Marguerite’s terror was aggravated by a sense of shame for having failed to anticipate her husband’s heroism, and being now unable to share it. Her thoughts were ready to veer any way in hope of escape, rather than anchor themselves upon her husband’s determination, and await the event. No wonder, since she had so much at stake, and was a very simpleton in political matters. She had all possible fears, and no wishes. A miserable state to be in, in such times!

Could not the whole family remove? Could not her husband, at least, slip away by night? Must they remain in the neighbourhood of gunpowder, and in daily expectation of the mob?—actually within hearing of the hated drums?

They must; her husband replied. Any attempt to fly, or to alter their manner of living, would be immediately detected, and would bring a worse destruction than that which they might possibly escape by remaining. Had not Marguerite observed spies about the house?

O yes: every day since poor Joli was found hanged. That was a sad piece of carelessness. Charles thought so too, and even with more reason than his wife. He knew that the dressing up of that dog was set down in the list of his sins against his country. If it had taken place eighteen months later, it would have brought upon him an immediate sentence of death: but matters not having yet gone so far as they were destined to proceed, the fact was only recorded against him.

“Let us go,” said Marguerite, faintly, when she found her husband bent on adhering to his plans, for reasons which she could not gainsay. “I cannot bear the air of this place.”

“We will go presently, love,” replied Charles. “The first moment that I see you look like yourself, I will call to Pierre to unlock the door. Meanwhile, here is a seat; and I will give you air and something to revive you.”

Having seated her where a breath of fresh air from the little trap-door might blow upon her face, he brought a flask of rich wine, in a full glass of which he pledged her, assuring her, with a smile, that it did not yet taste of gunpowder. His pledge was,—

“Marguerite, my wife,—life and safety to ourselves and our household! If not these,—at least the peace of our enlightened and steadfast will!—Will you not pledge me?”

She bowed her head upon his shoulder, and wept her shame at being unworthy of him,—unfit to live in such times.

“Then preserve yourself, love, to live in better times. They will come; they must come; and steady hopefulness will be our best security till they arrive.”

Marguerite so far succeeded in her endeavour to adopt her husband’s principle, that she returned with a smile the searching gaze which Pierre fixed upon her as she issued from the cellar: but her countenance fell at the first words with which he answered her intimation that she now knew the great secret, and would guard it carefully.

“Alas! Madame. I fear it has ceased to be a secret——That is,” he added, changing his tone when he perceived her alarm,—“our men yonder cannot but observe how carefully we keep the place locked, and how many customers we send away; and nothing escapes suspicion in these times. But your having been down is a happy circumstance, Madame; especially as you emerge with an air so charmingly serene.”

This hint to look composed was not lost upon the lady, who tripped across the court with a demeanour of assumed gaiety. It presently vanished; and she looked with astonishment on her husband when at play with the children after dinner. It rent her heart to hear her father inquire perpetually how early in the spring they should set out for Guienne, that he might delight himself in his beloved olive-groves once more, with the children by his side: but Charles answered as if there had still been olive-groves; and as if the family were at liberty to go whither they pleased in their beautiful country. When, at intervals, she saw him whipping his little girl’s wooden horse, and practising battledore with his young son, laughing all the while as merrily as either, she could scarcely believe him to be the same who had so lately solemnly pledged her over a train of gunpowder laid by his own resolute hands.

M. Raucourt had abundance of leisure to repeat his question about journeying southwards, and to describe to his grandchildren the wealth of fruit-grounds that they would inherit from him. Month after month, as the days grew longer, and the weather became hotter, he told them that, when spring came, they should go with him to groves where pink blossoms came out before the green leaves, and where the young oranges grew more golden amidst the verdure as the season drew on.

“But, grandpapa,” objected Julien, “the spring is going away very fast already.”

“Ah! well, then, we shall be too late for the almond blossoms, but the oranges and the grapes will be all the more beautiful.”

“But,” observed Pauline, when two more months had passed away, “the vintage will be all over now before we can get there, mamma says.”

“Well, my dear, but there is a spring every year, and I am talking of next spring.”

And so the matter was settled for this year. Marguerite began to hope that the affair of the cellars would be so likewise, as Charles had of late been less importuned to sell, and there had been no fresh evidences, amidst the increasing discontents of the people, that he was held in suspicion. There was even a hope of removing a large part of his stock openly and safely. Steele wanted more wine, and Antoine, having none left at Bordeaux, referred him to his brother; and the Englishman arrived in Paris to see whether he could enter into another negociation with the house with which he had already dealt so extensively. He took up his abode in Charles’s house, and consulted with him, and also with some of the authorities of the city, as to the best mode of removing his purchases, without exciting the rage of the mob, who by this time had taken upon themselves to decide the right and wrong of all matters that passed before their eyes, whether of the nature of public or private business. The magistrates, who politicly adopted the tone of the people as often as they could, sighed over the anomaly of a foreigner purchasing wine in Paris, while there was too little left for Frenchmen; and Steele wondered as emphatically at the state of affairs which obliged two merchants to call in the interference of the magistracy to repel that of the mob, while they settled their private bargains. Marguerite thought little of the one anomaly or the other, in her strong wish to have her husband’s cellars emptied at all events. The greatest happiness she could imagine was that of helping him and Pierre to sweep away the gunpowder, and throw open the doors of the vacant place to any one who chose to enter. There was much to be done, however, before they could arrive at this fortunate issue.

One day, while Steele’s business was pending, a carriage drove up to the door, with considerable state, and the Marquis de Thou, having ascertained that the wine-merchant was at home, alighted, and requested to speak with him on business. While Charles waited on him, Marguerite anxiously inquired of Steele respecting the marquis’s politics; for she apprehended a snare in every transaction. She thought it strange that so stout an old royalist should have any dealings with her husband, and was not comforted by what she learned from Steele; namely, that being forced by the hatred of his country neighbours to leave his chateau in Guienne, and take refuge in Paris in the middle of summer, he seemed disposed to trim between the two parties, and was therefore likely to be a dangerous person to have dealings with. Immediately on his arrival, he had contrived to place his daughter in the queen’s train, while he kept upon terms with the duke of Orleans. Pleading to himself, and bidding lady Alice plead to the queen, if called upon, his old companionship with Orleans, he did much of the duke’s dirty work, very unconsciously, very complacently, and with the comfortable conviction that his loyalty remained unblemished, while he attended no public meetings, and managed to be within the palace walls whenever a popular movement was likely to take place. While Steele was explaining what was reported of the marquis at Bordeaux, Charles appeared.

“The marquis wants to make large purchases of wine,” he said. “Do you conceive he can have occasion for a fourth part of my stock for his own use?”

“His chateau is shut up,” replied Steele; “and he is not occupying his hotel in Paris. Depend upon it, he is shopping for Orleans, as usual.”

“He shall not have enough to intoxicate a single bravo with,” cried Charles. “Come with me, Steele, and find some objection to every sample. Claim as much as you please, and disgust him with as much more as you can.”

Pierre was called in to help, and among the three, all as solemn as himself, the marquis was more eminently bamboozled than he had ever been before in his life; which is saying a great deal. He protested every sample to be better than the last, whatever might have been mixed with it by Pierre in the fetching. He made half a hundred low bows when Steele claimed all that was tolerable; and declared his admiration of Charles’s magnanimity in pointing out the defects of his own commodity. The civility of M. Pierre also in vowing that the marquis should have no wine but the best, which was all, unhappily, sold already, was worthy of much acknowledgment. Being under promise, however, to purchase such and such quantities of wine, he must waive their polite scruples, and obviate all others by referring M. Charles Luyon to the most wealthy nobleman in the kingdom for payment. This avowal decided the matter. Charles shirked the marquis all the more speedily for his having owned that he came from the Duke of Orleans, and the carriage conveyed away the messenger without his errand.

From day to day other customers came: but, as all might be traced as instruments of the duke, they were all dismissed in the same way as the marquis. Charles was convinced that some popular commotion was at hand. He perceived that the truly patriotic movers in the revolution were more and more hated by Orleans, as his purposes degenerated more and more from the purity of theirs; and he could not restrain his indignation at the efforts that were made to infatuate and brutalize the people, that they might disgrace or interrupt the measures of the enlightened of their leaders, and bring down a nation worthy of freedom to bow the knee to one who nourished the passions of a tyrant in the coward heart of a slave. “He shall not madden the people with my wine. Whatever they do shall be done in a state of sanity, as far as I can contribute thereto,” was still Charles’s resolution; and he declined prices on which the hand of many a brother in trade would have closed without a question. He had too humble an idea of his own consequence to adopt his wife’s opinion that it was designed to attach him to the Orleans party by making him the creditor of its chief. She was confirmed in her notion, however, by a very disagreeable circumstance,—the appearance of Orleans himself;—to purchase fruit, as he declared.

From fruit the negociation presently turned to wine, as Charles expected; and for which he had prepared himself with a somewhat desperate intent. Knowing the faint heart which his new customer hid under his impudent address, he thought he might calculate on the effect which would be produced by a sight of his underground preparations; and he accordingly requested his Grace, with a compliment to his well-known condescension, to enter the cellar. As soon as they were fairly in, he called to Pierre to be very careful of the lantern, as a single spark might be fatal; invited the duke, unless he objected to approach so near to the magazine, to inspect the date of a certain curious old wine; begged to go first among the fireworks for fear of an accidental explosion, and so forth; expatiating con amore on his commodity, in the intervals.

“Bless my soul, M. Luyon!” cried the duke, “what can you mean by making a fortress of your cellars? It is dangerous to set foot in them, by your own account.”

“Only to those who have no business here,” replied Charles. “My man and I can tread in security.”

And he coolly gave his reasons for rendering his wine inaccessible; pointing out no party, but merely with a reference to the perpetual danger of disturbance in the present times.

“But it is absolutely a fortress,” repeated the duke. “Your door is massive. Is there no way of escape?——I mean, no other entrance?”

“None whatever,” replied Charles; and at this moment, Pierre, having set down the lantern, slammed the plated door, and barred and crossbarred it with a diligence which the guest by no means approved.

“A fortress is perfectly harmless when in friendly hands, and unless attacked,” observed Charles. “Here are no weapons of offence, you observe; and it is far from being my interest to blow up my stock, unless driven to it.”

“Or even then,” argued the duke. “Supposing your premises were attacked,—an idle anticipation;—but supposing they were, it would answer better to you to have them stripped than destroyed.”

“To my pocket, doubtless,” answered Charles, occupying himself with opening a flask; “but not to my conscience. If by my means a mob, or any individual of a mob, were to be incited to party violence,—if I were so treacherous as to allow their impulses of patriotism to be corrupted into licentiousness,—I should feel the manliness within me melting away. I should start at shadows for the rest of my days. No, sir; perish my possessions, rather than they should go to corrupt public virtue.—Taste this, I advise you, my lord duke.”

“Do not you think the air rather close here?” asked Orleans, in his smoothest manner. “Are not the fumes of this wine——”

“And of the gunpowder, my lord? They are no doubt oppressive to those who are unused to them. Open the door, Pierre.”

The duke found his faculty of taste more to be relied upon in the open air; and took his stand accordingly in the portal, where he stood negociating and gossiping for an unconscionable time, till first one or two people appeared in the court, then more, and more still, and in an instant the well-known drum was heard close by, and the shouts of a rabble which poured in without the slightest warning. Orleans looked as if he was going to be very angry; but Charles had no time to parley with his hypocrisy.

It was too late to fasten the portal on the outside, and run to the house. Pierre’s motion was to pull the duke with them into the cellar; but his master forbade. He thrust Orleans out of the portal, calling out,

“See, we carry a light in with us; and remember you tread on hollow ground,”—and retreated, not allowing even his faithful Pierre to enter the place of danger with him. He locked, bolted, barred and double barred the door, went and placed the lantern close by the train, looked to his matches and tinder, and then sat down, with folded arms, to await the issue of the expected siege. He was fully resolved to sacrifice his life and property rather than be aiding and abetting with Orleans in giving a licentious character to the great act (whatever it might be) which the people were evidently contemplating. The more he had thought of the events of the preceding day, when arms had been seized and cannon laid hold of by the people, the more convinced he had been that the present would not pass away without being signalized by some extraordinary deed, and the more resolutely determined he felt to use such power as he had, for the safety and honour of the state. The fierce yells of the mob outside had no effect but to increase his courage, as they served to justify his object to himself; and as he looked through the dim vault, from the further end of which came the dull echo of the blows upon the door, as he observed that the one feeble light did not so much as flicker in the socket while all was tumult outside, he felt a thrilling consciousness of power which was not gloomy, though it was fearful, and might involve his own destruction. Whether it would involve any other life, he had considered much and long; he believed not; or that if one or a few should be injured by the slight explosion which would effect his purpose, this would be a less evil than would be perpetrated by a drunken mob in possession of such means of destruction as they had seized the day before.

One circumstance nearly unnerved him. He had prevented Pierre from entering with him, under the idea of saving his life from the peril in which his own was placed; but the sudden outcry which presently arose, the oaths evidently directed at an individual, the cries of shrill female voices,—“To the lamp-post with him!”—agonized Charles with the idea that the vengeance of the mob for his opposition was to fall upon his unfortunate servant. He felt a momentary impulse to throw open the door and take all the consequences, the first of which would undoubtedly be that he would be taken to the lamp-post,——

“Not instead of Pierre, but with him,” he thought, however, in another moment. “No. I cannot save him; so I will persevere. And may heaven hold me guiltless of his blood; for I meant well towards him!—But what now?—What a silence!—Have they sent for fire to smoke me out? I will throw up a thicker smoke presently, if that be it.—O, what a horrible cry! What can have put them in a new rage?”

If Charles could have looked through the thick walls of his vault, he would have seen that which might well have called down an immediate sentence of death on all his household; that which added new horrors to his wife’s suspense, and increased the agony of poor Pierre, standing as he was in the grasp of two of the enemy, and assured by the fish-women about him that he was to be hanged as soon as they could find a cord. He forgot his own situation for a moment when he looked up to the balcony, and saw the deplorable mistake which was likely to prove the destruction of the whole family. Nobody within doors had thought of M. Raucourt, whom no event was now ever known to bring from his easy chair at the front window. He was left alone while the back of the house was being barricaded with all speed, and messengers put out upon the roof to find their way, if possible, to the authorities; or at least to make signals for assistance. But the children came in a state of amazement to grandpapa, and the shouts reached even his dull ear, and recalled the associations which in the old royalist were always the first to be awakened. He had no other idea than that the people were hailing the royal family, and he resolved not to be behind others in his duty. He sent Pauline for the white cockade he had given her, tottered to his chamber, got out, under a new impulse of strength, upon the balcony, and waved his white favour. It was this which had silenced the mob with astonishment; and in the depth of this silence, the feeble, cracked voice of the old man was heard trying to shout “Vive le Roi!”

The horrible burst of passion which followed was not directed against him. The helplessness of his attitude as he stood supporting himself with both hands, and the gleam of foolish pleasure which came over his countenance, showed his real state; and even the lowest of the mob did not yet make war against dotards. It was because his act was supposed to betoken the politics of the family that it excited such an outcry; and there seemed some reason for Pierre’s fears that the very house would be presently levelled with the ground. It made his heart sick within him to see the old man smiling and bowing, and trying to induce the shrinking children to come and stand beside him, and resisting his wretched daughter’s attempts to withdraw him. Pierre struggled fiercely, but in vain; he implored, more humbly than he would have stooped to do for his own life, to be allowed two minutes’ speech to the people. He met only threats and laughter. The threats mattered little to a man who expected to be hanged in a few minutes, but the laughter stung him to the soul. He cursed himself for the folly of having appealed to those who could mock the innocence of dotage and childhood, and disregard the agony of a woman: and he recalled the words in which he had at first spoken to them as the French people.

Pierre was right. These were no sample of the French people who had begun to cast off the yoke of tyranny. These were a portion of the brutalized class who, in using the word tyranny, thought only of the difference between suffering and inflicting it: who, when they talked of liberty, asked for license to plunder palaces and riot in wine-cellars. These were, in short, the Orleans mob, and not the real authors of the political changes now taking place. They aided these changes at the time, indeed, by testifying to the degree of oppression which the lower orders had till now suffered; and they furnish, to this day and for ever, an instructive commentary upon these changes, in as far as they exhibit the operation of despotism in preparing its own downfall by at once brutalizing and exasperating its victims. But still these were perfectly distinct from the true protectors of liberty, the wise and steady opponents of despotism. These last were very differently employed this morning, and tidings of their doings came just in time to preserve Charles and his family.

The children had already been sent away by the roof, in charge of the servants, and Marguerite had sat down alone beside the chair of her father, (whom it was impossible to remove, and whom she would not leave,) when sounds reached her which gave her back a little of the hope she had wholly surrendered. It was not the approach of soldiers, nor the potential voices of magistrates, nor any of the welcome intimations of help at hand which conclude a riot and disperse a rabble in an orderly country, and under ordinary circumstances. Neither soldiers nor magistrates could be depended upon, or had any power in Paris at this time but that which the outrageous mob chose to allow them. Marguerite knew this so well, that, though she took all precautions in sending for aid, she expected none but that which might arise from accident. Such a diversion of the people’s rage as actually happened was beyond her hopes.

While her father was still talking about the king, and she was holding him down in his chair, in opposition to his complaints of not being allowed to go to the window to pay his duty, the fearful sound of the tocsin was heard above all the uproar in the court and street. One cry seemed to come on the four winds,—“To the Bastille! to the Bastille!” At first confused and reiterated, the clangor and the shout echoed noisily from street to street, from steeple to steeple. Presently the cry became more concentrated, as if the city sent up but one mighty voice. Marguerite sank down on her knees, overcome with the hope of deliverance for her husband; but the mob did not yet cease to batter the door which shielded him, and the fierce women cried out that they would not be decoyed away by a false alarm. After a few more moments came the booming of cannon on the ear, and a pause followed in the court. Again it came, and again, and the windows rattled, and there was in the intervals quiet enough for the rushing of a steady stream of people to be heard from the streets, from whom arose, in alternation with silence, the deep and steady cry, “To the Bastille!” The mob in the court mixed with this stream, eager to learn what new scene was to be enacted, what better hope of plunder was presented than that afforded by the stores of an obstinate and insignificant wine-merchant, who had already caused them more trouble than he and his goods were worth. They looked round for a signal from their leader, but Orleans had disappeared some time before, not choosing to be held responsible for the violence to which he had tempted his followers. They went to look for him at the Bastille, where he was indeed present, to help, as usual, to disgrace a work set on foot by better men.

As soon as the court was empty, Marguerite flew to release her husband. Charles was listening intently to ascertain whether this hush was a treacherous calm, or whether he was indeed safe for the present, when he felt a breath of fresh air, and saw a glimmer of daylight fall into the midst of the vault, and heard a faint voice calling to him,—

“Come out, love! If you are safe, all is safe.”

Not all, Charles remembered, when he had time to think of any one but his wife. Before he even went to seek his children, and to recallrecall the servants, he ascertained that Pierre had disappeared, and hurried out to learn his fate, bending his steps to the Place de Grêve, where he feared he was most likely to find his faithful servant, dead or alive. He found two bodies hanging, and cries of murderous exultation, which made his blood run cold, still echoing through the place; but Pierre was nowhere to be seen, and the bodies were those of soldiers. He saw more victims brought to the foot of the lamp-posts; but they came from the direction of the Bastille, and were evidently members of the invalid garrison. Through some unseen influence exerted in the crowd, these men were spared, which gave Charles the hope that Pierre, if yet living, would escape. In fact, he was safe enough, being at this moment employed in drawing the people to the attack upon that gloomy fortress, which was regarded with more detestation by Frenchmen than if it had been a pest-house. When Pierre had by his energy sufficiently attested his good citizenship to be allowed to depart whither he would, he ran homewards, met his master in search of him, embraced the children, kissed Marguerite’s hand, and hastened back again to assist the siege, as if nothing had happened to himself that morning. Charles did the same, having persuaded his wife that he should be safer before the Bastille than at home, and left her in the protection of Steele, who had returned from his fruitless errand to the magistrates; fruitless, because they could listen to no petitions for private succour while the grand work of the demolition of the state-fortress was going on under their sanction, and the control of their forces.

Steele had no more idea of remaining with the women and children on such an occasion, than his friend Charles. As soon as he had persuaded Marguerite to lie down, and had seen grandpapa and the children at play together again, and called in two stout porters of the establishment to keep watch below, he also disappeared. Often and vehemently did he protest in after years that he would not for any consideration have been absent from that siege; and of all his possessions, none were so valued by him as a link of the chain from which one of the captives had been released by Steele’s own hands; which link the Englishman carried about him to the day of his death.

While Marguerite slept, through pure exhaustion, occasionally starting at the sound of cannon, or scared with visions of the horrible faces she had seen in the court so lately, her husband was actively disproving, to as many as might observe him, his being a royalist. He lent a helping hand to one work after another; now assisting in letting down the drawbridges successively; now in hauling forward the cannon; now in demolishing the guard-houses; now in forcing an entrance into the gloomy place itself; and finally, shouting for the release of the prisoners. Everything was forgotten but the work before his eyes: hours flew like minutes, amidst the intenseness of the occupation; and yet, if his thoughts reverted for a moment to the events of the morning, they seemed of ancient date,—as if he had lived a lifetime in this one day.

The spectacles of a lifetime were indeed to be beheld within the compass of this one scene. The most vivid emotions to which all ranks and all ages are subject were here in full play: all the various grouping which life affords was here presented; the entire elements of the scenery of human character were here congregated in infinite and magnificent combinations. The appeals to eye and ear alone were of unprecedented force; those addressed to the spirit equalled in stimulus the devotion of Leonidas in his defile, and excelled in pathos the meditation of Marius among more extensive ruins than those which were now tumbling around. From the heights of the fortress might be seen a heaving ocean of upturned faces, when the breeze dispersed at intervals the clouds of smoke which veiled the sun, and gave a dun and murky hue to whatever lay beneath. If a flood of sunshine now and then poured in to make a hundred thousand weapons glitter over the heads of the crowd, the black row of cannon belched forth their red fires to extinguish the purer light. The foremost of the people, with glaring eyes, and blackened and grinning faces, looked scarcely human, in their excess of eagerness, activity, and strength. Yet more terrific were the sounds: the clang of the tocsin at regular intervals, the shouts of the besiegers, the shrieks of the wounded, the roar of the fire which was consuming the guard-houses, the crash of the ruins falling on all sides, a heavy splash in the moat from time to time, as some one was toppled from the ramparts to be smothered in its mud,—and above all these, the triumphant cries of victory and liberty achieved,—these were enough to dizzy weak brains, and give inspiration to strong ones. Here were also the terrors which sooner or later chill the marrow of despotism, and the stern joy with which its retribution fires the heart of the patriot. Here were the servants of tyranny quailing before the glance of the people; kneeling soldiers craving mercy of mechanics, of women, of some of every class whom, in the execution of their fancied duty, they had outraged. Here were men shrinking from violence with a craven horror, and women driven by a sense of wrong to show how disgusting physical courage may be made. Here were also sons led on to the attack by their hitherto anxious fathers; husbands thrust forward into danger by their wives; and little children upreared by their mothers amidst the fire and smoke, to take one last look of the hated edifice which was soon to be levelled with the ground. The towers of palaces might be seen afar, where princes were quaking at this final assurance of the downfalldownfall of their despotic sway, knowing that the assumed sanctity of royalty was being wafted away with every puff of smoke which spread itself over the sky, and their irresponsibility melting in fires lighted by the hands which they had vainly attempted to fetter, and blown by the breath which they had imagined they could stifle. They had denied the birth of that liberty whose baptism in fire and in blood was now being celebrated in a many-voiced chaunt with which the earth should ring for centuries. Some from other lands were already present to hear and join in it; some free Britons to aid, some wondering slaves of other despots to slink homewards with whispered tidings of its import; for from that day to this, the history of the fall of the Bastille has been told as a secret in the vineyards of Portugal, and among the groves of Spain, and in the patriotic conclaves of the youth of Italy, while it has been loudly and joyfully proclaimed from one end to the other of Great Britain, till her lisping children are familiar with the tale.

The congregation would not have been complete without the presence of another class of witnesses whose very existence will perhaps be matter of incredulity in some future age of the world;—that class which man has taken upon himself to institute, and which will one day rise up against him in judgment of his abused power. There were captives present in this scene of lawless freedom,—or rather of freedom above the law. They were there, first trembling before the assailants, and then marvelling at the treatment they received, as the kid would marvel at being dandled by the lion. So it appeared to be with most of them, while one or two caught the tone of popular triumph before the doors of their cells were opened, and others received their deliverance in a manner that rent the heart of the deliverers.

When the capture of the place was complete, and its defenders had been carried off, some to be sacrificed for the sins of the government, and others to meet with mercy, Charles pressed forward, with a multitude of companions, to release the captives. It was hard labour to pull the clenched doors from their staples and hinges; and in some cases it was found easier to effect the work in a yet more irregular manner: as in one to which Steele called Charles’s attention when they accidentally met in the centre of the fortress, where the light of day, however, streamed upon them through the demolished roof. Steele’s face was working in strong emotion, and he appeared speechless while he seized his friend by the arm, and drew him to gaze on what made his heart’s blood boil. Steele pointed through a breach in the enormous wall, whose thickness shut out all sound from the inmate of the dungeon it inclosed; and there, with eyes drooped before the unwonted light,—a light which, however, only half displayed the squalid sickliness of his countenance, sat one who seemed to take no heed of any human presence. His expanded nostrils and half-opened mouth seemed to betoken that there had been passion and expectation within him; but the apathy and despondency of his attitude exhibited a strange contradiction to these evidences. When the first face appeared through the opening, he fumbled uneasily with his hands in his coarse dungeon dress; and when he was hailed, more and more loudly, under the idea that he was deaf, his beard was seen to stir upon his breast, and his lips to move, as if he was attempting in vain to articulate a sound. The endeavour presently ceased, though voice after voice was heard in importunity,—sometimes endearing, sometimes rallying,—that he would rise and help to free himself. It was a work of time to make a breach large enough to admit his deliverers; and at last, just before the first of them clambered in, the captive uplifted his broken and unmodulated voice in a few words, one or two of which Steele recognized to be English.

“O! he is a Briton!” cried he, clenching his hands above his head in the extremity of passion; and, staggering against the wall, he uttered a deep curse on the tyranny by which a countryman had been goaded into madness far from his own land, and from all who could know or avenge his state. Again and again he looked; again and again he withdrew, unable to bear the alternating aspects of idiotcy and gibbering madness. At last, he made trial of a new kind of stimulus; leaning through the breach, and calling to the captive,—

“O come, and take the hand of a brother once more! Look up, and tell us that your deliverers are welcome! Let it be crime, or let it be misery that has stricken you so deeply, the last day of your dungeon life is over. Come, and hear about England! Come and feel the fresh air——”

The prisoner here shivered, as if already chilled by the air of a warm July day. Encouraged by this sign of attention, Steele went on.

“Only tell us whom you fear, and we will carry you far from them. Only name those you love, and I will get you tidings of them. Come and help us to free yourself and others; for you know more of the secrets of this horrible place than we.”

He would not move, however; and when they got to him, they found that he was chained by the middle to the wall behind him. It was impossible to learn from him his name, alleged offence, or period of imprisonment.

It was not till the Count de Solages was also liberated that it was ascertained that his name was White; that he had been confined for some unknown offence for many years in the castle of Vincennes, whence he was removed, in company with the count, to the Bastille, seven years before.

The people carried away all the prisoners on their shoulders, intending to make them tell their stories in the coffee-houses of Paris; but Steele could not bear to see his countryman,—such a mere wreck of humanity as he was,—thus exhibited. He thankfully accepted his friend Charles’s invitation to bring him first to his house, and try whether the intellects of the sufferer could be restored by any method of treatment—treatment which was more likely to be efficacious if administered by one who could speak his own language than by strangers. Fired as Steele had been in the achievement of the great work of the day, he now left the completion of it to others. While the mayor and executive were sending forth their popular decrees,—while the king was informed for the first time that his realm was in a state of revolution,—while the helpless ministry looked in one another’s dismayed faces,—while the city architects were employed under a regular commission to make a perfect blank where the Bastille had stood, Steele was watching over his released countryman, fondly hoping that he traced an hourly growing resemblance to manhood, not only in external appearance, but in thought and action. He tried to make him vary his posture, and to walk;—an exercise to which he was as much averse as one who has taken laudanum. The next thing was to induce him to speak, which proved less difficult, provided he was permitted to mix up French and English after his own fashion. There was sometimes more and sometimes less sense in what he said, and it was occasionally interrupted by fits of impotent passion, for which no immediate cause could be assigned. These, however, came on only after his new way of life had continued for some time, and were indeed stages in the growth of the unmanageable madness which sent him, after all remedial means had been tried, to end his days in the lunatic asylum at Charenton.

Before these had become terrifying to Charles’s children, they did not shrink from talking to him, and were encouraged to do so, as he spoke more, and more sensibly to them than to any one else.

“Why are you so very fond of water, I wonder?” exclaimed Julien, one day, laughing, when White held out his hand to snatch some which looked cool and clear in the boy’s hand. “O yes, you may have it. I can get plenty more. Why do you want so much water?”

“I drink water. And my rat—Where is my rat?”

None of the family could make out why he looked about him for a rat: but Steele’s conjecture was that such an animal might have found its way out of the moat of the prison into the cell where no other living thing could enter but the silent turnkey. On inquiry, this was found to be the case; and the circumstances were touching in the extreme to those who had never known what it was to want such a resource. It was observed that White was as greedy of bread as of water, though not always for the purpose of eating it. Nothing could tempt him from it when there was any in the room; and whatever was offered in exchange for a crust, however delicate to the taste, or glittering to the eye, was rejected. “Bread, bread. Water, water,” was for ever his cry.

“He likes to play on my bird-organ,” observed Julien, “and I told him he might keep it: but he thrust it back upon me for a piece of bread. He sold it much cheaper, papa,—for far less bread,—than the people that made it. I think that is very silly.”

“It depends upon the value he puts upon what he has in exchange,” answered papa.

“Well, you told me how much bread was worth this organ; and it was much more than I gave him.”

“Yes; but you might happen to be shut up, as he has been, where one loaf of bread would be more useful to you than ten such at home.”

“Why more useful? I can but eat bread anywhere.”

“Yes; you can give it away,” interposed mamma. “If you were shut up for several years in a silent and nearly dark place, where nobody ever came to you, and were to hear a noise one day, and to see something moving, and to find out that it was a rat which had made its way to your cell; and if you wished that the rat should come again, and learn to know you, and feed tamely out of your hand, would you not desire to have some food to give it?”

“O yes: I would give it part of my dinner.”

“But if you had very little dinner, scarcely enough to satisfy your own hunger, you would buy more bread for your rat if you could. If your jailer asked you much more than the bread would be worth out of prison, you would give it him rather than your rat should not come and play with you. You would pay him first all your copper, and then all your silver, and then all your gold.”

“Yes, because I could not play with money so pleasantly as with a live animal, and there would be nothing else that I could buy in such a place. I had rather have the company of my rat than a pocket full of gold.”

“So White thought,” observed Marguerite, “and he gave the turnkey every thing he had left for bread, till his buttons, and his pencil case, and even his watch were all gone. It was a long time before he could bring himself to part with his watch; for the moving of the wheels was something to look at, and the ticking kept his ears awake, and made him feel less desolate: but when it came to giving up his watch or his rat, he thought he could least spare his live companion: so he carefully observed for some time the shifting of the glimmering light upon the wall, as the morning passed into noon, and noon into afternoon and evening, and then he thought this sort of dial might serve him instead of a watch, and he gave it to the turnkey on condition of having an ounce more bread every day for a year.”

“He must have been pleased to have made his bargain for a whole year.”

“His pleasure lasted a very short while. The turnkey came earlier than usual one day when the rat was there, and twisted its neck before White could stop him.”

Julien stamped with grief and anger when he heard this; but presently supposed the turnkey was honest enough to restore the watch. Charles shook his head in answer, and told his little son that poor White had been quite crazy since that day, and had talked about nothing but a rat, and shown no desire for any thing but bread and water since, though it was six years ago that his misfortune had happened.

“Did you ever hear of paying for water, Julien; or for air?”

No: Julien thought that God had given both so freely that it would be a sin to sell them. His father thought this not a good reason; for it seemed to him fair that men should buy and sell whenever one wanted something that another person had too much of; as much air and water as corn and flax, which were also given by God.

“Ah, but, papa, it costs men a great deal of trouble to prepare corn and flax.”

“True; and now you have hit upon the right reason. If corn and flax grew of themselves on land which belonged to nobody, would you pay for them, or just gather them without paying?”

“I should be very silly to pay when I might have them without.”

“So I think: but would corn and flax be less valuable then than now, when we have to pay very dear for them?”

“The corn would be just as good to eat, and the flax to make linen of: but they would not to change away.”

“No more than the air, which is very useful in breathing, or water which we could not do without, and which yet would be a very poor thing to carry to market. Now, would you call water a valuable thing or not, Julien?”

“No, not at all, because it will buy nothing——O yes, but it is though; because we could not do without it.—Mamma, is water valuable or not?”

“Very valuable in use, but not usually in exchange. When things are valuable in exchange, it is either because they cost labour before they could be used, or because they are very scarce.”

“So,” observed Charles, “if a mine should ever be dug so deep that the air is not fresh at the bottom where the miners work, the owner of the mine would be very glad to buy air of any one who could convey it down by a machine. Such an one would be wise to charge so much a gallon for the fresh air he supplied, to pay for the labour and expense of his machine, and for the trouble of working it.”

Marguerite then mentioned that she once staid in a small country town during a drought. There was no reservoir of water, and all the pumps and cisterns were dry. The poor people went out by night into the neighbouring country, and watched the springs; and any one who was fortunate enough to obtain a gallon of fresh water was well paid for it. The price rose every day, till at last one woman gave a calf for a pailfull of water, hoping to save her cow, it being certain that both must die without this supply.

“And did she save her cow?”

“Yes. While the woman was anxiously sitting up in bed, planning what she should change away next, she fancied there was a different feel in the air; and on looking out of the window, she found the sky covered with black clouds; and before morning, the trade in water was over. There was nobody to give a doit for a cistern-full.”

“It was just so with me,” observed Charles, “when I was besieged in the cellar. I was parched with thirst, and would have given a pipe of my best wine to any one who would have let me down a quart of water through the trap-door. Three hours after, I myself threw hundreds of gallons on the fire at the guard houses, when the order was given to take them down in an orderly way; and I did not consider such use of the water any waste. So much for the value which is given by scarcity.”

“But, papa, though things are more valuable to people when there is a scarcity of them, the people are less rich than they were before. That seems to me very odd.”

“Because you have been accustomed to consider value and wealth as the same things, which they are not. Our wealth consists in whatever is valuable in use as well as in exchange. Owing to the storm of last year, I have less wealth in my possession now than I had then, though what I have may, perhaps, exchange for more wealth still. I have as much furniture, and as many clothes and luxuries, and as much money; but I have fewer growing vines, and much less wine. If I were to use up my own grapes and wine instead of selling them, they would last a much shorter time than my stock of the former year would have lasted. So I have less wealth in possession. But the value of wine has risen so high, in consequence of scarcity, that I can get as much now of other things in exchange for a pint, as I could, fourteen months ago, in exchange for a gallon.”

“But that is partly because the wine is older. Mr. Steele is very particular about the wine being old, and he pays you much more, he told me, the longer it has been kept.”

“And it is very fair he should, for reasons which you can hardly understand yet.”

“Try him,” said Marguerite.

“It is impossible, my dear. I refer to the charges I am at for the rent of my cellar, the wear of my casks, and the loss of interest upon the capital locked up in the wine. All this must be paid out of the improvement in the quality of the article; and all this, Julien must wait a few years to understand.

“Now tell me, my boy, whether you think it a good thing or not that there should be a scarcity of wine?”

“Why, papa, as we do not want to drink all you have ourselves, and as people will give you as much for it as they would for twice as much, I do not think it signifies to you; but it must be a bad thing for the people of Paris that there is so little wine to be had. At least you said so about the bread.”

“But if my wine should be as dear next year, and I should have no more losses from storms, and no more expense than in common years, in growing my wine, would the high price be a good thing for me or not?”

“It would be good for you, and bad for your customers; only I think they would not give you so much for your wine. They would remember that there had been no more storms, and they would find people that had cheaper wine to sell, and then they would leave off buying of you.”

“And they would be very right, if there was anybody to sell cheaper; as there wouldwould be, if labourers had less wages, and so made it less expensive to grow and prepare wine. But if some way was found of making more wine than ever, in a cheaper way than ever, who would be the better for that?”

“The people that buy of you, because I suppose you would let them have it cheaper.”

“And papa too,” said Marguerite, “for many people would buy wine who cannot afford it now.”

“Therefore,” concluded Charles, “a high exchangeable value is not at all a good thing for everybody, though it may be for a time to some few. AndAnd a low exchangeable value is a very good thing to everybody, if it arises from the only cause which can render it permanent,—a diminution of the cost of production.”

“But if this happened with every article,” pursued Marguerite, “there would be an end of the cheapness, though not of the plenty. As many of one thing would exchange for a certain number of other things as before.”

“True; but less labour would purchase them all; and this is the grand consideration. As less labour will now purchase a deal table than was once necessary to procure a rough hewn log in its place, less labour still may hereafter buy a mahogany one; and this is a desirable thing for the purchasers of tables, and no less for the makers, who will then sell a hundred times the number they can dispose of now.”