaws he spurred towards Traunick. Against this act of generosity the Aiducos of the band exclaimed loudly; and a nephew of Socivisca went so far as to draw from his girdle a long brass-butted pistol, with which he struck his uncle on the face; the latter, infuriated by such an insult from a junior, shot him through the heart, and was compelled to fly from the troop.
The nephew was buried as his grandfather had been, in a grave by the wayside; but this family quarrel and double misfortune affected Socivisca so much that he returned to Karlovitz, relinquishing alike his life of war and outrage for a time, but for a time only; for, fired with enthusiasm on hearing that Stephano Piciola (known as Di Montenero), so often victorious over the Turks, had made himself master of all Albania, in 1770, he issued forth again at the head of his Aiducos, and scoured the Bosnian frontier, shooting down every Turk whom he met.
In his fiftieth year, after having led a life of such danger and strife—after shedding so much blood, and during a period of thirty years since the slaughter of the three Turkish brothers at his father's farm, having plundered so much, so freely had he spent his cash among his friends and followers, that he found his exchequer reduced to only six hundred sequins.
To secure these, he entrusted three hundred to the care of a kinsman and the rest to a friend, both of whom absconded with their trust to the shelter of the pacha, and left him in abject poverty in the small town of Grachaez, in the province of Carlstadt, on the military frontier of Croatia.
In the year 1775 the Emperor Francis I., when passing through the province, wished to see the famous predatory warrior of whom he had heard so much, and visited his humble abode at Grachaez. There he was so greatly struck with the simple dignity, the resolute but respectful demeanour of the white-bearded partisan, that he presented him with a handsome sum of money, and asked him to show his numerous wounds, and to detail the chief events of his life.
Socivisca did so, with so much simplicity and modesty that the Emperor, whom he pleased and amused, and who was looking forward to the capture of the Bukovine and other districts from the Turks, made him an offer of service, and assigned him an important military command upon the Hungarian frontier, opposed to the great pachalics of Bosnia and Servia.
In the exercise of this office* he was alive at Grachaez in 1777, after which year his name can no more be traced in the histories, papers, or periodicals of the time, so that we are unable to say when he died.
* "Arambassa of Pandonas" it is styled in the English newspapers—a title we frankly confess ourselves unable to understand.
Such was the wild, romantic, and singular story of a mountain robber, whose life ultimately became productive of public utility; who enjoyed the favour and protection of Francis I. and Maria Theresa; and whose career, in his unrelenting animosity to the Turks, presents a curious mixture of patriotism and ferocity, religious enthusiasm and the long-engendered rancour of rival and antagonistic races.
AN EPISODE OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.
CHAPTER I.
In the spring of the year 1870, when my merry Paquette and I used to laugh at the cartoons of theKladderadatch, representing King William lowering a mannikin in regimentals gently, by the spike of his helmet, into a huge chair, inscribed "Spanien," we little foresaw the horrors that were to come, or the days when we might tremble at the warlike news of the officialStaatsanzieger.
We had been married a year, and were so happy in our pretty little house at Blankenese (a short distance from Hamburg), where all the sloping bank above the Elbe is covered with rich green copsewood, from amid which peep out the tiny red-tiled cottages of the fishermen; while over all tower the white-walled villas of those opulent merchants whose names stood so high in the Neuerwall or the Admiralitatstrasse, and higher still in the Bourse of the Free City—free now only in name, as it has become, since the Holstein war, an integral portion of the Prussian Empire.
Paquette Champfleurie was my first real love; yet, though still little more than a girl, she was a widow when we married, and it all came to pass in this fashion, for we had indeed much sorrow before our days of joy arrived. When I, Carl Steinmetz—for such is my name, though no relation to the great Prussian general—was but a lad in a merchant's office, in the quaint old gable-ended and timber-built street called the Stubbenhuk, I had learned to love Paquette, then a boarder in a fashionable school on the beautiful Alsterdam. Our interviews were stolen; our intercourse most difficult; for her kinswoman, the Gräfine von Spitzberger—a reduced lady of rank, with whom she was placed for educational purposes—watched her with the eyes of a lynx. But what will not love achieve?
Paquette, a lively, dark-eyed, and chestnut-haired girl from Lorraine, with a piquant little face that was not by any means French in contour or expression, and I, a sharp-wittedburschenfresh from Berlin, soon found means for prosecuting our affair of the heart, from the time when our eyes first met on a Sunday evening in St. Michael's Kirche, to that eventful hour when, after many a note exchanged or concealed in a certain hollow tree near the Lombardsbrücke, we plighted our troth in the little grove near Schiller's bronze statue, with no witnesses but the quiet stars overhead, and the snow-white swans that floated on the blue current of the Alster.
But sorrow soon came to rouse us from our dreams; for three weeks after that happy evening her father took her home, without permitting us to say farewell, and ere long I learned that she had become the wife of Baptiste Graindorge, a wealthy merchant of Lorraine! With these tidings the half of my life seemed to leave me. They cost me many a secret tear, and much jealous bitterness, though I knew that French girls have no freedom of choice in matrimony; and I loathed the odious Graindorge in my heart, while bending resolutely over my desk, in the dingy and gloomy little office in the noisy Stubbenhuk—bending also every energy to amass money, though for what purpose now I scarcely know. But fortune favoured me.
I became ere long a junior partner in the firm under whom I had worked as a clerk, and the same year saw Paquette free; for our horrible Graindorge had died abroad of fever, at the French colony of Senegal, and she became mine—mine after all! A widow, no scheming father could interfere with her then.
In the whole of busy Hamburg there could be no happier couple than we were—and this was but a year ago. Wedded, we visited every place where we had been wont to meet by stealth, in terror of the old Gräfine—the leafy arcades of the Young Maiden's Walk, the Botanical Gardens, the groves that cover all the old mounds about the Holstein Wall, and the banks of the Alster, while Michael's Kirche was indeed a holy place to us, for there we had first met.
One morning in July of last year—ah, I shall never forget it—we were at breakfast together in the dining-room of our cottage at Blankenese, and prior to taking the Sporvei 'bus for the city, I was skimming over theStaatsanzieger, which was then beginning to be full of threatening news concerning the Spanish succession, and calling on Prussia to rouse herself, as all France, or Paris, at least, was shouting "A Berlin!" and "To the Rhine!" The atmosphere was deliciously warm; the slender iron casements were wide open; the fragrant roses and jessamine clambered thickly round them, and the drowsy hum of the bees mingled with the sounds that came, softened by distance, from the vast shining bosom of the Elbe, where ships, with the flags of all the world, were gliding, some towards Jonashafen and the city, others downward to the North Sea; and opposite lay the flat but green and lovely coast of Hanover, studded with pretty red villages, church-spires, and windmills whirling in the sunny air.
My heart felt happy and joyous, and Paquette was looking her loveliest in a light muslin morning dress; her bright brown hair, her pure complexion, and her dark, laughing eyes, making her seem a very Hebe, as she poured out my coffee, buttered the little brown German rolls, and chirruped about how we should spend the evening, after she had joined me in the city, and we had dined, as we frequently did, under the shady verandah of the pleasant Alster Pavilion, surrounded by swans and pleasure boats.
"Where shall we go, Carl, darling?" she continued—"to the Circus Renz?"
"No, Paquette; I am sick of the horsemanship and the sawdust, and the same everlasting girl, who, when she is not flying through a hoop, prances about in the dress of a Uhlan."
"The Botanical Gardens, then; the band of the 76th Hanoverians play there to-night, and some ten thousand gay people will be present."
"Well, darling, it shall be as you wish; and after looking in at the Stadt Theatre, to see Kathie Lanner's Swedish ballet, a droski will soon whirl us home from the Damthor-wall."
"But it was in that theatre, Carl, love, we saw each other last, and at a distance, on the night——"
"Before—before——" I began.
"I was torn from you to become the wife of another, Carl," she exclaimed, in a low voice, as she took my face between her pretty hands, and kissed me playfully.
"Ah, Graindorge!" thought I, with a little bitterness, as I kissed her in return, and rose to fill my meerschaum prior to setting forth for the city; but a strange cry from Paquette made me wheel sharply round on the varnished floor, and to my bewilderment and terror, I saw her sinking back in her chair, pallid as death, like one transfixed—her jaw relaxed, her poor little hands clasped, her eyes expressive only of horror and woe, and bent on something outside the window. My gaze involuntarily followed hers, as I sprung to her side.
At the railing before our little flower-garden stood a shabby-looking man, whose face will ever haunt me. His hat, well worn, tall and shiny, was pressed knowingly over the right eye. He was looking steadily at us, and appeared as if he had been doing so for some time. A diabolical grin, like that of Mephistopheles, was over all his features—in his carbuncle-like eyes, and in his wide mouth, where all his teeth seemed to glisten. He had a sallow and dissipated face, a hooked, sardonic nose, and on his left cheek a large black mole. A faded green dress-coat, with brass buttons, a yellow vest, and short inexpressibles of checked stuff, formed his attire.
My wife was almost fainting, and seemed on the verge of distraction.
"Paquette, my love," I began; but she held up her trembling hands as if deprecatingly between us, and said in a low, broken, and wailing voice—
"Do not speak to me—do not touch me. I am not your wife! Oh, my poor deluded Carl!—oh, my poor heart! Oh, death, come and end this horror—this mystery!"
Her words, her voice, her whole air and expression, made my blood run cold with a sudden terror, that her reason had become affected.
"Paquette—dearest Paquette," I said, in a soothing and an imploring manner, "what do these terrible words mean? That man——"
"Is Monsieur Baptiste Graindorge, my first husband, come back from the grave to torment me!"
"Impossible—girl, you rave!" said I, in deep distress, as I vaulted over the window and rushed out upon the road; but the scurvy eavesdropper was gone, and no trace of him remained. In great grief, and feeling sorely disturbed by the whole affair, I returned to Paquette, whom I found crouching on the sofa, crushed by agitation and despair. She gazed at me lovingly, sorrowfully, and yet as if fearful that I might approach and touch her.
"Is there not some terrible mistake or misconception in this?" said I, seeking to gather courage from my own words.
"None—none," she replied. "I recognized too surely his face—the mole—the odious smile."
"But the man died in Africa—it is impossible; and you are my wife, Paquette, whom none can take from me," I continued, with excited utterance, as she permitted me to kiss her: but the poor little pet was cold as marble, and her tremulous hands played almost fatuously, yet caressingly, with my hair, while she murmured—
"Oh, Carl—my poor Carl—whatwillbecome of us now?"
The whole affair seemed too improbable for realization. I besought her to take courage—to consider the likeness which had startled her as a mere fancy—an optical delusion; and, aware that my presence was imperatively necessary at business in the city, I was compelled to leave her, and did so not without a sorrowful foreboding.
So strong was the latter emotion, that the closing of the house-door rang like a knell in my heart. I paused irresolute at the garden gate, and again on the road; but the jingling bells of the approaching Sporvei 'bus ended my doubts. I sprang in, and in due time found myself at my office in the busy Admiralitatstrasse, opposite the Rath Haus.
Haunted by the strange episode of the morning, I strove vainly to become absorbed in bills of lading, and so forth, till one o'clock should toll from the spires—the time for plunging into the crowd of noisy speculators at the Bourse—and I was just about to set forth, when a stranger was announced; I looked up, and was face to face with the horrible Graindorge! He stood before me just as I had seen him at the garden-rail, with his tall shiny hat, his shabby coat, his bloated visage with its black mole and malignant smile.
"Your business?" I asked curtly.
"Will be briefly stated, Herr Steinmetz," said he. "So madame fully recognized me this morning?"
"Or thought she did," said I, after a short interval of silence.
"There was no doubt in the matter, but firm conviction. I didnotdie in Senegal, the report was false; and so, Herr Steinmetz, I am here to claim my wife and take her back with me to Lorraine."
"You are a foul impostor!" cried I furiously, yet with a sinking heart; "and I shall hand you over to the watch."
"Pardon me, but you will do nothing of the kind," replied the other, with the most exasperating composure; "it will not be pleasant to have your wife—yoursupposedwife, I mean—made a source of speculation to all Hamburg, by any public exposé."
"Oh, my God! my poor Paquette!" I exclaimed involuntarily; "and I love her so!"
"Milles diables!" grinned the Frenchman; "it is more than I do."
"Wretch! what proof have we that you are Baptiste Graindorge, and not a cheat—a trickster?"
"The effect produced by my presence—my appearance—on madame, who dare not deny my identity, which the Gräfine Spitzberger has already admitted—with great reluctance, I grant you. Well, I am supposed to be dead. I shall be content to let this supposition remain, and to quit Hamburg for a consideration."
"Name it," I asked, thankful for the prospect of being rid of his horrid presence even for a time, that I might consult some legal friend; and yet, even while I spoke and thought of purchasing his silence, I knew that Paquette, my adored wife, would be no wife of mine! It was a horrible dilemma. Graindorge the Lorrainer was rich; now he seemed to be poor and needy. I knew not what to think; grief was uppermost in my soul. After a pause he said slowly—
"For six thousand Prussian dollars I shall quit Hamburg."
With a trembling hand, yet without hesitation, I wrote him a cheque on my banker, Herr Berger in the Gras-keller, for the sum named, and the snaky eyes of the Frenchman flashed as he clutched the document. He inserted it in his tattered pocket-book, and carefully buttoned his shabby green coat over it; then he placed his hat jauntily on one side of his head, and tapping the crown with his hand, made me a low ironical bow, and with a pirouette and a malicious smile quitted the room, saying—
"Adieu, Monsieur Steinmetz—I go; but fora timeonly."
CHAPTER II.
I saw the whole scheme now. The bankrupt—for such I had no doubt he was—meant to make his power over Paquette and me a source of future revenue to himself; and I felt sure that when his last dollar was spent—by to-morrow, perhaps—he would present himself again with a fresh demand. Like one in a dream I went to the Bourse; but little or no business was done there that day, for war rumours were hourly growing more rife. There were riots in its neighbourhood, too. The tradesmen were "on strike," and the swords of the watch had been busy, for no less than seven unarmed men were cut down in the Adolphsplatz. Then, that evening I heard that a spy, supposed to be a Frenchman, had been hovering about the northern ramparts, near the Damthor, and had been seen to count the cannon on the Holstein-wall—a spy who had escaped alike the watch and the guard of the Seventy-sixth Regiment, and whom I heard described as a shabby man in a green coat, with amoleon his cheek!
My heart leaped within me; could this personage and M. Baptiste Graindorge be one and the same? If so, neither Hamburg nor I was likely to be troubled by his presence again.
Before my usual hour, I hastened home—home to my pretty little villa among the rose-trees at Blankenese; but, alas! to find it desolate, and our servant, Trüey, a faithful young Vierlander, in tears, and filled with wonder; for her mistress had packed up some clothes, and leaving all her jewels, even to her wedding-ring, had departed, after writing a letter for me.
I tore it open, and found it to contain but a few words, to confirm my terror and fill up the cup of my misery.
"The Gräfine von Spitzberger has been with me. The man we saw is indeed my husband, M. Graindorge, the story of whose death has been all a mistake; and he provedto herhis identity, by his knowledge of all our family affairs. Oh, Carl! oh, my poor darling! the real husband of my heart and my only love! I must leave you—yes—and by the time you read this, shall be far on the railroad for France. Graindorge shall never see me more; my father's house or a convent must be my shelter now. My last hope is, that you will not attempt to follow me; my last prayer, that God may bless and comfort you."
The lines were written tremulously. I kissed my darling's wedding-ring, placed it by a ribbon at my neck, and wept bitterly. Then the room seemed to swim around me; I became senseless, and was ill in bed for days. Our home was broken now. It was desolate—oh, so desolate, without my Paquette! She was gone. She had left me for ever! And every object around seemed to recall her more vividly to me—her piano, her music, the little ornaments we had bought together at the Alster Arcade, and the pillow her cheek had rested on. "She will write to me," thought I; but no letter came. And something of jealousy began to mingle with the bitterness of my soul. Was she with Graindorge?
I think I should have gone mad but for the events that occurred so quickly now, for one week sufficed to change the whole face of affairs in Hamburg. France had declared war against Prussia. Trade stood still; silence reigned in our splendid Bourse, usually the most noisy and busy scene in the world; the Elbe was empty of shipping, for its buoys and lights were all destroyed. The Prussians, horse, foot, and artillery, were pouring towards Travemünde, where a landing of the French was expected. In one day nearly every horse in Hamburg was seized for military purposes, and the city was ordered to furnish eighteen thousand infantry for the Landwehr.
Of this force I was one. A strip of paper was left at my office one day, and the next noon saw me in the barracks near the Damthor-wall, and before the colonel, an officer of Scottish descent, the Graf von Hamilton. Then, like thousands of others, my plain clothes were taken from me, and I received in lieu a spiked helmet of glazed leather, a blue tunic faced with white, a goat-skin knapsack, great-coat, and camp-kettle, a needle-gun, bayonet, and sword. We were all accoutred without delay, and within two hours were at drill, under a burning sun, in the Heilinghaist-feld, between Hamburg and Altona. My desk, my office, my home, knew me no more; yet I often mounted guard near the chambers of our firm in the Admiralitatstrasse. Paquette and my previous existence seemed all a dream—a dream that had passed away for ever. And though the gay streets, the tall spires, the sights and sounds in our pleasure-loving city were all unchanged, I seemed to have lost my identity. My former life was completely blotted out.
From the Landwehr, with many others, I was speedily drafted into the Seventy-sixth Hanoverians, and in three weeks we were ordered to join the Army of the Rhine. Though I had studied in Berlin, I was not a Prussian, but a native of the free city of Hamburg. Like many of my comrades, who were fathers of families, or only sons, torn from their homes and peaceful occupations, I had no interest in the cruel and wanton war on which we were about to enter; and more than all, I loved France, for it was the native land of Paquette Champfleurie.
In the then horror of my mind, the war was certainly somewhat of a change or relief, and the excitement around drew me from my own terrible thoughts. I was going towards Lorraine, where even while fighting against her poor countrymen, I might see my lost one, my wife—for such I still deemed her, despite the odious Baptiste Graindorge; and so I fondly and wildly speculated. The idea of being killed and buried where Paquette might perhaps pass near my grave, was even soothing to my now morbid soul, for I knew that she had loved me long beforethat mancame between us with his wealth of gold napoleons; so she must love me still—Carl, whose heart had never wandered from her.
But there is something great and inspiring in war and its adjuncts, after all. I remember that on the day we left our beautiful Hamburg, when I heard the crash of the brass bands and saw the North German colours waving in the wind, above the long, long column of glazed helmets and bright bayonets, as our regiment, with the Forty-seventh Silesians, the Fifty-third Westphalians, and the Eighty-eighth Nassauers, defiled through the Damthor, and past the Esplanade towards the Bahnhof, I became infected by the enthusiasm around me, and found myself joining in the mad shouts of "Hurrah, Germania!" and in the old Teutonic song which the advanced guard of Uhlans struck up, brandishing their lances the while—
"O Tannebaum, O Tannebaum, wie grün sind deine Blatter!"
as we marched for the Rhine, towards which we were forwarded fast by road and rail.
We were soon face to face with the gallant French, and how fast those terrible battles followed each other at Weissenburg, Forbach, Spicheren, and elsewhere, the public prints have already most fully related. Though I did not seek death any more than others my comrades, I cared little for life, yet (until one night in October) I escaped in all three of those bloody conflicts, and many a daily skirmish, without a wound, though the chassepot balls whistled thickly round me, and more than once the fire of a mitrailleuse, a veritable stream of bullets, swept away whole sections by my side. I have had my uniform riddled with holes, my helmet grazed many times, and part of my knapsack shot away; yet somehow fate always spared poor Carl Steinmetz; for he had no enmity in his heart towards the poor fellows who fell before his needle-gun. At last we rapidly pushed on, and reduced many fortified places as we advanced to blockade Metz. Then Lorraine lay around us, and I gazed on the scenery with emotions peculiarly my own, for I thought of Paquette, of her animated face and all her pretty ways, and of all she had told me of her native province, its dense forests where wolves lurked, its wild mountains, its salt springs and lakes—Lorraine now, as in centuries long past, a subject for dispute between France and Germany.
The Seventy-sixth, under the Graf von Hamilton, formed part of the army which, under Prince Frederick Carl, blockaded Metz with such cruel success; and we had severe work in the wet nights of October, while forming thefeld-wachtin the advanced rifle-pits. Often when lying there alone, in the damp hole behind a sand-bag or sap-roller, waiting for a chance shot in the early dawn at some unfortunate Frenchman, I thought bitterly and sadly of our once happy home, of Paquette, my lost wife, and wondered where she wasnow, or if, when she saw the Prussian columns, with all their bright-polished barrels and spiked helmets shining in the sun, she could dream that I, Carl Steinmetz, was a unit in that mighty host. Then I would marvel in my heart whether I, with the spiked helmet and needle-gun, loaded with accoutrements and spattered with mud, was the same Carl Steinmetz who, but a few months before, sat daily at his desk in the Admiralitatstrasse, and had the sweet smiles of Paquette to welcome him home and listen to his news from the Bourse. Was this military transformation madness or witchcraft? It was neither, but stern reality, as an unexpected shot from a hedge about four hundred yards distant, tore the brass eagle from my helmet and fully informed me.
This was just about daybreak on the morning of the 26th October last, and when I could see all the village quarters, from Mars-la-Tour to Mazières, lit up, and all the bivouac fires burning redly on our left and in the rear.
With a few others I started from the rifle-pits, and we made a dash at the hedge, which we believed to conceal some of those Francs-tireurs, whom we had orders to shoot without mercy, though they were only fighting for home and country. We were on the extreme flank of the blockading force, and the hedge in question surrounded a villa which stood somewhat apart from the road to Château Salins. Led by the Graf's son, a young captain, we rushed forward, and found it manned by some fifty men of the French line, who had crept out of Metz intending to desert, for Bazaine permitted them to do so when provisions began to fail. "A bas les Pru-essiens!" cried their leader—a tall sub-officer in very tattered uniform—thus accentuating the word in the excess of his hatred.
"Vorwarts—für Vaterland—hurrah, Germania!" shouted the young Von Hamilton. A volley that killed ten of our number tore among us, but we broke through and fell upon them with the bayonet. Clubbing his chassepot the French sous-officier, with a yell on his lips, beat down poor Hamilton; then he rushed upon me, and what was my emotion—what my astonishment, to find myself face to face with Graindorge—he who had robbed me of Paquette—the same beer-bloated and scurvy-looking fellow, with the huge black mole, whom I had last seen in Hamburg! I charged him with my bayonet breast high, but agitation so bewildered me that he easily eluded my point, and felled me to the earth with his clubbed rifle. Now came a sense of confusion, of light flashing from my eyes, the clash of steel, thepingof passing balls; then darkness seemed to envelop me, and death to enter my heart as I became senseless.
I remained long thus, for the sun was in the west when full consciousness returned. The thick leather helmet had saved my head from fracture, but dried blood plastered all my face, and I found my right arm broken by a bullet. All the French in the rear of the hedge had been shot down or bayoneted, and they presented a terrible spectacle. All were dead save one—the sous-officier, who lay near me, dying of many bayonet wounds. Our wounded had been removed, but ten of the Seventy-sixth lay near me stiff and cold. What a scene it was in that pretty garden, amid the rose-trees, the last flowers of autumn, and the twittering sparrows, to see all those poor fellows, made in God's fair image, butchered thus—and for WHAT? My wounds were sore, my heart was sad and heavy; oh, when was it otherwise now? Staggering up I turned to the Frenchman, whose half-glazing eyes regarded me with a fiercely defiant expression, for he doubted not that in thisguerre à la morthis last moment had come. I took off my battered helmet, and then with a thrill of terror he seemed to recognize me.
"Carl Steinmetz of Hamburg!" said he, with difficulty.
"You know me then?" I asked grimly.
"Oh, yes—in God's name give me water—I am dying!"
My canteen was empty; but I found some wine in that of a corpse which lay near. I poured it down his throat and it partially revived him.
"Yes, fellow," said I, "in me you see that Steinmetz who was so happy till you came and my wife fled; so we know each other, Monsieur Baptiste Graindorge."
"I amnotBaptiste—heis lying quiet in his grave on the shore of the Senegal river."
"Who, in the name of Heaven, are you?"
"Achille Graindorge—his cousin. I took advantage of our casual but strong resemblance to impose upon you—and—and get money—when in Hamburg—acting——"
"As a spy—eh?"
"Yes."
"Has she—has Paquette seen you since?"
"No—for she would at once have detected the cheat."
"And you know not where she is?"
"As I have Heaven soon to answer—no," he gasped out, and sinking back, shortly after expired, his last breath seeming to issue from the wounds in his chest. I had no pity for him, but felt a glow of joy in my heart, as I turned away, and crept—for I was unable to stand—towards the door of the villa in search of succour, the agony of my thirst and wounds being so great that I cared little whether the inmates aided or killed me.
However, the coincidences of this day were not yet over.
The door, on which I struck feebly with my short Prussian sword, was opened ultimately by an old gentleman, beyond whom I saw a female, shrinking back in evident terror. I recognized M. de Champfleurie, my father-in-law; but being now unable to speak, I could only point to my parched lips and powerless arm, as I sank at his feet and fainted.
When I recovered, my uniform was open, my accoutrements were off; I was lying upon a sofa with my aching head pillowed softly—on what?—The tender bosom of Paquette, my darling little wife; for she had recognized me, though disguised alike by dress and blood, and now her tears were falling on my weather-beaten face.
It chanced that, flying from place to place in Lorraine, before our advancing troops, and having failed to reach Metz, they had taken shelter in that abandoned villa; and thus happily I could reveal the secret of our separation before the burial party bore away the body of Achille Graindorge, who had actually been quartered at Senegal when his cousin Baptiste died there.
My story is told. On the following day Metz capitulated, and poor M. Champfleurie danced with rage on learning that Bazaine had surrendered with two other Marshals of the Empire, 173,000 prisoners and 20,000 sick, wounded, and starving men. My fighting days were over now; Paquette was restored to me, and happiness was again before us.
For their kindness in succouring me, the Graf von Hamilton gave M. de Champfleurie and his daughter a pass to the rear, and we speedily availed ourselves of it, for I was discharged with a shattered arm; and now I write these lines, again in pleasant Blankenese, our dear home, with the broad Elbe shining blue beneath our windows, and the autumn leaves falling fast from the thick woods that cover all its green and beautiful shore.
APPARITIONS AND WONDERS.
The Scottish newspaper recorded, not long ago, some instances of mirages in the Firth of Forth exactly like the freaks of the Fata Morgana in the Straits of Messina, and on three distinct occasions the Bass Rock has assumed, to the eyes of the crowds upon the sands of Dunbar, the form of a giant sugar-loaf crowned by battlements, while the island of May seemed broken into several portions, which appeared to be perforated by caverns where none in fact exist.
Such optical delusions have been common at all times in certain states of the atmosphere, and science finds a ready solution for them; but in the days of our forefathers, they were deemed the sure precursors of dire calamities, invasion, or pestilence.
The years shortly before and after the beginning of the last century seem to have been singularly fruitful in the marvellous; and the most superstitious Celtic peasant in the Scottish glens or the wilds of Connemara would not have believed in more startling events than those which are chronicled in the occasional broadsides, and were hawked about the streets of London by the flying stationers of those days.
To take a few of these at random: we find that all London was excited by strange news from Goeree, in Holland, where, on the evening of the 14th of August, 1664, there was seen by many spectators an apparition of two fleets upon the ocean; these, after seeming to engage in close battle for one hour and a half (the smoke of the noiseless cannon rolling from their sides), vanished, as if shown from a magic-lantern. Then appeared in the air two lions, or the figures thereof, which fought three times with great fury, till there came a third of greater size, which destroyed them both. Immediately after this, there came slowly athwart the sky, as represented in the woodcut which surmounted this veracious broadsheet, the giant figure of a crowned king. This form was seen so plainly, that the buttons on his dress could be distinguished by the awe-stricken crowd assembled on the sands. Next morning the same apparition was seen again; and all the ocean was as red as blood. "And this happening at this juncture of time," concludes the narrator, "begets some strange apprehensions; for that, about six months before Van Tromp was slain in war with England, there was seen near the same place an apparition of ships in the air fighting with each other."*
* London: printed by Thomas Leach, Shoe Lane, 1664.
Sixteen years later, another broadsheet announced to the metropolis, that the forms of ships and men also had been seen on the road near Abington, on the 26th of August, 1680, "of the truth whereof you may be fully satisfied at the Sarazen's Head Inn, Carter Lane." It would seem that John Nibb, "a very sober fellow," the carrier of Cirencester, with five passengers in his waggon, all proceeding to London about a quarter of an hour after sunrise, were horrified to perceive at the far horizon, the giant figure of a man in a black habit, and armed with a broadsword, towering into the sky. Like the spectre of the Brocken, this faded away; but to add to the bewilderment of Nibb and his companions, it was replaced by "about a hundred ships of several bigness and various shapes." Then rose a great hill covered with little villages, and before it spread a plain, on which rode thirty horsemen, armed with carbine and pistol.
The same document records that, on the 12th of the subsequent September, a naval engagement was seen in the air, near Porsnet, in Monmouthshire, between two fleets, one of which came from the northern quarter of the sky, the other from the south. A great ship fired first, "and after her, the rest discharged their vollies in order, so that great flashings of fire, and even smoak was visible, and noises in the ayr as of great guns." Then an army of phantoms engaged in "a square medow" near Porsnet, closing in with sword and pistol, and the cries of the wounded and dying were heard. On the 27th of December, Ottery, near Exeter, had a visitation of the same kind, when at five in the evening two armies fought in the air till six o'clock. "This was seen by a reverend minister and several others to their great amazement." On the 2nd of the same month, the people in Shropshire were, according to another sheet, sorely perplexed by the sudden appearance of two suns in the firmament, and it was duly remembered, that "such a sign was seen before the death of that tempestuous firebrand of Rome here in England, Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, and when Queen Mary began her bloody reign."
Then follow the death of the three lions in the Tower, and a vast enumeration of fiery darts, bullets, storms of hail, and floods, making up that which the writer hopes will prove "a word in season to a sinking kingdom."*
* London: Printed for J. B., Anno Domini 1680; and P. Brooksly, Golden Ball, near the Hospital Gate, 1681.
Nor were ghosts wanting at this time, of a political nature, too; for, in the same year, there was hawked in London an account of an apparition which appeared three several times to Elizabeth Freeman, thirty-one years of age, on each occasion delivering a message to his sacred majesty King Charles the Second. As certified before Sir Joseph Jorden, knight, and Richard Lee, D.D., rector of Hatfield, her story was as follows, and was, no doubt, a political trick:
On the night of the 24th of January, 1680, she was sitting at her mother's fire-side, with a child on her knee, when a solemn voice behind her said, "Sweetheart!" and, on turning, she was startled to perceive a veiled woman all in white, whose face was concealed, and whose hand—a pale and ghastly one—rested on the back of her chair.
"The 15th day of May is appointed for the royal blood to be poisoned," said the figure. "Be not afraid, for I am only sent to tell thee," it added, and straightway vanished.
On Tuesday, the 25th of January, the same figure met her at the house door, and asked Elizabeth if she "remembered the message," but the woman, instead of replying, exclaimed: "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, what art thou?" Upon this the figure assumed "a very glorious shape," and saying, "Tell King Charles, from me, not to remove his parliament, but stand to his council," vanished as before. Next evening the veiled figure appeared again, when Elizabeth was with her mother, who, on beholding her daughter's manifest terror, said: "Dost thou see anything?" She was then warned to retire, after which the spectre said, sternly: "Do your message." "I shall, if God enable me," replied Elizabeth. After this the spectre appeared but once again, and remained silent. "This was taken from the maid's own mouth by me, Richard Wilkinson, schoolmaster in the said town of Hatfield."*
* London: Printed for J. B., Anno Domini 1680; and P. Brooksly, Golden Ball, near the Hospital Gate, 1681.
In 1683, as a variety, London was treated to an account of a dreadful earthquake in Oxfordshire, where the houses were rocked like ships or cradles, while tables, stools, and chests "rowled to and fro with the violence of the Shog."*
* Printed for R. Baldwin, at the Old Bailey.
The year 1687 brought "strange and wonderful news from Cornwall, being an account of a miraculous accident which happened near the town of Bodmyn, at a place called Park. Printed by J. Wallis, White Fryars Gate—next Fleet St.—near the Joyners Shop."
From this it would appear that on Sunday, the 8th of May, Jacob Mutton, whose relations were of good repute, and who was servant to William Hicks, rector of Cordingham (at a house he had near the old parish church of Eglashayle, called Park), heard, on going into his chamber about eight o'clock in the evening, a hollow voice cry, "So hoe! so hoe! so hoe!" This drew him to the window of the next room, from whence, to the terror of a lad who shared his bed, he disappeared, and could nowhere be found.
According to his own narrative, he had no sooner laid a hand upon an iron bar of the window, which was seventeen feet from the ground, than the whole grating fell into the yard below, all save the bar which he had grasped. This bar was discovered in his hand next morning, as he lay asleep in a narrow lane beyond the little town of Stratton, among the hills, thirty miles distant from Park. There he was wakened by the earliest goers to Stratton fair, who sent him home, sorely bewildered, by the way of Camelford. "On Tuesday he returned to his master's estate, without any hurt, but very melancholy, saying 'that a tall man bore him company all the journey, over hedges and brakes, yet without weariness.'" What became of this mysterious man he knew not, neither had he any memory of how the iron bar came to be in his hand. "To conclude, the young man who is the occasion of this wonderful relation, was never before this accident accounted any ways inclinable to sadness, but, on the contrary, was esteemed an airy, brisk, and honest young fellow."
But Mutton's adventure was a joke when compared with that of Mr. Jacob Seeley, of Exeter, as he related it to the judges on the western circuit, when, on the 22nd of September, 1690, he was beset by a veritable crowd of dreadful spectres. He took horse for Taunton, in Somersetshire, by the Hinton Cliff road, on which he had to pass a solitary place, known as the Black Down. Prior to this, he halted at a town called Cleston, where the coach and waggons usually tarried, and there he had some roast beef, with a tankard of beer and a noggin of brandy, in company with a stranger, who looked like a farmer, and who rode by his side for three miles, till they reached the Black Down, when he suddenly vanished into the earth or air, to the great perplexity of Mr. Jacob Seeley. This emotion was rather increased when he found himself surrounded by from one to two hundred spectres, attired as judges, magistrates, and peasantry, the latter armed with pikes; but, gathering courage, he hewed at them with his sword, though they threw over his head something like a fishing-net, in which they retained him from nine at night till four next morning. He thrust at the shadows with his rapier, but he felt nothing, till he saw one "was cut and had four of his fingers hanging by the skin," and then he found blood upon his sword. After this, ten spectre funerals passed; then two dead bodies were dragged near him by the hair of the head; and other horrors succeeded, till the spell broke at cock-crow.
It was now remembered that the house wherein Mr. Seeley had his beef, beer, and brandy had been kept by one of Monmouth's men (the spectre farmer, probably), who had been hung on his own sign-post, and the piece of ground where the net confined the traveller, was a place where maay of the hapless duke's adherents had been executed and interred. Hence it was named the Black Down, according to the sheet before us, which was "Printed for T. M., London, 2nd Oct., 1690."
A sheet circulated at the close of the preceding year warns "all hypocrites and atheists to beware in time," as there had been a dreadful tempest of thunder and lightning in Hants, at Alton, where the atmosphere became so obscure that the electric flashes alone lighted the church during the service, in which two balls of fire passed through its eastern wall, another tore the steeple to pieces, broke the clock to shreds, and bore away the weathercock. The narrator adds, that all Friesland was under water, and that a flood in the Tiber had swept away a portion of the Castle of St. Angelo.
As another warning, London was visited, in 1689, by a tempest, which uprooted sixty-five trees in St. James's Park and Moorfields, blew down the vane of St. Michael's Church in Cornhill, and innumerable chimneys, and injured many well-built houses, and part of the Armourers' Hall in Coleman Street. Several persons were killed in Gravel Lane and Shoreditch; sixty empty boats were dashed to pieces against the bridge; three Gravesend barges full of people were cast away, and the Crown man-of-war was stranded at Woolwich.*
* Printed for W. F., Bishopgate Without.
But the warning seems to have been in vain, for London, in 1692, was treated to an earthquake, which—as another sheet records—spread terror and astonishment about the Royal Exchange, all along Cornhill, in Lothbury, and elsewhere, on the 8th of September. All things on shelves were cast down, and furniture was tossed from wall to wall; the Spitalfields weavers had to seek shelter in flight, and all their looms were destroyed; these and other calamities were, it was alleged, "occasioned by the sins of the nation," and to avert such prodigies, the prayers of all good men were invoked.*
* J. Gerard, Cornhill, 1692.
Two years later saw another marvel, when "the dumb maid of Wapping," Sarah Bowers, recovered her power of speech through the prayers of Messrs. Russell and Veil, "two pious divines," who exorcised and expelled the evil spirit which possessed her; and in 1696 the metropolis was treated to the "detection of a popish cheat" concerning two boys who conversed with the devil, though none seemed to doubt the Protestant miracle.
The close of the century 1700 saw "the dark and hellish powers of witchcraft exercised upon the Reverend Mr. Wood, minister of Bodmyn," on whom a spell was cast by a mysterious paper, or written document, which was given to him by a man and woman on horseback (the latter probably seated on a pillion), after which he became strangely disordered, and wandered about in fields, meadows, woods, and lonely places, drenched the while with copious perspirations; however, "the spell was ultimately found in his doublet, and on the burning thereof, Mr. Wood was perfectly restored," and wrote to his uncle an account of the affair, which appeared in a broadsheet published at Exeter, by Darker and Farley, 1700.
Rosemary Lane was the scene of another wonder, when a notorious witch was found in a garret there, and carried before Justice Bateman, in Well Close, on the 23rd July, 1704, and committed to Clerkenwell Prison. Her neighbour's children, through her alleged diabolical power, vomited pins, and were terrified by apparitions of enormous cats; by uttering one word she turned the entire contents of a large shop topsy-turvy. She was judicially tossed into the river from a ducking-stool, "but, like a bladder when put under water, she popped up again, for this witch swam like a cork." This was an indisputable sign of guilt; and in her rage or terror she smote a young man on the arm, where the mark of her hand remained "as black as coal;" he died soon after in agony, and was buried in St. Sepulchre's churchyard.* Of the woman's ultimate fate we know nothing.
* H. Hills, in the Blackfriars, near the waterside.
In 1705, London was excited by a new affair: "The female ghost and wonderful discovery of an iron chest of money;" a rare example of the gullibility of people in the days of the good Queen Anne.
A certain Madam Maybel, who had several houses in Rosemary Lane, lost them by unlucky suits and unjust decrees of the law: for a time they were tenantless and fell to decay and ruin. For several weeks, nay months past (continues the broadsheet), a strange apparition appeared nightly to a Mrs. Harvey and her sister, near relations of the late Madam Maybel, announcing that an iron chest filled with treasure lay in a certain part of one of the old houses in the lane. On their neglecting to heed the vision, the ghost became more importunate, and proceeded to threaten Mrs. Harvey, "that if she did not cause it to be digged up in a certain time (naming it) she should be torn to pieces." On this the terrified gentlewoman sought the counsel of a minister, who advised her to "demand in the name of the Holy Trinity how the said treasure should be disposed of."
Next night she questioned the spectre, and it replied:
"Fear nothing; but take the whole four thousand pounds into your own possession, and when you have paid twenty pounds of it to one Sarah Goodwin, of Tower Hill, the rest is your own; and be sure you dig it up on the night of Thursday, the 7th December!"
Accordingly men were set to work, and certainly a great iron chest "was found under an old wall in the very place which the spirit had described."
One of the diggers, John Fishpool, a private of the Guards, "has been under examination about it, and 'tis thought that the gentleman who owns the ground will claim the treasure as his right, and 'tis thought there will be a suit of law commenced on it." Many persons crowded to see the hole from whence the chest had been exhumed in Rosemary Lane, and, by a date upon the lid, it would seem to have been made or concealed in the ninth year of the reign of Henry the Eighth.*
* London: printed for John Green, near the Exchange, 1705.
The dreadful effects of going to conjurers next occupied the mind of the public.
Mr. Rowland Rushway, a gentleman of good reputation, having lost money and plate to a considerable amount, Hester, his wife, took God to witness, "that if all the cunning men in London could tell, she should discover the thief, though it cost her ten pounds!"
With this view she repaired to the house of a judicial astrologer in Moorfields, about noon, when the day was one of great serenity and beauty. After some preliminary mummery or trickery, the wizard placed before her a large mirror, wherein she saw gradually appear certain indistinct things, which ultimately assumed "the full proportion of one man and two women."
"These are the persons who stole your property," said the astrologer; "do you know them?"
"No," she replied.
"Then," quoth he, "you will never have your goods again."
She paid him and retired, but had not gone three roods from the house when the air became darkened, the serene sky was suddenly overcast, and there swept through the streets a dreadful tempest of wind and rain, done, as she alleged, "by this cunning man, Satan's agent, with diabolical black art," forcing her to take shelter in an ale-house to escape its fury. Many chairmen and market folks were all cognizant of this storm, which was confined to the vicinity of the ale-house, and a portion of the adjacent river, where many boats were cast away; and the skirt of it would seem to have visited Gray's Inn Walk, where three stately trees were uprooted.
In the year 1765, the French, Dutch, and Brussels papers teemed with marvellous accounts of a monstrous creature, called "The Wild Beast of Gévaudan," whose ravages for a time spread terror and even despair among the peasantry of Provence and Languedoc, especially in those districts of the ancient Narbonne Gaul which were mountainous, woody, and cold, and where communication was rendered difficult by the want of good roads and navigable rivers.
In the April of that year a drawing of this animal was sent to the Intendant of Alençon, entitled "Figure de la beste(sic)feroce l'ou nomme l'hyene qui a devoré plus que80personnes dans le Gévaudan." An engraving of this is now before us, and certainly its circulation must have added to the confusion of the nature of the original. This print represents the beast with a huge head, large eyes, a long tongue, a double row of sharp fangs, small and erect ears like those of a cat, the paws and body of a lion, with the tail of a cow, which trails on the ground with a bushy tuft at the end.*
* The History of France records that there appeared a wild beast in the Forest of Fontainebleau in 1653, which devouredone hundred and fortypersons, before it was killed by twelve mousquetaires of the Royal Guards!
In December, 1764, it first made its appearance at St. Flour, in Provence, and on the 20th it devoured a little girl who was herding cattle near Mende. A detachment of light dragoons, sent in search of it, hunted in vain for six weeks the wild and mountainous parts of Languedoc. Though a thousand crowns were offered by the province of Mende to any person who would slay it, and public prayers were put up in all the churches for deliverance from this singular scourge, which soon became so great a terror to those districts, as ever the dragon was of which we read in the "Seven Champions of Christendom."
No two accounts tallied as to the appearance of this animal, and some of these, doubtless the offspring of the terror and superstition of the peasantry, added greatly to the dread it inspired. French hyperbole was not wanting, and the gazettes were filled with the most singular exaggerations and gasconades.
The groves of olive and mulberry trees, and the vineyards, were neglected, the wood-cutters abandoned the forests, and hence fuel became provokingly dear, even in Paris.
In the month of January we are told that it devoured a great many persons, chiefly children and young girls. It was said by those who escaped to be larger than a wolf, but that previous to springing on its victim, by crouching on the ground, it seemed no longer than a fox. "At the distance of one or two fathoms it rises on its hind legs, and leaps upon its prey, which it seizes by the neck or throat, but is afraid of horned cattle, from which it runs away."
It was alleged by some to be the cub of a tiger and lioness; by others, of a panther and hyena, which had escaped from a private menagerie belonging to Victor Amadeus, duke of Savoy. A peasant of Marvejols, who wounded it by a musket shot, found a handful of its hair, "which stank very much;" he averred it to "be the bigness of a year-old calf, the head a foot in length, the chest large as that of a horse, his howling in the night resembled the braying of an ass." According to collated statements, the beast was seen within the same hour at different places, in one instance twenty-four miles apart; hence many persons naturally maintained that there weretwo.
On the 27th December, 1764, a young woman, in her nineteenth year, was torn to pieces by it at Bounesal, near Mende. Next day it appeared in the wood of St. Martin de Born, and was about to spring upon a girl of twelve years, when her father rushed to her protection. The woodman, a bold and hardy fellow, rendered desperate by the danger of his child, kept it at bay for a quarter of an hour, "the beast all the while endeavouring to fly at the girl, and they would both inevitably have become its prey if some horned cattle which the father kept in the wood had not fortunately come up, on which the beast was terrified and ran away."
This account was attested on oath by the woodman, before the mayor and other civil authorities of Mende, an episcopal city in Languedoc.
On the 9th of January an entire troop of the 10th Light Horse (the Volontaires Etrangers de Clermont-Prince), then stationed at St. Chely, was despatched under Captain Duhamel in quest of the animal, which had just torn and disembowelled a man midway between their quarters and La Garge. On this occasion the Bishop of Mende said a solemn mass, and the consecrated Host was elevated in the cathedral, which was thronged by the devout for the entire day; but the beast still defied all efforts for his capture or destruction, and soon after, "in the wood of St. Colme, four leagues from Rhodez, it devoured a shepherdess of eighteen years of age, celebrated for her beauty."
The English papers began to treat the affair of "the wild beast" as a jest or allegory invented by the Jesuits to render the Protestants odious and absurd, as it was said to have escaped from the Duke of Savoy's collection; and "this circumstance is designed," says one journal, "to point out the Protestants who are supposed to derive their principles from the ancient Waldensee, who inhabited the valleys of Piedmont, and were the earliest promoters of the Reformation."