THE PASSPORT.

PARIS.

WHEN I got home to my hotel, La Fleur told me I had been inquired after by the Lieutenant de Police. . . . The deuce take it, said I,-I know the reason. It is time the reader should know it; for, in the order of things in which it happened, it was omitted; not that it was out of my head, but that, had I told it then, it might have been forgot now-and now is the time I want it. I had left London with so much precipitation that it never entered my mind that we were at war with France; and had reached Dover, and looked through my glass at the hills beyond Boulogne, before the idea presented itself; and with this in its train, that there was no getting there without a passport. Go but to the end of a street, I have a mortal aversion for returning back no wiser than I set out; and as this was one of the greatest efforts I had ever made for knowledge, I could less bear the thoughts of it; so hearing the Count de **** had hired the packet, I begged he would take me in his suite. The Count had some little knowledge of me, so made little or no difficulty,-only said his inclination to serve me could reach no farther than Calais, as he was to return by way of Brussels to Paris; however, when I had once passed there, I might get to Paris without interruption, but that in Paris I must make friends and shift for myself.

Let me get to Paris, Monsieur le Count, said I, and I shall do very well. So I embarked, and never thought more of the matter.

When La Fleur told me the Lieutenant de Police had been inquiring after me, the thing instantly recurred;-and, by the time La Fleur had well told me, the master of the hotel came into my room to tell me the same thing, with this addition to it, that my passport had been particularly asked after: the master of the hotel concluded with saying he hoped I had one. . . . Not I, faith! said I.

The master of the hotel retired three steps from me, as from an infected person, as I declared this;-and poor La Fleur advanced three steps towards me, and with that sort of movement which a good soul makes to succour a distressed one: the fellow won my heart by it; from that single trait, I knew his character as perfectly, and could rely on it as firmly, as if he had served me with fidelity for seven years. Mon Seigneur! cried the master of the hotel; -but recollecting himself as he made the exclamation, he instantly changed the tone of it— If monsieur, said he, has not a passport (apparemment), in all likelihood he has friends in Paris who can procure him one. . . . Not that I know of, quoth I, with an air of indifference. Then certes, replied he, you'll be sent to the Bastile or the Chatelet, au moins. Poo!

...

said I, the King of France is a good-natured soul, he'll hurt nobody.. Cela n'empeche pas, said he,—you will certainly be sent to the Bastile to-morrow morning. .. But I've taken your lodgings for a month, answered I, and I'll not quit them before the time for all the Kings of France in the world. . . . La Fleur whispered in my ear-that nobody could oppose the King of France.

Pardi, said my host, ces Messieurs Anglois sont des gens tres extraordinaires;-and having both said and sworn it--he went out.

THE PASSPORT.

THE HOTEL AT PARIS.

I COULD not find in my heart to torture La Fleur's with a serious look upon the subject of my embarrassment, which was the reason I had treated it so cavalierly; and, to show him how light it lay upon my mind, I dropped the subject entirely; and, whilst he waited upon me at supper, talked to him with more than usual gaiety about Paris, and of the Opera Comique.-La Fleur had been there himself, and had followed me through the streets as far as the bookseller's shop; but seeing me come out with the young fille de chambre, and that we walked down the Quai de Conti together, La Fleur deemed it unnecessary to follow me a step farther,-so, making his own reflections upon it, he took a shorter cut, and got to the hotel in time to be informed of the affair of the police, against my arrival.

As soon as the honest creature had taken away, and gone down to sup himself, I then began to think a little seriously about my situation.

—And here, I know, Eugenius, thou wilt smile at the remembrance of a short dialogue which passed betwixt us the moment I was going to set out.—I must tell it here.

Eugenius, knowing that I was as little subject to be overburthened with money as thought, had drawn me aside to interrogate me how much I had taken care for. Upon telling him the exact sum, Eugenius shook his head and said it would not do; so pulled out his purse, in order to empty it into mine. I've enough, in conscience, Eugenius, said I. . . . Indeed, Yorick, you have not, replied Eugenius; I know France and Italy better than you. But you don't consider, Eugenius, said I, refusing his offer, that before I have been three days in Paris, I shall take care to say or do something or other for which I shall get clapped up into the Bastile, and that I shall live there a couple of months entirely at the King of France's expense. I beg pardon, said Eugenius, dryly really, I had forgot that resource. Now the event I treated gaily came seriously to my door.

Is it folly, or nonchalance, or philosophy, or pertinacity,- -or what is it in me, that, after all, when La Fleur had gone down-stairs, and I was quite alone, I could not bring down my mind to think of it otherwise than I had then spoken of it to Eugenius?

-And as for the Bastile-the terror is in the word.-Make the most of it you can, said I to myself, the Bastile is but another word for a tower; and a tower is but another word for a house you can't get out of. Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year.-But with nine livres a day, and pen and ink and paper and patience, albeit a man can't get out, he may do very well within,-at least for a month or six weeks; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in.

I had some occasion (I forget what) to step into the court-yard, as I settled this account; and remember I walked down-stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning.Beshrew the sombre pencil! said I, vauntingly -for I envy not its power-which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue, she overlooks them.

"Tis true, said I, correcting the proposition -the Bastile is not an evil to be despised.-But strip it of its towers-fill up the foss-unbarricade the doors-call it simply a confinement, and suppose 'tis some tyrant of a distemper, and not of a man, which holds you in it-the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint.

I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained 'it could not get out.' -I look'd up and down the passage, and, seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention.

In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage.-'I can't get out-I can't get out,' said the starling.

I stood looking at the bird: and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity,-'I can't get out,' said the starling. God help thee! said I,-but I'll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get the door: it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it.

The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and, thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it, as if impatient. I fear, poor

creature, said I, I cannot set thee at liberty. 'No,' said the starling; 'I can't get outI can't get out.'

I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; nor do I remember an incident in my life where the dissipated spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly call'd home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked up-stairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, said I,-still thou art a bitter draught! and, though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.-'Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, addressing myself to Liberty, whom all, in public or in private, worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change. No tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, nor chemic power turn thy sceptre into iron;-with thee, to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled.-Gracious Heaven! cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my ascent, grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it,

and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy mitres, if it seem good unto thy Divine Providence, upon those heads which are aching for them!

THE CAPTIVE.

PARIS.

THE bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down close by my table, and, leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination.

I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born to no inheritance but slavery but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me,

-I took a single captive; and, having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.

I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood;-he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time ;-nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice!-His children!

But here my heart began to bleed; and I

was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.

He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the farthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed. A little calendar of small sticks was laid at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there. He had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down,-shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh. I saw the Iron enter into his soul ! -I burst into tears.I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn. I started up from my chair, and calling La Fleur, I bid him bespeak me a remise, and have it ready at the door of the hotel by nine in the morning.

set by him :-so La Fleur bought both him and his cage for me for a bottle of Burgundy.

In my return from Italy, I brought him with me to the country in whose language he had learned his notes; and, telling the story of him to Lord A-, Lord A. begged the bird of me; in a week Lord A. gave him to Lord B-; Lord B. made a present of him to Lord C-; and Lord C.'s gentleman sold him to Lord D.'s for a shilling :-Lord D. gave him to Lord E., and so on, half round the alphabet. From that rank he passed into the lower house, and passed the hands of as many commoners. -But as all these wanted to get in, and my bird wanted to get out, he had almost as little store set by him in London as in Paris.

It is impossible but many of my readers must have heard of him; and if any by mere chance have ever seen him, I beg leave to inform them that that bird was my bird-or some vile copy set up to represent him.

I have nothing further to add upon him, but that, from that time to this, I have borne this

La Fleur would have put me to bed; but not willing he should see anything upon my cheek which would cost the honest fellow a heart-ache, I told him I would go to bed by myself, and bid him go do the same.

THE STARLING.

ROAD TO VERSAILLES.

I GOT into my remise the hour I proposed,-La Fleur got up behind, and I bid the coachman make the best of his way to Versailles.

As there was nothing in this road, or rather nothing which I look for in travelling, I cannot fill up the blank better than with a short history of this self-same bird, which became the subject of the last chapter.

Whilst the Honourable Mr. **** was waiting for a wind at Dover, it had been caught upon the cliffs, before it could well fly, by an English lad who was his groom; who, not caring to destroy it, had taken it in his breast into the packet; and, by course of feeding it, and taking it at once under his protection, in a day or two grew fond of it, and got it safe along with him to Paris.

At Paris the lad had laid out a livre in a little cage for the starling; and, as he had little to do better the five months his master stayed there, he taught it, in his mother's tongue, the four simple words (and no more) to which I owned myself so much its debtor.

Upon his master's going on for Italy, the lad had given it to the master of the hotel. But his little song for liberty being in an unknown language at Paris, the bird had little or no store

THE ADDRESS.

VERSAILLES.

I SHOULD not like to have my enemy take a view of my mind when I am going to ask protection of any man, for which reason I generally endeavour to protect myself; but this going to Monsieur le Duc de C- was an act of compulsion ;-had it been an act of choice, I should have done it, I suppose, like other people.

How many mean plans of dirty address, as I went along, did my servile heart form! I deserved the Bastile for every one of them.

Then nothing would serve me, when I got within sight of Versailles, but putting words and sentences together, and conceiving attitudes and tones to writhe myself into Monsieur le Duc de C's good grace.-This will do, said I. Just as well, retorted I again, as a coat carried up to him by an adventurous tailor, without taking his measure.-Fool! continued I,-see Monsieur le Duc's face first ;-observe what character is written in it ;-take notice in what posture he stands to hear you ;-mark the turns and expressions of his body and limbs ; and for the tone-the first sound which comes from his lips will give it you;-and, from all these together, you'll compound an address at once upon the spot, which cannot disgust the Duke ;-the ingredients are his own, and most likely to go down.

Well! said I, I wish it well over.-Coward again! as if man to man was not equal, throughout the whole surface of the globe; and if in

the field, why not face to face in the cabinet too? and trust me, Yorick, whenever it is not so, man is false to himself, and betrays his own succours ten times, where nature does it once. Go to the Duc de C with the Bastile in thy looks!-my life for it, thou wilt be sent back to Paris in half an hour with an escort.

thought I, I might as well take a view of the town; so I pulled the cord, and ordered the coachman to drive round some of the principal streets.-I suppose the town is not very large, said I.-The coachman begged pardon for setting me right, and told me it was very superb; and that numbers of the first dukes and mar

-And there you are wrong again, replied I, . . . a heart at ease, Yorick, flies into no extremes,-'tis ever on its centre.-Well! well! cried I, as the coachman turned in at the gates, I find I shall do very well: and by the time he had wheeled round the court, and brought me up to the door, I found myself so much the better for my own lecture, that I neither ascended the steps like a victim to justice, who was to part with life upon the topmast, -nor did I mount them with a skip and a couple of strides, as I do when I fly up, Eliza! to thee, to meet it.

As I entered the door of the saloon, I was met by a person who possibly might be the maitre d'hotel, but had more the air of one of the under-secretaries, who told me the Duc de C was busy.-I am utterly ignorant, said I, of the forms of obtaining an audience, being an absolute stranger, and, what is worse in the present conjuncture of affairs, being an Englishman, too. . . . He replied that did not increase the difficulty.-I made him a slight bow, and told him I had something of importance to say to Monsieur le Duc. The secretary looked towards the stairs, as if he was about to leave me to carry up this account to some one.-But I must not mislead you, said I, for what I have to say is of no manner of importance to Monsieur le Duc de C―, but of great importance to myself. . . . C'est une autre affaire, replied he.... Not at all, said I, to a man of gallantry. But pray, good sir, continued I, when can a stranger hope to have accesse?... In not less than two hours, said he, looking at his watch. The number of equipages in the court-yard seemed to justify the calculation that I could have no nearer a prospect; and as walking backwards and forwards in the saloon, without a soul to commune with, was for the time as bad as being in the Bastile itself, I instantly went back to my remise, and bid the coachman drive me to the Cordon Bleu, which was the nearest hotel.

Conti had spoken so handsomely the night before, came instantly into my mind.-And why should I not go, thought I, to the Count de B, who has so high an idea of English books and English men, and tell him my story? So I changed my mind a second time. In truth, it was the third; for I had intended that day for Madame de R, in the Rue St. Pierre, and had devoutly sent her word by her fille de chambre that I would assuredly wait upon her. But I am governed by circumstances ;-I cannot govern them: so, seeing a man standing with a basket on the other side of the street, as if he had something to sell, I bid La Fleur go up to him and inquire for the Count's hotel.

La Fleur returned, a little pale; and told me it was a Chevalier de St. Louis selling patés.It is impossible, La Fleur, said I.-La Fleur could no more account for the phenomenon than myself, but persisted in his story: he had seen the croix set in gold, with its red riband, he said, tied to his button-hole; and had looked into the basket, and seen the patés which the Chevalier was selling; so could not be mistaken in that.

Such a reverse in a man's life awakens a better principle than curiosity. I could not help looking for some time at him, as I sat in the remise. The more I looked at him, his croix, and his basket, the stronger they wove themselves into my brain.-I got out of the remise, and went towards him.

He was begirt with a clean linen apron, which fell below his knees, and with a sort of a bib that went half-way up his breast. Upon the top of this, but a little below the hem, hung his croix. His basket of little patés was covered over with a white damask napkin: another of the same kind was spread at the bottom; and there was such a look of propreté and neatness throughout that one might have bought his patés of him as much from appetite as senti

ment.

He made an offer of them to neither; but stood still with them at the corner of a hotel,

LE PATISSER

VERSAILLES.

BEFORE I had got half-way down the street, I changed my mind. As I am at Versailles,

tion.

He was about forty-eight ;-of a sedate look, something approaching to gravity. I did not wonder.- --I went up rather to the basket than him, and, having lifted up the napkin, and taken one of his patés into my hand, I begged he would explain the appearance which affected

me.

He told me, in a few words, that the best part of his life had passed in the service; in which, after spending a small patrimony, he had obtained a company and the croix with it; but that at the conclusion of the last peace his regiment being reformed, and the whole corps, with those of some other regiments, left without the provision, he found himself in a wide world, without friends, without a livre ;-and indeed, said he, without anything but this (pointing, as he said it, to his croix).- -The poor Chevalier won my pity, and he finished the scene by winning my esteem too.

In any other province in France save Brittany, this was smiting the root for ever of the little tree his pride and affection wished to see reblossom. But in Brittany there being a provision for this, he availed himself of it; and, taking an occasion when the States were assembled at Rennes, the Marquis, attended with his two boys, entered the Court; and having pleaded the right of an ancient law of the duchy, which, though seldom claimed, he said, was no less in force, he took his sword from his side;-Here, said he, take it; and be trusty guardians of it till better times put me in condition to reclaim it.

The president accepted the Marquis' sword;

It would be wicked to withhold a pleasure from the good, in passing over what happened to this poor Chevalier of St. Louis about nine months after.

It seems he usually took his stand near the iron gates which lead up to the palace; and as his croix had caught the eye of numbers, numbers had made the same inquiry which I had done. He had told the same story, and always with so much modesty and good sense that it had reached at last the King's ears; who, hearing the Chevalier had been a gallant officer, and respected by the whole regiment as a man of honour and integrity, he broke up his little trade by a pension of fifteen hundred livres a year.

As I have told this to please the reader, I beg he will allow me to relate another, out of its order, to please myself;-the two stories reflect light upon each other, and 'tis a pity they should be parted.

THE SWORD.

RENNES.

WHEN states and empires have their periods of declension, and feel in their turns what distress and poverty is,-I stop not to tell the causes which gradually brought the house d'E―, in Brittany, into decay. The Marquis d'Ehad fought up against his condition with great firmness wishing to preserve and still show to the world some little fragments of what his ancestors had been-their indiscretions had put it out of his power. There was enough left for the little exigencies of obscurity. But he had two boys who looked up to him for light;-he thought they deserved it. He had tried his sword, it could not open the way,—the mounting was too expensive, and simple economy was not a match for it :-there was no resource but commerce.

The Marquis and his whole family embarked the next day for Martinico, and, in about nineteen or twenty years of successful application to business, with some unlooked-for bequests from distant branches of his house, returned home to reclaim his nobility, and to support it. It was an incident of good fortune, which will never happen to any traveller but a sentimental one, that I should be at Rennes at the very time of this solemn requisition. I called it solemn-it was so to me.

The Marquis entered the Court with his whole family: he supported his lady; his eldest son supported his sister; and his youngest was at the other extreme of the line, next his mother. He put his handkerchief to his face twice.

-There was a dead silence. When the Marquis had approached within six paces of the tribunal, and gave the Marchioness to his youngest son, and advancing three steps before his family-he reclaimed his sword. His sword was given him: and the moment he got it into his hand, he drew it almost out of the scabbard. "Twas the shining face of a friend he had once given up: he looked attentively along it, beginning at the hilt, as if to see whether it was the same,-when, observing a little rust which it had contracted near the point, he brought it near his eye, and bending his head down over it, I think I saw a tear fall upon the place,-I could not be deceived by what followed.

'I shall find,' said he, 'some other way to get it off'

When the Marquis had said this, he returned his sword into his scabbard, made a bow to the guardians of it, and with his wife and daughter and his two sons following him, walked out. O how I envied his feelings!

THE PASSPORT.

VERSAILLES.

I FOUND no difficulty in getting admittance to Monsieur le Count de B. The set of Shake