text:
Twenty Years After/Chapter 26

They rode on in this way for ten minutes. Suddenly two dark forms seemed to separate from the mass, advanced, grew in size, and as they loomed up larger and larger, assumed the appearance of two horsemen.

"Aha!" cried D'Artagnan, "they're coming toward us."

"So much the worse for them," said Porthos.

"Who goes there?" cried a hoarse voice.

The three horsemen made no reply, stopped not, and all that was heard was the noise of swords drawn from the scabbards and the cocking of the pistols with which the two phantoms were armed.

"Bridle in mouth!" said D'Artagnan.

Porthos understood him and he and the lieutenant each drew with the left hand a pistol from their bolsters and cocked it in their turn.

"Who goes there?" was asked a second time. "Not a step forward, or you're dead men."

"Stuff!" cried Porthos, almost choked with dust and chewing his bridle as a horse chews his bit. "Stuff and nonsense; we have seen plenty of dead men in our time."

Hearing these words, the two shadows blockaded the road and by the light of the stars might be seen the shining of their arms.

"Back!" shouted D'Artagnan, "or you are dead!"

Two shots were the reply to this threat; but the assailants attacked their foes with such velocity that in a moment they were upon them; a third pistol-shot was heard, aimed by D'Artagnan, and one of his adversaries fell. As for Porthos, he assaulted the foe with such violence that, although his sword was thrust aside, the enemy was thrown off his horse and fell about ten steps from it.

"Finish, Mouston, finish the work!" cried Porthos. And he darted on beside his friend, who had already begun a fresh pursuit.

"Well?" said Porthos.

"I've broken my man's skull," cried D'Artagnan. "And you - - "

"I've only thrown the fellow down, but hark!"

Another shot of a carbine was heard. It was Musqueton, who was obeying his master's command.

"On! on!" cried D'Artagnan; "all goes well! we have the first throw."

"Ha! ha!" answered Porthos, "behold, other players appear."

And in fact, two other cavaliers made their appearance, detached, as it seemed, from the principal group; they again disputed the road.

This time the lieutenant did not wait for the opposite party to speak.

"Stand aside!" he cried; "stand off the road!"

"What do you want?" asked a voice.

"The duke!" Porthos and D'Artagnan roared out both at once.

A burst of laughter was the answer, but finished with a groan. D'Artagnan had, with his sword, cut in two the poor wretch who had laughed.

At the same time Porthos and his adversary fired on each other and D'Artagnan turned to him.

"Bravo! you've killed him, I think."

"No, wounded his horse only."

"What would you have, my dear fellow? One doesn't hit the bull's-eye every time; it is something to hit inside the ring. Ho! parbleau! what is the matter with my horse?"

"Your horse is falling," said Porthos, reining in his own.

In truth, the lieutenant's horse stumbled and fell on his knees; then a rattling in his throat was heard and he lay down to die. He had received in the chest the bullet of D'Artagnan's first adversary. D'Artagnan swore loud enough to be heard in the skies.

"Does your honor want a horse?" asked Musqueton.

"Zounds! want one!" cried the Gascon.

"Here's one, your honor - - "

"How the devil hast thou two horses?" asked D'Artagnan, jumping on one of them.

"Their masters are dead! I thought they might be useful, so I took them."

Meantime Porthos had reloaded his pistols.

"Be on the qui vive!" cried D'Artagnan. "Here are two other cavaliers."

As he spoke, two horsemen advanced at full speed.

"Ho! your honor!" cried Musqueton, "the man you upset is getting up."

"Why didn't thou do as thou didst to the first man?" said Porthos.

"I held the horses, my hands were full, your honor."

A shot was fired that moment; Musqueton shrieked with pain.

"Ah, sir! I'm hit in the other side! exactly opposite the other! This hurt is just the fellow of the one I had on the road to Amiens."

Porthos turned around like a lion, plunged on the dismounted cavalier, who tried to draw his sword; but before it was out of the scabbard, Porthos, with the hilt of his had struck him such a terrible blow on the head that he fell like an ox beneath the butcher's knife.

Musqueton, groaning, slipped from his horse, his wound not allowing him to keep the saddle.

On perceiving the cavaliers, D'Artagnan had stopped and charged his pistol afresh; besides, his horse, he found, had a carbine on the bow of the saddle.

"Here I am!" exclaimed Porthos. "Shall we wait, or shall we charge?"

"Let us charge them," answered the Gascon.

"Charge!" cried Porthos.

They spurred on their horses; the other cavaliers were only twenty steps from them.

"For the king!" cried D'Artagnan.

"The king has no authority here!" answered a deep voice, which seemed to proceed from a cloud, so enveloped was the cavalier in a whirlwind of dust.

"'Tis well, we will see if the king's name is not a passport everywhere," replied the Gascon.

"See!" answered the voice.

Two shots were fired at once, one by D'Artagnan, the other by the adversary of Porthos. D'Artagnan's ball took off his enemy's hat. The ball fired by Porthos's foe went through the throat of his horse, which fell, groaning.

"For the last time, where are you going?"

"To the devil!" answered D'Artagnan.

"Good! you may be easy, then - you'll get there."

D'Artagnan then saw a musket-barrel leveled at him; he had no time to draw from his holsters. He recalled a bit of advice which Athos had once given him, and made his horse rear.

The ball struck the animal full in front. D'Artagnan felt his horse giving way under him and with his wonderful agility threw himself to one side.

"Ah! this," cried the voice, the tone of which was at once polished and jeering, "this is nothing but a butchery of horses and not a combat between men. To the sword, sir! the sword!"

And he jumped off his horse.

"To the swords! be it so!" replied D'Artagnan; "that is exactly what I want."

D'Artagnan, in two steps, was engaged with the foe, whom, according to custom, he attacked impetuously, but he met this time with a skill and a strength of arm that gave him pause. Twice he was obliged to step back; his opponent stirred not one inch. D'Artagnan returned and again attacked him.

Twice or thrice thrusts were attempted on both sides, without effect; sparks were emitted from the swords like water spouting forth.

At last D'Artagnan thought it was time to try one of his favorite feints in fencing. He brought it to bear, skillfully executed it with the rapidity of lightning, and struck the blow with a force which he fancied would prove irresistible.

The blow was parried.

"'Sdeath!" he cried, with his Gascon accent.

At this exclamation his adversary bounded back and, bending his bare head, tried to distinguish in the gloom the features of the lieutenant.

As to D'Artagnan, afraid of some feint, he still stood on the defensive.

"Have a care," cried Porthos to his opponent; "I've still two pistols charged."

"The more reason you should fire the first!" cried his foe.

Porthos fired; the flash threw a gleam of light over the field of battle.

As the light shone on them a cry was heard from the other two combatants.

"Athos!" exclaimed D'Artagnan.

"D'Artagnan!" ejaculated Athos.

Athos raised his sword; D'Artagnan lowered his.

"Aramis!" cried Athos, "don't fire!"

"Ah! ha! is it you, Aramis?" said Porthos.

And he threw away his pistol.

Aramis pushed his back into his saddle-bags and sheathed his sword.

"My son!" exclaimed Athos, extending his hand to D'Artagnan.

This was the name which he gave him in former days, in their moments of tender intimacy.

"Athos!" cried D'Artagnan, wringing his hands. "So you defend him! And I, who have sworn to take him dead or alive, I am dishonored - and by you!"

"Kill me!" replied Athos, uncovering his breast, "if your honor requires my death."

"Oh! woe is me! woe is me!" cried the lieutenant; "there's only one man in the world who could stay my hand; by a fatality that very man bars my way. What shall I say to the cardinal?"

"You can tell him, sir," answered a voice which was the voice of high command in the battle-field, "that he sent against me the only two men capable of getting the better of four men; of fighting man to man, without discomfiture, against the Comte de la Fere and the Chevalier d'Herblay, and of surrendering only to fifty men!

"The prince!" exclaimed at the same moment Athos and Aramis, unmasking as they addressed the Duc de Beaufort, whilst D'Artagnan and Porthos stepped backward.

"Fifty cavaliers!" cried the Gascon and Porthos.

"Look around you, gentlemen, if you doubt the fact," said the duke.

The two friends looked to the right, to the left; they were encompassed by a troop of horsemen.

"Hearing the noise of the fight," resumed the duke, "I fancied you had about twenty men with you, so I came back with those around me, tired of always running away, and wishing to draw my sword in my own cause; but you are only two."

"Yes, my lord; but, as you have said, two that are a match for twenty," said Athos.

"Come, gentlemen, your swords," said the duke.

"Our swords!" cried D'Artagnan, raising his head and regaining his self-possession. "Never!"

"Never!" added Porthos.

Some of the men moved toward them.

"One moment, my lord," whispered Athos, and he said something in a low voice.

"As you will," replied the duke. "I am too much indebted to you to refuse your first request. Gentlemen," he said to his escort, "withdraw. Monsieur d'Artagnan, Monsieur du Vallon, you are free."

The order was obeyed; D'Artagnan and Porthos then found themselves in the centre of a large circle.

"Now, D'Herblay," said Athos, "dismount and come here."

Aramis dismounted and went to Porthos, whilst Athos approached D'Artagnan.

All four once more together.

"Friends!" said Athos, "do you regret you have not shed our blood?"

"No," replied D'Artagnan; "I regret to see that we, hitherto united, are opposed to each other. Ah! nothing will ever go well with us hereafter!"

"Oh, Heaven! No, all is over!" said Porthos.

"Well, be on our side now," resumed Aramis.

"Silence, D'Herblay!" cried Athos; "such proposals are not to be made to gentlemen such as these. 'Tis a matter of conscience with them, as with us."

"Meantime, here we are, enemies!" said Porthos. "Gramercy! who would ever have thought it?"

D'Artagnan only sighed.

Athos looked at them both and took their hands in his.

"Gentlemen," he said, "this is a serious business and my heart bleeds as if you had pierced it through and through. Yes, we are severed; there is the great, the distressing truth! But we have not as yet declared war; perhaps we shall have to make certain conditions, therefore a solemn conference is indispensable."

"For my own part, I demand it," said Aramis.

"I accept it," interposed D'Artagnan, proudly.

Porthos bowed, as if in assent.

"Let us choose a place of rendezvous," continued Athos, "and in a last interview arrange our mutual position and the conduct we are to maintain toward each other."

"Good!" the other three exclaimed.

"Well, then, the place?"

"Will the Place Royale suit you?" asked D'Artagnan.

"In Paris?"

"Yes."

Athos and Aramis looked at each other.

"The Place Royale - be it so!" replied Athos.

"When?"

"To-morrow evening, if you like!"

"At what hour?"

"At ten in the evening, if that suits you; by that time we shall have returned."

"Good."

"There," continued Athos, "either peace or war will be decided; honor, at all events, will be maintained!"

"Alas!" murmured D'Artagnan, "our honor as soldiers is lost to us forever!"

"D'Artagnan," said Athos, gravely, "I assure you that you do me wrong in dwelling so upon that. What I think of is, that we have crossed swords as enemies. Yes," he continued, sadly shaking his head, "Yes, it is as you said, misfortune, indeed, has overtaken us. Come, Aramis."

"And we, Porthos," said D'Artagnan, "will return, carrying our shame to the cardinal."

"And tell him," cried a voice, "that I am not too old yet for a man of action."

D'Artagnan recognized the voice of De Rochefort.

"Can I do anything for you, gentlemen?" asked the duke.

"Bear witness that we have done all that we could."

"That shall be testified to, rest assured. Adieu! we shall meet soon, I trust, in Paris, where you shall have your revenge." The duke, as he spoke, kissed his hand, spurred his horse into a gallop and disappeared, followed by his troop, who were soon lost in distance and darkness.

D'Artagnan and Porthos were now alone with a man who held by the bridles two horses; they thought it was Musqueton and went up to him.

"What do I see?" cried the lieutenant. "Grimaud, is it thou?"

Grimaud signified that he was not mistaken.

"And whose horses are these?" cried D'Artagnan.

"Who has given them to us?" said Porthos.

"The Comte de la Fere."

"Athos! Athos!" muttered D'Artagnan; "you think of every one; you are indeed a nobleman! Whither art thou going, Grimaud?"

"To join the Vicomte de Bragelonne in Flanders, your honor."

They were taking the road toward Paris, when groans, which seemed to proceed from a ditch, attracted their attention.

"What is that?" asked D'Artagnan.

"It is I - Musqueton," said a mournful voice, whilst a sort of shadow arose out of the side of the road.

Porthos ran to him. "Art thou dangerously wounded, my dear Musqueton?" he said.

"No, sir, but I am severely."

"What can we do?" said D'Artagnan; "we must return to Paris."

"I will take care of Musqueton," said Grimaud; and he gave his arm to his old comrade, whose eyes were full of tears, nor could Grimaud tell whether the tears were caused by wounds or by the pleasure of seeing him again.

D'Artagnan and Porthos went on, meantime, to Paris. They were passed by a sort of courier, covered with dust, the bearer of a letter from the duke to the cardinal, giving testimony to the valor of D'Artagnan and Porthos.

Mazarin had passed a very bad night when this letter was brought to him, announcing that the duke was free and that he would henceforth raise up mortal strife against him.

"What consoles me," said the cardinal after reading the letter, "is that, at least, in this chase, D'Artagnan has done me one good turn - he has destroyed Broussel. This Gascon is a precious fellow; even his misadventures are of use."

The cardinal referred to that man whom D'Artagnan upset at the corner of the Cimetiere Saint Jean in Paris, and who was no other than the Councillor Broussel.

title: Twenty Years After/Chapter 26


text:
Author:George Washington Williams

Works

 * History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880 (1883)
 * A History of Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion (1888)
 * "An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo By Colonel, The Honorable Geo. W. Williams, of the United States of America" (1890)

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title: Author:George Washington Williams


text:
Page:Colymbia (1873).djvu/88

82 It was a considerable time ere I could make out precisely what was taught under this high-sounding name. Indeed the bases of the science do not seem to be very clearly defined, as its principles are couched in such vague and hazy language that they are susceptible of very different explanations, and it is seldom that any two professors agree in their interpretation. Indeed there are endless disputations and discussions among themselves with regard to the very first principles of the science. All contend that a knowledge of transcendental geography is essential for every one, that by it alone can society be held together and kept in the right direction, that without it the bonds of society would be loosened and universal confusion ensue.

The common points of agreement among the professors seem to be these. There exists somewhere—but as no one had ever been there, so no one affected to know where—a vast country, whither all Colymbians would some day go provided they had accurate views respecting the said country. But, as no Colymbian had ever, as far as is known, gone thither, it seems to me that none have fulfilled the primary condition of having a perfect knowledge of it. Opinions vary as to the physical characters of this unknown country, and still more as to the character of its supposed inhabitants and the form of government that obtains there. And yet it is thought indispensable that they should frame their own conduct on the supposed conduct of the inhabitants of this unknown country, and act in conformity with the wishes of its ruler or rulers.

There are certain old books supposed to have been written by persons who had peculiar opportunities of obtaining an insight into the way of life in this terra

title: Page:Colymbia (1873).djvu/88


text:
Twenty Years After/Chapter 27

"Well," said Porthos, seated in the courtyard of the Hotel de la Chevrette, to D'Artagnan, who, with a long and melancholy face, had returned from the Palais Royal; "did he receive you ungraciously, my dear friend?"

"I'faith, yes! a brute, that cardinal. What are you eating there, Porthos?"

"I am dipping a biscuit in a glass of Spanish wine; do the same."

"You are right. Gimblou, a glass of wine."

"Well, how has all gone off?"

"Zounds! you know there's only one way of saying things, so I went in and said, `My lord, we were not the strongest party.'

"`Yes, I know that,' he said, `but give me the particulars.'

"You know, Porthos, I could not give him the particulars without naming our friends; to name them would be to commit them to ruin, so I merely said they were fifty and we were two.

"`There was firing, nevertheless, I heard,' he said; `and your swords - they saw the light of day, I presume?'

"`That is, the night, my lord,' I answered.

"`Ah!' cried the cardinal, `I thought you were a Gascon, my friend?'

"`I am a Gascon,' said I, `only when I succeed.' The answer pleased him and he laughed.

"`That will teach me,' he said, `to have my guards provided with better horses; for if they had been able to keep up with you and if each one of them had done as much as you and your friend, you would have kept your word and would have brought him back to me dead or alive.'"

"Well, there's nothing bad in that, it seems to me," said Porthos.

"Oh, mon Dieu! no, nothing at all. It was the way in which he spoke. It is incredible how these biscuit soak up wine! They are veritable sponges! Gimblou, another bottle."

The bottle was brought with a promptness which showed the degree of consideration D'Artagnan enjoyed in the establishment. He continued:

"So I was going away, but he called me back.

"`You have had three horses foundered or killed?' he asked me.

"`Yes, my lord.'

"`How much were they worth?'"

"Why," said Porthos, "that was very good of him, it seems to me."

"`A thousand pistoles,' I said."

"A thousand pistoles!" Porthos exclaimed. "Oh! oh! that is a large sum. If he knew anything about horses he would dispute the price."

"Faith! he was very much inclined to do so, the contemptible fellow. He made a great start and looked at me. I also looked at him; then he understood, and putting his hand into a drawer, he took from it a quantity of notes on a bank in Lyons."

"For a thousand pistoles?"

"For a thousand pistoles - just that amount, the beggar; not one too many."

"And you have them?"

"They are here."

"Upon my word, I think he acted very generously."

"Generously! to men who had risked their lives for him, and besides had done him a great service?"

"A great service - what was that?"

"Why, it seems that I crushed for him a parliament councillor."

"What! that little man in black that you upset at the corner of Saint Jean Cemetery?"

"That's the man, my dear fellow; he was an annoyance to the cardinal. Unfortunately, I didn't crush him flat. It seems that he came to himself and that he will continue to be an annoyance."

"See that, now!" said Porthos; "and I turned my horse aside from going plump on to him! That will be for another time."

"He owed me for the councillor, the pettifogger!"

"But," said Porthos, "if he was not crushed completely - - "

"Ah! Monsieur de Richelieu would have said, `Five hundred crowns for the councillor.' Well, let's say no more about it. How much were your animals worth, Porthos?"

"Ah, if poor Musqueton were here he could tell you to a fraction."

"No matter; you can tell within ten crowns."

"Why, Vulcan and Bayard cost me each about two hundred pistoles, and putting Phoebus at a hundred and fifty, we should be pretty near the amount."

"There will remain, then, four hundred and fifty pistoles," said D'Artagnan, contentedly.

"Yes," said Porthos, "but there are the equipments."

"That is very true. Well, how much for the equipments?"

"If we say one hundred pistoles for the three - - "

"Good for the hundred pistoles; there remains, then, three hundred and fifty."

Porthos made a sign of assent.

"We will give the fifty pistoles to the hostess for our expenses," said D'Artagnan, "and share the three hundred."

"We will share," said Porthos.

"A paltry piece of business!" murmured D'Artagnan crumpling his note.

"Pooh!" said Porthos, "it is always that. But tell me - - "

"What?"

"Didn't he speak of me in any way?"

"Ah! yes, indeed!" cried D'Artagnan, who was afraid of disheartening his friend by telling him that the cardinal had not breathed a word about him; "yes, surely, he said - - "

"He said?" resumed Porthos.

"Stop, I want to remember his exact words. He said, `As to your friend, tell him he may sleep in peace.'"

"Good, very good," said Porthos; "that signified as clear as daylight that he still intends to make me a baron."

At this moment nine o'clock struck. D'Artagnan started.

"Ah, yes," said Porthos, "there is nine o'clock. We have a rendezvous, you remember, at the Place Royale."

"Ah! stop! hold your peace, Porthos, don't remind me of it; 'tis that which has made me so cross since yesterday. I shall not go."

"Why?" asked Porthos.

"Because it is a grievous thing for me to meet again those two men who caused the failure of our enterprise."

"And yet," said Porthos, "neither of them had any advantage over us. I still had a loaded pistol and you were in full fight, sword in hand."

"Yes," said D'Artagnan; "but what if this rendezvous had some hidden purpose?"

"Oh!" said Porthos, "you can't think that, D'Artagnan!"

D'Artagnan did not believe Athos to be capable of a deception, but he sought an excuse for not going to the rendezvous.

"We must go," said the superb lord of Bracieux, "lest they should say we were afraid. We who have faced fifty foes on the high road can well meet two in the Place Royale."

"Yes, yes, but they took part with the princes without apprising us of it. Athos and Aramis have played a game with me which alarms me. We discovered yesterday the truth; what is the use of going to-day to learn something else?"

"You really have some distrust, then?" said Porthos.

"Of Aramis, yes, since he has become an abbe. You can't imagine, my dear fellow, the sort of man he is. He sees us on the road which leads him to a bishopric, and perhaps will not be sorry to get us out of his way."

"Ah, as regards Aramis, that is another thing," said Porthos, "and it wouldn't surprise me at all."

"Perhaps Monsieur de Beaufort will try, in his turn, to lay hands on us."

"Nonsense! He had us in his power and he let us go. Besides we can be on our guard; let us take arms, let Planchet post himself behind us with his carbine."

"Planchet is a Frondeur," answered D'Artagnan.

"Devil take these civil wars! one can no more now reckon on one's friends than on one's footmen," said Porthos. "Ah! if Musqueton were here! there's a fellow who will never desert me!"

"So long as you are rich! Ah! my friend! 'tis not civil war that disunites us. It is that we are each of us twenty years older; it is that the honest emotions of youth have given place to suggestions of interest, whispers of ambition, counsels of selfishness. Yes, you are right; let us go, Porthos, but let us go well armed; were we not to keep the rendezvous, they would declare we were afraid. Halloo! Planchet! here! saddle our horses, take your carbine."

"Whom are we going to attack, sir?"

"No one; a mere matter of precaution," answered the Gascon.

"You know, sir, that they wished to murder that good councillor, Broussel, the father of the people?"

"Really, did they?" said D'Artagnan.

"Yes, but he has been avenged. He was carried home in the arms of the people. His house has been full ever since. He has received visits from the coadjutor, from Madame de Longueville, and the Prince de Conti; Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Vendome have left their names at his door. And now, whenever he wishes - - "

"Well, whenever he wishes?"

Planchet began to sing:

"Un vent de fronde

S'est leve ce matin;

Je crois qu'il gronde

Contre le Mazarin.

Un vent de fronde

S'est leve ce matin."

"It doesn't surprise me," said D'Artagnan, in a low tone to Porthos, "that Mazarin would have been much better satisfied had I crushed the life out of his councillor."

"You understand, then, monsieur," resumed Planchet, "that if it were for some enterprise like that undertaken against Monsieur Broussel that you should ask me to take my carbine - - "

"No, don't be alarmed; but where did you get all these details?"

"From a good source, sir; I heard it from Friquet."

"From Friquet? I know that name - - "

"A son of Monsieur de Broussel's servant, and a lad that, I promise you, in a revolt will not give away his share to the dogs."

"Is he not a singing boy at Notre Dame?" asked D'Artagnan.

"Yes, that is the very boy; he's patronized by Bazin."

"Ah, yes, I know."

"Of what importance is this little reptile to you?" asked Porthos.

"Gad!" replied D'Artagnan; "he has already given me good information and he may do the same again."

Whilst all this was going on, Athos and Aramis were entering Paris by the Faubourg St. Antoine. They had taken some refreshment on the road and hastened on, that they might not fail at the appointed place. Bazin was their only attendant, for Grimaud had stayed behind to take care of Musqueton. As they were passing onward, Athos proposed that they should lay aside their arms and military costume, and assume a dress more suited to the city.

"Oh, no, dear count!" cried Aramis, "is it not a warlike encounter that we are going to?"

"What do you mean, Aramis?"

"That the Place Royale is the termination to the main road to Vendomois, and nothing else."

"What! our friends?"

"Are become our most dangerous enemies, Athos. Let us be on our guard."

"Oh! my dear D'Herblay!"

"Who can say whether D'Artagnan may not have betrayed us to the cardinal? who can tell whether Mazarin may not take advantage of this rendezvous to seize us?"

"What! Aramis, you think that D'Artagnan, that Porthos, would lend their hands to such an infamy?"

"Among friends, my dear Athos, no, you are right; but among enemies it would be only a stratagem."

Athos crossed his arms and bowed his noble head.

"What can you expect, Athos? Men are so made; and we are not always twenty years old. We have cruelly wounded, as you know, that personal pride by which D'Artagnan is blindly governed. He has been beaten. Did you not observe his despair on the journey? As to Porthos, his barony was perhaps dependent on that affair. Well, he found us on his road and will not be baron this time. Perhaps that famous barony will have something to do with our interview this evening. Let us take our precautions, Athos."

"But suppose they come unarmed? What a disgrace to us."

"Oh, never fear! besides, if they do, we can easily make an excuse; we came straight off a journey and are insurgents, too."

"An excuse for us! to meet D'Artagnan with a false excuse! to have to make a false excuse to Porthos! Oh, Aramis!" continued Athos, shaking his head mournfully, "upon my soul, you make me the most miserable of men; you disenchant a heart not wholly dead to friendship. Go in whatever guise you choose; for my part, I shall go unarmed."

"No, for I will not allow you to do so. 'Tis not one man, not Athos only, not the Comte de la Fere whom you will ruin by this amiable weakness, but a whole party to whom you belong and who depend upon you."

"Be it so then," replied Athos, sorrowfully.

And they pursued their road in mournful silence.

Scarcely had they reached by the Rue de la Mule the iron gate of the Place Royale, when they perceived three cavaliers, D'Artagnan, Porthos, and Planchet, the two former wrapped up in their military cloaks under which their swords were hidden, and Planchet, his musket by his side. They were waiting at the entrance of the Rue Sainte Catharine, and their horses were fastened to the rings of the arcade. Athos, therefore, commanded Bazin to fasten up his horse and that of Aramis in the same manner.

They then advanced two and two, and saluted each other politely.

"Now where will it be agreeable to you that we hold our conference?" inquired Aramis, perceiving that people were stopping to look at them, supposing that they were going to engage in one of those far-famed duels still extant in the memory of the Parisians, and especially the inhabitants of the Place Royale.

"The gate is shut," said Aramis, "but if these gentlemen like a cool retreat under the trees, and perfect seclusion, I will get the key from the Hotel de Rohan and we shall be well suited."

D'Artagnan darted a look into the obscurity of the Place. Porthos ventured to put his head between the railings, to try if his glance could penetrate the gloom.

"If you prefer any other place," said Athos, in his persuasive voice, "choose for yourselves."

"This place, if Monsieur d'Herblay can procure the key, is the best that we can have," was the answer.

Aramis went off at once, begging Athos not to remain alone within reach of D'Artagnan and Porthos; a piece of advice which was received with a contemptuous smile.

Aramis returned soon with a man from the Hotel de Rohan, who was saying to him:

"You swear, sir, that it is not so?"

"Stop," and Aramis gave him a louis d'or.

"Ah! you will not swear, my master," said the concierge, shaking his head.

"Well, one can never say what may happen; at present we and these gentlemen are excellent friends."

"Yes, certainly," added Athos and the other two.

D'Artagnan had heard the conversation and had understood it.

"You see?" he said to Porthos.

"What do I see?"

"That he wouldn't swear."

"Swear what?"

"That man wanted Aramis to swear that we are not going to the Place Royale to fight."

"And Aramis wouldn't swear?"

"No."

"Attention, then!"

Athos did not lose sight of the two speakers. Aramis opened the gate and faced around in order that D'Artagnan and Porthos might enter. In passing through the gate, the hilt of the lieutenant's sword was caught in the grating and he was obliged to pull off his cloak; in doing so he showed the butt end of his pistols and a ray of the moon was reflected on the shining metal.

"Do you see?" whispered Aramis to Athos, touching his shoulder with one hand and pointing with the other to the arms which the Gascon wore under his belt.

"Alas! I do!" replied Athos, with a deep sigh.

He entered third, and Aramis, who shut the gate after him, last. The two serving-men waited without; but as if they likewise mistrusted each other, they kept their respective distances.

title: Twenty Years After/Chapter 27


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 task of supervising the employment of the destitute cotton operatives of Lancashire on the making of roads and other public works, and he contributed some striking articles on the subject to the 'Daily Telegraph.' In 1864 he issued his popular 'History of the Cotton Famine from the fall of Sumter to the passing of the Public Works Act,' which reappeared in a cheap edition next year. In 1867 a tour in the south and east of Europe first aroused his philo-Hellenic sympathies, which were conspicuous in his descriptive letters 'From the Levant,' published in 1868, and to which he was constant through life. In the same year Arnold became first editor of the 'Echo,' a new evening paper, and one of the earliest to be sold for a halfpenny, which attained great success under his control. He resigned the post in 1875, soon after the purchase of the paper by, known as Baron Grant [q. v. Suppl. I], and immediately started on a journey through the East with his wife, riding the whole length of Persia, a distance of more than 1000 miles. His 'Through Persia by Caravan ' (1877), dedicated to Earl and Countess Granville, gives a spirited account of his adventures.

Arnold's interests were divided between politics and journalism. A staunch radical, he studied with attention current social and agrarian problems, and contributed frequently to the leading reviews. Articles and pamphlets by him were collected into a volume, entitled 'Social Politics' (1878), in which he warmly advocated the reform of the land laws and the political enfranchisement of women. He was in sympathy with the movement in favour of the nationalisation of land, and in 1885 was elected chairman of the Free Land League.

Meanwhile Arnold's ambition to enter parliament had been gratified. After contesting unsuccessfully the borough of Huntingdon in the liberal interest in 1873, he was returned in 1880 as radical member for Salford. While acting with the radical wing of his party on questions of home politics, Arnold frequently criticised with vigour and independence the government's conduct of foreign affairs. In 1880 he became chairman of the Greek committee, in succession to Sir Charles Dilke, and he was active in urging the claims of the Hellenic kingdom to an extension of territory in accordance with the suggestion of the treaty of Berlin. In 1873 the King of Greece had conferred on him the golden cross of the Order of the Saviour. In the House of Commons he made his mark as an effective speaker in debates on the franchise. On 21 March 1882 his proposal of a uniform franchise and a redistribution of seats was approved by the house (Hansard, 3 S. cclxvii. 1443, 1532). In 1883 he moved for an elaborate return of electoral statistics, which influenced the reform bill of 1884. At the general election of 1885 Arnold was defeated in the newly formed division of North Salford. He stood again there in 1892 as a supporter of home rule, with the same result, and he was defeated in 1892 for North Dorset. He did not re-enter the House of Commons. As a liberal imperialist Arnold gradually lost sympathy with the official policy of the liberal party, and in 1900 he opposed the views of Sir [q. v. Suppl. II] on the conduct of the South African war.

Abandoning party politics, Arnold devoted his energies to problems of municipal government. In 1889, on the formation of the London county council, he was elected an alderman for six years; he was re-elected in 1895 for three, and again in 1898 for six years. On 12 March 1895 he was chosen chairman, and was re-elected on 10 March 1896, thus enjoying the unique distinction of holding the office for more than one year. On 18 July 1895 he was knighted, and Cambridge bestowed on him the hon. degree of LL.D. in 1897. He died at 45 Kensington Park Gardens on 20 May 1902, and was buried at Gravesend. In 1867 he married Amelia, only daughter of Captain H. B. Hyde, 96th regiment, of Castle Hyde, co. Cork, who survived him without issue. She founded a scholarship in his memory at Girton College, Cambridge, and a brass memorial tablet has been placed there.

ARNOLD, EDWIN (1832–1904), poet and journalist, born at Gravesend on 10 June 1832, was second son of Robert Coles Arnold of Whartons, Framfield, and elder brother of Sir  [q. v. Suppl. II]. Educated at King's School, Rochester, and at King's College, London, where he was a friendly rival of F. W. (Dean) Farrar (1850-1), Edwin obtained a scholarship at University College, Oxford, in 1851 and graduated B.A. in 1854 and M.A. in 1856. Although he won only a third class in the final classical school, he read Greek poetry with enthusiasm, and in 1852


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Rh incognita and into the wishes of its ruler. But the language of these old books is extremely vague, and often quite contradictory; and even when any distinct intimation of the practices of the unknown people is given, they are obviously so utterly unsuited to the circumstances of the Colymbians, that any imitation of them would be impossible or, at least, very undesirable. So that these books, though theoretically held to be authoritative, are practically discarded, and each professor excogitates for himself a line of conduct which he boldly asserts is pleasing to the ruler of the unknown country, and which is more or less in conformity with the habits of his audience, though it bears no sort of resemblance to, any thing the books tell about the customs of the unknown land, nay, is sometimes the exact opposite of these.

It was, indeed, no easy matter to adapt rules of life framed for a terrestrial people to the regulation of the conduct of an aquatic race. Thus, for example, one of the best authenticated customs of the unknown country is the wearing of long flowing robes, but it is impossible to wear such robes in the water with any comfort. The difficulty is usually evaded by saying that the wearing of long robes is only to be understood "figuratively;" and, indeed, this term is employed to smooth many other difficulties in the teaching of transcendental geography. Whenever a habit of the unknown people is inapplicable to the circumstances of the Colymbians, the professors generally tell their hearers that it is to be understood "figuratively," and that they are to imitate the custom in a "figurative" manner. I am not aware that they or their hearers usually attach any precise meaning to the expression "figuratively," but the use of it

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 he devoted much time and conscientious labour, the conflicting influences of his early training were often apparent.

In 1881 Armstrong was appointed director for art at the South Kensington (now Victoria and Albert) Museum in succession to Sir Edward J. Poynter, R.A., and he promptly made his influence felt on the methods of teaching. He held that so rarely were the talents of the craftsman and designer to be found united in the same pupil, that it was the duty of technical schools to recognise the independence of the two capacities, while applying art to industry in every branch of teaching. Before his appointment to South Kensington he had guided and instructed Miss Jekyll in her efforts to establish at Chelsea a school for art needlework for the first time in this country, efforts which were amply justified by the results. In his official capacity he continued to work on the same lines. He warmly supported the efforts of [q. v. Suppl. II] to supply art students with an adequate representation of antique sculpture, and developed and carried out the plans of his predecessor (Sir) Edward Poynter, for a museum of casts. To his initiative also was due the revival of the art of English enamelling, under Professor Dalpeyrat in 1886. He was, too, a warm supporter of the School of Art Wood-carving, which, though not officially countenanced or aided by the department, received the active support of its chief, Sir [q. v. Suppl. II], to whose place as chairman of the committee Armstrong succeeded in 1902. But it was by the personal interest which he took in the pupils' work, scattered though it was all over the country, that Armstrong's services to art and its application to industry must be gauged. He made himself acquainted with the requirements of each district, the special aptitudes of the students and the lines on which they needed help and guidance. It was owing to Armstrong's insistence that the Victoria and Albert Museum possesses the reproduction to scale of the Camerino of Isabelle d'Este, the Appartamento Borgia in the Vatican, the dome of the Chapel of St. Peter Martyr at Milan, and the chief room of the Palazzio Madama at Rome and other works works representing the highest period of the Italian renaissance and invaluable to students of decorative art. With the same object he applied himself to the acquisition of works of art for the museum having an educational value or bearing upon the development of artistic taste and feeling. His colloquial knowledge of foreign languages, combined with an attractive personality, behind which lay a shrewd sense of business, enabled him not only to purchase and acquire for the museum many important works, but to establish friendly relations with the directors and officials of similar museums on the continent, and to attract them to this country to compare and explain their methods. Armstrong retired from South Kensington in 1898, when he was made C.B. Thereupon he took up painting again, and devoted himself especially to the execution of a mural tablet in plaster and copper which was placed in the church at Abbots Langley to the memory of his only child the subjects of the panels being a Riposo and Christ and the doctors.

Armstrong died suddenly at Abbots Langley on 24 April 1911, and was buried there. On 22 April 1881 he married Mary Alice, daughter of Colonel Brine of Shaldon, Devon.

 ARNOLD, ARTHUR (1833–1902), radical politician and writer, born on 28 May 1833, at Gravesend, Kent, was third son of the three sons and three daughters of Robert Coles Arnold, J.P., of Whartons, Framfield, Sussex, by his wife Sarah, daughter of Daniel Pizzi of Clement's Hall, Rochford, Essex. Sir [q. v. Suppl. II] was an elder brother. Owing to delicate health, Arnold, whose full Christian names were Robert Arthur, was educated at home, and subsequently adopted the profession of surveyor and land agent. He was professionally engaged on proposals connected with the construction of the Thames embankment; and in 1861 he issued a pamphlet, entitled 'The Thames Embankment and the Wharf Holders,' in which he supported the adoption of the scheme of (Sir) [q. v. Suppl. I]. Cherishing literary ambitions, he produced in his leisure two sensational novels, 'Ralph; or, St. Sepulchre's and St. Stephen's' (1861) and 'Hever Court' (1867), the latter appearing as a serial in 'Once a Week.'

In 1863, under the Public Works (Manufacturing Districts) Act, Arnold was appointed by [q. v.], then president of the poor law board, assistant commissioner and subsequently government inspector of public works. For three years he was engaged on the difficult


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 operations around Delhi. On the suppression of the mutiny he was appointed orderly officer at Addiscombe Military College, a post which he occupied till the closing of that institution in 1861, when he retired from the army with the rank of captain. In 1866 he took up the duties of secretary and registration agent to the Westminster Conservative Association, and his powers of work and organisation were largely responsible for the defeat of [q. v.] by [q. v.] in November 1868. After acting for a short time as financial manager of Watney's brewery, he was offered in 1871 the editorship and management of the 'Globe' newspaper, then in the hands of a small conservative syndicate of which Mr. George Cubitt, afterwards Lord Ashcombe, was the leading member. The paper had been run for some years past at a heavy financial loss, but Captain Armstrong, though without any previous experience of journalism, was an excellent man of business with a keen political instinct. He rapidly raised the paper from the position of a mere derelict to that of a valuable property, and he made it one of the most thorough-going and influential supporters of Disraeli in the metropolitan press; down to his death it remained the typical organ of the militant conservative school. As an acknowledgment of his labours and success the sole property of the 'Globe' was made over to him by the owners in 1875, and in 1882 he acquired a large interest in the 'People,' a Sunday conservative paper with a large circulation among the working classes. Thanks to these joint ventures Armstrong acquired a handsome fortune, but he took no part in public or political affairs outside the columns of his paper. Perhaps the best remembered incident in connection with his editorship of the 'Globe' was the disclosure in its pages, on 30 May 1878, of the terms of the Salisbury-Schouvaloff Treaty. A summary of that document had been brought to the paper by an occasional contributor, [q. v.], to whom the foreign office had given employment as an emergency 'writer.' The official denial of its correctness was followed by the publication in the same paper on 14 June of the full text, which completely vindicated Marvin's accuracy. Proceedings were instituted against the latter on the part of the government, but were speedily abandoned. In 1892 Armstrong received a baronetcy in recognition of his services to the unionist party; he had relinquished the editorship of the 'Globe' in 1889, and in 1899 the control of the paper passed to George Elliot, his second surviving son, who succeeded to the baronetcy. He died on 20 April 1907, after a long illness, and was buried at Woking. He married on 2 Feb. 1865 Alice Fitzroy, daughter of the Rev. Charles Joseph Furlong, who survived him. His eldest son, Arthur Reginald, lieutenant 19th Hussars, died at Secunderabad 1 Nov. 1898. A portrait in oils by Herkomer belongs to his widow. A cartoon portrait by 'Spy' appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1894.

ARMSTRONG, THOMAS (1832–1911), artist, born at Fallowfield, Manchester, on 19 Oct. 1832, was eldest son of Thomas Armstrong. Educated at a private school at Tarvin, near Chester, he was originally intended for business in Manchester. His tastes, however, led him to take up drawing under Mr. Crazier, of the Manchester Fine Art Academy. Deciding to adopt painting as a profession, he went to Paris in 1853, contemporaneously with du Maurier, Poynter, Lamont, and Whistler. At first he worked in the Académie of Suisse, who had been for many years a prisoner of war at Dartmoor and on his release had set up an art class in Paris, which the principal painters of the Restoration period from Ingres onwards had frequented. Armstrong subsequently entered the atelier of Ary Scheffer, who greatly influenced his style and method of work. In the summer he joined Millet, Bodmer, and Charles Jacque at Barbizon, and from them learnt much of which he made profitable use in his work in Algiers (1858-9) and subsequently on the Riviera (1870-2). Meanwhile he had studied in the Académie Royale of Antwerp under Van Lerius (1855-6), and in 1860 he was joined by du Maurier at Düsseldorf. There Professor Eduard Bendemann had recently succeeded F. W. Schadow, who had brought from Rome to Germany the traditions of Renaissance art. On his return to England Armstrong devoted himself to decorative painting in houses in the north, and on more than one occasion associated with his work that of his friend [q. v. ], whom he was the means of bringing into public notice. In 1864 he definitely fixed himself in London, exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1865 to 1877, and subsequently up to 1881 at the Grosvenor Gallery. His landscape painting was distinguished by its fidelity and poetic feeling, but in his figure pieces, to which


text: Author talk:John Donohoe FitzGerald

title: Author talk:John Donohoe FitzGerald


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  [q. v. Suppl. II]. Subsequently, at Mr. Leigh's Academy in Maddox Street, he came to know J. R. Clayton, designer of stained glass windows, and his future brother-in-law Henry Tanworth Wells [q. v. Suppl. II]. Later he was employed at Messrs. Hunt & Roskell's factory of gold and silver work, enjoyed the occasional tuition of, R.A. [q. v.], and at the same time joined the Royal Academy schools. Finally he became designer in chief to Hunt & Roskell, and in that capacity did a great deal of work in and for metal: designing, modelling, and chasing in gold, silver, and bronze. His style was influenced by that of Vechté, the great French silver-chaser, who was then in England. Among Armstead's works in metal the most important are a ‘Testimonial (the Shakespeare Cup) to Charles Kean,’ the ‘St. George's Vase,’ the ‘Tennyson Cup’ (for which he was premiated at the Paris Exhibition of 1855), the ‘Packington Shield,’ and the ‘Outram Shield,’ now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Save for a brief engagement by Hancock's firm of like character, he remained with Hunt & Roskell till 1863, when he left to devote himself exclusively to sculpture. Armstead had already practised that art in his leisure, and had won two Art Union prizes (for ‘Satan Dismayed’ and ‘The Temptation of Eve’), besides designing external mural decoration for Evelyn Shirley's mansion at Ettington, Warwickshire. A short visit to Italy in 1863–4 was followed by an introduction to Sir Gilbert Scott. Scott soon employed Armstead on the Albert Memorial, and thenceforth his position was assured. From his early tutor, Bailey, he derived some of that over-suavity of style which marked the early Victorian school of modelling, of which John Gibson was perhaps the most typical exemplar. To a certain extent, however, Armstead now rose above the tradition in which he had been reared, and his later works show little of the fluid modelling and superficial elegance which characterised his master. He was industrious and business-like; one commission always led to another, and down nearly to the end of his life he was one of the best employed sculptors of his time. Armstead's most important works are the marble reliefs on the south and east sides of the podium to the Albert Memorial and four bronze statues—rhetoric, astronomy, chemistry, and medicine—on the same structure; the external sculpture on the colonial office, Whitehall; the reredos in Westminster Abbey; the fountain in the forecourt of King's College, Cambridge; the memorial to [q. v.] in the central hall of the law courts, and the effigies of Bishop Wilberforce in Winchester Cathedral and of Bishop Ollivant in Llandaff Cathedral. Armstead executed a few imaginative works such as ‘Ariel,’ ‘Hero and Leander,’ ‘The Ever-reigning Queen’ (his diploma work), and ‘Remorse.’ The last named was bought by the Chantrey trustees and is now in the Tate Gallery.

Armstead was elected A.R.A. on 16 Jan. 1875, and R.A. on 18 Dec. 1879. He was a loyal and industrious servant of the Academy and extremely popular as a man. He taught in the Academy schools from 1875 till near his death. He gave proof of unusually fine taste as an arranger of works of art when it became his turn to place the sculpture in the annual exhibitions. He also arranged the British sculpture in the Paris Exhibition of 1900. He died at his house, 52 Circus Road, St. John's Wood, on 4 Dec. 1905.

Armstead married, on 9 Sept. 1857, Sarah, daughter of Henry Tanworth Wells, and sister of {{DNB lkpl|year=12|Wells, Henry Tanworth|Henry Tanworth Wells, R.A. [q. v. Suppl. II]; he had issue three daughters and one son. A portrait, painted in 1878 by his brother-in-law Wells, is, with a bust executed by W. R. Colton, A.R.A., in 1902, in the possession of his son, Dr. H. W. Armstead. A second portrait, painted by Sir Hubert von Herkomer, R.A., in 1902, belongs to his daughter, Miss C. W. Armstead. {{smaller block|[Henry Hugh Armstead, R.A., by his daughter, Miss C. W. Armstead [1906]; The Times, 6 Dec. 1905; Men and Women of the Time, 1899; private information.]}} {{DNB WA}}

ARMSTRONG, {{sc|Sir}} GEORGE CARLYON HUGHES, first baronet (1836–1907), journalist and newspaper proprietor, younger son of Colonel George Craven Armstrong, of the East India Company's army, and of Georgianna, daughter of Captain Philip Hughes, was born at Lucknow on 20 July 1836. He was privately educated and was nominated to a military cadetship in the company's service in the year 1855. During the Indian Mutiny he was attached to the 59th Bengal native infantry, and afterwards to Stokes's Pathan horse, a newly raised regiment of native irregulars. As second in command of the latter he was dangerously wounded in the course of the


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The New International Encyclopædia/Miquel, Johannes von

MIQUEL, mḗ-kĕl', (1829-1901). A German statesman, born in Neuenhaus, Hanover, of a family of French émigrés, and educated for the bar at Heidelberg and Göttingen. In his student days he was a rabid revolutionist and something of a Socialist, but when the period of reaction set in he soon forsook his earlier sentiments. His practice in Göttingen was very successful, and in 1864 he was elected a member of the Hanoverian Diet, and in 1865 Burgomaster of Osnabrück. Removing to Berlin in 1870, he was a director of the Diskontogesellschaft until 1873, and then president of its advisory board until 1876. Then he was again made Chief Burgomaster of Osnabrück, and in 1880 of Frankfort-on-the-Main. But his greater field of usefulness was in the Prussian House of Deputies and in the Imperial Diet. There, as in the Prussian House of Lords, of which he was ex-officio a member as Burgomaster of Frankfort, he was a leader of the National Liberal Party and one of Bismarck's most able and forceful lieutenants. In 1890 he became Prussian Minister of Finance, and was hailed as the ‘Emperor's man,’ no doubt to reassure the country in face of its fear that the new Imperial policy was to be merely reactionary. In this office, which Miquel held up to a few months before his death, he showed himself an able financier, and a bold reformer in his attempt to liberate the Imperial Treasury from depending on the contributions of the various States. As a politician he was an opportunist driven to intrigue with any party and, above all, to any sacrifice of conviction to the policy of the Kaiser, in the hope that he might be made Chancellor. But if he was unsuccessful in his programme of Imperial finance, in his more proper sphere of Prussian finance, by playing somewhat into the hands of the Agrarian Party, he secured the adoption of a new tax system, which greatly benefited the working classes and at the same time tremendously increased the revenue. On his Prussian policy, consult: Zedlitz und Neukirch, “Miquel als Finanz- und Staatsminister,” in Preussische Jahrbücher (1901).


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An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo By Colonel, The Honorable Geo. W. Williams, of the United States of America

Good and Great Friend,

I have the honour to submit for your Majesty’s consideration some reflections respecting the Independent State of Congo, based upon a careful study and inspection of the country and character of the personal Government you have established upon the African Continent.

It afforded me great pleasure to avail myself of the opportunity afforded me last year, of visiting your State in Africa; and how thoroughly I have been disenchanted, disappointed and disheartened, it is now my painful duty to make known to your Majesty in plain but respectful language. Every charge which I am about to bring against your Majesty’s personal Government in the Congo has been carefully investigated; a list of competent and veracious witnesses, documents, letters, official records and data has been faithfully prepared, which will be deposited with Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, until such time as an International Commission can be created with power to send for persons and papers, to administer oaths, and attest the truth or falsity of these charges.

There were instances in which Mr. HENRY M. STANLEY sent one white man, with four or five Zanzibar soldiers, to make treaties with native chiefs. The staple argument was that the white man’s heart had grown sick of the wars and rumours of war between one chief and another, between one village and another; that the white man was at peace with his black brother, and desired to “confederate all African tribes” for the general defense and public welfare. All the sleight-of-hand tricks had been carefully rehearsed, and he was now ready for his work. A number of electric batteries had been purchased in London, and when attached to the arm under the coat, communicated with a band of ribbon which passed over the palm of the white brother’s hand, and when he gave the black brother a cordial grasp of the hand the black brother was greatly surprised to find his white brother so strong, that he nearly knocked him off his feet in giving him the hand of fellowship. When the native inquired about the disparity of strength between himself and his white brother, he was told that the white man could pull up trees and perform the most prodigious feats of strength. Next came the lens act. The white brother took from his pocket a cigar, carelessly bit off the end, held up his glass to the sun and complaisantly smoked his cigar to the great amazement and terror of his black brother. The white man explained his intimate relation to the sun, and declared that if he were to request him to burn up his black brother’s village it would be done. The third act was the gun trick. The white man took a percussion cap gun, tore the end of the paper which held the powder to the bullet, and poured the powder and paper into the gun, at the same time slipping the bullet into the sleeve of the left arm. A cap was placed upon the nipple of the gun, and the black brother was implored to step off ten yards and shoot at his white brother to demonstrate his statement that he was a spirit, and, therefore, could not be killed. After much begging the black brother aims the gun at his white brother, pulls the trigger, the gun is discharged, the white man stoops. . . and takes the bullet from his shoe!

By such means as these, too silly and disgusting to mention, and a few boxes of gin, whole villages have been signed away to your Majesty.

When I arrived in the Congo, I naturally sought for the results of the brilliant programme: “fostering care”, “benevolent enterprise”, an “honest and practical effort” to increase the knowledge of the natives “and secure their welfare”. 1 had never been able to conceive of Europeans, establishing a government in a tropical country, without building a hospital; and yet from the mouth of the Congo River to its head-waters, here at the seventh cataract, a distance of 1,448 miles, there is not a solitary hospital for Europeans, and only three sheds for sick Africans in the service of the State, not fit to be occupied by a horse. Sick sailors frequently die on board their vessels at Banana Point; and if it were not for the humanity of the Dutch Trading Company at that place—who have often opened their private hospital to the sick of other countries—many more might die. There is not a single chaplain in the employ of your Majesty’s Government to console the sick or bury the dead. Your white men sicken and die in their quarters or on the caravan road, and seldom have Christian burial. With few exceptions, the surgeons of your Majesty’s Government have been gentlemen of professional ability, devoted to duty, but usually left with few medical stores and no quarters in which to treat their patients. The African soldiers and labourers of your Majesty’s Government fare worse than the whites, because they have poorer quarters, quite as bad as those of the natives; and in the sheds, called hospitals, they languish upon a bed of bamboo poles without blankets, pillows or any food different from that served to them when well, rice and fish.

I was anxious to see to what extent the natives had “adopted the fostering care” of your Majesty’s “benevolent enterprise” (?), and I was doomed to bitter disappointment. Instead of the natives of the Congo “adopting the fostering care” of your Majesty’s Government, they everywhere complain that their land has been taken from them by force; that the Government is cruel and arbitrary, and declare that they neither love nor respect the Government and its flag. Your Majesty’s Government has sequestered their land, burned their towns, stolen their property, enslaved their women and children, and committed other crimes too numerous to mention in detail. It is natural that they everywhere shrink from “the fostering care” your Majesty’s Government so eagerly proffers them.

There has been, to my absolute knowledge, no “honest and practical effort made to increase their knowledge and secure their welfare.” Your Majesty’s Government has never spent one franc for educational purposes, nor instituted any practical system of industrialism. Indeed the most unpractical measures have been adopted against the natives in nearly every respect; and in the capital of your Majesty’s Government at Boma there is not a native employed. The labour system is radically unpractical; the soldiers and labourers of your Majesty’s Government are very largely imported from Zanzibar at a cost of £10 per capita, and from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Accra and Lagos at from £1 to £1/10 per capita. These recruits are transported under circumstances more cruel than cattle in European countries. They eat their rice twice a day by the use of their fingers; they often thirst for water when the season is dry; they are exposed to the heat and rain, and sleep upon the damp and filthy decks of the vessels often so closely crowded as to lie in human ordure. And, of course, many die.

Upon the arrival of the survivors in the Congo they are set to work as labourers at one shilling a day; as soldiers they are promised sixteen shillings per month, in English money, but are usually paid off in cheap handkerchiefs and poisonous gin. The cruel and unjust treatment to which these people are subjected breaks the spirits of many of them, makes them distrust and despise your Majesty’s Government. They are enemies, not patriots.

There are from sixty to seventy officers of the Belgian army in the service of your Majesty’s Government in the Congo of whom only about thirty are at their post; the other half are in Belgium on furlough. These officers draw double pay—as soldiers and as civilians. It is not my duty to criticise the unlawful and unconstitutional use of these officers coming into the service of this African State. Such criticism will come with more grace from some Belgian statesman, who may remember that there is no constitutional or organic relation subsisting between his Government and the purely personal and absolute monarchy your Majesty has established in Africa. But I take the liberty to say that many of these officers are too young and inexperienced to be entrusted with the difficult work of dealing with native races. They are ignorant of native character, lack wisdom, justice, fortitude and patience. They have estranged the natives from your Majesty’s Government, have sown the seed of discord between tribes and villages, and some of them have stained the uniform of the Belgian officer with murder, arson and robbery. Other officers have served the State faithfully, and deserve well of their Royal Master.

From these general observations I wish now to pass to specific charges against your Majesty’s Government.

FIRST.—Your Majesty’s Government is deficient in the moral military and financial strength, necessary to govern a territory o 1,508,000 square miles, 7,251 miles of navigation, and 31,694 square miles of lake surface. In the Lower Congo River there is but One post, in the cataract region one. From Leopoldville to N’Gombe, a distance of more than 300 miles, there is not a single soldier or civilian. Not one out of every twenty State-officials know the language of the natives, although they are constantly issuing laws, difficult even for Europeans, and expect the natives to comprehend and obey them. Cruelties of the most astounding character are practised by the natives, such as burying slaves alive in the grave of a dead chief, cutting off the heads of captured warriors in native combats, and no effort is put forth by your Majesty’s Government to prevent them. Between 800 and 1,000 slaves are sold to be eaten by the natives of the Congo State annually; and slave raids, accomplished by the most cruel and murderous agencies, are carried on within the territorial limits of your Majesty’s Government which is impotent. There are only 2,300 soldiers in the Congo.

SECOND.—Your Majesty’s Government has established nearly fifty posts, consisting of from two to eight mercenary slave-soldiers from the East Coast. There is no white commissioned officer at these posts; they are in charge of the black Zanzibar soldiers, and the State expects them not only to sustain themselves, but to raid enough to feed the garrisons where the white men are stationed. These piratical, buccaneering posts compel the natives to furnish them with fish, goats, fowls, and vegetables at the mouths of their muskets; and whenever the natives refuse to feed these vampires, they report to the main station and white officers come with an expeditionary force and burn away the homes of the natives. These black soldiers, many of whom are slaves, exercise the power of life and death. They are ignorant and cruel, because they do not comprehend the natives; they are imposed upon them by the State. They make no report as to the number of robberies they commit, or the number of lives they take; they are only required to subsist upon the natives and thus relieve your Majesty’s Government of the cost of feeding them. They are the greatest curse the country suffers now.

THIRD.—Your Majesty’s Government is guilty of violating its contracts made with its soldiers, mechanics and workmen, many of whom are subjects of other Governments. Their letters never reach home.

FOURTH.—The Courts of your Majesty’s Government are abortive, unjust, partial and delinquent. I have personally witnessed and examined their clumsy operations. The laws printed and circulated in Europe “for the Protection of the blacks” in the Congo, are a dead letter and a fraud. I have heard an officer of the Belgian Army pleading the cause of a white man of low degree who had been guilty of beating and stabbing a black man, and urging race distinctions and prejudices as good and sufficient reasons why his client should be adjudged innocent. I know of prisoners remaining in custody for six and ten months because they were not judged. I saw the white servant of the Governor-General, CAMILLE JANSSEN, detected in stealing a bottle of wine from a hotel table. A few hours later the Procurer-General searched his room and found many more stolen bottles of wine and other things, not the property of servants. No one can be prosecuted in the State of Congo without an order of the Governor-General, and as he refused to allow his servant to be arrested, nothing could be done. The black servants in the hotel, where the wine had been stolen, had been often accused and beaten for these thefts, and now they were glad to be vindicated. But to the surprise of every honest man, the thief was sheltered by the Governor General of your Majesty’s Government.

FIFTH—Your Majesty’s Government is excessively cruel to its prisoners, condemning them, for the slightest offences, to the chain gang, the like of which can not be seen in any other Government in the civilized or uncivilized world. Often these ox-chains eat into the necks of the prisoners and produce sores about which the flies circle, aggravating the running wound; so the prisoner is constantly worried. These poor creatures are frequently beaten with a dried piece of hippopotamus skin, called a “chicote”, and usually the blood flows at every stroke when well laid on. But the cruelties visited upon soldiers and workmen are not to be compared with the sufferings of the poor natives who, upon the slightest pretext, are thrust into the wretched prisons here in the Upper River. I cannot deal with the dimensions of these prisons in this letter, but will do so in my report to my Government.

SIXTH.—Women are imported into your Majesty’s Government for immoral purposes. They are introduced by two methods, viz., black men are dispatched to the Portuguese coast where they engage these women as mistresses of white men, who pay to the procurer a monthly sum. The other method is by capturing native women and condemning them to seven years’ servitude for some imaginary crime against the State with which the villages of these women are charged. The State then hires these woman out to the highest bidder, the officers having the first choice and then the men. Whenever children are born of such relations, the State maintains that the women being its property the child belongs to it also. Not long ago a Belgian trader had a child by a slave-woman of the State, and he tried to secure possession of it that he might educate it, but the Chief of the Station where he resided, refused to be moved by his entreaties. At length he appealed to the Governor-General, and he gave him the woman and thus the trader obtained the child also. This was, however, an unusual case of generosity and clemency; and there is only one post that I know of where there is not to be found children of the civil and military officers of your Majesty’s Government abandoned to degradation; white men bringing their own flesh and blood under the lash of a most cruel master, the State of Congo.

SEVENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government is engaged in trade and commerce, competing with the organised trade companies of Belgium, England, France, Portugal and Holland. It taxes all trading companies and exempts its own goods from export-duty, and makes many of its officers ivory-traders, with the promise of a liberal commission upon all they can buy or get for the State. State soldiers patrol many villages forbidding the natives to trade with any person but a State official, and when the natives refuse to accept the price of the State, their goods are seized by the Government that promised them “protection”. When natives have persisted in trading with the trade-companies the State has punished their independence by burning the villages in the vicinity of the trading houses and driving the natives away.

EIGHTH.—Your Majesty’s Government has violated the General Act of the Conference of Berlin by firing upon native canoes; by confiscating the property of natives; by intimidating native traders, and preventing them from trading with white trading companies; by quartering troops in native villages when there is no war; by causing vessels bound from “Stanley-Pool” to “Stanley-Falls”, to break their journey and leave the Congo, ascend the Aruhwimi river to Basoko, to be visited and show their papers; by forbidding a mission steamer to fly its national flag without permission from a local Government; by permitting the natives to carry on the slave-trade, and by engaging in the wholesale and retail slave-trade itself.

NINTH.—-Your Majesty’s Government has been, and is now, guilty of waging unjust and cruel wars against natives, with the hope of securing slaves and women, to minister to the behests of the officers of your Government. In such slave-hunting raids one village is armed by the State against the other, and the force thus secured is incorporated with the regular troops. I have no adequate terms with which to depict to your Majesty the brutal acts of your soldiers upon such raids as these. The soldiers who open the combat are usually the bloodthirsty cannibalistic Bangalas, who give no quarter to the aged grandmother or nursing child at the breast of its mother. There are instances in which they have brought the heads of their victims to their white officers on the expeditionary steamers, and afterwards eaten the bodies of slain children. In one war two Belgian Army officers saw, from the deck of their steamer, a native in a canoe some distance away. He was not a combatant and was ignorant of the conflict in progress upon the shore, some distance away. The officers made a wager of £5 that they could hit the native with their rifles. Three shots were fired and the native fell dead, pierced through the head, and the trade canoe was transformed into a funeral barge and floated silently down the river.

TENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government is engaged in the slave-trade, wholesale and retail. It buys and sells and steals slaves. Your Majesty’s Government gives £3 per head for able bodied slaves for military service. Officers at the chief stations get the men and receive the money when they are transferred to the State; but there are some middle-men who only get from twenty to twenty-five francs per head. Three hundred and sixteen slaves were sent down the river recently, and others are to follow. These poor natives are sent hundreds of miles away from their villages, to serve among other natives whose language they do not know. When these men run away a reward of 1,000 N’taka is offered. Not long ago such a recaptured slave was given one hundred “chikote” each day until he died. Three hundred N’taka—brassrod-—is the price the State pays for a slave, when bought from a native. The labour force at the stations of your Majesty’s Government in the Upper River is composed of slaves of all ages and both sexes.

ELEVENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government has concluded a contract with the Arab Governor at this place for the establishment of a line of military posts from the Seventh Cataract to Lake Tanganyika territory to which your Majesty has no more legal claim, than I have to be Commander-in-Chief of the Belgian army. For this work the Arab Governor is to receive five hundred stands of arms, five thousand kegs of powder, and £20,000 sterling, to he paid in several instalments. As I write, the news reaches me that these much-treasured and long-looked for materials of war are to be discharged at Basoko, and the Resident here is to be given the discretion as to the distribution of them. There is a feeling of deep discontent among the Arabs here, and they seem to feel that they are being trifled with. As to the significance of this move Europe and America can judge without any comment from me, especially England.

TWELFTH—The agents of your Majesty’s Government have misrepresented the Congo country and the Congo railway. Mr. H. M. STANLEY, the man who was your chief agent in setting up your authority in this country, has grossly misrepresented the character of the country. Instead of it being fertile and productive it is sterile and unproductive. The natives can scarcely subsist upon the vegetable life produced in some parts of the country. Nor will this condition of affairs change until the native shall have been taught by the European the dignity, utility and blessing of labour. There is no improvement among the natives, because there is an impassable gulf between them and your Majesty’s Government, a gulf which can never be bridged. HENRY M. STANLEY’S name produces a shudder among this simple folk when mentioned; they remember his broken promises, his copious profanity, his hot temper, his heavy blows, his severe and rigorous measures, by which they were mulcted of their lands. His last appearance in the Congo produced a profound sensation among them, when he led 500 Zanzibar soldiers with 300 camp followers on his way to relieve EMIN PASHA. They thought it meant complete subjugation, and they fled in confusion. But the only thing they found in the wake of his march was misery. No white man commanded his rear column, and his troops were allowed to straggle, sicken and die; and their bones were scattered over more than two hundred miles of territory.

CONCLUSIONS Against the deceit, fraud, robberies, arson, murder, slave-raiding, and general policy of cruelty of your Majesty’s Government to the natives, stands their record of unexampled patience, long-suffering and forgiving spirit, which put the boasted civilisation and professed religion of your Majesty’s Government to the blush. During thirteen years only one white man has lost his life by the hands of the natives, and only two white men have been killed in the Congo. Major Barttelot was shot by a Zanzibar soldier, and the captain of a Belgian trading-boat was the victim of his own rash and unjust treatment of a native chief.

All the crimes perpetrated in the Congo have been done in your name, and you must answer at the bar of Public Sentiment for the misgovernment of a people, whose lives and fortunes were entrusted to you by the august Conference of Berlin, 1884—1 885. I now appeal to the Powers which committed this infant State to your Majesty’s charge, and to the great States which gave it international being; and whose majestic law you have scorned and trampled upon, to call and create an International Commission to investigate the charges herein preferred in the name of Humanity, Commerce, Constitutional Government and Christian Civilisation.

I base this appeal upon the terms of Article 36 of Chapter VII of the General Act of the Conference of Berlin, in which that august assembly of Sovereign States reserved to themselves the right “to introduce into it later and by common accord the modifications or ameliorations, the utility of which may be demonstrated experience”.

I appeal to the Belgian people and to their Constitutional Government, so proud of its traditions, replete with the song and story of its champions of human liberty, and so jealous of its present position in the sisterhood of European States—to cleanse itself from the imputation of the crimes with which your Majesty’s personal State of Congo is polluted.

I appeal to Anti-Slavery Societies in all parts of Christendom, to Philanthropists, Christians, Statesmen, and to the great mass of people everywhere, to call upon the Governments of Europe, to hasten the close of the tragedy your Majesty’s unlimited Monarchy is enacting in the Congo.

I appeal to our Heavenly Father, whose service is perfect love, in witness of the purity of my motives and the integrity of my aims; and to history and mankind I appeal for the demonstration and vindication of the truthfulness of the charge I have herein briefly outlined.

And all this upon the word of honour of a gentleman, I subscribe myself your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant,

GEO. W. WILLIAMS

Stanley Falls, Central Africa, July 18th, 1890.


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Rh in almost every county in England.’ In 1657 Leybourn published ‘Arithmetick, Vulgar, Decimal, and Instrumental,’ 8vo, in three parts (other editions, 1659 and 1678); and in 1667 ‘The Line of Proportion or [of] Numbers, commonly called Gunter's Line, made easie,’ 12mo, a treatise on the sliding-rule; a second part was published in 1677 (other editions, 1678 and 1684). In 1662 and 1673 he produced the fourth and fifth editions of the ‘Works’ of Edmund Gunter [q. v.], adding some rules of his own for the mensuration of plane and solid figures. An advertisement page gives a list of ‘Arts and Sciences Mathematical professed and taught by William Leybourn,’ viz. arithmetic, geometry, astronomy; and ‘upon these foundations the superstructures’ of the use of geometrical instruments in surveying, &c., trigonometry, navigation, and dialling. In 1667 appeared his ‘Platform Guide Mate for Purchasers, Builders, Measurers,’ 8vo. The first book is on interest, the second and third on building and mensuration; another edition was published in 1685. ‘The Art of Numbering by Speaking Rods, vulgarly termed Nepeirs Bones,’ was published London, 1667, 12mo, 1685; and was enlarged as ‘The Description and Use of Gunters Quadrant … to which is added the Use of Nepiars Bones,’ 2nd edition, London, 1721, 12mo; 3rd edition, 1731. ‘Panorganon, or a Universal Instrument,’ appeared London, 1672, 4to. Other minor works were: ‘Introduction to Astronomy and Geography in VII. Parts,’ London, 1675, 8vo, and ‘The Art of Dyalling,’ which reached a second edition, 1681, 4to; another edition, 1700.

In 1690 Leybourn published his ‘Cursus Mathematicus; Mathematical Sciences in Nine Books.’ This is a folio volume of over nine hundred pages, and includes the substance of his former publications. The first book treats of arithmetic under four headings, natural or vulgar, decimal, logarithmic, and instrumental; the second deals with plane and solid geometry and mensuration; the third with the doctrine of primum mobile and spherical projection in astronomy; the fourth with celestial and terrestrial cosmography; the fifth consists of plane and spherical trigonometry; practical geometry, including surveying and fortification, occupies the sixth; the seventh is devoted to navigation, and the eighth to dialling; the ninth and last deals with theoretical astronomy, principally in connection with the planets; and it is remarkable that the author discusses Kepler's discoveries, but says nothing of Newton's ‘Principia,’ which had appeared three years previously. The work closes with appendices and tables, and a ‘Canon Logarithmus,’ or table of logarithms.

In 1693 Leybourn produced the most enduring of his works, under the title ‘Panarithmologia, being a Mirror Breviate Treasure Mate for Merchants, Bankers, Tradesmen, Mechanicks, and a sure Guide for Purchasers, Sellers, or Mortgagers of Land, Leases, Annuities, Rents, Pensions, &c., in Possession or Reversion, and a constant Concomitant fitted for all men's occasions.’ This supplies, according to De Morgan, the earliest ready reckoner known in English—from one to ten thousand, and a farthing to 1l., calculated, as Leybourn tells us, ‘by another hand … near thirty years since.’ An appendix of 144 pp. is rich in miscellaneous commercial information. This work was long popular; the twenty-third edition appeared in 1808 under the name, ‘The Ready Reckoner, or Traders' sure Guide.’

In 1694 Leybourn published ‘Pleasure with Profit; consisting of Recreations of divers kinds, Numerical, Geometrical, Mechanical, Statical, Astronomical …; to recreate ingenious spirits and to induce them to make farther scrutiny into these Sciences.’ He also added an appendix to Thomas Stirrup's ‘Horometria, or the Compleat Diallist,’ London, 1659, 4to. He edited (London, 1680, 8vo) the second edition of ‘The City and Country Purchaser and Builder,’ by Stephen Primatt. The fourth edition of Scamozzi's ‘Mirror of Architecture’ (London, 1700, 4to) has William Leybourn's name as editor. The year of his death is uncertain.

Leybourn's works all grew out of his teaching, and were deservedly popular. They are clear and attractive in style, and are the work of a man of considerable ingenuity and uncommon industry. His larger works are prefaced with engraved portraits of himself, which preserve a record of his personal appearance from the age of twenty-seven to sixty-four. Gaywood is the engraver of the portrait (æt. 30) before Leybourn's ‘Arithmetick;’ R. White of those placed respectively (æt. 48) before his ‘Compleat Surveyor’ and (æt. 64) before his ‘Cursus Mathematicus.’

LEYBOURNE, LEYBURN, LEMBURN, or LEEBURN, ROGER (d. 1271), warden of the Cinque ports, son of Roger de Leybourne of Leybourne, Kent, who took arms against King John, was made prisoner at the fall of Rochester Castle, 30 Nov. 1215, and


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Rh paid 250 marks for his release. His mother was Eleanor, daughter and coheiress of Stephen de Thurnham or Turnham, another Kentish magnate (Archæologia Cantiana, v. 152, 193; a chart facing p. 222 corrects, Baronage, ii. 13). He could hardly have been born later than 1220. In 1251 he came into his inheritance on the death of his father. At the jousts held at Walden, Essex, in 1252, he slew Arnold de Montigny, against whom he was tilting; he professed deep sorrow, but as it was discovered that his lance's point was not covered by a socket, as it should have been, he was suspected of murderous intent, for it was remembered that he had had his leg broken by Arnold in a joust. He assumed the cross and took out a pardon from the king. In 1253 he accompanied Henry III [q. v.] to Gascony. He was intimate with the king's son Edward [see ], accompanied him to many jousts in England and France, was his steward, and kept his purse (, Gesta Regum Continuata, ii. 220). While serving against Llewelyn of Wales in 1256 he narrowly escaped being slain. In 1258 he sided with the baronial party, swore to the Provisions of Oxford, and was with his associates included by name in the papal bull of excommunication. Acting as Edward's steward in 1260 he hanged some of the servants of the Earl of Gloucester [see, eighth , &c.] in the Welsh marches, unjustly it was said, and without trial, whereupon the earl quarrelled with Edward (Chronicles of Edward I, i. 54). In the same year he accompanied Edward to France, and at Paris received from him a grant of the manor of Elham, Kent. Soon afterwards the queen [see ], angered by Leybourne's association with the baronial party, stirred up Edward against him. An account of his stewardship was demanded, and he was declared by the exchequer to be 1,000l. in arrears, though the accusation is said to have been false. Process was issued, and as he removed all his goods from his manors to avoid distraint, writs were sent out to inquire after and seize them in Kent, Essex, and Sussex. At the same time the king demanded from him the manor of Elham, on the plea that it was inalienable from the crown (, u.s.; documents cited in Archæologia Cantiana, v. 166–70). Being stripped of all his revenues, Leybourne took to marauding, and Sir William de Detling having been dispossessed of Detling, Kent, by his lord the Archbishop of Canterbury, for homicide, Leybourne joined him in forcibly ejecting the archbishop's officers, and put his own son in possession of the manor. He attended the meeting of the barons at Oxford at Whitsuntide 1263, and joined himself with Roger de Clifford (d. 1285?) [q. v.] and others. Associating themselves with Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, they seized Peter the Savoyard bishop of Hereford, took Gloucester, with the consent of the townsmen occupied Bristol, and then proceeded eastward, everywhere seizing the property of the aliens and their supporters. Leybourne marched with Earl Simon to Dover, and on 9 July to Romney. By 18 Aug., however, he and other lords, some of whom were, like himself, old servants of Edward, were won over by Edward, and executed a deed of reconciliation with him. Leybourne was at once made steward of the household to the king and queen and Edward, and on 3 Dec. was appointed warden of the Cinque ports.

As one of the king's adherents Leybourne swore to submit to the award of Louis IX of France, and in February 1264 crossed over to Witsand to bring Henry back to England. He marched with the king's army to Northampton, and was sent with Earl John de Warrenne to secure the south-eastern counties. He joined in the defence of Rochester against the baronial army, and burnt some of the buildings of the monastery and the suburbs of the city (, De Bellis, notes p. 127). He was badly wounded during the siege (, i. 313), which was raised on the approach of the royal army. He was taken prisoner at the battle of Lewes on 14 May, and was set at liberty on giving security that he would appear in parliament when summoned (Annals of Dunstable, p. 232). Joining himself to the marchers and others of the king's side he took part in the attempt to rescue Edward at Wallingford and in the war carried on in the marches of Wales and the western districts. When summoned to appear at Windsor before the king's council he and his allies refused to obey, and sentence of banishment for a year and a day was pronounced against them. In December they came to terms with the government, and Leybourne and Clifford met the king at Pershore, and were allowed to visit Edward at Kenilworth (Fœdera, i. 449). They promised to retire to Ireland, but soon took up arms again, and caused the Earl of Leicester much trouble. On 23 May 1265 Leybourne and Clifford received a safe-conduct to visit Edward at Hereford, and there, no doubt, arranged with him for his escape, which he effected on the 28th. Leybourne joined Edward and took part in the battle of Evesham on 4 Aug. In September he was sent by the king to London, held an assembly of the citizens in


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Twenty Years After/Chapter 28

They proceeded silently to the centre of the Place, but as at this very moment the moon had just emerged from behind a cloud, they thought they might be observed if they remained on that spot and therefore regained the shade of the lime-trees.

There were benches here and there; the four gentlemen stopped near them; at a sign from Athos, Porthos and D'Artagnan sat down, the two others stood in front of them.

After a few minutes of silent embarrassment, Athos spoke.

"Gentlemen," he said, "our presence here is the best proof of former friendship; not one of us has failed the others at this rendezvous; not one has, therefore, to reproach himself."

"Hear me, count," replied D'Artagnan; "instead of making compliments to each other, let us explain our conduct to each other, like men of right and honest hearts."

"I wish for nothing more; have you any cause of complaint against me or Monsieur d'Herblay? If so, speak out," answered Athos.

"I have," replied D'Artagnan. "When I saw you at your chateau at Bragelonne, I made certain proposals to you which you perfectly understood; instead of answering me as a friend, you played with me as a child; the friendship, therefore, that you boast of was not broken yesterday by the shock of swords, but by your dissimulation at your castle."

"D'Artagnan!" said Athos, reproachfully.

"You asked for candor and you have it. You ask what I have against you; I tell you. And I have the same sincerity to show you, if you wish, Monsieur d'Herblay; I acted in a similar way to you and you also deceived me."

"Really, monsieur, you say strange things," said Aramis. "You came seeking me to make to me certain proposals, but did you make them? No, you sounded me, nothing more. Very well what did I say to you? that Mazarin was contemptible and that I wouldn't serve Mazarin. But that is all. Did I tell you that I wouldn't serve any other? On the contrary, I gave you to understand, I think, that I adhered to the princes. We even joked very pleasantly, if I remember rightly, on the very probable contingency of your being charged by the cardinal with my arrest. Were you a party man? There is no doubt of that. Well, why should not we, too, belong to a party? You had your secret and we had ours; we didn't exchange them. So much the better; it proves that we know how to keep our secrets."

"I do not reproach you, monsieur," said D'Artagnan; "'tis only because Monsieur de la Fere has spoken of friendship that I question your conduct."

"And what do you find in it that is worthy of blame?" asked Aramis, haughtily.

The blood mounted instantly to the temples of D'Artagnan, who arose, and replied:

"I consider it worthy conduct of a pupil of Jesuits."

On seeing D'Artagnan rise, Porthos rose also; these four men were therefore all standing at the same time, with a menacing aspect, opposite to each other.

Upon hearing D'Artagnan's reply, Aramis seemed about to draw his sword, when Athos prevented him.

"D'Artagnan," he said, "you are here to-night, still infuriated by yesterday's adventure. I believed your heart noble enough to enable a friendship of twenty years to overcome an affront of a quarter of an hour. Come, do you really think you have anything to say against me? Say it then; if I am in fault I will avow the error."

The grave and harmonious tones of that beloved voice seemed to have still its ancient influence, whilst that of Aramis, which had become harsh and tuneless in his moments of ill-humor, irritated him. He answered therefore:

"I think, monsieur le comte, that you had something to communicate to me at your chateau of Bragelonne, and that gentleman" - he pointed to Aramis - "had also something to tell me when I was in his convent. At that time I was not concerned in the adventure, in the course of which you have so successfully estopped me! However, because I was prudent you must not take me for a fool. If I had wished to widen the breach between those whom Monsieur d'Herblay chooses to receive with a rope ladder and those whom he receives with a wooden ladder, I could have spoken out."

"What are you meddling with?" cried Aramis, pale with anger, suspecting that D'Artagnan had acted as a spy on him and had seen him with Madame de Longueville.

"I never meddle save with what concerns me, and I know how to make believe that I haven't seen what does not concern me; but I hate hypocrites, and among that number I place musketeers who are abbes and abbes who are musketeers; and," he added, turning to Porthos "here's a gentleman who's of the same opinion as myself."

Porthos, who had not spoken one word, answered merely by a word and a gesture.

He said "yes" and he put his hand on his sword.

Aramis started back and drew his. D'Artagnan bent forward, ready either to attack or to stand on his defense.

Athos at that moment extended his hand with the air of supreme command which characterized him alone, drew out his sword and the scabbard at the same time, broke the blade in the sheath on his knee and threw the pieces to his right. Then turning to Aramis:

"Aramis," he said, "break your sword."

Aramis hesitated.

"It must be done," said Athos; then in a lower and more gentle voice, he added. "I wish it."

Then Aramis, paler than before, but subdued by these words, snapped the serpent blade between his hands, and then folding his arms, stood trembling with rage.

These proceedings made D'Artagnan and Porthos draw back. D'Artagnan did not draw his sword; Porthos put his back into the sheath.

"Never!" exclaimed Athos, raising his right hand to Heaven, "never! I swear before God, who seeth us, and who, in the darkness of this night heareth us, never shall my sword cross yours, never my eye express a glance of anger, nor my heart a throb of hatred, at you. We lived together, we loved, we hated together; we shed, we mingled our blood together, and too probably, I may still add, that there may be yet a bond between us closer even than that of friendship; perhaps there may be the bond of crime; for we four, we once did condemn, judge and slay a human being whom we had not any right to cut off from this world, although apparently fitter for hell than for this life. D'Artagnan, I have always loved you as my son; Porthos, we slept six years side by side; Aramis is your brother as well as mine, and Aramis has once loved you, as I love you now and as I have ever loved you. What can Cardinal Mazarin be to us, to four men who compelled such a man as Richelieu to act as we pleased? What is such or such a prince to us, who fixed the diadem upon a great queen's head? D'Artagnan, I ask your pardon for having yesterday crossed swords with you; Aramis does the same to Porthos; now hate me if you can; but for my own part, I shall ever, even if you do hate me, retain esteem and friendship for you. I repeat my words, Aramis, and then, if you desire it, and if they desire it, let us separate forever from our old friends."

There was a solemn, though momentary silence, which was broken by Aramis.

"I swear," he said, with a calm brow and kindly glance, but in a voice still trembling with recent emotion, "I swear that I no longer bear animosity to those who were once my friends. I regret that I ever crossed swords with you, Porthos; I swear not only that it shall never again be pointed at your breast, but that in the bottom of my heart there will never in future be the slightest hostile sentiment; now, Athos, come."

Athos was about to retire.

"Oh! no! no! do not go away!" exclaimed D'Artagnan, impelled by one of those irresistible impulses which showed the nobility of his nature, the native brightness of his character; "I swear that I would give the last drop of my blood and the last fragment of my limbs to preserve the friendship of such a friend as you, Athos - of such a man as you, Aramis." And he threw himself into the arms of Athos.

"My son!" exclaimed Athos, pressing him in his arms.

"And as for me," said Porthos, "I swear nothing, but I'm choked. Forsooth! If I were obliged to fight against you, I think I should allow myself to be pierced through and through, for I never loved any one but you in the wide world;" and honest Porthos burst into tears as he embraced Athos.

"My friends," said Athos, "this is what I expected from such hearts as yours. Yes, I have said it and I now repeat it: our destinies are irrevocably united, although we now pursue divergent roads. I respect your convictions, and whilst we fight for opposite sides, let us remain friends. Ministers, princes, kings, will pass away like mountain torrents; civil war, like a forest flame; but we - we shall remain; I have a presentiment that we shall."

"Yes," replied D'Artagnan, "let us still be musketeers, and let us retain as our battle-standard that famous napkin of the bastion St. Gervais, on which the great cardinal had three fleurs-de-lis embroidered."

"Be it so," cried Aramis. "Cardinalists or Frondeurs, what matters it? Let us meet again as capital seconds in a duel, devoted friends in business, merry companions in our ancient pleasures."

"And whenever," added Athos, "we meet in battle, at this word, `Place Royale!' let us put our swords into our left hands and shake hands with the right, even in the very lust and music of the hottest carnage."

"You speak charmingly," said Porthos.

"And are the first of men!" added D'Artagnan. "You excel us all."

Athos smiled with ineffable pleasure.

"'Tis then all settled. Gentlemen, your hands; are we not pretty good Christians?"

"Egad!" said D'Artagnan, "by Heaven! yes."

"We should be so on this occasion, if only to be faithful to our oath," said Aramis.

"Ah, I'm ready to do what you will," cried Porthos; "even to swear by Mahomet. Devil take me if I've ever been so happy as at this moment."

And he wiped his eyes, still moist.

"Has not one of you a cross?" asked Athos.

Aramis smiled and drew from his vest a cross of diamonds, which was hung around his neck by a chain of pearls. "Here is one," he said.

"Well," resumed Athos, "swear on this cross, which, in spite of its magnificent material, is still a cross; swear to be united in spite of everything, and forever, and may this oath bind us to each other, and even, also, our descendants! Does this oath satisfy you?"

"Yes," said they all, with one accord.

"Ah, traitor!" muttered D'Artagnan, leaning toward Aramis and whispering in his ear, "you have made us swear on the crucifix of a Frondeuse."

title: Twenty Years After/Chapter 28