rehabilitation in the eyes of the French people. In 1879, after Grévy became president, Ferry accepted the portfolio of minister of public instruction. Almost immediately he brought forward the two famous bills which set all France, clerical and anticlerical, in a blaze, and with which his name will ever be connected. He ejected the entire clerical element which formed the majority of the old Conseil Supérieur, and planned education on such absolutely "unsectarian and extreme principles that the very name of God was forbidden to be pronounced. The veteran Jules Simon justly reproached the minister for this measure, maintaining that the instruction of children in the primary ideas of duty towards God was perfectly compati ishness led the country to Sedan. When the empire fell, on September 4, Ferry, as deputy for Paris, took his place in the government of National Defence, and subsequently became mayor of the capital. He showed great courage during the time of the Commune, and, had he been listened to, it is probable that many of the horrors of that time might have been avoided. He resisted to the end, and, as mayor of Paris, only left his post when he saw all was lost. For one whole day, from six in the morning till ten at night, he sent telegram after telegram to the governor of Paris, to the minister of war, and to M. Thiers, endeavoring in vain to persuade them not to give up the Hôtel de Ville to the mob. His last telegram ran thus: "The troops have evacuated the Hôtel de Ville; all the employés are leaving; Ible with unsectarian aims. Simon wished shall leave the last. The insurgents have made a barricade and are firing." He only escaped the fury of the mob by flying through the court of the Presbytery of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois. The next day he rejoined the government at Versailles. Soon came the gloomy moment of the siege of Paris, and provisions grew scarce. Jules Ferry, not hesitating to sacrifice his popularity, proposed in a plenary meeting of mayors and vice-mayors the rationing of the people. A great hubbub ensued. "For how long have you bread?" asked some one of the audience. "I could tell you that to a day," answered Ferry; "but you will cut out my tongue before I will tell you, for that is the secret of the government of the defence, and none but the government must know it." Absurd as it seems to non-French readers, Ferry was never forgiven for the courage and energy he displayed on this occasion. Had he not managed to escape, he would most certainly have been killed. From that time forward Jules Ferry's name is found connected with every great public event. He took an active part in the National Assembly as a prominent member of the Left against the reactionary party. He helped to construct and vote the new constitution. Returned for his native town by a large majority, in the new Chamber he spoke and acted with increased influence, becoming the acknowledged leader of the Left. In their name he violently attacked the government, in the important debate which followed the events of May 16, for what he called its cowardly persecution of the weak, its war against the poor and helpless - that is to say, the clergy and the schoolmasters. This speech counted not a little for Ferry's And that this simple method should be retained These changes at home were followed abroad by the conquest of Tunis, towards which the German press certainly pushed on France. Time has since revealed that Bismarck was anxious to make use of this question in order to bring France and Italy to loggerheads. When Ferry, in his turn, was accused of arbitrary conduct because he would not listen to the proposals for a revision of the Constitution, he said: "We exclude no one from our majority; but we leave on one side those who do not wish to enter it, for the government ought to be a guiding lantern, not a kind of twilight in which all opinions are lost." He certainly acted in an unconstitutional manner during the Tonquin campaign, representing the war, which was going on at full swing, as mere skirmishes. He lied over and over again concerning the despatches that arrived from the seat of hostilities, and never told the truth until the news published in the English papers obliged him to do so. From that day he became a marked man, and, though he is still re After a brief interval, during which M. Brisson held the reins of office, there followed a Cabinet presided over by M. de Freycinet. Charles de Freycinet, who finds himself for the fourth time at the head of the French Cabinet, comes of an old family of the department of La Drôme. His forefathers were distinguished navigators, several of whom enjoyed a high reputation for pluck and sang-froid, and in their present descendant we may distinguish more than one of the characteristic traits of his ancestors. He has stood more than one parliamentary broadside without giving in; and, like his great-uncle, he, too, has been an explorer, and in his cruise around the political globe has discovered, so say his detractors, two groups of islands, one in the Centre and the other on the borders of the Extreme Left. With great skill he has steered just clear of political shipwreck, and managed to rise to the highest ranks in the government. Educated for an engineer, he became, in 1850, the manager of the railways of the South. In this post his admirable administrative genius showed itself, and many of the regulations drawn up by him then are still in force. He also published some valuable mathematical works, as well as a study on the sanitation of towns. Unlike most mathematicians, M. de Freycinet's genius is a mobile one. His career contains three or four sharp turns. After throwing up his post in the railway, he entered the government service, and was employed on foreign missions to England, Belgium, and Germany. When the empire fell, M. de Freycinet offered his service to the government of the National Defence, and, although he had no special qualification for military affairs, he distinguished himself, and stood well in the breach, literally creating two regiments a day. Gambetta, with his keen eye for men, was struck by De Freycinet's talent, clearheadedness, and self-confidence, and bestowed upon him a post of importance. After the peace De Freycinet retired back into private life, and dedicated his days to study, but he resumed his public career in 1876, when he stood for a seat in the Senate, warmly supported by Gambetta. His profession of political faith he couched on this occasion in the following words: Politically, I date from 1870; if I entered the Republic late, I came in by the front door, and received a baptism not of water but of fire, for it was in the fiery furnace of the National Defence that for five months I wrestled for my country with all my might and main. What I did it would ill become me to tell, but my master and friend, M. Gambetta, will tell you if I did my whole duty. . . . Side by side with great geniuses there are men who apply themselves to questions of administration and organization entailed by the application of a new order of ideas. I am one of those men, and, to sum up everything in one word, I would wish to be called by you to form one of the scientific phalanx of the Republic." M. de Freycinet was duly elected, and he sat in the Chamber with the Republican Left, always voting in the Senate in harmony with the Republican majority of the Chamber of Deputies. The cause and the explanation, as he himself had said, of his political career was the National Defence, and the man in whom that National_Defence was incorporated namely, Gambetta. Soon, however, M. de Freycinet could stand before the Senate and the public on his own merits. When he arose to address the senators for the first time, it was evident that a new orator and a new kind of eloquence were revealed in him. From that moment, slowly but surely, by paths curiously tortuous, De Freycinet climbed the political mountain. In 1882 he nearly missed being re-elected for the Senate. Paris had, in the meantime, become ferociously Radical, and De Freycinet was not fierce enough for its taste. When, after a few brief weeks of existence, "le grand ministère," as Gambetta's Cabinet was nicknamed, fell under the weight of its chief, M. de Freycinet took in hand the reins of government. The programme he put forth was the exact contrary of Gambetta's. There were to be no constitutional questions, no scrutin de liste, no policy, no reforms, or rather, there were to be reforms, but of a strictly practical character. Nevertheless, his Cabinet, too, did not live long. After a brief six months M. de Freycinet had to resign and wait another three years before he once more resumed office. Into his place stepped M. Duclerc, to be succeeded almost immediately by M. Fallières, succeeded in his turn by the Ferry Cabinet, which managed to live for two years, struggling on bravely till the defeat of Lang-Son gave it its death-blow. M. Grévy, who had been charmed by De Freycinet's manner and abilities, as had been Gambetta and Marshal MacMahon, immediately sent for him to come to the help of the ministry. He was, however, unable to form a Cabinet, and had to content himself with the ministry of foreign affairs, given to him by M. Brisson, who proved more successful. When Brisson resigned, after eight months of office, the minister of foreign affairs was quite ready to be made president of the council. At the present moment M. de Freycinet is minister of war, which realizes his lifelong dream. Several Cabinets have succeeded each other and he is still in office. He has even again become president of the Council, for it is now M. Carnot's turn to be fascinated. Indeed, De Freycinet narrowly missed being made president himself, and would have been probably elected had he not been thrown over at the last by M. Clémenceau. As to the practical reforms promised by him in 1882, as yet nothing has been seen of them. His critics say that he chops and changes with the times, and these are always changing in the uneasy sea of French politics. The bark of the republic has often been in imminent danger during the last decade, thanks to the raging Radical sea, the fierce hurricane of Boulangism, the current of opinions constantly swaying and changing. Now, for a moment, all seems calm, and it is possible that De Freycinet may sit long on the ministerial bench, and that his shrill but harmonious voice, with something of the pan-pipe or the flute in its quality, will often be heard in the Chamber. His small head and slender body are conspicuous objects when he stands up delivering his clearcut arguments, which sparkle like prisms, catching votes with them, it is said, as larks are caught by mirrors. Sir Charles Dilke has nicknamed him "The White Mouse; one of his colleagues in the Senate "The Syren." He certainly has the gift of managing men, and is clever and astute. The measure with which M. de Freycinet's name will ever be associated is the military law, passed in 1889, which makes three years' military service compulsory for all adult Frenchmen, even for seminarists and students of the Ecole Normale It has been said that there are three kinds of mathematicians those in a straight line, those in an angle, and those in a circle. M. de Freycinet belongs to the last category. He rounds his back, his arms, his fingers; he is fond of elegant solutions and demonstrations. He can pass a budget of seven hundred millions with ease and grace. Even when he is ironical, which is not seldom, there is always in his speech a preponderance of honey for the gall. Undoubtedly not the least important result of Boulangism has been the fact that it led indirectly to the appointment of a civilian as minister of war a very important, and most people think advantageous, change, a civilian minister being above and outside the jealousies which so often exist between generals. The latter, by the time they are fit to be ministers of war, are in France as a rule physically and mentally worn out. From The Nineteenth Century. THE STORY OF BIANCA CAPPELLO. THE Italian novella of the sixteenth century was not merely a work of art. invention. It bore but little resemblance to the more complex and profound productions which have distinguished literature in those later days in which the novel attained to its fullest art-development. The old novella was usually a plain, straightforward narrative of actual events which were connected with the romance of adventure, of tragedy, or of crime. Many of these novelle, or old stories, are still extant, and are written in more or less choice Italian. In the objective day in which the drama most vitally flourished, and in which it had its deepest interest and most effective influence, many of these Italian novelle were translated into French and English, and so became known to the dramatists of England in "the spacious time of great Elizabeth." Webster used the story of Vittoria Accoromboni, and also that of the Duchess of Amalfi. Shakespeare created his "Othello" out of Giraldi Cinthio's narrative of the Moor | ourselves the life and times for they Among the old houses, the case vecchie, of Venice was that of Cappello. Saltini Italy, in the time of the Renaissance, finds that the first recorded member of the and of the Counter-Reformation, with family was one Marino Cappello, who lived Spain and France struggling for suprem- in Venice in the eleventh century. The acy into a land divided into many princi- race would seem in Venice to have been palities, and torn by internal dissensions wealthy, to have served the State with Italy, with a profoundly immoral credit, and to have been not undistinChurch, and a deeply depraved nobility guished in arts and arms. One of the and sovereignty- was the scene of many family was a member of the Consiglio of those terrible tragical occurrences Maggiore in 1297; but the Cappelli had which afford strong motives to the tragic never given a doge to Venice. Of this dramatist, and which present subjects for prosperous race was born, on the 24th of the morbid pathology of history. Pas- August, 1519, il magnifico Signor Bartosions were fierce and revenge was ruth- lommeo Cappello, whose mother was a less; prince and bravo murdered without Pisani. Bartolommeo would not appear hesitation or remorse; poison and the to have been a man of great capacity, but dagger were the ultimate arbitrament; was rather a fortunate and dignified mediand, as was but natural, the land and time ocrity. In 1544 he married Pellegrina produced infra-human heroines women d'Ippolito Morosini, a beautiful young with the fatal gift of demoniac beauty, lady, with a large dowry, and of a distinwith all the cunning of conscienceless in-guished family which had given to Venice tellect; women who stirred maddening doges and cardinals. It was a fortunate passion, and who revelled in remorseless marriage for the magnificent Bartolomcrime. Take, as a few instances of these meo. From this union sprang two chil Italian criminal dramas, the cases of the dren - Vettore, a boy, born on the 18th of Signora di Monza, of Virginia Maria di August, 1547, and Bianca, a girl, born Leyva, of Lucrezia Buonvisi, of the Sister about a year later. The dignified, if comUmilia, with her unholy loves and mur-monplace Bartolommeo and the gentle and ders in the cloisters of S. Chiara; of the Cenci, of the Massimi, of the Duchess of Palliano, of Vittoria Accoromboni, and of Bianca Cappello. lovely Pellegrina had therefore been married about three years before they were blessed with children. The little girl was a child of quite distinctive loveliness, of singular vivacity, gifted with a strong will, and with individual force of character qualities which characterized her girlhood, and, indeed, her whole after-life. Her education was, no doubt, the education common in that day to the daughters of noble Venetian families; and between mother and daughter there existed a strong and tender attachment — a thing not quite so common in Venice in the sixteenth century. In after-life, when powerful, wicked, and unhappy, Bianca always spoke of her mother in terms of the utmost tenderness and of the most vivid regret; but, when about ten years of age, Bianca had the great misfortune to lose this loved and loving mother, a loss which probably had great influence upon her future fate and fortunes. Her father, the magnifico Signor Bartolommeo, gave Bianca a step-mother, by marrying, in 1559, Lucrezia di Girolomo Grimani, widow of Andrea Contarini. She was the niece of a doge, and sister of Giovanni, the patriarch of Aquileia. This, from a worldly point of view, was another good match for Bartolommeo. This last story, which is less known and less clear than some of the others, I now propose to try to tell. It is difficult to get at the exact or the whole truth in connection with the fair Bianca, because dark deeds of violence and of fraud, when committed within the golden shadow projected by the throne, are but timidly recorded, and never by contemporary annalists, who are often but imperfectly informed, and who always dread the displeasure of dangerous princes, and fear the vengeance of the powerful. It is not easy to piece together the facts that can now be known in connection with the sons of Cosimo of the house of Medici, and with that house's most renowned, if most infamous, grand duchess, a woman at once so charming and so wicked; but still, to honest labor, it is possible to ascertain much, and conjectural insight can paint some not quite unsatisfactory picture which shall be, at least, imaginatively consistent and true. 'Ve must walk warily, and yet firmly, among the conflicting and imperfect records of historians, as we try to image to The lady was no longer young, nor was she renowned for charm. She is said to have been di cattivo cuore bad-hearted; but to her as step-mother, was entrusted the young, the lovely, and lively Bianca. The choice was unfortunate, since stepmother and step-daughter could not and did not agree. The position was difficult, and there was no possible sympathy or affection between the two women. The unmarried girls of a noble Venetian family were, in those days, brought up in almost Oriental seclusion; and their lives must have been woefully dreary and full of ennui. The case must have been worse than common where a tyrannical stepmother attempted to coerce and constrain a high-spirited step-daughter. Such a stepdaughter would become an adept in intrigue and in deception. The natural desires of youth could only obtain some sort of gratification by the exercise of adroit cunning and unprincipled diplomacy. Bianca was clearly being trained in a very bad school of morals. When the girl was about fifteen, she was already designated as un portento di bellezza- -a miracle of beauty; and her personal appearance is described in a way which seems like an attempt to depict an ideal through the description of a living person. Special mention is made of sul mento una gentile fossetta, of a delicious dimple in her chin. She was of middle stature, softly rounded as a Hebe in her graceful shape. Her hair was light, darkening to a golden, chestnut. Her large, victorious eyes were di una tinta scura color del mare; and her forehead was of serene width and space. She was dazzlingly fair of complexion, with just a touch of rose-bloom in the tenderly rounded cheek. The nose was subtly modelled, the mouth beautiful in detail. Her hands and feet were delicate and small. She expressed grace, dignity, charm, passion; and yet was effluent of a certain power of clear intelligence and of distinct will. Were there already hints, discernible by the discerning, of what her character might become when moulded by circumstance? Still, to look at, she was a poet's beauty, and possessed a rare fascination. We have attained some glimpses of the physiognomy of her figure and her personality. The child of her land and of her time, her worst qualities would be engendered and also developed by the facts of her early life in Venice, and it would go hard but she should better the instruction. Many witch-women have combined the outside of an angel with a demon within; and, in spite of the snow upon the surface of Bianca's radiant youth, there was, beneath that, a volcano hidden only from observation by the veneer of hypocrisy taught to her by the duenna and the priest. Both the natural and artificial modesty of her repressed youth concealed daring passion and lawless ambition; and Bianca was ready to risk all breach of custom in order to essay the longed-for life of passion, of emotion, of excitement, and of change. The house of her father, and of her stepmother, could not hold her when the fairy prince were he a real or a sham one should come, and should call to her. Meanwhile, a crisis in her early life was impending, and her fate was waiting for her in the next street. The palace of the magnifico Bartolommeo Cappello in Venice was situated at the foot of the Ponte Storto. Almost opposite to this house stood another grand and antique palace, which was the dwelling of the great Florentine bankers, Salviati. The manager, or, as we should now say, director of this Venetian branch of the illustrious bank was Giovan Battista Buonaventuri, a man of mature years, of integrity, ability, and dignity. He lived in the Salviati palace, and had with and under him his nephew. Piero, son of Ser Zanobi Buonaventuri, a notary, and cancelliere della Mercanzia at Florence. Piero was born in Florence on the 6th of April, 1539. He was handsome, showy, vain, and light of character. Era sempre a caccia di galanti avventure; he was always seeking love adventures pursuit which, in the Venice of his day, in which there were great license of love and also great freedom of assassination, was dangerous as well as diverting. He was commonly taken to be a son of the great house of Salviati a supposition which he gladly favored; che egli, ambizioso com'era, lasciava credere volentieri. -a One day this gallant young banker's clerk saw Bianca at a window in the secondo piano of her father's house. Piero knew well who Bianca was; she took him to be one of the sons of Salviati. Piero also knew well that Bartolommeo Cappello would have slain his daughter with his own hand rather than give her to him in marriage, and he resorted to a clandes tine correspondence. The lovers discoursed with speaking eyes and kindling cheeks, until an interview could be arranged. This was not quite an easy mat ter to manage-but it was managed. At this particular time her step-mother had fallen ill, so that surveillance had become somewhat slack. Bianca had a composure |