ter, who stood and looked, with great | you the country about him," Mrs. Forgravity, upon his place of trial. When rester said. The English M. P. could Katie's voice became audible at his side, not but think that it was his reputation advising him in very distinct tones to re- which had travelled before him, and gained store the old place, Walter felt himself him so delightful a reception. shrink and grow red, as if some villany had been suggested to him. He made no reply. He had thought himself of some thing of the same description in his first acquaintance with Kinloch-houran; but how different his feelings were now!"

unfelt wind blew about the soft light of an | of the last boat as it was pushed off. Then unseen lamp. It brought him to himself he looked at Oona with a smile. in a moment, and woke him up from the "I am called ". he said, "but not that maze of vague thoughts which had ab- way. Now I must go home." stracted him even in the midst of the gay Her heart beat so that she could scarcemovement and bustle. He listened with ly speak. Was this spell to take possesstrange spectatorship, half stern, half sion of her again, against her will, without amused, to all the murmurs of the little any wish of his, like some enchantment? crowd. She fought against it with all her might.

Napoleon's marshals were twenty-six in number, of whom seven only were born in a rank which would have entitled them to become general officers under the old monarchy. These were Kellermann, Berthier, Davoust, Macdonald, Marmont, Grouchy, and Poniatowski, a Pole. Of the others, Murat was the son of an innkeeper, Lefebvre of a miller, Augereau of a mason, Bernadotte of a weaver, and Ney of a cooper. Masséna's father, like Murat's, kept a village wine-shop; Lannes was the son of an ostler, and was himself apprenticed to a dyer; Victor, whose real name was Perrin, was the son of an invalided private soldier, who after leaving the service became a market-crier; while Soult's mother kept a mercer's shop, and Oudinot's a small café with a circulating library. The marshals sprung from the bourgeoisie or middle class were Serrurier, whose father was an officer, but never rose above the rank of captain; Bessières, whose father, though a poor clerk in a lawyer's office, was the son of a doctor; Suchet, who was the son of a

pleasure marred by being solicited to join | ated the young prince of Neufchâtel and
in political intrigues, and it made matters Wagram Berthier's son, who was but
worse that such intrigues were often nec-five years old- -an hereditary peer of
essary to secure to them not only their France.
honors, but their pay. At a time when it
required fifteen thousand francs of re-
publican paper money to make a louis
d'or, all grades and dignities which the
republic conferred might be compared to
assignats: they bore no sort of specific
relation to those bestowed under the old
monarchy. Napoleon, however, suddenly
raised all these depreciated honors to a
premium, and it was the most signal glory
of his reign to have done so. He was
greater as a pacificator than as a con-
queror. To have reopened the churches,
to have replaced justice on her seat, to
have put an end to the reign of talkers
and writers the men who are least fitted
for business, but who under republics get
a monopoly of it to the general detriment
-was a mighty achievement. It set all
things in order, and made France once
more habitable and pleasant to dwell in.
But again when Napoleon created a new
aristocracy, he performed a brilliant stroke
of policy. Those who have ridiculed him
for it as if he had indulged in a mere
piece of vanity, have not considered what
were the difficulties of his position. Un-silk-merchant; Moncey, the son of a bar-
til he had converted his foremost soldiers
into princes, dukes, and counts, they could
all feel that he had not done so much for
them as a Bourbon king would have done;
and some of them did feel it. Many were
sprung from the poorest class, and the
prestige of the village seigneur to whom
they had bowed as boys, loomed very
large in their memories. The character
of a nation is not to be altered within a
few years, because a number of ranters
have declaimed about equality even to the
length of proposing that all steeples and
towers should be razed so that buildings
might be of one symbolical height; and
the persecution of the nobility during the
Revolution had really added to the value
of titles. Whether Napoleon wished to
lessen the worth of the old distinctions,
or merely to gratify his followers by plac-
ing them on a level with their former
masters the nobles, his creation of a new
aristocracy was a wise act, and it was im-
mediately ratified by popular approval.
Somebody jested with Ney about the new
nobility having no ancestors: "We ARE
ancestors," answered the marshal, and
this view was so generally accepted that
even when the Bourbons were restored
the imperial titles obtained full recogni-
tion. In 1815 Louis XVIII. actually cre-

rister; Gouvion, who assumed the name
of Saint-Cyr, and whose father practised
as an attorney; and Brune, who started
in life as a journalist. It is curious to
trace through the lives of the different
men the effect which their earliest asso-
ciations had upon them.
Some grew
ashamed of their parentage; whilst others
bragged overmuch of being self-made
men. Only one or two bore their honors
with perfect modesty and tact.

The noblest character among Napoleon's marshals was beyond doubt Adrian Moncey, Duc de Conegliano. He was born at Besançon in 1754, and enlisted at the age of fifteen, simply that he might not be a charge to his parents. From his father, the barrister, he had picked up a smattering of education, while nature had given him a talent for drawing: He looked so small and young when he was brought before the colonel of the Franche Comté regiment for enrolment, that the latter, who was quite a young man - the Count de Survilliers asked him, laughing, whether he had been tipsy from "drinking too much milk" when he fell into the hands of the recruiting sergeant. The sergeant, by way of proving that young Moncey had been quite sober when he had put on the white cockade (which was like

He

taking the king's shilling in England), | standing between us, sir," said the Duc produced a cleverly executed caricature of d'Angoulême to him, after Moncey had himself which the boy had drawn; upon forced Barcelona and Tarragona to surwhich M. de Survilliers predicted that so render. accomplished a recruit would quickly win "There is likely to be none so long as an epaulette. This promise came to you only employ me on soldier's work," nothing, for in 1789, after twenty years' was the marshal's mild answer. service, Moncey was only a lieutenant. eventually became governor of the InvaIt was a noble trait in him that in after-lides, and it fell to him in 1840 to receive years he never spoke resentfully of his Napoleon's body when it was brought slow promotion. He used to say that he from St. Helena. It was remarked at the had been thoroughly well trained, and he time that if Napoleon himself could have alluded kindly to all his former officers. designated the man who was to discharge There is a well-known story of Napoleon this pious duty, he would have chosen being addressed by an officer who com- none other than Moncey, or Oudinot, who plained that he had been six years a lieu- by a happy coincidence became governor tenant. "I served seven years in that of the Invalides in 1842 after Moncey's grade!" was the answer, "and it has not death. prevented me from making my way." This was not the spirit in which Moncey would have replied. His sense of what he had suffered himself, rather urged him to watch that no deserving officer under his orders should be kept from promotion in his regular turn. He was so gentle and just that he got surnamed the second Catinat. Louis XIV. said of Catinat, that he was the only Frenchman who never asked anything of government, and Moncey, like him, was no courtier in the Duc d'Antin's famous definition of that creature: "One who speaks well of all men that are up, gives the go-by to those that are down, and begs for every place that falls vacant." After Napoleon's overthrow, Moncey's conduct was most chivalrous; he privately blamed Ney's betrayal of the Bourbons, for it was not in his nature to approve of double-dealing, but he refused to sit in judgment upon his former comrade. Marshal Victor was sent to shake his resolution, but Moncey repeated two or three times: "I do not think I should have acted as Ney did, but I believe he acted according to his conscience and did well; ordinary rules do not apply to this case.'

Nicolas Oudinot, Duc de Reggio, was surnamed the Modern Bayard. He was born in 1767, and like Moncey enlisted in his sixteenth year. He was wounded thirty-two times in action, but was so little of a braggart that in going among the old pensioners of the Invalides he was never heard to allude to his own scars. At Friedland a bullet went through both his cheeks, breaking two molars. "Ces dentistes russes ne savent pas arracher," was his only remark as his wound was being dressed. It was to him that an old soldier, applying for a decoration, addressed a letter beginning thus: "Marshal! under the Empire I received two wounds which are the ornaments of my life, one in the left leg, the other in the campaign of Jéna." This note used to be exhibited in the Museum of Arms, which Oudinot formed at his Château of Jean d'Heurs, near Bar-le-Duc, a museum which has since been purchased by the city of St. Etienne. It is full of curiosities collected from battle-fields, sometimes at great cost, for Oudinot never grudged money in buying mementoes of his profession. He was the most disinterested of men. After Friedland he received with the title of The Bourbons were so exasperated that count a grant of £40,000, and he began to they deprived Moncey of his rank and distribute money at such a rate among honors, and locked him up in the State his poor relations, that the emperor reprison of Ham, nevertheless in 1823, when monstrated with him. "You keep the the expedition to Spain took place under lead for yourself, and you give the gold the Duc d'Angoulême's orders, Moncey away," said his Majesty, in allusion to was offered the command of the 4th Corps, two bullets which remained in the mar and accepted it without rancor. He had shal's body. Oudinot was a great sayer first won his renown in the war of 1796 of drolleries of the Rabelaisian sort. against Spain, and had distinguished him- Being temporary governor of Madrid self in the subsequent Peninsular cam- during the war of 1823, he was appealed paigns, so that his experience of Spanish to by an irascible Spanish don, who had warfare was considered, and proved in the been kicked by a French officer, and event, to be valuable. I am sorry there wanted reparation for his "injured honshould ever have been any misunder- or." "Où diable placez-vous votre hon.

66

neur?" asked the marshal. It was Oudi- | colonelcy at Jemmapes. The Irish Corps not's son who commanded the expedition had just then got into a bad scrape by that was sent to Rome in 1849, to restore mutinying and killing Count Theodobald Pius IX. to his throne. He was a plain, Dillon, brother of their colonel, and soldierly man, much like his father, and grandson of General Arthur Dillon, who once scolded M. Ferdinand de Lesseps had founded the corps. T. Dillon was piteously for being too charming. De brigadier-general (maréchal de camp) and Lesseps was trying to arrange a concilia- the cause of his massacre was simply tion between the Roman triumvirate that in obedience to sealed instructions he headed by Mazzini and the French government, and thereby he delayed the general's military action. At last Oudinot wrote impatiently: "I know, sir, how seductive you are: you enthralled General Vaillant, and you might talk me round | if we met; but I do not want to hear you; and General Vaillant, now that he is no longer under the spell of your tongue, thinks as I do. We both protest against your baulking us any longer."