aiming a mortal blow at the abuses of the aristocracy and the old forms of society that royalty also had its drama, which was not less disastrous to it, and this was the "procès du collier." "A prince, a prelate allied to the royal blood, was dragged to the bar of a criminal court, among courtesans and thieves. What a spectacle! and at what a time!" Albeit we do not agree with M. Renée in his political economy, or on many other points, we are ready to admit that he treats this celebrated trial, as he does the character of Marie Antoinette, in a reasonable and impartial manner. He denounces Cardinal de Rohan as a scandal to the Church. "In the whole age there was not," he says, a prelate de mœurs plus effrontées ;" but in this instance he makes him the victim of a designing woman, the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, who traced her descent to a base son of Henri II. A courtesan who resembled the queen was hired to play her part, and deceive the cardinal. "He would," says M. Renée, "have no doubt been less easily duped if he had been less corrupt." He, the cardinal, who had been an ambassador, was, strange to say, according to the same version of the story, equally easily duped by the forged signature of "Marie Antoinette de France." A woman's anger, legitimate, no doubt, but ill-judged and dangerous, dictated a prosecution the result of which was that the public made common cause with a man whom it despised and detested, but who became a hero from the day that he was persecuted by the court. Nay, even a portion of the royal family, the highest nobility, and the whole of the clergy, took the part of the cardinal against the queen. Marie Antoinette's evil star was always in the ascendant. This was also an epoch when the marvellous was greedily devoured. Everybody was ready to believe that there was more in the intrigue than saw light on the trial. Romancers in our own days have judged so likewise. No wonder, then, at an epoch when the crowd so besieged the doors of Cagliostro, who could procure des tête-à-tête for Cardinal de Rohan with Cleopatra and Semiramis, that the police had to interfere; and when Mesmer's mysterious banquets were flocked to by all who could afford to pay, that the "procès du collier" should have attained an unwonted significance and a little-merited importance. So it was also in other matters. Religious belief had been sapped by the philosophers, encyclopædists, and poets; something was wanted in its stead. People looked up to science and to the mystic and marvellous. It is impossible to conceive in the present day the excitement that attended upon the first balloon ascent of Charles and Robert. It was under the same excitement that La Pérouse was sent to discover new continents. And it was under the same excitement that the port of Cherbourg was begun: "C'était parler résolûment à l'Angleterre," says M. Renée;" c'était relever en vue de ses rivages les ruines qu'elle avait faites à Dunkerque." The Egyptian enigma, as it has been termed in our days by kindly-disposed and well-intentioned quidnuncs, was no enigma in the days of Louis XVI. and his minister Vergennes. The downfal of the monarchy kept pace with this progress of events with a slow but steady step. Louis XVI. had his convocation of Notables -a last resource of a loyal and munificent minister-but which only hastened his fall. The masculine spirit of the queen asserted its supremacy over the king in the complications that then arose. She selected Cardinal de Brienne, but he proved unequal to the task, and Necker was recalled. Once more the assembly of Notables was summoned, coups d'état were attempted against parliament, popular effervescence still kept assuming a more formidable character, and it was in the midst of all these difficulties that the States-General-a great national representation, which had been obsolete for now two centuries, the qualifications for a seat in which were unknown, and the powers of which were ill defined -was summoned. The States-General, in the existing state of the public mind, was only a further engine of destruction-possibly it would have been the case with any other assembly of whatever kind. France was panting for Girondists and Conventionalists, to be succeeded by Terrorists. M. Renée has not followed out the monarch's history beyond the meeting of the States-General. From the day, he says, when the Revolution began, the history of Louis XVI. is in reality only that of the Revolution; and this does not stop at the death of a man: that epoch does not belong to Louis XVI., it is rather Louis XVI. that belongs to it. This is a disloyal mode of viewing the relations of parties. Is it because the Revolution was in the ascendancy, and a king sacrificed, that the king belonged to the epoch and was no longer himself-virtually, if not politically so? M. Renée, however, concludes otherwise, and admitting the reign of Louis XVI. to have ended with the convocation of the States-General, and the history of the Revolution to have commenced at the same epoch, that history, he says, has been already written, and it is a task that he has not the presumption to undertake. MY FRIEND PICKLES; AND SOME SOCIAL GRIEVANCES OF WHICH HE DESIRES TO COMPLAIN. BY ALEXANDER ANDREWS. XI. SERVANTS OUT OF PLACE. MRS. PICKLES had been absent on urgent domestic affairs some two hours, and I was engrossed with a most pungent article of the Saturday Review, when she re-entered the room, rather thoughtful, as I fancied, and seating herself at the fire, looked into it for some minutes with that earnest, distraught look of Cowper's which saw dreadful faces and read long and strange stories in the coals. As I know this is not her usual mood, I begin to wonder what is amiss now. At last she says, "Do you know, Mr. Pickles, I don't like the look of that Mary." I haven't liked the look of her for these four days, and so I have told Mrs. Pickles, but first she said the girl had been shamming, then she had been picking, but now she says she is shivering, and we had better send for the doctor. The doctor is fetched, finds the girl's tongue the colour of this paper, and her pulse going a hundred and twenty-six to the minute. He comes in with a face almost as long as his last year's bill, hopes there's nothing wrong, but is afraid-don't alarm yourselves, he may be wrong, he hopes he is, but there appears to him no doubt, it's typhus fever. Has she been out lately mixing with any one, for typhus is about a good deal? Are the drains all right? Really, the best thing-the most prudent, with your little family, you know, Mrs. Pickles -poor girl, I don't say it is, but you know it may be-is to remove her. Remove her! Yes, it's very easily said, but whither are we to remove this poor fever-stricken girl at eleven o'clock at night? Stay: she has a cousin in the High-street-a married cousin. I think of my children,does it cross my mind to inquire whether that married cousin has any?and rush off for a cab. Poor creature! we help her in, give the address to the cabman, and send her off to her married cousin's. "What an escape!" says Mrs. Pickles, drawing a long breath; and with the next she adds, "Poor thing, what will she do?" She must " pause for a reply," for I have rammed some very coarse and strong tobacco, laid in for driving the green fly from the rose-trees, into a very dirty pipe left by the workmen, and am smoking it with might and main, for who knows but that typhus is in the house already. Presently I feel very sick-the room is going round-great goodness! these are the first symptoms of infection! or-the last symptoms of tobacco. "There, I feel better now, thank you, dear—and I think a little drop of brandy-hark, what's that?" A sound of wheels in the new gravel of Turtledove-road-the cab comes back. They won't take her in," says the cabman-not our proprietor, but a "return" I had found on the road. "There's a pretty go! you've put a fever patient in my cab!" A half-crown falls out of my hand into his. "Take her off to the union. Quick! Poor thing!" doing right, Pickles ?" "The children!" is all I can say, for I mustn't think. "Are we An hour of anxious waiting-the same sound of wheels on the new gravel. "The porter says he won't take no fever cases in," cries the cabman; "and ain't you ashamed of yourselves, calling yourselves respectable, to send a poor girl about at this hour, after getting all her work out of her" (she had been with us a week); "pretty gentlefolks you are, I don't think!" Can I argue with him? Isn't he right? But he doesn't know I have five precious children in the house. I respect that husky cabman. But there is no time to be lost in deliberating; that poor girl, away from her home and friends, must not be left shivering in the cab. She was a baby once, as engaging, no doubt, as any of ours, and as babies always are to fond parents, rich or poor; what if celestial little Agnes should come, when we are dead, to be banded about at eleven o'clock at night with fever on her? "Where," I ask distractedly-" where is the home for sick servants? There must be one among the great charities of London-the place to which thousands of girls resort to service, leaving behind all who take an interest in them, hundreds of miles away, unable, in many cases, to write and tell their parents of their utmost need when they, poor things, are among strangers ?" Oh, of course, there are St. Thomas's and St. Bartholomew's, and the Middlesex, and the London, and Guy's, and the Fever Hospital, only eight miles off; but will they, on my simple requisition, send a proper vehicle, at this unseemly hour, to fetch her to their excellent and tender care? Can I expect it? No. Can I carry this poor, contagious, friendless thing on my back? What have I done already? Infected an honest man's cab, and to-morrow morning a happy father will hire it to carry his little prattling ones for their holidays to the sea. Peradventure, I am a murderer-morally, if not legally! Oh, I wish I had taken the number of that cab before it went away! I would send to Somerset House, and get its plates suspended for a fortnight-remunerating the honest cabman, of course, the while; I would-Well, to be sure, one is never safe with cabs for the matter of that; for how often do I see baby-funerals brought to our new cemetery in cabs ?-infection in many cases, no doubt, hanging about the little coffins. It ought not to be allowed, and, with the strict and direct control which the police can exercise over the cabs, could easily be prevented, were the axiom yet understood and appreciated that "prevention is better than cure." But, about the girl But Mrs. Pickles, with her woman's heart, has come to a decision quicker. She knows what a mother's feelings are, and the girl is tucked up snugly in a lofty bedroom, and Mrs. Pickles in the kitchen making condiments. For three weeks we live with Death unallied to us, yet a guest. I feel savage not with the poor girl, Heaven knows, although she would go gossiping where she knew fever was raging, and brushed her, perchance, in the shop where she stood chattering as she bought the candles. We sent our ambassador to King Typhus, as he held his court in "the poor neighbourhood;" but I feel savage that, with all our big talk of charity and philanthropy, we have no home-no practical home for sick servants. The workhouse is not a home fit for the decent, virtuous-minded girl overtaken with sickness, far, far away from her friends. I won't hear with patience of Mrs. Pickles's philosophy, "Where the girl falls sick, there she must be tended." It is true enough, and right enough, but what is this girl, who came to us only a week ago, predisposed by poor living and poor habits to infection-what is she to me, compared with my own flesh and blood up-stairs? Turn her out? No, not if they all died! But why do I pay four shillings in the pound for poor-rates if the porter at the Union "won't have no fever cases there?" If I apply to the guardians, I know he will have acted "under a misconception of orders," or the sick ward will have been full, or there will have been no casual ward, or there will be some lying or lame excuse, but in the mean time the mischief is done. We all know where the poor-rates go. What with fraudulent trustees, absconding collectors, high-paid commissioners, architectural jobs of Union houses, corrupt contractors, law costs of settlements, how little is left for the purposes of practical relief in proportion to the amount raised! Let charity, then, step in, as it is always obliged to do, and supply the deficiencies of a halting and faltering system, not to build its foundation upon the rotten and frail plan of our poor-laws, but to found a home for servants, as it has foundedshame to the orthodox institutions !-asylums for the maimed, the starving, the mad, the houseless-ay! houseless, with millions of money raised in London by act of parliament for roofs to cover them in the several parishes! and, above all, for those who cannot brook the insolence -the worst of insolence, because the most brutal and the most heartlessof the yellow-collared despot who guards the workhouse gate-the irresponsible, ignorant unsympathising wretch, who has once felt the pangs of hunger but now feels only the pride of office. Well, the girl got well, and-let me pass over the sequel quicklyproved miserably ungrateful. Our little Julia took the fever the household was upset-midnight watchings had to be taken by turns, and, in the midst of them, this wayward girl went off and left us without assistBut we did not repent doing what appeared to us to be our ance. duty. A poor, good, simple girl came in the hour of need, well recommended as a faithful creature, honest, industrious, and in all respects the orthodox "valuable servant," only "rather forgetful." Forgetful! she was indeed! She would go out of the room, sent express for a cup of barley-water when fever was clamouring for it, and come back next minute to ask what it was we wanted. But so faithful-so persevering so eagerly trying to help! Watching-always watching at the bedside. Poor girl! the watching made her only more and more forgetful. my wife In one of those long and weary night-watches, she confided to the secret of her faithful, humble, hopeless love. She loved the poor young plasterer, whom we had seen hovering about, nervous, timid, but faithful as herself, and with a love such as is seldom known in the saloons of fashion. Her poor heart was breaking-her faithful swain was subject to epileptic fits. This was her great grief-and great it was to her, poor, fond and loving heart! It was a sad and mournful love: she could not find courage to break it off-she had not courage to go on with it. And he, poor, soft, steady fellow, how he waited for her going out to church, and talked to her as they went along, as she innocently revealed to my wife, how his wages And he brought were increasing, and what magnificent hopes he had. her once a warm pair of gloves, then a strong pair of boots, then a Prayer-book-always something-and one day a geranium of his own rearing "for her mistress, if she would accept it." It was quite ridiculous to see how my wife tended that stunted geranium, that Susan might see and tell him that she valued it. And we found out that the great silly fellow was fond of sweets, and Susan would save such as the children gave her, or any stray pieces of cake sent out into the kitchen on anniversaries (of which there were a great many in our household), for "her Jem." I tell you it was downright brimful love! Even the children, with ready instinct, never laughed at it. and my It was some time after the confession that poor Susan got ill, wife nursed her as she had the ungrateful girl who had gone, and allowed the poor plasterer to inquire daily after the faithful creature's health. She was not exactly ill only more forgetful-lost-walking about as in a dream. We sent her to our medical man, who kindly saw her. But shall I ever forget the low, faint, sad words in which she told us his opinion on her return-so calm yet so plaintive! |