most as Rohan had done, into the Queen's retirement, or apartment; flings himself (as Campan again has recorded) at her Majesty's feet; and there, with clasped uplifted hands, in passionate nasal-gutturals, with streaming tears and loud sobs, entreats her to do one of two things: Either to buy his Necklace; or else graciously to vouchsafe him her royal permission to drown himself in the River Seine. Her Majesty, pitying the distracted bewildered state of the man, calmly points out the plain third course: Dépécez votre Collier, Take your Necklace in pieces; adding withal, in a tone

of queenly rebuke, that if he would drown himself, he at all times could, without her furtherance.

Ah, had he drowned himself, with the Necklace in his pocket; and Cardinal Commendator at his skirts! Kings, above all, beautiful Queens, as far-radiant Symbols on the pinnacles of the world, are so exposed to madmen. Should these two fixed-ideas that beset this beautifullest Queen, and almost burst through her Palace-walls, one day unite, and this not to jump into the River Seine: what maddest result may be looked for!

CHAPTER V.

The Artist.

If the reader has hitherto, in our too figurative language, seen only the figurative hook and the figurative eye, which Boehmer and Rohan, far apart, were respectively fashioning for each other, he shall now see the cunning Milliner (an actual, unmetaphorical Milliner) by whom these two individuals, with their two implements, are brought in contact, and hooked together into stupendous artificial Siamese-Twins; -after which the whole nodus and solution will naturally combine and unfold itself.

Jeanne de Saint-Remi, by courtesy or otherwise, Countess styled also of Valois, and even of France, has now, in this

year of Grace 1783, known the world for some seven-andtwenty summers; and had crooks in her lot. She boasts herself descended, by what is called natural generation, from the Blood-Royal of France: Henri Second, before that fatal tourney-lance entered his right eye and ended him, appears to have had, successively or simultaneously, four — unmentionable women and so, in vice of the third of these, came a certain Henri de Saint-Remi into this world; and, as High and Puissant Lord, ate his victuals and spent his days, on an allotted domain of Fontette, near Bar-sur-Aube, in Champagne. Of High and Puissant Lords, at this Fontette, six other generations followed; and thus ultimately, in a space of some two centuries, succeeded in realising this brisk little Jeanne de Saint-Remi, here in question. But, ah, what a falling-off! The Royal Family of France has wellnigh forgotten its left-hand collaterals: the last High and Puissant Lord (much clipt by his predecessors), falling into drink, and left by a scandalous world to drink his pitcher dry, had to alienate by degrees his whole worldly Possessions, down almost to the indispensable, or inexpressibles; and die at last in the Paris Hôtel-Dieu; glad that it was not on the street. So that he has, indeed, given a sort of bastard royal life to little Jeanne, and her little brother; but not the smallest earthly provender to keep it in. The mother, in her extremity, forms the wonderfullest connexions; and little Jeanne, and her little brother, go out into the highways to beg.1

A charitable Countess Boulainvilliers, struck with the little bright-eyed tatterdemalion from the carriage-window, picks her up; has her scoured, clothed; and rears her, in her fluctuating miscellaneous way, to be, about the age of twenty, a nondescript of Mantuamaker, Soubrette, Court-beg gar, Fine-lady, Abigail, and Scion-of-Royalty. Sad combination of trades! The Court, after infinite soliciting, puts one off with a hungry dole of little more than thirty pounds 1 Vie de Jeanne Comtesse de Lamotte (by Herself), vol. i.

a-year. Nay, the audacious Count Boulainvilliers dares, with what purposes he knows best, to offer some suspicious presents!1 Whereupon his good Countess, especially as Mantuamaking languishes, thinks it could not but be fit to go. down to Bar-sur-Aube; and there see whether no fractions of that alienated Fontette Property, held perhaps on insecure tenure, may, by terror or cunning, be recoverable. Burning her paper patterns, pocketing her pension till more come, Mademoiselle Jeanne sallies out thither, in her twenty-third

year.

Nourished in this singular way, alternating between saloon and kitchen-table, with the loftiest of pretensions, meanest of possessions, our poor High and Puissant Mantuamaker has realised for herself a 'face not beautiful, yet with a certain piquancy;' dark hair, blue eyes; and a character, which the present Writer, a determined student of human nature, declares to be undecipherable. Let the Psychologists try it! Jeanne de Saint-Remi de Valois de France actually lived, and worked, and was: she has even published, at various times, three considerable Volumes of Autobiography, with loose Leaves (in Courts of Justice) of unknown number; 2 wherein he that runs may read, but not understand.

6

1 He was of Hebrew descent: grandson of the renowned Jew Bernard, whom Louis XV., and even Louis XIV., used to walk with in the Royal Garden,' when they wanted him to lend them money. See Souvenirs du Duc de Levis; Memoires de Duclos, &c.

2 Four Mémoires pour by her, in this Affaire du Collier; like 'Lawyers' tongues turned inside out!' Afterwards One Volume, Mémoires Justificatifs de la Comtesse de, &c. (London, 1788); with Appendix of 'Documents' so-called. This has also been translated into a kind of English. Then Two Volumes, as quoted above: Vie de Jeanne de, &c.; printed in London, by way of extorting money from Paris. This latter Lying Autobiography of Lamotte was bought-up by French persons in authority. It was the burning of this Editio Princeps in the Sêvres Potteries, on the 30th of May 1792, which raised such a smoke, that the Legislative Assembly took alarm; and had an investigation about it, and considerable examining of Potters, &c., till the truth came out. Copies of the Book were speedily reprinted after the Tenth of August. It is in English too; and, except in the Necklace part, is not so entirely distracted as the former.

Strange Volumes! more like the screeching of distracted night-birds (suddenly disturbed by the torch of Police-Fowlers), than the articulate utterance of a rational unfeathered biped. Cheerfully admitting these statements to be all lies; we ask, How any mortal could, or should, so lie ?

The Psychologists, however, commit one sore mistake; that of searching, in every character named human, for something like a conscience. Being mere contemplative recluses, for most part, and feeling that Morality is the heart of Life, they judge that with all the world it is so. Nevertheless, as practical men are aware, Life can go on in excellent vigour, without crotchet of that kind. What is the essence of Life? Volition? Go deeper down, you find a much more universal root and characteristic: Digestion. While Digestion lasts, Life cannot, in philosophical language, be said to be extinct and Digestion will give rise to Volitions enough; at any rate, to Desires and attempts, which may pass for such. He who looks neither before nor after, any farther than the Larder and Stateroom, which latter is properly the finest compartment of the Larder, will need no World-theory, Creed as it is called, or Scheme of Duties: lightly leaving the world to wag as it likes with any theory or none, his grand object is a theory and practice of ways and means. Not goodness or badness is the type of him; only shiftiness or shiftlessness.

And now, disburdened of this obstruction, let the Psychologists consider it under a bolder view. Consider the brisk Jeanne de Saint-Remi de Saint-Shifty as a Spark of vehement Life, not developed into Will of any kind, yet fully into Desires of all kinds, and cast into such a Life-element as we have seen. Vanity and Hunger; a Princess of the Blood, yet whose father had sold his inexpressibles; uncertain whether fosterdaughter of a fond Countess, with hopes skyhigh, or supernumerary Soubrette; with not enough of mantuamaking: in a word, Gigmanity disgigged ; one of the saddest, pitiable, unpitied predicaments of man! She is of

that light unreflecting class, of that light unreflecting sex: varium semper et mutabile. And then her Fine-ladyism, though a purseless one: capricious, coquettish, and with all the finer sensibilities of the heart; now in the rackets, now in the sullens; vivid in contradictory resolves; laughing, weeping without reason, though these acts are said to be signs of reason. Consider too, how she has had to work her way, all along, by flattery and cajolery; wheedling, eavesdropping, namby-pambying: how she needs wages, and knows no other productive trades. Thought can hardly be said to exist in her only Perception and Device. With an understanding lynx-eyed for the surface of things, but which pierces beyond the surface of nothing; every individual thing (for she has never seized the heart of it) turns up a new face to her every new day, and seems a thing changed, a different thing. Thus sits, or rather vehemently bobs and hovers her vehement mind, in the middle of a boundless many-dancing whirlpool of gilt-shreds, paper-clippings, and windfalls, to which the revolving chaos of my Uncle Toby's Smoke-jack was solidity and regularity. Reader! thou for thy sins must have met with such fair Irrationals; fascinating, with their lively eyes, with their quick snappish fancies; distinguished in the higher circles, in Fashion, even in Literature: they hum and buzz there, on graceful filmwings; searching, nevertheless, with the wonderfullest skill, for honey; 'untamable as flies!'

Wonderfullest skill for honey, we say; and, pray, mark that, as regards this Countess de Saint-Shifty. Her instinctof-genius is prodigious; her appetite fierce. In any foraging speculation of the private kind, she, unthinking as you call her, will be worth a hundred thinkers. And so of such untamable flies the untamablest, Mademoiselle Jeanne, is now buzzing down, in the Bar-sur-Aube Diligence; to inspect the honey-jars of Fontette; and see and smell whether there be any flaws in them.

Alas, at Fontette, we can, with sensibility, behold straw