The tinually grew more confused and anx- of their faith at the martyr's stake; and ious. He came to my aid. "Maximi- yet this handsome man was the most lien," he said, gently touching the speak- fearful of all, and my hair stood on end er's arm, "leave off exciting thyself. when he said, in a voice almost devoid of The people are not worth so many words." accent, "Stay, nothing hurried. "No, by the salvation of the nation, boy-yes. I do not object to that. The they are not," Robespierre shrieked; woman-never." "and art thou worthy," he addressed me, "that I should waste so much time, throw away so many words? If thou hast not understood long ago that they are guilty, thou art a bad citizen—a suspect." The affair was dangerous. Lebas parried the blow. "Maximilien, do not go too far," he said. "I have already explained to thee why our friend Mesnard acted thus. Thou hast thyself allowed that it is more dangerous to risk a prayer for compromised persons, than to rush upon the foe-well, then, does not our friend's courage deserve a reward? We have no external symbols, so reward the republican devotion of Anatole, which did not shun death, with an order for the release of the prisoners. Anatole is returning to Arras-shall he daily pass the house of thy birth in grief and sorrow, because thou hast refused him the liberation of a woman and of a poor, misguided, blinded boy?-he who has staked his head? François Lepelletier and his sister-in-law are worthy of being commended to the mercy of the Convention; let them return to their, to thy, native town-let them enter as free citizens within those walls from which thou camest to save the nation." Robespierre reflected for a moment; then he gave Lebas an earnest look and walked to the table. "Thank fortune," he said to me, "that thou comest from Arras, and hast Lebas for a friend." Marion Lepelletier was lost. "What, art thou of opinion, Antoine, that I ought not?" Robespierre asked. "Thou darest not," St. Just said, firmly; "women are the worst. This one acted with perfect knowledge of the consequences. Shall it be said that the people of Arras form an exception in the eye of the law? Moreover, the woman is an aristocrat by birth, who could not live with her patriotic husband. And you would save such vermin? Lebas, wilt thou accept the responsibility?" St. Just was fearful to look upon, his awful beauty had such an imposing ef fect, that any words of protest stuck in my throat. Lebas shrugged his shoulders and was silent. Robespierre wrote a few lines. While writing, he said: "Enough talking: the woman dies." St. Just was reading his newspaper again. Lebas nodded to me, and I locked up my sorrow in my breast. Robespierre gave the paper to Lebas. "Send Simon with this to the Luxembourg. The young man will be set at liberty. I trust he will bear it in mind: people do not escape twice so easily when they have committed a crime against the nation." I stammered my thanks. Robespierre offered me his hand. "Remember me to friends in Arras, citizen Mesnard, and to thy parents. Do not be negligent in thy duties. Now good morning. Thou hast detained me long enough." Lebas made me a sign. The door of Robespierre's room soon closed after us. The air appeared to be lighter and more balmy, the sky higher, the sun more beaming. At any rate, I had saved one life, and the lion's den-Robespierre's room-luckily lay behind me! He seized a stamped paper and dipped the pen in the ink. I began to breathe more freely. Suddenly the man, who had hitherto been reading so busily, rose. It was St. Just. I never saw a more interesting masculine beauty. Few faces displayed so much gentleness, combined with such energy. St. Just was at that time six-and-twenty years of age. He looked like a martyr; the old paint- On the same afternoon I quitted Paris ers impressed such earnestness, such with my protégé. At six o'clock on the beauty on their heroes, when they repre- following morning he was clasped in his sented them undergoing death in honor, mother's arms. Her joy, and the delight "Thank Heaven," said Lebas, "that thou hast liberated one. The woman, I knew from the first, was not to be saved." of my parents, were indescribable: they were only painfully clouded by Marion's awful death. She died on the guillotine on April 18, as did her landlord. On the same day twenty-one other condemned persons died under the knife. Three months later, Robespierre and St. Just had ceased to set the world in terror. The Revolution devoured even these darling children. My poor Lebas shot himself. His amiable wife, howev-in er, is still alive: she is supported by numerous friends, and I have repeatedly talked with her about those eventful hours of a terrible epoch. Bentley's Miscellany. THE castle of Chambord, it is well known was purchased by a committee after the murder of the Duc de Berry, and presented to the duke's posthumous son on his christening day, May 1, 1821, in the name of France: through gratitude the royal pretender now bears in exile the name of a Count de Chambord. This is all the family of the Bourbons, the royal house of France, possesses on French soil after a reign of nearly one thousand years! The descendant of Louis XIV., called like him Dieudonné, as if God himself had sent him to bless the nation, he, who in all his letters signs himself Henri de France, is in reality nothing but a Count de Chambord. A solitary castle, almost like a ruin, the more affecting, because, being still kept up, recalls the days of its former splendor, inhabited by none save the spectres of the past and the silence of the grave, and, lastly, to heighten the fearful impression, lost in a miserable-looking desert. This is all that the Bourbons still hold of la Belle France. The château is situated in the Sologne; such is the name of the district of Romorantin on the left bank of the Loire to the south of Blois, an uncultivated desert with about a thousand ponds. The soil consists of sand and gravel with a thin layer of humus; beneath this not very productive layer is clay, so that the ground forms in summer a dry heath, in winter a swamp. As the ground is, so are its fruits; agriculture is behindhand, and for this reason the emperor has purchased a large estate in eastern Sologne, where he has established a model farm, in the hope of exciting emulation. The domestic animals are like the plants; the horses are poor looking, but good tempered and staunch. The sheep alone are good; though small, they produce fine wool and excellent meat. Unfortunately, wolves and foxes have largely increased numbers. The population is equally crippled, for it is continually suffering from fever. And yet it was not always so. Traces of Roman settlements are found; and Dezobry's "Lexicon Géographique" states: "Formerly a flourishing and blooming country, ruined by the revocation of the edict of Nantes." The Bourbons committed grievous sins. Perhaps the count, during his stay at Homburg, may have been struck by hearing the French tongue of the seventeenth century, and seeing before him descendants of the expelled Huguenots. These refugees probably came from the same Sologne, where his only property in France is situated. History performs terrible justice: Henri breathes the same air of exile as the victims of the despotism of his ancestor. History, I have said, is just. In Barbé's "France Illustrée," I read: "The revocation of the edict of Nantes ruined the cloth trade of Romorantin: the Revolution saved it. It is true that the town has not regained its old importance, owing to the competition of the north, but a perceptible progress has been visible during the last fifty years." France could only be saved by the overthrow of the Bourbons. And a trip to Chambord taught me this truth. What a lesson! In Orleans I was frequently reminded of the pretender. There is a considerable Legitimist party here, branching out into the bourgeoisie through religious societies. In one of the shops I saw a medal, struck at the birth of the Duke de Bordeaux, as he was called during the restoration. Accident also led me to the house in which the Marquis Larochejacquelin, so well known in the war of the Vendée, died. It is the house next the post-office in the Rue Colombier; in a corner of the yard is an acacia planted by the marquise herself. I had visited the Vendée, and the strug gles of 1793 and 1832 rose before my mind, when I heard the foliage of this tree whispering ghostly voices seemed to speak out of them. It is best to take the train, not to Blois, but only to the little town of Mer, five leagues from it; here you are nearer Chambord, and the castle presents itself better to the traveler, while in coming from Blois he sees it for hours; here it suddenly surprises him in all its splendor. Mer is a little town, but its name has a fearful sound for the ear of the Bourbons, for it was the home of Jurien, that madly-excited wrestler against Bossuet and Louis the despot, the author of the "Soupirs de la France Esclave." France had fallen into the deepest wallow of serfdom under the Bourbon Louis, who fancied himself more than a Sultan-fancied himself a God. For he sacrificed hecatombs of noble men to his religion, because it was his personal religion. But Jurien the prophet truly foretold the downfall of this idolatry, for which Bossuet's little soul was not ashamed to enter the lists. Five months after the revocation of the edict of Nantes appeared his book, "L'Accomplissement des Prophéties," which dealt the first blow at the Antichrist, in April, 1689. And lo! on April 11, 1689, William of Orange was crowned at Westminster, and thus the center of the resistance against the despotism of Bourbonism was established. Among the Protestants who fled before Louis, was Denys Papin, who discovered the secret of steam power. A statue is now erected to him at Blois, his native town. People are enriching themselves with his glory; even the adherents of the ancient régime, who are numerous in Blois, and have an organ there in La France Centrale, are now proud of him; but they have not given up their hatred of the Huguenots, which rendered France poor, and drove Papin into banishment. At Mer a small Protestant community has been re-established, which has its chapel in the adjoining village of Auray, and, strangely enough, it was legally established under Louis XVIII., by a gentleman of Brittany, who emigrated to England in 1793, as a Legitimist and Catholic, but there became a Protestant. Jurien's house is in the town, and belongs to a Protestant family, whose grey-haired head described to me with the utmost excitement, the horrors of the Huguenot persecution. Thus two Huguenot shadows-two victims of Louis XIV.-guard on the Loire the passage to Chambord, and warn the descendant of the guilt of his house. Mer is about a league from the Loire; a suspension-bridge runs across to the Sologne, Secalaunica in medieval Latin, whence local savans, blinded by local patriotism, remove hither the great battle of the Huns in 451, by reading the campis Seca, instead of Cata, launicis. On the left bank of the Loire is the village of Muides; farther down, another, Saint-Dié; as they are on a height, they look quite stately. The interior of the village, however, differs very greatly from the elegance that prevails on the right bank of the Loire, and the poor village inn proves the poverty of the district. At the end of an hour's stroll you reach the park wall, which is eight leagues in circumference; on the left of the entrance a road branches off, and we must look carefully at the finger-post, for it reveals to us the secret of the wondrous building we are approaching. On the arm we read: "Chemin de Thoury." The beautiful countess de Thoury had enchained the heart of Francis I. when he was still Count d'Angoulême, and Chambord owes its origin to the charm of love and the passion for the chase, which the wooded country satisfied. It is true that there was on the same spot an old hunting lodge, inhabited by the old Count of Blois, of the House of Champagne, the only hereditary family under the Capets; it was called in the twelfth century Chambord-Montfrault, from a still older castle of these counts, whose name is still preserved within the park in the Pavilion-Montfrault. The founder of this family, the savage Thibault le Tricheux, still wanders around this pavilion. When a peasant has unwittingly trodden on the weed of straying (l'herbe qui égare), and comes here at midnight, he often meets a black hunter with black dogs; it is Thibault, in his day the terror of the region. In the fourteenth century, Chambord was held as a château fort by paid seneschals; in 1359 it served as a prison for English soldiers. After the death of the last Count of Blois, in 1397, Chambord fell to Duke Louis d'Orléans, brother of Charles VI., who bought it of Gui II. de Chatillon. The castle gradually decayed; in 1498, when Louis d'Orléans, grandson of the purchaser, mounted the throne of France, it was united with the crown lands. The Orleans family were distinguished by excellent taste; the founder of the house married an Italian, Valentine of Milan, and the contact with the land of beauty probably exerted its influence. But the natural taste in the family was unmistakable; Charles, the father of Louis XII., was a thoughtful poet, and the fact that after his return from captivity he allowed the citizens of Blois to fell wood in his forest to rebuild their houses ("J'aime mieux loger des hommes que des bêtes," he said), is a proof of his liking for pretty houses, as well as his liberality. The feeling for art spread through the province. In the reign of Francis I., also a scion of the Orleans family, this artistic life attained its highest lustre, of which the towns along the Loire still display rich proofs. The old castle of Chambord was rebuilt by Francis I., and the works began in 1526, after his return from captivity in Madrid. In a social point of view, the château is merely a sterile creation of absolutistic whim; useful for nothing, lost for ever, it is, in spite of its perfect preservation, a ruin occupied by the ghosts of recollections. What can be made out of such labyrinths? Does even Versailles, as a museum, repay the cost of its building? Not at all. These enormous edifices only lived when they served as a residence for the extravagant court of the old monarchy. Around the palace of Francis I, pranced constantly six thousand horses, rarely fewer, and at times eighteen thousand. And as he was of opinion that a royal court without ladies was like a year without spring, and a spring without roses, he summoned to his brilliant banquets the pretty ladies who, during the middle ages, had escaped royal glances in their feudal castles. "At first it had a good effect," says Mézeray, the historian "the amiable sex introduced its pleasing manners at court; but morals soon became corrupted, and female caprice gave away dignities and offices." Well, we all know that the court of the kings of France became a harem, and at last a Du Barri reigned over king and state. But if we regard Chambord from an artistic point of view, it is one of the finest architectural ornaments of France, and a pearl of the native national art. Charles V., who saw it incomplete, without the side wings, considered it " an abridgment of what human art and industry can effect." The Venetian envoy, Jerome Lippomano, who had seen the city of the Doges, wrote, in 1577: "I have seen many fine buildings in my time, but never a more beautiful or rich one. In the centre of the park rises the château, with its gilt parapets, its leadcovered wings, its pavilions, terraces, and galleries, like the palace of Morgana or Alcine, as our poets describe it. We left it, full of astonishment and admiration, and even of confusion." I could go on quoting; for he can not find words enough to describe his wonderment at everything he saw. And this magic palace is a work of native art, created by a Frenchman in the heart of the renaissance. Daruy, the historian, expresses himself as follows about this epoch: "France does not owe everything to Francis I., as Benvenuto Cellini asserted. A special French art was formed, which retained everything from the past, that is so admirably adapted for our climate-the lofty gables, the ornaments for the roof, the turrets tastefully suspended at the corners." &c., &c. This description is capitally suited for Chambord. But, in spite of its thoroughly national character, the chateau was for a long time assumed to be the work of an Italian. It has been asscribed to Primaticcio, who, however, only came to France in 1531, or five years after the beginning of the building: others considered Vignola the architect, but he reached France even later (1540); others, too, voted for Maître Roux, who arrived only a year before Primaticcio. The boasting Italians would not have omitted including this splendid edifice in the list of their buildings. "The very obscurity that enshrouds the name of the architect is a proof that he was a modest provincial artist, whose merits were silently passed over by the jealous foreign masters at court. That there was no lack of competent native artists, is proved by the fact that the Italian masters had a number of Frenchmen as assistants." (De la Saussaye, in his account of Chambord.) It is now established that Pierre Nepveu, called Trinqueau, of Blois, drew the plan of Chambord, and executed it himself to a great extent. After this introduction let us enter the park. From the Pavillon de Muides it another order, ornamented with a balustrade and eight columns. The latter carry the continuation of the steps to a belvidere, crowned by a richly ornamented and elegant turret, upon which a huge stone lily rises in the air. The inner quadrangle forms the nucleus of the château, and the original plan was probably restricted to it. But the work grew beneath the artist's hand. He surrounded the first quadrangle by a second, but in such a way that the north side of is an hour and a half's walk to the châ- both forms one line: on the east and teau. The land at the entrance is culti-west side the buildings of the outer quadrangle break off in the middle, and the remainder is enclosed by a low terrace. The north side was built in the reign of Francis I.: the ornaments still bear the F and the Salamander, which he took into his coat of arms. In the angle of the tower and the façade an outbuilding slightly disturbs the effect. It was the favorite residence of Francis I. On fine summer nights he talked here on the terrace with the ladies and gentlemen who formed la petite bande de la cour. Here, in his study, he is said, at an early age, to have scratched on a pane with a diamond the well-known verses: vated. The barns and farm-house had a cleanly look; a little boy was minding geese, but there was nobody else in the field. After a short stroll the forest is reached. Everything was quiet; only a pheasant stalked in the grass, or the twittering of birds disturbed the wayfarer. The roads in the park have historic names: Rue de François I., Rue du Maréchal de Saxe. We turn round a corner, and the wondrous edifice surprises us in the very heart of the wilderness, like a palace in the Arabian Nights. Opposite to it, on a grass plot, is a pillar surmounted by a cross; we rest here and survey the château. The Cosson, which traverses the entire park from east to west, separates us from it. The building forms a quadrangle, a hundred and fifty-six metres in length and a hundred and seventeen in breadth; the north side, which we have before us, forms an imposing façade, divided into four nearly equal parts by four turrets. On closer inspection, however, the building is found to be composed of two quadrangles. The centre one has at each corner a round tower with a pointed roof, and contains two stories beside the ground floor; in the centre of the quadrangle a splendid winding staircase, turning round a double screw, and thus forming two flights of steps, leads to the terrace of the roof. These steps, of bold design and rich detail, are the greatest curiosity in the château. Two persons go up at the same time, constantly see each other, and yet do not meet. But the steps do not leave off at the terrace; they rise for another hundred feet in a pyramidal form. This pyramid consists of eight arcades, with pillars eight metres high; upon this colonnade rises Souvent femme varie Mal habil qui s'y fie! According to another story, Louis XIV., when he was in love with Mademoiselle La Vallière, broke the pane. But, as Brantôme tells us, the two verses are limited to the three words, "Toute femme varie," which Francis wrote near a window. The north side was completed under Henri II.; among the ornaments may still be seen the H and the crescent which he selected as his device, with the motto, "Donec totum impleat orbem." Perhaps it was an allusion to the name of his beloved, the beauteous Diane, but the royal initial is not here openly interwoven with that of Diana. The tower contains the chapel, which is in a splendid state of preservation. Mass is read here every Sunday. This part of the château is the least ornamented. The plan of the whole reminds one of former centuries, of the castles of the feudal lords: a wall with towers surrounded a stronger building called the donjon or keep the latter name has also been applied to the inner quadrangle of Chambord. But that which was formerly a |