sive luxury; I took for granted that she had become attached to me; but it may only have been that she disliked darning Ian's socks even more than I did. I really think we saw each other to more purpose during those brief visits than we had ever done before. I was always supposed to be tired with my On the strength of my salary, we now considered ourselves fairly wellto-do; so much so that I rashly lent fifteen pounds to a friend-on excellent security and, before we knew where we were, Ian and I were poorer than ever. For three weeks I was obliged to forego my precious weekly visits; and our correspondence was confined to an impassioned appeal on my part for a scrap of geological information, wherewith to appease the wolfish hunger of enquiring a pupil with mind. Oh, those pupils with enquiring minds!-"but that is another story." you by 10.15. Postal order enclosed for fare. Oh, the halcyon days! At the end of three years Ian took his B.Sc. with honors, and went on to Cambridge. Neither of us was a very great correspondent, and you may fancy my delight when some friends of his invited me up to spend May Week. Even in my What a fortnight that was! now as I sit in the evening dusky High School class-room, poring over a mighty pile of exercises, I have only to close my eyes But I must not begin to talk of all that now; and, indeed, the halcyon days were over when we bade farewell to our eyrie at the top of a long common stair; the halcyon days were those in which we bought stamps singly and bootlaces by the pair; when we looked out on the lights of the mighty city away down below, and fell asleep alternately over the pages of the "Areopagitica;" when-ach, mein Lieber!—we were above it all-alone with the stars! THE AUTHOR OF "MONA MACLEAN." From The Nineteenth Century. NAPOLEON ON HIMSELF. Some unpublished memoranda relating to the great Napoleon after his final downfall in 1815 have come into Ian apologized afterwards for reply- my possession. They consist of notes ing to my query on a post-card. It made by Admiral Sir George Cockseemed tactless certainly; but he said burn, who had charge of the emperor it was all he could afford. He had at St. Helena before the arrival of Sir even given up his pipe for the time. Hudson Lowe. While no Englishman could be a persona grata to Napoleon, we find from a variety of authentic sources that at least he regarded Cockburn as a gentleman and entitled to respect, while he always spoke with unmeasured bitterness of his suc Two weeks had still to drag out their weary length before my salary was due. I had forgotten that Ian's bursary was payable in the mean time, until one morning I received the following intimation of the fact, Relief of Lucknow! Advance of General M. [the university clerk I suppose] to the aid of the starving garrison. Seats taken for Salvini to-morrow evening-front row of dress circle. Will meet cessor. Cockburn's reminiscences or records are apparently in the form of a confidential letter or despatch, and are dated the 22nd of October, 1815. They have not been published by Las-Cases, Montholon, O'Meara, or any of the biographers of Bonaparte, and on some important points in Napoleon's career they put an entirely different interpretation from all the hitherto accepted versions. Take first the expedition to Egypt. It is stated by all writers that the French Directory, fearing Napoleon's ambition, thought they could only keep him quiet by employing him, and gave him command of the SOcalled Army of England. "But," to quote one of his latest biographers, who only sums up the opinions of most historians, "he was bent on the conquest of Egypt. He appears to have had something visionary in his temperament, and to have dreamed of founding a mighty empire from the standpoint of the East, the glow and glamour of which seem always to have had a certain fascination for him. He therefore employed the resources of the Army of England to prepare for an expedition to Egypt, and the Directory yielded to his wishes, partly no doubt through the desire of getting him away from France." This view is entirely wrong. In his conversations with Cockburn Napoleon admitted that the Directory wanted to get him out of France, but he distinctly assured Sir George that the expedition to Egypt did not originate with himself, as generally supposed. But when the proposition to go to Egypt was placed before him, he warmly entered into it, for he was as anxious to get away from the Directory as they were to be rid of him, and he calculated upon returning with increased popularity whenever he might deem the crisis favorable. little personal risk owing to the general confusion, yet everything was so arranged that it could not possibly have failed. The government of France from that day evitably and irretrievably in his hands and (the 7th of November, 1799) became in those of his adherents. Therefore, Napoleon added, all the stories which I might have heard of an intention to arrest him at that time, and of opposing his plans, were all nonsense and without any foundation in truth, for his plans had been too long and too carefully laid to admit of being so counteracted. After he became first consul, he said, plots and conspiracies against his life had, however, been very frequent, but by vigilance and some good fortune they had all been discovered and frustrated. New and most interesting details are furnished by Cockburn, on Bonaparte's authority. With reference to the famous plot by Pichegru and Georges Cadoudal, Napoleon said that this plot was the nearest proving fatal to him of any, and he implicated Moreau in it, though this great general was convicted and banished on insufficient evi dence. burn] said that thirty-six of the conNapoleon [continues Sir George Cockspirators had been actually in Paris six weeks without the police knowing anything of the plot, and it was at last discovered by means of an emigrant apothecary, who had been informed against and secured after landing from an English man-of-war. The police at length having entertained some suspicions in consequence of the numbers of persons reported to have been clandestinely landed about the same time, it was judged the apothecary would be a likely person to bring to confession if properly managed. Therefore, being condemned to death, Sir George Cockburn thus continues and every preparation made for his exehis narrative: Napoleon said that, having left France with these ideas, he was anxiously looking for the events which brought him back even before they happened, and on his return to France he was soon well assured that there no longer existed in it a party strong enough to oppose him. He therefore immediately planned the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, and though he might, he said, on that day have run some cution, his life was offered him if he would give any intelligence sufficiently important to merit such indulgence. He immediately caught at the offer, and gave the names of the thirty-six persons before mentioned, every one of whom, with Pichegru and Georges, were, owing to the vigorous measures at once adopted, found and secured in Paris within a fortnight. Napoleon added that previous to this plot being discovered it would probably have proved fatal to him had not Georges in sisted upon being appointed a consul, which Moreau and Pichegru would not hear of, and therefore Georges and his party could not be brought to act. (Bonaparte) maintained that he had certain information of the duke having been in disguise several times. Cockburn asked the emperor whether there was any truth in the report that he had Napoleon likewise defended himself sent an order for the duke's reprieve, to Cockburn on the subject of the exe- but that it had unfortunately arrived cution of the Duc d'Enghien. It will too late. Bonaparte replied that it was be remembered that this unfortunate certainly not true, for the duke was prince of the house of Bourbon was condemned for having conspired charged with being concerned in the against France, and he (the emperor) plot of Pichegru and Cadoudal imme- was determined from the first to let diately it was discovered, and that the law take its course respecting him, Napoleon unscrupulously resolved to in order if possible to check these freseize the person of the duke. Accord- quent conspiracies. In answer to a ingly, on the night of the 14th of remonstrance from Sir George against March, 1804, the neutral territory of his having taken the duke from the Baden was violated, and the duke, neutral territories of the Duke of with two attendants, was captured and Baden, Napoleon said that this did not, carried prisoner to Strasburg, and in his opinion, at all alter the case bethence to Paris and Vincennes. On tween France and the Duc d'Enghien; the early morning of the 20th of March that the Duke of Baden might cerhe was tried before a military com- tainly have some reason to complain of mission consisting of eight officers, and the violation of his territory, but that after a five hours' examination was was an affair for him to settle with condemned to death. Soon afterwards the Duke of Baden, and not with the he was shot in the castle moat, and Duc d'Enghien. He maintained that buried in the grave already dug for when they had got the latter within the him. After the Restoration his bones territory of France-no matter how-were taken up and re-interred in the they had full right to try to punish chapel of the Castle of Vincennes. him for any act committed by him in This wantonly cruel and criminal act France against the existing governfixed a deep stigma on the character ment. of Bonaparte. The records of the trial were published by M. Dupin, who showed the illegality of the proceedings of the military commission-an illegality which was publicly acknowledged by General Hulin, the president of the court. Thiers has endeavored to exculpate Bonaparte, but Lanfrey took a strongly adverse view, while some historians have fixed most of the guilt on Talleyrand. Fouché, who was a very pretty villain in his own way, described the execution of the duke as worse than a crime-it was a blunder. In his conversations with Sir George Cockburn, Napoleon asserted that it was to be at hand for the purpose of aiding in the Pichegru conspiracy, and to take advantage of any confusion it might produce, that the Duc d'Enghien took up his residence in the neighborhood of Strasburg, in which town he Those three little words, "no matter how," vitiate the whole of Napoleon's argument. They cut at the root of all right of asylum in neutral states, and such miserable special pleading will be of no avail at the bar of history. Well might Sir George Cockburn exclaim: "Thus does this man reason who now exclaims so violently against the legality of our conduct in refusing to receive him in England, and sending him to reside in St. Helena." No, the execution of the Duc d'Enghien must remain a dark blot upon Napoleon's career; and it is difficult to believe that a man of his clear views on most questions could possibly have deceived himself by his own arguments. He must, on the contrary, have had many bitter moments of remorse when the deeds of the past rose up before him in the solitude of St. Helena. Writing under the date already mentioned (the 22nd of October, 1815), Sir George Cockburn gives these personal glimpses of Napoleon: Since General Bonaparte's arrival at St. Helena, I have been so occupied that I have seen but little of him. I went with him, however, one day to Longwood, and he seemed tolerably satisfied with it, though both he and his attendants have since been complaining a good deal. The general having stated to me that he could not bear the crowds which gathered to see him in the town, he has at his own request been permitted to take up his residence (until Longwood should be ready) at a small house called The Briars, where there is a pretty good garden and a tolerably large room detached from the house, of which he has taken possession, and in which and in the garden he remains almost all the day. In the evenings, I understand, he was regularly invited himself to join the family party in the house, where he plays at whist with the ladies of the family for sugar plums until his usual hour of retiring for the night. The greatest conqueror of modern times playing at whist for sugarplums is a severely simple spectacle, but it is a better and more humane one than that presenting him as the instigator of the crime by which the Duc d'Enghien was sent to his death. Never was there a monarch who played so recklessly with human life-whether in its individual or aggregate aspect-as Napoleon; and it would furnish strange reading if the world could have a real transcript of his inmost thoughts as he paced the gloomy and rockbound island of St. Helena. G. BARNETT SMITH. Translated for THE LIVING AGE, One day, as the celebrated Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens, was strolling through the cathedrals of Madrid, accompanied by his pupils, he entered the church of a humble convent whose name tradition does not mention. admire in the poor and dismantled edifice. He was about to go away, swearing at the bad taste of the priests of Madrid, when he noticed a picture half hidden in the shadow of the ugliest chapel of all. He approached it, and uttered an exclamation of surprise. His pupils surrounded him in a moment, crying "What have you found, Maestro?" "Look," said Rubens, pointing to the canvas before him. The young men were as much astonished as their master. The painting represented the death of a monk. He was very young, and still beautiful, despite traces of the fasting and suffering he had undergone. He lay extended on the bricks of his cell, dimmed by his eyes were already death. One hand held a skull, while the other pressed to his heart a crucifix of wood and copper. On the background of the canvas another picture was painted. It was supposed to be hanging on the wall of the cell, over the narrow cot from which the young monk had crept to die more humbly on the floor. The second picture depicted a young woman, beautiful in death, lying in her coffin in the midst of sumptuous black draperies and surrounded by funeral candles. Unfortu No one could look upon those two scenes, one contained within the other, without feeling that they explained and completed each other. nate love, dead hope, a disappointed life and eternal forgetfulness of the world; behold here the mysterious drama of the canvas. Moreover, the color, the drawing, the composition, all revealed a genius of the first order. "Maestro, who can be the author of this magnificent painting?" asked Rubens' pupils, crowding about the picture. "A name was painted in this corner, but, you see, it has been effaced. As to the painting, it is not more than thirty or less than twenty years old." "But the artist," they clamored. "The artist, according to the merit The illustrious artist found little to of the work, might be Velasquez. Zubarán, Ribéra, or even the young Murillo himself. Velasquez has not so much feeling as this shows; neither is it a work of Zubarán's, if I judge rightly the coloring and the manner of treating the subject. Still less, can it be attributed to Murillo or Ribéra. Their style is lighter, while this is more sombre. This picture belongs neither to one school nor to the other. Frankly, I do not recognize the author of this painting, and I could swear that I had never seen any other works of his. Further, I believe that the artist, perhaps already dead, who has given such a wonder to the world, did not belong to any school, nor has he ever painted any other picture beside this. He could not paint another that would approach it in merit. This is a work of pure inspiration, a reflection of his own soul, a piece of his life. But-do you want to know who painted that picture. The dead man before you painted it!" "Eh! Maestro, you are jesting." "No, I know what I am saying," answered Rubens. "But how can you conceive of a dead man painting his Own death agony?" "By conceiving that a living being could divine or represent his death! Moreover, you know that to be admitted into certain religious orders, one must be dead to the world." "Ah! do you believe that?" "I believe that the woman whose form is painted on the background of this picture, was the soul and life of that man dying on the floor. I believe that, when she died, he also considered himself dead to the world. I believe, finally, that this painting, instead of representing the last moments of its hero or author, who are undoubtedly one person, represents the renunciation of a youth, disillusioned as to earthly joys." "So you think that he still lives?" "Yes, senor, he may be alive, and, with the lapse of years, perhaps his spirit has become serene and joyful, and the unknown artist may be a very fat and jolly old man. Nevertheless, we must look for him. We must find out whether he has painted other pictures. Follow me." As he spoke, Rubens walked towards a priest who was praying in another chapel, and asked, with his usual freedom of manner, "Will you be kind enough to tell the padre prior that I wish to speak with him, by the king's orders?" The priest, who was an elderly man, arose from his knees with difficulty, and answered, in a humble and feeble voice, "What do you wish with me? I am the prior." "Pardon, father, for interrupting your prayers," replied Rubens. "Can you tell me who is the author of this painting?" "Of that painting!" exclaimed the monk, "What would you think of me if I should tell you that I do not remember?" "What, you knew, and you have forgotten!" "Yes, my son, I have forgotten." "Then, padre, said Rubens insolently, "I would not give much for your memory." no attention The prior, paying to the painter, again knelt on the ground. "I come in the king's name!" thundered the haughty Fleming. "What further do you wish, brother?" murmured the priest, slowly raising his head. "I wish to buy that painting." "The painting is not for sale." "Well, then, where can I find the artist. His Majesty would like to know him, and I must embrace him, congratulate him, show my admiration and my affection for him." "Your wishes cannot be realized. The artist is no longer in the world." "He is dead!" exclaimed Rubeus, in desperation. "The Maestro spoke wisely," said one of the young men. "This picture was painted by a dead man." "He is dead," repeated Rubens, "and no one has known him; his very name is forgotten. His name which ought |