They established houses of entertainment of various descriptions, into which the young and unwary were allured; and then, when their victims were heated with the excesses practised there, and were inclined to join in any pursuits the partners of their vices, these corrupters hurried them into some crowd of revolutionists, engaged in fervid debate, and colouring the most nefarious projects with the language and the sentiments of pure philanthropy and patriotic enthusiasm. It was at such a place and time that Henri became infected with the contagious frenzy of republicanism. He had been persuaded, after many refusals, to visit a gaming-house, which was a favourite place of resort to some most intimate associates. The recollection of his father's last words stung him as he entered; but he was determined not to play, and he kept his resolution. Encouraged by the forbearance to which he found himself equal, he fell at length into the practice of visiting the place as a sort of lounge, looking on at his friends, but still refraining from play. He soon became familiar with these scenes; gambling lost its horrors for him; he passed the threshold of the temple of vice, and it was not long before he began the worship which he saw all but himself practising within it. In short, he yielded to the entreaties, the encouragement, and the ridicule of his associates; and in a little time became a constant attendant at the gaming-table. He had, like other gamblers, his vicissitudes of good and ill fortune; but having exhausted his father's means, he, on one evening, after a run of ill-luck, staked, in despair, his all upon a single cast-and lost it. It was a moment of wildness and tempest of the passions. Virtue had lost her habitual hold, and he was like a skiff upon the waters, unoared, unruddered, and unanchored-ready to move as the current might drift it. His companions adjourned to a neighbouring political club. He walked with the crowd, and assisted in one of those stormy and portentous debates, which so often ended in maddening the auditors to a resolution, promptly executed, to commit, as essential to the common weal, some instant act of lawless violence. The meeting broke up in tumult; the members proceeded in a body to their work of atrocity; Henri, fired by example, and despe

rate at his state of total destitution, which seemed to leave him no refuge but in the public ruin, joined in their wildest excesses, and became too far committed to avail himself of a moment of repentance and reflection, even were that moment allowed him-but it was not. His sanguine temper had made him a leader in the disorder which he at first only thought he shared; and he was obliged to take an active, though subordinate post among the faction which he had joined. The speed with which a character can be changed in times of public convulsion would be incredible, if facts did not terribly attest it. At the miserable period of our revolution, I have seen the mildest and best natures so soured and hardened by atrocious usage, or by a familiarity with crimes which they were compelled to witness, or driven, at first, by the force of circumstances, to share, that in the end they seemed to have the tempers not of men, but of demons. But civil wars only make that more glaring and manifest which occurs less obtrusively in the most quiet times. Character must ever be the result of habit and example; and he who trusts his virtue in the neighbourhood of vice will find, that the diseases of the mind are but too like the contagious distempers of the body -as infectious, and as deadly.

"So it was with Henri Tarrant. For a while he shuddered at the deeds which it became his part to assist in perpetrating. He objected, he remonstrated; but he only made himself suspected by his party, who talked of treason when he spoke of mercy or of justice. He found himself, therefore, obliged, at first, to abandon humanity for self-preservation; after some time his conscience ceased to prompt when he ceased to listen to its dictates; and at length he became a proselyte to the doctrines and arguments which flattered him, by seeming to excuse or palliate the courses that he considered it impossible to avoid. Paris, however, was a place so dangerous alike to those of moderation and humanity, and those who adopted measures of the sternest rigour, that he seized the first opportunity of procuring a commission in the revolutionary army, and was soon after ordered on active service.

"In the meantime, La Vendée had become the theatre of a conflict as

singular in its character, and as sanguinary as any which history records. The people of this district were equally remarkable for their primitive and simple manners, and for a strong attachment to their religion and to the persons of their clergy. At first they regarded the distant din of the revolution as they would the sound of a remote torrent. They were peaceful and contented, and exempt from many of the abuses which prevailed in other parts of France. They therefore felt little interest in the political changes which were occurring in the metropolis. But when it was attempted to put in execution the decree, suspending and degrading such of their pastors as would not take the revolutionary oath, which the clergy of La Vendée, almost to a man, rejected, the people became frantic. The lowest ranks were the first to arm, and the gentry, who were mostly staunch royalists, but who feared that the country was not yet ripe for revolt, were in some instances compelled, against their declared wishes, to head a populace, excited to the highest pitch of enthusiasm in the cause of their king and their religion.

M.

"The peasantry in the immediate neighbourhood of M. Tarrant, were distinguished by a more than ordinary degree of activity and ardour. They were foremost among those who gained the first considerable advantage over the revolutionary troops. Tarrant had, by the universal voice, been chosen their leader; and, forget ting his age and the infirmities which were growing fast upon him, he displayed in the field all the eager valour of the stoutest and youngest of his followers. His son, Gabriel, too, rendered important services; and when the youth distinguished himself by some signal act of bravery, the old gentleman would cry, Well done, my dear boy! Right, Gabriel; right, my boy! But where is Henri-where is Henri-if he be indeed alive, that he is not fighting by his father's side in such a cause as this?'

"I need not detail to you the successes and reverses of this miserable and hopeless contest. After prodigies of valour and patient suffering, the unhappy Vendeans were overpowered by numbers. The vengeance of the victors was ample and terrible. During a considerable part of the war, no quarVOL. XIX.

ter was given, and at its close the face of the country presented only one wide succession of smoking ruins. The streets of every town which lay in the march of the merciless conquerors, literally ran blood. After the decisive battle of Chollet, a mixed and harassed host of upwards of eighty thousand human beings, of all sexes and conditions, sickly and decrepit old men, weak and affrighted women, half-naked and famished children, wounded peasants, and the remnant of them who saved their lives and arms in the battle, rolled on towards the Loire, exhausted by fatigue and hunger, but seeking, like a drove of panic-struck and hunted cattle, some refuge from the dreadful scourge that followed fast behind them. M. Tarrant had been wounded in the last engagement, and with difficulty made his way among the crowd, supported by his daughter, who, in the midst of these terrible trials, never lost her resolution. Madame Tarrant, who had been for some months rapidly declining, was assisted forward by her son. Unfortunately, they deviated a little from the track of the other fugitives, hoping, by following some of the byroads which Gabriel thought he knew, and which were little frequented, to gain more easily the heights of St Ferment, the point towards which all were hastening, with the design of escaping across the Loire. They proceeded a considerable space onward, the high ground which was their landmark being hidden from their view; but they missed their way among the lanes and valleys with which all this country abounds, and when they believed they had nearly reached the point of rendezvous, they found themselves upon the bank of the river, upwards of two miles from their place of refuge. At this moment, several peasants passed them in great trepidation, crying, 'The Blues! The Blues!" (so the revolutionary soldiers were called ;) and urging instant speed,-'Fly, fly, my children!' cried M. and Madame Tarrant, at the same moment, 'We must perish at all events -escape while you can!' It was a moment of life and death. Gabriel looked towards the heights of St Ferment, and saw the first body of fugitives safe on the opposite bank of the river, and the rest following, apparently unpursued. The peasants who

2 N

moved past them urged to the young people the advice which their parents had given. One of them, who remonstrated most strongly, was a neighbour of M. Tarrant's, and he even caught the arm of Marie, and strove to force her away. For an instant, Gabriel seemed irresolute, but he cast a glance at his sister, and that glance confirmed him. Her arm was clasped round her mother's, who at the sudden alarm would have sunk, but for her support; and her eyes were cast upwards with an expression in which fixed resolution was blended with humble and devout resignation.

666 Here, then, we remain,' said Gabriel, as a party of the Blues appeared on an eminence of the road, a few yards distant. 'We shall live, or die together.'

"The revolutionary troops were guarding a number of prisoners whom they drove forward laden with forage. They stopped short upon seeing how near they had come to the flying host, which was crossing the river at St Ferment, and as they were but a small party, sent out to scour the country for provisions, they did not choose to approach nearer to St Ferment, lest they might fall in with some straggling band of their opponents more numerous than their own. Two of the foremost lifted their sabres to cut down the Tarrants; but another called out that the commanding-officer, who was at a little distance behind, had given orders to spare, for the present, all the prisoners they might meet, in order that, by distributing among them the burdens with which the other wretches were overladen, they might proceed more quickly to the town to which they were to return, before night, and which was several miles distant. The Tarrants were then loaded and driven on with the rest of the crowd. Marie and Gabriel asked for double weight, and implored that their aged parents might be freed from burdens which they could not bear; but they were answered with sabre-blows from the soldiers. The old man, and his sick and feeble wife, were compelled to bear their load with the rest, and the whole group moved towards the town, the prisoners being goaded on by the swords and bayonets of the soldiery. What would have been the agony of this aged couple, had they known that

the troops who inflicted these tortures upon them were commanded by their own son! Henri Tarrant was the offi

cer of the party. But his station during this march was some hundred yards to the rear, and his miserable parents were spared the anguish of the discovery.

"When they reached the town, the prisoners, on being unloaded, were distributed, without food, among the houses of a large square, which the sword had cleared of its inhabitants during the day; and which served as prisons for the victims until their savage guards, to use their own language, 'had leisure' to dispatch them.

"It was the practice, during this inhuman war, to assign an officer and his party, during the night, the task (as the phrase was) of clearing the prisons; that is, of butchering the prisoners in cold blood. About midnight, the cries which burst from several parts of the square, announced that the business of slaughter had begun. House after house was searched and cleaned. The officer (it was a part of his ordinary duty) preceded the soldiers, opened the door, and directed them in their bloody work. They had visited all the houses but one, and as that stood at a little distance from the others, the soldiers were retiring without having noticed it; when their captain, who had approached, and discovered that it contained some victims not yet immolated, called the soldiers back, entered the house, and ascended the stairs which led to the room where the prisoners were confined. A broken door had been nailed up to secure them, and, had they not been too feeble for the exertion, they might have torn it down without much difficulty, and so have probably escaped; for that part of the square had been left nearly unguarded. They did not appear to have made any such effort. The officer looked through the clinks of the shattered door; the moon shone full in through a barred window; and Henri Tarrant (for it was he) saw by its light his father, bending in mute anguish over the body of his mother, who seemed to have just expired in the arms of her children. Time was precious;-but it was lost. So sudden, so appalling was the discovery, that Henri gazed on stupidly for a few seconds.

“The spirit has fled to its last rest

ing-place,' said M. Tarrant, lifting his face upwards. Soon shall we all meet there. Providence is wise, my children, and we must not murmur.-Henri ! Henri! she blessed you as she died. Would to God that I, too, before I die, could see and bless you!-Three years have this night passed since

"Henri was awakened to the passing peril of the moment. He essayed to rush down and order off the soldiers; but a file of a serjeant and five or six grenadiers had passed quickly up stairs, without knowing that their officer had entered; and though they bore lights, not observing him in their haste, they overturned him in the press. What followed was the work of a moment. The door was burst open at a plunge. Marie, when she saw the soldiers approach, flung herself between them and her father; but her cry of filial anguish, before it was fully breathed out, became the shriek of death. In an instant her lifeless body quivered upon a bayonet. Gabriel received another mortal thrust, aimed, like the former, at his father; and before" Here M. St Julien paused for the first time since he had begun this miserable narrative. He added hurriedly:"Just as I rushed forward to save my father, a blow from a sabre cleft his grey head, and he fell upon the weltering heap,-the bodies of my mother, my sister, and my brother,all-all brought to death by my means, and three of them slaughtered before my eyes, and under my authority!"

I recoiled with horror at this dreadful confession, and could not for some moments bear to address a man, who stood before me a self-convicted parricide. He perceived what I felt, and

said :

"I did not propose making this avowal, but guilt is a poor dissembler. You abhor me. It is but just yet hear me. Listen a little farther to the most wretched penitent that ever sought to atone, in a life of misery and sorrow, for crimes, at the bare mention of which humanity shudders. You are young; perhaps you are yet innocent; perhaps, too, you have parents. You live in times free from the distractions of those atrocities, the example and the frequency of which rob man of all that is human in his nature. But every season, and every age of man, and of the world, has its own dangers.

Take from my history a solemn warning.

"Mark how I fell. My first crime was disobedience. Had I never entered a gaming-house, I would have become unpopular with my associates; and in separating from them, I would have been cut off from the contagion of their atrocious vices. Again, my second crime was disobedience also; to which I was led by the first. Had I not entered a political club, I might have escaped the bloody work of the revolutionary demons. Had I, in short, followed my father's injunctions, given on the eve of my departure from home, I would not have been, in three years from that very evening, the occasion of his murder. But so it is. Take but one step in crime, and you glide as on a downward plane of ice ;-it is a special mercy of Heaven if your criminal course be arrested;-and on that who dare reckon?

"For me, I had filled up the measure of my crimes. I immediately quitted the army. The accidents of the times, and the laws of indemnity, saved me from death,-but not from punishment. Parricide was written in fiery characters in my brain; there they are still, and there they will remain for ever. During many years, I laboured at a profession which allowed me the privacy suited to repentance; designing if I could compass it, to purchase the spot (forfeited at the Vendean insurrection) on which I had spent the years of my innocence, and to pass the remainder of my life in dispensing some little benefit among my fellow-creatures. The storms of the Revolution have swept off all by whom I could be personally remembered here, and my change of name prevents any suspicion of my identity. I shall spend the days that are left me in assuaging pain, as some wretched effort at atonement for the agonies I have caused, and in diffusing among the youth around me, as far as my scanty means allow, those principles of virtue, and those truths of religion, which I once learned from the fondest of mothers; and which notwithstanding all the unhappy errors of my education, and all the deep guilt with which I have since been covered, give, even to such a wretch as I am, a consolation in misery here,-a hope of mercy hereafter."

P.

* * *

*

I awoke as from a long and deep sleep. Whether I had been in a trance, or asleep, or dead, I knew not; neither did I seek to inquire. With that inconsistency that may often be remarked in dreams, I took the whole as a matter of course, and awoke with the full persuasion that the long sleep or trance in which I had been laid, had nothing in it either new or appalling. That it had been of long continuance I doubted not; indeed I thought that I knew that months and years had rolled over my head while I was wrapped in mysterious slumbers. Yet my recollection of the occurrences that had taken place before I had been lulled to sleep was perfect; and I had the most accurate remembrance of the spot on which I lay, and the plants and flowers that had been budding around me. Still there was all the mistiness of a vision cast over the time, and the causes of my having laid myself down. It is one of the vagaries of a dream, and I thought on it without wondering.

The spot on which I was lying was just at the entrance of a cave, that I fancied had been the scene of some of my brightest joys and my deepest sorrows. It was known to none save me, and to me it had been a place of refuge and a defence, for in the wildness of my dream I thought that I had been persecuted and hunted from the society of man; and that in that lone cave, and that romantic valley, I had found peace and security.

I lay with my back on the ground, and my head resting on my arm, so that when I opened my eyes, the first objects that I gazed on were the stars and the full moon; and the appearance that the heavens presented to me was so extraordinary, and at the same time so awful, because so unlike the silvery brightness of the sky on which I had last gazed, that I raised my head on my hand, and, leaning on my elbow, looked with a long and idiot stare on the moon and the stars, and the black expanse of ether.

There was a dimness in the air-an unnatural dimness-not a haze or a thin mantle of clouds stretching over and obscuring the atmosphere-but a

darkness-a broad shadow-spreading over, yet obscuring nothing, as if above the heavenly bodies had been spread an immense covering of clouds, that hid from them the light in which they moved and had their being.

The moon was large and dark. It seemed to have approached so near the earth, that had it shone with its usual lustre, the seas, and the lands, and the forests, that I believe to exist in it, would have been all distinctly visible. As it was, it had no longer the fair round shape that I had so often gazed on with wonder. The few rays of light that it emitted seemed thrown from hollow and highland-from rocks and from rugged declivities. It glared on me like a monstrous inhabitant of the air, and, as I shuddered beneath its broken light, I fancied that it was descending nearer and nearer to the earth, until it seemed about to settle down and crush me slowly and heavily to nothing. I turned from that terrible moon, and my eyes rested on stars and on planets, studded more thickly than imagination can conceive. They too were larger, and redder, and darker than they had been, and they shone more steadily through the clear darkness of the mysterious sky. They did not twinkle with varying and silvery beams-they were rather like little balls of smouldering fire, struggling with a suffocating atmosphere for existence.

I started up with a loud cry of despair, I saw the whole reeling around me,-I felt as if I had been delirious,

mad,-I threw myself again on the flat rock, and again closed my eyes to shut out the dark fancies that on every side seemed to assail me,-a thousand wild ideas whirled through my brain, -I was dying,-I was dead,—I had perished at the mouth of that mossy cave.-I was in the land of spirits,myself a spirit, and waiting for final doom in one of the worlds that I had seen sparkling around me. No, no,I had not felt the pangs of dissolution, and my reason seemed to recall unto me all that I had suffered, and all that I had endured,-I repeated the list of my miseries,-it was perfect, but Death was not there.

I was delirious,-in a mad fever,