after the king's death we find one of the ladies of the court squatting down behind her, pulling her companion's petticoats, and endangering the gravity of the whole proceeding. The epigram which appeared next day might have warned her of the danger of petty indiscretions:

"Petite reine de vingt ans,

here;

Vous qui traitez si mal les gens,
Vous repasserez la barrière,
Laire, larila, larila, laire,” etc.

so gracious that, as he said, he could never either forget or repeat them, that a pension was to be conferred upon him. "Madam," so ran the courtier-like dedication of the piece, "the indulgent approbation with which your majesty has deigned to honor the tragedy encourages me to present it to you. Your goodness has rendered the design still dearer to my gratitude. Happy, madam, could I consecrate it by new efforts, justify your benefits by new undertakings, and find grace before your majesty more by the merit of the work than the choice of a subject." Let us see what manner of man it was whose courtier tongue could run so glibly in the conventional phrases of servility.

Four years later her enemies had gathered courage, and the feeling against her was deeper and less concealed. The birth of her daughter gave rise to a host of cruel pleasantries, in which the royal family were unhappily the readiest to take a part. The Comte Born, a natural child, in 1741, he bore the de Provence held the child at the font. name of Nicholas, and as such was entered, "Monseigneur," he said, when the grand in the position that became his low estate, at almoner inquired its name, cette question the Collège des Grassins, in the Paris univern'est pas la première que vous avez à m'adres- sity. His appearance bespoke sensitiveness, ser; il faut s'enquerir d'abord les père et energy, and enthusiasm: his delicate nostril, mère." The almoner, astonished, said that his blue eyes lighting up in instantaneous that question was asked only when doubt ex-vivacity, his flexible and touching voice, gave isted as to the parentage of the child; "per- the impressian of a finely strung, highly nersonne ignore," he added, " que madame est vous organization. His abilities were not née du roi et de la reine." "Est-ce votre slow in making themselves felt, and the young avis, M. le Curé?" the count sardonically scholar soon carried every prize before him. asked, turning to the Curé of Notre Dame. All thoughts of the Church, the natural caThe audience stood aghast and the curé, in reer for one so circumstanced, were speedily fear and trembling, strove to close so embar-resigned; and some youthful indiscretion rassing a scene. The disrespect did not stop brought his career as a collegian to a close. the city authorities aped the imperti- The world was all before him; the escape nence of the court: and the queen, at last from the thraldom of orders delightful; and vexed beyond endurance, uttered an impa- Chamfort secure of pleasing, and with all the tient sneer at the contemptuous delay with qualities to command success, threw himself which the birthday fêtes were organized. with courageous recklessness upon society. "The magistrates," she said, " are resolved, Literary employment, however was not to be I suppose, to defer them till the little one is had; famine knocked loudly at the door; his big enough to dance at them herself." The mother was looking to him for bread; and fraternal affection thus curiously exemplified the young adventurer, in despair, applied for on the part of the queen's brother-in-law was the place of clerk to a procureur. The prothe subject of a drama dedicated in this very cureur discerned the superiority of his petiyear to the queen, which placed Chamfort, tioner, and made him tutor to his son; but already the darling of Parisian drawing- he soon found his household in disorder. rooms, in the full sunshine of imperial favor." Enfant d'Amour, beau comme lui, plein de For fifteen years he had been laboring at his tragedy of Mustapha and Zéangir; and in 1776 it was for the first time acted at Versailles. Its success was complete. The tender intimacy of the two brothers, who defy all attempts at separation, and perish at last in each other's arms, affected the king to tears. The queen summoned the fortunate author to her box, and announced, in terms

feu, de gaieté, impétueux et malin," the newcomer proved a very troublesome inmate and we next find him travelling into Germany in the capacity of private secretary to some provincial millionnaire. This plan, however, answered as badly as the last; and Chamfort returned nothing richer, except for the discovery "qu'il n'y avait rien à quoi il fut moins propre qu'à être un Allemand." He

now began to work seriously at literature, whom he lived were the fitting priestesses of and in 1764 brought out a little comedy, in a cynical creed: none of his sayings accordwhich the fashionable doctrines of an ideal ingly are tinged with a fiercer skepticism than primitive perfection were carelessly worked those which relate to feminine infirmity. "Il into an amusing shape. Belton, an erratic faut," he says, "choisir : aimer les femmes, Englishman, is wrecked upon a savage shore, ou les connaître: il n'y a pas de milieu.” and lights on Betty, an interesting and unso- "Pour moi," he writes elsewhere, "je rephisticated young lady, who provides him cherche surtout celles qui vivent hors du with sustenance, introduces him to her fa- mariage et du célibat: ce sont quelquefois les ther's cave, and finally accompanies him to plus honnêtes." Many of his stories are in his home. Belton's wavering virtue is re- illustration of the same ungallant theme:lieved at the fortunate moment by a charita"Mademoiselle du Thé ayant perdu un de ble Quaker, who provides a dowry and insists ses amants, et cette aventure ayant fait du on a formal marriage, much to the astonish-bruit, un homme qui alla la voir la trouva ment of Betty, to whom priests and lawyers jouant de la harpe, et lui dit avec surprise, are still novelties. "Quoi," she exclaims, Eh! mon Dieu! je m'attendais à vous Ah!' dit-elle sans cet homme noir, je n'aurais pu t'- trouver dans la désolation.' aimer?" d'un ton pathétique, 'c'était hier qu'il fallait me voir.'

6

"L'abbé de Fleury avait été amoureux de Madame la Maréchale de Noailles, qui le traita avec mépris. Il devint premier ministre; elle eut besoin de lui, et il lui rappela ses rigueurs. Ah! monseigneur,' lui dit naïvement la maréchale, qui l'aurait pu prévoir?'

"Un homme était en deuil de la tête aux pieds grandes pleureuses, perruque noir, figure allongée. Un de ses amis l'aborde tristement: Eh! bon Dieu! qui est-ce donc que vous avez perdu?' Moi,' dit-il, 'je n'ai rien perdu ; c'est que je suis veuf.'"

The pretty trifle succeeded, and Voltaire, in expressing his approval, indoctrinated the young author with that supreme contempt for his countrymen which became in after life the leading principle of Chamfort's creed. "Our nation," he wrote, "has emerged from barbarism only because of two or three persons endowed by nature with the taste and genius which she refuses to all the rest. We must expect the race, who failed to discover the merit of Athalie and Misanthrope to continue ignorant and feeble, and in need of the guidance of a few enlightened men." Chamfort's next efforts were directed to the Thoroughly prosperous in the best society, Academy; and a few years afterwards, in the Chamfort was gradually becoming a revolutionist at heart: it was the fashion in aristoEloge de Molière, one of his successful compositions, he, for almost the first time, gave little play, The Merchant of Smyrna, pub-cratic quarters to deride aristocracy; and a evidence of that " âpreté dévorante, "that dreary view of life, and that cynical dislike | lished by him in 1770, carried the taste so of society, which pointed all his later witti- far, that its author, in after years, pleaded it cisms. What, he asked, would be the task as a proof of his democratic tendency. The of the Molière of that day? fun of the piece turns on the perplexities 66 Verrait-il, of a slave-merchant, who has encumbered sans porter la main sur les crayons, l'abus himself with several unsalable purchases; que nous avons fait de la philosophie et de la société ; le mélange ridicule des conditions: amongst the rest, a German baron and three abbés. They are so useless that he dares not cette jeunesse, qui a perdu tout morale à even expose them in the market. Here is a quinze ans, toute sensibilité à vingt; cette conversation in the same spirit. Hassan is habitude malheureuse de vivre ensemble sans interrogating one of the captives, a Spaniard, avoir besoin de s'estimer: la difficulté de se as to what he is :·déshonorer, et, quand on est enfin parvenu, la facilité de recouvrer son honneur et de rentrer dans cette île autrefois escarpée et sans bords?" Unfortunately, in decrying the times, Chamfort was but sketching his own career. He had thrown himself with disastrous vehemence into all the worst pleasures of a corrupt capital: the women among

"L'Espagnol. Je vous l'ai déjà dit, gentilhomme.

"Hassan. Gentilhomme! je ne sais pas ce que c'est. Que fais-tu ?

"L'Espagnol. Rien.

"Hassan. Tant pis pour toi, mon ami; tu vas bien t'ennuyer.-(à Kaled) Vous n'avez pas fait une trop bonne emplette.

"Kaled. Ne voiltà-t-il pas que je suis en- | devant un râtelier vide.". The idea that he core attrapé! ... Gentilhomme, c'est sans paid for his dinners by his bons-mots robbed doute comme qui dirait baron allemand. them of their charm; the disproportion of C'est ta faute aussi : pourquoi vas-tu dire que his own fortune to those with whom he lived tu es gentilhomme? je ne pourrai jamais me drove him mad with jealousy. He detested, yet could not bring himself to resign the society in which his talent shone so brightly; he found himself the plaything of a wealthy class, and he could neither tolerate nor abandon his position. "Il est ridicule," he exclaimed," de vieillir en qualité d'acteur dans une troupe où l'on ne peut même prétendre à la demi-part."

66

the oracle of republican clubs, and lent his direction of the Conservatives. To this period wit to the cause, which always had his sym- we may refer his translation of Fraternité pathies, and now claimed his open allegiance. ou la Mort, which he said should be rendered His services, as an ally, were speedily appre-"Sois mon frère, ou je te tue." He found ciated. One morning he visited the Count his most natural leaders in the Girondists; de Lauraquais: "Je viens de faire un and Roland in re-arranging the Bibliothèque ouvrage," he cried. "Comment ? un livre." Nationale, appointed Chamfort to a post in Nom, pas un livre; je ne suis pas si bête; connection with it. He now turned the full mais un titre de livre, et ce titre est tout. blaze of his satire against the Convention; J'en ai déjà fait présent au puritain Sièyes, and there were of course plenty of ready lisqui pourra commenter à son aise. Il aura teners to inform the State conspirators of the beau dire; on ne se ressouviendra que du sarcasms of their new assailant. His friends titre." "Quel est-il done?' "Le voici: warned him of his peril, but he relied upon Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-Etat? Tout. Qu'a- his reputation as a Liberal. "N'ai-je pas," t-il? Rien." " Another of his contributions he cried, "hautement professé ma haine conwas the famous cry: "Guerre aux châteaux! tre les rois, les nobles, les prêtres, en un mot Paix aux chaumières!" and the horrors of tous les ennemis de la raison et de la liberté?" September elicited from him no other apology At last he was denounced and imprisoned. than the inquiry, "Voulez-vous qu'on vous Scarcely had he recovered his liberty, when a fasse des révolutions à l'eau de rose?" It is second arrest showed the complicated dangers easy to conceive the satisfaction with which, of his position and threatened him with a for the first time, he allows his taste to fol- more protracted confinement. He resolved low its natural bent. He abounds in good to escape it by self destruction, and mutilated stories pointed at an incapable ruler, the himself horribly, but without effect, both follies of an aristocracy, the pride of birth, with pistol and razor. Before he was dragged the slavery of a court. to prison he dictated and signed, all bleeding as he was, the following theatrical declaration: "Moi, Sébastien Roche Nicholas Chamfort, déclare avoir voulu mourir en homme libre plutôt que d'être conduit en esclave en prison." He lived to appear before the Tríbunal, and was at length partially enlarged. His nervous system, however, had received too great a shock, and the carelessness of his physician hastened his end. He died with a characteristic sentence on his lips: “Ah, mon ami," he cried to the Abbé Sièyes, “je m'en vais enfin de ce monde, où il faut que le cœur, se brise ou se bronze!

"M. Ddisait, à propos des sottises ministérielles et ridicules, Sans le gouvernement on ne rirait plus en France.'

"On demandait à une duchesse de Rohan à quelle époque elle comptait accoucher. 'Je me flatte,' dit-elle d'avoir cet honneur dans deux mois.' L'honneur était d'accoucher

d'un Rohan.

6

"Un courtisan disait, à la mort de Louis XIV., Après la mort du roi, on peut tout

croire.'

"Dans les malheurs de la fin du régne de Louis XIV, après la perte des batailles de Turin, d'Oudenarde, de Malplaquet, de Ramillies, d'Hochstet, les plus honnêtes gens de la cour disaient, Au moins le roi se porte bien c'est, le principal.'

"Un prédicateur de la Ligne avait pris pour texte de son sermon, Eripe nos, Domine, à luto facis, qu'il tradusait ainsi, Seigneur,

dé-Bourbonez-nous.'

Melancholy alternative; but happily the verdict of philosophers of the Chamfort school ought to count for less than nothing in our estimation of existence. He had shut himself off from the really interesting side of life. Government, religion, marriage, death, the Chamfort's posts and pensions were of unseen world, all the great springs of human course soon swamped by the revolutionary action, all the tenderest sentiments of human tide, but his zeal was only quickened by the hearts, were to him but so many whetstones loss. He was one of the first to enter the on which to sharpen the glittering razor of Bastille after its capture, and he talked with his wit. Mephistopheles himself might envy Brutus-like severity of the sacrifices which a the icy heartlessness of the glittering epigrams patriot should be prepared to make. For in which his contempt for each was crystalsome time he acted as secratary to the Jacobin lized. His wit fed upon himself, and merrily Club; but the growing ascendency of Robes- proclaimed his own degradation: "L'homme pierre and Marat drove him once again in the est un sot animal," he said, “si j'en juge par

moi-même." His estimation of mankind at large was equally unflattering: "Le public, le public, combien faut-il de sots pour faire un public?" The best thing to do with society was to leave it. He preferred solitude to the company of his fellow men, "parce que je suis plus accoutumé à mes défauts qu'à ceux d'autrui."

"Je demandais à M-, pourquoi, en se pourquoi, en se condamnant à l'obscurité, il se dérobait au bien qu'on pouvait lui faire. 'Les hommes,' me dit il, ne peuvent rien faire pour moi qui vaille leur oubli.'

“M. D——, pour peindre d'un seul mot la rareté des honnêtes gens, me disait que dans la société l'honnête homme est une variété de l'espèce humaine.

"M. de Lassay, homme très-doux, mais qui avait une grande connaissance de la société, disait qu'il faudrait avaler un crapaud tousles matins pour ne trouver rien de dégoûtant le reste de la journée, quand on devait la passer dans le monde."

The verdict of after-times is disposed of with a single sneer: "La postérité n'est pas autre chose qu'um public qui succède à un autre; or vous voyez ce que c'est que le public d'à présent.

His feelings about religion were tinged with all the bitterness of the period; and the sarcasms which he poured out so freely upon this world, lost none of their sting when directed against the next.

"On s'habitue à tout, même à la vie. La Fontaine, entendant plaindre le sort des damnés au milieu du feu de l'enfer, dit: Je me flatte qu'ils s'y accoutument, et qu'à la fin ils sont là comme le poisson dans l'eau.' "A propos des choses de ce bas monde qui vont de mal en pis, M. L- disait, J'ai lu quelque part qu'en polítique il n'y a rien de si malheureux pour les peuples que les règnes trop longs. J'entends que Dieu est éternel; tout est dit.""

6

à Dieu, ce que je dois au roi, ce que je dois à l'état.'. Un de ses amis l'interrompit, Tais-toi,' dit-il, ' tu mourras insolvable.'"' The examples already quoted will suffice to give an idea of the cold, hard, metallic glare of a genius which, like Chamfort's, was unenlightened by earnest thought, softened by no humanizing emotion, and devoid of all inspiring sincerity. His witticisms glitter about him like a cascade of sparks, emitting neither distinct light nor creative heat; his very polish is suggestive of sterility; and the smile which his humor suggests is quickly succeeded by a wearisome sense of deliberate heartlessness, hopelessness, and indifference.

We turn with relief to a mind more instinct with purpose, and certainly not less entertaining in performance. Rivarol was pronounced by no less a judge than Voltaire to be "the Frenchman par excellence of his day; and even without so authoritative a verdict, it would be impossible to overlook the numerous particulars in which he typified the tastes, if not always the convictions, of his countrymen. His short career—för he died at forty-four-explains the incomplete and fragmentary nature of his works; but, besides his extraordinary conversational reputation, which raised him to the dignity of a professed improvisatore, he has left enough behind him to assure neutral critics of his

readiness, versatility, and resource, and to justify his biographers in claiming for him admission to that shadowy temple of fame in which those who, but for adverse chance, might, could, should, or would have been among the leaders of mankind, receive the languid honors of conjectural admiration. He was born in 1757, in a village in Languedoc, and, as the eldest of a family of sixteen, was very speedily impressed with the imperafather, though coming of good Italian stock, tive necessity of securing a livelihood. The and by no means without education, had descended to the inglorious but profitable business of an innkeeper. The circumstance was not forgotten when Rivarol, in after times, surrounded by an eager and revengeful army of literary enemies, stood forth as the champion of aristocratic rights. Even those who profited by his talent could not help sneering "Le maréchale de Biron eut une maladie at the hand which defended them. Once in très-dangereuse: il voulut se confesser, et dit a well-born crowd, at the first outbreak of devant plusieurs de ses amis: Ce que je dois the Revolution, Rivarol was descanting with

We conclude with two stories of less gloomy import, and good specimens of Chamfort's lighter order of fun. The first sounds as if it owned the parentage of Molière.

"On disait à Délon, médecin mesmérist: Eh bien, M. de Best mort, malgré la promesse que vous aviez faite de le guérir.' Vous avez,' dit-il, été absent; vous n'avez pas suivi les progrès de la cure: il est mort guéri.'