Trianon, and what may pertain thereto, lies it | ran down like water. Small sparrows, as I not here? That "Righ!-Marie Antoinette of learn, have been trained to fire cannon; but France," too; and the 30th of July, first-instal- would make poor Artillery Officers in a Waterment-day, coming? She shall be brought to loo. Thou dost not call that Cork a strong terms, good Eminence! Order horses and beef- swimmer? which, nevertheless, shoots, witheaters for Saverne; there, ceasing all written out hurt, the Falls of Niagara; defies the or oral communication, starve her into capitu- thunderbolt itself to sink it, for more than a lating. It is the bright May month: his Emi- moment. Without intellect, imagination, power nence again somnambulates the Promenade de of attention, or any spiritual faculty, how brave la Rose, but now with grim dry eyes; and, were one, with fit motive for it, such as from time to time, terrifically stamping. hunger! How much might one dare, by the simplest of methods, by not thinking of it, not knowing it!-Besides, is not Cagliostro, foolish blustering Quack, still here? No scapegoat had ever broader back. The Cardinal, too, has he not money? Queen's Majesty, even in effigy, shall not be insulted; the Soubises, De Marsans, and high and puissant Cousins, must huddle the matter up: Calumniated Innocence, in the most universal of Earthquakes, will find some crevice to whisk through, as she has so often done.

the Devils drove him? It is Monseigneur's Heyduc: Monseigneur spoke three words in German to him, at the door of his Versailles Hôtel; even handed him a slip of writing, which (some say, with borrowed Pencil, "in his red square cap") he had managed to pre pare on the way hither. To Paris? To the Palais-Cardinal! The horse dies on reaching the stable; the Heyduc swoons on reaching the cabinet: but his slip of writing fell from his hand; and I (says the Abbé Georgel) was there. The red Portfolio, containing all the

and Trianon Roses. These August days, are they not worse than dog's days; worthy to be blotted out from all Almanacs? Boehmer and Bassange thou canst still see; but only "return from them swearing." Nay, what new misery is this? Our tutelary Histrionic Countess enters, distraction in her eyes;† she has just been at Versailles; the Queen's Majesty, with a levity of caprice which we dare not trust ourselves to characterize, declares plainly that she will deny ever having got the Necklace; ever having had, with his Eminence any transaction whatsoever!-Mud-gilt Autographs, is burnt utterly, with much explosion without parallel in volcanic annals. -The Palais de Strasbourg appears to be beset with spies; the Lamottes (for the Count, too, is here) are packing up for Bur-sur-Aube. The Sieur Boehmer, has he fallen insane? Or into communication with Breteuil ?

And so distractedly and distractively, to the sound of all Discords in Nature, opens that Fourth, final Scenic Exhibition, composed by Destiny.

CHAPTER XV.

SCENE FOURTH BY DESTINY.

It is Assumption-day, the 15th of August. Don thy pontificalia, Grand-Almoner; crush down these hideous temporalities out of sight. In any case, smooth thy countenance into some sort of lofty-dissolute serene: thou hast a thing they call worshipping God to enact, thyself the first actor.

The Grand-Almoner has done it. He is in Versailles Eil de Bauf Gallery; where male and female Peerage, and all Noble France in gala, various and glorious as the rainbow, waits only the signal to begin worshipping: on the serene of his lofty-dissolute countenance, there can nothing be read. By Heaven! he is sent for to the Royal Apartment!

He returns with the old lofty-dissolute look, inscrutably serene: has his turn for favour actually come, then? Those fifteen long years of soul's travail are to be rewarded by a birth-Monsieur le Baron de Breteuil issues; great in his pride of place, in this the crowning moment of his life. With one radidiant glance, Breteuil summons the Officer on Guard with another, fixes Monseigneur: "De par le Roi, Monseigneur: you are arrested! At your risk, Officer!"-Curtains as of pitchblack whirlwind envelope Monseigneur; whirl off with him,-to outer darkness. Versailles Gallery explodes aghast; as if Guy Fawkes's Plot had burst under it. "The Queen's Majesty was weeping," whisper some. There will be no Assumption service; or such a one as was never celebrated since Assumption came in fashion.

Europe, then, shall ring with it from side to xide-But why rides that Heyduc as if all

else, before Breteuil can arrive for apposition of the seals!-Whereby Europe, in ringing from side to side, must worry itself with guessing: and at this hour (on this paper) sees the matter in such an interesting clear-obscure.

Soon Count Cagliostro and his Seraphic Countess go to join Monseigneur, in State Prison. In few days, follows Dame de Lamotte (from Bar-sur-Aube); Demoiselle d'Oliva by and by (from Brussels); Villette-de-Retaux from his Swiss retirement, in the taverns of Geneva. The Bastille opens its iron bosom to them all.

CHAPTER LAST.

MISSA EST.

Thus, then, the Diamond Necklace having, on the one hand, vanished through the Horn Gate of Dreams, and so (under the pincers of Nisus Lamotte and Euryalus Villette) lost its sublunary individuality and being; and, on the other hand, all that trafficked in it, sitting now safe under lock and key, that justice may take cognisance of them,-our engagement in regard to the matter is on the point of terminating. That extraordinary Procès du Collier (Necklace Trial,) spinning itself through Nine other ever-memorable Months, to the astonishment of the hundred and eighty-seven assembled Parliementiers, and of all Quiddunes, Journalists, Anecdotists, Satirists, in both Hemispheres, is, in every sense, a "Celebrated Tria!,” and belongs to Publishers of such. How, by innumerable confrontations and expiscatory questions, through entanglements, doublings, and windings that fatigue eye and soul, this most involute of Lies is finally winded off to the scandalous-ridiculous cinder-heart of it,

do with such Collection. Nevertheless, search- | said, from of old, by the opposite party: 'All ing for some fit Capital of the composite men are liars?' Do they not (and this nowise order, to adorn adequately the now finished in haste') whimperingly talk of one just singular Pillar of our Narrative, what can suit person,' (as they call him,) and of the remainus better than the following, so far as we know, ing thousand save one that take part with us? yet unedited, So decided is our majority."-(Applause.)

Occasional Discourse, by Count Alessandro Cagliostro, Thaumaturgist, Prophet, and Arch-Quack; delivered in the Bastille: Year of Lucifer, 5789; of the Hegira Mohammedan, (from Mecca,) 1201; of the Hegira Cagliostric, (from Palermo,) 24; of the Vulgar Era, 1785.

"Fellow Scoundrels,-An unspeakable Intrigue, spun from the soul of that Circe-Megæra, by our voluntary or involuntary help, has assembled us all, if not under one rooftree, yet within one grim iron-bound ring-wall. For an appointed number of months, in the ever-rolling flow of Time, we, being gathered from the four winds, did by Destiny work together in body corporate; and, joint labourers in a Transaction already famed over the Globe, obtain unity of Name, (like the Argonauts of old,) as Conquerors of the Diamond Necklace. Ere long it is done, (for ring-walls hold not captive the free Scoundrel for ever;) and we disperse again, over wide terrestrial Space; some of us, it may be, over the very marches of Space. Our Act hangs indissoluble together; floats wondrous in the older and older memory of men while we, little band of Scoundrels, who saw each other, now hover so far asunder, to see each other no more, if not once more only on the universal Doomsday, the last of the Days!

In such interesting moments, while we stand within the verge of parting, and have not yet parted, methinks it were well here, in these sequestered Spaces, to institute a few general reflections. Me, as a public speaker, the Spirit of Masonry, of Philosophy, and Philanthropy, and even of Prophecy (blowing mysterious from the Land of Dreams) impels to do it. Give ear, O Fellow Scoundrels, to what the Spirit utters; treasure it in your hearts, practise it in your lives.

"Sitting here, penned up in this which (with a slight metaphor) I call the Central Cloaca of Nature, where a tyrannical De Launay can forbid the bodily eye free vision, you with the mental eye see but the better. This Central Cloaca, is it not rather a Heart, into which, from all regions, mysterious conduits introduce, and forcibly inject, whatsoever is choicest in the Scoundrelism of the Earth; there to be absorbed, or again (by the other auricle) ejected into new circulation? Let the eye of the mind run along this immeasurable venousarterial system; and astound itself with the magnificent extent of Scoundreldom; the deep, I may say, unfathomable, significance of

Scoundrelism.

"Yes, brethren, wide as the Sun's range is our Empire; wider than old Rome's in its palmiest era. I have in my time been far; in frozen Muscovy, in hot Calabria, east, west, wheresoever the sky overarches civilized man: and never hitherto saw I myself an alien; out of Scoundreldom I never was. Is it not even

"Of the Scarlet Woman,-yes, Monseigneur, without offence,-of the Scarlet Woman that sits on Seven Hills, and her Black Jesuit Militia, out foraging from Pole to Pole, I speak not; for the story is too trite: nay, the Militia itself, as I see, begins to be disbanded, and invalided, for a second treachery; treachery to herself! Nor yet of Governments; for a like reason. Ambassadors, said an English punster, lie abroad for their masters. Their masters, we answer, lie, at home, for themselves. Not of all this, nor of Courtship, (with its so universal Lovers' vows,) nor Courtiership, nor Attorneyism, nor Public Oratory, and Selling by Auction, do I speak: I simply ask the gainsayer, Which is the particular trade, profession, mystery, calling, or pursuit of the Sons of Adam that they successfully manage in the other way? He cannot answer!-No: Philosophy itself, both practical and even speculative, has, at length (after shamefullest groping) stumbled on the plain conclusion that Sham is indispensable to Reality, as Lying to Living; that without Lying the whole business of the world, from swaying of senates to selling of tapes, must explode into anarchic discords, and so a speedy conclusion ensue.

"But the grand problem, Fellow Scoundrels, as you well know, is the marrying of Truth and Sham; so that they become one flesh, man and wife, and generate these three: Profit, Pudding, and Respectability that always keeps her Gig. Wondrously, indeed, do Truth and Delusion play into one another: Reality rests on Dream. Truth is but the skin of the bot tomless Untrue: and ever, from time to time, the Untrue sheds it; is clear again; and the superannuated True itself becomes a Fable. Thus do all hostile things crumble back into our Empire; and of its increase there is no end.

"O brothers, to think of the Speech without meaning, (which is mostly ours,) and of the Speech with contrary meaning, (which is wholly ours,) manufactured by the organs of Mankind in one solar day! Or call it a day of Jubilee, when public Dinners are given, and Dinner-orations are delivered: or say, a Neighbouring Island in time of General Election! O ye immortal gods! The mind is lost; with a kind of sacred wonder. can only admire great Nature's plenteousness

"For, tell me, What is the chief end of man?

To glorify God,' said the old Christian Sect, now happily extinct. To eat and find eatables by the readiest method,' answers sound Philosophy, discarding whims. If the readier method (than this of persuasive-attraction) is discovered,-point it out.—Brethren, I said the old Christian Sect was happily extinct: as, indeed, in Rome itself, there goes the wonderfullest traditionary Prophecy, of that Nazareth Christ coming back, and being crucified a second time there; which truly I see not in the

Goethe mentions it (Italianische Reise.)

"Sniff not, Dame de Lamotte; tremble, thou foul Circe-Megara: thy day of desolation is at hand! Behold ye the Sanhedrim of Judges, with their fanners (of written Parchment) loud-rustling, as they winnow all her chaff, and down-plumage, and she stands there naked and mean?-Villette, Oliva, do ye blab secrets? Ye have no pity of her extreme need; she none of yours. Is thy light-giggling, untamable heart at last heavy? Hark ye! Shrieks of one cast out; whom they brand on both shoulders with iron stamp; the red hot

least how he could fail to be. Nevertheless, bly-Jock!) The Arch-Quack, whose eyes were that old Christian whim, of an actual living turned inwards as in rapt contemplation, and ruling God, and some sacred covenant started at the titter and mutter: his eyes flashed binding all men in Him, with much other mys- outwards with dilated pupil; his nostrils tic stuff, does, under new or old shape, linger opened wide; his very hair seemed to stir in with a few. From these few, keep yourselves its long twisted pigtails, (his fashion of curl;) for ever far! They must even be left to their and as Indignation is said to make Poetry, it whim, which is not like to prove infectious. here made Prophecy, or what sounded as such "But neither are we, my Fellow Scoundrels, With terrible, working features, and gesticulawithout our Religion, our Worship; which, tion not recommended in any Book of Gesture, like the oldest, and all true Worships, is one the Arch-Quack, in voice supernally discordof Fear. The Christians have their Cross, ant (like Lions worrying Bulls of Bashan) the Moslem their Cresent: but have not we, began: too, our-Gallows? Yes, infinitely terrible is the Gallows; bestrides, with its patibulary fork, the Pit of bottomless Terror. No Manicheans are we; our God is One. Great, exceeding great, I say, is the Gallows; of old, even from the beginning, in this world; knowing neither variableness nor decadence; for ever, for ever, over the wreck of ages, and all civic and ecclesiastic convulsions, meal-mobs, revolutions, the Gallows with front serenely terrible towers aloft. Fellow Scoundrels, fear the Gallows, and have no other fear! This is the Law and the Prophets. Fear every ema-"V," thou Voleuse, hath it entered thy soul! nation of the Gallows. And what is every buffet, with the fist, or even with the tongue, of one having authority, but some such emanation. And what is Force of Public Opinion but the infinitude of such emanations,-rushing combined on you like a mighty stormwind? Fear the Gallows, I say! O when, with its long black arm, it has clutched a man, what avail him all terrestrial things? These pass away, with horrid nameless dinning in his ears; and the ill-starred Scoundrel pendulates between Heaven and Earth, a thing rejected of both."—(Profound sensation.)

Weep, Circe de Lamotte; wail there in truckle bed, and hysterically gnash thy teeth: nay, do, smother thyself in thy door-mat coverlid; thou hast found thy mates; thou art in the Salpêtrière !-Weep, daughter of the high and puissant Sans-inexpressibles! Buzz of Parisian Gossipry is about thee; but not to help thee: no, to eat before thy time. What shall a King's Court do with thee, thou unclean thing, while thou yet livest? Escape! Flee to utmost countries; hide there, if thou canst, thy mark of Cain!-In the Babylon of Fogland! Ha! is that my London? See I Judas Iscariot Egalité? Print, yea print abundantly the abominations of your two hearts: breath of rattlesnakes can bedim the steel mirror, but only for a time.-And there! Ay, there at last! Tumblest thou from the lofty leads, poverty-stricken, O thriftless daughter of the high and puissant, escaping bailiffs? Descendest thou precipitate, in dead night, from window in the third story: hurled forth by Bacchanals, to whom thy shrill tongue had grown unbearable ?* Yea, through the smoke of that new Babylon thou fallest headlong; one long scream of screams makes night hideous: thou liest there, shattered like addle egg, 'nigh to the Temple of Flora! O Lamotte, has thy Hypocrisia ended, then? Thy

Such, so wide in compass, high, gallowshigh in dignity, is the Scoundrel Empire; and for depth, it is deeper than the Foundations of the World. For what was Creation itself wholly (according to the best Philosophers) but a Divulsion by the TIME-SPIRIT, (or Devil so-called ;) a forceful Interruption, or breaking asunder, of the old Quiescence of Eternity? It was Lucifer that fell, and made this lordly World arise. Deep? It is bottomless-deep; the very Thought, diving, bobs up from it baffled. Is not this that they call Vice of Lying the Adim-Kadmon, or primeval Rude-Element, old as Chaos mother's-womb of Death and Hell; whereon their thin film of Virtue, Truth, and the like, poorly wavers-for a day? All Virtue, what is it, even by their own show-many characters were all acted. Here at last ing, but Vice transformed,—that is, manufactured, rendered artificial? Man's Vices are the roots from which his Virtues grow out and see the light,' says one: 'Yes,' add I, and thanklessly steal their nourishment!' Were it not for the nine hundred ninety and nine unacknowledged (perhaps martyred and calumniated) Scoundrels, how were their single Just Person (with a murrain on him!) so much as possible?-Oh, it is high, high: these things are too great for me; Intellect, Imagination, flags her tired wings; the soul lost, baffled"-Here Dame de Lamotte tittered audibly, and muttered, Coq-d'-Inde, (which, being interpreted into the Scottish tongue, signifies Bub

thou actest not, but art what thou seemest: a mangled squelch of gore, confusion, and abomination; which men huddle underground, with no burial stone. Thou gallows-carrion!"

-Here the prophet turned up his nose, (the broadest of the eighteenth century,) and opened

*The English Translator of Lamotte's Life says, she fell from the leads of her house, nigh the Temple of Flora, endeavouring to escape seizure for debt; and was taken up so much hurt that she died in consequence. Another report runs that she was flung out of window, as in the Cagliostric text. One way or other she did die, on the 23d of August, 1791 (Biographie Universelle, XXX. 287.) Where the "Temple of Flora" was, or is,

ope knows not.

wide his nostrils with such a greatness of dis- POSTURE waver? Burst there, in starry sheen, gust, that all the audience, even Lamotte her- updarting, Light-rays from out its dark founself, sympathetically imitated him "O Dame dations; as it rocks and heaves, not in travailde Lamotte! Dame de Lamotte! Now, when throes, but in death-throes? Yea, Light-rays, the circle of thy existence lies complete: and piercing, clear, that salute the Heavens,-lo, my eye glances over these two score and three they kindle it; their starry clearness becomes as years that were lent thee, to do evil as thou red Hellfire! IMPOSTURE is burnt up; one Redcouldst; and I behold thee a bright-eyed little sea of Fire, wild-billowing enwraps the World; Tatterdemalion, begging and gathering sticks with its fire-tongue licks at the Stars. Thrones in the Bois de Boulogne; and also at length a are hurled into it, and Dubois Mitres, and Presquelched Putrefaction, here on London pave-bendal Stalls that drop fatness, and-ha! what ments; with the headdressings and hungerings, see I?-all the Gigs of Creation: all, all! Wo the gaddings and hysterical gigglings that is me! Never since Pharaoh's Chariots, in came between,-What shall I say was the meaning of thee at all?

"Villette-de-Retaux! Have the catchpoles trepanned thee, by sham of battle, in thy Tavern, from the sacred Republican soil.* It is thou that wert the hired Forger of Handwritings? Thou wilt confess it? Depart, unwhipt, yet accursed.-Ha! The dread Symbol of our Faith? Swings aloft, on the Castle of St. Angelo, a Pendulous Mass, which I think I discern to be the body of Villette! There let him end; the sweet morsel of our Juggernaut. "Nay, weep not thou, disconsolate Oliva; blear not thy bright blue eyes, daughter of the shady Garden! Thee shall the Sanhedrim not harm: this Cloaca of Nature emits thee; as notablest of unfortunate-females, thou shalt have choice of husbands not without capital; and accept one. Know this, for the vision of it is true.

"But the Anointed Majesty whom ye profaned? Blow, spirit of Egyptian Masonry, blow aside the thick curtains of Space! Lo you, her eyes are red with their first tears of pure bitterness; not with their last. Tirewoman Campan is choosing, from the Printshops of the Quais, the reputed-best among the hundred likenesses of Circe de Lamotte: a Queen shall consider if the basest of women ever, by any accident, darkened daylight or candle-light for the highest. The Portrait answers: 'Never!'-(Sensation in the audience.)

"-Ha! What is this? Angels, Uriel, Anachiel, and the other Five; Pentagon of Rejuvenescene; Power that destroyed Original Sin; Earth, Heaven, and thou Outer Limbo, which men name Hell! Does the EMPIRE OF IM

the Red-sea of water, was there wreck of Wheel-vehicles like this in the Sea of Fire. Desolate, as ashes, as gases, shall they wander in the wind.

"Higher, higher, yet flames the Fire-Sea; crackling with new dislocated timber; hissing with leather and prunella. The metal Images are molten; the marble Images become mortar-lime; the stone Mountains sulkily explode. RESPECTABILITY, with all her collected Gigs inflamed for funeral pyre, wailing, leaves the Earth, to return under new Avatar. Imposture, how it burns, through generations: how it is burnt up—for a time. The World is black ashes; which-when will they grow green? The Images all run into amorphous Corinthian brass; all Dwellings of men destroyed; the very mountains peeled and riven, the valleys black and dead: it is an empty World! Wo to them that shall be born then!-A King, a Queen, (ah me!) were hurled in; did rustle once; flew aloft, crackling, like paper-scroll. Oliva's Husband was hurled in ; Iscariot Egalité; thou grim De Launay, with thy grim Bastille; whole kindreds and peoples; five millions of mutually destroying Men. For it is the End of the Dominion of IMPOSTURE (which is Darkness and opaque Firedamp; and the burning up, with unquenchable fire, of all the Gigs that are in the Earth!"-Here the Prophet paused, fetching a deep sigh; and the Cardinal uttered a kind of faint, tremulous Hem!

"Mourn not, O Monseigneur, spite of thy nephritic cholic, and many infirmities. For thee mercifully it was not unto death. O Monseigneur, (for thou hadst a touch of goodness,) who would not weep over thee, if he also laughed? Behold! The not too judicious Historian, that long years hence, amid remotest wilderness, writes thy Life, and names thee *See Georgel, and Villette's Mémoire. Mud-volcano; even he shall reflect that it was +Afaire du Collier is this MS. Note: "Gay d'Oliva, a thy Life this same; thy only chance through common-girl of the Palais-Royal, who was chosen to whole Eternity; which thou (poor gambler) play a part in this Business, got married, some years afterwards, to one Beausire, an Ex-Noble, formerly hast expended so: and, even over his hard attached to the d'Artois Household. In 1790, he was heart, a breath of dewy pity for thee shall Captain of the National Guard Company of the Temple: blow.-O Monseigneur, thou wert not all ignoHe then retired to Choisy, and managed to be named Procureur of that Commune: he finally employed him- ble: thy Mud-volcano was but strength disself in drawing up Lists of Proscription in the Luxem- located, fire misapplied. Thou wentest ravenbourg Prison, when he played the part of informer, ing through the world; no Life-elixir or Stone (mouton.) See Tableau des Prisons de Paris sous Robespierre." These details are correct. In the Mémoires of the Wise could we two (for want of funds) sur les Prisons, (new Title of the Book just referred to,) discover: a foulest Circe undertook to fatten ii. 171, we find this: "The second Denouncer was Beausire, an Ex-Noble, known under the old govern- thee; and thou hadst to fill thy belly with the ment for his intrigues. To give an idea of him, it is east wind. And burst? By the Masonry of enough to say that he married the d'Oliva," &c., as in the MS. Note already given. Finally is added: "He was the main spy of Boyenval; who, however, said that he made use of him; but that Fouquier-Tinville did not like him, and would have him guillotined in good time."

t See Campan.

Rohan was elected of the Constituent Assembly; and even got a compliment or two in it, as Court-victim, from here and there a man of weak judgment. He was one of the first who, recalcitrating against "Civil Con stitution of the Clergy," &c., took himself across the Rhine.