where thy
unconquered
sword?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v10 - Emp to Fro
5543 (#109) ###########################################
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
5543
flying feet, the floating robes, rounding and swelling in fan-
shaped curves; Fritz holding little Suzel in his arms, raising her
hand aloft gracefully, gazing at her with delight, whirling around
at times like the wind, and then slowly revolving in measured
cadence, smiling, dreaming, gazing at her again, and then dart-
ing off with renewed ardor; whilst she, with her waist undulat-
ing in graceful curves, her long tresses floating behind her like
wings, and her charming little head thrown backwards, gazed at
him in ecstasy, her little feet scarcely touching the ground as
she flew along.
Fat Haan, grappling his tall partner with uplifted arm, gal-
loped away without a moment's intermission, balancing and stamp-
ing with his heels to mark the time, and looking up at her from
time to time with an air of profound admiration; while she, with
her hooked nose, twirled about like a weathercock.
Schoultz, his back rounded in a semicircle and his long legs.
bent, held his red-haired partner under the arms, and kept turn-
ing, turning, turning, without a moment's cessation, and with the
most wonderful regularity, like a bobbin on its spindle, and keep-
ing time so exactly that the spectators were fairly enchanted.
But it was Fritz and the little Suzel that excited universal
admiration, from the grace of their movements and the happi-
ness which shone in their faces. They no longer belonged to
this lower earth,- they felt as if they were floating in a sort of
celestial atmosphere. This music, singing in joyous strains the
praises of happiness and love, seemed as if composed expressly
for them. The eyes of the whole hall were riveted upon them,
while they saw no one but each other. At times their youth and
good looks so excited the enthusiasm of the audience that it
seemed as if they were about to burst into a thunder of applause;
but their anxiety to hear the waltz kept them silent. It was only
when Haan, almost beside himself with delight in the contem-
plation of the tall burgomaster's daughter, raised himself on tip-
toe, and whirling her around him twice shouted in a stentorian
voice-"You! you! » subsiding the next moment into the regular
cadence of the dance, and when Schoultz at the same moment,
raising his right leg, passed it, without missing a bar of the tune,
over the head of his plump little partner, and in a hoarse voice,
and whirling round like one possessed, began to shout, "You!
you! you! you! you! you! " that the admiration of the spectators
found vent in clapping of hands and stamping of feet, and a
storm of hurrahs which shook the whole building.
## p. 5544 (#110) ###########################################
5544
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
Never in their whole lives had they seen such dancing. The
enthusiasm lasted for more than five minutes, and when at last
it died away they heard with pleasure the waltz of the spirits of
the air again resume the ascendant, as the song of the nightin-
gale swells out in the night air after the summer storm has
passed.
At last Haan and Schoultz were fairly exhausted; the per-
spiration was pouring down their cheeks, and they were fain to
promenade their partners through the hall; although it seemed as
if Haan were being led about by his danseuse, while Schoultz, on
the other hand, looked as if he were carrying his fair one sus-
pended from his elbow.
Suzel and Fritz still kept whirling round. The shouts and
stamping of feet of the spectators did not seem to reach their
ears; and when Joseph, himself exhausted, drew the last long-
drawn sigh of love for his violin, they stopped exactly opposite
Father Christel and another old Anabaptist, who had just entered
the hall, and were gazing at them with surprise and admiration.
Hallo! So you are here too, Father Christel," exclaimed
Fritz, beaming with delight; "you see Suzel and I have been
dancing together. "
"It is a great honor for us, Mr. Kobus," replied the farmer,
smiling; "a great honor indeed. But does the little one under-
stand it? I fancied she had never danced a step in her life. "
"Why, Father Christel, Suzel is a butterfly, a perfect little
fairy; I believe she has wings! "
Suzel was leaning on his arm, her eyes cast down, and her
cheeks covered with blushes; and Father Christel, looking at her
with delight, asked: -
"But Suzel, who taught you to dance? I was quite surprised
to see you just now. "
"Mazel and I," replied the little one,
"used to take a turn or
two in the kitchen now and then to amuse ourselves. "
Then the people around, who had leaned forward to listen,
could not help laughing; and the other Anabaptist exclaimed:-
"What are you thinking of, Christel?
young girls require to be taught to waltz?
it comes to them by nature? Ha ha
ha! "
Do you imagine that
Don't you know that
## p. 5545 (#111) ###########################################
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
5545
A BIVOUAC AT LIGNY
From Waterloo: A Sequel to the Conscript of 1813: copyright 1869, by
Charles Scribner & Co.
-
IT
T WAS dark already, and the dense masses of smoke made it
impossible to see fifty paces ahead. Everything was moving
toward the windmills; the clatter of the cavalry, the shouts,
the orders of the officers, and the file-firing in the distance, all
were confounded. Several of the squares were broken. From
time to time a flash would reveal a lancer bent to his horse's
neck, or a cuirassier, with his broad white back and his helmet
with its floating plume, shooting off like a bullet, two or three
foot soldiers running about in the midst of the fray,- all would
come and go like lightning. The trampled grain, the rain streak-
ing the heavens, the wounded under the feet of the horses, all
came out of the black night— through the storm which had just
broken out for a quarter of a second. Every flash of musket
or pistol showed us inexplicable things by thousands.
But every-
thing moved up the hill and away from Ligny; we were masters.
We had pierced the enemy's centre; the Prussians no longer
made any defense, except at the top of the hill near the mills
and in the direction of Sombref, at our right. St. Armand and
Ligny were both in our hands.
As for us,—a dozen or so of our company there alone among
the ruins of the cottages, with our cartridge boxes almost empty,
we did not know which way to turn. Zébédé, Lieutenant
Bretonville, and Captain Florentin had disappeared, and Sergeant
Rabot was in command. He was a little old fellow, thin and
deformed, but as tough as steel; he squinted, and seemed to
have had red hair when young. Now, as I speak of him, I
seem to hear him say quietly to us, "The battle is won! by file
right! forward, march! "
Several wanted to stop and make some soup, for we had
eaten nothing since noon, and began to be hungry. The ser-
geant marched down the lane with his musket on his shoulder,
laughing quietly, and saying in an ironical tone:-
"Oh! soup, soup! Wait a little; the commissary is coming! "
We followed him down the dark lane; about midway we saw
a cuirassier on horseback with his back toward us. He had a
## p. 5546 (#112) ###########################################
5546
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
sabre-cut in the abdomen and had retired into this lane; the
horse leaned against the wall to prevent him from falling off.
As we filed past he called out, "Comrades! " But nobody even
turned his head.
Twenty paces farther on we found the ruins of a cottage,
completely riddled with balls: but half the thatched roof was still
there, and this was why Sergeant Rabot had selected it; and we
filed into it for shelter.
We could see no more than if we had been in an oven; the
sergeant exploded the priming of his musket, and we saw that it
was the kitchen, that the fireplace was at the right, and the
stairway on the left. Five or six Prussians and Frenchmen were
stretched on the floor, white as wax, and with their eyes wide
open.
"Here is the mess-room," said the sergeant: "let every one
make himself comfortable. Our bedfellows will not kick us. "
As we saw plainly that there were to be no rations, each one
took off his knapsack and placed it by the wall on the floor for
a pillow. We could still hear the firing, but it was far in the
distance on the hill.
The rain fell in torrents. The sergeant shut the door, which
creaked on its hinges, and then quietly lighted his pipe. Some
of the men were already snoring when I looked up, and he was
standing at the little window, in which not a pane of glass
remained, smoking.
He was a firm, just man; he could read and write, had been
wounded and had his three chevrons, and ought to have been an
officer, only he was not well formed. He soon laid his head on
his knapsack, and shortly after all were asleep.
«<
It was long after this when I was suddenly awakened by
footsteps and fumbling about the house outside.
I raised up on
my elbow to listen, when somebody tried to open the door. I
could not help screaming out. 'What's the matter? " said the
sergeant. We could hear them running away, and Rabot turned
on his knapsack, saying, "Night-birds-rascals! clear out, or I'll
send a ball after you! He said no more, and I got up and
looked out of the window, and saw the wretches in the act of
robbing the dead and wounded. They were going softly from
one to another, while the rain was falling in torrents.
It was
something horrible.
I lay down again, and fell asleep, overcome by fatigue.
## p. 5547 (#113) ###########################################
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
5547
At daybreak the sergeant was up and crying "En route! "
We left the cottage and went back through the lane. The
cuirassier was on the ground, but his horse still stood beside
him. The sergeant took him by the bridle and led him out into
the orchard, pulled the bits from his mouth, and said:-
-
"Go and eat; they will find you again by-and-by. "
And the poor beast walked quietly away. We hurried along
the path which runs by Ligny. The furrows stopped here, and
some plots of garden ground lay along by the road.
The ser-
geant looked about him as he went, and stooped down to dig up
some carrots and turnips which were left. I quickly followed his
example, while our comrades hastened on without looking round.
I saw that it was a good thing to know the fruits of the
earth. I found two beautiful turnips and some carrots, which
are very good raw, but I followed the example of the sergeant
and put them in my shako.
I ran on to overtake the squad, which was directing its steps
toward the fires at Sombref. As for the rest, I will not attempt
to describe to you the appearance of the plateau in the rear of
Ligny, where our cuirassiers and dragoons had slaughtered all
before them. The men and horses were lying in heaps; the
horses with their long necks stretched out on the ground, and the
dead and wounded lying under them.
Sometimes the wounded men would raise their hands to make
signs, when the horses would attempt to get up and fall back,
crushing them still more fearfully.
Blood! blood! everywhere. The directions of the balls and
shot were marked on the slope by the red lines, just as we see
in our country the lines in the sand formed by the water from
the melting snow. But will you believe it? These horrors
scarcely made any impression upon me. Before I went to Lützen
such a sight would have knocked me down. I should have
thought then: -"Do our masters look upon us as brutes? Will the
good God give us up to be eaten by wolves? Have we mothers
and sisters and friends, beings who are dear to us, and will they
not cry for vengeance? " I should have thought of a thousand
other things, but now I did not think at all. From having seen.
such a mass of slaughter and wrong every day and in every
fashion, I began to say to myself:-
"The strongest are always in the right. The Emperor is the
strongest, and he has called us, and we must come in spite of
## p. 5548 (#114) ###########################################
5548
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
everything, from Pfalzburg, from Saverne, or other cities, and
take our places in the ranks and march. One who showed the
least sign of resistance would be shot at once. The marshals,
the generals, the officers, down to the last man, follow their
instructions, they dare not make a move without orders; and
everybody obeys the army. It is the Emperor who wills, who
has the power and who does everything. And would not Joseph
Bertha be a fool to believe that the Emperor ever committed a
single fault in his life. ? Would it not be contrary to reason? "
That was what we all thought, and if the Emperor had re-
mained here, all France would have had the same opinion.
My only satisfaction was in thinking that I had some carrots
and turnips; for in passing in the rear of the pickets to find our
place in the battalion we learned that no rations had been dis-
tributed except brandy and cartridges.
The veterans were filling their kettles; but the conscripts, who
had not yet learned the art of living while on the campaign, and
who had unfortunately already eaten all their bread, as will hap-
pen when one is twenty years old and is on the march with a
good appetite,—they had not a spoonful of anything.
At last, about seven o'clock, we reached the camp. Zébédé
came to meet me, and was delighted to see me, and said:
"What
have you brought, Joseph? We have found a fat kid, and we
have some salt, but not a mouthful of bread. "
I showed him the rice which I had left, and my turnips and
carrots.
-
-
"That's good," said he; we shall have the best soup in the
battalion. "
I wanted Buche to eat with us too, and the six men belong-
ing to our mess, who had all escaped with only bruises and
scratches, consented. Padoue the drum - major said, laughing,
"Veterans are always veterans; they never come empty-handed. ”
We looked into the kettles of the five conscripts and winked;
for they had nothing but rice and water in them, while we had
a good rich soup, the odor of which filled the air around us.
At eight we took our breakfast with an appetite, as you can
imagine.
Not even on my wedding day did I eat a better meal, and it
is a pleasure even now to think of it. When we are old we are
not so enthusiastic about such things as when we are young, but
still we always recall them with satisfaction.
## p. 5549 (#115) ###########################################
5549
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
(1810-1842)
BY MARY J. SERRANO
N THE year 1810 all Spain was in arms, disputing Spanish soil
inch by inch with the soldiers of Napoleon, who, including
in his plan of universal conquest the crown of Spain, had
decoyed into France and then perfidiously imprisoned the Spanish
King Ferdinand, and placed his brother Joseph by force of arms
upon the vacant throne.
It was in the spring of this year that José de Espronceda was born
in the little town of Almendrajo, in the province of Estremadura, dur-
ing a halt of the cavalry regiment of which his father was colonel,
his mother having accompanied her husband in the marches of the
campaign.
Nursed amid the din of battle waged in defense of national rights,
drawing in with every breath the spirit of national liberty that filled
the air, and that continued to fill it during his childhood and youth,
as an aspiration towards national regeneration, it was not strange
that this spirit of liberty, converted by the workings of his poet's
imagination into a spirit of revolt against all restraint, should have
fermented in his blood and should remain a ruling influence in his
short and agitated existence.
Thus is that almost all Espronceda's poems, whatever their
subject, are an aspiration toward freedom, whether from the bonds
of spirit or of matter, or a passionate protest against the injustice
of man or of fate. But in Espronceda's cynicism, unlike that of
Byron, whom he so strongly resembled both in his genius and his
character,—of Heine, of Leopardi, or of Musset, there is nothing of
egotism or of affectation, defects from which his sincere and gener-
ous nature was altogether free; and while his expression of feeling is
intensely personal, as for instance in the cry of passionate regret for
lost illusions which he calls Canto to Teresa,' and which stands
as the second canto of 'El Diablo Mundo' (The World Spirit), the
feelings he expresses are the common feelings of humanity; as the
injustice against which he protests is the injustice suffered by his
fellow-men. Thus, in 'The Mendicant,' 'The Executioner,' and 'The
Condemned Criminal,' he arraigns human society for the inequalities
## p. 5550 (#116) ###########################################
5550
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
of station and of fortune which array man against his fellow-man,
and for the indifference with which it regards the victim of its own
defective organization, while sanctioning, in decreeing his death, the
crime for which it condemns him to die.
The 'Song of the Cossack' and 'The Pirate' reflect vividly the free
life of nature, the freedom of the desert and of the sea- the dash
across the plain of the Cossack horseman, the wild sweep in which
the steed responds to the will of the rider as the hand responds to
the brain; the wide solitude of the boundless sea, the invigorating
saltness of the breeze murmuring through the sails, the shimmer
of the moon on the blue waters; and through and above all the
intoxicating sense of conscious power, of strength unconquered and
defiant.
Another note is struck in the poem 'To Jarifa in an Orgy. ' Here
the freedom aspired to is freedom from law, the unescapable law that
ordains that satiety shall inevitably attend upon excess. But when
the poet's soul, steeped in the dregs of pleasure, abandons itself un-
resistingly to its fate, a sudden touch of human sympathy, of pure
feeling, stirs it with regenerating power and so saves it from moral
death.
In The Student of Salamanca,' one of Espronceda's two long
poems, for of 'Pelayo,' an epic poem written in his boyhood, and a
remarkable production thus considered, only a few fragments remain,
-the prevailing note is one of defiance; defiance of all authority,
human or Divine. The poem is based on the legend of Don Juan
Tenorio; and in the character of the hero, Espronceda, like Byron in
Don Juan, is supposed to have depicted his own. Imaginative power
of the highest order, and an extraordinary skill in the employment of
the resources of poetic expression, characterize this work, in which
earth and heaven and hell, the natural and the supernatural, are
brought together on a single canvas without dissonance or dispropor-
tion of line or color. The solitary landscape bathed in the mellow
light of the moon; the branches of the trees outlined darkly against
the softly luminous midnight sky; the brook murmuring its plaintive
song; the touching figure of the gentle and unfortunate Elvira, whose
illusions have been scattered to the wind by the ruthless hand of her
faithless lover, like the petals which she pulls, in the abstraction of
her grief, from the flowers; the gambling-house, with its exhibition
of cynicism and depravity; the graves giving up their dead to cel-
ebrate ghastly festivities-all form a picture of surpassing power and
extraordinary artistic beauty.
-
'El Diablo Mundo,' Espronceda's most important composition,
recalls in its plan the legend of Faust. The hero, an old man who
becomes endowed with immortal youth, has scarcely put on his new
## p. 5551 (#117) ###########################################
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
5551
form when he is seized by the police as a fugitive from justice, and
cast into prison. Here he finds a companion in a hardened criminal
who indoctrinates him in his own cynical philosophy of life, for the
mind of the new Adam is the blank mind of a child. The daughter
of his mentor comes to visit her father in the prison, and Adam con-
ceives a violent passion for her, which she returns with equal vehe-
mence. In the prison Adam meets some thieves who induce him
to join in the midnight robbery of a beautiful and wealthy countess.
The alarm is given, but Adam makes his escape. He wanders
through the city streets, and at last enters a house where an orgy is
going on in one room, while in another the daughter of the house
lies dead. Touched by the mother's lamentations, Adam's heart is
filled with the desire to restore the dead girl to life. Here ends the
poem, which the author did not live to finish.
In Espronceda's poems the spirit of the man is reflected: a spirit
of fire, a flame lurid and obscured at times by smoke, but a flame
that always aspires. In his poems, too, is to be found the best his-
tory of his unsettled and adventurous life; of which the chief events
to be recorded are his journeyings, now voluntary, now as an exile,
to Lisbon, to Paris, to London, and back again to Madrid, and the
part he took in the political movements of which they were in gen-
eral the result.
An incident characteristic of the poet is related of his first visit
to Lisbon. When the vessel on which he was a passenger arrived in
port, the health officer, boarding her, proceeded to collect a small tax
which it was the custom to demand from the passengers. When
Espronceda's turn arrived, the poet took from his pocket a dollar, all
the money he possessed, and handed it to the officer, who returned
him the change. The poet tossed the coins lightly into the water,
in order, as he said, that he might not "enter so great a capital with
so small a sum of money. "
During his residence in London, Espronceda devoted himself with
ardor to the study of the English poets, more particularly of Byron,
whose influence is clearly traceable in his works. Here the passion-
ate lament entitled 'Elegy to Spain' was written. Here, too, the
unhappy passion which inspired the 'Canto to Teresa' reached the
fatal culmination which was to prove a source of unending remorse
to both the guilty lovers.
The accession to power in 1840 of the liberal party, whose prin-
ciples he advocated, seemed to promise Espronceda at last leisure to
take his just place in literature; a place, according to the judgment
of Valera, -a cautious critic,- beside Goethe, Byron, and Leopardi.
The promise, however, was never realized. His health had been
undermined by a life often of privation and always irregular; and
## p. 5552 (#118) ###########################################
5552
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
before he could take his seat he was attacked by an inflammation of
the larynx, and died after four days' illness, on the 23d of May,
1842, at the age of thirty-two years.
Mary J. Serraus
TO SPAIN: AN ELEGY
ow solitary is the nation now
How
Η That peopled countries vast a former day!
That, all beneath her sovereignty to bow,
From East to West extended once her sway!
Tears now profuse to shed, unhappy one,
Queen of the world! 'tis thine; and from thy face,
Enchanting yet in sorrow, there is none
Its overwhelming traces to erase.
How fatally o'er thee has death poured forth
Darkness and mourning, horrible and great!
And the stern despot in his maddened wrath
Exulted wildly o'er thy low estate.
Nothing or great or beautiful he spared,
My country! - the young warrior by him fell,
The veteran fell, and vile his war-axe glared,
Pleased all its fury o'er thee to impel.
Even the pure maiden fell beneath the rage
Of the unpitying despot, as the rose,
Condemned the summer's burning sun to engage,
Her bloom and beauty withering, soon must close.
Come, O ye inhabiters of all the earth,
And contemplate my misery! can there,-
Tell me! -be any found of mortal birth
Bearing the sorrows I am doomed to bear?
―――
I, wretched, banished from my native land,
Behold, far from the country I adore,
Her former glories lost and high command,
And only left her sufferings to deplore.
Her children have been fatally betrayed
By treacherous brethren, and a tyrant's power;
## p. 5553 (#119) ###########################################
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
5553
And these her lovely fertile plains have made
Fields o'er which only lamentations lower.
Her arms extended wide, unhappy Spain!
Her sons imploring in her deep distress:
Her sons they were, but her command was vain,
Unheard the traitor-madness to repress.
Whate'er could then avail thee, tower or wall,
My country! still amid thy woes adored?
Where were the heroes that could once appall
The fiercest foe?
where thy unconquered sword?
Alas! now on thy children's humbled brow
Deeply is shame engraved, and on their eyes,
Cast down and sorrowfully throbbing now,
The tears alone of grief and mourning rise.
Once was a time for Spain, when she possessed
A hundred heroes in her hour of pride;
And trembling nations saw her manifest
Her power and beauty, dazzling, by their side.
As lofty shows itself in Lebanon
The cedar, so her brow she raised on high;
And fell her voice the nations round upon,
As terrify a girl the thunders nigh.
But as a stone now in the desert's wild
Thou liest abandoned, and an unknown way
Through strangers' lands, uncertain where, exiled,
The patriot's doomed unfortunate to stray.
Her ancient pomp and power are covered o'er
With sand and weeds contemptuous; and the foe,
That trembled at her puissance before,
Now mocks exulting and enjoys her woe.
Maidens! your flowing locks disheveled tear,
To give them to the wandering winds; and bring
Your harps in mournful company to share
With me the sorrowful laments I sing.
Thus banished from our homes afar away
Still let us weep our miseries. O Spain,
Who shall have power thy torments to allay?
Who shall have power to dry thy tears again?
X-348
## p. 5554 (#120) ###########################################
5554
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
THE SONG OF THE PIRATE
THE
HE breeze fair aft, all sails on high,
Ten guns on each side mounted seen,
She does not cut the sea, but fly,
A swiftly sailing brigantine;
A pirate bark, the Dreaded' named,
For her surpassing boldness famed,
On every sea well known and shore,
From side to side their boundaries o'er.
The moon in streaks the waves illumes;
Hoarse groans the wind the rigging through;
In gentle motion raised, assumes
The sea a silvery shade with blue;
While singing gaily on the poop,
The pirate captain, in a group,
Sees Europe here, there Asia lies,
And Stamboul in the front arise.
Sail on, my swift one! nothing fear;
Nor calm, nor storm, nor foeman's force
Shall make thee yield in thy career,
Or turn thee from thy course.
Despite the English cruisers fleet,
We have full twenty prizes made;
And see, their flags beneath my feet
A hundred nations laid.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
There blindly kings fierce wars maintain
For palms of land, when here I hold
As mine, whose power no laws restrain,
Whate'er the seas infold.
Nor is there shore around whate'er,
Or banner proud, but of my might
Is taught the valorous proofs to bear,
And made to feel my right.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
## p. 5555 (#121) ###########################################
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
5555
Look, when a ship our signals ring
Full sail to fly, how quick she's veer'd!
For of the sea I am the king,
My fury's to be feared;
But equally with all I share
Whate'er the wealth we take supplies;
I only seek the matchless fair,
My portion of the prize.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty:
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
I am condemned to die! I laugh;
For if my fates are kindly sped,
My doomer from his own ship's staff
Perhaps I'll hang instead.
And if I fall, why what is life?
For lost I gave it then as due,
When from slavery's yoke in strife
A rover I withdrew.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
My music is the north wind's roar,
The noise when round the cable runs,
The bellowings of the Black Sea's shore,
And rolling of my guns.
And as the thunders loudly sound,
And furious as the tempest rave,
I calmly rest in sleep profound,
So rocked upon the wave.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
## p. 5556 (#122) ###########################################
5556
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
(1812-1876)
F MY hair must turn gray, a thousandfold sooner let it be
with the dust of highways than that of musty tomes," said
Alphonse Esquiros; and the words show an energy which
always longed to accomplish something of practical utility, and which
expended itself in too many directions to be adequately successful in
any one.
For his contribution to literature is too meritorious not to
win appreciation, yet so scanty that we wonder why he did not leave
us more.
Esquiros first made himself known as a poet. He was very young
only twenty- when his little volume of odes and sonnets, 'Les
Hirondelles,' attracted Victor Hugo's admiration and friendship. “A
true poet's book," Hugo called it; "the fair beginning of a young
man; a swarm of charming verses on radiant wing. "
Then Esquiros engaged in journalism, and at the same time pre-
pared a historical novel, Charlotte Corday,' founded on the tragic
life of the Revolutionary heroine. This true story, strengthened by
an imagination which presented both Charlotte and her victim Marat
sympathetically, was very popular. Esquiros invested both murderous
figures with a fine ideality which made them seem victims rather
than sinners; and he made them symbolic too,-their final meeting
the inevitable clash between the Gironde and the Mountain. In the
simple, direct style there is no falsetto; and yet, as has been pointed
out, Esquiros here deserts the crisp French romanticism for a touch
of the sentiment we associate with our English Laurence Sterne.
With his skill in story-telling and his poetic quality, his feeling
for delicate emotion and grace of form, Esquiros combined much of
the reformer's spirit; and that brought him into trouble.
The same
year that Charlotte Corday' appeared (1840), he published too
'L'Évangile du Peuple,' a religious and political work, in which Jesus
is portrayed as a socialistic reformer in harmony with revolutionary
spirits. Naturally. this revival of revolutionary thinking was disap-
proved by the government, and its author was severely punished. He
was sentenced to the payment of a fine of 500 francs and to an
imprisonment of eight months. While confined in Sainte-Pélagie he
diverted himself with poetic composition, and wrote 'Les Chants du
Prisonnier,' pretty reminiscences of his early life. He wrote, too,
several semi-socialistic works, - 'Les Vierges Martyres' (The Virgin
I
## p. 5557 (#123) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5557
Martyrs), 'Les Vierges Folles' (The Foolish Virgins), and 'Les Vierges
Sages' (The Wise Virgins).
Esquiros was a Parisian, and much of his life was spent in the
centre of the political storms of his country. He was ardently patri-
otic, and his mind was always strongly diverted from literature to
politics, in which he stoutly advocated radical and socialistic reform.
Soon after his release he became a democratic member in the Legis-
lative Assembly, where he continued until, upon the overthrow of
the government, he found himself exiled.
His series of historical and political works,—'L'Histoire des Monta-
gnards' (History of the Montagnards: 1847), 'L'Histoire des Martyrs
de la Liberté' (History of the Martyrs of Liberty: 1851), and 'La Vie
Future au Point de Vue Socialiste (The Future Life from the Social-
ist's Standpoint: 1857),- although often eloquent and always earnest,
are considered superficial in thought. He was a man of feeling and
imagination rather than of analysis and synthesis, and philosophy
was not his true vocation. One quality in which he excelled found
exercise now that he was sent away from France: he had the fac-
ulty, not usual with Frenchmen, of understanding a foreign point of
view, of studying other lands and peoples with intuitive sympathy.
For years he lived in England, where he made many friends and was
for some time professor of French literature at Woolwich. He thor-
oughly investigated the different interests and industries of the coun-
try, the various forms of religion, the departments of government,
the army and navy; and obtained a just and comprehensive knowl-
edge of English life, which he embodied in serious and interesting.
studies which ran through a long series in the Revue des Deux
Mondes. They were translated into English, and in book form,
'L'Angleterre et la Vie Anglaise (England and English Life), and
'Les Moralistes Anglaises' (The English Moralists), were greatly
enjoyed on both sides of the Channel.
He spent some time in Holland too, and of this one result was a
delightful volume, 'La Néerlande et la Vie Hollandaise' (The Nether-
lands and Dutch Life: 1861), in which he gathered together a great
deal of information about that interesting little land and gave it
graphic presentation. This too was translated into English, and 'The
Dutch at Home' is still a popular book.
In 1869 Esquiros returned to France, and was soon after elected
democratic deputy from Bouches-du-Rhône. The next year came the
downfall of the Empire, after which he was appointed Administrateur
Supérieur from the same department. Something about Esquiros is
suggestive of Malesherbes; and in this position he showed similar
integrity and fearless energy, until like Malesherbes his virtues
proved his own undoing, and he was driven to resign.
## p. 5558 (#124) ###########################################
5558
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
The narrative talent which makes his works on foreign lands such
pleasant reading, and his two novels Charlotte Corday' and 'Le
Magicien always interesting, is especially striking in his one little.
volume of short stories. 'Le Château Enchanté' (The Enchanted
Castle), 'Le Mariage Fatal (The Fatal Marriage), and the others,
are romantic tales, told with a convincing simplicity and earnest
realization of the pathos of human life. Perhaps, on the whole, the
most striking quality of Alphonse Esquiros was his broad sympathy.
THE DEATH OF MARAT
From Charlotte Corday'
ON
N THE evening of the 13th of July, after leaving Du Perret,
Charlotte Corday started to return to her hotel, and crossed
the Palais Royal. It was still quite light. Everything
sparkled in the mild reddish glow which the setting sun shed.
along the galleries and on all the little shops. In the clear win-
dows of a cutlery shop especially, the steel blades glittered brill-
iantly. Charlotte Corday stopped. After looking a few minutes
at the sharp murderous instruments, she entered the shop.
There was one large knife with an ebony handle exposed for
sale, and Charlotte Corday tried the blade with her finger.
sheath lay beside it in the case. The price was three francs.
She paid it. Then she hid the knife, in its sheath, under the
red fichu which covered her throat.
As it was a beautiful evening, she went out into the garden
and sat down on a bench in the shade of the chestnut-trees. A
little child was playing near, gathering sand in its red apron.
The stranger's face pleased him; he drew near, smiled, hovered
about the bench, courting attention. Beauty attracts children.
Then, becoming quite familiar at last, he bravely dropped back
his little blond curly head on the lady's lap. Charlotte took him
in her arms and gave him a melancholy look. In the refreshing
breezes of the evening, she felt many tender and profound
thoughts at sight of this little being, sitting innocently on her
knees. In spite of herself she thought of the joys of maternity,
of the family, of love. She told herself that perhaps she was
mad, thus to sacrifice to vain chimeras the sweet and facile hap-
piness offered by nature. The agitations into which events and
public affairs had thrown her for the past six months subsided
## p. 5559 (#125) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5559
under the limpid gaze of this little creature; her eyes filled with
tears before his ingenuous smile; fresh and charming recollections
of that early age rushed wildly to her heart. At sight of so
much serenity, grace, forgetfulness, universal pardon, painted on
the child's face, she felt her fierce resolution soften, and her
vengeance slipping from her hands.
Now the prying, inquisitive little fingers of the child, which
for a moment had been investigating under her red fichu, drew
out the sinister knife for a plaything. At sight of it Charlotte
grew pale, rose, set the child on the ground, and went away;
first casting an unquiet glance around and replacing the knife
under her fichu, and the fatal secret in her breast. At the en-
trance to the garden she met a cabman, whose horses were rest-
ing before the door of a house. "Citizen Coachman," she asked,
can you tell me, if you please, where Citizen Marat lives? "
«<
"Rue des Cordeliers, No. 30;" and fearing this woman might
forget the address, the cabman wrote it himself in pencil on a
bit of white paper. This done, Charlotte Corday went back to
her hotel.
The next day Du Perret called as he had promised, and after
chatting with her for about a quarter of an hour, took her to
the minister. But Charlotte Corday found that she could not
draw her friend's papers from the hands of the administration.
Then she took leave of Du Perret, thanking him, and forbidding
him to call again. "You know what I told you yesterday," she
added. "Fly as quickly as you can. Fly this very night, for
to-morrow it will be too late. "
The claims of friendship satisfied, she turned all her strength
and resolution toward the true object of her journey. That
morning she had addressed the following letter to Marat by post:
"Citizen: I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for the
country makes me think that you will be interested to know
the unhappy events in that part of the Republic. I will call
upon you about one o'clock. Be so good as to receive me and
grant me a moment's interview. I will show you how to render
CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
France a great service.
A perfidious intention like a knife-blade was hidden under the
last sentence. Receiving no answer, Mademoiselle Corday wrote
again, about four o'clock that afternoon:
-
## p. 5560 (#126) ###########################################
5560
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"I wrote you this morning, Marat. Did you receive my letter?
I cannot believe so, since I am refused admittance at your door.
I hope you will grant me an interview to-morrow. I repeat that
I have just come from Caen. I wish to tell you secrets most
important to the safety of the Republic. Moreover, I am being
persecuted for the cause of liberty. I am unhappy. That alone
gives me a right to your protection. CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
The note written, she folded it and placed it in her breast.
This second message must be given to Marat's housekeeper, if he
still refused to see her. At a quarter of seven Charlotte Corday
took a cab on the Place des Victoires. "Where to? " asked the
driver. "Rue des Cordeliers, No. 30," answered a voice clear
and gentle as a child's.
The cab jogged along for a quarter of an hour, and then
stopped before a grim, dull-looking house, where, to follow the
language of the Girondists, the monster of the Mountain had
established his den. Marat's house at No. 30 Rue des Cordeliers
(now Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine) is still standing, and has
retained its former character. The monolithic mass, pierced with
rather high windows, draws the attention by its rigid, gloomy,
and solitary aspect. Dwellings as well as men have a physi-
ognomy. Providence doubtless chose this house from among all
others, for its air of fitness as witness and sombre setting of
one of the most tragic scenes of the great Revolutionary drama.
Since then it has been repaired to some extent, but no amount
of freshening can remove its sadness. Before the 13th of July
this sadness was a presentiment; since then it has been a mem-
ory. Still on the wall in pale letters are the words "ou la m»
the remnant of that stern inscription "La fraternité, l'indivisi-
bilité, ou la mort. "
-
2
Alas! This great word, in which all the others are lost, is
itself becoming effaced under the file of time. As one of the
ancients said, "death dies" (mors moritur). The front door, in
its frame of black paint, gives the whole house a funereal air.
A kind of square vestibule, with a wretched porter's lodge to
the right, leads to a damp little court where the dank mossy
pavement sends to the surface a cold sweat, as it were, in time of
rain. This court is bounded by a wing of the building, streaked
with cracks and mold. There is a well in one of the angles.
On the right, a staircase of greasy stone steps, surmounted by
## p. 5561 (#127) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5561
an iron railing, leads up to a large landing lighted by a double
casement. Under the stairs the eyes plunge into a sordid hollow,
where there is a confusion of old household utensils, and where
cellar doors open confusingly like shadowy mouths. This house
Iwas made for some sinister event.
Charlotte, trim and alert, stepped out of the cab before
the porte-cochère. Afterwards, the neighbors remembered their
surprise at seeing a young woman with a green ribbon in her
hair getting out of a carriage. First of all she had to brave the
cross-grained portress in her lodge, a veritable female Cerberus,
who, knowing that her tenant was ill and much beset, pitilessly
refused to let her enter. Charlotte Corday insisted. Subdued
by her urgent and resolute tone, the portress finally allowed her
to go up-stairs.
Marat was living upon the first floor. The staircase conducted
to a long landing, at the end of which was an obscure kitchen
window, covered with iron bars, beside a door painted yellow.
This grim grating must have vividly touched Charlotte Corday's
imagination, and she fancied Marat in his lodging like a wild
beast in its cage.
She stopped near the barred window with its menacing air,
before the door to the left. A strange coldness seized her heart.
Her enemy was behind this light partition; and behind it too was
her own future, the scaffold all ready and threatening! There
was still time to retreat. She could return to Caen or sail to
England. Easy, admissible joys held out loving arms to the
young and beautiful woman, either under the trees of Normandy
or on the white shores of Great Britain. The struggle before
her was one of those irrevocable struggles where, like the bee,
the victor leaves his life in the wound he inflicts.
The sill of this door once crossed, she could never retrace her
steps. This door upon which she was about to knock was the
door to her tomb. She hesitated. The most fearless hand must
needs tremble before this perilous entrance, over which, in let-
ters visible to her excited imagination, she read the terrible sen-
tence of the damned- "Leave all hope at the door. " True, she
had dreamed, the blow once struck, of escaping and gaining a
seaport; but this was so doubtful a chance, so light and fragile
a thread to support the weight of her crime, that she could
scarcely trust it. To shake the wood of this door was to awaken
the dull and terrible sound which comes from a coffin-lid when
## p. 5562 (#128) ###########################################
5562
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
touched. And there was something horrible, too, in this calm.
moment preceding so furious and violent an action as the mur
der of a man. She felt the need of gathering all her strength
to hold the knife in her delicate white hands. She stood erect
and motionless like the statue of Judith. Her hand seemed to
weigh a hundred pounds. However, some one was coming up
the stairs behind her, and the fixed resolution at the bottom of
her heart conquered. The hesitations of the avenging arm before
this fatal door ceased, and Charlotte Corday knocked.
Marat was lying in his bath. The bath-room was dimly lighted
by a window on the court. The only furniture was a block of
wood, upon which papers, pens, and a lead inkstand were thrown
pell-mell. Marat was writing. He was signing a petition to the
administration in behalf of a poor widow with four children who
had asked the aid of the People's Friend.
For several days, as we have said, Marat had not been able
to stay out of the bath without being consumed by sharpest
sufferings. There the agitated and volcanic little man tried to
take the attitude and repose of the tomb where he was soon to
rest. In these moments of solitude, preyed upon by horror of
the death which was slowly and surely taking possession of his
perishing body, Marat was pierced to the heart by an invisible
sword, and bled within of an incurable wound. All his life this
man had kept his sufferings to himself.
As he neared the tomb his griefs surged up out of his breast
and suffocated him. He glanced drearily over his life of cruci-
fixion. When he remembered the ills he had endured for the
cause of the Revolution, he asked himself if it would not have
been better to have given himself to the calm and serious work
of science. In mind he entered again his little room at Ver-
sailles, where the birds came to pick up the crumbs on his
window-sill and where the trees cast their green shadows. Then
he thought sadly how little joy, and that frothy and shadowed,
was brought to the heart by the puissance of success in civil
storms. Marat the persecuted, who in time had made himself a
persecutor, offered in this moment a striking and terrible exam-
ple of what he himself had once written: -
"One would be tempted to accuse Heaven and to deny its
justice, if there were not some consolation at sight of frightful
tyrants themselves suffering the ills which they inflict upon
others. "
## p. 5563 (#129) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5563
The great executioner of Divine justice had fallen into the
cold and painful hands of the final torture.
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
5543
flying feet, the floating robes, rounding and swelling in fan-
shaped curves; Fritz holding little Suzel in his arms, raising her
hand aloft gracefully, gazing at her with delight, whirling around
at times like the wind, and then slowly revolving in measured
cadence, smiling, dreaming, gazing at her again, and then dart-
ing off with renewed ardor; whilst she, with her waist undulat-
ing in graceful curves, her long tresses floating behind her like
wings, and her charming little head thrown backwards, gazed at
him in ecstasy, her little feet scarcely touching the ground as
she flew along.
Fat Haan, grappling his tall partner with uplifted arm, gal-
loped away without a moment's intermission, balancing and stamp-
ing with his heels to mark the time, and looking up at her from
time to time with an air of profound admiration; while she, with
her hooked nose, twirled about like a weathercock.
Schoultz, his back rounded in a semicircle and his long legs.
bent, held his red-haired partner under the arms, and kept turn-
ing, turning, turning, without a moment's cessation, and with the
most wonderful regularity, like a bobbin on its spindle, and keep-
ing time so exactly that the spectators were fairly enchanted.
But it was Fritz and the little Suzel that excited universal
admiration, from the grace of their movements and the happi-
ness which shone in their faces. They no longer belonged to
this lower earth,- they felt as if they were floating in a sort of
celestial atmosphere. This music, singing in joyous strains the
praises of happiness and love, seemed as if composed expressly
for them. The eyes of the whole hall were riveted upon them,
while they saw no one but each other. At times their youth and
good looks so excited the enthusiasm of the audience that it
seemed as if they were about to burst into a thunder of applause;
but their anxiety to hear the waltz kept them silent. It was only
when Haan, almost beside himself with delight in the contem-
plation of the tall burgomaster's daughter, raised himself on tip-
toe, and whirling her around him twice shouted in a stentorian
voice-"You! you! » subsiding the next moment into the regular
cadence of the dance, and when Schoultz at the same moment,
raising his right leg, passed it, without missing a bar of the tune,
over the head of his plump little partner, and in a hoarse voice,
and whirling round like one possessed, began to shout, "You!
you! you! you! you! you! " that the admiration of the spectators
found vent in clapping of hands and stamping of feet, and a
storm of hurrahs which shook the whole building.
## p. 5544 (#110) ###########################################
5544
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
Never in their whole lives had they seen such dancing. The
enthusiasm lasted for more than five minutes, and when at last
it died away they heard with pleasure the waltz of the spirits of
the air again resume the ascendant, as the song of the nightin-
gale swells out in the night air after the summer storm has
passed.
At last Haan and Schoultz were fairly exhausted; the per-
spiration was pouring down their cheeks, and they were fain to
promenade their partners through the hall; although it seemed as
if Haan were being led about by his danseuse, while Schoultz, on
the other hand, looked as if he were carrying his fair one sus-
pended from his elbow.
Suzel and Fritz still kept whirling round. The shouts and
stamping of feet of the spectators did not seem to reach their
ears; and when Joseph, himself exhausted, drew the last long-
drawn sigh of love for his violin, they stopped exactly opposite
Father Christel and another old Anabaptist, who had just entered
the hall, and were gazing at them with surprise and admiration.
Hallo! So you are here too, Father Christel," exclaimed
Fritz, beaming with delight; "you see Suzel and I have been
dancing together. "
"It is a great honor for us, Mr. Kobus," replied the farmer,
smiling; "a great honor indeed. But does the little one under-
stand it? I fancied she had never danced a step in her life. "
"Why, Father Christel, Suzel is a butterfly, a perfect little
fairy; I believe she has wings! "
Suzel was leaning on his arm, her eyes cast down, and her
cheeks covered with blushes; and Father Christel, looking at her
with delight, asked: -
"But Suzel, who taught you to dance? I was quite surprised
to see you just now. "
"Mazel and I," replied the little one,
"used to take a turn or
two in the kitchen now and then to amuse ourselves. "
Then the people around, who had leaned forward to listen,
could not help laughing; and the other Anabaptist exclaimed:-
"What are you thinking of, Christel?
young girls require to be taught to waltz?
it comes to them by nature? Ha ha
ha! "
Do you imagine that
Don't you know that
## p. 5545 (#111) ###########################################
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
5545
A BIVOUAC AT LIGNY
From Waterloo: A Sequel to the Conscript of 1813: copyright 1869, by
Charles Scribner & Co.
-
IT
T WAS dark already, and the dense masses of smoke made it
impossible to see fifty paces ahead. Everything was moving
toward the windmills; the clatter of the cavalry, the shouts,
the orders of the officers, and the file-firing in the distance, all
were confounded. Several of the squares were broken. From
time to time a flash would reveal a lancer bent to his horse's
neck, or a cuirassier, with his broad white back and his helmet
with its floating plume, shooting off like a bullet, two or three
foot soldiers running about in the midst of the fray,- all would
come and go like lightning. The trampled grain, the rain streak-
ing the heavens, the wounded under the feet of the horses, all
came out of the black night— through the storm which had just
broken out for a quarter of a second. Every flash of musket
or pistol showed us inexplicable things by thousands.
But every-
thing moved up the hill and away from Ligny; we were masters.
We had pierced the enemy's centre; the Prussians no longer
made any defense, except at the top of the hill near the mills
and in the direction of Sombref, at our right. St. Armand and
Ligny were both in our hands.
As for us,—a dozen or so of our company there alone among
the ruins of the cottages, with our cartridge boxes almost empty,
we did not know which way to turn. Zébédé, Lieutenant
Bretonville, and Captain Florentin had disappeared, and Sergeant
Rabot was in command. He was a little old fellow, thin and
deformed, but as tough as steel; he squinted, and seemed to
have had red hair when young. Now, as I speak of him, I
seem to hear him say quietly to us, "The battle is won! by file
right! forward, march! "
Several wanted to stop and make some soup, for we had
eaten nothing since noon, and began to be hungry. The ser-
geant marched down the lane with his musket on his shoulder,
laughing quietly, and saying in an ironical tone:-
"Oh! soup, soup! Wait a little; the commissary is coming! "
We followed him down the dark lane; about midway we saw
a cuirassier on horseback with his back toward us. He had a
## p. 5546 (#112) ###########################################
5546
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
sabre-cut in the abdomen and had retired into this lane; the
horse leaned against the wall to prevent him from falling off.
As we filed past he called out, "Comrades! " But nobody even
turned his head.
Twenty paces farther on we found the ruins of a cottage,
completely riddled with balls: but half the thatched roof was still
there, and this was why Sergeant Rabot had selected it; and we
filed into it for shelter.
We could see no more than if we had been in an oven; the
sergeant exploded the priming of his musket, and we saw that it
was the kitchen, that the fireplace was at the right, and the
stairway on the left. Five or six Prussians and Frenchmen were
stretched on the floor, white as wax, and with their eyes wide
open.
"Here is the mess-room," said the sergeant: "let every one
make himself comfortable. Our bedfellows will not kick us. "
As we saw plainly that there were to be no rations, each one
took off his knapsack and placed it by the wall on the floor for
a pillow. We could still hear the firing, but it was far in the
distance on the hill.
The rain fell in torrents. The sergeant shut the door, which
creaked on its hinges, and then quietly lighted his pipe. Some
of the men were already snoring when I looked up, and he was
standing at the little window, in which not a pane of glass
remained, smoking.
He was a firm, just man; he could read and write, had been
wounded and had his three chevrons, and ought to have been an
officer, only he was not well formed. He soon laid his head on
his knapsack, and shortly after all were asleep.
«<
It was long after this when I was suddenly awakened by
footsteps and fumbling about the house outside.
I raised up on
my elbow to listen, when somebody tried to open the door. I
could not help screaming out. 'What's the matter? " said the
sergeant. We could hear them running away, and Rabot turned
on his knapsack, saying, "Night-birds-rascals! clear out, or I'll
send a ball after you! He said no more, and I got up and
looked out of the window, and saw the wretches in the act of
robbing the dead and wounded. They were going softly from
one to another, while the rain was falling in torrents.
It was
something horrible.
I lay down again, and fell asleep, overcome by fatigue.
## p. 5547 (#113) ###########################################
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
5547
At daybreak the sergeant was up and crying "En route! "
We left the cottage and went back through the lane. The
cuirassier was on the ground, but his horse still stood beside
him. The sergeant took him by the bridle and led him out into
the orchard, pulled the bits from his mouth, and said:-
-
"Go and eat; they will find you again by-and-by. "
And the poor beast walked quietly away. We hurried along
the path which runs by Ligny. The furrows stopped here, and
some plots of garden ground lay along by the road.
The ser-
geant looked about him as he went, and stooped down to dig up
some carrots and turnips which were left. I quickly followed his
example, while our comrades hastened on without looking round.
I saw that it was a good thing to know the fruits of the
earth. I found two beautiful turnips and some carrots, which
are very good raw, but I followed the example of the sergeant
and put them in my shako.
I ran on to overtake the squad, which was directing its steps
toward the fires at Sombref. As for the rest, I will not attempt
to describe to you the appearance of the plateau in the rear of
Ligny, where our cuirassiers and dragoons had slaughtered all
before them. The men and horses were lying in heaps; the
horses with their long necks stretched out on the ground, and the
dead and wounded lying under them.
Sometimes the wounded men would raise their hands to make
signs, when the horses would attempt to get up and fall back,
crushing them still more fearfully.
Blood! blood! everywhere. The directions of the balls and
shot were marked on the slope by the red lines, just as we see
in our country the lines in the sand formed by the water from
the melting snow. But will you believe it? These horrors
scarcely made any impression upon me. Before I went to Lützen
such a sight would have knocked me down. I should have
thought then: -"Do our masters look upon us as brutes? Will the
good God give us up to be eaten by wolves? Have we mothers
and sisters and friends, beings who are dear to us, and will they
not cry for vengeance? " I should have thought of a thousand
other things, but now I did not think at all. From having seen.
such a mass of slaughter and wrong every day and in every
fashion, I began to say to myself:-
"The strongest are always in the right. The Emperor is the
strongest, and he has called us, and we must come in spite of
## p. 5548 (#114) ###########################################
5548
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
everything, from Pfalzburg, from Saverne, or other cities, and
take our places in the ranks and march. One who showed the
least sign of resistance would be shot at once. The marshals,
the generals, the officers, down to the last man, follow their
instructions, they dare not make a move without orders; and
everybody obeys the army. It is the Emperor who wills, who
has the power and who does everything. And would not Joseph
Bertha be a fool to believe that the Emperor ever committed a
single fault in his life. ? Would it not be contrary to reason? "
That was what we all thought, and if the Emperor had re-
mained here, all France would have had the same opinion.
My only satisfaction was in thinking that I had some carrots
and turnips; for in passing in the rear of the pickets to find our
place in the battalion we learned that no rations had been dis-
tributed except brandy and cartridges.
The veterans were filling their kettles; but the conscripts, who
had not yet learned the art of living while on the campaign, and
who had unfortunately already eaten all their bread, as will hap-
pen when one is twenty years old and is on the march with a
good appetite,—they had not a spoonful of anything.
At last, about seven o'clock, we reached the camp. Zébédé
came to meet me, and was delighted to see me, and said:
"What
have you brought, Joseph? We have found a fat kid, and we
have some salt, but not a mouthful of bread. "
I showed him the rice which I had left, and my turnips and
carrots.
-
-
"That's good," said he; we shall have the best soup in the
battalion. "
I wanted Buche to eat with us too, and the six men belong-
ing to our mess, who had all escaped with only bruises and
scratches, consented. Padoue the drum - major said, laughing,
"Veterans are always veterans; they never come empty-handed. ”
We looked into the kettles of the five conscripts and winked;
for they had nothing but rice and water in them, while we had
a good rich soup, the odor of which filled the air around us.
At eight we took our breakfast with an appetite, as you can
imagine.
Not even on my wedding day did I eat a better meal, and it
is a pleasure even now to think of it. When we are old we are
not so enthusiastic about such things as when we are young, but
still we always recall them with satisfaction.
## p. 5549 (#115) ###########################################
5549
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
(1810-1842)
BY MARY J. SERRANO
N THE year 1810 all Spain was in arms, disputing Spanish soil
inch by inch with the soldiers of Napoleon, who, including
in his plan of universal conquest the crown of Spain, had
decoyed into France and then perfidiously imprisoned the Spanish
King Ferdinand, and placed his brother Joseph by force of arms
upon the vacant throne.
It was in the spring of this year that José de Espronceda was born
in the little town of Almendrajo, in the province of Estremadura, dur-
ing a halt of the cavalry regiment of which his father was colonel,
his mother having accompanied her husband in the marches of the
campaign.
Nursed amid the din of battle waged in defense of national rights,
drawing in with every breath the spirit of national liberty that filled
the air, and that continued to fill it during his childhood and youth,
as an aspiration towards national regeneration, it was not strange
that this spirit of liberty, converted by the workings of his poet's
imagination into a spirit of revolt against all restraint, should have
fermented in his blood and should remain a ruling influence in his
short and agitated existence.
Thus is that almost all Espronceda's poems, whatever their
subject, are an aspiration toward freedom, whether from the bonds
of spirit or of matter, or a passionate protest against the injustice
of man or of fate. But in Espronceda's cynicism, unlike that of
Byron, whom he so strongly resembled both in his genius and his
character,—of Heine, of Leopardi, or of Musset, there is nothing of
egotism or of affectation, defects from which his sincere and gener-
ous nature was altogether free; and while his expression of feeling is
intensely personal, as for instance in the cry of passionate regret for
lost illusions which he calls Canto to Teresa,' and which stands
as the second canto of 'El Diablo Mundo' (The World Spirit), the
feelings he expresses are the common feelings of humanity; as the
injustice against which he protests is the injustice suffered by his
fellow-men. Thus, in 'The Mendicant,' 'The Executioner,' and 'The
Condemned Criminal,' he arraigns human society for the inequalities
## p. 5550 (#116) ###########################################
5550
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
of station and of fortune which array man against his fellow-man,
and for the indifference with which it regards the victim of its own
defective organization, while sanctioning, in decreeing his death, the
crime for which it condemns him to die.
The 'Song of the Cossack' and 'The Pirate' reflect vividly the free
life of nature, the freedom of the desert and of the sea- the dash
across the plain of the Cossack horseman, the wild sweep in which
the steed responds to the will of the rider as the hand responds to
the brain; the wide solitude of the boundless sea, the invigorating
saltness of the breeze murmuring through the sails, the shimmer
of the moon on the blue waters; and through and above all the
intoxicating sense of conscious power, of strength unconquered and
defiant.
Another note is struck in the poem 'To Jarifa in an Orgy. ' Here
the freedom aspired to is freedom from law, the unescapable law that
ordains that satiety shall inevitably attend upon excess. But when
the poet's soul, steeped in the dregs of pleasure, abandons itself un-
resistingly to its fate, a sudden touch of human sympathy, of pure
feeling, stirs it with regenerating power and so saves it from moral
death.
In The Student of Salamanca,' one of Espronceda's two long
poems, for of 'Pelayo,' an epic poem written in his boyhood, and a
remarkable production thus considered, only a few fragments remain,
-the prevailing note is one of defiance; defiance of all authority,
human or Divine. The poem is based on the legend of Don Juan
Tenorio; and in the character of the hero, Espronceda, like Byron in
Don Juan, is supposed to have depicted his own. Imaginative power
of the highest order, and an extraordinary skill in the employment of
the resources of poetic expression, characterize this work, in which
earth and heaven and hell, the natural and the supernatural, are
brought together on a single canvas without dissonance or dispropor-
tion of line or color. The solitary landscape bathed in the mellow
light of the moon; the branches of the trees outlined darkly against
the softly luminous midnight sky; the brook murmuring its plaintive
song; the touching figure of the gentle and unfortunate Elvira, whose
illusions have been scattered to the wind by the ruthless hand of her
faithless lover, like the petals which she pulls, in the abstraction of
her grief, from the flowers; the gambling-house, with its exhibition
of cynicism and depravity; the graves giving up their dead to cel-
ebrate ghastly festivities-all form a picture of surpassing power and
extraordinary artistic beauty.
-
'El Diablo Mundo,' Espronceda's most important composition,
recalls in its plan the legend of Faust. The hero, an old man who
becomes endowed with immortal youth, has scarcely put on his new
## p. 5551 (#117) ###########################################
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
5551
form when he is seized by the police as a fugitive from justice, and
cast into prison. Here he finds a companion in a hardened criminal
who indoctrinates him in his own cynical philosophy of life, for the
mind of the new Adam is the blank mind of a child. The daughter
of his mentor comes to visit her father in the prison, and Adam con-
ceives a violent passion for her, which she returns with equal vehe-
mence. In the prison Adam meets some thieves who induce him
to join in the midnight robbery of a beautiful and wealthy countess.
The alarm is given, but Adam makes his escape. He wanders
through the city streets, and at last enters a house where an orgy is
going on in one room, while in another the daughter of the house
lies dead. Touched by the mother's lamentations, Adam's heart is
filled with the desire to restore the dead girl to life. Here ends the
poem, which the author did not live to finish.
In Espronceda's poems the spirit of the man is reflected: a spirit
of fire, a flame lurid and obscured at times by smoke, but a flame
that always aspires. In his poems, too, is to be found the best his-
tory of his unsettled and adventurous life; of which the chief events
to be recorded are his journeyings, now voluntary, now as an exile,
to Lisbon, to Paris, to London, and back again to Madrid, and the
part he took in the political movements of which they were in gen-
eral the result.
An incident characteristic of the poet is related of his first visit
to Lisbon. When the vessel on which he was a passenger arrived in
port, the health officer, boarding her, proceeded to collect a small tax
which it was the custom to demand from the passengers. When
Espronceda's turn arrived, the poet took from his pocket a dollar, all
the money he possessed, and handed it to the officer, who returned
him the change. The poet tossed the coins lightly into the water,
in order, as he said, that he might not "enter so great a capital with
so small a sum of money. "
During his residence in London, Espronceda devoted himself with
ardor to the study of the English poets, more particularly of Byron,
whose influence is clearly traceable in his works. Here the passion-
ate lament entitled 'Elegy to Spain' was written. Here, too, the
unhappy passion which inspired the 'Canto to Teresa' reached the
fatal culmination which was to prove a source of unending remorse
to both the guilty lovers.
The accession to power in 1840 of the liberal party, whose prin-
ciples he advocated, seemed to promise Espronceda at last leisure to
take his just place in literature; a place, according to the judgment
of Valera, -a cautious critic,- beside Goethe, Byron, and Leopardi.
The promise, however, was never realized. His health had been
undermined by a life often of privation and always irregular; and
## p. 5552 (#118) ###########################################
5552
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
before he could take his seat he was attacked by an inflammation of
the larynx, and died after four days' illness, on the 23d of May,
1842, at the age of thirty-two years.
Mary J. Serraus
TO SPAIN: AN ELEGY
ow solitary is the nation now
How
Η That peopled countries vast a former day!
That, all beneath her sovereignty to bow,
From East to West extended once her sway!
Tears now profuse to shed, unhappy one,
Queen of the world! 'tis thine; and from thy face,
Enchanting yet in sorrow, there is none
Its overwhelming traces to erase.
How fatally o'er thee has death poured forth
Darkness and mourning, horrible and great!
And the stern despot in his maddened wrath
Exulted wildly o'er thy low estate.
Nothing or great or beautiful he spared,
My country! - the young warrior by him fell,
The veteran fell, and vile his war-axe glared,
Pleased all its fury o'er thee to impel.
Even the pure maiden fell beneath the rage
Of the unpitying despot, as the rose,
Condemned the summer's burning sun to engage,
Her bloom and beauty withering, soon must close.
Come, O ye inhabiters of all the earth,
And contemplate my misery! can there,-
Tell me! -be any found of mortal birth
Bearing the sorrows I am doomed to bear?
―――
I, wretched, banished from my native land,
Behold, far from the country I adore,
Her former glories lost and high command,
And only left her sufferings to deplore.
Her children have been fatally betrayed
By treacherous brethren, and a tyrant's power;
## p. 5553 (#119) ###########################################
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
5553
And these her lovely fertile plains have made
Fields o'er which only lamentations lower.
Her arms extended wide, unhappy Spain!
Her sons imploring in her deep distress:
Her sons they were, but her command was vain,
Unheard the traitor-madness to repress.
Whate'er could then avail thee, tower or wall,
My country! still amid thy woes adored?
Where were the heroes that could once appall
The fiercest foe?
where thy unconquered sword?
Alas! now on thy children's humbled brow
Deeply is shame engraved, and on their eyes,
Cast down and sorrowfully throbbing now,
The tears alone of grief and mourning rise.
Once was a time for Spain, when she possessed
A hundred heroes in her hour of pride;
And trembling nations saw her manifest
Her power and beauty, dazzling, by their side.
As lofty shows itself in Lebanon
The cedar, so her brow she raised on high;
And fell her voice the nations round upon,
As terrify a girl the thunders nigh.
But as a stone now in the desert's wild
Thou liest abandoned, and an unknown way
Through strangers' lands, uncertain where, exiled,
The patriot's doomed unfortunate to stray.
Her ancient pomp and power are covered o'er
With sand and weeds contemptuous; and the foe,
That trembled at her puissance before,
Now mocks exulting and enjoys her woe.
Maidens! your flowing locks disheveled tear,
To give them to the wandering winds; and bring
Your harps in mournful company to share
With me the sorrowful laments I sing.
Thus banished from our homes afar away
Still let us weep our miseries. O Spain,
Who shall have power thy torments to allay?
Who shall have power to dry thy tears again?
X-348
## p. 5554 (#120) ###########################################
5554
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
THE SONG OF THE PIRATE
THE
HE breeze fair aft, all sails on high,
Ten guns on each side mounted seen,
She does not cut the sea, but fly,
A swiftly sailing brigantine;
A pirate bark, the Dreaded' named,
For her surpassing boldness famed,
On every sea well known and shore,
From side to side their boundaries o'er.
The moon in streaks the waves illumes;
Hoarse groans the wind the rigging through;
In gentle motion raised, assumes
The sea a silvery shade with blue;
While singing gaily on the poop,
The pirate captain, in a group,
Sees Europe here, there Asia lies,
And Stamboul in the front arise.
Sail on, my swift one! nothing fear;
Nor calm, nor storm, nor foeman's force
Shall make thee yield in thy career,
Or turn thee from thy course.
Despite the English cruisers fleet,
We have full twenty prizes made;
And see, their flags beneath my feet
A hundred nations laid.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
There blindly kings fierce wars maintain
For palms of land, when here I hold
As mine, whose power no laws restrain,
Whate'er the seas infold.
Nor is there shore around whate'er,
Or banner proud, but of my might
Is taught the valorous proofs to bear,
And made to feel my right.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
## p. 5555 (#121) ###########################################
JOSÉ DE ESPRONCEDA
5555
Look, when a ship our signals ring
Full sail to fly, how quick she's veer'd!
For of the sea I am the king,
My fury's to be feared;
But equally with all I share
Whate'er the wealth we take supplies;
I only seek the matchless fair,
My portion of the prize.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty:
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
I am condemned to die! I laugh;
For if my fates are kindly sped,
My doomer from his own ship's staff
Perhaps I'll hang instead.
And if I fall, why what is life?
For lost I gave it then as due,
When from slavery's yoke in strife
A rover I withdrew.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
My music is the north wind's roar,
The noise when round the cable runs,
The bellowings of the Black Sea's shore,
And rolling of my guns.
And as the thunders loudly sound,
And furious as the tempest rave,
I calmly rest in sleep profound,
So rocked upon the wave.
My treasure is my gallant bark,
My only God is liberty;
My law is might, the wind my mark,
My country is the sea.
## p. 5556 (#122) ###########################################
5556
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
(1812-1876)
F MY hair must turn gray, a thousandfold sooner let it be
with the dust of highways than that of musty tomes," said
Alphonse Esquiros; and the words show an energy which
always longed to accomplish something of practical utility, and which
expended itself in too many directions to be adequately successful in
any one.
For his contribution to literature is too meritorious not to
win appreciation, yet so scanty that we wonder why he did not leave
us more.
Esquiros first made himself known as a poet. He was very young
only twenty- when his little volume of odes and sonnets, 'Les
Hirondelles,' attracted Victor Hugo's admiration and friendship. “A
true poet's book," Hugo called it; "the fair beginning of a young
man; a swarm of charming verses on radiant wing. "
Then Esquiros engaged in journalism, and at the same time pre-
pared a historical novel, Charlotte Corday,' founded on the tragic
life of the Revolutionary heroine. This true story, strengthened by
an imagination which presented both Charlotte and her victim Marat
sympathetically, was very popular. Esquiros invested both murderous
figures with a fine ideality which made them seem victims rather
than sinners; and he made them symbolic too,-their final meeting
the inevitable clash between the Gironde and the Mountain. In the
simple, direct style there is no falsetto; and yet, as has been pointed
out, Esquiros here deserts the crisp French romanticism for a touch
of the sentiment we associate with our English Laurence Sterne.
With his skill in story-telling and his poetic quality, his feeling
for delicate emotion and grace of form, Esquiros combined much of
the reformer's spirit; and that brought him into trouble.
The same
year that Charlotte Corday' appeared (1840), he published too
'L'Évangile du Peuple,' a religious and political work, in which Jesus
is portrayed as a socialistic reformer in harmony with revolutionary
spirits. Naturally. this revival of revolutionary thinking was disap-
proved by the government, and its author was severely punished. He
was sentenced to the payment of a fine of 500 francs and to an
imprisonment of eight months. While confined in Sainte-Pélagie he
diverted himself with poetic composition, and wrote 'Les Chants du
Prisonnier,' pretty reminiscences of his early life. He wrote, too,
several semi-socialistic works, - 'Les Vierges Martyres' (The Virgin
I
## p. 5557 (#123) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5557
Martyrs), 'Les Vierges Folles' (The Foolish Virgins), and 'Les Vierges
Sages' (The Wise Virgins).
Esquiros was a Parisian, and much of his life was spent in the
centre of the political storms of his country. He was ardently patri-
otic, and his mind was always strongly diverted from literature to
politics, in which he stoutly advocated radical and socialistic reform.
Soon after his release he became a democratic member in the Legis-
lative Assembly, where he continued until, upon the overthrow of
the government, he found himself exiled.
His series of historical and political works,—'L'Histoire des Monta-
gnards' (History of the Montagnards: 1847), 'L'Histoire des Martyrs
de la Liberté' (History of the Martyrs of Liberty: 1851), and 'La Vie
Future au Point de Vue Socialiste (The Future Life from the Social-
ist's Standpoint: 1857),- although often eloquent and always earnest,
are considered superficial in thought. He was a man of feeling and
imagination rather than of analysis and synthesis, and philosophy
was not his true vocation. One quality in which he excelled found
exercise now that he was sent away from France: he had the fac-
ulty, not usual with Frenchmen, of understanding a foreign point of
view, of studying other lands and peoples with intuitive sympathy.
For years he lived in England, where he made many friends and was
for some time professor of French literature at Woolwich. He thor-
oughly investigated the different interests and industries of the coun-
try, the various forms of religion, the departments of government,
the army and navy; and obtained a just and comprehensive knowl-
edge of English life, which he embodied in serious and interesting.
studies which ran through a long series in the Revue des Deux
Mondes. They were translated into English, and in book form,
'L'Angleterre et la Vie Anglaise (England and English Life), and
'Les Moralistes Anglaises' (The English Moralists), were greatly
enjoyed on both sides of the Channel.
He spent some time in Holland too, and of this one result was a
delightful volume, 'La Néerlande et la Vie Hollandaise' (The Nether-
lands and Dutch Life: 1861), in which he gathered together a great
deal of information about that interesting little land and gave it
graphic presentation. This too was translated into English, and 'The
Dutch at Home' is still a popular book.
In 1869 Esquiros returned to France, and was soon after elected
democratic deputy from Bouches-du-Rhône. The next year came the
downfall of the Empire, after which he was appointed Administrateur
Supérieur from the same department. Something about Esquiros is
suggestive of Malesherbes; and in this position he showed similar
integrity and fearless energy, until like Malesherbes his virtues
proved his own undoing, and he was driven to resign.
## p. 5558 (#124) ###########################################
5558
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
The narrative talent which makes his works on foreign lands such
pleasant reading, and his two novels Charlotte Corday' and 'Le
Magicien always interesting, is especially striking in his one little.
volume of short stories. 'Le Château Enchanté' (The Enchanted
Castle), 'Le Mariage Fatal (The Fatal Marriage), and the others,
are romantic tales, told with a convincing simplicity and earnest
realization of the pathos of human life. Perhaps, on the whole, the
most striking quality of Alphonse Esquiros was his broad sympathy.
THE DEATH OF MARAT
From Charlotte Corday'
ON
N THE evening of the 13th of July, after leaving Du Perret,
Charlotte Corday started to return to her hotel, and crossed
the Palais Royal. It was still quite light. Everything
sparkled in the mild reddish glow which the setting sun shed.
along the galleries and on all the little shops. In the clear win-
dows of a cutlery shop especially, the steel blades glittered brill-
iantly. Charlotte Corday stopped. After looking a few minutes
at the sharp murderous instruments, she entered the shop.
There was one large knife with an ebony handle exposed for
sale, and Charlotte Corday tried the blade with her finger.
sheath lay beside it in the case. The price was three francs.
She paid it. Then she hid the knife, in its sheath, under the
red fichu which covered her throat.
As it was a beautiful evening, she went out into the garden
and sat down on a bench in the shade of the chestnut-trees. A
little child was playing near, gathering sand in its red apron.
The stranger's face pleased him; he drew near, smiled, hovered
about the bench, courting attention. Beauty attracts children.
Then, becoming quite familiar at last, he bravely dropped back
his little blond curly head on the lady's lap. Charlotte took him
in her arms and gave him a melancholy look. In the refreshing
breezes of the evening, she felt many tender and profound
thoughts at sight of this little being, sitting innocently on her
knees. In spite of herself she thought of the joys of maternity,
of the family, of love. She told herself that perhaps she was
mad, thus to sacrifice to vain chimeras the sweet and facile hap-
piness offered by nature. The agitations into which events and
public affairs had thrown her for the past six months subsided
## p. 5559 (#125) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5559
under the limpid gaze of this little creature; her eyes filled with
tears before his ingenuous smile; fresh and charming recollections
of that early age rushed wildly to her heart. At sight of so
much serenity, grace, forgetfulness, universal pardon, painted on
the child's face, she felt her fierce resolution soften, and her
vengeance slipping from her hands.
Now the prying, inquisitive little fingers of the child, which
for a moment had been investigating under her red fichu, drew
out the sinister knife for a plaything. At sight of it Charlotte
grew pale, rose, set the child on the ground, and went away;
first casting an unquiet glance around and replacing the knife
under her fichu, and the fatal secret in her breast. At the en-
trance to the garden she met a cabman, whose horses were rest-
ing before the door of a house. "Citizen Coachman," she asked,
can you tell me, if you please, where Citizen Marat lives? "
«<
"Rue des Cordeliers, No. 30;" and fearing this woman might
forget the address, the cabman wrote it himself in pencil on a
bit of white paper. This done, Charlotte Corday went back to
her hotel.
The next day Du Perret called as he had promised, and after
chatting with her for about a quarter of an hour, took her to
the minister. But Charlotte Corday found that she could not
draw her friend's papers from the hands of the administration.
Then she took leave of Du Perret, thanking him, and forbidding
him to call again. "You know what I told you yesterday," she
added. "Fly as quickly as you can. Fly this very night, for
to-morrow it will be too late. "
The claims of friendship satisfied, she turned all her strength
and resolution toward the true object of her journey. That
morning she had addressed the following letter to Marat by post:
"Citizen: I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for the
country makes me think that you will be interested to know
the unhappy events in that part of the Republic. I will call
upon you about one o'clock. Be so good as to receive me and
grant me a moment's interview. I will show you how to render
CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
France a great service.
A perfidious intention like a knife-blade was hidden under the
last sentence. Receiving no answer, Mademoiselle Corday wrote
again, about four o'clock that afternoon:
-
## p. 5560 (#126) ###########################################
5560
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"I wrote you this morning, Marat. Did you receive my letter?
I cannot believe so, since I am refused admittance at your door.
I hope you will grant me an interview to-morrow. I repeat that
I have just come from Caen. I wish to tell you secrets most
important to the safety of the Republic. Moreover, I am being
persecuted for the cause of liberty. I am unhappy. That alone
gives me a right to your protection. CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
The note written, she folded it and placed it in her breast.
This second message must be given to Marat's housekeeper, if he
still refused to see her. At a quarter of seven Charlotte Corday
took a cab on the Place des Victoires. "Where to? " asked the
driver. "Rue des Cordeliers, No. 30," answered a voice clear
and gentle as a child's.
The cab jogged along for a quarter of an hour, and then
stopped before a grim, dull-looking house, where, to follow the
language of the Girondists, the monster of the Mountain had
established his den. Marat's house at No. 30 Rue des Cordeliers
(now Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine) is still standing, and has
retained its former character. The monolithic mass, pierced with
rather high windows, draws the attention by its rigid, gloomy,
and solitary aspect. Dwellings as well as men have a physi-
ognomy. Providence doubtless chose this house from among all
others, for its air of fitness as witness and sombre setting of
one of the most tragic scenes of the great Revolutionary drama.
Since then it has been repaired to some extent, but no amount
of freshening can remove its sadness. Before the 13th of July
this sadness was a presentiment; since then it has been a mem-
ory. Still on the wall in pale letters are the words "ou la m»
the remnant of that stern inscription "La fraternité, l'indivisi-
bilité, ou la mort. "
-
2
Alas! This great word, in which all the others are lost, is
itself becoming effaced under the file of time. As one of the
ancients said, "death dies" (mors moritur). The front door, in
its frame of black paint, gives the whole house a funereal air.
A kind of square vestibule, with a wretched porter's lodge to
the right, leads to a damp little court where the dank mossy
pavement sends to the surface a cold sweat, as it were, in time of
rain. This court is bounded by a wing of the building, streaked
with cracks and mold. There is a well in one of the angles.
On the right, a staircase of greasy stone steps, surmounted by
## p. 5561 (#127) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5561
an iron railing, leads up to a large landing lighted by a double
casement. Under the stairs the eyes plunge into a sordid hollow,
where there is a confusion of old household utensils, and where
cellar doors open confusingly like shadowy mouths. This house
Iwas made for some sinister event.
Charlotte, trim and alert, stepped out of the cab before
the porte-cochère. Afterwards, the neighbors remembered their
surprise at seeing a young woman with a green ribbon in her
hair getting out of a carriage. First of all she had to brave the
cross-grained portress in her lodge, a veritable female Cerberus,
who, knowing that her tenant was ill and much beset, pitilessly
refused to let her enter. Charlotte Corday insisted. Subdued
by her urgent and resolute tone, the portress finally allowed her
to go up-stairs.
Marat was living upon the first floor. The staircase conducted
to a long landing, at the end of which was an obscure kitchen
window, covered with iron bars, beside a door painted yellow.
This grim grating must have vividly touched Charlotte Corday's
imagination, and she fancied Marat in his lodging like a wild
beast in its cage.
She stopped near the barred window with its menacing air,
before the door to the left. A strange coldness seized her heart.
Her enemy was behind this light partition; and behind it too was
her own future, the scaffold all ready and threatening! There
was still time to retreat. She could return to Caen or sail to
England. Easy, admissible joys held out loving arms to the
young and beautiful woman, either under the trees of Normandy
or on the white shores of Great Britain. The struggle before
her was one of those irrevocable struggles where, like the bee,
the victor leaves his life in the wound he inflicts.
The sill of this door once crossed, she could never retrace her
steps. This door upon which she was about to knock was the
door to her tomb. She hesitated. The most fearless hand must
needs tremble before this perilous entrance, over which, in let-
ters visible to her excited imagination, she read the terrible sen-
tence of the damned- "Leave all hope at the door. " True, she
had dreamed, the blow once struck, of escaping and gaining a
seaport; but this was so doubtful a chance, so light and fragile
a thread to support the weight of her crime, that she could
scarcely trust it. To shake the wood of this door was to awaken
the dull and terrible sound which comes from a coffin-lid when
## p. 5562 (#128) ###########################################
5562
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
touched. And there was something horrible, too, in this calm.
moment preceding so furious and violent an action as the mur
der of a man. She felt the need of gathering all her strength
to hold the knife in her delicate white hands. She stood erect
and motionless like the statue of Judith. Her hand seemed to
weigh a hundred pounds. However, some one was coming up
the stairs behind her, and the fixed resolution at the bottom of
her heart conquered. The hesitations of the avenging arm before
this fatal door ceased, and Charlotte Corday knocked.
Marat was lying in his bath. The bath-room was dimly lighted
by a window on the court. The only furniture was a block of
wood, upon which papers, pens, and a lead inkstand were thrown
pell-mell. Marat was writing. He was signing a petition to the
administration in behalf of a poor widow with four children who
had asked the aid of the People's Friend.
For several days, as we have said, Marat had not been able
to stay out of the bath without being consumed by sharpest
sufferings. There the agitated and volcanic little man tried to
take the attitude and repose of the tomb where he was soon to
rest. In these moments of solitude, preyed upon by horror of
the death which was slowly and surely taking possession of his
perishing body, Marat was pierced to the heart by an invisible
sword, and bled within of an incurable wound. All his life this
man had kept his sufferings to himself.
As he neared the tomb his griefs surged up out of his breast
and suffocated him. He glanced drearily over his life of cruci-
fixion. When he remembered the ills he had endured for the
cause of the Revolution, he asked himself if it would not have
been better to have given himself to the calm and serious work
of science. In mind he entered again his little room at Ver-
sailles, where the birds came to pick up the crumbs on his
window-sill and where the trees cast their green shadows. Then
he thought sadly how little joy, and that frothy and shadowed,
was brought to the heart by the puissance of success in civil
storms. Marat the persecuted, who in time had made himself a
persecutor, offered in this moment a striking and terrible exam-
ple of what he himself had once written: -
"One would be tempted to accuse Heaven and to deny its
justice, if there were not some consolation at sight of frightful
tyrants themselves suffering the ills which they inflict upon
others. "
## p. 5563 (#129) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5563
The great executioner of Divine justice had fallen into the
cold and painful hands of the final torture.
