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 (her gaze intent on eternity) she was but a wraith without body or substance. She had a wild impulse to seize the stout, good-natured nun by the shoulders and shake her, crying: “Don’t you know that I’m a human being, unhappy and alone, and I want comfort and sympathy and encouragement; oh, can’t you turn a minute away from God and give me a little compassion; not the Christian compassion that you have for all suffering things, but just human compassion for me?” The thought brought a smile to Kitty’s lips: how very surprised Sister St. Joseph would be! She would certainly be convinced of what now she only suspected, that all English people were mad.

“Fortunately I am a very good sailor,” Kitty answered. “I’ve never been sea-sick yet.”

The Mother Superior returned with a small, neat parcel.

“They’re handkerchiefs that I’ve had made for the name-day of my mother,” she said. “The initials have been embroidered by our young girls.”

Sister St. Joseph suggested that Kitty would like to see how beautifully the work was done and the Mother Superior with an indulgent, deprecating smile untied the parcel. The handkerchiefs were of very fine lawn and the initials embroidered in a complicated cypher were surmounted by a crown of strawberry leaves. When Kitty had properly admired the workmanship the handkerchiefs were wrapped up again and the parcel handed to her. Sister St. Joseph, with an “eh bien, Madame, je vous quitte” and a repetition of her polite and impersonal salutations, went away. Kitty realised that this was

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 the moment to take her leave of the Superior. She thanked her for her kindness to her. They walked together along the bare, white-washed corridors.

“Would it be asking too much of you to register the parcel when you arrive at Marseilles?” said the Superior.

“Of course I’ll do that,” said Kitty.

She glanced at the address. The name seemed very grand, but the place mentioned attracted her attention.

“But that is one of the châteaux I’ve seen. I was motoring with friends in France.”

“It is very possible,” said the Mother Superior. “Strangers are permitted to view it on two days each week.”

“I think if I had ever lived in such a beautiful place I should never have had the courage to leave it.”

“It is of course a historical monument. It is scarcely intimate. If I regretted anything it would not be that, but the little château in which we lived when I was a child. It was in the Pyrenees. I was born within sound of the sea. I do not deny that sometimes I should like to hear the waves beating against the rocks.”

Kitty had an idea that the Mother Superior, divining her thought and the reason for her remarks, was slyly making fun of her. But they reached the little, unpretentious door of the convent. To Kitty’s surprise the Mother Superior took her in her arms and kissed her. The pressure of her pale lips first on one side and


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Wikisource:WikiProject Film/Drafts/Archives/Trolley Troubles (1927)

User: SnowyCinema

File: Trolley Troubles (1927).webm

Author: Walt Disney

Publisher: Universal Pictures

Year: 1927

PD: PD/US|1966|film=yes

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Cat: Cartoons

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Trolley Troubles

 * Trolley Troubles (1927), the original silent version
 * Trolley Troubles (1931), a sound rerelease

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 “Of course I did.”

“But how did you know I was coming?”

“Mr. Waddington sent me a telegram.”

Kitty turned away. She had a lump in her throat. It was funny that a little unexpected kindness should so affect her. She did not want to cry; she wished Dorothy Townsend would go away. But Dorothy took the hand that was hanging by Kitty’s side and pressed it. It embarrassed Kitty that this shy woman should be so demonstrative.

“I want you to do me a great favour. Charlie and I want you to come and stay with us while you’re in Hong-Kong.”

Kitty snatched her hand away.

“It’s awfully kind of you. I couldn’t possibly.”

“But you must. You can’t go and live all by yourself in your own house. It would be dreadful for you. I’ve prepared everything. You shall have your own sitting-room. You can have your meals there if you don’t care to have them with us. We both want you to come.”

“I wasn’t thinking of going to the house. I was going to get myself a room at the Hong-Kong Hotel. I couldn’t possibly put you to so much trouble.”

The suggestion had taken her by surprise. She was confused and vexed. If Charlie had had any sense of decency he would never have allowed his wife to make the invitation. She did not wish to be under an obligation to either of them.

“Oh, but I couldn’t bear the idea of your living at a hotel. And you’d hate the Hong-Kong Hotel just now. With all those people about and the band


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366 and couches to their playthings, so they, both old and young, offer food to their idols, and afterwards eat it themselves with the greatest delight, pretending that they have left it. We see them occasionally marrying male and female idols together, and acting more like madmen than rational beings. They whirl their hands round their head, snap with their hands, breathe with the greatest rapidity, knock with their arms forcibly against their sides, beat themselves on the cheek, bend their hands and fingers, and their whole body, in various unnatural ways, and perform a thousand other gesticulations of a similar nature, and call this spiritual worship. At certain festivals they engage in pugilistic contests, and, with a view of performing religious actions, bedaub their face and hands and all their limbs with mud, or even blood, and fight together, or strike each other with their fists, and commit such outrages, and play such gambols before the gods, as one would hardly think rational beings capable of performing. Occasionally they substitute another person in the place of their favourite god, and make him dance before them, and amuse themselves by ridiculing and reviling him through Bashoodeb, Kashoodeb, and other such like buffoons, so that it is truly distressing to behold them. They consider their blocks as animated beings, and though they cannot eat, offer them food; and though they cannot smell, present them with various flowers; and lest in the cold season they might suffer from the cold, they furnish them with warm clothes; and in the hot season, they fan them; and lest the musquitoes should bite them, they place them within curtains at night. They are constantly afraid lest the hands and feet of these their gods should be broken, and are therefore very anxious about their preservation; and yet, with all their care, we sometimes see that the rats and cockroaches spoil their colour, and make holes in their bodies; and the flies, after sitting upon various unclean things, come and sit upon them. Alas! where then is their divinity, seeing they suffer themselves to be thus insulted? And how is it that they are so entirely dependent for protection upon the diligence of their worshippers, if they are really animated, as their adherents suppose, by the spirit of the gods? Again, idolaters, to get rid of their sins, likewise pay their adoration to a shell or a bell. For the same purpose, they also anoint their gods of wood and stone, with milk, curds, ghee, sugar, and honey; they present to them clothes, sandal-wood, and garlands; they burn incense, and kindle lamps, present eatable offerings, cocoa-nuts, betel, and money, and scatter flowers before them. They sometimes worship them by standing in their presence, placing their fingers in their mouth, and bleating like sheep; sometimes they bawl out before them in the most unnatural way, and use language which it would be highly improper here to repeat. They beat drums, play on various instruments, walk in procession, wave clubs, twigs, &c.”

Now, viewed in reference to its effect on the intellect only, what must be the influence of a system like this in perpetual operation?—a system, which robs the divine Being of every attribute fitted to awaken veneration, gratitude, or love; a system which virtually and practically converts cows, monkeys, dogs, jackals, squirrels, birds, and other animals; trees, plants, books, wood, stone, and other lifeless substances, into gods or objects of religious reverence; a system studiously inculcating as worship a mass of trivialities such as one would think “could


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Rh

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 behind. She gave herself a look in the glass. She wore black, the nuns had dyed a dress for her, but not mourning; and the thought crossed her mind that the first thing she must do was to see to this. The habiliments of woe could not but serve as an effective disguise to her unexpected feelings. There was a knock on her cabin door. The amah opened it.

“Mrs. Fane.”

Kitty turned round and saw a face which at the first moment she did not recognise. Then her heart gave a sudden quick beat and she flushed. It was Dorothy Townsend. Kitty so little expected to see her that she knew neither what to do nor what to say. But Mrs. Townsend came into the cabin and with an impulsive gesture took Kitty in her arms.

“Oh, my dear, my dear, I’m so dreadfully sorry for you.”

Kitty allowed herself to be kissed. She was a little surprised at this effusiveness in a woman whom she had always thought cold and distant.

“It’s very kind of you,” murmured Kitty.

“Come on deck. The amah will look after your things and my boys are here.”

She took Kitty’s hand and Kitty, allowing herself to be led, noticed that her good-natured, weather-beaten face bore an expression of real concern.

“Your boat’s early, I very nearly didn’t get down in time,” said Mrs. Townsend. “I couldn’t have borne it if I’d missed you.”

“But you didn’t come to meet me?” exclaimed Kitty.


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 arpeggios through the complicated harmonies of a symphony, one thought beat in her heart insistently. It was this thought which gave their exotic beauty to the rice-fields, which made a little smile break on her pale lips as a smooth-faced lad swung past her on his way to the market town with exultation in his carriage and audacity in his eyes, and which gave the magic of a tumultuous life to the cities she passed through. The city of the pestilence was a prison from which she was escaped, and she had never known before how exquisite was the blueness of the sky and what a joy there was in the bamboo copses that leaned with such an adorable grace across the causeway. Freedom! That was the thought that sung in her heart so that even though the future was so dim, it was iridescent like the mist over the river where the morning sun fell upon it. Freedom! Not only freedom from a bond that irked, and a companionship which depressed her; freedom, not only from the death which had threatened, but freedom from the love that had degraded her; freedom from all spiritual ties, the freedom of a disembodied spirit; and with freedom, courage and a valiant unconcern for whatever was to come.

HEN the boat docked at Hong-Kong Kitty, who had been standing on deck to look at the coloured, gay and vivacious traffic of the river, went into her cabin to see that the amah had left nothing


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 would not admit that his death was a relief to her, she could say honestly that if by a word of hers she could bring him back to life she would say it, but she could not resist the feeling that his death made her way to some extent a trifle easier. They would never have been happy together and yet to part would have been terribly difficult. She was startled at herself for feeling as she did; she supposed that people would think her heartless and cruel if they knew. Well, they shouldn’t know. She wondered if all her fellows had in their hearts shameful secrets which they spent their time guarding from curious glances.

She looked very little into the future and she made no plans. The only thing she knew was that she wanted to stay in Hong-Kong as short a while as might be. She looked forward to arriving there with horror. It seemed to her that she would like to wander for ever through that smiling and friendly country in her rattan chair, and, an indifferent spectator for ever of the phantasmagoria of life, pass each night under a different roof. But of course the immediate future must be faced: she would go to the hotel when she reached Hong-Kong, she would arrange about getting rid of the house and selling the furniture; there would be no need to see Townsend. He would have the grace to keep out of her way. She would like, all the same, to see him once more in order to tell him what a despicable creature she thought him.

But what did Charles Townsend matter?

Like a rich melody on a harp that rang in exultant


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T first because she had not wept when Walter died she was ashamed. It seemed dreadfully callous. Why, the eyes of the Chinese officer, Colonel Yü, had been wet with tears. She was dazed by her husband’s death. It was difficult to understand that he would not come into the bungalow again and that when he got up in the morning she would not hear him take his bath in the Suchow tub. He was alive and now he was dead. The sisters wondered at her Christian resignation and admired the courage with which she bore her loss. But Waddington was shrewd; for all his grave sympathy she had a feeling that—how should she put it?—that he had his tongue in his cheek. Of course, Walter’s death had been a shock to her. She didn’t want him to die. But after all she didn’t love him, she had never loved him; it was decent to bear herself with becoming sorrow; it would be ugly and vulgar even to let any one see into her heart; but she had gone through too much to make pretences to herself. It seemed to her that this at least the last few weeks had taught her, that if it is necessary sometimes to lie to others it is always despicable to lie to oneself. She was sorry that Walter had died in that tragic manner, but she was sorry with a purely human sorrow such as she might have felt if it had been an acquaintance. She would acknowledge that Walter had admirable qualities; it just happened that she did not like him; he had always bored her. She


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 course it had, they all had, a significance of some sort, but what was it? It was as though they performed a ritual dance, elaborate and ancient, and you knew that those complicated measures had a meaning which it was important for you to know; and yet you could see no clue, no clue.

It seemed incredible to Kitty (an old woman was passing along the causeway, in blue, and the blue in the sunshine was like lapis lazuli; her face with its thousand little wrinkles was like a mask of old ivory; and she leaned, as she walked on her tiny feet, on a long black staff) it seemed incredible to Kitty that she and Walter had taken part in that strange and unreal dance. They had played important parts too. She might easily have lost her life: he had. Was it a joke? Perhaps it was nothing but a dream from which she would suddenly awake with a sigh of relief. It seemed to have taken place a long time ago and in a far-off place. It was singular how shadowy the persons of that play seemed against the sunny background of real life. And now it seemed to Kitty like a story that she was reading; it was a little startling that it seemed to concern her so little. She found already that she could not recall with distinctness Waddington’s face which had been so familiar to her.

This evening they should reach the city on the Western River from which she was to take the steamer to Canton. Thence it was but a night’s run to Hong-Kong.


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 two or three more; the soldiers of the escort shuffled along with a clumsy walk that covered five and twenty miles a day; the amah was carried by two bearers and Kitty, not because she was heavier, but for face’ sake, by four. Now and then they met a string of coolies lolloping by in line with their heavy burdens, now and then a Chinese official in a sedan who looked at the white woman with inquisitive eyes; now they came across peasants in faded blue and huge hats on their way to market and now a woman, old or young, tottering along on her bound feet. They passed up and down little hills laid out with trim rice fields and farm-houses nestling cosily in a grove of bamboos; they passed through ragged villages and populous cities walled like the cities in a missal. The sun of the early autumn was pleasant, and if at daybreak, when the shimmering dawn lent the neat fields the enchantment of a fairy tale, it was cold, the warmth later was very grateful. Kitty was filled by it with a sense of beatitude which she made no effort to resist.

The vivid scenes with their elegant colour, their unexpected distinction, and their strangeness, were like an arras before which, like mysterious, shadowy shapes, played the phantoms of Kitty’s fancy. They seemed wholly unreal. Maei-tan-fu with its crenellated walls was like the painted canvas placed on the stage in an old play to represent a city. The nuns, Waddington, and the Manchu woman who loved him, were fantastic characters in a masque; and the rest, the people sidling along the tortuous streets and those who died, were nameless supers. Of


text: Constitution of India (2020)/Part XIII

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 then on the other, was so unexpected that it made her flush and inclined to cry.

“Good-bye, God bless you, my dear child.” She held her for a moment in her arms. “Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.”

The convent door closed for the last time behind her.

ADDINGTON walked with Kitty up the hill and they turned aside for a moment to look at Walter’s grave; at the memorial arch he said good-bye to her, and looking at it for the last time she felt that she could reply to the enigmatic irony of its appearance with an equal irony of her own. She stepped into her chair.

One day passed after the other. The sights of the wayside served as a background to her thoughts. She saw them as it were in duplicate, rounded as though in a stereoscope, with an added significance because to everything she saw was added the recollection of what she had seen when but a few short weeks before she had taken the same journey in the contrary direction. The coolies with their loads straggled disorderly, two or three together, and then a hundred yards behind one by himself, and then


text: Constitution of India (2020)/Part XIV

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text: Constitution of India (2020)/Part XV

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text: Constitution of India (2020)/Part XVI

title: Constitution of India (2020)/Part XVI


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Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/376

Rh ness to be, like the pure light of heaven, freely and exhaustlessly communicative. “A good man,” observes an eloquent writer of antiquity, “a man who feels the power of religion, is not a blessing only to himself, but the common benefit of all other men; as he really communicates to all others the advantages which he himself enjoys. For, as the sun is a light to all those who have eyes, so the pious, the divinely wise, are the light of all rational beings: as the aromatic spices, which exhaling spread on the breeze and fill with their sweet odour those who are near; in the same manner, the friends and acquaintances of a good man derive from the breath of virtue, which emanates far and wide from his character, a perfume that adorns and enriches their own.”

But, in India, whither are we to turn, or where are we to look for relief in the privilege of gazing at the bright side of a picture like this?—or one, in any way approximating to this? —or one, containing even the seeds, germs, or primordial elements of anything resembling this?—We confess, we know not. The intellectual and moral condition of the wholly uninstructed masses, constituting the overwhelming majority, we have already glanced at; and, in the preceding pages, will be found ample materials, from which to form an accurate estimate of the intellectual and moral condition of the partially or inadequately instructed minority. To spare the reader the tedium of a lengthened recapitulation, we have only to request that he may be pleased to look back and carefully re-ponder the statements of fact already given. Let him look at the nature, character, and influence of the instruction imparted in the elementary schools, and say, whether Mr. Ward’s estimate of it does not fall far short of the reality, rather than exceed it. Education in these schools, “is confined,” says he, “to a few rudiments, qualifying the pupils to write a letter on business, and initiating them into the first rules of arithmetic. A Hindu school is a mere shop, in which, by a certain process, the human mind is prepared to act as a copying machine, or as a lithographic press. The culture of the mind is never contemplated in these seminaries. Hence Hindu youths, though of a capacity exceedingly quick, never find the means of strengthening or enlarging the faculties. The bud withers as soon as it is ready to expand. Destitute, therefore, of all that is reclaiming in education, of all that contributes to the formation of good dispositions and habits, these youths herd together for mutual corruption. Destitute of knowledge themselves, the parents, the tutors cannot impart to others that which they themselves have not received; human nature takes its unrestrained course; and whatever is in the human heart receives an unbounded gratification.” These schools, thus viewed,


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Wikisource:WikiProject Film/Drafts/Archives/Oh Teacher

User: SnowyCinema

File: Oh Teacher (1927).webm

Author: Walt Disney

Publisher: Universal Pictures

Year: 1927

PD: PD/US|1966|film=yes

Note:

Cat: Silent cartoons

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She’s an excellent sweet lady, and out of all suspicion, she is virtuous.

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Page:R L Stevenson 1917 Familiar studies of men and books.djvu/226

 test. As for his three pupils, Colin Laurent, Girard Gossouyn, and Jehan Marceau—if they were really his pupils in any serious sense—what can we say but God help them! And sure enough, by his own description, they turned out as ragged, rowdy, and ignorant as was to be looked for from the views and manners of their rare preceptor.

At some time or other, before or during his university career, the poet was adopted by Master Guillaume de Villon, chaplain of Saint Benoît-le-Bétourné near the Sorbonne. From him he borrowed the surname by which he is known to posterity. It was most likely from his house, called the Porte Rouge, and situated in a garden in the cloister of St. Benoît, that Master Francis heard the bell of the Sorbonne ring out the Angelus while he was finishing his Small Testament at Christmastide in 1456. Towards this benefactor he usually gets credit for a respectable display of gratitude. But with his trap and pitfall style of writing, it is easy to make too sure. His sentiments are about as much to be relied on as those of a professional beggar; and in this, as in so many other matters, he comes towards us whining and piping the eye, and goes off again with a whoop and his finger to his nose. Thus, he calls Guillaume de Villon his "more than


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 father," thanks him with a great show of sincerity for having helped him out of many scrapes, and bequeaths him his portion of renown. But the portion of renown which belonged to a young thief, distinguished (if, at the period when he wrote this legacy, he was distinguished at all) for having written some more or less obscene and scurrilous ballads, must have been little fitted to gratify the self-respect or increase the reputation of a benevolent ecclesiastic. The same remark applies to a subsequent legacy of the poet's library, with specification of one work which was plainly neither decent nor devout. We are thus left on the horns of a dilemma. If the chaplain was a godly, philanthropic personage, who had tried to graft good principles and good behaviour on this wild slip of an adopted son, these jesting legacies would obviously cut him to the heart. The position of an adopted son towards his adoptive father is one full of delicacy; where a man lends his name he looks for great consideration. And this legacy of Villon's portion of renown may be taken as the mere fling of an unregenerate scapegrace who has wit enough to recognise in his own shame the readiest weapon of offence against a prosy benefactor's feelings. The gratitude of Master Francis figures, on this reading, as a frightful minus quantity. If, on the other hand, those jests


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 were given and taken in good humour, the whole relation between the pair degenerates into the unedifying complicity of a debauched old chaplain and a witty and dissolute young scholar. At this rate the house with the red door may have rung with the most mundane minstrelsy; and it may have been below its roof that Villon, through a hole in the plaster, studied, as he tells us, the leisures of a rich ecclesiastic.

It was, perhaps, of some moment in the poet's life that he should have inhabited the cloister of Saint Benoît. Three of the most remarkable among his early acquaintances are Catherine de Vausselles, for whom he entertained a short-lived affection and an enduring and most unmanly resentment; Regnier de Montigny, a young blackguard of good birth; and Colin de Cayeux, a fellow with a marked aptitude for picking locks. Now we are on a foundation of mere conjecture, but it is at least curious to find that two of the canons of Saint Benoît answered respectively to the names of Pierre de Vaucel and Etienne de Montigny, and that there was a householder called Nicolas de Cayeux in a street—the Rue des Poirées—in the immediate neighbourhood of the cloister. M. Longnon is almost ready to identify Catherine as the niece of Pierre; Regnier as the nephew of Etienne, and Colin as the son of


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 Nicolas. Without going so far, it must be owned that the approximation of names is significant. As we go on to see the part played by each of these persons in the sordid melodrama of the poet's life, we shall come to regard it as even more notable. Is it not Clough who has remarked that, after all, everything lies in juxtaposition? Many a man's destiny has been settled by nothing apparently more grave than a pretty face on the opposite side of the street and a couple of bad companions round the corner.

Catherine de Vausselles (or de Vaucel—the change is within the limits of Villon's licence) had plainly delighted in the poet's conversation; near neighbours or not, they were much together and Villon made no secret of his court, and suffered himself to believe that his feeling was repaid in kind. This may have been an error from the first, or he may have estranged her by subsequent misconduct or temerity. One can easily imagine Villon an impatient wooer. One thing, at least, is sure: that the affair terminated in a manner bitterly humiliating to Master Francis. In presence of his lady-love, perhaps under her window and certainly with her connivance, he was unmercifully thrashed by one Noë le Joly—beaten, as he says himself, like dirty linen on the washing-board. It is characteristic that his malice


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 had notably increased between the time when he wrote the Small Testament immediately on the back of the occurrence, and the time when he wrote the Large Testament five years after. On the latter occasion nothing is too bad for his "damsel with the twisted nose," as he calls her. She is spared neither hint nor accusation, and he tells his messenger to accost her with the vilest insults. Villon, it is thought, was out of Paris when these amenities escaped his pen; or perhaps the strong arm of Noë le Joly would have been again in requisition. So ends the love story, if love story it may properly be called. Poets are not necessarily fortunate in love; but they usually fall among more romantic circumstances and bear their disappointment with a better grace.

The neighbourhood of Regnier de Montigny and Colin de Cayeux was probably more influential on his after life than the contempt of Catherine. For a man who is greedy of all pleasures, and provided with little money and less dignity of character, we may prophesy a safe and speedy voyage downward. Humble or even truckling virtue may walk unspotted in this life. But only those who despise the pleasures can afford to despise the opinion of the world. A man of a strong, heady temperament, like Villon, is very differently tempted. His eyes lay hold on all


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 provocations greedily, and his heart flames up at a look into imperious desire; he is snared and broached-to by anything and everything, from a pretty face to a piece of pastry in a cookshop window; he will drink the rinsing of the wine cup, stay the latest at the tavern party; tap at the lit windows, follow the sound of singing, and beat the whole neighbourhood for another reveller, as he goes reluctantly homeward; and grudge himself every hour of sleep as a black empty period in which he cannot follow after pleasure. Such a person is lost if he have not dignity, or, failing that, at least pride, which is its shadow and in many ways its substitute. Master Francis, I fancy, would follow his own eager instincts without much spiritual struggle. And we soon find him fallen among thieves in sober, literal earnest, and counting as acquaintances the most disreputable people he could lay his hands on: fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat; sergeants of the criminal court, and archers of the watch; blackguards who slept at night under the butchers' stalls, and for whom the aforesaid archers peered about carefully with lanterns; Regnier de Montigny, Colin de Cayeux, and their crew, all bound on a favouring breeze towards the gallows; the disorderly abbess of Port Royal, who went about at fair time with soldiers and thieves, and conducted her abbey on the queerest principles,


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A time-pleaser; so crammed, as he thinks, with excellences, that it is his ground of faith, that all that look on him love him.

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 undefined "It was resolved, that the greatest living poet of Italy should be crowned with the laurelin the imperial city, as Petrarch had been more than two hundred and fifty years before.The decree to that effect was passed by the Pope and the Senate; but ere the day of triumph came, Tasso was seized with an illness, which he instantly felt would be mortal. At his own request, he was immediately conveyed to the neighbouring Monastery of St. Onofario, where, surrounded by the consolations of that faith which had been through life his constant support, be patiently awaited what he firmly believed would be the issue of his malady. He expired in the arms of Cardinal Ciutbio Aldohrandini. The Cardinal had brought him the Pope's benediction; on receiving which, he exclaimed, 'This is the crown with which I hope to be crowned, not as a poet in the capital, but with the glory of the blessed in heaven.'" undefined

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 and most likely Perette Mauger, the great Paris receiver of stolen goods, not yet dreaming, poor woman! of the last scene of her career when Henry Cousin, executor of the high justice, shall bury her, alive and most reluctant, in front of the new Montigny gibbet. Nay, our friend soon began to take a foremost rank in this society. He could string off verses, which is always an agreeable talent; and he could make himself useful in many other ways. The whole ragged army of Bohemia, and whosoever loved good cheer without at all loving to work and pay for it, are addressed in contemporary verses as the "Subjects of François Villon." He was a good genius to all hungry and unscrupulous persons; and became the hero of a whole legendary cycle of tavern tricks and cheateries. At best, these were doubtful levities, rather too thievish for a schoolboy, rather too gamesome for a thief. But he would not linger long in this equivocal border land. He must soon have complied with his surroundings. He was one who would go where the cannikin clinked, not caring who should pay; and from supping in the wolves' den, there is but a step to hunting with the pack. And here, as I am on the chapter of his degradation, I shall say all I mean to say about its darkest expression, and be done with it for good. Some


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A pleasant-spirited lady. There’s little of the melancholy element in her.

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 charitable critics see no more than a jeu d'esprit, a graceful and trifling exercise of the imagination, in the grimy ballad of Fat Peg (Grosse Margot). I am not able to follow these gentlemen to this polite extreme. Out of all Villon's works that ballad stands forth in flaring reality, gross and ghastly, as a thing written in a contraction of disgust. M. Longnon shows us more and more clearly at every page that we are to read our poet literally, that his names are the names of real persons, and the events he chronicles were actual events. But even if the tendency of criticism had run the other way, this ballad would have gone far to prove itself. I can well understand the reluctance of worthy persons in this matter; for of course it is unpleasant to think of a man of genius as one who held, in the words of Marina to Boult—

But beyond this natural unwillingness, the whole difficulty of the case springs from a highly virtuous ignorance of life. Paris now is not so different from the Paris of then; and the whole of the doings of Bohemia are not written in the sugar-candy pastorals of Murger. It is really not at all surprising that a young man of the fifteenth century, with a knack of making verses, should accept his bread upon disgraceful terms. The


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 race of those who do is not extinct; and some of them to this day write the prettiest verses imaginable After this, it were impossible for Master Francis to fall lower: to go and steal for himself would be an admirable advance from every point of view, divine or human.

And yet it is not as a thief, but as a homicide, that he makes his first appearance before angry justice. On June 5, 1455, when he was about twenty-four, and had been Master of Arts for a matter of three years, we behold him for the first time quite definitely. Angry justice had, as it were, photographed him in the act of his homicide; and M. Longnon, rummaging among old deeds, has turned up the negative and printed it off for our instruction. Villon had been supping—copiously we may believe—and sat on a stone bench in front of the Church of St. Benoît, in company with a priest called Gilles and a woman of the name of Isabeau. It was nine o'clock, a mighty late hour for the period, and evidently a fine summer's night. Master Francis carried a mantle, like a prudent man, to keep him from the dews (serain), and had a sword below it dangling from his girdle. So these three dallied in front of St. Benoît, taking their pleasure (pour soy esbatre). Suddenly there arrived upon the scene a priest, Philippe Chermoye or Sermaise, also with sword


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 and cloak, and accompanied by one Master Jehan le Mardi. Sermaise, according to Villon's account, which is all we have to go upon, came up blustering and denying God; as Villon rose to make room for him upon the bench, thrust him rudely back into his place; and finally drew his sword and cut open his lower lip, by what I should imagine was a very clumsy stroke. Up to this point, Villon professes to have been a model of courtesy, even of feebleness: and the brawl, in his version, reads like the fable of the wolf and the lamb. But now the lamb was roused; he drew his sword, stabbed Sermaise in the groin, knocked him on the head with a big stone, and then, leaving him to his fate, went away to have his own lip doctored by a barber of the name of Fouquet. In one version, he says that Gilles, Isabeau, and Le Mardi ran away at the first high words, and that he and Sermaise had it out alone; in another, Le Mardi is represented as returning and wresting Villon's sword from him: the reader may please himself. Sermaise was picked up, lay all that night in the prison of Saint Benoît, where he was examined by an official of the Châtelet and expressly pardoned Villon, and died on the following Saturday in the Hôtel Dieu.

This, as I have said, was in June. Not before January of the next year could Villon extract a pardon from the king; but while his hand was in,


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In spite of the prodigious number of people who managed to get hanged, the fifteenth century was by no means a bad time for criminals. A great confusion of parties and great dust of fighting favoured the escape of private housebreakers and quiet fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat. Prisons were leaky; and as we shall see, a man with a few crowns in his pocket and perhaps some acquaintance among the officials, could easily slip out and become once more a free marauder. There was no want of a sanctuary where he might harbour until troubles blew by; and accomplices helped each other with more or less good faith. Clerks, above all, had remarkable facilities for a criminal way of life; for they were privileged, except in cases of notorious incorrigibility, to be plucked from the hands of rude secular justice and tried by a tribunal of their own. In 1402, a couple of thieves, both clerks of the University, were condemned to death by the Provost of Paris. As they were taken to Montfaucon, they kept crying "high and clearly" for their benefit of clergy, but were none the less pitilessly hanged and gibbeted. Indignant Alma Mater interfered before the king; and the Provost was deprived of all royal offices, and


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 condemned to return the bodies and erect a great stone cross, on the road from Paris to the gibbet graven with the effigies of these two holy martyrs. We shall hear more of the benefit of clergy; for after this the reader will not be surprised to meet with thieves in the shape of tonsured clerks, or even priests and monks.

To a knot of such learned pilferers our poet certainly belonged; and by turning over a few more of M. Longnon's negatives, we shall get a clear idea of their character and doings. Montigny and De Cayeux are names already known; Guy Tabary, Petit-Jehan, Dom Nicolas, little Thibault, who was both clerk and goldsmith, and who made picklocks and melted plate for himself and his companions—with these the reader has still to become acquainted. Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux were handy fellows and enjoyed a useful pre-eminence in honour of their doings with the picklock. "Dictus des Cahyeus est fortis operator crochetorum," says Tabary's interrogation, "sed dictus Petit-Jehan, ejus socius, est forcius operator." But the flower of the flock was little Thibault; it was reported that no lock could stand before him; he had a persuasive hand; let us salute capacity wherever we may find it. Perhaps the term gang is not quite properly applied to the persons whose


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 fortunes we are now about to follow; rather they were independent malefactors, socially intimate, and occasionally joining together for some serious operation just as modern stockjobbers form a syndicate for an important loan. Nor were they at all particular to any branch of misdoing. They did not scrupulously confine themselves to a single sort of theft, as I hear is common among modern thieves. They were ready for anything, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter. Montigny, for instance, had neglected neither of these extremes, and we find him accused of cheating at games of hazard on the one hand, and on the other of the murder of one Thevenin Pensete in a house by the Cemetery of St. John. If time had only spared us some particulars, might not this last have furnished us with the matter of a grisly winter's tale?

At Christmas-time in 1456, readers of Villon will remember that he was engaged on the Small Testament. About the same period, circa festum nativitatis Domini, he took part in a memorable supper at the Mule Tavern, in front of the Church of St. Mathurin. Tabary, who seems to have been very much Villon's creature, had ordered the supper in the course of the afternoon. He was a man who had had troubles in his time and languished in the Bishop of Paris's prisons on a


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 suspicion of picking locks; confiding, convivial, not very astute—who had copied out a whole improper romance with his own right hand. This supper-party was to be his first introduction to De Cayeux and Petit-Jehan, which was probably a matter of some concern to the poor man's muddy wits; in the sequel, at least, he speaks of both with an undisguised respect, based on professional inferiority in the matter of picklocks. Dom Nicolas, a Picardy monk, was the fifth and last at table. When supper had been despatched and fairly washed down, we may suppose, with white Baigneux or red Beaune, which were favourite wines among the fellowship, Tabary was solemnly sworn over to secrecy on the night's performances; and the party left the Mule and proceeded to an unoccupied house belonging to Robert de Saint-Simon. This, over a low wall, they entered without difficulty. All but Tabary took off their upper garments; a ladder was found and applied to the high wall which separated Saint-Simon's house from the court of the College of Navarre; the four fellows in their shirt-sleeves (as we might say) clambered over in a twinkling; and Master Guy Tabary remained alone beside the overcoats. From the court the burglars made their way into the vestry of the chapel, where they found a large chest, strengthened with iron bands and closed


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 with four locks. One of these locks they picked, and then, by levering up the corner, forced the other three. Inside was a small coffer, of walnut wood, also barred with iron, but fastened with only three locks, which were all comfortably picked by way of the keyhole. In the walnut coffer—a joyous sight by our thieves' lantern—were five hundred crowns of gold. There was some talk of opening the aumries, where, if they had only known, a booty eight or nine times greater lay ready to their hand; but one of the party (I have a humorous suspicion it was Dom Nicolas, the Picardy monk) hurried them away. It was ten o'clock when they mounted the ladder; it was about midnight before Tabary beheld them coming back. To him they gave ten crowns, and promised a share of a two-crown dinner on the morrow; whereat we may suppose his mouth watered. In course of time, he got wind of the real amount of their booty and understood how scurvily he had been used; but he seems to have borne no malice. How could he, against such superb operators as Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux; or a person like Villon, who could have made a new improper romance out of his own head, instead of merely copying an old one with mechanical right hand?

The rest of the winter was not uneventful for the gang. First they made a demonstration


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 She did not try to read. Her thoughts floated upon the surface of her mind like little white clouds reflected on a still lake. She was too tired to seize upon one, follow it up and absorb herself in its attendant train. She wondered vaguely what there was for her in the various impressions which her conversations with the nuns had left upon her. It was singular that, though their way of life so profoundly moved her, the faith which occasioned it left her untouched. She could not envisage the possibility that she might at any time be captured by the ardor of belief. She gave a little sigh: perhaps it would make everything easier if that great white light should illuminate her soul. Once or twice she had had the desire to tell the Mother Superior of her unhappiness and its cause; but she dared not: she could not bear that this austere woman should think ill of her. To her what she had done would naturally seem a grievous sin. The odd thing was that she herself could not regard it as wicked so much as stupid and ugly.

Perhaps it was due to an obtuseness in herself that she looked upon her connection with Townsend as regrettable and shocking even, but to be forgotten rather than to be repented of. It was like making a blunder at a party; there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortifying, but it showed a lack of sense to ascribe too much importance to it. She shuddered as she thought of Charlie with his large frame too well covered, the vagueness of his jaw and the way he had of standing with his chest thrown out so that he might not seem to have a


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 against the Church of St. Mathurin after chalices, and were ignominiously chased away by barking dogs. Then Tabary fell out with Casin Chollet, one of the fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat, who subsequently became a sergeant of the Châtelet and distinguished himself by misconduct, followed by imprisonment and public castigation, during the wars of Louis Eleventh. The quarrel was not conducted with a proper regard to the king's peace, and the pair publicly belaboured each other until the police stepped in, and Master Tabary was cast once more into the prisons of the Bishop. While he still lay in durance, another job was cleverly executed by the band in broad daylight, at the Augustine Monastery. Brother Guillaume Coiffier was beguiled by an accomplice to St. Mathurin to say mass; and during his absence, his chamber was entered and five or six hundred crowns in money and some silver plate successfully abstracted. A melancholy man was Coiffier on his return! Eight crowns from this adventure were forwarded by little Thibault to the incarcerated Tabary; and with these he bribed the jailor and reappeared in Paris taverns. Some time before or shortly after this, Villon set out for Angers, as he had promised in the Small Testament. The object of this excursion was not merely to avoid the presence of his cruel mistress


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 or the strong arm of Noë le Joly, but to plan a deliberate robbery on his uncle the monk. As soon as he had properly studied the ground, the others were to go over in force from Paris—picklocks and all—and away with my uncle's strongbox! This throws a comical sidelight on his own accusation against his relatives, that they had "forgotten natural duty" and disowned him because he was poor. A poor relation is a distasteful circumstance at the best, but a poor relation who plans deliberate robberies against those of his blood, and trudges hundreds of weary leagues to put them into execution, is surely a little on the wrong side of toleration. The uncle at Angers may have been monstrously undutiful; but the nephew from Paris was upsides with him.

On the 23d April, that venerable and discreet person, Master Pierre Marchand, Curate and Prior of Paray-le-Monial, in the diocese of Chartres, arrived in Paris and put up at the sign of the Three Chandeliers, in the Rue de la Huchette. Next day, or the day after, as he was breakfasting at the sign of the Armchair, he fell into talk with two customers, one of whom was a priest and the other our friend Tabary. The idiotic Tabary became mighty confidential as to his past life. Pierre Marchand, who was an acquaintance of Guillaume Coiffier's and had


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 sympathised with him over his loss, pricked up his ears at the mention of picklocks, and led on the transcriber of improper romances from one thing to another, until they were fast friends. For picklocks the Prior of Paray professed a keen curiosity; but Tabary, upon some late alarm, had thrown all his into the Seine. Let that be no difficulty, however, for was there not little Thibault, who could make them of all shapes and sizes, and to whom Tabary, smelling an accomplice, would be only too glad to introduce his new acquaintance? On the morrow, accordingly, they met; and Tabary, after having first wet his whistle at the prior's expense, led him to Notre Dame and presented him to four or five "young companions," who were keeping sanctuary in the church. They were all clerks, recently escaped, like Tabary himself, from the episcopal prisons. Among these we may notice Thibault, the operator, a little fellow of twenty-six, wearing long hair behind. The Prior expressed, through Tabary, his anxiety to become their accomplice and altogether such as they were (de leur sorte et de leurs complices). Mighty polite they showed themselves, and made him many fine speeches in return. But for all that, perhaps because they had longer heads than Tabary, perhaps because it is less easy to wheedle men in a body, they kept obstinately to generalities


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 and gave him no information as to their exploits, past, present, or to come. I suppose Tabary groaned under this reserve; for no sooner were he and the Prior out of the church than he fairly emptied his heart to him, gave him full details of many hanging matters in the past, and explained the future intentions of the band. The scheme of the hour was to rob another Augustine monk, Robert de la Porte, and in this the Prior agreed to take a hand with simulated greed. Thus, in the course of two days, he had turned this wineskin of a Tabary inside out. For a while longer the farce was carried on; the Prior was introduced to Petit-Jehan, whom he describes as a little, very smart man of thirty, with a black beard and a short jacket; an appointment was made and broken in the de la Porte affair; Tabary had some breakfast at the Prior's charge and leaked out more secrets under the influence of wine and friendship; and then all of a sudden, on the 17th of May, an alarm sprang up, the Prior picked up his skirts and walked quietly over to the Châtelet to make a deposition, and the whole band took to their heels and vanished out of Paris and the sight of the police.

Vanish as they like, they all go with a clog about their feet. Sooner or later, here or there,


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 “It is a great good fortune to consecrate that heart to the love of Jesus Christ.”

At that moment a little girl came up to the Mother Superior and confident in her interest showed her a fantastic toy that she had somehow got hold of. The Mother Superior put her beautiful; delicate hand round the child’s shoulder and the child nestled up to her. It intrigued Kitty to observe how sweet her smile was and yet how impersonal.

“It is wonderful to see the adoration that all your orphans have for you, Mother,” she said. “I think I should be very proud if I could excite so great a devotion.”

The Mother Superior gave once more her aloof and yet beautiful smile.

“There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.”

ALTER did not come back to dinner that evening. Kitty waited for him a little, for when he was detained in the city he always managed to send her word, but at last she sat down. She made no more than a pretence of eating the many courses which the Chinese cook, with his regard for propriety notwithstanding pestilence and the difficulty of provisioning, invariably set before her; and then, sinking into the long rattan chair by the open window, surrendered herself to the beauty of the starry night. The silence rested her.


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 they will be caught in the fact, and ignominiously sent home. From our vantage of four centuries afterwards, it is odd and pitiful to watch the order in which the fugitives are captured and dragged in.

Montigny was the first. In August of that same year, he was laid by the heels on many grievous counts; sacrilegious robberies, frauds, incorrigibility, and that bad business about Thevenin Pensete in the house by the cemetery of St. John. He was reclaimed by the ecclesiastical authorities as a clerk; but the claim was rebutted on the score of incorrigibility, and ultimately fell to the ground; and he was condemned to death by the Provost of Paris. It was a very rude hour for Montigny, but hope was not yet over. He was a fellow of some birth; his father had been king's pantler; his sister, probably married to some one about the Court, was in the family way, and her health would be endangered if the execution was proceeded with. So down comes Charles the Seventh with letters of mercy, commuting the penalty to a year in a dungeon on bread and water, and a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James in Galicia. Alas! the document was incomplete; it did not contain the full tale of Montigny's enormities; it did not recite that he had been denied benefit of clergy, and it said nothing about Thevenin Pensete. Mon-


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 tigny's hour was at hand. Benefit of clergy, honourable descent from king's pantler, sister in the family way, royal letters of commutation—all were of no avail. He had been in prison in Rouen, in Tours, in Bordeaux, and four times already in Paris; and out of all these he had come scatheless; but now he must make a little excursion as far as Montfaucon with Henry Cousin, executor of high justice. There let him swing among the carrion crows.

About a year later, in July 1458, the police laid hands on Tabary. Before the ecclesiastical commissary he was twice examined, and, on the latter occasion, put to the question ordinary and extraordinary. What a dismal change from pleasant suppers at the Mule, where he sat in triumph with expert operators and great wits! He is at the lees of life, poor rogue; and those fingers which once transcribed improper romances are now agonisingly stretched upon the rack. We have no sure knowledge, but we may have a shrewd guess of the conclusion. Tabary, the admirer, would go the same way as those whom he admired.

The last we hear of is Colin de Cayeux. He was caught in autumn 1460, in the great Church of St. Leu d'Esserens, which makes so fine a figure in the pleasant Oise valley between Creil


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 and Beaumont. He was reclaimed by no less than two bishops; but the Procureur for the Provost held fast by incorrigible Colin. 1460 was an ill-starred year: for justice was making a clean sweep of "poor and indigent persons, thieves, cheats, and lockpickers," in the neighbourhood of Paris; and Colin de Cayeux, with many others, was condemned to death and hanged.

Villon was still absent on the Angers expedition when the Prior of Paray sent such a bombshell among his accomplices; and the dates of his return and arrest remain undiscoverable. M. Campaux plausibly enough opined for the autumn of 1457, which would make him closely follow on Montigny, and the first of those denounced by the Prior to fall into the toils. We may suppose, at least, that it was not long thereafter; we may suppose him competed for between lay and clerical Courts; and we may suppose him alternately pert and impudent, humble and


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 scene? She was very sorry, Heaven knew she didn’t want to cause him pain, but she couldn’t help it if she didn’t love him. It was no good pretending and it was always better to tell the truth. She hoped he wouldn’t be unhappy, but they had made a mistake and the only sensible thing was to acknowledge it. She would always think kindly of him.

But even as she said this to herself a sudden gust of fear made the sweat start out in the palms of her hands. And because she was frightened she grew angry with him. If he wanted to make a scene, that was his lookout; he must not be surprised if he got more than he bargained for. She would tell him that she had never cared two pins for him and that not a day had passed since their marriage without her regretting it. He was dull. Oh, how he’d bored her, bored her, bored her! He thought himself so much better than any one else, it was laughable; he had no sense of humour; she bated his supercilious air, his coldness, and his self-control. It was easy to be self-controlled when you were interested in nothing and nobody but yourself. He was repulsive to her. She hated to let him kiss her. What had he to be so conceited about? He danced rottenly, he was a wet blanket at a party, he couldn’t play or sing, he couldn’t play polo and his tennis was no better than anybody else’s. Bridge? Who cared about bridge?

Kitty worked herself up into a towering passion. Let him dare to reproach her. All that had happened was his own fault. She was thankful that he


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 fawning, in his defence. But at the end of all supposing, we come upon some nuggets of fact. For first, he was put to the question by water. He who had tossed off so many cups of white Baigneux or red Beaune, now drank water through linen folds, until his bowels were flooded and his heart stood still. After so much raising of the elbow, so much outcry of fictitious thirst, here at last was enough drinking for a lifetime. Truly, of our pleasant vices, the gods make whips to scourge us. And secondly he was condemned to be hanged. A man may have been expecting a catastrophe for years, and yet find himself unprepared when it arrives. Certainly, Villon found, in this legitimate issue of his career, a very staggering and grave consideration. Every beast, as he says, clings bitterly to a whole skin. If everything is lost, and even honour, life still remains; nay, and it becomes, like the ewe lamb in Nathan's parable, as dear as all the rest. "Do you fancy," he asks, in a lively ballad, "that I had not enough philosophy under my hood to cry out: 'I appeal'? If I had made any bones about the matter, I should have been planted upright in the fields, by the St. Denis Road"—Montfaucon being on the way to St. Denis. An appeal to Parliament, as we saw in the case of Colin de Cayeux, did not necessarily lead to an acquittal or a commuta-


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 knew the truth at last. She hated him and wished never to see him again. Yes, she was thankful that it was all over. Why couldn’t he leave her alone? He had pestered her into marrying him and now she was fed up.

“Fed up,” she repeated trembling anger. “Fed up! Fed up!”

She heard the car draw up to the gate of their garden. He was coming up the stairs.

E came into the room. Her heart was beating, wildly and her hands were shaking; it was lucky that she lay on the sofa. She was holding an open book as though she had been reading. He stood for an instant on the threshold and their eyes met. Her heart sank; she felt on a sudden a cold chill pass through her limbs and she shivered. She had that feeling which you describe by saying that some one was walking over your grave. His face was deathly pale; she had seen it like that once before, when they sat together in the Park and he asked her to marry him. His dark eyes, immobile and inscrutable, seemed preternaturally large. He knew everything.

“You’re back early,” she remarked.

Her lips trembled so that she could hardly frame the words. She was terrified. She was afraid she would faint.

“I think it’s about the usual time.”


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 tion; and while the matter was pending, our poet had ample opportunity to reflect on his position. Hanging is a sharp argument, and to swing with many others on the gibbet adds a horrible corollary for the imagination. With the aspect of Montfaucon he was well acquainted; indeed, as the neighbourhood appears to have been sacred to junketing and nocturnal picnics of wild young men and women, he had probably studied it under all varieties of hour and weather. And now, as he lay in prison waiting the mortal push, these different aspects crowded back on his imagination with a new and startling significance; and he wrote a ballad, by way of epitaph for himself and his companions, which remains unique in the annals of mankind. It is, in the highest sense, a piece of his biography:—

Here is some genuine thieves' literature after so much that was spurious; sharp as an


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 His voice sounded strange to her. It was raised on the last word in order to give his remark a casual air, but it was forced. She wondered if he saw that she was shaking in every limb. It was only by an effort that she did not scream. He dropped his eyes.

“I’m just going to dress.”

He left the room. She was shattered. For two or three minutes she could not stir, but at last, raising herself from the sofa with difficulty, as though she had had an illness and were still weak, she found her feet. She did not know if her legs would support her. She felt her way by means of chairs and tables to the verandah and then with one hand on the wall went to her room. She put on a tea-gown and when she went back into her boudoir (they only used the drawing-room when there was a party) he was standing at a table looking at the pictures of the Sketch. She had to force herself to enter.

“Shall we go down? Dinner is ready.”

“Have I kept you waiting?”

It was dreadful that she could not control the trembling of her lips.

When was he going to speak?

They sat down and for a moment there was silence between them. Then he made a remark and because it was so commonplace it had a sinister air.

“The Empress didn’t come in to-day,” he said.

“I wonder if she’s been delayed by a storm.”

“Was she due to-day?”

“Yes.”

She looked at him now and saw that his eyes were


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 etching, written with a shuddering soul. There is an intensity of consideration in the piece that shows it to be the transcript of familiar thoughts. It is the quintessence of many a doleful nightmare on the straw, when he felt himself swing helpless in the wind, and saw the birds turn about him, screaming and menacing his eyes.

And, after all, the Parliament changed his sentence into one of banishment; and to Roussillon, in Dauphiny, our poet must carry his woes without delay. Travellers between Lyons and Marseilles may remember a station on the line, some way below Vienne, where the Rhone fleets seaward between vine-clad hills. This was Villon's Siberia. It would be a little warm in summer perhaps, and a little cold in winter in that draughty valley between two great mountain fields; but what with the hills, and the racing river, and the fiery Rhone wines, he was little to be pitied on the conditions of his exile. Villon, in a remarkably bad ballad, written in a breath, heartily thanked and fulsomely belauded the Parliament; the envoi, like the proverbial postscript of a lady's letter, containing the pith of his performance in a request for three days' delay to settle his affairs and bid his friends farewell. He was probably not followed out of Paris, like Antoine Fradin, the popular preacher, another exile of a few years later, by weeping


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 Remonstrance with the gods for allowing the future to be foretold, lines 1-18. Terror at Rome, 18-74. Relation of the massacres perpetrated by Marius and Sulla, 75-261. Interview between Brutus and Cato, 262-365. Marriage of Cato and Marcia, 366-426. Character of Cato, 427-442. Pompeius marches to Capua, 443. Geography of Italy, 450-494. Cæsar overruns Northern Italy, 496-533. Episode of Domitius at Corfinium, 534-590. Pompeius's speech to his army, 591-673. He retires to Brundisium, 674-690. The town described, 690-709. Cnæus is sent to the East, 709-733. Cæsar tries to block the harbour, 735-772. Pompeius escapes to Epirus, 773-837.


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He’s gentle; never schooled, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved.

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372 as by Mr. Ward, chiefly in their negative character, are sufficiently unproductive of good and prolific of evil. How much more so, when viewed in their positive character! Under the endless recurrence of a dull, monotonous, mechanical routine, the intellectual soil, light by nature and wholly unmanured by art, soon becomes impoverished altogether. Under the combined influences of an utterly vicious system of discipline, the forced initiation into deceptive and dishonest practices, the habitual inculcation of loose, grovelling, carnalizing maxims for the regulation of future conduct, the unceasing repetition of abominably filthy or grossly idolatrous legends,—the moral and religious soil is transformed into a fertile nursery of all manner of rank, unprofitable, and noxious weeds!

Nor is the aspect of things materially improved, when we turn aside to contemplate the nature, character, and influence of the education in the schools of learning, whether Muhammadan or Hindu. Besides the details already supplied, we may, instead of deducing any further inferences of our own, appeal to the well-weighed judgments of the most disinterested, impartial, and unsuspicious witnesses. The English translator of work on the Philosophy of History, adduces, from the illustrious Goerres, the following passage as a brief summary of his estimate of the practical influence of the system so enthusiastically propounded by the prophet of Mecca, and, by his credulous followers, embraced and propagated with such resolute and inflexible zeal. “The rigid monotheism,” says he, “of his (the prophet’s) doctrine, which, by denying the Trinity and with it all personal manifestation of the Deity, limits its idea to the depths of eternity, without admitting any true or living communication of the Godhead with what appertains to time, naturally allures the metaphysical pride which in this abstraction hath made itself its own God. The ethical Pantheism which this religion professes, while it furnishes a pretext, a motive and a palliation to all the pretences of the mighty, to the ambition of usurpers, the violence of pride, and the arrogance of tyranny, and at the same time consoles and disarms the injured and the oppressed by the inevitableness of destiny, must draw to its preacher the men of the sword, of violence, and of blood, and links those once bound indissolubly to him. The sensual Eudaimonism, to which his creed opens so free a scope both in this world and the next, must rally round the apostle of lust the multitude that burns with all the passionate glow of that fervid zone, and place under his control all the wild fiery energies of that region.” With reference to the practical influence of Sanskrit learning, we have the recorded testimony of the equally illustrious. Being himself one


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 fixed on his plate. He made another observation, equally trivial, about a tennis tournament that was about to be played, and he spoke at length. His voice as a rule was agreeable, with a variety of tone, but now he spoke on one note. It was strangely unnatural. It gave Kitty the impression that he was speaking from a long way off. And all the time his eyes were directed to his plate, or the table, or to a picture on the wall. He would not meet hers. She realised that he could not bear to look at her.

“Shall we go upstairs?” he said when dinner was finished.

“If you like.”

She rose and he held open the door for her. His eyes were cast down as she passed him. When they reached the sitting-room he took up the illustrated paper once more.

“Is this a new Sketch? I don’t think I’ve seen it.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t noticed.”

It had been lying about for a fortnight and she knew that he had looked it through and through. He took it and sat down. She lay again on the sofa and took her book. As a rule in the evening, when they were alone, they played coon-can or patience. He was leaning back in an arm-chair, in a comfortable attitude, and his attention seemed absorbed by the illustration he was looking at. He did not turn the page. She tried to read, but she could not see the print before her eyes. The words were blurred. Her head began to ache violently.

When would he speak?


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 They sat in silence for an hour. She gave up the pretence of reading, and letting her novel fall on her lap, gazed into space. She was afraid to make the smallest gesture or the smallest sound. He sat quite still, in that same easy attitude, and stared with those wide, immobile eyes of his at the picture. His stillness was strangely menacing. It gave Kitty the feeling of a wild beast prepared to spring.

When suddenly he stood up she started. She clenched her hands and she felt herself grow pale. Now!

“I have some work to do,” he said in that quiet, toneless voice, his eyes averted. “If you don’t mind I’ll go into my study. I daresay you’ll have gone to bed by the time I’ve finished.”

“I am rather tired to-night.”

“Well, good-night.”

“Good-night.”

He left the room.

S soon as she could next morning she rang Townsend up at his office.

“Yes, what is it?”

“I want to see you.”

“My dear, I’m awfully busy. I’m a working man.”

“It’s very important. Can I come down to the office?”


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 Fable XX. The New Fables of Phædrus. 447

Fable XIX. THE RUNAWAY SLAVE AND ÆSOP.

There is no necessity to add evil to evil.

A Slave, when running away from a Master of severe disposition, met Æsop, to whom he was known as a neighbour: "Why are you in such a hurry?" said Æsop. " I'll tell you candidly, father," said the other, " for you are worthy to be called by that name, as our sorrows are safely entrusted to you. Stripes are in superabundance; victuals fail: every now and then I am sent to the farm as a slave to the rustics there: if he dines at home I am kept standing by him all night, or if he is invited out, I remain until daylight in the street. I have fairly earned my liberty; but with grey hairs I am still a slave. If I were conscious to myself of any fault, I should bear this patiently: I never have had a bellyful, and, unhappy that I am, I have to put up with a severe master besides. For these reasons, and for others which it would take too long to recount, I have determined to go wherever my feet may carry me." "Listen then," said Æsop; "When you have committed no fault, you suffer these inconveniences as you say: what if you had offended? What do you suppose you would then have had to suffer?"

By such advice he was prevented from running away.

Fable XX. THE CHARIOT-HORSE SOLD FOR THE MILL.

Whatever happens, we must hear it with equanimity.

A certain Man withdrew from his chariot a Horse, ennobled by many victories, and sold him for the mill. As he was being led out of doors from the mill-stones to water, he saw his fellows going towards the Circus, to celebrate the joyous contests at the games. With tears starting forth, he


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 mother said to me: ‘Still, my Odette, I do not think that you will die without having done something that will endure.’

“I was still lost in my anxiety and my reflections, while my cousins, never knowing the beating of my heart, worked quietly, when suddenly my mother, letting her tapestry fall and looking at me attentively, said: ‘Ah, my dear child, I am very sure that you will end by becoming a religious.’

“‘Are you speaking seriously, my good mother,’ I answered. ‘You are laying bare the innermost thought and desire of my heart.’

“‘Mais oui,’ cried my cousins without giving me time to finish, ‘For two years Odette has thought of nothing else. But you will not give your permission, ma tante, you must not give your permission.’

“‘By what right, my dear children, should we refuse it,’ said my mother, ‘if it is the Will of God?’

“My cousins then, wishing to make a jest of the conversation, asked me what I intended to do with the trifles that belonged to me and quarrelled gaily about which should take possession of this and which of that. But these first moments of gaiety lasted a very little while and we began to weep. Then we heard my father come up the stairs.”

The Mother Superior paused for a moment and sighed.

“It was very hard for my father. I was his only daughter and men often have a deeper feeling for their daughters than they ever have for their sons.”

“It is a great misfortune to have a heart,” said Kitty, with a smile.


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Rh whoever has given a patient attention to the cautious inductive process by which these fearful results have been obtained, must feel satisfied that they cannot be far wide of the truth. Let, then, these terrific summations be kept ringing in the ears of our statesmen at home and abroad, aye, and of the whole sovereign British public, till some educational movement be originated, somewhat commensurate in its nature and extent with the clamant necessities of the living and moving masses of ignorance around us. For, viewed even as a case of simple ignorance or blank vacuity, who can, without painful emotion, contemplate its vastness—its almost boundlessness of expanse? Who, that has in any adequate degree realized the astounding fact, can maintain anything like silence, when he reflects that, in the two provinces of Bengal and Behar alone, the amount of ignorance is numerically far more extensive than it would be if, in the British isles, including England, Scotland, and Ireland, with their several insular appendages, not a single man, woman, or child, could be found, endowed with the humblest of all scholastic attainments—the attainment that would capacitate them simply to read, cypher, or write!

Mr. Adam himself, albeit not a man over much given to the melting or emotive mood, seems to have felt something like an indescribable sensation taking possession of his soul when, looking down from the high tower of his educational survey, he gazed at the wide waste of utter sterility, intellectual and moral, that stretched out in all directions around him. In summing up the details of his first report on the educational statistics of the thana Nattore in the district of Rajshahi, he thus gives vent to the uncontrollable feelings which had gained the ascendancy over his usually cool and phlegmatic temperament:—“The conclusions to which I have come on the state of ignorance both of the male and female, the adult and the juvenile population of this district, require only to be distinctly apprehended in order to impress the mind with their importance. No declamation is required for that purpose. I cannot, however, expect that the reading of the report should convey the impression which I have received from daily witnessing the mere animal life to which ignorance consigns its victims, unconscious of any wants or enjoyments beyond those which they participate with the beasts of the field—unconscious of any of the higher purposes for which existence has been bestowed, society has been constituted, and government is exercised. I am not acquainted with any facts which permit me to suppose that, in any other country subject to an enlightened government, and brought into direct and immediate contact with European civilization, in an equal population, there


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 “It is strange how vividly I remember the scene. We were sitting round the table, a round table covered with a red cloth, and we worked by the light of a lamp with a green shade. My two cousins were staying with us and we were all working at tapestries to re-cover the chairs in the drawing-room. Imagine, they had not been re-covered since the days of Louis XIV, when they were bought, and they were so shabby and faded, my mother said it was a disgrace.

“I tried to form the words, but my lips would not move; and then, suddenly, after a few minutes of silence my mother said to me: ‘I really cannot understand the conduct of your friend. I do not like this leaving without a word all those to whom she is so dear. The gesture is theatrical and offends my taste. A well-bred woman does nothing which shall make people talk of her. I hope that if ever you caused us the great sorrow of leaving us you would not take flight as though you were committing a crime.’

“It was the moment to speak, but such was my weakness that I could only say: ‘Ah, set your mind at rest, maman, I should not have the strength.’

“My mother made no answer and I repented because I had not dared to explain myself. I seemed to hear the word of Our Lord to St. Peter: ‘Peter, lovest thou me?’ Oh, what weakness, what ingratitude was mine! I loved my comfort, the manner of my life, my family and my diversions. I was lost in these bitter thoughts when a little later, as though the conversation had not been interrupted, my


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 throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I'm sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

'Twould cure an author for ever of the fuss and folly of opening his street-door, and calling in his neighbours and friends, and kinsfolk, with the devil and all his imps, with their hammers and engines, &c. only to observe how one sentence of mine follows another, and how the plan follows the whole.

I wish you saw me half starting out of my chair, with what confidence, as I grasp the elbow of it, I look up


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 Act IV. Sc. 3. ADELPHI. 159

Syr. He orders

Legs for a table, turned with feet of oak,

To eat off out of doors.

Dem.Or say, to drink —

You are given more to drink; well! I am off.

Syr. Right, you do right. I'll exercise your legs

To-day, I will, my busybody.

Where's Æschinus?

He should be here — confound him — dinner spoils!

There's Ctesipho all love. I must look cut

And take care of myself — to eat the fat

And drink the sweet — Ah! and to empty pots

And cans, and to be merry whilst we may.

ACT IV. — Scene 3. — Micio — Hegio.

Mic. Now, by my word of honour, Hegio,

I am delighted. I will make all straight;

I will repair all injury we've done.

Although, perchance, you deemed me one of those

Who, having done an injury, take affront

And quarrel rather than make reparation.

I cannot lay a claim to thanks for this,

Nor need you thank me, Hegio, as you do.

Heg. Nay, not for that: I never deemed you, Micio,

Other than what you are; but I entreat you

Come, calm the mother of the maiden's heart.

Tell her that our suspicions were ill-founded,

And that the Psaltrian was not bought for him,

But for his brother.

Mic. If you think it right,

Hence let us go.


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 catching the idea, even sometimes before it half way reaches me

I believe in my conscience I intercept many a thought which heaven intended for another man.

Pope and his Portrait are fools to meno martyr is ever so full of faith or fire—I wish I could say of good works too—but I have no

And till gods and men agree together to call it by the same name—the errantest, in science—in politics—or in religion, shall never kindle a spark within me, or have a worse word, or a more unkind greeting,


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Rh in various forms, the fables and speculations of past ages. The amount of authorship shown to exist in the different districts, is a measure of the intellectual activity which, however now misdirected, might be employed for useful purposes. The same men who have wasted, and are still wasting, their learning and their powers in weaving complicated alliterations, recompounding absurd and vicious fictions, and revolving in perpetual circles of metaphysical abstractions—never ending, still beginning—have professed to me their readiness to engage in any sort of literary composition that would obtain the patronage of Government.”

Apart, then, altogether from the distorted views of moral and religious truth inculcated in the Sanskrit institutions and the perverted habits of mind contracted in acquiring them, we have Mr. Adam’s own distinct admission that both the teachers and the taught are only wasting their learning and their powers on what is utterly frivolous, or useless, or worse. In such a case, the more learned any man is, the more frivolous and useless do his labours become. And this is a fact, which Mr. Adam himself amply exemplifies in his third Report. He there recounts the literary achievements of the most learned men in the different districts. The most voluminous author he met with, was a native of Burdwan; of whose works he enumerates nearly forty. Of these, some are of great extent, such as the history of, written on 889 leaves or 1,776 pages, containing 30,000 slokas or metrical stanzas. The greater part of them relate to fabulous, mythological, or purely scholastic subjects. And amongst these, we find such rarities and ingenuities as the following;—a work on the praises of Vishnu and Shiva, so composed that every sloka has two senses, of which one is applicable to Vishnu and the other to Shiva—another, exhibiting a double sense, one expressing the praises of Shiva, and the other some different meaning—a third, containing the praises of Krishna, written in a species of alliteration by a repetition of the same sounds—a fourth, in question and answer, so framed that the answer to one question contains the answers to all the questions in the same sloka—a fifth, containing the praises of Radha and Krishna, and so framed that they may be read either backward or forward—a sixth, so framed that each sloka contains materials for 64 slokas by the transposition of each letter in succession from the beginning to the end, first the thirty-two syllable from the left to right, and afterwards the thirty-two from right to left, &c. &c. How forcibly may all this remind us of the dark ages in Europe—those ages of coarse taste and rude discernment, of laborious trifling and busy indolence—when the learned could find no better employment for their time and talents than in unceasingly spinning and weaving the most fantastic subtleties out of their own racked and wearied brains; and when one of the loftiest and most charac-


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 160 ADELPHI. Act IV. Sc. 4.

Heg.You will do all a kindness,

Relieving the poor soul in doubt and dread,

Whose spirits need it too; you will be glad

When you have done it. If you think not so,

I will go there alone and tell the news.

Mic. Nay, I will go myself.

Heg. You will do best;

For the unfortunate are jealous, too,

And doubtful of the world; they ever dread

It, contumelious upon poverty.

And the best way to calm their throbbing hearts

And justify her husband, is to go.

Mic. Ah! that is true.

Heg. Come, let us go together.

ACT IV.— Scene 4.— Æschinus.

Æs. I am half driven wild: a thunderbolt,

To fall from heaven, thus at unawares,

Not dreaming of such thing — I am at sea.

My members all are quivering with fear;

My mind is all bewildered with its dread;

My soul is all in doubt and cannot think.

How shall I clear myself of all this cloud

Of treasons and of thoughts unmerited,

For Sostrata believes this Psaltrian

Purchased for me? The old dame tells me so.

I met her on the way — she sought the midwife

I asked her of the health of Pamphila —

If she were in the pangs — when she began

Exclaiming, Ai ! Ai ! Æschinus — I pray

Mock us no more, with words and broken faith.


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 present deplorable situation. I wish most ardently I had done what I always intended to do, and set down in writing those events, and the memoirs of my life; they undoubtedly would be very instructive, and greatly lessen the number of impostors, and those that are imposed upon."

Here he stopped, and, having mused a while, began his narrative, which, indeed, was very defective, but satisfactory enough for me.

"I am," thus Volkert began, "a native of England, my father died when I was not quite ten years old, and left me an helpless orphan, without either fortune or near relations: A rich Dutchman being moved by my helpless situation, took me in his house, and, leaving England the year following, carried me over with him to the Hague."