immense furnace which blazed fearfully below them, they remained silent and motionless. Our soldiers, on the other hand, with a horror quite natural in such a case, speedily quitted a burning building whose flames devoured at the same time both friends and enemies, whether alive or dead. Meanwhile, night soon came, and amid its darkness the eight men supposed to have been either crushed to death or burned alive, glided like wandering spectres along the heated walls, and reached in safety the hedge through which their companions had escaped; so that there remained nothing upon the field of battle except the red and smoking house, and around it a few corpses rendered visible by the last flashes of the expiring flame.'-p. 204-214.

We know not that we ever read a more heroic story,—and it is told with a generosity of sentiment highly creditable to General Dermoncourt.

But we must turn to other scenes ;-the Chouans were everywhere defeated. In vain did the courage of the Duchess increase, if it was possible, theirs. In vain did she share the dangers of the field and the painful labours of the hospitals:

'My moveable columns continued their movements on the other side of the Loire, and hunted down the Chouans wherever they appeared. The Duchess of Berri, who would not leave the kingdom, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties made to induce her to do so, had always some one or other of my detachments at her heels. Being thus pursued, the Duchess had never an entire night of sleep; and, when day-light came, danger and fatigue awoke with her.'-pp. 244, 245. At last it was resolved to play a bold and desperate game. The Duchess was to enter Nantes,-her partisans were to follow on a market-day, disguised as peasants,-to seize the castle by a coup-demain-proclaim Nantes the provisional capital of the kingdomerect her Royal Highness's standard, and proclaim her government. In these plans,' says General Dermoncourt, the chiefs calculated on the presence of mind and courage of the Duchess, and in this they were right,-for it was La Vendée which failed the Duchess, and not the Duchess who failed La Vendée.'-(p. 246.) The honest old General has, we think, grown so enamoured of his heroine, that he is here a little unjust to La Vendée ;--it did not fail her-it did more than could have been expected or supposed under such circumstances,-more than it ought; but the plan, though General Dermoncourt thinks it was not deficient in ability, was so absolutely impracticable, that we suspect that it was only proposed for the purpose of inducing the Duchess, who could not otherwise be persuaded to quit the field, to take shelter in Nantes, till an opportunity should occur of getting her out of France. Of this plan, therefore, all that was (or, as we believe, ever intended to be) executed, was the entrance of the Duchess into Nantes. Though the extract be somewhat long, we cannot resist giving the writer's graphic description of this incident :

:

They

'They deliberated some time on the safest mode of entering Nantes. The Duchess closed the debate by stating, that she would enter it on foot, in the dress of a peasant girl, accompanied only by Mademoiselle Eulalie de Kersabiec and M. de Ménars. Mademoiselle de Kersabiec was also dressed as a peasant, and M. de Ménars as a farmer. They had five leagues (twelve miles) to journey on foot. This was on the 16th June. After travelling half an hour in this trim, the thick nailed shoes and worsted stockings, to which the Duchess was not accustomed, hurt her feet. Still she attempted to walk; but, judging that if she continued to wear these shoes and stockings, she should soon be unable to proceed, she seated herself upon the bank of a ditch, took them off, thrust them into her large pockets, and continued her journey barefoot. A moment after, having remarked the peasantgirls who passed her on the road, she perceived that the fineness of her skin, and the aristocratic whiteness of her legs, were likely to betray her; she therefore went to the road-side, took some darkcoloured earth, and after rubbing her legs with it, resumed her walk. She had still four leagues to travel before she reached the place of her destination.

This sight, it must be confessed, was an admirable theme to draw philosophical reflections from those who accompanied her. They beheld a woman who, two years before, had her place of Queen-Mother at the Tuileries, and possessed Chambord and Bagatelle; rode out in a carriage drawn by six horses, with escorts of body-guards resplendnt with gold and silver-who went to the representation of theatrical pieces acted expressly for her, preceded by runners shaking their torches-who filled the theatre with her sole presence, and on her return to her palace, reached her splendid bed-chamber, walking upon double cushions from Persia and Turkey, lest the floor should gall her delicate little feet :-this woman, the only one of her family, perhaps, who had done nothing to deserve her misfortunes, they now saw, still covered with the smoke of the action at Vieillevigne, beset with danger, proscribed, a price set upon her head, and whose only escort and court consisted of an old man and a young girl,-going to seek an asylum from which she might perhaps be shut out, clad in the garments of a peasant, walking barefoot upon the angular sand and sharp pebbles of the road. And it was not she who suffered, but her companions; they had tears in their eyes, she, laughter, jests, and consolation in her mouth. Meanwhile the Duchess had become accustomed to her attire, and the country people on the road did not seem to perceive that the little peasant-woman who tripped lightly by them was any other than her dress indicated. It was already a great point gained to deceive the instinct of penetration peculiar to the inhabitants of this country, and who are rivalled, if not surpassed, in this quality, only by soldiers inured to warfare.

At length Nantes appeared in sight, and the Duchess put on her shoes and stockings to enter the town. On reaching the Pont Pyrmile, she found herself in the midst of a detachment commanded by an

officer

officer formerly in the royal guard, and whom she recognised from having often seen him on duty at her palace. Opposite to the Bouffai somebody tapped the Duchess on the shoulder; she started and turned round. The person guilty of this familiarity was an old apple-woman, who had placed her basket of fruit on the ground, and was unable herself to replace it upon her head. "My good girls," she said, addressing the Duchess and Mademoiselle de Kersabiec, "help me, pray, to take up my basket, and I will give each of you an apple." The Duchess of Berri immediately seized a handle of the basket, made a sign to her companion to take the other, and the load was quickly placed in equilibrium upon the head of the old woman, who was going away without giving the promised reward, when the Duchess seized her by the arm, and said, "Stop, mother, where's my apple?" The old woman having given it to her, she was eating it with an appetite sharpened by a walk of five leagues, when, raising her eyes, they fell upon a placard headed by these three words, in very large lettersSTATE OF SIEGE.

This was the ministerial decree which outlawed four departments of La Vendée, and set a price upon the Duchess's head. She approached the placard and calmly read it through, notwithstanding the remonstrances of Mademoiselle de Kersabiec, who pressed her to hasten to the house where she was expected. But the Duchess replied that the placard concerned herself too nearly for her not to make herself acquainted with its contents. The alarm of her two companions, whilst she was reading it, may easily be imagined.

At length she resumed her walk, and in a few minutes reached the house at which she was expected. There she took off her clothes covered with dirt, which are now preserved there as relics. She soon afterwards proceeded to the residence of Mesdemoiselles Deguigny, Rue Haute-du-Chateau, No. 3, where an apartment was prepared for her, and, within this apartment, a place of concealment. The apartment was nothing but a mansarde (or garret) on the third floor, consisting of two small rooms; and the place of concealment was a recess within an angle closed by the chimney of the innermost room. The iron plate forming the back of the grate was the entrance to the hiding-place, and was opened by a spring.

From a life of the greatest agitation, the Duchess suddenly passed to a state of the most complete inactivity. Her correspondence, which she always wrote herself, served to kill a few hours during the day, but the others seemed to her of dreadful length. She employed them in manual labour very foreign to her habits, and to the habits of those whom she made to share it with her. For instance, with the assistance of M. de Ménars, she entirely pasted on the grey paper which covered the walls of her mansarde. Her most habitual occupation, however, was painting flowers and tapestry, in which she excels. On the least subject of alarm, a bell was rung, which reached from the groundfloor to her bed-chamber, and gave the signal for concealment within the recess.'-p. 244–255.

Here

Here the Duchess was concealed till she was betrayed by an apostate Jew of the name of Deutz,-on the introduction of whose name the General indignantly expresses the repugnance he feels at even mentioning so execrable a wretch

Whom I should never pass in the street without bestowing a horsewhipping upon him, did I not think my horse would be degraded by being afterwards flogged with the same whip.'-pp. 257, 258.

It has been said that this wretch was in a kind of familiarity with the Duchess. General Dermoncourt negatives that calumny completely-Deutz was recommended to her Royal Highness by the Pope as a person whom she might safely employ, and he had several audiences of her at Massa, in the year 1830, but she never appears to have seen him again till he most perfidiously found his way to her concealment at Nantes, in order to betray her-and this interview was on Wednesday the 31st of October. We mention these dates to repel a calumny with which it has been endeavoured to blacken still deeper that unhappy frailty, which, since reading this volume, we more than ever regret and deplore. We shall not follow the General through the successive details of this wretch's perfidy; we will only say that we quite agree with him that the employment of such means, and such a man, does little honour to the characters of MM. de Montalivet and Thiers-their ignoble names, if they should reach posterity, will do so in vile association with that of Deutz. We say nothing of their Royal Master-though he has taken, in his time, among other oaths, that of the Chevalier of the Saint Esprit. We now approach the

last scene.

General Dermoncourt was ordered to surround the house which Deutz had designated. He did this so suddenly that the fugitives had barely time to get into the hiding-place already described. MM. de Ménars and Guibourg, and Mademoiselle de Kersabiec, entered first; the Duchess, last, observing with a smile, when the others offered her precedence, that in a retreat the general always goes last.' She was in the act of closing the aperture when the soldiers entered the room.

We must here suspend the narrative for a moment to state that on the table which the Duchess had hastily left, a letter from Paris was found, on which there is subjoined the following extraordinary

note :

The following is a note by General Dermoncourt: "The Duchess of Berri had agents at Paris among the individuals whom King LouisPhilippe considers the most devoted to him; and these persons gave her information of everything that passed in the offices of the Ministers, and at the Tuileries. It would, indeed, astonish the public, were I to name the party from whom she received the information alluded to; but my doing so would be a denunciation."'

Το

To this the English editor adds

The General, who is the most amiable of men, can with difficulty make up his mind to give pain even to unworthy individuals. Being acquainted with every circumstance connected with the present work, I feel no hesitation in satisfying the curiosity of the English reader by filling up the hiatus left by the General. The writer of the letter informing the Duchess of Berri that she was betrayed and would be arrested if she did not immediately leave Nantes, was M. d'Argout, then Minister of Commerce, who had long made a practice of giving her secret information, and acquainting her with all the secrets of the cabinet of Louis-Philippe.

In the correspondence seized by General Dermoncourt, there were letters implicating several members of the French cabinet, more especially Marshal Soult, the War Minister, a brave and skilful soldier under Napoleon, a fawning hypocrite under the Restoration, and, it seems, a base and perjured traitor under Louis-Philippe. Of course these letters, after their seizure, were forwarded to the proper authority, which happened to be precisely one of the parties implicated.

Among the letters written to the Duchess of Berri, was one from Marshal Soult, stating that he would be "entirely hers" (tout à elle) on condition that she would re-establish, in his favour, the office of Constable of France. Her reply was very characteristic; it was as follows:

"Monsieur le Maréchal,-The sword of Constable of France is to be won only in the field of battle; I await your presence there."

The reader may depend upon the accuracy of these details.'-TR. -pp. 291, 292.

There is nothing new under the sun. This story will remind a well-informed reader of the correspondence of the Whig ministers of King William and Queen Anne, with James II. and his son. Whigs of all nations and all ages will ever be the same. We have little doubt that Deutz is a most zealous liberal.

We need not detail all the protracted and painful search that was made for the Duchess-it was all in vain-the hiding-place (notwithstanding the treachery of the double apostate) baffled soldiers, generals, police, prefect, masons, architects-and at last was only betrayed by the consequences of a most unexpected accident.

After a useless search, which lasted the greater part of the night, the police officers began to despair of success. The prefect, therefore, made the signal of retreat, taking the precaution, however, to leave a sufficient number of men to occupy every room in the suspected house. From the manner in which the sentries were distributed throughout the house, it happened that two gendarmes were stationed in the very room containing the secret recess.

The poor prisoners were therefore obliged to remain very still; though their situation must have been dreadfully painful, in a small closet, only three feet and a half long, and eighteen inches wide at one

extremity,