which M. Magne had been driven to retire. Once more the Radicals endeavoured to obtain a vote on the question of adjournment; they were told by M. Martel, who happened to act as President on the occasion, that such a course would be contrary to the rules of the Chamber. Eventually the Session was brought to a close amidst the clamour of a number of irate deputies calling in question the authority of the President and the decision of the majority.

Thus terminated an episode of parliamentary history in France-from January to August, 1874-singularly undignified in its incidents and unfruitful in its results. The mutual antagonism of factions unable to move themselves, yet jealous of letting their rivals stir a step, the capricious phases of personal and party adhesion, had resulted in leaving the political machine at a standstill. The Septennate had come round to the point from which it had started. It still bore the character of Provisorium, no one knowing what form of government its provisional holder was to represent. In spite of promises, the Constitutional Laws which were to afford some basis for State administration, were left knocking at the doors of the Assembly, no nearer entrance than when M. Thiers had left them there in May 1873. Even the organic law on Municipalities, which Government had professed to have at heart, was stifled for the time being; the temporary measure of January 20, which placed the appointment of mayors wholly in the hands of the central authority, having been prolonged, on a motion of M. Clapier's of June 20, from a one year's to a two years' term. With a general impression that such a futile state of things could not long continue, that a legislative body so impotent to carry a single measure for the satisfaction of the nation's uncertainties, must soon dissolve for very lack of vital force, the country received back into its bosom the deputies who professed to represent it in the halls of Versailles, and the Permanent Committee commenced its fortnightly sittings at the head-quarters of administration.

During the period which we have been surveying, two of the political actors who had made their names more or less conspicuous on the arena of debate and in Ministerial councils had passed away-M. Beulé and M. de Goulard. M. Beulé died by his own hand, on April 5. His numerous failures as a politician seem to have preyed upon his mind. As a man of letters he had achieved a more solid reputation, his chief work having been the Studies on the Cæsars, published in the Revue des Deux Mondes towards the close of the Second Empire, in which he had openly compared Napoleon III. to the Emperors Domitian and Caligula.

M. de Goulard died on July 5, little more than a month after he had been engaged in an abortive attempt to form a Ministry which should replace that of the Duc de Broglie. His management of the finances under M. Thiers is matter of recent history. He was a man who, without having achieved extra

ordinary distinction, was highly thought of, and enjoyed the respect of all parties.

An obituary notice is also due to one, not a statesman, whose name will ever rank high among the French literary celebrities of the nineteenth century. M. Jules Michelet, the historian, whom some have called the "Macaulay " of his country's annals, died at Hyères on February 9, at the age of seventy-six. From this brilliant but eccentric man of genius it might seem too great a descent to mention Jules Janin, the clever feuilletonist, the Parisian's "prince of critics," whose funeral, however, on June 21, was almost a national event, nearly the whole of the Paris literary and artistic world being present on the occasion.

CHAPTER II.

"Crimes of Limours"-A French "Claimant "-Escape of New Caledonian convicts -Escape of Marshal Bazaine-The President's tour-Death of M. Guizot-State of parties Elections, parliamentary, provincial, and municipal-Rival Bonapartists-Prince of Wales at Eselimont and Chantilly-The Spanish Note-The withdrawal of the Orénoque-Right and Left Centres-Winter Session of the Assembly-Comte de Chambord's letter-Presidential Message- Debates on University education and freedom of worship-Conscription provisions-Bonapartist debate-Remarks on Arnim trial-Death of M. Ledru-Rollin.

In the absence of strong dramatic excitement in the political world, the public mind during the parliamentary season found means to feed its taste for things new and strange, in some incidents connected with the domain of judicature. Of these, we shall select for special mention the "Crimes of Limours" and the Naundorff litigation. The canton of Limours is a district situated within a few leagues from Paris. In January 1873, a gardechasse and his wife were found assassinated in their cottage at Augerville, with their heads beaten in and almost separated from their bodies. A rigorous but fruitless search was made to discover the perpetrator of the crime, and the excitement caused by the event was dying out, when one evening in October, the servant of the curé of the neighbouring village of Vaugrigneuse, on answering the door of the presbytery, found herself assaulted by an individual who beat her about the head, but at once took to flight on her crying for help. Four days afterwards an old man named Bunet was found dead between the two mattresses of his bed, having been struck over the head with a hatchet. A fowling-piece, a small sum of money, and several titres de rente had been stolen by the murderer, whom the police were unable to discover. At the end of the month following, an individual named Duval, residing at the hamlet of Forges-lès-Bains, was assassinated in the same manner as Bunet, the murderer carrying

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off all the valuables in the house. The last crime was committed on the night preceding Christmas Eve, when two elderly unmarried ladies residing at St. Maurice, were murdered in a similarly barbarous style, their money and jewellery being stolen. The whole district became panic-struck; houses were barricaded at night-time, and no one dared to venture out after six o'clock. Towards the end of January 1874, a rural postman named Désiré Legrand, was found in a pine-wood, near the hamlet of Vaugrigneuse, strangled with his own pocket-handkerchief, having evidently committed suicide. His letter-bag was found by his side, containing, besides the letters he had to deliver, a written statement, declaring his personal innocence of the crimes in question, and giving the names of the alleged murderers, five in number. It was generally thought that Désiré was seriously compromised in the murders, and that he committed suicide from feelings of remorse. The persons he had denounced were forthwith apprehended, but after detaining them in prison for two months, the police authorities, being convinced of their innocence, set them at liberty, and the public mind remained as mystified as ever on the subject. That eight or ten persons should have been assassinated with impunity in a small district, within a few leagues of Paris, was a startling affair. The police began the hunt again, but could find no trace. But in the month of June an agricultural labourer, named Poirier, was taken up on the charge of a murder committed near Nogent le Rotrou, also in the vicinity of Paris, though not in the same direction. The circumstances were these: On May 25, a farmer and his wife residing at a place called Tertre, went to the fête of Charbonnières, leaving behind them their children; returning in the afternoon they found their son and daughter both lying in a pool of blood, the girl quite dead, and the boy in a hopeless condition. The authorities immediately commenced an inquiry, the result of which indicated Poirier as the assassin. When the police went to arrest him it was found that he had left home; upon learning which, the whole population, armed with old muskets, scythes, &c., turned out to beat the country, which is thickly wooded. After some time Poirier was driven to a copse, and after a vain effort to break through the toils, he was forced to surrender. After his arrest, he confessed to a series of murders, beginning some years back, but denied having anything to do with those committed in the canton of Limours, or having had any accomplice in the atrocities to which he pleaded guilty. His assertions, however, did not meet with entire credit, and people were inclined rather to indulge the belief that the same wretch or wretches had been guilty of the double series of massacres, than that the system had been carried out from two independent centres of crime. Poirier was tried in the Assize Court of the Eure et Loir, and executed at Chartres in September.

The Naundorff litigation was no less than the suit of a

claimant to be the rightful representative of the Royal Bourbon line, as against the Comte de Chambord. The claimant himself was a so-called Captain Adelbert de Bourbon, of the Dutch Army, whose father, generally known by the name of Naundorff, a clockmaker, had, fifty years previously, asserted his pretensions to be the unfortunate Dauphin of the Temple, and had chosen to call himself the Duc de Normandie. Naundorff's pretensions had been put an end to by a decree of one of the French tribunals without trial; by which decree also he had been expelled from France. He had died at Delft in 1845. In Holland, however, the claims of himself and his family seem to have met with rather general recognition, and his sons had been advanced to posts in the State. On the present occasion, M. Jules Favre was the advocate selected to make good the pretensions of the soi-disant grandson of Louis XVI. He went through the story of the asserted escape of the Dauphin, as thus :

The Dauphin was confined in the tower of the Temple, and there was only one door. Several devoted conspirators, and among them the Comte de Montmorin and Josephine de Beauharnais, furnished the necessary funds. One morning some opium was administered to the Dauphin, who was carried upstairs in a basket, and a lay figure, made to resemble him, was placed in his bed. After a short time this fraud was discovered, and the Government had a deaf and dumb child substituted, so as to make it believed that Louis XVII. was still in the Temple. A doctor was called in to poison the child, but an apothecary administered a counter poison, and shortly afterwards both doctor and apothecary were poisoned. As the deaf and dumb boy would not die, a sickly lad was procured from a hospital; and he soon died, was subjected to a post-mortem examination, and was placed in a coffin. This coffin was taken upstairs, where the Dauphin had passed some eight or ten months; another substitution was accomplished, the dead body was placed in a basket, and Louis XVII. was put in the coffin. On the way to the cemetery a last substitution was effected; the Dauphin was slipped out of the coffin and some bundles of papers slipped in. Louis XVII. was confided to the care of trusty friends, and all the Courts of Europe were warned of what had occurred. After these astonishing assertions, M. Jules Favre went on to accuse all the persons who had sworn to the death of the Dauphin as guilty of deliberate falsehood. He then said that the people chiefly concerned in the escape of the Dauphin were Barras, Charette, Josephine Beauharnis, Hoche, Pichegru, &c., adding that a man named Laurent, who had managed the details, was afterwards sent to Cayenne by Bonaparte. The widow Simon, who died in hospital in 1819, up to her last breath declared that the Dauphin had made his escape; and when questioned by the Duchesse d'Angoulême, by the Duchesse de Berri, and Talleyrand, she persisted in the truth of her statement. Shortly after Bonaparte married Josephine, he had the Dauphin's coffin taken up in pres

they made out, or that a corpulent man of sixty-five had really, in the dead of night, let himself down a perpendicular cliff of nearly 100 feet, resting when half-way, by an iron hook attached to his girdle, then and there striking a lucifer-match as a signal to the faithful friends rowing over the stormy waters to his rescue, had thereafter plunged into the waves and battled his way till, almost dead from cold and exhaustion, he was dragged into the boat. It was more credible that his evasion had been facilitated by negligence on the part of some of the officials and connivance on that of others; and the judicial inquiry which was instituted into the matter on September 16, at Grasse, resulted in such a conclusion. That inquiry had to deal with the fate of eight persons who were arrested on the charge of complicity. The governor of the prison-M. Marchi, a Corsican, and therefore, so to say, a Bonapartist by blood-and four gaolers, were charged with neglect of duty conducing to the evasion of M. Bazaine; and Colonel Villette, the prisoner's friend and companion and former aide-decamp, Captain Doineau, a cashiered officer of the army, and Barreau, the ex-Marshal's body-servant, were accused of having directly participated in the escape. M. Rull, the nephew of Madame Bazaine, was also accused, but he was not in the hands of justice, and his case was dealt with in his absence. The evidence was very conflicting, and in parts imperfect, and it was founded much more upon hypothesis than English practice would consider justifiable. The broad outlines, however, of the enterprise seem to have been these :--Madame Bazaine and M. Rull, evidently well-informed as to the laxity of the arrangements within the prison, chartered an Italian steamer, from which they landed at Cannes, and rowed in an open boat to the Isle of St. Marguerite. Bazaine had meantime received through Doineau a message from his wife to the effect that she had secured an Italian "villa," this being the watchword by which it was arranged Bazaine should understand the steamer had been chartered. The prisoner and his friend, Colonel Villette, then, according to the theory of the prosecution, were able to slip out of the rooms occupied by the ex-Marshal, between the hour when the governor left them and the hour when the gates were locked. To guard against the chance of being observed by the gaolers, Bazaine had asked a few days before for a tent as a shelter from the burning sun, and this served to screen his departure from his quarters on the night of the escape Next comes the question, How did the prisoner make his way to the boat? He did so in one of two ways. Fither he simply walked out through one of the posterns-and for this purpose he must have obtained the assistance of the governor and some of the gaolers-or he must have really lowered himself, or been lowered, over the cliff, as was affirmed in the sensational account presented, with some singular variations, in the letters of the ex-Marshal himself and of his wife. The Court at Grasse rejected the former hypothesis; but also declined to believe