congeries of contradictions, somnolence and violence, foul passions, and foul habits. It is by his plush cloaks and wrappages mainly, as above hinted, that such a figure sticks together (what we call, "coheres,") in any measure; were it not for these, he would flow out bound

conventional Politesse, and a Cloak of prospective Cardinal's Plush. Are not Intrigues, might Rohan say, the industry of this our Universe; nay, is not the Universe itself, at bottom, properly an Intrigue? A Most Christian Majesty, in the Parc-aux-cerfs: he, thou seest, is the god of this lower world; our war-lessly on all sides. Conceive him further, banner (in the fight of Life) and celestial Entouto-nika is a Strumpet's Petticoat: these are thy gods, O France! What, in such singular circumstances, could poor Rohan's creed and world-theory be, that he should "perform" thereby Atheism? Alas, no; not even Atheism: only Machiavelism; and the indestructible faith that "ginger is hot in the mouth." Get ever new and better ginger, therefore; chew it ever the more diligently: 't is all thou hast to look to, and that only for a day.

with a kind of radical vigour and fire, (for he can see clearly at times, and speak fiercely ;) yet left in this way to stagnate and ferment, and lie overlaid with such floods of fat material,-have we not a true image of the shamefullest Mud-volcano, gurgling and sluttishly simmering, amid continual steamy indistinctness, (except, as was hinted, in wind-gusts :) with occasional terrifico-absurd Mud-explosions!

This, garnish it and fringe it never so handsomely, is, alas, the intrinsic character of Prince Louis. A shameful spectacle: such, however, as the world has beheld many times; as it were to be wished (but is not yet to be hoped) the world might behold no more. Nay, are not all possible delirious incoherences, outward and inward, summed up, for poor Rohan, in this one incrediblest incoherence, that he, Prince Louis de Rohan, is named Priest, Cardinal of the Church? A debauched, merely libidinous mortal, lying there quite helpless, dis-solute, (as we well say;) whom to see Church Cardinal (that is, symbolical Hinge, or main Corner, of the Invisible Holy in this World) an Inhabitant of Saturn might split with laughing,-if he did not rather swoon with pity and horror!

Prince Louis, as ceremonial fugleman at Strasburg, might have hoped to make some way with the fair young Dauphiness; but seems not to have made any. Perhaps, in those great days, so trying for a fifteen years' Bride and Dauphiness, the fair Antoinette was too preoccupied perhaps, in the very face and looks of Prospective-Cardinal Prince Louis, her fair young soul read, all unconsciously, an incoherent Roué-ism, (bottomless Mud-volcano-ism,) from which she by instinct rather recoiled.

Ginger enough, poor Louis de Rohan: too much of ginger! Whatsoever of it, for the five senses, money, or money's worth, or backstairs diplomacy, can buy; nay, for the sixth sense, too, the far spicier ginger: Antecedence of thy fellow-creatures,-merited, at least, by infinitely finer housing than theirs. Coadjutor of Strasburg, Archbishop of Strasburg, Grand Almoner of France, Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, Cardinal, Commendator of St. Wast d'Arras (one of the fattest benefices here below): all these shall be housings for Monseigneur: to all these shall his Jesuit Nursing-mother, (our vulpine Abbé Georgel,) through fair court-weather and through foul, triumphantly bear him,-and wrap him with them, fat, somnolent, Nurseling as he is.-By the way, a most assiduous, ever-wakeful Abbé is this Georgel; and wholly Monseigneur's. He has scouts dim-flying, far out, in the great deep of the world's business; has spiderthreads that over-net the whole world; himself sits in the centre ready to run. In vain shall King and Queen combine against Monseigneur: "I was at M. de Maurepas' pillow before six," -persuasively wagging my sleek coif, and the sleek reynard-head under it; I managed it all for him. Here, too, on occasion of Reynard Georgel, we could not but reflect what a singular species of creature your Jesuit must have been. Outwardly, you would say, a man; the smooth semblance of a man: inwardly, to the centre, filled with stone! Yet in all breathing things, even in stone Jesuits, are inscrutable sympathies: how else does a Reynard Abbé so lovally give himself, soul and body, to a somnolent Monseigneur;-how else does the poor Tit, to the neglect of its own eggs and interests, nurse up a huge lumbering Cuckoo; and think its pains all paid, if the soot-brown Stupidity will merely grow bigger and bigger!-Enough, by Jesuitic or other means, Prince Louis de Rohan shall be passively kneaded and baked into Commendator of St. Wast and much else; and truly such a Commendator as hardly, since King Thierri" smuggle" to quite unconscionable lengths;) (first of the Fainéons) founded that Establishment, has played his part there.

Such, however, have Nature and Art combined together to make Prince Louis. A figure thrice-clothed with honours; with plush, and civic, and ecclesiastic garniture of all kinds; but in itself little other than an amorphous

However, as above hinted, he is now gone, in these years, on Embassy to Vienna: with "four-and-twenty pages," (if our remembrance of Abbé Georgel serve) "of noble birth," all in scarlet breeches; and such a retinue and parade as drowns even his fat revenue in perennial debt. Above all things, his Jesuit Familiar is with him. For so everywhere they must manage: Eminence Rohan is the cloak, Jesuit Georgel the man or automaton within it. Rohan, indeed, sees Poland a-partitioning; or rather Georgel, with his "masked Austrian” traitor, "on the ramparts," sees it for him: but what can he do? He exhibits his four-and-twenty scarlet pages, (who

rides through a Catholic procession, Prospective-Cardinal as he is, because it is too long, and keeps him from an appointment: hunts, gallants; gives suppers, Sardanapalus-wise, the finest ever seen in Vienna. Abbé Georgel (as we fancy it was) writes a Despatch in his name "every fortnight;"-mentions, in

object he will attain, or go to Bedlam. How |
many ways he tries; what days and nights of
conjecture, consultation; what written un-
published reams of correspondence, protesta-
tion, back-stairs diplomacy of every rubric!
How many suppers has he eaten; how many
given,-in vain! It is his morning song, and
his evening prayer. From innumerable falls
he rises; only to fall again. Behold him even,
with his red stockings, at dusk, in the Garden
of Trianon: he has bribed the Concierge; will
see her Majesty in spite of Etiquette and Fate;
peradventure, pitying his long sad King's-evil,
she will touch him, and heal him. In vain,
(says the Female Historian, Campan.)* The
Chariot of Majesty shoots rapidly by, with
high-plumed heads in it; Eminence is known
by his red stockings, but not looked at, only
laughed at, and left standing like a Pillar of

Salt.

Thus through ten long years (of new resolve and new despondency, of flying from Saverne to Paris, and from Paris to Saverne) has it lasted; hope deferred making the heart sick. Reynard Georgel and Cousin de Marsan, by eloquence, by influence, and being "at M. de Maurepas' pillow before six," have secured the Archbishopric, the Grand-Almonership, (by the medium of Poland ;) and, lastly, to tinker many rents, and appease the Jew, that fattest Commendatorship, founded by King Thierri the Donothing-perhaps with a view to such cases. All good! languidly croaks Rohan; yet all not the one thing needful; alas, the Queen's eyes do not yet shine on me.

(sound still in spite of much tear and wear,) but most eminent clothing besides;-clothed with authority over much, with red Cardinal's cloak, red Cardinal's hat; with Commendatorship, Grand-Almonership (so kind have thy Fripiers been,) and dignities and dominions too tedious to name. The stars rise nightly, with tidings (for thee, too, if thou wilt listen) from the infinite Blue; Sun and Moon bring vicissitudes of season; dressing green, with flower-borderings, and cloth of gold, this ancient ever-young Earth of ours, and filling her breasts, with all-nourishing mother's milk. Wilt thou work? The whole Encyclopedia (not Diderot's only, but the Almighty's) is there for thee to spread thy broad faculty upon. Or, if thou have no faculty, no Sense, hast thou not (as already suggested) Senses, to the number of five. What victuals thou wishest, command; with what wine savoureth thee, be filled. Ak ready thou art a false lascivious Priest; with revenues of, say, a quarter of a million sterling; and no mind to mend. Eat, foolish Eminence; eat with voracity,-leaving the shot till afterwards! In all this the eyes of Marie Antoinette can neither help thee nor hinder.

And yet what is the Cardinal, dissolute, mudvolcano though he be, more foolish herein, than all Sons of Adam? Give the wisest of us once a "fixed-idea,”—which, though a temporary madness, who has not had ?-and see where his wisdom is! The Chamois-hunter serves his doomed seven years in the Quicksilver Mines; returns salivated to the marrow Abbé Georgel admits (in his own polite di- of the backbone; and next morning,-goes plomatic way) that the mud-volcano was much forth to hunt again. Behold Cardalion, King agitated by these trials; and in time quite of Urinals; with a woful ballad to his mistress' changed. Monseigneur deviated into cabalis- eyebrow! He blows out, Werter-wise, his tic courses, after elixirs, philtres, and the phi- foolish existence, because she will not have it losopher's stone; that is, the volcanic stream to keep; heeds not that there are some five grew thicker and heavier: at last by Caglios- hundred millions of other mistresses in this tro's magic, (for Cagliostro and the Cardinal by noble Planet; most likely much such as she. elective affinity must meet,) it sank into the O foolish men! They sell their Inheritance, opacity of perfect London fog! So, too, if (as their mother did hers,) thought it is ParaMonseigneur grew choleric; wrapped himself dise, for a crotchet: will they not, in every up in reserve, spoke roughly to his domestics age, dare not only grape-shot and gallowsand dependents,-were not the terrifico-absurd ropes, but Hell-fire itself, for better sauce to mud explosions becoming more frequent? their victuals? My friends, beware of fixedAlas, what wonder? Some nine-and-forty | ideas. winters have now fled over his Eminence, (for it is 1783,) and his beard falls white to the shaver; but age for him brings no "benefit of experience." He is possessed by a fixedidea!

Foolish Eminence! is the Earth grown all barren and of a snuff colour, because one pair of eyes in it look on thee askance? Surely thou hast thy Body there yet; and what of Soul might from the first reside in it. Nay, a warm, snug Body, with not only five senses,

Madame Campan, in her Narrative, and, indeed, in her Memoirs generally, does not seem to intend falsehood: this, in the Business of the Necklace, is saying a great deal. She rather, perhaps, intends the producing of an impression; which may have appeared to herself to be the right one But, at all events, she has, here or else where, no notion of historical rigour; she gives hardly any date, or the like; will tell the same thing, in differ ent places, different ways, &c. There is a tradition that Louis XVIII revised her Memoires before publication. She requires to be read with skepticism everywhere:

but yields something in that way.

To take his Neck

Here, accordingly, is poor Boehmer with one in his head too! He has been hawking his "irreducible case of Cardan" (that Necklace of his) these three long years, through all Palaces and Ambassadors' Hotels, over the old "nine Kingdoms," (or more of them that there now are:) searching, sifting Earth, Sea, and Air, for a customer. lace in pieces, and so, losing only his manual labour and expected glory, dissolve his fixedidea, and fixed diamonds, into current ones: this were simply casting out the Devil-from himself; a miracle, and perhaps more! For he too has a Devil or Devils: one mad object that he strives at; that he too will attain, or go to Bedlam. Creditors, snarling, hound him on from without; mocked Hopes, lost Labours, bear-bait him from within: to these torments his fixed-idea keeps him chained. In six-andthirty weary revolutions of the Moon, was it

wonderful the man's brain had got dried a little?

Behold, one day, being Court-Jeweller, he too bursts, almost as Rohan had done, into the Queen's retirement, or apartment; flings herself (as Campan again has recorded) at her Majesty's feet; and there, with clasped, uplifted hands, in passionate nasal-gutturals, with streaming tears and loud sobs, entreats her to do one of two things: Either to buy his Necklace; or else graciously to vouchsafe him her royal permission to drown himself in the River Seine. Her majesty, pitying the distracted, bewildered state of the man, calmly points out the plain third course: Dépécez votre Collier, (take your Necklace in pieces ;)-adding, withal, in a tone of queenly rebuke, that if he would drown himself, he at all times could, without her furtherance.

Ah, had he drowned himself, with the Necklace in his pocket; and Cardinal Commendator at his skirts! Kings, above all, beautiful Queens, as far-radiant Symbols on the pinnacles of the world, are so exposed to madmen. Should these two fixed-ideas that beset this beautifullest Queen, and almost burst through her Palace-walls, one day unite, and this not to jump into the River Seine-what maddest result may be looked for!

CHAPTER V.

THE ARTIST.

If the reader has hitherto (in our too figurative language) seen only the figurative hook and the figurative eye, which Boehmer and Rohan, far apart, were respectively fashioning for each other, he shall now see the cunning Milliner (an actual, unmetaphorical Milliner) by whom these two individuals, with their two implements, are brought in contact, and hooked together into stupendous artificial SiameseTwins; after which the whole nodus and solution will naturally combine and unfold

itself.

clipt by his predecessors,) falling into drink, and left by a scandalous world to drink his pitcher dry, had to alienate by degrees his whole worldly Possessions, down almost to the indispensable, or inexpressibles; and die at last in the Paris Hôtel-Dieu; glad that it was not on the street. So that he has indeed given a sort of bastard Life-royal to little Jeanne, and her little brother; but not the smallest earthly provender to keep it in. The mother, in her extremity, forms the wonderfullest connections; and little Jeanne, and her little brother, go out into the highways to beg.*

A charitable Countess Boulainvilliers, struck with the little bright-eyed tatterdemalion from the carriage window, picks her up; has her scoured, clothed; and rears her, in her fluctuating, miscellaneous way, to be, about the age of twenty, a nondescript of Mantuamaker, Soubrette, Court-beggar, Fine-lady, Abigail, and Scion-of-Royalty. Sad combination of trades! The Court, after infinite soliciting, puts one off with a hungry dole of little more than thirty pounds a year. Nay, the audacious Count Boulainvilliers dares (with what purposes he knows best) to offer some suspicious presents! Whereupon his good Countess (especially as Mantuamaking languishes) thinks it could not but be fit to go down to Bar-sur-Aube; and there see whether no fractions of that alienated Fontette Property, held, perhaps, on insecure tenure, may, by terror or cunning, be recoverable. Burning her paper patterns; pocketting her pension, (till more come,) Mademoiselle Jeanne sallies out thither, in her twenty-third year.

Nourished in this singular way, alternating between saloon and kitchen-table, with the loftiest of pretensions, meanest of possessions, our poor High and Puissant Mantuamaker has realized for herself a "face not beautiful, yet with a certain piquancy;" dark hair, blue eyes; and a character, which the present writer, a determined student of human nature, declares to be undecipherable. Let the Psychologists try it! Jeanne de Saint-Remi de Valois de France actually lived, and worked, and was: Jeanne de St. Remi, by courtesy or other- she has even published, at various times, three wise, Countess, styled also of Valois, and even considerable Volumes of Autobiography, with of France, has now, (in this year of Grace, loose Leaves (in Courts of Justice) of un1783,) known the world for some seven-and-known number; wherein he that runs may twenty summers; and had crooks in her lot. She boasts herself descended, by what is called Vie de Jeanne Comtesse de Lamotte, (by Herself.) natural generation, from the Blood-Royal of Vol. I. France: Henri Second, before that fatal tourHe was of Hebrew descent: grandson of the reney-lance entered his right eye, and ended Louis XVI., used to walk with in the Royal Garden," nowned Jew Bernard, whom Louis XV., and even him, appears to have had, successively or when they wanted him to lend them money.-See simultaneously, four-unmentionable women: Souvenirs du Duc de Levis; Mémoires de Duclos, &c. and so, in vice of the third of these, came a Four Mémoires Pour by her, in this Affaire du Collier; like "Lawyers' tongues turned inside out!" certain Henri de St. Remi into this world; and, Afterwards one Volume, Mémoires Justificatifs de la as High and Puissant Lord, ate his victuals Comtesse de, &c., (London, 1788;) with Appendix of and spent his days, on an allotted domain of into a kind of English. Then two Volumes, as quoted Fontette, near Bar-sur-Aube, in Champagne. above: Vie de Jeanne de, &c.; printed in London,-by Of High and Puissant Lords, at this Fontette, way of extorting money from Paris. This latter Lying Autobiography of Lamotte was bought up by French six other generations followed; and thus ulti-persons in authority. It was the burning of this Editio mately, in a space of some two centuries,- Princeps in the Sevres Potteries, on the 30th of May, succeeded in realizing this brisk little Jeanne 1792, which raised such a smoke, that the Legislative Assembly took alarm; and had an investigation about de St. Remi, here in question. But, ah, what it, and considerable examining of Potters, &c., till the a falling off! The Royal Family of France truth came out. Copies of the Book were speedily rehas well-nigh forgotten its left-hand collate-printed after the Tenth of August. It is in English too; and, except in the Necklace part, is not so entirely dia rals; the last High and Puissant Lord, (much tracted as the former.

"Documents" so-called. This has also been translated

:

their quick snappish fancies; distinguished in the higher circles, in Fashion, even in Literature: they hum and buzz there, on graceful film wings;-searching, nevertheless, with the wonderfullest skill, for honey: "untamable as flies!"

Wonderfullest skill for honey, we say; and, pray, mark that, as regards this Countess de Saint-Shifty. Her instinct-of-genius is prodigious; her appetite fierce. In any foraging speculation of the private kind, she, unthinking as you call her, will be worth a hundred thinkers. And so of such untamable flies the untamablest, Mademoiselle Jeanne is now buzzing down, in the Bar-sur-Aube Diligence; to inspect the honey-jars of Fontette; and see and smell whether there be any flaws in them.

read, but not understand. Strange Volumes! | was solidity and regularity. Reader! thou for more like the screeching of distracted night- thy sins must have met with such fair Irrabirds, (suddenly disturbed by the torch of Po- tionals; fascinating, with their lively eyes, with lice-Fowlers,) than the articulate utterance of a rational unfeathered biped. Cheerfully admitting these statements to be all lies; we ask, How any mortal could, or should, so lie? The Psychologists, however, commit one sore mistake; that of searching, in every character named human, for something like a conscience. Being mere contemplative recluses, for most part, and feeling that Morality is the Heart of Life, they judge that with all the world it is so. Nevertheless, as practical men are aware, Life can go on in excellent vigour, without crotchet of that kind. What is the essence of Life? Volition? Go deeper down, you find a much more universal root and characteristic: Digestion. While Digestion lasts, Life cannot, in philosophical language, be said to be extinct and Digestion will give rise to Alas, at Fontette, we can, with sensibility, Volitions enough, at any rate, to Desires (and behold straw-roofs we were nursed under; attempts) which may pass for such. He who farmers courteously offer cooked milk, and looks neither before nor after, any further than other country messes; but no soul will part the Larder, and Stateroom, (which is properly with his Landed Property, for which (though the finest compartment of the Larder,) will cheap) he declares hard money was paid. The need no World-theory, (Creed, as it is called,) honey-jars are all close, then ?-However, a or Scheme of Duties: lightly leaving the world certain Monsieur de Lamotte, a tall Gendarme, to wag as it likes with any theory or none, his home on furlough from Lunéville, is now at grand object is a theory (and practice) of ways Bar; pays us attentions; becomes quite parand means. Not goodness or badness is the ticular in his attentions,-for we have a face type of him; only shiftiness or shiftlessness." with a certain piquancy," the liveliest glibAnd now, disburdened of this obstruction, snappish tongue, the liveliest kittenish manner, let the Psychologists consider it under a bolder (not yet hardened into cat-hood,) with thirty view. Consider the brisk Jeanne de Saint-Remi pounds a-year, and prospects. M. de Lamotte, de Saint-Shifty as a Spark of vehement Life indeed, is as yet only a private sentinel; but (not developed into Will of any kind, yet fully then a private sentinel in the Gendarmes and into Desires of all kinds) cast into such a Life- did not his father die fighting "at the head of element as we have seen. Vanity and Hunger; his company," at Minden? Why not in virtue a Princess of the Blood, yet whose father had of our own Countess-ship dub him too Count; sold his inexpressibles; uncertain whether by left-hand collateralism, get him advanced! fosterdaughter of a fond Countess, with hopes-Finished before the furlough is done! The sky-high, or supernumerary Soubrette, with untamablest of flies has again buzzed off; in not enough of Mantuamaking: in a word, Gig-wedlock with M. de Lamotte; if not to get minity disgigged; one of the saddest, pitiable, honey, yet to escape spiders; and so lies in unpitied predicaments of man! She is of that garrison at Lunéville, amid coquetries and light unreflecting class, of that light unreflect- hysterics, in Gigmanity disgigged-disconsoing sex varium semper et mutabile. And then late enough. her Fine-Ladyism, though a purseless one: capricious, coquettish, and with all the finer sensibilities of the heart; now in the rackets, now in the sullens; vivid in contradictory resolves; laughing, weeping without reason,though these acts are said to be signs of reason. Consider, too, how she has had to work her way, all along, by flattery and cajolery; wheedling, eaves-dropping, and nambypambying: how she needs wages, and knows no other productive trades. Thought can hardly be said to exist in her only Perception and Device. With an understanding lynx-eyed for the surface of things, but which pierces beyond the surface of nothing; every individual thing (for she has never seized the heart of it) turns up a new face to her every new day, and seems a thing changed, a different thing. Thus sits, or rather vehemently bobs and hovers her vehement mind, in the middle of a boundless many-dancing whirlpool of gilt-shreds, paper clippings, and windfalls,-to which the revolving chaos of my Uncle-Toby's Smoke-jack

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 Civil-Law Doctor; merely a citi zen, 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 un-Parisian, half or quarter Life; the very tradesmen grow clamorous, and no cunningly devised fable, ready money alone, will appease them. Commandant Marquis d'Autichamp agrees with Madame Boulain

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.