and Margaret at prayer, and anxiously waiting to receive tidings respecting the vessel. As soon as Madame de la Tour perceived me she advanced towards me, and cried, "Where is my daughter, my beloved daughter?" From my long silence she feared that all was not right, and seeing my tears, she felt convulsive throbbings and agonizing pains, and her voice was only heard in sighs and groans. As for Margaret, she exclaimed, "Oh, where is my son? I do not see my son!" and then she fainted. We ran to her, and having revived her, we assured her that Paul was alive, and under the governor's care; when she was restored, she assisted her friend, who had long-continued faintings. Madame de la Tour remained the whole night in the most exquisite suffering; and such was her agitation, that I felt convinced that no sorrow was so poignant as maternal sorrow. When she recovered her senses, she cast a melancholy and languid look towards heaven. In vain did Margaret and myself press her hands in ours, and call her by the most kind appellations; she seemed insensible to such tributes of former affection, and only heaved deep and bitter groans. In the morning they brought Paul home lying in a palanquin. He had recovered his senses, but was not able to speak. His interview with his mother and Madame de la Tour produced an effect quite different to that which I had anticipated and dreaded; it was of more service to them than all the tender care that we had shown them. One ray of consolation appeared on the faces of these unhappy mothers. They flew to meet him, clasped him in their arms, and embraced him; and their tears, which from the poignancy of their grief, had hitherto been supressed, now flowed in torrents. Paul mingled his with theirs. Nature having thus found relief, a long stupor succeeded that convulsive anguish which had before occupied their minds, and they now enjoyed a lethargic repose, similar to the sleep of death. F. DE LA HARPE. IN his day Jean François de La Harpe (1739-1803), was esteemed as poet, tragedian, literary critic, and Academician; now he is almost forgotten save in name. His once noted work on "Ancient and Modern Literature" in sixteen volumes is hid beneath the dust of a century. He was professor of literature at the newly-established Lycée, worshipped Voltaire and lectured with the red cap on his head. He was nevertheless arrested and kept in prison for some time. In prison he sloughed his Voltairism and Jacobinism, and emerged a Catholic and a conservative. Then when the most violent storms of the Revolution had passed away the escaped La Harpe wrote in his "Memoirs" the following episode which might be styled the "Banquet of the Ancien Régime." It is a prophecy written after the event, so to speak, but the fiction is graphic enough to be true; for the events there recorded in the shape of predictions are but sober facts. A VISION OF THE REVOLUTION. At It seems to me but yesterday, and yet it was in the beginning of 1788. We were at table, in the house of one of our colleagues at the Academy, a gentleman of high position and a man of wit. The company was numerous and variedcourtiers, lawyers, men of letters, academicians. We had been well treated, according to the wont of our host. dessert the wines of Malmsey and Constance added to our well-bred cheerfulness that sort of liberty which does not always maintain the well-bred tone. Men had then arrived at the point at which everything is forgiven if it leads to a laugh. Champfort had read to us his impious and libertine stories, and the ladies of distinction had listened without even resorting to their fans. Then followed a flood of jests upon religion. One quoted a tirade from Voltaire's "Pucelle," another repeated certain philosophical verses of Diderot. One of the guests had taken no part in all this lively conversation. It was Cazotte, a pleasant and original man, but unfortunately VIII-16 infatuated by the dreams of the illuminati. He began to speak in the most serious tone: "Gentlemen," said he, "be content; you will all see this great revolution which you desire so much. You know that I am something of a prophet, and I repeat that you will see it. Do you know what will come of this revolution, what will happen to all of you that are here?" "Ah, let us hear," said Condorcet, with his sly and simple smile; "a philosopher is not sorry to come across a prophet." "You, Monsieur de Condorcet, will die on the pavement of a prison-cell; you will die of poison which you will have taken to escape the executioner, of poison which the luck of that time will compel you to carry always with you." At first there was great astonishment; then they laughed with the utmost gaiety. "What may all this have in common with philosophy and the reign of reason?" "It is exactly as I tell you; it is in the name of philosophy, of humanity, of liberty, it is under the reign of reason that you will end thus; and it will be veritably a reign of reason, for it will have temples, and indeed there will be no other temples in all France at that time save those of reason. You, Monsieur de Champfort, you will cut your veins with two-and-twenty strokes of a razor, and yet you will only die months afterwards. You, Monsieur Vicq d'Azyr, will not open your veins yourself, but you will have them opened six times in one day, in the midst of an attack of gout, to be the more sure of your death; and you will die in the night. You, Monsieur de Nicolaï, on the scaffold; you, Monsieur Bailly, on the scaffold; you, Monsieur de Malesherbes, on the scaffold; you, Monsieur Roucher, also on the scaffold." "Oh, then, we shall be worsted by the Turks and Tartars?" "Not at all; as I have said, you will be governed by philosophy and reason alone. They who will treat you thus will be all philosophers, will continually have in their mouths the phrases you have been uttering for an hour past; they will repeat all your maxims, will quote like you the verses of Diderot and 'La Pucelle."" "And when will all this happen?" "Six years will not pass before all that I have told you is accomplished." "Here are plenty of miracles," said La Harpe, "and you do not put me down for anything." "You will come in for a miracle at least as extraordinary; you will then be a Christian." "Ah," replied Champfort, “I am relieved; if we are only to die when La Harpe is a Christian, we are immortal." "For one reason," then said the Duchess de Grammont, "we women are very fortunate not to count for anything in revolutions. It is an axiom that they take no trouble about us and our sex." "Your sex, ladies, will not protect you this time. You will be treated just like men, with no distinction whatever. You, Madame la Duchesse, will be led to the scaffold, you and many other ladies with you, in a cart, with your arms tied behind you." "Ah, I hope in that case, that I shall at least have a carriage draped in black." "No, madame, greater ladies than yourself will go like you in a cart, their hands bound behind them." "Greater ladies! what! princesses of the blood?" "Greater ladies still." They began to find the jest a little strong. Madame de Grammont, in order to dissipate the cloud, did not dwell upon this last reply, and contented herself with saying in a lighter tone: You will see he does not mean to leave me so much as a confessor." "No, madame, you will not have one, you nor any one else; the last victim who will have one as a favor will be". . . He paused for a moment. "Well, then, who is the happy mortal who will have this privilege?" "It is the only privilege which will remain to him, and that man will be the king of France." ANDRÉ CHÉNIER. AFTER a most romantic career, André Marie de Chénier (1762-1794) perished upon the guillotine at the age of thirtytwo. He has been styled the Adonis of the French Revolution-"the young swan who died strangled by its bloody hands." Born in Constantinople, he was at one time a French diplomat in London; at another time a soldier, stationed in Strasburg; but, above all, he was a poet, Greek at heart. The Revolution, however, drew this classicist into its maelstrom. He used all his eloquence against the Jacobins, and was one of those who prepared the defence for King Louis XVI. One of his poems, nevertheless, was an "Ode to Charlotte Corday," the assassin of Marat. At last he fell a victim to the Reign of Terror, and a fellow-poet, Roucher (1745-1794), also rode to his death in the same tumbril. They had been associated in literary work. A dubious tradition declares that as they rode along in the fatal cart, they recited together the first scene of Racine's "Andromaque," between Orestes and Pylades. On the scaffold Chénier exclaimed: "I have done nothing for posterity; nevertheless (touching his forehead) there was something there." He had hardly printed a line. He left behind him in Saint-Lazare the portfolios containing his poems. Some are full of the pathos of anticipated death. Thus he sings: "Before the eve my sun must set." Deeply touching is his prison lament for "The Young Captive." She was Mademoiselle Coigny, whom he met in the Conciergerie, and whom, in another ode, he calls "the white and gentle dove." Sainte-Beuve speaks of him as, "before 1789 especially, the poet of pure art and of pleasures; as the man of ancient Greece and of elegy." He compares the poet to "a flute of boxwood, a violin of gold, a lyre of ivory." TO CHARLOTTE CORDAY. (Executed July 18, 1795.) WHAT! while everywhere cowards and evil-doers, While from the mire of Parnassus An impudent reptile, proud priest of that vile idol, Truth is silent! In her frozen mouth Her tongue, fettered with bonds of fear, Is it, then, so sweet to live? Of what value is life, |