dence, with a firm faith, and an entire confidence. Preserve us from all illusions and temptations of the devil, and do so that we shall embrace and practise the pure truth of thy sacred orders." Davel would appear throughout to have obeyed supernatural powers, as Jeanne d'Arc did before him; and he was as pious as the heroic shepherdess of Domremy. He perished on the plain of Vidy, exhibiting the same courage and resignation that the French maid did on the pile at Rouen. The Canton of Vaud neglected for a long time the man who had offered himself up as a sacrifice for its independence; but at last such ungrateful oblivion was repaired by putting up a tablet of marble in the Cathedral of Lausanne, upon which is the following inscription: To the memory Who perished on the scaffold in 1723, the 24th of April, Martyr To the rights and liberty of the Vaudois people. Erected In the year 1839, the month of April, the 24th day. The village of Cully, situated on the borders of the lake near Vevey, resolved also to pay its debt to Davel, and raised an obelisk of white stone under the trees of the promenade on the shore, upon which are inscribed the following lines, written by M. Juste Olivier, Vaudois poet, and author of a life of Davel: "A son pays esclave offrant la liberté, Comme un héros antique il mourut seul pour elle; Et, pieux précurseur de notre ere nouvelle, Il attendit son jour dans l'immortalité." The revelations of Davel, enclosed in an iron box, were deposited under the foot of the obelisk. Our biographers do not make mention of the life of one of the most distinguished men of French-Switzerland. The Pastor Vinet, of Lausanne, a man of great abilities, who died but a few years ago, alone consecrated a few lines to his memory in the seventh volume of the journal Le Semeur: "Davel, who has no peer in the past, and to whom the future promises none that shall be equal; warrior greedy of all other blood except his own; calm and mild alike in his enterprises, his perils, and his catastrophes; foolish, if you so will it, but sublime and affecting in his folly, and whose motives, principles, and means would put to shame many who would be tempted to invoke his example-a man whose memory, if it cannot be the guide of our actions, at least teaches us a religious patriotism and a Christian citizenship, the only ones which can save us." Gibbon, the great English historian, writes: "Davel, an enthusiast it is true, but an enthusiast for the public welfare.” Lastly, M. Gleyre, a Parisian artist, but a native of French-Switzerland, to which country we are indebted for Pradier, Töpffer, and so many other great artists, has painted for the town of Lausanne a large picture, which represents Davel addressing the people, in whose cause he suffered, from the scaffold at Vidy. To turn to something more lively, here is a lesson in morality from a quarter from which such would be least expected: A friend of ours, living in the Faubourg du Temple, went out at a late hour of a winter evening to take a pistol without lock to the gunsmith's. Turning the corner of the canal, he was stopped by a man of ferocious aspect, who demanded his life or his purse. It is related that Odry escaped when placed in a similar predicament by a pun; our friend adopted the readier plan of taking his pistol from his pocket and placing it on the highwayman's breast. "Follow me to the next guard-house, or I pull the trigger!" he exclaimed. As it was dark, the robber did not perceive that he was threatened by an imaginary lock. He had recourse to the supplications usual in such cases. "Sir, do not ruin me!" "It is to save you, on the contrary, that I lead you to the guard-house." "I am the father of three children." "Indeed, I am not in reality a wicked man." "Neither am I. Come, it is late, and rather cold by the water-side. March, or I shall fire." The robber was obliged to follow our friend to the guard-house. They arrived there just as a patrol came in. Our friend related his history. The robber was examined, and discovered to be an escaped convict, of whom the police had for a long time been in search. Our friend was next duly congratulated upon his presence of mind, and the energy which he had displayed. But," added the officer in command, "I regret to say, I shall be under the necessity of bringing an action against you." Why so?" "Because it appears, from your own avowal, that you carry arms upon your person without the authority to do so." Our friend then exhibited his pistol, and showed to the officer, that without a cock, it was no arm at all. 66 Not so," said the officer; a pistol is always a pistol. I must put your name on the charge-sheet." The robber, turning round to our friend, then said to him: "Sir, you have deceived me. May what happens to you now teach you that bad faith and lies always receive, sooner or later, their punishment." And here we must conclude our notice of the French Almanacks. Politics, that fertile subject for caricature and ridicule, being now carefully eschewed, little remains in domestic manners to turn to humorous account year after year. Add to which, the very fact of an inexorable censorship weighs heavily upon the spirits of a once volatile people. ST. MARTIN'S EVE. 66 I. THE dull, sombre light of a November afternoon, was giving place rapidly to twilight. The day had been wet and cold, and the soddened leaves that strewed the park of a fair domain in England, did not contribute to the cheerfulness of the scene. But if the weather rendered the outward demesne desolate, it seemed not to affect the stately house pertaining to it; for lights gleamed from many of its windows, passing and repassing from room to room, from passage to passage, and fires were casting their blazing glow around. A spectator might have said that some unusual excitement or gaiety was going on there. Excitement in that house there indeed was, but of gaiety none; for grim death was about to pay a visit there: not to call one, waiting for him in a green old age, but to strike the young and lovely. The servants of that mansion were gathered in groups, sorrow and consternation imprinted on their faces: : or they moved, with noiseless tread, attending to the wants of two physicians, who were partaking of refreshment in a reception-room: or they stole along an upper corridor, pausing and holding their breath, in awe, at the door of one of its chambers, for there lay their lady, at the point of doom. In an adjoining chamber to this, standing over the fire, was a middleaged woman, more intelligent-looking than are many of her class. The fire-glow shone full in her eyes, showing that tears were glistening in them. Strange sight! for the continuous scenes of sickness and sometimes of death in which these monthly-nurses' lives are spent, tend to render them partly callous to outward emotion. The family medical attendant was pacing the room, his footsteps falling noiselessly on the soft carpet. His hands were clasped behind him, resting on his back as he walked, and his face, worn and anxious, was never lifted from the ground. "This will make the second case we have lost this year," suddenly observed the woman, in a whispered tone. "What can have made it so unlucky a year?" The doctor gave no answer. Perhaps he did not like the "we" in her sentence. But he knew that his duty was always performed to the utmost of his skill and power, and his conscience, on this point, stood at peace before God. "There are no further means that can be tried?" exclaimed the woman, using the words more as an assertion than a question, as she glanced towards the partially-opened door connecting the apartments. "None," was the conclusive reply of the surgeon. "She is going rapidly." The fire had burnt down to embers in the sick chamber; a pale light was emitted from the shaded lamp; and perfume, almost to faintness, was perceptible in the atmosphere. They had been sprinkling essences about in profusion: as if that would make pleasant the way to death. The heavy velvet curtains were thrown up from the bed, and, lying there, was a form young and fair, with a pale, exhausted face. Every appurtenance in the chamber spoke of wealth but not all the world's wealth and luxury combined, could have availed to arrest that fastly-fleeting spirit. Close by stood a cradle; an infant, who had seen the light scarcely two days, quietly sleeping in it. Leaning over the bed was a young man, bowed down with grief, of attractive features and gentlemanly bearing. Not long had they been man and wife, but a year at most, and now it was hard to part, doubly hard with this new tie which had been born to them. Yet they both knew it must be so; and he had thrown his arm lightly across her, and laid his cheek, wet with tears, against hers, vainly wishing that his prayers could renew her life. There had been a long, agonising silence between them: each heart was full of painful thoughts; yet it seemed, in that last hour, as if they could not give them utterance. But an anxious care, one of the many she must leave on earth, was pressing upon that lady's brain, and she broke the silence. "When the months, the years, go by," she panted, feebly clasping her hands together in the attitude of prayer," and you think of another wife, oh choose one that will be a mother to my child! Be not ensnared by beauty, be not ensnared by wealth, be not ensnared by specious deceit; but take one who will be to him the mother that I would have been." "I shall never marry again," he passionately interrupted. "You, my first and dearest love, shall be the only wife I will take to my bosom. Never shall another usurp your place; and here I swear "Hush! hush!" she murmured, laying her hand upon his lips. "It would be cruel of me to exact such a promise from you, and it would be useless for you to make it; for you would never keep it, save with selfupbraiding. The remembrance of this scene, of me, will pass away, and you will begin to ask yourself, why should your life be condemned to solitude. No, no. To remain faithful to the dead, is not in man's nature." He thought in his own heart, honestly thought it then, that her opinion was a mistaken one, and that he should prove a living refutation of it. "Yet oh forget me not wholly !" she whispered. "Let there be brief moments when my remembrance shall return to you; when you will dwell upon me as having been the one you once best loved on earth!” Another deep silence, but the pulses of his heart might have been heard, beating wildly in its anguish. She spoke not from exhaustion. "What will you have him named?" he asked abruptly, pointing towards the cradle. "Call him Benjamin," she replied with difficulty, after a minute's thought." He cost Rachel her life, as this child has cost me mine. And oh may he be the solace to you that Benjamin was to old Jacob, and may you love and cherish this child as he did his!" Her voice suddenly failed her, a spasm smote her features, and she lay more heavily on the pillow. Her husband raised her; he clasped her fluttering heart to his, and wildly kissed her pallid face. But that face was losing its look of consciousness, and no tenderness could recal the departing spirit. He called to the medical man in the adjoining chamber. The latter came forward. He gave one glance at the bed, and then whispered the nurse to summon the physicians. He knew their presence was useless: but, at such times, man deems it well to fulfil these outward forms. In the local newspapers, there appeared that week two paragraphs: one, announcing a birth; the other, a death. "On the 10th inst., at Alnwick Hall, the wife of George Carlton, Esq., of a son and heir." "On the 12th inst. at Alnwick Hall, in her twenty-third year, Caroline, the beloved wife of George Carlton, Esq." II. "To remain faithful to the dead, is not in man's nature." Such were the words used by Mrs. Carlton in dying, and a greater truth was never uttered or written by Solomon. It was in the middle of September, but ten months after the decease of Mrs. Carlton, that Alnwick Hall was the scene of great festivity. Brilliant groups were in the park, in the temporary marquee on the lawn, and in the house itself; a sort of fête champêtre. Whether to escape the sad reflections left by the death of his wife, or that he found his own house monotonously dull, it was seen that Mr. Carlton had that summer joined in many of the festal meetings of his county neighbours, and he, in his turn, was now holding a fete. Rumour, with its many tongues, had likewise begun to whisper that he was already seeking a second wife. In a pleasant room, opening to the conservatory, several ladies were gathered. They were of various ages and degrees of beauty. One stood conspicuous amidst the rest: not for her beauty, though that was great; not for her dress, though that was all that can be imagined of elegance; but for a certain haughty, imperious manner, and a malicious glance that, in unguarded moments, would gleam from her countenance. She was tall and finely formed; a profusion of raven hair was braided over her pale, regular features; but in the jet-black eye and compressed mouth, might be read an expression strangely disagreeable. Beautiful she undoubtedly was, but not pleasing. She carried her age well: few would take her to be four-and-twenty, yet she had, in reality, seen nearly thirty summers. Her mother, Mrs. Norris, stood by her side, a showy woman still. Could report speak truth in asserting that the first match in all the county was about to be laid at Charlotte Norris's feet? If so, it would, indeed, be a triumph for her, hitherto so proud and portionless. In the centre of these ladies stood a young woman, holding a fine baby. He was not, indeed, what could be called a pretty child, but a pleasing look of intelligence, unusual for one so young, pervaded his features. And had he possessed all the beauty that since the creation of man has been said or sung, those fair women, now gathered round, could not have bestowed on him more courtly praise-for he was the heir of Alnwick. "Yes, he is a fine fellow for his age," observed Mr. Carlton, with a flushed cheek and gratified eye, as he listened to the flattery, for he was fondly attached to his child. "Pray is that his nurse?" inquired Mrs. Norris, scanning the maid through her glass. "What is your name, young woman?" "I have had the charge of him since his birth, madam," said the girl, looking pleased and curtseying. "And my name is Honoria, but they call me Honour, for shortness." |