roofs we were nursed under; farmers courteously offer cooked milk, and other country messes: but no soul will part with his Landed Property, for which, though cheap, he declares hard money was paid. The honey-jars are all close, then? However, a certain Monsieur de Lamotte, a tall Gendarme, home on furlough from Lunéville, is now at Bar; pays us attentions; becomes quite particular in his attentions, — for we have a face with a certain piquancy,' the liveliest glib-snappish tongue, the liveliest kittenish manner (not yet hardened into cat-hood), with thirty pounds a-year, and prospects. M. de Lamotte, indeed, is as yet only a private sentinel; but then a private sentinel in the Gendarmes: and did not his father die fighting at the head of his company,' at Minden? Why not in virtue of our own Countesship dub him too Count; by left-hand collateralism, get him advanced? - Finished before the furlough is done! The untamablest of flies has again buzzed off; in wedlock with M. de Lamotte; if not to get honey, yet to escape spiders; and so lies in garrison at Lunéville, amid coquetries and hysterics, in Gigmanity disgigged, disconsolate enough. At the end of four long years (too long), M. de Lamotte, or call him now Count de Lamotte, sees good to lay down his fighting-gear (unhappily still only the musket), and become what is by certain moderns called a Civilian :' not a CivilLaw Doctor; merely a Citizen, one who does not live by being killed. Alas! cold eclipse has all along hung over the Lamotte household. Countess Boulainvilliers, it is true, writes in the most feeling manner; but then the Royal Finances are so deranged! Without personal pressing solicitation, on the spot, no Court-solicitor, were his Pension the meagrest, can hope to better it. At Lunéville the sun, indeed, shines; and there is a kind of Life; but only an UnParisian, half or quarter Life; the very tradesmen grow clamorous, and no cunningly devised fable, ready-money alone will appease them. Commandant Marquis d'Auti : champ1 agrees with Madame Boulainvilliers that a journey to Paris were the project; whither, also, he himself is just going. Perfidious Commandant Marquis! His plan is seen through he dares to presume to make love to a Scion-ofRoyalty; or to hint that he could dare to presume to do it! Whereupon, indignant Count de Lamotte, as we said, throws up his commission, and down his fire-arms, without further delay. The King loses a tall private sentinel; the World has a new blackleg: and Monsieur and Madame de Lamotte take places in the Diligence for Strasburg. Good Fostermother Boulainvilliers, however, is no longer at Strasburg: she is forward at the Archiepiscopal Palace in Saverne; on a visit there, to his Eminence Cardinal Commendator Grand-Almoner Archbishop Prince Louis de Rohan! Thus, then, has Destiny at last brought it about. Thus, after long wanderings, on paths so far separate, has the time come, in this late year 1783, when, of all the nine hundred millions of the Earth's denizens, these preappointed Two behold each other! The foolish Cardinal, since no sublunary means, not even bribing of the Trianon Concierge, will serve, has taken to the superlunary: he is here, with his fixed-idea and volcanic vaporosity darkening, under Cagliostro's management, into thicker and thicker opaque,—of the Black-Art itself. To the glance of hungry genius, Cardinal and Cagliostro could not but have meaning. A flush of astonishment, a sigh over boundless wealth (for the mountains of debt lie invisible) in the hands of boundless Stupidity; some vague looming of indefinite hope: all this one can well fancy. But alas, what, to a high plush Cardinal, is a now insolvent Scionof-Royalty, though with a face of some piquancy? The good Fostermother's visit, in any case, can last but three days; then, amid old namby-pambyings, with effusions of the nobler sensibilities and tears of pity at least for oneself, He is the same Marquis d'Autichamp who was to relieve Lyons,' and raise the Siege of Lyons, in Autumn 1793, but could not do it. Countess de Lamotte, and husband, must off with her to Paris, and new possibilities at Court. Only when the sky again darkens, can this vague looming from Saverne look out, by fits, as a cheering weather-sign. CHAPTER VI. Will the Two Fixed-ideas unite? However, the sky, according to custom, is not long in darkening again. The King's finances, we repeat, are in so distracted a state! No D'Ormesson, no Joly de Fleury, wearied with milking the already dry, will increase that scandalous Thirty Pounds of a Scion-of-Royalty by a single doit. Calonne himself, who has a willing ear and encouraging word for all mortals whatsoever, only with difficulty, and by aid of Madame of France, raises it to some still miserable Sixty-five. Worst of all, the good Fostermother Boulainvilliers, in few months, suddenly dies: the wretched widower, sitting there, with his white handkerchief, to receive condolences, with closed shutters, mortuary tapestries, and sepulchral cressets burning (which, however, the instant the condolences are gone, he blows out, to save oil), has the audacity again, amid crocodile tears, to-drop hints! 2 Nay more, he, wretched man in all senses, abridges the Lamotte table; will besiege virtue both in the positive and negative way. The Lamottes, wintry as the world looks, cannot be gone too soon. As to Lamotte the husband, he, for shelter against much, decisively dives down to the subterranean shades of Rascaldom;' gambles, swindles; can hope to live, miscellaneously, if not by the Grace of God, yet by the Oversight of the Devil, for a time. Lamotte the wife also makes her packages and waving the unseductive Count Boulainvilliers - 1 See Campan 2 Vie de Jeanne de Lamotte, fc. écrite par elle-même, vol. i. Save-all a disdainful farewell, removes to the Belle Image in Versailles; there within wind of Court, in attic apartments, on poor water-gruel board, resolves to await what can betide. So much, in few months of this fateful year, 1783, has come and gone. Poor Jeanne de Saint-Remi de Lamotte Valois, Ex-Mantuamaker, Scion-of-Royalty! What eye, looking into those bare attic apartments and water-gruel platters of the Belle Image, but must, in spite of itself, grow dim with almost a kind of tear for thee! There thou art, with thy quick lively glances, face of a certain piquancy, thy gossamer untamable character, snappish sallies, glib all-managing tongue; thy whole incarnated, garmented, and so sharply appetent spark of Life;' cast down alive into this World, without vote of thine (for the Elective Franchises have not yet got that length); and wouldst so fain live there. Paying scot-andlot; providing, or fresh-scouring silk court-dresses; 'always keeping a gig!' Thou must hawk and shark to and fro, from anteroom to anteroom; become a kind of terror to all men in place, and women that influence such; dance not light Ionic measures, but attendance merely; have weepings, thanksgiving effusions, aulic, almost forensic, eloquence: perhaps eke out thy thin livelihood by some coquetries, in the small way; and so, most poverty-stricken, cold-blighted, yet with young keen blood struggling against it, spin forward thy unequal feeble thread, which the Atropos-scissors will soon clip! Surely now, if ever, were that vague looming from Saverne welcome, as a weather-sign. How doubly welcome is his plush Eminence's personal arrival;for with the earliest spring he has come in person, as he periodically does; vaporific, driven by his fixed-idea. Genius, of the mechanical-practical kind, what is it but a bringing together of two Forces that fit each other, that will give birth to a third? Ever, from Tubalcain's time, Iron lay ready hammered; Water, also, was boiling and bursting: nevertheless, for want of a genius, there was as yet no Steamengine. In his Eminence Prince Louis, in that huge, restless, incoherent Being of his, depend on it, brave Countess, there are Forces deep, manifold; nay, a fixed-idea concentrates the whole huge Incoherence as it were into one Force: cannot the eye of genius discover its fellow? Communing much with the Court valetaille, our brave Countess has more than once heard talk of Boehmer, of his Necklace, and threatened death by water; in the course of gossiping and tattling, this topic from time to time emerges; is commented upon with empty laughter, as if there lay no farther meaning in it. To the common eye there is indeed none but to the eye of genius? In some moment of inspiration, the question rises on our brave Lamotte: Were not this, of all extant Forces, the cognate one that would unite with Eminence Rohan's? Great moment, light-beaming, fire-flashing; like birth of Minerva; like all moments of Creation! Fancy how pulse and breath flutter, almost stop, in the greatness: the great not Divine Idea, the great Diabolic Idea, is too big for her. Thought (how often must we repeat it?) rules the world. Fire and, in a less degree, Frost; Earth and Sea (for what is your swiftest ship, or steamship, but a Thought- embodied in wood?); Reformed Parliaments, rise and ruin of Nations, sale of Diamonds: all things obey Thought. Countess de Saint-Remi de Lamotte, by power of Thought, is now a made woman. With force of genius she represses, crushes deep down, her Undivine Idea; bends all her faculty to realise it. Prepare thyself, Reader, for a series of the most surprising Dramatic Representations ever exhibited on any stage. We hear tell of Dramatists, and scenic illusion how 'natural,' how illusive it was: if the spectator, for some halfmoment, can half-deceive himself into the belief that it was real, he departs doubly content. With all which, and much more of the like, I have no quarrel. But what must be |