into a new road, and they will run along in it until they find another; then they make a sharp turn and trot on. But Spaniards have spinal bones in their backs, and bend slowly. You must collar them, and goad them, and bleed them under the tongue, like oxen in spring, if they grow riotous. No amnesty! no talk about it!

Saez. Sire, I had no such meaning. I would only have mentioned the innocent and devout office of his Most Christian Majesty, in condescending to be the godfather of a bell in the church of Saint Louis at Paris. The Duke Blacas was proxy, and promised, no doubt, in his Majesty's name, to instruct the new Christian in its duties, to watch over its morals, and in short to educate it as a good child and good Catholic, until it come to years of discretion.

Rey Netto. This indeed is better than such things as amnesties; the idea of which banished from my royal breast the delight I foretasted in the agonies of Riego. The rogue Riego! I had resolved how to punish him. My cousin Louis of Angoulême would not hear of racks and wheels, nor even of thumb-screws and other trinkets of justice, and requested me never to renew the subject, lest any impediment or remonstrance on his part, if publicly known, might raise a mutiny in his army. I have been illuminated from above my heart floats in the fulness of joy. The rogue Riego! if there is an ass in Madrid, he shall be drawn along the streets by one. I will give orders under my royal hand and seal, that the hurdle shall have some sharp pointed sticks in it, with a nail or two here and there*. I prayed to the archangel Saint Michael, and within a few minutes ... ha ha ha!

Saez. Your Majesty is really too jocose with such heavenly names.

Rey Netto. I can not help it. . . he knows my purity... I yield to his inspiration.

Saez. What did he inspire?

Rey Netto. First, that the fetters should pinch the traitor's legs to the bone, swell them like his Most Christian Majesty's, and blacken them like a zampa di Modena.

Saez. This is not a thought for laughter, but for justice.

Rey Netto. I can not help it, upon my conscience.

Saez. The second inspiration, what was that? Rey Netto. My sides shake again and ache with laughter. It was that, before he is carted, a good dose of physic should be given to him;

*When Riego was taken prisoner, there was with him an English officer named Matthews, bearing a regular commission from the Spanish Government, constitutionally established, and sworn to be religiously observed by his Catholic Majesty. This officer was treated with every cruelty and ignominy for several months; he was detained in solitary confinement, and kept without food, at one

time, fifty-three hours. General Martin, called the Empublic square of Roda. He killed many thousands of the French soldiers in the late war, and they abandoned him

pecinado, was exposed in an iron cage, on festivals, in the

to those of the Faith.

for compunction is never so certain as with the belly-ache; it makes people as grave as the Miserere.

Saez. I know the rebel too well: nothing will move him..

Rey Netto. Not jalap?

Saez. I would say, to confess his offences. Rey Netto. Let there be monks enough about him, and I will force him to edify the people: I will make him sing and sigh and beg pardon of Saint Jago and the virgin, of God and man and me. He may bristle like a wild boar of the Bierzo, I will make a lamb of him. He shall grin like a stuffed crocodile: he shall sweat like a Jew in a benito, roasting at a royal marriage-feast in the good old times.

What think you, father, of these his last words: read them, and correct them as you please. Saez. He can not speak better.

Rey Netto. I will despatch them instantly. Saez. With strict orders that they be not printed before the offender is dead. Who wrote them? Rey Netto. Father Gil Roncalle of Valmaseda.

Saez. Father Gil is a Carmelite. I wonder at his precipitancy. He may mean well; but he must correct several of the expressions.

Rey Netto. I doubted at first whether it was quite proper to represent a man saying what he never said.

Saez. Very proper, if the glory of God be increased thereby. Beside, what is falsehood on earth may be truth in heaven for it is unlawful to suppose that anything will be the same there as here, excepting our bodies, which we know will be identically what they are now, without the alteration of a single hair.

Rey Netto. O how comfortable! I do not mean the hair, but that blessed doctrine touching falsehood. What are you writing with your pencil under the last words of Riego?

Saez. Gloria Deo in excelsis.'

Rey Netto. Kyrie eleison! mater amabilis ! Saez. Your Majesty should not have crossed yourself at Deo; but only at demonio, or eretico, or constitucional.

Rey Netto. Father, what have you been eating? Your garlic, I think, smells of mutton.

Saez. I only added a few ounces of mutton, as many of beef, pork, and veal, with a little virgin oil and garvances, and, having finished them, laid down my spoon and fork upon the plate as the clock was striking.

Rey Netto. You are truly religious; but godliness and garlic can not always keep down virgin oil and garvances.

Saez. I must go to the mineral waters. Rey Netto. Come with me to Sacedon. Saez. They report that those of Toledo are good for the stomach.

Rey Netto. I would make you archbishop, if my family could do without it.. and beside, I want You must always be my spiritual you about me. guide, my confessor.

Saez. No office is so glorious as that of guiding

Rey Netto. That is to be minister.

Saez. Confessors must always rule ministers. Rey Netto. I have scarcely any money: it would save me something if you would exercise both offices.

Saez. I am too poor: I can not give cabinetdinners. Cooks are the presidents of wars and treaties; turtles are the seals, and services of plate the wax.

Rey Netto. I do not hear that any cook is a president; objections have been raised even against violinists and valets. As to hereditary wealth or poverty, take ten of the leading men in Europe, and you will find either them or their fathers void of all inheritance. Even the honour of paternity, as to some of them, is still in abeyance: they have risen by the same merits as will raise you, without your piety and devotion. Faithful to the good cause, they have soon deserted their first admirers, who forsooth cried up their liberal principles.

Saez. These principles are not so much amiss when two gentlemen have but a pair of breeches between them, but everyone who has a pair to himself, and common sense, is ashamed of acknowledging that they were ever his.

Rey Netto. Several of these gentlemen the kings my brothers have even made their cousins: some are dukes. For instance Fouché and Savary, and the Gascon whom you mentioned just now, and whom his Most Christian Majesty would have made running-footman to an ambassador; but he humbly represented that, being born among rocks, he could not run upon level ground. My brother of France, the best-natured man in the world, happened then to be patting the breast of a plump and fresh-plucked pullet. He changed his royal resolution, and made a running-footman of the intended ambassador, and an ambassador of the intended running-footman. This, I understand, has drawn closer the ties of affinity between his Most Christian Majesty and his Most Mahometan, who feels himself highly complimented by the gradual adoption of his political system in every court of Europe.

Saez. It is much to be feared that the French will corrupt our people by their flutes and fiddles; and they are so fond too of chattering and of scribbling, that I should not wonder if, deliverers as they call themselves, they drew their pens against us, proving this thing and disproving that. Where demonstrations come in the van, remonstrations come in the rear.

Rey Netto. Neither the fiddle-bow nor flute can overthrow us; but Heaven deliver us from the sharpness of the pen and from the wiliness of de

Saez. The scholars on other benches may make a clatter and a clamour: the treasury-bench is the only bench that stands firm. As for Chateaubriand, he is not half so great a rogue as he would make you believe he is. He wishes the world to forget that he was an author of voyages and novels, pasquinades and puffs, and is ambitious of rivalling the Fouchés a sort of ambition very natural to people who leave the pamphlet for the portfolio, the common reading-room for the king's cabinet. According to M. Talleyrand, one of these royal cousins, by his own peculiar virtue, has anticipated what we suppose may hereafter take place in heaven, by converting falsehood into truth. I hope, sire, it was not the same person who swore that Napoleon was innocent as a child?

Rey Netto. Between ourselves, there are worse men than Don Napoleon. I was never better lodged or better fed than at Vallancey. Don Napoleon gave me the most beautiful watch I ever saw, together with five seals, at parting. One of them plays chimes: you have nothing to do but to say three paternosters and wind it up, and it will chime of its own accord. The same Don Napoleon too gave me other things: a coral crucifix, which coral was once white, but became red through the blood of our Redeemer: a silver gridiron, the original of that on which the blessed Saint Lorenzo suffered martyrdom: and a rosary as miraculous as the chiming seal, good against musket-balls and pleurisies. But Prince Talleyrand, who was present, told me I must not tempt God by catching cold, nor by exposing my sacred person in battle. For none of these things was there any stipulation made by my brothers of the Holy Alliance. It is true Don Napoleon laughed at me when he caught me first. This is natural. I laughed at him when he was caught.

Saez. The heretics did not punish him as they ought to have done.

Rey Netto. They might at least have pinched him and stuck a needle under his nail. But these kings, God help them! have little power at present. They are kept in jeopardy by the constitutionalists, and are deprived of their confessors. Kyrie eleison! mater amabilis!

Saez. It will not be long so. All the princes in Europe, constitutional or legitimate, have one mind, one administration. Those of their ministers who talk the most boldly, talk by permission; and it is understood, as your Majesty knows, that it is only to delude the people and keep them quiet. What was done at Naples, has been done at Cadiz, is doing in Greece, and will be done in America. Legitimate kings have no surer coadjutors than the ministers of constitutional. These know by experience that the people is a football, that it is fed with air, and that the party which kicks it farthest is the winner. They have begun to learn something from us.

Rey Netto. But they are so ungrateful as not to

acknowledge it. As for religion, I have no hope of them they care not whether God laughs or cries: they do nothing for his glory: no processions, no autos da fé, no embroidery, no artificial flowers, no head-dresses, no canopies, no candles. Surely, for the sake of keeping up appearances with him, they might paint a couple of poles white, stick a wick on the top, and place one on each side of him at the altar, as they do in Italy, where piety of late years is grown frugal.

Saez. Again and again ought we to render thanks to the mother of God for our deliverance from the worst of them, as we did when they followed the French across the Pyrenees, and left our beloved country without stain.

Rey Netto. Kyrie eleison! jubilate domino! Kyrie eleison! Amen de profundis! Amen dico vobis.

Unus vestrúm, unus vestrúm traditurus est me. Jubilate domino. Kyrie eleison!

Saez. I do not despair of seeing the day, when the Parliament of England, like that of France, will serve only to register royal edicts, and when her kings shall recommend to colleges and cathedrals the sound doctors of Salamanca.

Rey Netto. Sanguine as are my hopes, I sometimes am discouraged, and hardly can expect it. Heretics are very stubborn: fire alone can soften and bend them. At present we are able but to treat them as ferrets, and sew their mouths up. On this achievement the sons of Saint Louis are unanimously resolved.

Saez. Faith, hope, and charity, are resplendent on your Majesty's countenance, whose gracious smiles, like beams from heaven, announce the certain accomplishment of your pious wishes.

Rey Netto. I did not smile about sewing up their mouths like ferrets; but, upon my life I cannot help laughing . . do you think it practicable? They must be careful in binding well both arms and feet. Now, my dear father, Don Victor, as there should always be some person to seize the legs of the criminal who is hanged, could not I be so disguised as to perform the office, and nobody know it? The hand of a man who dies by the halter is a cure for some diseases; a mere touch effects it. The leg of Riego, pulled as I should pull it, would to me be a panacea, like the milk of Saint Catharine's neck, or the oil running from her body.

Saez. If his accomplices should ever hear of it, they would be exasperated to madness.

Rey Netto. I have ordered a Te Deum to be sung for my deliverance, not only in Spain, but also in my kingdoms of America and India: this will bring them to reason.

Saez. Those flourishing kingdoms will, I trust, furnish your Majesty with temporal no less than spiritual means of overcoming your enemies.

Rey Netto. To encourage my brothers, the Holy Allies, in their good intentions, and to reward them for their past services, I intend to open a free trade to them with my kingdoms in both Indies; providing however that no mercantile or other ship sail nearer than within one mile of

Delhi and Mexico, so that the pestilential breath of heresy may not taint my people. Furthermore I shall authorise my minister of grace and justice, to revoke all diplomas granted to physicians, and all licenses to surgeons, by the pretended Cortes:* thus permitting every man to recover the money he has paid in fees, taking back his health in statu quo.

Saez. Sire, the great difficulty is the last.

Rey Netto. Long as I have resisted intercession for a general amnesty, I am at last inclined to grant that also, excluding those only who have borne arms against me, voted against me, written against me, and spoken against me.

Saez. Generous resolution! Your Majesty with good reason rubs your hands together, and tucks them comfortably between the knees.

Rey Netto. The rogue Riego! I have found a confessor for him.

Saez. True Christian charity! to think of our worst enemies in our happiest moments, and to provide for the safety of their souls when the laws demand them!

Rey Netto. Father Gil Roncalle is the man he shall accompany him on the road, and never leave him. I warrant he will make him penitent enough, and as pale in five minutes as a quaresimal fast could do. The father stank so, I had nearly lost the salvation of my soul by him. Saez. How, sire?

Rey Netto. He stood before me and presented the eucharist: such a vapour came up with it into my mouth, I was within a hair's breadth of spitting out my Maker with chocolate and anchovies.

Saez. He would have pardoned an involuntary sin, at the intercession of his Church.

Rey Netto. Involuntary sin! what sin, father, may that be?

Saez. Unintentional. Those who commit no voluntary sins, commit involuntary; for without sin is none, not even the babe. Infants are born in it.

Rey Netto. That I knew before; but a little water, and some blessed words, and a cross, so it be not a Greek one . . . O what mercy!

Saez. Yes, we may all come into the right way, if our parents and nurses do not look about and chatter at the font, but hold our heads quiet, and take especial care we never sneeze.

Rey Netto. Would that quite undo it?

Saez. Such a sign of contempt, so early! there is no hope for it, no office appointed, no ceremony, no procession.

Rey Netto. This knowledge is more important than any other; but you will be pleased and surprised, no doubt, to hear, that I have a motu proprio, by which I can restore my finances and fill my treasury.

Saez. Sire, I shall indeed rejoice to learn it.

Rey Netto. As king of the Indies, where the people are more tractable than in America, I shall propose to my vassal, the Great Mogul, his inde

* Incredible as it may seem, this ordinance was issued.

pendence of my crown, on condition that he pays me immediately one hundred million of dollars, and twenty million yearly for ever. From the English I shall demand no more than a few millions, they being powerful and proud, and disinclined to acknowledge my sovranty de jure!

Saez. Your Majesty would perhaps have said de facto.

Rey Netto. We kings confuse these terms: indeed they are immaterial.

Saez. The plan is admirable: the only difficulty is in the execution. It must ripen a short time yet in your Majesty's royal mind.

Aphanasia. You are leaving us! you are leaving us! O Maurice, in these vast wildernesses are you then the only thing cruel!

Beniowski. Aphanasia! who, in the name of Heaven, could have told you this?

Aphanasia. Your sighs, when we met at lesson. Beniowski. And may not an exile sigh? Does the merciless Catharine, the murderer of her husband, does even she forbid it? Loss of rank! of estate, of liberty, of country . .

Aphanasia. You had lost them, and still were happy. Did not you tell me that our studies were your consolation, and that Aphanasia was your heart's content?

Beniowski. Innocence and youth should ever be unsuspicious.

Aphanasia. I am then wicked in your eyes! Hear me hear me ! It was no suspicion in me. Fly, Maurice! fly, my beloved Maurice! my father knows your intention. . fly! fly!

Beniowski. Impossible! how know it? how suspect it? Speak, my sweet girl! be calm.

Aphanasia. Only do not go while there is nothing under heaven but the snows and sea. Where will you find food? who will chafe your hands? who will warn you not to sleep lest you should die? and whose voice, can you tell me, will help your smiles to waken you? Maurice, dear Maurice, only stay until the summer: my father will then have ceased to suspect you, and I may learn from you how to bear it. March, April, May three months are little. . you have been here three months. . one faggot's blaze! Do promise me. I will throw myself on the floor, and ask my good kind father to let you leave us. Beniowski. Aphanasia! are you wild? My dearest girl, abandon the idea! You ruin me; you cause my imprisonment, my deprivation of you, my death. Listen to me: I swear to do nothing without you.

Aphanasia. O yes; you go without me. Beniowski. Painfullest of my thoughts! no; here let me live, here, lost, degraded, useless; and Aphanasia be the witness of nothing but my ignominy. O God! was I born for this! is mine a light to set in this horizon!

Aphanasia. I do not understand you did you pray? May the saints of heaven direct you! But not to leave me !

Beniowski. O Aphanasia! I thought you were too reasonable and too courageous to shed tears: you did not weep before: why do you now?

Aphanasia. Ah why did you read to me, once,

of those two lovers who were buried in the same grave?

Beniowski. What two? there have been several. Aphanasia. Dearest, dearest Maurice! are lovers then often so happy to the last? God will be as good to us as to any; for surely we trust in him as much. Come, come along: let us run to the sea the whole way. There is fondness in your sweet compassionate face; and yet I pray you do not look! O do not look at me; I am so ashamed. Take me, take me with you! let us away this instant. Loose me from your arms, dear Maurice; let me go; I will return again directly. Forgive me! but forgive me! do not think me vile! You do not; I know you do not, now you kiss me.

Beniowski. Never will I consent to loose you, light of my deliverance ! Let this unite us eternally, my sweet espoused Aphanasia!

Aphanasia. Espoused! O blessed day! Olight from heaven! I could no longer be silent; I could not speak otherwise. The seas are very wide, they tell me, and covered with rocks of ice and mountains of snow for many versts, upon which there is not an aspin or birch or alder to catch at, if the wind should blow hard. There is no rye, nor berries, nor little birds tamed by the frost, nor beasts asleep and many days, and many long stormy nights, must be endured upon the waves, without food. Could you bear this quite alone?

:

Beniowski. Could you bear it, Aphanasia?
Aphanasia. Alone I could not.

Beniowski. Could you with me? Think again; we both must suffer.

Aphanasia. How can we, Maurice! shall not we die together? Why do you clasp me so hard?

Beniowski. Could you endure to see, hour after hour, the deaths and the agonies of the brave? How many deaths! what dreadful agonies! The fury of thirst, the desperation of hunger! To hear their bodies plunged nightly into the unhallowed deep.. but first, Aphanasia, to hear them curse me as the author of their sufferings, the deluder of an innocent and an inexperienced girl, dragging her with me to a watery grave, famished and ghastly, so lovely and so joyous but the other day! O my Aphanasia! there are things which you have never heard, never should have heard, and must hear. You have read about the works of God in the creation.

Aphanasia. My father could teach me thus far: it is in the Bible.

Aphanasia. I thought it strange, until I saw you, Maurice!

Beniowski. Strange then will you think it that Man himself breaks this image in his brother.

Aphanasia. Cain did, and was accursed for it. Beniowski. We do, and are honoured; dishonoured if we do not. This is yet distant from the scope of my discourse. You have heard the wolves and bears howl about our sheds?

Aphanasia. O yes; and I have been told that they come upon the ice into the sea. But I am not afraid of them: I will give you a signal when they are near us.

Beniowski. Hunger is sometimes so intolerable, it compels them to kill and devour one another. Aphanasia. They are violent and hurtful creatures; but that shocks me.

Beniowski. What, if men did it!

look as if it pained you to be kind to me? Do you retract the promise yet warm upon your lips? Would you render the sea itself more horrible than it is? Am I ignorant that it has whirlpools and monsters in its bosom; and storms and tempests that will never let it rest; and revengeful and remorseless men, that mix each other's blood in its salt waters, when cities and solitudes are not vast enough to receive it. The sea is indeed a very frightful thing: I will look away from it: I protest to you I never will be sad or frightened at it, if you will but let me go with you. If you will not, O Maurice, I shall die with fear; I shall never see you again, though you return. . and you will so wish to see me! For you will grow kinder when you are away.

Beniowski. O Aphanasia! little know you me or yourself!

Beniowski. Hunger has driven men to this extremity. You doubt my words: astonishment turns you pale paler than ever.

Aphanasia. I do believe you.. Was I then so pale? I know they kill one another when they are not famished; can I wonder that they eat one another when they are? The cruelty would be less even without the compulsion; but the killing did not seem so strange to me, because I had heard of it before.

Beniowski. Think! our mariners may draw lots for the victim, or may seize the weakest.

Aphanasia. I am the weakest: what can you say now? O foolish girl to have spoken it. You have hurt, you have hurt your forehead! Do not stride away from me thus wildly! do not throw back on me those reproaching, those terrifying glances! Have the sailors no better hopes of living, strong as they are, and accustomed to the hardships and dangers of the ocean?

Beniowski. Hopes there are always. Aphanasia. Why then do you try to frighten

can not think it half, so many sighs and sorrows interrupt me! And you will love me very much when you are gone! Even this might pain you: do not let it! No! you have promised: 'twas I who had forgotten it, not you.

How your heart beats! These are your tears upon my hair and shoulders.

Beniowski. May they be the last we shall mingle!

Aphanasia. Let me run then and embrace my father if he does not bless me, you ought not.

Beniowski. Aphanasia, I will not refuse you even what would disunite us. Let me too stay and perish!

Aphanasia. Ah my most tender, most confiding father! must you then weep for me, or must you hate me!

Beniowski. You shall meet again; and soon perhaps. I promise it. The seas will spare us. He who inspires the heart of Aphanasia, will preserve her days.

Romilly. Perceval, I congratulate you on your| appointment.

Perceval. It is an arduous one, Romilly, and the more after such eloquent men as have preceded

me.

Romilly. What! and do you too place eloquence in the first rank among the requisites of a minister? Pitt, who could speak fluently three hours together, came about us like the tide along the Lancashire sands, always shallow, but always just high enough to drown us.

Perceval. Despise him as you may, he did great things.

Romilly. Indeed he did he made the richest nation in the world the most wretched, and the poorest the most powerful.

Perceval. He was unfortunate, I acknowledge it, on the Continent.

Romilly. Like the Apparition in the Revelations, he put the right foot upon the sea, and the left upon the land, but in such a manner that they could not act in concert.

Perceval. He was placed among the immortals while living.

Romilly. And there are clubs expressly formed for the purpose of irrigating this precious plant of immortality with port and claret. They or their fathers sprang up rapidly in their obscurity under the rank litter of the improvident husbandman. He was called immortal by those who benefited from him, the word God on such occasions being obsolete.