Edmond Dantès

CHAPTER VII.

Occasionally, however, a beautiful girl, with an oriental look notwithstanding her tasteful and elegant Parisian attire, would be seen for a moment at the windows, but she invariably vanished on realizing that she was observed. Sometimes, a handsome young man stood at her side, but he also seemed anxious to avoid the scrutiny of the curious, although he evinced less timidity than his companion, always withdrawing slowly and with great deliberation.

It was after midnight. On the second floor of the pavilion once inhabited by the Viscount Albert de Morcerf was now a spacious library. The walls were lined with tall book-shelves, mounting to the lofty ceiling, and groaning under ponderous piles of volumes, from the huge black letter folio of the Middle Ages to the lightest duodecimo of the day; while in all parts of the chamber, on the floor, tables and chairs, and in the deep embrasures of the windows, were scattered huge masses of papers, pamphlets, manuscripts and charts. Over the bookcases stood marble busts of Danton, Mirabeau, Napoleon, Armand Carrel, the Duc de St. Simon and other great men whose names are identified with France; between the windows looking out on the garden, shrouded in shrubs and creeping plants, hung a full-length and magnificent picture of Fourier. Near the centre of the apartment stood a vast table covered with books, papers, manuscripts and writing materials, beside which stood one of those sombre and massive arm-chairs, on the possession of which the former proprietor had so felicitated himself, bearing on a carved shield the fleur-de-lis of the Louvre, and in whose sumptuous and antique embrace had, perhaps, reposed a Richelieu, a Mazarin or a Sully. The windows were hung with heavy tapestry of ancient pattern and rich dye, and also the walls, save where covered with books. A soft and summery atmosphere, the warmth of which emanated from concealed furnaces, neutralized the chill of an autumnal night, and the mellow chiaro-oscuro of a vast astral diffused its lunar effulgence on all around.

Within this chamber was a man, who, with arms crossed upon his bosom and eyes fastened in profound and seemingly mournful contemplation upon the floor, slowly paced from one extremity of the spacious apartment to the other.

This man was M. Dantès, representative of Marseilles in the French Chamber of Deputies.

"At last, at last," he murmured, "the avenging Nemesis ceases to gnaw! At length the angel Peace begins to smile! The tempest, which, for nearly thirty years, has raved and swelled in my heart, begins to lull! At length I commence to live—at length I realize and pursue life's true end. Let me reflect," he continued, after a pause, "let me review the past. The past! alas! my past is a painful blank! At twenty, from the very marriage-feast, from the side of her whom more than life I loved, I was torn by the envy of one man and the jealousy of another, and then, by the ambition of a third, to whom nothing was crime if it but ministered to that unhallowed impulse, I was plunged into a dungeon, whose counterpart only the vaults of hell can furnish. For fourteen long years I was the tenant of a sombre tomb. The agony, the despair of those awful years—oh! God! oh! God!" and he shuddered and clasped his hands over his head as if to crush the recollection.

After a pause he resumed: "And then those daily vows of vengeance! oh! vain and impotent vows as then they seemed! vows of awful agony, of fiendish retribution, though at that time I knew not all! I knew not that a venerable father had pined and died of starvation through the wrong done to me! I knew not that the woman I loved had become the bride of my destroyer! Yet those vows, awful and blasphemous as they were, those vows of vengeance have been terribly, dreadfully fulfilled! As the destroying angel of God's retributive providence, I was endowed with superhuman powers to walk the earth, to administer His justice and to execute His decrees. For fourteen years was that vengeance prepared, yet delayed. At last, it fell—it fell. All who had wronged me met their dreadful doom. Ambition was changed to madness. Avarice was tortured with bankruptcy. Falsehood sought refuge in self destruction; and all—all—all—even the meanest of those who had contributed to blight my life—perished miserably at my will! And did the guilty suffer alone? Alas! impious, remorseless, horrible revenge! The innocent and the criminal suffered alike. A might approaching omnipotence was vouchsafed me, but no power of omniscience to direct my hand or stay its effects. Blind and mad I knew not what I did. Those I most loved fell beneath the blow which crushed those I most abhorred, and shared the same fate. The terrible agencies I had summoned as my slaves became my masters. The fiends which, as ministers of God's justice, garbed in the guise of angels of light, I had, by hideous necromancy, evoked to aid me in righteous retribution, proved the dark demons of hell and derided all orders to accomplish my bidding. The awful engines I had set in motion I found myself powerless to arrest or control. Effects ceased not with the causes in which they had their origin. The stroke of vengeance, aimed at foes, recoiled on friends—recoiled on myself. And when I fain would stop, when I would arrest the awful havoc which my will had commenced, the dark ministers I had called up howled in my ears, 'On! on! on! vengeance is thine! vengeance is thine!' They mocked my terror and laughed at my apprehensions.

"At last there seemed a pause. Fate appeared to have done her worst, to have executed her decrees. The blind agencies of vengeance blasted no more, because there seemed no more to blast. The misery I had caused I strove to alleviate, the innocent hearts I had crushed I endeavored to heal; rejoicing in the joy I had created and the affection I gratified, once more I loved—loved, but, oh! not as I first had loved—not with that deep, adoring, delirious passion of my youth, and yet with a subdued, fraternal feeling I loved; in the calm and sweet seclusion of a favored clime, parted from the world with all its miseries and its crimes, environed by all that man or nature could contribute to human bliss, I began to dream of happiness, in the happiness I had created. But, alas! I forgot that man's happiness lies not in his own hand, but in the hand of his Maker. I forgot that an omniscient eye pursued me, that a blasphemed and omnipotent Power was over me. The blow paused—hovered—fell, not upon me, not on the guilty, but again it fell on the innocent; and she, who was my only hope, my beloved Haydée, my wife, was snatched from my heart, ruthlessly murdered by that fiend, Benedetto!"

The unhappy man pressed his hand to his forehead, and for some time paced the chamber in silence; then, approaching a small alcove at one extremity of the apartment, he raised the heavy and sumptuous hangings and revealed a small silver casket of exquisite workmanship and appointments, that sparkled as the mellow light poured in upon it. M. Dantès knelt beside the ebony table on which this casket rested, and for some moments seemed absorbed in prayer; then, rising and taking the casket in his hands, he touched a spring, when the lid flew open, disclosing a miniature portrait of Haydée, set in a frame of gold, ornamented with flashing diamonds and emeralds; he gazed long and lovingly at this portrait, that seemed designed to show how exquisitely fair God's creatures may be, after which he kissed it reverently, closed the casket, restored it to the table, and slowly dropped the hangings to their place. Resuming his walk, he said, mournfully: "But the deepest wound will close; the heaviest grief, the bitterest woe, becomes assuaged. Time, the comforter, soothes and consoles. From this stroke of bereavement I at length awoke, and, at the same moment, awoke to the conviction that my whole past had been an error; that my life had been a lie; that the years which had succeeded my imprisonment had been more utterly lost than those passed within my dungeon itself; and there came to me the conviction that time, talent, power and wealth had been worse than wasted—that the wondrous riches, undreamed of save in the wildest flights of oriental fiction, and by a miracle bestowed upon me, were designed for nobler, holier purposes than to subserve a fiendish and blasphemous vengeance for even unutterable wrongs, or to minister to the gratification of pride, and the satisfaction of selfish tastes and appetites, however refined and sublimated.

"I looked around me—the world was full of misery—and the same disposition which had plunged me into a dungeon was crushing the hearts and hopes of millions of my race. My bosom softened by bereavement yearned toward my suffering fellows, and the path of duty, peace and happiness seemed open to my desolate and despairing heart. Resolution followed conviction; the world was my field; liberty, equality and fraternity were my objects. Not France alone, with her miserable millions, but Russia with her serfs, Poland with her wrongs, the enslaved Italian, the oppressed German, the starving son of Erin, the squalid operative of England, the priest-ridden slave of Jesuit Spain, and the oppressed but free-born Switzer. Great men and good men I found had already, with superhuman skill, constructed a system, a machine for the amelioration of mankind's condition, which needed only the co-operation of boundless wealth to set it in motion. That wealth was mine! The common house for the laborer, the asylum for the insane, for the orphan, the Magdalen, the destitute, the sick, the friendless, the deserted, the bereaved, or the asylum for the victim of his own vices, or the vices of others, for the depravity which originates in misery, ignorance or fate—all these my riches could sustain. Around me, in the accomplishment of this design, the uncounted wealth intrusted to my stewardship has already gathered the mightiest minds in every department of intellect, and the best hearts; and if but a few years are vouchsafed us to carry out the system we have adopted, all Europe, despite her throned and sceptred tyrants, impiously claiming the right to oppress by the will of God, shall be free! Silently but surely, the principle of human liberty is ceaselessly at work, undermining thrones and overthrowing dynasties. The hush that precedes the tornado even now broods over Europe; nations slumber the heavy sleep that preludes the earthquake. The hour of revolution is at hand—of social regeneration, disenthrallment, redemption, over all the world. In every capital of Europe the mine is prepared—the train laid to be lighted, and from this solitary chamber the free thought on the lightning's pinion flies to Vienna, St. Petersburg, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, London, over mountain and plain—over sea and land—through the forest wilderness and the thronged city; taken up by the press, it makes thrones totter and tyrants tremble—tremble at an influence which emanates they know not whence and contemplates a purpose they know not what—an influence whose mystery they are impotent to penetrate, and whose shadowy but awful right they are powerless to resist!"

At that instant the silvery tinkle of a bell was heard at the table, and a low and continuous whizzing as of clockwork at once commenced. The Deputy advanced hastily to the table. The register of the electric telegraph like a living thing was unfolding the secrets of events at that moment transpiring at the furthest extremity of the Kingdom! Eagerly seizing the slip of paper which was gliding through the machine, he glanced over the cabalistic cipher there traced. "Lyons—Marseilles—Rome—Algeria," he murmured. "All goes well." And while the wonderful register, like a thing of life, still whizzed, clicked and delivered its magic scroll, covered with characters unintelligible to all but him for whose eye they were designed, he touched a spring, and a row of ivory keys resembling those of a piano-forte was revealed. Then rapidly touching them with the fingers of one hand, while he held up before him the endless slip of paper in the other as it was evolved, he transferred its cabalistic contents, character by character, to their distant destination.

And when the day dawned on Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Madrid, the intelligence thus concentrated, and thus distributed in that solitary chamber, was laid by the press before a hundred thousand eyes, in a language which each could comprehend, for in every capital of Europe unbounded wealth had established a press which groaned in unceasing parturition for human rights, causing princes to tremble and ministers to wonder and grow pale; over each press, thus set in motion as if literally by an electric touch a thousand miles away, presided men of the greatest powers and most varied attainments which philanthropy or covetousness could enlist, while the result of their labors was sown broadcast among the poorest and humblest, without price or compensation, pouring light upon their darkened understandings and giving them knowledge of their rights.

Nor was the newspaper press alone active. The feuilleton press was also at work; and magazines, reviews, pamphlets, whole libraries of volumes, were flung like Sibylline leaves on the four winds of heaven. Fiction, the drama, religion, art, literature, moral and mechanical science—all departments of intellect—silently, unseen, yet surely exerted their omnipotent influence for the attainment of one single glorious end—the happiness, rights, freedom of man; all this was under the guidance of one powerful mind and benevolent heart, wielding the resistless necromancy of countless and exhaustless treasure! Not a point in all Europe whence influence could radiate and be distributed was there at which this man, in one brief year, had not set in motion the press and the telegraph, those tremendous levers of the age to move the world, and all the more powerfully to move it because oft unseen. Not a court was there of emperor or prince, czar or kaiser, king, duke or potentate in which dwelt not his emissary, who suspected, least of all, knew everything that occurred, and, on the lightning's wing, dispatched it to its destination, so that the most important decrees of the cabinet-council of Vienna were exposed to the whole world by the Parisian press long before they had been communicated by Metternich to his sovereign. And thus, often, the ruler first learned the purposes of the Minister. Not a city or village was there in all Europe which nourished not in its bosom the germ of reform and revolution, while the great principle of association combined, embodied, and concentrated into a focus energies and influences which would otherwise have proved comparatively powerless.

The click and buzz of the register ceased—the engine had revealed its secret—the shadowy tale had been caught up as it fell and given to the press of all Europe, thence to be laid before men's minds.

Exhausted by the severe mental toil, and by the lateness of the hour, the Deputy sank back into his arm-chair and clasped his hands. "Glorious, omnipotent science!" he exclaimed in low and trembling, yet eager and enthusiastic tones. "Wealth must yield in power to thee, for what wealth can rival thy achievements or secure thy results? Thou hast girt the earth with web-work, forced the lightning to syllable the unspoken thought and made man's mind ubiquitous like God's; ere long, thou wilt have knit together with thy magic spells a world of mankind into one vast brotherhood!"

M. Dantès ceased and, closing his eyes wearily, continued to think over the possibilities of the future. As he sat there motionless and seemingly asleep, a light footfall was heard in the apartment and his daughter stood before him. Zuleika was now sixteen, tall and matured beyond her years; she greatly resembled her dead mother, Haydée, the beautiful Greek, and the half-oriental costume she wore helped to render the resemblance still more striking; her abundant hair was the hue of the raven's wing, her feet and hands were those of a fairy, while her large and expressive eyes flashed like diamonds, and her parted lips, as red as rubies, disclosed perfect teeth of the whiteness of pearls. A shade of anxiety settled upon her handsome countenance as she bent over her weary father. The Deputy opened his eyes and glanced at her.

"Why are you up so late, my child?" he asked, fondly. "I thought you were sleeping soundly long ere this."

"I was waiting for you, papa," replied Zuleika, in a low, musical voice, that sounded like a chime of tiny bells; "I could not retire to my couch while you were toiling."

M. Dantès pointed to a stool; the young girl brought it and seated herself at his feet; he drew her to his knee, smoothing her tresses gently and affectionately.

"So you would not desert me, darling?" he said, with a glad smile.

"No, indeed, dear papa," answered she, nestling closer to him.

"Will you always love me as you do now, Zuleika?" asked the father, looking down into the liquid depths of her eyes.

"Oh! papa, what a question, what a singular question!" said the girl, springing to her feet, throwing her arms around his neck, and kissing him again and again.

"But love of another kind and for another will come along after awhile," said the Deputy sadly, "and then you will forget your father."

Zuleika blushed and hung her head in maidenly modesty; then she exclaimed:

"No, no, papa; never will I forget you whatever may happen!"

"Ah! my darling, you know not what you are saying; it is only natural for a woman to cast her father aside and cleave unto her husband."

"But, papa, I have not even a lover yet, and, besides, I am not a woman; I am merely a little girl and your own, true, loving daughter."

"Yes, yes, but you must remember that last year, young as you were then, you attracted marked attention from several youthful Romans of the best families in the Eternal City, and that one of them, the Viscount Giovanni Massetti, went so far as to ask me for your hand."

At the mention of Massetti's name the blush upon Zuleika's cheek deepened. She trembled slightly, but said nothing; her heart fluttered painfully, but the pain was not altogether disagreeable. The young Viscount was evidently not unpleasing to her.

M. Dantès resumed, looking at her fixedly the while:

"My daughter, as you were then attending the convent school I felt it my duty to deny Giovanni Massetti's solicitation, nay, his ardent, impetuous prayer, but I did not deprive him of all hope; I gave him permission to urge his suit with you personally after a year from that time had elapsed. Did I do right?"

Zuleika maintained silence, but blushed and trembled more than ever, while her heart fluttered so that she placed her hand upon her breast to still it.

"Come, come, my daughter, answer me," said the Deputy, kindly, "did I do right? Tell me what your little heart says."

"I do not know, oh! I do not know!" cried Zuleika, bursting into tears.

"There, there now," said her father, soothingly; "I did not mean either to frighten or wound you. If the Viscount is displeasing to you I will answer his letter to-morrow and tell him as gently as possible that he has no hope of winning your hand."

"What! have you received a letter from Giovanni?" exclaimed Zuleika, with sudden interest, her tears vanishing instantly and her pretty face brightening up.

"Ho! ho!" said M. Dantès to himself, "Mademoiselle has waked up in earnest now." Then he added aloud: "Yes, one came this afternoon. The Viscount is in Paris, and has claimed the privilege I accorded him a year ago, provided you interposed no objection. However, the matter can speedily be settled. Young Massetti is a man of honor, and will not for an instant think of troubling with his attentions a lady to whom they cannot prove acceptable."

"Oh! papa, papa, don't tell him that; he wouldn't come here if you did; besides, did—did—did I ever tell you that Giovanni's attentions would prove unacceptable to me?"

"No, not in so many words," answered M. Dantès, archly, "but I inferred as much from your manner and tears just now. So I am to understand that you do not want me to reply to the Viscount's letter, am I?"

"Oh! yes, I want you to reply to his letter, but—but——"

"But what, darling?"

"I do not wish you to tell him there is no hope!"

"You think there is hope, then?"

"I—I—am afraid so, dear papa!"

"Yet a moment ago you told me you had no lover, and were merely a little girl!"

"I did not know then that Giovanni was in Paris, and I—I—thought he had forgotten all about me."

M. Dantès smiled as he said:

"That makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it, Mademoiselle?"

"Yes," answered Zuleika, innocently; then she added in a tone of great earnestness: "Write to Giovanni in the morning, and—and tell him I shall be delighted to see him."

"I will write and inform him that, so far as I have been able to discover, my daughter does not object to receiving a visit from him."

"Oh! that would be too cold and formal, and Giovanni is such an old friend."

"Well, well," said M. Dantès, "I will so frame my reply as to give entire satisfaction both to you and him. Now, my child, kiss me and retire to your couch, for it is very, very late."

Zuleika embraced her father and kissed him repeatedly; then, with beaming eyes and a countenance overflowing with happiness she ran lightly from the apartment.

As she tripped joyously away, M. Dantès arose from his arm-chair and gazed after her with a look of the utmost sadness.

"Oh! my daughter, my daughter," he murmured, "soon will you also quit me, and then I shall be alone, indeed! True, Espérance will remain, but, generous, manly and heroic as he is, he can never fill the void Zuleika will leave. Oh! Haydée, Haydée, my beloved wife, why were you torn so ruthlessly from your husband's heart!"

Zuleika's dreams that night were rose-hued and delicious, and in all of them the central figure was the youthful Roman Viscount.

When day dawned M. Dantès was still pacing his library.

CHAPTER VIII.

But there is one structure on the Rue Lepelletier not very noticeable save for its immense size and its ancient and dingy aspect, which has witnessed more scenes and events, and is more important than all its more splendid neighbors put together.

This edifice is of brick, five stories in height, and, as has been intimated, is time-stained, storm-stained, smoke-stained and stained, it would seem, by all other conceivable causes of stain, so begrimed and dingy, yet so venerable and imposing, does it seem.

This vast and ancient pile can be said to represent no order of architecture. Architectural elegance appears not to have been thought of when it was designed, and yet the façade of the old building seems to bear the same relation to the building itself as the face of an old man bears to his body, and that face is full of character, as are the faces of some men—sombre, sedate, serious, almost sinister in aspect. This old face, too, seemed full of apertures, through which unceasing and sleepless espionage could be kept up on the good citizens of the good City of Paris. Doors, and especially windows, numberless, opened and looked upon the street, and on a cul de sac at one end of the edifice.

One of the doors opening on the cul de sac, at its further extremity, was broad, low, dark and sombre; like the gates of hell, as portrayed by the English bard, it "stood open night and day." If you entered this door and advanced, you would immediately find yourself ascending a narrow, gloomy and winding flight of stairs. Having with difficulty groped your way to the top, without having broken your neck, by having first reached the point from which you started, to wit, the bottom; or your shins, by stumbling against the steps—having, I say, accomplished the ascent to the first landing, your further passage is effectually stopped by a massive door, which resists all your efforts to open it; and, as you are contemplating the dangerous descent which you now think you are immediately and inevitably forced to make, an ivory bell-handle against the wall, beside the door, arrests your attention, with the words around it, which, with difficulty, you decipher by the dim light, "Editor's Room—No Admittance," followed by the encouraging, but somewhat contradictory word, "Ring," which, doubtless, means this: "If you are a particular friend of the editor, or have particular business with him as a journalist, ring the bell, and perhaps you may be admitted." Supposing either of these positions yours, you "ring the bell," and immediately you are startled by the tinkling of a small bell in the darkness close beside you, and the ponderous door, firm as a barricade till then, is now opened by unseen hands—by the same hand, indeed, and by the same action of that hand which caused the bell to tinkle.

You enter the door, and find yourself in a corridor or passage, long and dark, for everything in this building is dark, and gaslight is the only light eighteen hours in the twenty-four; you find yourself in a corridor, I say, running the entire depth of the building, and bringing you back again toward the Rue Lepelletier, which you left on entering the cul de sac, to seek the low entrance below. As you traverse the endless gallery, your attention is arrested by a deep hum, as of many voices at a distance, with which the entire structure seems pervaded, accompanied by a heavier sound, which rises and falls with measured stroke. This mysterious hum might have been heard when you first approached or entered the building; but the silence and solitude of the corridor have caused you to notice it now for the first time, and to wonder at its cause.

Now had you the power of those magicians, necromancers, clairvoyants and demi-devils, whether of the flesh or the spirit, who, at a glance, can gaze through massive walls and peer down the chimneys of a great city, and who, almost without glancing at all, can see through partitions, key-holes and iron doors, your wonder at the cause of these unknown sounds would instantly cease, while it would be yet more excited by those causes themselves, for the vast building all around you, and through which you are passing, and which envelops you in its ceaseless hum, like the voice of a great city, would seem to you nothing less than a leviathan of life and action—a Titan—a Frankenstein—a mental and material giant, with its acoustic tubes, like veins and arteries, running all over the structure, just beneath the surface of the walls, and uniting in every apartment; with its electric wires, like bundles of nerves, which, having webbed the whole body with network, converge into a focus-tube, and thence pass down into the vaults, through the massive foundations, and beneath, the pavements of the thronged streets of the metropolis, and thence, rising again to the surface, branching on distinct, diverse and solitary routes without the suburbs all over Europe. You would see, too, the mighty heart of this Titan, whose heavy heavings you have felt, heard and wondered at—THE PRESS—in its subterranean tenement, amid smoke and flame. The press; which, like the animal heart, receives eventually all that the veins convey to it, and flings forth everything in modified form through lungs and arteries. Tireless and untired in its action, never ceasing, never resting, for as well might a man think to live when his heart had ceased to beat, as a printing office exist when the throbbings of its press were no longer felt; and as well could a man be supposed to live without breath as a printing-office of the nineteenth century without its lungs, the steam engine, or its breath of life, the subtle fluid by which it is moved.

But to drop metaphor. In the basement of the building you would find the press-room, with its steam engine, its furnaces, its presses, its dark demi-devils, and ghostly and ghastly gnomes and genii groping or flitting about amid the glare and gloom, begrimed and besmoked, seemingly at work at unhallowed yet supernatural toil, which toil, as if a punishment for sin, like that of Sisyphus, or the daughters of Danae in the heathen Tartarus, was eternal. The press never stops.

On the first floor you would perceive the financial and publishing department in all its endless ramifications, with the separate bureaus for folding, enveloping, mailing, etc.

On the second floor—but that you will shortly behold, and it will describe itself.

On the third floor you would discover immense magazines of material—paper, ink, of every hue and quality, and type of every known description; and all in quantities seemingly as useless as incalculable.

On the fourth and fifth floors you would find the composition rooms, whence fly the winged words all over the world, peopled by its whole army of compositors; while from the long platoons of cases, "click—click—click" is heard, the sole and unceasing sound which alone in those apartments is ever suffered to fall on the ear. If we add that the entire structure is warmed in winter by heated air, conveyed in tubes from the furnaces of the press, our description will be complete, and we may say such is the printing office of the nineteenth century in Paris. How changed from that of German Guttenberg or English Caxton, three hundred years before! Such is it by daylight. Flood every object and apartment with gaslight, and you have the scene at night—through all the night, for couriers and dispatches never cease to arrive—and the journal issues with the dawn—and the workmen are relieved by constant and continuous relays. Such an office gives employment to hundreds and bread to thousands. It demands twenty editors, exclusive of their chief, twenty reporters, exclusive of the same number in the commercial and mercantile corps; twenty-five clerks and bureau agents, sixty carriers, twenty mechanicians and margers, sixty folders, twenty pressmen, seventy correctors and compositors and five hundred distributors, besides a numberless and nameless army of attachés and employés too numerous to be specified. The aggregate compensation of this army is ten thousand francs per day, the annual income is nine millions of francs, the circulation is ninety thousand copies daily, and each number is read by half a million people, and through their influence by half a million more.

The daily tax of the Government is nine thousand francs. The press has been called the Third Estate of France. It is not! Nor is it the second—nor is it the first! It combines all three. Nay, the power of all three united equals not its tithe; and its position—its rank!—royalty itself bows to the press! Ask the history of the past ten years. Point to the man of power or position in the court or State, who owes it not to the press! Where is the statesman who is not, or has not been, a journalist, or the savant, the philosopher, the philanthropist, the poet, the orator, the advocate, the diplomat, even the successful soldier? The sword and the pen are emblems of the power of France—its achievements and its continuance; Sir Bulwer Lytton says,

"The pen is mightier than the sword!"

But I have left you, dear reader, perambulating the dim corridor—so dim that your eyes can hardly decipher, although it is now high noon, the various signs upon the series of doors in the wall on your left, designating the various rooms of the editorial corps, for to the editorial department is devoted the second floor of this extensive edifice. The last door in this prolonged series bears the name of the chief journalist. You ring a bell, are bid to enter, and the apartment is before you. Immense windows, rising from the floor to the ceiling, and opening upon a balcony, which overhangs the Rue Lepelletier, afford abundance of light for your eye to detect everything in the room by day, and an immense chandelier with gas-burners and opaque shades, pouring forth its flood of mellow radiance, would facilitate the same investigation yet more at night. Beneath the chandelier is spread the immense oval slab of the table. At it sits a man writing. Well, let him write on, at least for the present. Beside him, pile upon pile, pile upon pile, rise papers, wave after wave, flood upon flood, nothing but papers; on the floor beneath his feet, on the table and under the table, before him, behind him, and all around him, naught but papers, papers, rising, rising, as if in wrathful might and stormy indignation, while the very walls are lined with papers in all languages, from all climes and governments, and of every age and dimension, deposited in huge folio volumes and arranged in huge closets, along one whole side of the room. From the four continents, yea, and from the islands of the sea likewise, has this vast army come. In those tall closets extending from floor to ceiling might be found the full files for years of every leading paper in every part of Christendom, affording a treasury of reference, universal, unfailing, exhaustless, of knowledge of every conceivable description, rapidly found by means of exact and copious tables of contents.

Upon the other side of the apartment extend ranges of shelves, from floor to ceiling, filled with ponderous tomes in black substantial binding, seeming to belong to that class of standard works chiefly valuable for reference as authorities, and bearing ample testimony in their wear and tear, and their soiled appearance, to having been faithfully fingered. No thin, delicate and perfumed duodecimo is there, resplendent in gold and Russia, with costly engravings on steel, and letter-press in gilt or hot-pressed post. No, the books, the table, the journalist and the whole chamber bear the dark, stern, toil-soiled aspect of labor, the severe air of practical utility. The only ornaments, if such they can be styled, are busts—the busts of the silver-tongued Vergniaud and a few of his political brothers—the victim Girondins of '92 being conspicuous. Here, too, in a prominent niche is the noble front of Armand Carrel, the brave, the knightly, the chivalric, the true Republican, the true statesman, the true journalist, the true man—Armand Carrel, who, with Adolphe Thiers, his associate, sat first in this apartment as its chief—Armand Carrel, who fell years ago before the pistol of Émile de Girardin, a brother journalist, the founder of the cheap press, the hero of scores of combats before and since, yet almost unscathed by all.

Such are some of the ornaments of the chief editor's sanctum. At the further extremity of the apartment, the wall is covered with maps and diagrams, as well as charts of the prominent cities and points in Europe; and a large table beneath is heaped with books of travel, geographical views, and historical scenes arranged with no regard to order, and seeming to lie precisely as thrown down after having been used.

In a word, the whole room bears unmistakable evidence of stern, practical thought. In it and about it display is everywhere scrupulously eschewed. Practical utility is the only question of interest as touching the instruments of an editor, as of those of a carpenter; and the workshop of the journalist bears no inconsiderable similarity to that of the artisan in more respects than one. To each a tool is valuable, be that tool a book or a chisel, only for its usefulness, and the facility and rapidity with which it will aid the possessor to accomplish his ends, and not for its beauty of form, or costliness of material or construction.

In one respect only was there variance from this settled custom to be perceived, and that was in that delicate mechanism embodying the triumphs of modern science, which facilitates transmission of thought, and which, by skillful adaptation, made this one chamber a focus to which ideas and feeling in every other apartment of that vast establishment converged, and which enabled one man, without rising from his chair, to issue his orders to every department, from press-room to composing-room, from foundation stone to the turrets of that tall pile, everything being governed by the will and impulse of a single mind. Indeed, to such an extent is labor-saving carried in the Parisian printing office that the compositor may never have seen the journalist whose leaders he has spent half his life in setting up, for copy, proof and revise glide up or down as if by the agency only of magic, and the real actors rarely meet.

CHAPTER IX.

The journalist who now occupied the editorial chair was seemingly about thirty-five years of age, and one whom the ladies would call "a fine-looking man." His stature was about the average, his shoulders broad and his form thick-set. His face was long and thin, his forehead full and capacious, though not high, and was furrowed by thought. His beard, which, like his hair, was black, encircled his chin, and a moustache was suffered to adorn his lip. His dress was black and a plain stock, without a collar, surrounded his throat. His eyes were large, black, and piercing, and the expression of his countenance was contemplative and sad.

Such is a hasty limning of the personal outlines of the first journalist in Paris, the chief editor of the chief organ of the democracy in Europe, Armand Marrast, of "Le National."

An air of depression, exhaustion and regret was upon his face as he sat beside the table, with a pen in his hand and paper before him, in a thoughtful mood, as if planning a leader for his journal, of which but a single line was written. Whatever were his reflections, they were evidently far from pleasant; but the single line traced at the head of the paper indicated the source of his uneasiness. It read:

"Again the House of Orléans triumphs!"

Throwing down his pen, he folded his arms, and began hastily pacing the chamber.

"Again the House of Orléans triumphs!" he bitterly exclaimed. "Aye, again and again! It is thus forever, and thus forever seems likely to continue. Every measure, however imperative, of the opposition, ignominiously fails—every measure of the Government, however infamous, succeeds. And so it has been for twelve years. Ah! what a barren sceptre did the Three Days of '30 place in the hands of the French people! The despotism of a Citizen King has been as deadly as that of the Restoration, and more insulting. For twelve years his acts have been but a continuous series of infringements upon the rights, and insults to the opinions, of the men of July. The Republican party is trampled on. Freedom of the press, electoral reform, rights of labor, restriction of the Royal prerogative, reduction of the civil list, all these measures are effectually crushed. The press is fettered, and its conductors are incarcerated. Out of a population of thirty-three millions, but two hundred thousand are electors. Out of four hundred and sixty deputies, one-third hold places under the Government, the aggregate of whose salaries would sustain thousands of starving families at their very doors. Paris, despite every struggle of freedom, is, at this hour, a Bastille. The line of fortification is complete. Wherever the eye turns battlements frown, ordnance protrudes, bayonets bristle. Corruption stalks unblushingly abroad in the highest places, and the frauds of Gisquet all Paris knows are but those of an individual. The civil list, instead of being reduced, is every year enlarged. A Citizen King receives forty times the appropriation received by the First Consul, while his whole family are quartered on the State. The dotation to the Duke of Orléans, on his marriage, would have saved from starvation hundreds of thousands whose claim for charity far exceeded his. Thank God, his own personal unpopularity defeated the dotation designed for the Duke of Nemours. But the appanages were granted because the King's life was attempted by an assassin. A Citizen King, indeed! This man cares only for his own. He would be allied to every dynasty in Europe. His policy is unmixed selfishness. His love for the people who made him their monarch is swallowed up in love for himself. Millions have been wrung from the sweat of toil to accomplish a worse than useless conquest, thousands of Frenchmen have been sacrificed on the burning sands of Africa, and all for what?—that a throne might be won for a boy—a boy without ability, or experience, and now the Duke of Aumale is Governor-General of Algeria, while hundreds of brave men are forgotten."

As these last words, which indicated the cause of the present agitation, were uttered by the excited journalist a door at the further end of the apartment softly opened, and a young man of very low stature and boyish in aspect entered. He seemed, at a first glance, hardly to have attained his majority, though actually he was ten years older. His face was round, yet pale, his lips full, his brow commanding, his eye large, dark and thoughtful, and His characteristic expression mild and benevolent. He wore a dark frock coat, buttoned to the chin, and a plain black cravat was tied around his neck.

The journalist was so deeply absorbed in his meditations that for some moments he seemed unaware that he was no longer alone, and he might have remained yet longer in that ignorance had not the guest approached and exclaimed:

"Algeria!"

The journalist raised his head and hastily turned.

"Ah! Louis, is it you?" he said, cordially extending his hand; "I'm glad you've come. But why did I not hear you?"

"For two reasons, my dear Armand," said the visitor, seating himself in an editorial chair: "one, that I came in by the private entrance, and the other, that you were too zealously engaged in cursing the recent appointment of the King to hear anything short of a salvo of artillery."

"Ah! that cursed appointment! What next I wonder? Thank God, the old man has no more sons to make governors, although he'll never be satisfied till each one of them has a crown on his head, by his own right or the right of a wife."

"And what care we whom the boys marry, so long as marriage takes them out of France? Montpensier can find favor in the eyes of the Spanish Infanta, Christina's sister, and thus balk England; be it so, yes, be it so, especially since it can't be helped or prevented."

"But this affair of Algeria, Louis—"

"Is a very different affair you would say. No doubt, no doubt. As to Algeria, I have always viewed it as a very costly bauble for France, 'an opera-box' as the Duke of Broglie once said, 'rather too expensive for France.'"

"But then it has been a splendid arena for French valor. It has given the rough old Bugeaud a Marshal's bâton, and has made the gallant Lamoricière, his sworn foe, a general officer, thanks to his own intrepid conduct and the court influence of his brother-in-law, Thiers."

"In the late dispatch appear the names of some new candidates for advancement, I perceive."

"You allude to Morrel and Joliette among others, I suppose. Morrel has received a regiment, and Joliette is Chef d'Escadron of Spahis. Luckily for aspirants, and thanks to disease and slaughter, there is no lack of vacancies."

"The name of Morrel I have seen before in the 'Moniteur,' but Joliette—who is he?"

"A sort of protégé of Bugeaud, 'tis said. He is reported to have enlisted at Marseilles, and in three years has risen to his present position from the ranks. He is of a good family, rumor says, but, suddenly reduced by some calamity, he became a soldier."

"He must be a brave fellow, Armand! As I said before, Algeria has been a fine field for the development of military genius. My chief objections to French conquests are these—they have drained millions from France which should have been devoted to the cause of labor, and have tended to dazzle the masses with the glory of the achievements of French valor abroad; thus while thousands of the young and enterprising have been lured away to fill up the ranks, and to seek fame and fortune, the minds of those remaining have been withdrawn from their own wrongs, oppression and suffering, and from efficiently concerting to sustain the measures of their friends for their relief. There is not a race in Christendom so fond of military glory and achievement as the French. Dazzled by this, the people, the masses—"

"The people, the masses!" impatiently interrupted the journalist. "You know me, Louis; for years you have known me well, for years have we devoted every energy of heart and soul to the cause of the people, and for years, ever since we came to man's estate, have we been equal sufferers in the same cause—"

"Sufferers in the cause of the people of France, in the cause of man, we both, doubtless, have been, but not equal sufferers. What have been my sacrifices or sufferings, my dear Armand, compared to yours? In that dark hour when Armand Carrel fell—fell by an ignoble bullet in an ignoble cause—fell in bitterness and without a hope for liberty in his beloved France—I felt impelled to come forward and exert myself for the welfare of my race, and endeavor to aid others in filling the gap created by his loss. To France, to my country, did I then, though but a boy, devote myself—France, my country!—for such I feel her to be, though I was born in Spain and my mother was a Corsican. Since that hour my pen has been dedicated to the cause of the people, the dethronement of the Bourgeoisie and the organization of labor. As to sacrifice or suffering, I have sacrificed only my time and toil at the worst. I have not been deemed worthy of suffering even a fine for a newspaper libel, and my paper has never been thought worth suppression!"

"And what have I accomplished, Louis?" asked Marrast, gloomily. "My life seems almost a blank."

"With Armand Carrel, you have for fifteen years been the champion of Republicanism in France, and with you, as leaders, has all been accomplished that now exists. When Carrel died, on you fell his mantle. As editor of 'La Tribune,' your boldness and charging Casimir Perier and Marshal Soult with connivance in Gisquet's scandalous frauds brought upon you fine and imprisonment. Your boldness and patriotism during the insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, 1832, once more caused your paper to be stopped and your presses to be sealed. In April, '34, your press was again stopped, and you, with Godefroi Cavaignac, were thrown into Sainté Pélagie, whence you so gallantly escaped, though to become an exile in England. Again, in '35, you were sentenced to transportation. So much for sufferings; as to sacrifices—why, you have been utterly ruined by fines!"

"Well, Louis, well," was the sad answer, "granting all this, my sacrifices and sufferings are only the more bitter from the fact of having been utterly in vain, entirely useless. You, Louis, have been wiser than I. Your journal is well named 'Bon Sens.'"

"Possibly wiser," was the reply, "and possibly less bold. But does not discretion sometimes win what boldness would sacrifice? In rashly struggling for all we sometimes lose all. Prudence and perseverance, my dear Armand, are invaluable."

CHAPTER X.

"Marrast is right, Messieurs. I was, indeed, preaching patience. I was endeavoring to soothe his irritation and chide his depression with a sermon; since we are all old friends and fellow-sufferers in the good cause and have a common interest in knowing the reasons of failure and the means of triumph, I will by your leave proceed."

"Aye, dear Louis, go on!" cried Marrast, kindly. "But you are the most youthful sage I ever listened to."

"Yes, Louis, proceed; you look like a curé," said Rollin, laughing.

"I subscribe to Louis Blanc's creed, be it what it may," added Flocon, briskly.

"And so do I," said Albert, gravely, in a deep tone.

Of the new visitors, Ledru Rollin was a man of medium stature, about thirty-five years of age and dressed in the extreme of the mode. His complexion and hair were light, his eyes large, blue and protruding, his mouth prominent, and his full cheeks covered with whiskers, which like those of Marrast, were closely trimmed and met beneath his chin. His head and shoulders were thrown back, and his air was bold and independent. He was a lawyer of talent, who had gained celebrity as advocate of the accused on many occasions of State prosecutions.

Flocon was an older man than Rollin, and his countenance bore the wary, vigilant and suspicious look which experience alone gives. He was low in stature, thick-set and close-knit in figure; his eyes seemed always half closed; his brow was broad and massive; his face was long; a moustache was on his lip, and his hair was closely cut. The outline of his head and the expression of his face seemed those rather of one born on the banks of the Rhine than on the banks of the Seine, so calm and passionless did they appear. His dress was plain but neat. Flocon was the chief editor of "La Réforme," the name of which indicates its character. It was this man who, in February, 1833, repressed the violence of his partisans and saved the office of the "Gazette de France," yet the very next day published his celebrated letter to the Legitimists, which, for audacity, force and pungency was only equaled by the paralyzing effect it produced. The fines, imprisonments and civil incapacities to which this man had been subjected for assaults upon a government he deemed corrupt, for the ten years preceding, had been literally numberless.

Albert was a man of fifty or more, with a large head, square German face and forehead, a large hazel eye, fixed and unexcitable, hair closely cut, and beard upon his chin and lip. His dress was a long iron-gray frock coat, buttoned closely to his chin. His face was rather thin, and his complexion bronzed. His name had for years been identified with reform; and though a manufacturer himself, of the class of workmen, being proprietor and chief engineer of a large machine factory at Lyons, he had established and sustained in that city a paper to advocate his principles, named "La Glaneuse," the prosecution of which by the Government for libel and the fining and imprisonment of its editor formed an originating cause of the revolt in Lyons of April, 1834. For the part played by this man in the revolt thus arising, he was sentenced to transportation, a penalty afterwards commuted to fine and imprisonment. He was a man of few words, remarkably few, but of deep thought and prompt action, and, in moments of crisis and emergency, a man of unshaken and inflexible nerve. To the casual observer, he seemed only a silent man, or a sullen one, astute or stolid; in times of peril he was a man of iron, but a man of action and passion, too, moving with resistless might. To rouse his powers, mental or physical, demanded, indeed, circumstances of unusual import, but once roused they were irresistible.

Such were the personages now assembled in the office of "Le National;" and, of those five men, all were connected with the press, directly, as editor or proprietor, save only Ledru Rollin, and he was a writer for "La Réforme," as well as an advocate.

The name of Louis Blanc's paper was, as has been said, "Le Bon Sens."

But to return to the narrative.

"And you really wish a sermon from me, old comrades, with patience as the text?"

"Aye—aye—aye!" exclaimed all.

"Suppose I add to it this line I find on the paper before me on the table, that our good Marrast had just written as the text for a paragraph which would probably have cost him another fine and imprisonment, had the paragraph been completed and published?"

"Read! read!" cried Rollin.

"With your permission, Armand?"

"Certainly," replied the editor, still continuing his promenade.

"'Again the House of Orléans triumphs!'" read Louis Blanc, aloud.

"And is it not true—the accursed tyrants?" vociferated Rollin.

"Aye, true!" was the mild answer; "alas, too true! That perfidious House does triumph, and for that very reason the fact should never be acknowledged by its opponents."

Rollin shook his head, and, throwing himself back in his capacious chair, folded his arms, sunk his chin upon his breast and closed his eyes.

Marrast continued his walk.

Flocon remained silent and thoughtful.

Albert gave a significant smile.

"Oppose ceaselessly, but quietly, every act of despotism this Bourgeois Government may attempt; but, be the result what it may, never admit yourselves discouraged, depressed, dismayed, defeated. From every fall rise like Antaeus, with renewed vigor. Nor is it wise or prudent in those engaged in a great and glorious cause to provoke danger, to brave penalty, when nothing of good to that cause can reasonably be expected. Prudence, policy, patience and perseverance accomplish more than rashness, yet are not inconsistent with intrepidity, boldness, patriotism and philanthropy the most exalted. Comrades, what says the past, the past ten years, in whose events we have all so intimately mingled? Shall I tell you?"

"Aye! 'L'Histoire de Dix Ans,'" said Flocon.

"We are all sure of being immortal there, in that same book of yours! Eh! Louis?" cried Rollin, opening his large blue eyes.

Louis Blanc smiled and continued:

"Shall I convince you, comrades, by the history of the past ten years, the scenes we have all witnessed, the events we have all deplored, the defeats we have all sustained, the insulting ovations we have all been forced to behold and the unceasing triumphs and tyranny of the House of Orléans that, had patience and prudence been our motto, these defeats and triumphs would never have been witnessed, because these premature revolts would never have been made?"

Albert bowed and gave his peculiar smile.

"Our friend Albert smiles, and well he may. He has had a sad experience in this error of premature outbreaks. In April, 1834, he exerted every energy to restrain the revolt in Lyons, as chief of the Société des Droits de l'Homme, and as the undoubted friend of the operatives. But his efforts were futile. Exasperated, urged on by less experienced leaders, they were in full tide of revolution, and could no more be restrained in their unwise rising than could the mountain cataract in mad career be dammed. The result was, of course, defeat—most disastrous defeat. Hundreds of the people perished, and our friend was imprisoned and fined for taking part in a movement, which he had in vain attempted to quell, and then, with the certainty of defeat, had joined, rather than desert the people who trusted and relied on him."

"A noble act!" cried Marrast, as he paced the room.

Albert quietly smiled, but otherwise his countenance remained unmoved.

"And was it not a most noble and a most wise act," continued the author of "The Ten Years," "when our friend Flocon, by an energetic and eloquent harangue, restrained the indignant people from razing to the ground the office of the 'Gazette de France,' the organ of the Duchess of Berri, and his bitter foe? Terribly would that rash act have recoiled on us, and yet, at the same time, with this most patriotic and prudent deed before us, a wilder measure than even that was adopted, and it was quelled only by force. You all remember the events. In February, '33, Eugène Brifault, in his 'Corsair,' alluded jestingly to the mysterious pregnancy of the mother of Henry V., Duke of Bordeaux, as did every one, she then being imprisoned at Baye because of her prior conspiracy to place her son on the throne, and her secret marriage in Italy being unrevealed. The Legitimists of 'Le Revenant' challenged; the allusion was repeated, and a second trial and a death ensued. 'Le National' and 'La Tribune,' regarding these repeated challenges as a menace to the Republicans, hurled defiance at the Legitimists, and demanded twelve distinct rencontres in behalf of as many names of our friends posted at their offices, among which those of Armand Carrel, Godefroi Cavaignac and Armand Marrast were conspicuous. The challenge is accepted—the names of twelve Legitimists are furnished—Armand Carrel selects Roux Laborie—they fight, and Carrel is dangerously wounded—the police then interfere—the affair ends with Flocon's terrific and audacious defiance flung down at the whole Legitimist and Orléans parties in the columns of 'La Réforme.' Now, what to Republicans were the quarrels of Legitimists and Orléanists? If we were to be ruled by a king, what cared we whether that king were Henry V. or Louis Philippe? How would the sacrifice of Carrel, Marrast, Cavaignac, or of any of those twelve brave men have been repaid, or made up? And afterwards, alas! in July of '36, when Armand Carrel, causelessly assuming a quarrel not his own, because of a fancied attempt to degrade the press, by rendering its issues accessible, by cheapness, to the masses, was slain in the Bois de Vincennes by the vulgar bullet of Émile de Girardin, of 'La Presse.' What reparation to our cause was it that our champion had died like a hero, and Châteaubriand, Arago, Cormenin and Béranger wept around his grave? Alas! that inestimable life belonged to his country and his race, and not to himself, to fling away in an obscure quarrel."

"But we are not all of us Armand Carrels," said Rollin.

"And yet, to the great cause of human liberty, and the amelioration of man's condition, to which each of us stands sworn, are pledged our lives. To hazard that cause, by the sacrifice of those lives, or by rashly and unwisely attempting its advancement, makes us violators of our vows, quite as much in reality as if we had become traitors."

"But the instances you cite are those only of individual rashness, Louis, and not of the people, or of their leaders acting in concert," remarked Marrast.

"True, concert of action has been chiefly needed, but I have only to recall the dates and places of our repeated attempts and defeats, for the past ten years, to convince you all that those attempts were premature, and had they not been so, they might have been successful—that they have frittered away energies which, properly concentrated and directed, might have achieved a revolution; and that while they have betrayed our designs and depressed our friends, have enabled our foes insultingly to triumph and caused them to be on the constant qui vive to anticipate our movements. What but premature and undigested uprisings were the conspiracy of the bell-tower of Nôtre Dame, in January of '32, when 'Le National' was seized—or the disturbances in La Vendée—or those in Grenoble—or those in Marseilles—or those in the Rue des Prouvaires—or those in April, during the cholera, when Casimir Perier died—or those of the 5th and 6th of June, on the occasion of General Lamarque's funeral, on pretence of avenging upon the Government the affront offered during the obsequies of Casimir Perier, the victim-Premier of the cholera? For the part taken by 'La Tribune,' then conducted by Marrast, in this revolt, its press was seized and sealed. The same was the fate of 'La Quotidienne,' and the same would have been the fate of 'Le National,' but for its barricades. Well do I remember the meeting of our friends in this very apartment on the night after General Lamarque's funeral. The great shade of the venerable warrior seemed among us, repeating for our counsel and imitation his last impressive words, 'I die but the cause lives!' But, alas! we observed it not. Doubt, dissension, dismay and despair were in our midst. All was dark—all was defiance and denunciation, crimination and recrimination—brother's hand raised against brother. Armand Carrel that night sat in this chair, but he was not the man to command his own will or opinions; how could he then bring to obedience and concert the conflicting impulses of others? Armand Carrel was a wonderful man. His motto, like that of Danton, was this: 'Audacity, audacity, always audacity!' Yet with all the audacity of Danton, he had little of his firmness. An officer under the Restoration, a conspirator at Bifort, in arms in Spain against the white flag, three times a prisoner before a council of war—in 1830 he was with Thiers, the founder of this journal; but everywhere he carried the exactitude of the camp; even in dress, manner and bearing he was a soldier—lofty, haughty, seemingly overbearing, yet, at heart, noble and generous, and to his friends accessible in the extreme. To his military notions, nothing could be accomplished without soldiers, and for the people to carry a revolution against soldiers seemed to him absurd."

"Armand Carrel would have been, nevertheless, a good revolutionist, Louis," said Marrast; "but he was a bad conspirator. He had no faith in the people, no confidence in the efforts of undisciplined and unarmed masses."

"And therein," said Rollin, "he greatly erred."

"Although we can as yet boast of having accomplished but very little by them, Ledru," added Flocon, with a meaning smile. "The masses are easily roused, but they don't stay roused, and then they often get unmanageable, even by those by whose summons they were stirred up. They fight well, but, somehow or other, they always get beaten; they succumb at last, and bow their necks to the yoke lower than ever."

"It is not the people," said Louis Blanc, "it is we the leaders, who are to be blamed. We rouse them before we are ready for them—before we have prepared them or anything else for a result; and then it is not strange that they only rush bravely on to death and defeat. We seize on the occasion of a funeral for an outbreak without organization, and the cuirassiers of the military escort trample our ranks beneath their horses' hoofs. But for unusual efforts, such would have been the case at the funeral of Dulong, the Deputy who fell in a duel with General Bugeaud, in January of '34."

"What were the circumstances?" asked Rollin.

"Armand recollects them better than I," replied Louis Blanc.

"The circumstances were these, as I remember them," said Marrast. "General Bugeaud remarked in the course of a speech in the Chamber that 'obedience is always a soldier's duty.' 'What if the order be to become a turnkey?' asked Dulong, in allusion to the General's position in relation to the Duchess of Berri, during her pregnancy and confinement at Baye. Armand Carrel endeavored to pacificate, but the effort failed. They met in the Bois de Boulogne at ten o' clock in the morning; the weapons were pistols; the distance forty paces. Bugeaud fired almost as soon as he turned, advancing only a few steps; his ball entered above Dulong's right eye, and at six o'clock that evening he was dead."

"There was a splendid ball at the Tuileries that night, was there not?" asked Flocon.

"There was, and this, with other things, excited in the masses the idea that their champion was the victim of a Royalist conspiracy, which all the influence of Armand Carrel and Dulong's uncle, Dupont de l'Eure was hardly sufficient to suppress. But Dupont immediately resigned his seat in the Chamber. He would sit no longer in a body one man of which he deemed the murderer of a beloved nephew. The obsequies were grand. Armand Carrel pronounced the eulogy, and two hundred and thirty-four deputies wet the grave with their tears. The people were greatly excited, and, as has been said, were with great difficulty restrained by Carrel and Dupont. Had they been suffered to revolt, the only result which could have followed would have been a terrific outpouring of their blood, furnishing another instance, I suppose, of the evil of impatience; is it not so, Louis?"

"Undoubtedly," was the reply; "and only two months after that other instance actually occurred, for our warning, in the revolt at Lyons, with which we are all familiar, and in which we were all actors, most of us to our sorrow. This was in April. Albert's journal, 'La Glaneuse,' had been seized for libel on the Government, and the editor fined and imprisoned. Next a reform banquet of the operatives was forbidden, although but a year before Garnier Pages had been suffered to banquet the Lyonnese to the number of two thousand, and although at no period had so many gorgeous festivities and public balls been given by the rich Royalists, as if in premeditated scorn of the banquet prohibited to the poor Republicans. The result was so prompt as to seem inevitable; there was a strike of the operatives, an insurrection of the people. Albert was sent to Paris as an envoy, to find a man to lead the revolt. MM. Cabet and Pages were deemed too moderate. Cavaignac would go only with Cabet. Lafayette was too feeble, but gave his name and letters. Carrel and Marrast were not members of the Société des Droits de l'Homme, and Albert had been cautioned that Carrel was too moderate. Thiers had denounced 'La Tribune,' and Marrast's friends were hiding him from the police. In despair concerning his mission, the envoy was about returning home, when he was sent for to Armand Carrel's house, and Carrel offered to go to Lyons and lead the revolt, provided Godefroi Cavaignac would accompany him. Now these friends had long been at feud, but all private grievances were forgotten in this crisis of the cause, and Albert is just about preceding them in the post-chaise, to announce their coming, when, lo! the telegraph says, 'Order reigns in Lyons!' Here, then, after a terrific slaughter, was recorded another fruitless revolt, because a premature one. Nay, it was infinitely worse than fruitless. Not only did the Republicans utterly fail in their attempts, not only were they cruelly crushed by the Royal mercenaries, but they were openly derided in their defeat, and the cause was gloomier than ever. The slaughter of women and children in the streets of Lyons, and on their own hearthstones, in the course of this insurrection, was hideous, and is graphically portrayed in the memorial of our friend Ledru Rollin, as advocate in the matter. But, as if all this were not enough for our persecuted cause, the decease of the great and good Lafayette, the idol of freemen all the world over, took place in the following May. Alas! his sun went down in clouds. His end was dark. Bitter maledictions quivered on his dying lips. He had lived to mourn that July day, only three years before, when, on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, he had, with his own hands, been called to invest a cold-blooded, perfidious, selfish, and most ungrateful tyrant with Royal robes. Alas! there was order in Lyons—Lafayette was in his grave—peace reigned in Paris—the House of Orléans triumphed!"