stairs. He bounded down the stairs, nally to many a worthless jade. We've smoked a pipe we neither of us shall forget, and walked beneath the midbe-night stars in many a curious place. And now we part, you for gilded halls and wedding chimes, I to seek a new comrade, and make a fresh start across the beaten track of Bohemia." three steps at a time, and shot in upon Brodeau had never for an instant doubted that this would be the end of it. He mildly approved the conventional conclusion, though not without private regrets of his own. "A girl's eyes have done it," sighed Armand sentimentally. "Of course, of course, the old temptation. But she would have inveigled Anthony out of his hermitage. A sorry time you'll have of it, I foresee, though I honestly congratulate you. It is a thing we must come to sooner or later, and the escapades of youth have their natural end, like all things else. Only lovers believe in eternity, until they have realized the fragility of love itself. It was absurd to imagine you could go on flouting fortune forever, and living in a shanty like this, with a palace ready for you on the other side of the river. But there is consolation for me in the thought that you will give me a big order in commemoration of your marriage, eh, old man?” When it came to parting the young men wrung hands with a sense of more than ordinary separation. For two years had they shared fair and foul weather, and camped together out of doors and under this shabby roof, upon which one was now about to turn his back. The days of merry vagabondage were at an end for Armand, and his face was now towards civilization and respectable responsibilities. He might revisit this scene of pleasant Bohemia, and find things unchanged, but the old spirit would not be with him, and the zest of old enjoyments would be his no "Come back? Yes,' Armand replied sadly; "but I shall feel something like Marius among the ruins of Carthage.' "I'll keep your velvet jacket, and when you are tired of grandeur and lords and dukes, you can drop in here and put it on, and smoke a comfortable t pipe in your old armchair.” Maurice went straightway to the nearest café, and spent a dismal evening, consuming bock after bock, until he felt sufficiently stupefied to face his solitary studio, where he shed furtive tears in contemplation of all his friend's property made over to him as an artist's legacy. Though brimming over with happiness and excitement, Armand himself was not quite free of regret for the relinquished velvet jacket and brushes and boxes, as he made his farewell to wandering by a journey on the top of an omnibus from the Etoile to the Rue de Grenelle, and solaced himself with a cheap cigarette. For one long week did he work dutifully at the bank, inspected books with his uncle, and repressed an inclination to yawn over the dreary discussion of shares and bonds and funds, of vast European projects and policies in jeopardy, and he felt the while a smart of homesickness for the little studio in the Many a merry tramp we've had to- Avenue Victor Hugo. In the evening gether, Armand," said Maurice, and he he dined with his mother, and found felt an odd sensation about his throat consolation for the irksomeness of etiwhile his eyelids pricked queerly. quette in the excellence of the fare. "We've got drunk together on devilish He thought of Marguerite incessantly, bad wine, and pledged ourselves eter- and spoke of her whenever he could, more. 66 but he did not forget Maurice or the forsaken your delightful den. I hear Cooking-stove, on which their dinners How could you, my cousin? The cookin the olden days had so often come to ing-stove, the fishing-rod, the easel, grief. He might sip Burgundy now, yet blouse, and velvet jacket,-all abanhe relished not the less the memory of doned for the less interesting resources the big draughts of beer which he and of our every-day existence!" Maurice had found so delicious. III. Her eyes and voice were full of arch protest, and her smile went to the troubled lad's head, more captivating than wine. "It was for your sake, Marguerite," he answered timidly, in tones dropped to an unquiet murmur. BUT all these pinings and idle regrets were silenced, and gave place to rapturous content the first afternoon on which he walked up the long avenue of his "Permit me, cousin, to retire for the uncle's country-house at Marly. The moment," said Bernard, turning his week of trial was at an end, and he was back deliberately upon his disconcerted now to claim his reward from dear lips. | relative. Everything under the sun seemed to What was it in their exchanged looks, him perfect, and even banks had their in their clasped hands, in Bernard's unown charm, discernible to the happy conscious air of fond proprietorship, in eye. There was a beauty in gold he had Marguerite's half droop towards him of hitherto failed to perceive, and crusty shy surrender, that carried to Armand old gentlemen were the appropriate the conviction of fatal error? He guardians of lovely nymphs. In such a watched his rival departing, and turned mood, there is melody in all things, and a blank face upon the radiant girl whose warmth lies even in frosted starlight. delicious smile had all the eloquence Nothing but the sweetness of life is felt; and trouble of maiden's relinquished its turbidness and accidents, its disap-freedom. She met his white, empty pointments, pains, and stumbles, lie gaze with a glance more full and frank peacefully forgotten in the well of mem- than the one she had just lifted so tenory; and we wish somebody could derly to Bernard Francillon. have told us in some past trouble that understand you, Armand. the future contained for us a moment so sake?" good as this. Mademoiselle is in the garden," a servant informed him, and led the way through halls and salons, down steps running from the long window into a shaded green paradise. And then he heard a fresh voice that he seemed not to have heard for so long, and on hearing it only was his heart made aware how much he had missed it during the past age of privation. "Ah, my cousin Armand!” There was a young man dawdling at her feet in an attitude that sent the red blood to Armand's forehead. This was Bernard Francillon, his other and less sympathetic cousin. The young man jumped up, and measured him in a stare of insolent interrogation, and Marguerite, with a look of divine self-consciousness and a lovely blush, said, very softly: So Armand, you have let yourself be tamed, and you have actually "I don't Why for my He "It was your father's error. thought you loved me, and I, heaven help me! till now I thought so too," he breathed, in a despairing undertone, not able to remove his eyes from her surprised and delicately concerned face. "Poor Armand! I am very sorry," was all she said, but the way in which she held her hand out to him was a mute admission of his miserable error. He lifted the little hand to his lips, and turned from her in silence. The sun that had shone so brightly a moment ago was blotted from the earth, and the music of the birds was harsh discordance, as he wandered among the evening shadows of the woods. All things jarred upon his nerves, until night dropped a veil upon the horrible nakedness of his sorrow. He felt he wore it upon his face for all eyes to see, and he thanked the darkness, as it sped over the starry heavens. Beyond the beautiful valley, where the river flowed, | were so imperfectly informed that the the spires and domes and bridges of murderers of Mr. Burke and Lord EdParis showed through the reddish glim- ward Cavendish remained for some time mer of sunset as through a dusty light. undenounced, if not unsuspected, yet, Soon there would be noise and laughter as soon as it was known that informaupon the crowded boulevards, and a tion was really wanted, and would be flow of carriages making for the the- loyally paid for, the informer was at atres through the flaunting gas-flames; hand, and the hidden assassins were and happy lovers in defiant file would duly arrested, convicted, and executed. be driving towards the Bois. How Even among the purer patriots of 1848 often had he and Maurice watched there was no lack either of information them on foot, as they smoked their evening cigarette, and sighed or laughed as might be their mood. Would he ever have the heart to laugh at lovers again, or laugh at anything, he wondered drearily! And there was no one here to remind him that sorrow, like joy, is evanescent, and that all wounds are cured. Tout lasse, tout casse, tout passe, even pain and broken hearts. Here silence was almost palpable to the touch, like the darkness of nature dropping into sleep. He turned his back upon Paris, and faced the dim country. HANNAH LYNCH. From The Edinburgh Review. THE ranks of Irish treason have never been wanting in traitors to the sacred cause of disaffection. The evidence of that most loyal of transatlantic Fenians known to fame as Major le Caron, and his bold and unblushing revelations of the secrets of the conspirators in two hemispheres before the Parnell Commission in 1889, are still fresh in the public memory. The more commonplace career of the chief informer of 1867, who owned or adopted the singularly incongruous name of Corydon, was familiar to readers of Irish newspapers for some time after the Fenian rising in Dublin about five-and-twenty years ago; and although, in 1881, the government of the day, trusting, perhaps, overmuch to " messages of peace, 1 1. Secret Service under Pitt. By W. J. Fitzpatrick, F.S.A. 8vo. London : 1892. 2. The Sham Squire, and the Informers of 1798. By William J. Fitzpatrick. Third edition, completely recast, with new matter. 8vo. Dublin: 1866. or of informers. Some of the seemingly staunchest hearts in Smith O'Brien's movement of '48, says Mr. Fitzpatrick, were false to their chief and colleagues, and when the crisis came, suggested to the police magistrates that, in order to preserve consistency and keep up the delusion, they ought to be arrested and imprisoned! 2 But at no time did the spy and the informer flourish in greater and more abundant luxuriance than in the good old days before the Union, when Ireland enjoyed her own Legislature in Dublin, and a well-worn path led from the Parliament House in College Green to the Treasury in Lower Castle Yard. From the constitution of an independent Legislative Assembly in 1782 to the Union, eighteen years later, Ireland was distracted by disaffection in every form, was actually visited with rebellion, illorganized and hurriedly undertaken, and was hardly saved from the horrors of civil war by the faithlessness, the corruption, and the shameless treachery of the sworn leaders of the revolt. Of these disgraceful days, and of the strange and secret personages who lived and moved in Ireland, and more especially in Dublin, at that time, Mr. Fitzpatrick has given us a most original and interesting account; and his work, 2 The Sham Squire, p. 327. See also a very curi-" ous letter in the Dublin Irish Times of March 25, 1892, where it is stated, upon apparently good authority, that "every meeting of 'Young Ireland' was known in the Castle half an hour after their secret plans were arranged." "I was enabled," says the writer- an eye-witness-"to warn my friends that every step they took was revealed at once to the Castle. I informed J. B. D., and a not less true and trusted patriot, J. P., son of the C. B., and they laughed, and said it was impossible.' Yet they, like so many in the days of Pitt, were deceived." though wanting in form and arrange- conspiracy; and as he pocketed the salment, and professing to be rather a ary so easily earned, and performed at collection of notes and studies than a his own good pleasure the congenial consecutive narrative, will be found of duties of his irresponsible office, he the utmost value to all future historians who desire to present in their true colors the ways and works of the leading actors in the strange events in Ireland before the Union. The present day is a day of specialists, and Mr. Fitzpatrick is a specialist in spies, the greatest living authority on the secret history of the rebels and informers who flourished in the last decade of the eighteenth century. "The Sham Squire," an account of the life and operations of Francis Higgins and many of his contemporaries, was published by Mr. Fitzpatrick nearly thirty years ago, and the greater part of the information collected in that very interesting little book is republished in the larger and more important work that now lies before us. But the title of his hast volume is by no means as happy as that of his first. "Secret Service" is no doubt a phrase of doubtful signification, but it scarcely describes the venal and impudent treachery of Turner and McNally. And although the introduction of the name of Pitt as the employer or accomplice of Higgins and Magan may please those who denounce the "baseness and blackguardism" of his Irish policy, the great minister was no more concerned with the secret hiswry of the spies employed by the authorities at Dublin Castle than with that of the gentleman who blacked the ministerial shoes in Downing Street, or drank the ministerial port wine at Putney. "Irish Spies and Informers" are the subject of Mr. Fitzpatrick's book, as we purpose that they shall be the subject of the present article. Rebellion in Ireland has commonly been frustrated by rebels, and in the most secret councils of the most select committees the spy or the informer has ever occupied a trusted seat. Most uncompromising of all patriots in his patriotism, most suspicious of the hidden enemy, most terrible in his denunciation of doubtful friends, he tasted at once the sweets of office and the joys of could chuckle at once over the completeness with which he had betrayed his friends, and the incompleteness with which his good nature, his selfinterest, or his mere love of artistic duplicity might have led him to serve his employers. But under all circumstances he took care that he was well paid. He did not, at least, sell his country for nought. The recorded emoluments of these Irish informers were enormous. As to their indirect profits it would be idle to speculate. One Reynolds, a spy of very secondary importance, received on March 4, 1799, a sum of 5,000l. from the Secret Service money, and was further gratified with a secret pension of some hundreds a year. He afterwards obtained the office of British postmaster at Lisbon, the emoluments of which amounted during his four years of service to nearly 6,000l. He was subsequently appointed to more than one well-paid consulship, and at length, retiring in middle life from the public service of his country, he chose Paris as his final place of abode, and enjoyed his well-earned pension to the day of his death, having drawn from the exchequer of a hated government not less in all than 45,000l. is said to have received close on 30,000%. for his truly valuable information, and Magan, who took up the business as a needy barrister, left over 14,000l. to his sister. Higgins, who was not even an informer at first hand, but a species of information agent or spy keeper, began life as a pauper and a "sham squire," and after many years of free and easy living in Dublin, maintaining a reputation for that liberal hospitality so necessary to his success in his profession, died worth no less than 40,000l. Very few were the real squires, or peers of Ireland for the matter of that, who left so considerable a sum of money behind them in the early days of the present century. Armstrong Of all the delusions that possess the mind of the average Englishman as re gards Ireland and the Irish, and the | perquisites sanctioned by the conni delusions are many and great, none is vance of their superiors.2 Clerks in submore universal, and none is more false, ordinate departments, with salaries not than that the Irishman is careless or exceeding 100l. a year, kept handsome indifferent to money. The ordinary houses in town and country, with splenIrishman may not be thrifty, but he is did establishments; insolvent squires acquisitive; he may not be economical, kept open house, and were lavish of but he is parsimonious; he may be un- their wine-merchant's claret; parsimowilling to do business, but he is equally nious curmudgeons accumulated large unwilling to spend money; he may not fortunes; rich usurers acquired old esbe fond of comfort, but he is inordi- tates. There was a great deal of what nately fond of cash. Thus we find that was called pleasure; there was nothing the spies and informers of all grades that any one could call business, and and denominations, of whom Mr. Fitz- the "poor devil," as at all times in Irepatrick writes, took good care that their land, went to the wall. He was plunvaluable services should be obtained dered by those who had nothing better only for valuable consideration; and to plunder, and he was then, as now, a after spending the public money with a pawn in the hands of superior players; free hand in the 1 agreeable discharge of food for political powder in the sordid their public duties, they usually died, strife of party warfare. Such was Irish not as the moralist would describe, in society in the days when rebellion was poverty, obscurity, and remorse, but at least a possibility. But for over with a proud look and a high stomach, ninety years that mitigated form of civil and a very satisfactory balance at their war that now goes by the name of Irish banker's. The rich men in Ireland are politics has rather been a contest of wits generally those who have nothing of than a contest of arms, a great internatheir own. The man of property, as a tional game, in fact, in which, as in the rule, is poor. And in Dublin a hundred modern game of poker, the boldest and years ago it is at least certain that the most unscrupulous player commonly men who lived the most luxuriously wins. Patriotism, according to Dr. were those who lived on public plunder. Johnson, is the last refuge of a scounFor the superior classes, rich sinecures, drel, but in Ireland it is his first thought. flagrant jobs, pensions on the Irish It is his chosen career; it is the profesestablishment; for the middle-class sion in which, if his scoundrelism be at informer, the Secret Service money; for once enriched with ability and adorned the humbler servant of government, with effrontery, he is most certain of mere robbery. The grossest frauds pre- success. To say that treachery was the vailed in almost every department of ever present refuge of a patriot would State. The public stores were plun- be less pointed, but in Ireland it would dered with impunity in open day; the at least be somewhat more exact. And arms, ammunition, and military accou-just as in the world of unscrupulous trements condemned as useless were finance there are always men who seek boldly taken out of one gate of the magazine and brought in at the other, and charged anew to the public account. Journeymen armorers who worked in the arsenal seldom went home to their meals without conveying away a musket, a sword, or brace of pistols, as lawful 66 1 The calling does not seem to have been attended with any special danger. The only instance recorded by Mr. Fitzpatrick of an informer being killed by his compatriots is that of Phillips, a priest, in January, 1796 (p. 173); and he adds that "punishment of informers by death was not of the frequency that was supposed." to make money by the failure of projects which they themselves appear to support, and in whose success they profess to be deeply interested, so in the no less sordid world of Irish disaffection the informer springs into existence on the same day as the plot. Sprung, we should say, rather than springs, for times have changed, and at the present moment in Ireland there is no such thing as treason. The game is played with different cards. There are no in 2 The Sham Squire, p. 205. |