in another the subject; but there is none in which either is known out
of relation to the other. The immediate knowledge which Reid allows of
things different from the mind, and the immediate knowledge of mind
itself, cannot, therefore, be split into two distinct acts. In
perception, as in other faculties, the same indivisible consciousness is
conversant about both terms of the relation of knowledge."--_Edinburgh
Review_, No. 103, p. 165.--A very able and elaborate paper, attributed
to Sir William Hamilton.

[7] _Lewes' Biographical History of Philosophy._ Vol. iv., p. 209. In
every way a remarkable work. Written with great vivacity and clearness,
comprising a world of matter in the briefest possible space,--and, O
reader, and O author, forgive the anticlimax!--at the least possible
cost. In fact it forms part of the Series known as "_Knight's Weekly
Volume_." To find a strictly original work of so much ability given to
the world in this form, proves that the publisher and the man of letters
are, in this mercantile age, second to none in the activity and
enterprise with which they render _their_ service to the public.

CHARLES DE BERNARD.

The position of French novels and novelists in the appreciation of the
English public, has undergone, within the last few years, a notable
change. We need revert to no distant period to recall the day when the
word "Paris" on the title-page of a book of fiction, was, to the work so
inscribed, virtual sentence of exclusion from respectable library and
decent drawing-room this side the Channel. It was the foul-bill of
health, the signal of a moral quarantine, interminable and hopeless of
pratique. French novels came to England and were read; but the arrivals
were comparatively rare, the readers scarce more numerous; whilst by the
masses they were condemned as contraband and dangerous merchandise, and
eschewed as religiously as Lyons silks by the humane, when Spitalfields
are starving. The wilful and wicked minority who took pleasure in their
pungent pages, did so clandestinely, and with precaution. In
carefully-locked desk, or on topmost shelf of bookcase, lurking behind
an honourable front-rank of history and essay, the disreputable
literature was bestowed. Nor was its reception more openly hospitable
when arrayed in English garb. Translators there were, who strove to
render into the manly, wholesome Anglo-Saxon tongue, the produce--witty,
frivolous, prurient, and amusing--of Gallic imagination. But either the
translations shared the interdict incurred by the objectionable
originals, or the plan adopted to obtain their partial acceptance,
destroyed pith and point. Letters from plague-ridden shores are fitted
for the perusal of the uninfected by fumigation and other mysterious
processes. They reach us reeking with aromatics and defaced by
perforations, intended doubtless to favour the escape of the demon of
pestilence bodily imprisoned within their folds. But their written
contents are uninjured by the salutary operation; the words of
affection, the combinations of commerce, the politician's plans, are
still to be read upon their stained and punctured surface. Not so with
the French novels that underwent fumigation and curtailment at the hands
of decorous translators. The knife that extirpated the gangrene,
unavoidably trenched upon the healthy flesh: in rooting up the abundant
tares, the scanty grain was shaken out, and chaff and straw alone
remained.

We speak of times past, although still recent; glance we at the present,
and, Heaven help us! what a change is here! Tempora mutantur et
_libri_--or it were perhaps more proper to say, _et lectores_. With
headlong velocity, one extreme has been abandoned for its opposite. The
denounced of yesterday is the favoured of to-day; the scouted is now the
cherished; the rejected stone has a lofty place in the literary edifice.
French novels, translated, if not original, are as commonly seen in the
"best regulated families" as comfits at the confectioner's or poison on
potter-carriers' shelves. The ban is removed, the anathema revoked;
either the Upas has been discovered to be less baneful than was
imagined, or the disease lurking at the core has been forgotten in the
bright colours and pleasant flavour of the appetible fruit. We take up
the newspaper. What heads the column? Half a score advertisements of the
"Mysteries of Paris"--a new edition of the "Wandering Jew," "illustrated
by the first artists"--"Memoirs of a Physician," in twopenny numbers and
shilling volumes; French novels, in short, at all prices and in every
form. We step into the club; the produce of Paris and Brussels presses
strews the table, and an elderly gentleman, with a solemn face and
quakerish coat, searches amongst them for the nine-and-twentieth volume
of "Monte Christo," or of some other French romance of longitude equally
sea-serpentine. We call upon our friend Tom Sterling, a worthy fellow,
much respected on 'Change. Miss Sterling is deep in a natty duodecimo,
whose Flemish aspect speaks volumes in favour of international
copyright. Our natural clearsightedness enables us to read, even from
the door, "Société Belge de Librairie" upon its buff paper cover. Is the
book hastily smuggled under sofa-cushions, or stealthily dropped into
the neglected work-basket? By no means. The fair student deliberately
marks her place, and engages us in a controversy as to the merits,
faults, and beauties of a score of French romancists, in whose
lucubrations she assuredly is far better read than ourselves. In short,
English aversion for French modern literature has disappeared, and been
replaced by partiality--not to say affection. Dumas is a staple
commodity; Sue is voted delightful; English authors of talent and
standing translate or "edite"--to use the genteel word now adopted--the
works of French ones; even George Sand finds lady-translators, and, we
fear, lady readers; French books are reprinted in London, and the Palais
Royal is transported to the arcade of Burlington. We shall not take upon
ourselves to blame or applaud this change in public taste, to decide how
far such large importation and extensive patronage of foreign wares are
advantageous or deplorable--to tax with laxity those who write, or with
levity those who read, the lively and palatable productions of the
present French school. Without encouraging, we will venture to direct,
the prevailing appetite, by pointing the attention of Maga's
readers--whose name is Legion--to the writings of an author not the best
known, but certainly one of the most accomplished, of his class. In
France, his reputation stands very high; and if in England it is not yet
equally well-established, it must be attributed to his having written
little, and to the absence of that charlatanry and egotism which has
brought other cultivators of the Belles Lettres into such universal
notice here and on the Continent. M. Dumas, for instance, even had his
writings, and those of the numerous staff of literary aid-de-camps to
whose bairns he stands godfather, been less diverting, would still have
commanded readers in every country where French is understood, and which
the post from Paris reaches. The man is his own advertisement; his
eccentricities are worth, at a moderate estimate, a dozen advertising
vans, a daily paragraph in a score of newspapers, and a cartload of
posters. He is a practical puff, an incarnate stimulant to popular
curiosity. Let the public appetite for his weekly volumes flag ever so
little, and forthwith he puts in practice, for the renewal of his vogue,
devices so ingenious, that proceeding from any but the privileged
monarch of romance-writers, they would be looked upon as the tricks of a
lunatic. One day in a court of assizes, the next at that of a king, on
the morrow before a civil tribunal, the illustrious inheritor of the
marquisate of La Pailleterie parades his graces, jogs the world's memory
as to the fact of his existence, and bids it read his books and bow
before his footstool. To-day he is on the Corso, to-morrow on the sunny
banks of Rhine; the next day he peeps into Etna's crater, or gasps
beneath the brazen sky of shadeless Syria. Now we hear of him in Spanish
palaces, figuring at royal weddings, and adding one more to the
countless ribbon-ends that already grace his button-hole; and scarcely
has our admiration subsided, when a Mediterranean breeze murmurs sweet
tidings of his presence on African shores, taking his coffee with Beys,
commanding war-steamers, riving the captive's fetters, and rivetting his
claims on his country's gratitude. Wherever he goes, he stands, a modern
Gulliver, pre-eminent in moral giantship, amidst surrounding pigmies,
who

     "Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find themselves
     dishonourable graves."

And the seeming ubiquity of the famous quadroon[8] is not more
marvellous than the multiplicity of characters he assumes. "Dumas at
Home and Abroad" offers an inexhaustible theme and a boundless field for
pen and pencil caricaturists. Alternately dramatist, novelist, tourist,
ambassador, the companion of princes, the manager of theatres, an
authority in courts of justice, a challenger of deputies, and shining
with equal lustre in these and fifty other capacities equally diverse,
what wonder that the slightest work flowing from the pen of so
remarkable a genius, though it be but a forgotten "trifle of twelve
thousand lines," is received with intense gratitude, and caught at like
manna by a famished multitude? Eugène Sue is another writer who has
taken the world by storm, but in quite a different fashion. The
ex-lieutenant of marine does not obtrude his personality upon public
notice, and relies more upon the powerful calibre of his guns than upon
their number. Two books, lengthy ones certainly, established his
reputation. He had been many years a cultivator of literature, and had
produced sundry romances of little more than average merit, when he
suddenly burst upon the public, in the widely spread _feuilleton_ of the
_Débats_, with a work which, however objectionable in some respects, is
unquestionably of extraordinary power and interest. Like the Pickwick
Papers, the "Mystères de Paris" at once established their author in
popular estimation, not only in the land in whose language they were
written, but in all the reading countries of Europe. It was the opening
of a new vein in the literary mine, and though the metal might have been
purer, it had all the glitter that captivates the multitude. The "Juif
Errant," inferior to its predecessor, was scarcely less successful. Its
bitter attacks on the Jesuits, and the consequent anathemas fulminated
against it, with more zeal than wisdom, by certain of the French clergy,
doubtless contributed to its vogue. After Sue and Dumas, Balzac is (with
the exception, perhaps, of Madame Dudevant,) the best known, and most
read, out of France, of all the living French novelists. We hold him
much over-rated, but his great fertility, and the real excellence of a
few of his books, have made him a widely-spread reputation. His early
efforts were less successful than those of Sue; and his first thirty
volumes scarcely attained mediocrity. At last he made a start, and took
his place on the first line of his class, in virtue of a few
masterpieces, scanty diamonds glittering in a cinder-heap.
Over-production, the crying vice of the literature of the day, and an
over-weening conceit, prevented Honoré de Balzac from maintaining the
position he might and ought to have occupied. Such gems as the "Père
Goriot" and "Eugenie Grandet" were buried and lost sight of under
mountains of rubbish. True that he now denied a number of books
published under supposititious names, and which had been universally
attributed to him; but enough remained, which he could not deny, to
tarnish, if not to cancel his fame. To these he has since, with the
reckless and inconsiderate greed that cares not for the public, so long
as it finds a publisher, considerably added. His self-sufficiency is
unparalleled; and in the preface to an edition of his works published
under the comprehensive and presumptuous title of "La Comédie Humaine,"
he puts himself on a level with the first of poets and philosophers,
proposing himself the modest aim of portraying human nature in every
variety of its moral physiognomy.

Less prolific, more unassuming, and far less universally known than the
three authors at whose character and writings we have thus briefly
glanced, Charles de Bernard need fear comparison with none of them. That
he is faultless we do not assert; that he in great measure eschews the
errors of his contemporaries, will be patent to all who peruse his
pages. The objections that English readers will make to his books are to
be traced to no aberrations of his, but to those of the society whose
follies he so ably and wittily depicts. He faithfully sketches, and more
often amusingly caricatures, the vices, foibles, and failings of French
men and women. If those are to be delineated at all--and, with a view to
their amendment, surely they may--the task could hardly be executed with
a chaster and less offensive pencil. De Bernard paints immorality--it
would be unjust to say that he encourages it. He neither deals in
highly-coloured and meretricious scenes _à la_ Sue and Dumas; nor
supports, with the diabolical talent and ingenuity of a Sand, the most
subversive and anti-social doctrines. His works are not befouled with
filth and obscenity, such as that impure old reprobate Paul de Kock
delights and wallows in--or disgraced by the irreligion, and contempt of
things holy, found in the writings of scores of French authors whom we
could name, were they worth the naming. It is undeniable that the
ingenious plots of his very entertaining books turn, for the most part,
on matters difficult to touch upon with propriety, and which English
writers usually avoid; frequently, for instance, on illicit passion and
conjugal infidelity. And therefore many Englishmen, with whatever
interest and amusement they themselves might read his volumes, would
hesitate to recommend them to their sisters and daughters. Some few of
his tales, especially of the shorter ones, are in all respects
unexceptionable. We instance "La Peau du Lion," translated as "The
Cossack's Grave;" and "L'Anneau d'Argent," which has also appeared in
English. Gerfaut, one of this author's earliest works, and
unquestionably his masterpiece, has little that can justly offend,
although its translation met, we believe, a cold reception. The plot
turns on an attachment between a married woman and the hero of the
story. But if M. de Bernard falls readily enough into the easy,
matter-of-course tone in which his countrymen habitually discuss amatory
peccadilloes--and he could hardly have attained his present popularity
in France had he assumed the prude--he does not disdain or neglect to
point a moral after his own fashion. In administering a remedy, a wise
physician has regard to the idiosyncrasy of the patient as well as to
the nature of the disease. A nation whose morality is unhealthy, must
not be treated like a sick horse, whose groom crams a ball down his
throat, and holds his jaws together, and his head back, to prevent its
rejection. The dose must be artfully disguised, wrapped in a sweetmeat,
and the invalid will take it kindly, and sooner or later feel the
benefit. We would fain discern, in some of M. de Bernard's books, under
a perfumed envelope of palatable trifle, a tendency worthy of applause;
a design to combat, by quiet and implied ridicule, the moral maladies of
his country. It is not his wont, as with many of his competitors, to
make the vicious interesting and the virtuous fools. His husbands are
not invariably good-natured, helpless noodles, with whom, even in their
direst calamities, the most right-thinking have difficulty to
sympathise: the Lovelaces who pursue married women with their insidious
and dangerous attentions, are not by him for ever exalted into heroes,
redeeming their pleasant vices by a host of high and chivalrous
qualities. On the contrary, the apparently easy-going husband often
proves a smart fellow, and thorough Tartar--the brilliant lover an
emancipated bagman, or contemptible _chevalier d'industrie_. Of this we
have an example in "Le Gendre," in some respects one of the most
objectionable of De Bernard's novels, certainly not well suited for a
birth-day present to misses in their teens. A seemingly tame, insipid
clown of a husband counteracts the base manoeuvres of a dashing Paris
_roué_; and finally, after refusing to fight the would-be seducer, whom
he has ascertained to be an arrant swindler, takes truncheon in hand,
and belabours him in presence of his intended victim and of a roomful of
company. But setting aside any moral tendency which goodwill towards
such a vastly pleasant author as De Bernard may induce us, by the aid of
our most complaisant spectacles, to discover in his writings, his
gentlemanly tone is undeniable, his pictures of French life, especially
in Paris, are beyond praise. In the most natural and graphic style
imaginable, he dashes off a portrait typifying a class, and in a page
gives the value of a volume of the much-vaunted "Physiologies." And this
he does, like all he does, in a sparkling, well-bred, impertinent style,
peculiar to himself, and peculiarly attractive.

We have already remarked, that M. de Bernard has written little. The
assertion was comparative; we meant that he has produced, since the
commencement of his literary career--not yet very remote--an average of
only three or four volumes per year. This rate, in days when French
scribes carry on five romances at a time, in the daily feuilletons of
five newspapers, and when certain English authors, emulous of Gallic
fecundity, annually conceive and elaborate their dozen or two of
octavos--says little for his industry, or much for his judicious
forbearance. Latterly, however, we regret to observe in him a
disposition to increase the length of his books, and abandon the
pleasant one, two, and three volume tales with which he began. In this
he is wrong; books of so very light a description as his will not bear
great prolongation. Things agreeable enough in small quantities, pall
and cloy if the ration be overmuch augmented. However fragrant and
well-spiced, syllabub is not to be drunk by the bucketful; neither would
it be satisfactory to dine off a _soufflé au marasquin_, though
compounded by the philanthropical Regenerator himself. In England,
custom has decided that three volumes are the proper length for a novel,
and they have become, as a maximum, a rule rarely departed from. We are
content that it should be so, and, indeed, heartily rejoice at it, when
we see works of fiction spun out by indefatigable French manufacturers
into interminable series, through which, at twelve hours a-day, the most
insatiable devourer of the romantic needs a month to toil. Following the
fashion of the times, and encouraged by the example of his successfully
diffuse brethren, M. de Bernard, weary of launching trim corvettes and
dashing frigates, has taken to build line-of-battle ships. He had better
have kept to the small craft, which he found to float so well. Two of
his recent works, "Le Beaupère," and "Le Gentilhomme Campagnard," have
lost in merit what they have gained in length. The subject of the former
is most unpleasant: its catastrophe unnecessarily painful. And the
"Gentilhomme Campagnard," just now concluded, although containing, as do
all his books, much spirited dialogue, many well-drawn characters, and
well-contrived incidents, is weakened by being spun out, and at times,
by its tediousness of detail, reminds us of De Balzac. And here we will
remark, that there is a certain general resemblance between the styles
of De Bernard and De Balzac; so much so, that when the former first
wrote, some persons conjectured his name to be a pseudonyme adopted by
the latter, to the detriment of publishers, to whom, it was said, he had
contracted to deliver all he should produce. And the malignant hinted,
that the author of "Eugenie Grandet" was sufficiently unscrupulous and
hungry of gain to render such a stratagem on his part any thing but
improbable. Whether Charles de Bernard be an assumed name or not, it has
long since been evident, that the books published under it proceed from
a more guarded and uniformly sprightly pen, than that of M. de Balzac.

The plot of the "Gentilhomme Campagnard," is based on the dissensions of
two villages, or more properly speaking, of a hamlet and a very small
town, situated within a mile of each other, and which had once
constituted two separate parishes, but had been amalgamated at the
revolution of '89, greatly to the detriment and indignation of the
weaker party. It is in 1836 that M. de Bernard takes up the
imaginary history of their jealousy and squabbles, as a canvass
on which to embroider the flowers of his invention. The hamlet,
Châteaugiron-le-Vieil, is inhabited, and virtually governed, by the
Gentilhomme Campagnard, the Baron de Vaudrey--a retired colonel of
cuirassiers, whose services under the empire do not prevent his stanch
adherence, under the citizen monarchy of July, to the legitimate and
exiled sovereigns of France. His nephew, the Marquis of Châteaugiron,
less addicted to the fallen Bourbons, arrives, at the opening of the
tale, at his family mansion in Châteaugiron-le-Bourg, with certain
electioneering projects, highly displeasing to the baron, who resolves
vigorously to oppose them, and accordingly gives the whole weight of his
influence to a neighbouring iron-master, M. Grandperrin, also a
candidate. The iron-master has married a second wife, a heartless
vindictive woman, and former mistress of the marquis. She plays an
important part in the clever plot, which, although complicated, is
perfectly clear. To sketch at any length even the principal of the
numerous characters in the amusing comedy, would lead us much too far;
we can barely afford to glance at a few of them. On the foremost
line--after the Gentilhomme Campagnard himself, a fine, generous-hearted
veteran, an excellent compound of the soldier and the nobleman,
possessed of great good sense and shrewdness, and altogether one of
those personages of whom, whether real or imaginary, one reads with
pleasure--stands Madame Bonvalot, or _de_ Bonvalot, as she best loves to
be styled, the _parvenue_ widow of a Bordeaux wine merchant. Her
beautiful and amiable daughter, an excellent model of a virtuous French
lady, gracefully and delicately drawn, is married to the Marquis of
Châteaugiron. The mother, an affected, frivolous, rouged, bejewelled
dowager of fifty, who, through ambition to figure at the Tuileries, has
extorted from her noble son-in-law a promise that he will adhere to the
new order of things, is followed from Paris by one Pichot, ex-clerk to a
notary, also a former lover of Madame Grandperrin, and self-styled
Viscount de Langerac. This fortune-hunter has managed to worm himself
into the intimacy of the marquis, and to kindle, in the too-susceptible
breast of Madame Bouvalot, a tender flame, which he diligently fans.
Then we have a young country-lawyer, Froidevaux, an honest, independent
fellow, and desperate sportsman, who gives advice gratis, thinks more of
partridges than parchments, prefers a day's shooting to a profitable
lawsuit, and is consequently as poor as he is popular, and, to all
appearance, has very little chance of obtaining the hand of Mademoiselle
Victorine, the iron-master's only daughter and heiress, a plump little
beauty, who views Froidevaux with special favour and affection, and with
whom he is deeply in love. Amongst the personages of a lower class, the
most prominent is Toussaint Gilles, landlord of the Cheval Patriote, and
son of one of the revolutionary butchers of the Reign of Terror; a
furious republican, who wears a _carmagnole_ and a red cap, inherits his
father's hatred of the vile aristocrats, and prides himself on his
principles, and on a truculent and immeasurable mustache. Amoudru, a
pusillanimous mayor; Bobilier, a fiery old justice of the peace, and
devoted vassal of the house of Châteaugiron; and Rabusson, once a
sergeant in M. de Vaudrey's regiment, now his game-keeper, must not be
forgotten. A festival got up by Bobilier to celebrate the marquis's
arrival at the castle of his ancestors, stirs the bile of Toussaint
Gilles, who sees in it a base adulation of the _çi-devants_. As
president of the republican club of Châteaugiron-le-Bourg, he, on the
following day, incites a few discontented spirits to a popular
demonstration, to consist in burning down the triumphal arch erected by
the servile justice of peace, and in hoisting a brand-new tricolored
flag on the tree of liberty--a poplar planted, during the glorious days
of July, close to the gate of the marquis's château, but which had long
since withered into a dry and unsightly maypole. A number of bad
characters mingle in the crowd, and the demonstration assumes a more
turbulent and criminal aspect than its original promoters had
contemplated. The outer gate of the château is forced, and stones are
thrown, one of which grazes the cheek of the Viscount de Langerac, who
receives the wound, so he affirms, whilst heroically interposing his
person between Madame de Bonvalot and the shower of missiles. At last
the marquis arms his servants, and repels the rioters, already
frightened at their own deeds; the justice of peace menaces them with
the assizes, Froidevaux exerts his influence, and the disturbance is
nearly at an end, when the flames communicate from the triumphal arch to
the tree of liberty. Toussaint Gilles, as captain of the firemen,
hurries to extinguish the conflagration that menaces the flag-staff, on
whose summit Picardet the blacksmith, another zealous member of the
democratic club, is busy fastening the tricolored symbol of freedom. The
following scene, one of the most detachable in the book, will give a
notion of M. de Bernard's lively and pointed style.

"The by-standers, whether firemen or not, hurried after the captain to a
shed adjoining the Town-hall. Some of them harnessed themselves to the
engine, and dragged it at full speed to the scene of the fire; others
seized the buckets, and hastened to fill them; soon a line was formed
from the well to the burning tree. Quickly as this was done, the
progress of the flames was still more rapid, and Picardet soon found his
post untenable. On first perceiving the fire, the smith had climbed,
like a frightened cat, to the very top of the poplar, at risk of
breaking the tapering stem by the weight of his body; but the refuge was
a very precarious one, for the fire followed him, and he required wings
to rise higher than the place he had attained. Three expedients offered
themselves to him; all equally unpleasant. To leap from the poplar--he
would inevitably break his neck; to slide down the blazing trunk--he
would reach the ground roasted; to wait till assistance reached
him--would it arrive in time? If not immediate, the tree would be on
fire from bottom to top.

"Under such circumstances, the most intrepid might well hesitate, and
Picardet, although naturally brave, remained for a moment undecided; but
when he saw the flag catch fire close to his feet, he understood that
delay was mortal, and heroically made up his mind. Relaxing his hold, he
glided with lightning velocity from top to bottom of the tree.

"At the very moment that the smith, blinded and suffocated by the smoke,
his hair blazing like the tail of a comet, his hands bleeding, and his
clothes torn, rolled upon the ground, roaring with pain, a stream of
water, issuing from the engine, and directed by Toussaint Gilles,
inundated him from head to foot, time enough to save a part of his
singed locks.

"'Now that Picardet is put out,' cried the captain of the firemen, 'save
the tree of liberty! Come, men! Steady, and with a will!'

"As he spoke, Toussaint Gilles levelled the flexible hose at the poplar,
and his assistants pumped vigorously; but before a single drop of water
had reached its destination, the firemen saw, with surprise and alarm,
the engine rise under their hands, and fall heavily on one side,
deluging their legs with the whole of its contents. All eyes fixed
themselves in astonishment on M. de Vaudrey, who had fallen amongst them
like a bomb, and whose herculean strength had just performed this feat.
The country gentleman was perfectly calm, but his complexion was high,
and his brow moist with perspiration, as if he had walked very fast. A
few paces in his rear stood the faithful Rabusson, motionless and in a
martial attitude; in one hand he grasped a knotted stick, more like a
mace than a walking-cane; with the other he led Sultan, the baron's
enormous watch-dog.

"The stupified silence that ensued was at last broken by Toussaint
Gilles.

"'What means this?' he demanded, his voice trembling with rage.

"'It is easy to understand,' coolly replied M. de Vaudrey.

"'Why have you upset our pump?'

"'To prevent your pumping.'

"'And why do you prevent our pumping?'

"'Because those who lighted the fire shall not put it out. It pleased
you to see yonder wooden columns burn, it pleases me to see the poplar
blaze.'

"'Raise the pump,' said the captain to his men, with an imperious air.
'We will see who dares upset it again.'

"'And we will see who dares raise it, when I forbid!' retorted the
baron, calmly folding his muscular arms across his vast chest.

"A murmur was heard; but nobody stirred.

"'Cowards!' cried Toussaint Gilles, with a furious glance at his
friends; 'are you all afraid of one man?'

"'In the first place, there are two of them,' said the prudent Laverdun
to his neighbour, 'and two who are worth ten; to say nothing of their
monster of a dog, who demolishes a wolf with a single bite.'

"'M. Toussaint Gilles,' said the baron, smiling ironically, 'when an
officer gives an order, and is not obeyed, do you know what he should
do?'

"'I want none of your advice,' cried the captain of firemen, in a brutal
tone.

"'He should execute his order himself,' said M. de Vaudrey with
immovable calmness.

"'So I will,' said Toussaint Gilles, advancing roughly. But at the very
moment that he stooped to raise the engine, the baron grasped his
collar, and compelled him to stand upright.

"'M. Toussaint Gilles,' he said, 'listen to me. You are a bad fellow,
needing correction, and I undertake to correct you.'

"'To correct me!' cried the captain, struggling, as ineffectually as a
hare in the clutches of an eagle, in the powerful grasp that restrained
him.

"'He is strangling the captain! Help the captain!' exclaimed several of
the spectators.

"But words were all the help they offered to their chief, so greatly
were the boldest awed by the colossal figure and well-known strength and
courage of the old officer. Gautherot the butcher, constitutionally
brave and pugnacious, was the only one who went to his friend's
assistance. He rushed upon M. de Vaudrey, when Rabusson barred his
passage.

"'One to one,' said the sergeant; 'if you want a thrashing, here am I.'

"'You've a dog, and a cudgel,' replied the butcher; 'I have only my
fists.'

"'True.'

"With a generosity bordering on imprudence, Rabusson placed his heavy
stick in the dog's mouth.

"'Keep that, Sultan,' said he imperatively, 'and don't stir.' Then
turning to the butcher with an air of defiance--

"'Now,' he said, 'are you ready?'

"'Ready,' replied Gautherot, putting himself on guard, with the
steadiness of an experienced boxer.

"The circle which had formed round the baron and the captain, enlarged
itself to leave space for the new antagonists. After a few preliminary
evolutions, Gautherot assumed the offensive.

"'Guard that,' he cried, dealing his adversary a blow that would have
floored an ox. Rabusson guarded it with his left arm, and repaid it with
such a smashing hit in the face, that the bold butcher rolled upon the
ground, blood gushing from his nose and mouth.

"Although Gautherot had numerous friends amongst the rioters, and
although he was then in some sort their champion, a roar of laughter
accompanied his overthrow, and all eyes were fixed admiringly upon the
conqueror. Popular favour, ever ready to abandon a falling hero, is
rarely withheld from him who triumphs.

"At this moment an unexpected incident increased the confusion of the
stormy scene. Excited by the shouts of the mob, and by the fight he had
witnessed, Sultan forgot his orders, dropped the club confided to his
care, and without a bark or other notification of his intentions, sprang
furiously upon the person nearest him. This unlucky individual chanced
to be Laverdun the grocer.

"Under any circumstances, the honourable vice-president of the
Châteaugiron club would have been utterly unable to contend against a
dog as big as a lion, and almost as formidable; but on this occasion,
attacked without warning, and petrified by fear, he did not even attempt
resistance. The consequence was, that in less than a second he lay upon
the ground, pale as death, and half strangled, by the side of his friend
Gautherot, who, stunned by his fall, made no attempt to rise.

"Whilst this occurred, M. de Vaudrey addressed the following admonition
to Captain Toussaint Gilles, who strove in vain to escape from his
hands.

"'I well know, Mr Innkeeper, that you have long been in the habit of
speaking against me and my nephew, and hitherto I have treated your
insolence with the contempt it merited. But though I care nothing for
your bark, I shall not allow you to bite. Bear this in mind: to-day I
pardon you, but if you value your mustaches and your ears, don't begin
again.'

"So saying, M. de Vaudrey destroyed, by an irresistible shock, the
equilibrium of Toussaint Gilles, and hurled him to the ground to keep
company with Gautherot and Laverdun.

"Of the five principal members of the club, three were thus humbled to
the dust; the fourth, singed like a fowl in preparation for the spit,
was in no condition to show fight; Vermot, the turbulent clerk of the
justice of peace, who completed this political quintet, had long since
abandoned the field of battle. On beholding the discomfiture of their
leaders, the rioters stared at each other with a disconcerted air.

"'_Messieurs les bourgeois de Châteaugiron_,' said Monsieur de Vaudrey,
looking round at the crowd with a mixture of calm assurance and ironical
contempt--'I thank you, in my nephew's name, for having burned the
absurd tree which obstructed the entrance to his château; you planted
it, and it was for you to destroy it.'

"'It was not done on purpose,' said a bystander, with great _naiveté_.

"'We will plant another,' cried a voice from the crowd.

"'In the same place?' asked the baron.

"'Yes, in the same place,' replied the voice.

"'Then I beg to be invited to the ceremony,' said M. de Vaudrey, with
imperturbable phlegm; 'some of you seem to have very confused notions
with regard to other people's property, and I undertake to complete your
education.'

"At that moment the poplar, into whose heart the flames had eaten, gave
a loud crack, quivered above the heads of the startled crowd, and broke
in the middle. The lower half remained erect, whilst the upper portion
fell blazing upon the ruins of the triumphal arch, as, in a duel, a
desperately wounded combatant falls expiring upon the body of his slain
foe.

"Toussaint Gilles, Gautherot, and Laverdun had all risen from their
recumbent attitude, but none of them showed a disposition to recommence
the engagement. The butcher wiped his bleeding muzzle with a cotton
handkerchief, and seemed to count, with the end of his tongue, how many
teeth he had left; the grocer, pale as his own tallow candles, examined
his throat with a trembling hand, to make sure that the fangs of the
terrible Sultan had not penetrated beyond the cravat; finally, the
Captain gnawed his mustache, but dared not manifest his fury otherwise."

This energetic interference of the baron and his two aid-de-camps, biped
and quadruped, and the fall of the tree of liberty, which the rioters,
superstitious in spite of their republicanism, look upon as a bad omen,
put an end to the disturbance. The disaffected disperse, and M. de
Vaudrey enters his nephew's house, where an amusing scene occurs between
him and Madame de Bonvalot. Then come a robbery and a fire, and
abundance of incidents--some tolerably new in conception, all very
pleasant in narration. The good sense, perspicacity and straightforward
dealing of the baron, subjugate every one. He unmasks the fictitious
viscount, cures his nephew of his electioneering ambition, and the
painted dowager of her longing for an invite to the Tuileries; and
adopts Froidevaux--whose father had saved his life at Leipsic, and who
has himself picked the baron out of a burning house--as his son and
heir, thus rendering him a suitable husband for the pretty Victorine.
The story ends, as all proper-behaved novels should end, with the
discomfiture of the wicked, and a prospect of many years of happiness
for the virtuous. In this agreeable perspective, Madame de Bonvalot is a
sharer. Having, by the adoption of Froidevaux, alienated the greater
part of his fortune from his nephew's children, the baron is resolved to
secure them the reversion of their grandmother's ample jointure. But
Madame de Bonvalot, whose wrinkles are hidden by her rouge, forgets the
half century that has passed over her head, and hankers after matrimony.
To preserve her from it, M. de Vaudrey commences a course of delicate
attentions, sufficiently marked to prevent her favouring other admirers,
but duly regulated by thermometer, and warranted never to rise to
marrying point. And the fall of the curtain leaves the humorous old
soldier of fifty-five and the vain coquette of fifty, fairly embarked
upon the tepid and rose-coloured stream of flirtation; he quizzing her,
she admiring him--she thinking of her wedding, he only of her will. A
new and ingenious idea, worthy of a French novelist, and which, we
apprehend, could by no possibility have occurred to any other.

We shall close this paper with a tale, appended, as make-weight, to the
final volume of the "Gentilhomme Campagnard", and whose brevity
recommends it for extraction. It is too short and slight to be a fair
specimen of M. de Bernard's powers, but, as far as it goes, it is as
witty and amusing as any thing he has written. It is entitled--

A CONSULTATION.

Towards the beginning of last autumn, amongst a number of persons
assembled in Doctor Magnian's waiting room, sat a man of about forty
years of age, fair complexioned, thin, pale, with a slight stoop in his
shoulders, and altogether of a weak and sickly aspect, that would have
convinced any one he was in the house of a physician. On his entrance,
this person had established himself in a corner with an uneasy air, and
there waited until all the other patients had had their consultations.
When the last had departed, the master of the house approached him with
a friendly smile.

"Good morning, Bouchereau," said the doctor; "excuse me for making you
wait; but my time belongs in the first instance to the sick, and I trust
you have no such claim on an early audience."

"The sufferings of the mind are worse than those of the body," said the
pale man, with a stifled sigh.

"What's the matter?" cried the doctor. "You look haggard and anxious.
Surely Madame Bouchereau is not ill?"

"My wife is in robust health," replied Bouchereau, smiling bitterly.

"Then what is the cause of your agitation? The mind, say you? If you do
not speak, how am I to tell what passes in yours? Come, how can I serve
you?"

"My dear doctor," said the other, sitting down with a most dejected
countenance, "we have known each other for twenty years. I look upon you
as my best friend, and in you I have unlimited confidence."

"Well, well!" said the doctor--"enough of compliments."

"They are not compliments; I speak from my heart. And the strange
confession I have resolved to make to you will be sufficient proof of my
esteem for your character."

"To the point!" cried Magnian impatiently.

"The fact is melancholy for me, and may even appear ridiculous. That is
why I hesitate. Promise me, in the first place, never to reveal what I
am about to tell you."

"The secret of the confessional is as sacred for the physician as for
the priest," said Doctor Magnian gravely.

Bouchereau again sighed, bit his lips, and gazed up at the ceiling. "You
know Pelletier?" he at last said, looking piteously at his friend.

"The captain on the staff? Of course I do. Sanguine habit, short neck,
more shoulders than brains, organisation of a bull! I have always
predicted he would die of apoplexy."

"Heaven fulfil your prophecy!"

"You astonish me! I thought you friends."

"Friends!" repeated Bouchereau, with mingled irony, and indignation.

"_Que diantre!_ Speak out, or hold your tongue. I am no Oedipus to
guess your riddle."

The impatience that sparkled in the doctor's eyes brought his doleful
friend to the substance of his intended confession.

"Well, my dear Magnian," said he, in an agitated voice, "in two words,
here is the case: Pelletier makes love to my wife."

To conceal a smile, the doctor protruded his under-lip, and nodded his
head several times with affected gravity.

"Who would have thought it?" he at last exclaimed. "I never suspected
the great dragoon of such good taste. But are you quite sure? Husbands
are usually the last persons to discover those things."

"I am only too sure; and you shall hear how. My wife is at Fontainbleau,
passing a few days with her mother. The day before yesterday I happened
to remark that the key of my desk fitted her drawers. Mechanically, I
opened one of them, and in a sort of mysterious pigeon-hole I found
several letters from Pelletier."

"The deuce you did! But why open drawers belonging to your wife?"

"It is my right. Besides, do not judge hastily. From the tenor of the
correspondence, I am convinced Virginia's only fault is to have received
the letters and concealed the fact from me. I am pretty sure she has
given the writer no encouragement, and I am therefore much less angry
with her than with Pelletier. Him I will never pardon. A man to whom I
have thrown open my house! an old comrade at Sainte Barbe! A friend, in
short; at least I thought him so!"

"You forget that one is never betrayed but by one's friends."

"I called upon him yesterday."

"Ah!"

"I reproached him with his shameful conduct. Can you guess his answer?"

"He denied the fact."

"At first. But when I showed him his letters he saw it was useless to
lie. 'My dear Bouchereau,' he said, in his impertinent manner, 'since
you know all about it, I will not take the trouble to contradict you. It
is perfectly true that I am in love with your wife; I have told her so
already, and I cannot promise you that I will not tell her so again, for
very likely I should not keep my promise. I perfectly understand my
conduct may be disagreeable to you, but you know I am too much the
gentleman not to accept the responsibility of my acts and deeds. And if
you feel offended, I am at your orders, ready to give you satisfaction,
when, where, and how you like.'"

"Very cool indeed!" said the physician, struggling violently to keep his
countenance. "What! he had the effrontery to tell you that?"

"Word for word."

"And what was your answer?"

"That he should hear from me shortly. Then I left him, deeming further
discussion unbecoming. And so the matter stands."

The Doctor looked grave. After walking once up and down the room, his
eyes on the ground, his hands behind his back, he returned to his
visitor.

"What shall you do?" he said, looking him steadily in the face.

"What do you advise?"

"Such behaviour is very hard to put up with, but on the other hand, I
should be sorry to see you engaged in a duel with that bully Pelletier."

"A professed duellist," cried Bouchereau, his eyes opening wider and
wider; "a man who passes his mornings in the shooting gallery and
fencing room, and has a duel regularly once a quarter!"

"And you," said the Doctor with a piercing look, "have you ever fought a
duel?"

"Never," replied the married man, looking paler even than his wont; "not
but that I have had opportunities, but duelling is repugnant to my
principles. The idea of shedding blood shocks me; it is a barbarous
custom, a monstrous anomaly in these civilised days."

"In short, you have no very strong desire to enter the lists?"

"Were I positively outraged, had I a mortal injury to revenge, the voice
of passion would perhaps drown that of humanity; for, in certain
moments, the wisest man cannot answer for himself. But in this instance,
the affair not being so serious, if Pelletier, instead of affecting an
arrogant tone, had made the apology to which I think I have a right, and
had promised to behave better in future, then--all things considered--to
avoid scandal--don't you think it would have been possible and
honourable--"

"Not to fight?" interrupted Magnian; "certainly. If you go out with
Pelletier, ten to one that he bleeds you like a barn-door fowl, and that
would be unpleasant."

"Doctor, you misunderstand me."

"Not at all. And to prove the contrary, you shall not fight, and the
Captain shall make you a satisfactory apology. Is not that what you
want?"

The Doctor's penetration called up a faint flush on the cheek of the
lover of peace.

"Pelletier is a brute," resumed Magnian, as if speaking to himself.
"Staff officers have generally more breeding than that. To make love to
the wife, well and good; but to defy the husband is contrary to all the
rules of polite society."

"You advise me, then, to let the matter be arranged?" said Bouchereau,
in an insinuating tone.

"Certainly," replied the physician laughing, "and what is more, I
undertake the negotiation. I repeat my words: to-morrow Pelletier shall
retract his provocation, make you a formal apology, and swear never
again to disturb your conjugal felicity. This is my share of the
business; the rest concerns you."

"The rest?"

"It is one thing to promise, another to perform. It would be prudent to
facilitate the observance of the Captain's vow by a little tour, which
for a few months would remove Madame Bouchereau from the immediate
vicinity of this military Adonis. His duty keeps him at Paris; you are
free. Why not pass the winter in the South: at Nice, for instance?"

"It has already occurred to me that a short absence would be desirable,
and I rejoice to find you of my opinion. But why Nice, rather than any
other town?"

"The climate is extremely salutary, especially for a person whose chest
is rather delicate."

"But my chest is very strong,--at least I hope so," interrupted
Bouchereau, in an uneasy tone, and trying to read the Doctor's thoughts.

"Certainly; I say nothing to the contrary," replied Magnian gravely; "I
have no particular motive for my advice; but precautions never do harm,
and it is easier to prevent than cure."

"You think me threatened with consumption!" cried Bouchereau, who, as
has been shown, entertained the warmest affection for Number One.

"I said nothing of the sort," replied the physician, as if reproaching
himself for having said too much. "If you want to know why I proposed
Nice, I will tell you: it is from a selfish motive. I shall probably
pass part of this winter there, and my stay would be made very agreeable
by the society of yourself and Madame Bouchereau."

"Well, we will see; the thing may be arranged," replied Bouchereau. And
he left the house, more uneasy than he entered it; for to the
apprehension of a duel was superadded the fear of a dangerous disease,
by which he had never before contemplated the possibility of his being
attacked.

At six o'clock that evening, Doctor Magnian entered the Café Anglais,
where he made pretty sure to find Pelletier. Nor was he mistaken; the
gallant Captain was there, solitarily installed at a little table, and
dining very heartily, without putting water in his wine. He was a tall,
stout, vigorous fellow, square in the shoulder, narrow in the hip, with
a bold keen eye, a well-grown mustache, a high complexion, and a
muscular arm; one of those men of martial mien who would seem to have
missed their vocation if they were not soldiers, and whose aspect
inspires the most presumptuous with a certain reserve and modesty. More
doughty champions than the cadaverous Bouchereau might have shrunk from
an encounter with a lion of such formidable breed.

The physician and the officer saluted each other cordially, and after
exchanging a few compliments, took their dinner at different tables.
They left the coffee-house at the same time, and meeting at the door,
walked arm in arm along the boulevard, in the direction of the
Madeleine.

"Well, Doctor," said Pelletier jocosely, "have you found me what I have
asked you for at least ten times: a pretty woman--maid or widow, fair or
dark, tall or short, all one to me--who will consent to make me the
happiest of men, by uniting her lot with mine? I ask only a hundred
thousand crowns: you must own I am modest in my expectations."

"Too modest! you are worth more than that."

"You are laughing at me?"

"Not at all; besides the moment would be ill chosen to jest, for I have
a serious affair on hand. Bouchereau has commissioned me to speak to
you."

"And you call that a serious affair?" said the Captain, laughing
scornfully.

"A matter that can only end in bloodshed, appears to me deserving of the
epithet," said the Doctor, with assumed gravity.

"Ah! M. Bouchereau thirsts for my blood?" cried Pelletier, laughing
still louder; "hitherto, I took him to be rather herbivorous than
carniverous. And with what sauce does he propose to eat me--sword or
pistol?"

"He leaves you the choice of arms," replied M. Magnian, with
imperturbable seriousness.

"It's all one to me. I told him so already. Let me see: to-morrow I
breakfast with some of my comrades; it is a sort of regimental feed, and
I should not like to miss it, but the day after to-morrow, I'm your man.
Will that do?"

"Perfectly. The day after to-morrow, seven in the morning, at the
entrance of the forest of Vincennes."

"Agreed," said the Captain, familiarly slapping his companion's arm with
his large brawny hand. "So you meddle with duelling, Doctor? I should
have thought a man of your profession would have looked upon it as a
dangerous competitor."

The physician replied to this very old joke, by a malicious smile, which
he immediately repressed.

"At random you have touched me on the raw," he said, after a moment's
silence. "Shall I tell you the strange, I might say the monstrous idea
that has just come into my head?"

"Pray do. I am rather partial to monstrous ideas."

"It occurred to me that for the interest of my reputation, I ought to
wish the projected duel to prove fatal to Bouchereau."

"Why so?" inquired the officer, with some surprise.

"Because if you don't kill him, in less than a year I shall have the
credit of his death."

"I don't understand. Are you going to fight him?"

"Certainly not; but I am his physician, and as such, responsible for his
existence in the eyes of the vast number of persons who expect medical
science to give sick men the health that nature refuses them. Therefore,
as Bouchereau, according to all appearance, has not a year to live----"

"What's the matter with him?" cried Pelletier, opening his great eyes.

"Consumption!" replied the Doctor, in a compassionate tone, "a chronic
disease--quite incurable! I was about sending him to Nice. We,
physicians, as you know, when we have exhausted the resources of
medicine, send our patients to the waters or to the South. If nothing
happens to him the day after to-morrow, he shall set out: God knows if
he will ever return."

"Consumptive! he who is always as sallow as Debureau."

"Complexion has nothing to do with it."

"And you think he is in danger?"

"I do not give him a year to live; perhaps not six months."

The two men walked some distance, silent and serious.

"Yes, Captain," said the Doctor, breaking the pause, "we may look upon
Poor Bouchereau as a dead man, even setting aside the risk he incurs
from your good blade. Before twelve months are past, his wife may think
about a second husband. She will be a charming little widow, and will
not want for admirers."

Pelletier cast a sidelong look at his companion, but the Doctor's air of
perfect simplicity dispelled the suspicion his last words had awakened.

"If Bouchereau died, his wife would be rich?" said the Captain,
musingly, but in an interrogative tone.

"_Peste!_" replied Magnian, "you may say that. Not one hundred thousand,
but two hundred thousand crowns, at the very least."

"You exaggerate!" cried the Captain, his eyes suddenly sparkling.

"Easy to calculate," said Magnian confidently--"Madame Bouchereau
inherited a hundred thousand francs from her father, she will have a
hundred and fifty thousand from her mother, and her husband will leave
her three hundred and fifty thousand more: add that up."

"Her husband's fortune is secured to her, then, by marriage contract?"
inquired Pelletier, who had listened with rapidly increasing interest to
his companion's enumeration.

"Every _sou_," replied the physician, solemnly.

The two words were worth an hour's oration, and with a person whom he
esteemed intelligent, M. Magnian would not have added another. But,
remembering that the Captain, as he had said a few hours before, was
more richly endowed with shoulders than with brains, he did not fear to
weigh a little heavily upon an idea from which he expected a magical
result.

"For you," he jestingly resumed, "who have the bump of matrimony finely
developed, here would be a capital match. Young, pretty, amiable, and a
fortune of six hundred thousand francs. Though, to be sure, if you kill
the husband, you can hardly expect to marry the widow."

Pelletier forced a laugh, which ill agreed with the thoughtful
expression his physiognomy had assumed; then he changed the
conversation. Certain that he had attained his end, the Doctor pleaded a
professional visit, and left the Captain upon the boulevard, struck to
the very heart by the six hundred thousand francs of the future widow.

Without halt or pause, and with the furious velocity of a wounded
wild-boar, Pelletier went, without help of omnibus, from the Madeleine
to the Bastille. When he reached the Porte St Martin, his determination
was already taken.

"Without knowing it," he thought, "the Doctor has given me excellent
advice. Fight Bouchereau! not so stupid. I should kill him; I am so
unlucky! and then how could I reappear before Virginia? The little
coquette views me with no indifferent eye; and luckily I have made love
to her for the last three months, so that when the grand day comes, she
cannot suppose I love her for her money. Kill Bouchereau! that _would_
be absurd. Let him die in his bed, the dear man--I shall not prevent it.
I shall have plenty of fighting with my rivals, as soon as his wife is a
widow. Six hundred thousand francs! They'll throng about her like bees
round a honey-pot. But let them take care; I'm first in the field, and
not the man to let them walk over my body."

The following morning, long before the consultations had begun, the
Captain strode into Magnian's reception room.

"Doctor," said he, with military frankness, "what you said yesterday
about Bouchereau's illness, has made me seriously reflect. I cannot
fight a man who has only six months to live. Suppose I wound him: a
hurt, of which another would get well, might be mortal to one in his
state of health; and then I should reproach myself, all my life, with
having killed an old friend for a mere trifle. Did he tell you the cause
of our quarrel?"

"No," replied the Doctor, who, in his capacity of negotiator, thought
himself at liberty to lie.

"A few hasty words," said Pelletier, deceived by Magnian's candid air;
"in fact, I believe I was in the wrong. You know I am very hasty; à
propos of some trifle or other, I was rough to poor Bouchereau, and now
I am sorry for it. In short, I have had enough duels to be able to avoid
one without any body suspecting a white feather in my wing. So if you
will advise Bouchereau to let the matter drop, I give you _carte
blanche_. Between ourselves, I think he will not be sorry for it."

"You may find yourself mistaken, Captain," replied the Doctor, with
admirable seriousness; "yesterday Bouchereau was much exasperated:
although of peaceable habits, he is a perfect tiger when his blood is
up. It appears that you hurt his feelings, and unless you make a formal
apology----"

"Well, well," interrupted Pelletier, "it is not much in my way to
apologise, and this is the first time; but with an old friend, I will
stretch a point. I would rather make concessions than have to reproach
myself hereafter. Shall we go to Bouchereau?"

"Let us go," said the Doctor, who could hardly help smiling to see how
the voice of interest instilled sensibility and humanity into the heart
of a professed duellist.

When Magnian and the officer entered his drawing-room, Bouchereau, who
had not shut his eyes the whole night, experienced all the sensations of
the criminal to whom sentence of death is read. But the first words
spoken restored fluidity to his blood, for a moment frozen in his veins.
The Captain made the most explicit and formal apology, and retired after
shaking the hand of his old friend, who, overjoyed at his escape, did
not show himself very exacting.

"Doctor, you are a sorcerer!" cried Bouchereau, as soon as he found
himself alone with the physician.

"It is almost part of my profession," replied Magnian laughing.
"However, the terrible affair is nearly arranged. I have done my share;
do yours. When shall you set out for the south?"

The satisfaction depicted on Bouchereau's physiognomy vanished, and was
replaced by sombre anxiety.

"Doctor," said he, in an altered voice, "You must tell me the truth; I
have resolution to hear my sentence with calmness; my chest is attacked,
is it not?"

"You mean your head."

"My head also!" cried Bouchereau, positively green with terror.

"You are mad," said the Doctor, shrugging his shoulders; "I would
willingly change my chest for yours."

"You deceive me. I cannot forget what escaped you yesterday. I coughed
all night long, and I have a pain between my shoulders which I never
perceived before."

"All fancy!"

"I feel what I feel," continued Bouchereau gloomily; "I do not fear
death; but I confess that I could not, without regret, bid an eternal
adieu, in the prime of life, to my wife and family. It is my duty to be
cautious for their sake, if not for my own. Instead of writing to
Virginia to return home, I will join her at Fontainbleau, and start at
once for Nice."

"Go," said the doctor, "the journey cannot hurt you."

"But do you think it will benefit me?"

"Without a doubt."

"It is not too late, then, to combat this frightful malady."

"Oh, you are not very far gone," said Magnian ironically. "I shall be at
Nice myself in less than six weeks, so that you are sure to be attended
by a physician in whom you have confidence, if, contrary to all
probability, your state of health requires it."

The two friends parted: the Doctor laughing at his patient's fears, the
patient imagining himself in imminent peril, and almost doubting whether
it would not have been better to fall by the terrible sword of Captain
Pelletier than to linger and expire, in the flower of his age, upon an
inhospitable foreign shore. In two days, Bouchereau, haunted by his
funereal visions, had taken out his passport, arranged his affairs, and
completed his preparations. Getting into a post-chaise, he made his
unexpected appearance at Fontainbleau; and, exerting his marital
authority to an extent he had never previously ventured upon, he carried
off his wife, stupified by such a sudden decision, and greatly vexed to
leave Paris, which Pelletier's languishing epistles had lately made her
find an unusually agreeable residence. By the end of the week, the
husband and wife, one trembling for his life, the other regretting her
admirer, arrived at Nice, where, towards the close of the autumn, they
were joined by Dr Magnian, who thus showed himself scrupulously exact in
the fulfilment of his promise.

On an evening of the month of April following, the tragedy of _Les
Horaces_ was performed at the _Théâtre Français_. Thanks to the young
talent of Mademoiselle Rachel, rather than to the old genius of
Corneille, the house was crowded. In the centre of the right-hand
balcony, Captain Pelletier, accompanied by some blusterers of the same
kidney, talked loud, laughed ditto, criticised the actors and
spectators, and disturbed all his neighbours, without any one venturing
to call him to order; so powerful, in certain cases, is the influence of
an insolent look, a ferocious mustache, and an elephantine build.

After examining with his opera glass every corner of the theatre, from
the pit to the roof, the Captain at last caught sight of a group, snugly
installed in a comfortable box, which at once fixed his attention. It
consisted of Monsieur and Madame Bouchereau, in front, and of Doctor
Magnian, seated behind the lady. The appearance and attitude of these
three persons were characteristic. With his usual pallid complexion and
unhappy look, his eyes adorned with a pair of blue spectacles--a new
embellishment, which he owed to an imaginary ophthalmia--the pacific
husband whiled away the _entr'acte_ by the study of a play-bill, which
he abandoned when the curtain rose, to bestow his deepest attention on
the actors, even though none but the inferior characters were on the
stage. Madame Bouchereau trifled with an elegant nosegay, whose perfume
she frequently inhaled, and whose crimson flowers contrasted so well
with the fairness of her complexion, as to justify a suspicion that
there was some coquetry in the manoeuvre executed with such apparent
negligence. Leaning back in her chair, she frequently turned her head,
the better to hear Magnian's smiling and half-whispered remarks. The
husband paid no attention to their conversation, and did not seem to
remark its intimate and confidential character.

"Who is it you have been looking at for the last quarter of an hour?"
inquired one of the Captain's comrades. "At your old flame, Madame
Bouchereau? I thought you had forgotten her long ago."

"I did not know she had returned from Nice," replied Pelletier, with a
reserved air.

"She has been at Paris a fort-night."

"Does not Bouchereau look very ill? The southern climate has not done
him much good. He is twice as pale as before he went. Poor Bouchereau!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed the officer, "have you been gulled by the story of the
decline? That is really too good."

"What is too good?" asked the Captain abruptly.

"The trick that rogue Magnian played Bouchereau and you; for if I may
judge from your astonished look, you also have been mystified."

"Berton, you abuse my patience," said Pelletier in a surly tone.

"Wolves do not eat one another," replied Berton laughing; "so let us
talk without anger. The story is this:--all Paris, except yourself, has
been laughing at it for a week past. It appears that on the one hand,
although no one suspected it, the aforesaid Magnian was in love with
Madame Bouchereau, and that on the other, finding himself threatened
with a pulmonary complaint, he thought it advisable to pass the winter
in a warm climate. What did the arch-schemer? He persuaded Bouchereau
that it was he, Bouchereau, whose chest was affected; sent him off to
Nice with his pretty wife, and, at his leisure, without haste or hurry,
joined them there. You have only to look at them, as they sit yonder, to
guess the _denoûement_ of the history. The appropriate label for their
box would be the title of one of Paul de Kock's last novels; _la Femme_,
_le Mari_, _el l'Amant_. Magnian is a cunning dog, and has very
ingenious ideas. Fearing, doubtless, that the husband might be too
clear-sighted, he threatened him with an ophthalmia, and made him wear
blue spectacles. Clever, wasn't it? and a capital story?"

"Charming, delightful!" cried the Captain, with a smile that resembled a
gnashing of teeth.

The tragedy was over. Dr Magnian left his box; Pelletier followed his
example. The next minute the two men met in the lobby.

"Doctor, a word with you," said the officer sternly.

"Two, if you like, Captain," was Magnian's jovial reply.

"It appears, that in spite of your prognostics, Bouchereau is in perfect
health."

"_Voudriez-vous qu'il mourût?_ Would you have him die?" said the Doctor,
parodying with a comical emphasis the delivery of Joanny, who had taken
the part of the father of the Horatii.

"I know you are excellent at a joke," retorted Pelletier, whose vexation
was rapidly turning to anger; "but you know that I am not accustomed to
serve as a butt. Be good enough to speak seriously. Is it true that
Bouchereau was never in danger?"

"In great danger, on the contrary. Was he not about fighting you?"

"So that when you sent him to Nice----?"

"It was to prevent the duel. As a physician, I watch over the health of
my clients; and it was my duty to preserve Bouchereau from your sword,
which is said to be a terrible malady."

"One of which you will perhaps have to cure yourself before very long,"
exclaimed the Captain, completely exasperated by the Doctor's coolness.
"The idiot Bouchereau may die of fear, or of any thing else. I certainly
shall not do him the honour to meddle with him; but you, my friend, so
skilled in sharp jests, I shall be glad to see if your valour equals
your wit."

The part of an unfortunate and mystified rival is so humiliating, that
Pelletier's vanity prevented his stating his real ground of complaint,
and mentioning the name of Madame Bouchereau. The Doctor imitated his
reserve, and listened to the officer's defiance with the same tranquil
smile which had previously played upon his countenance.

"My dear Captain," he said, "at this moment you would particularly like
to pass your good sword through my body, or to lodge a ball in my
leg--for, in consideration of our old friendship, I presume you would
spare my head. You shall have the opportunity, if you positively insist
upon it. But if you kill me, who will arrange your marriage with
Mademoiselle Nanteuil?"

Pelletier stared at his adversary with an astonished look, which
redoubled the Doctor's good humour.

"Who is Mademoiselle Nanteuil?" he at last said, his voice involuntarily
softening.

"An amiable heiress whom I attend, although she is in perfect health;
who has two hundred thousand francs in possession, as much more in
perspective, and who, if an intelligent friend undertook the
negotiation, would consent, I think, to bestow her hand and fortune upon
a good-looking fellow like yourself."

"Confound this Magnian!" said the Captain, taking the Doctor's arm, "it
is impossible to be angry with him."

FOOTNOTES:

[8] It is pretty generally known--even to those to whom it has not been
granted to stand in the imposing presence of our fast friend and ancient
ally, Monsieur Alexandre Dumas--that there is a slight tinge of black in
the blood of that greatest of French _romanciers_, past, present, or to
come. In connexion with the fact, we will cite an anecdote:--

A person more remarkable for inquisitiveness than for correct
breeding--one of those who, devoid of delicacy and reckless of rebuffs,
pry into every thing--took the liberty to question M. Dumas rather
closely concerning his genealogical tree.

"You are a quadroon, M. Dumas?" he began.

"I am, sir," quietly replied Dumas, who has sense enough not to be
ashamed of a descent he cannot conceal.

"And your father?"

"Was a mulatto."

"And your grandfather?"

"A negro," hastily answered the dramatist, whose patience was waning
fast.

"And may I inquire what your great-grandfather was?"

"An ape, sir," thundered Dumas, with a fierceness that made his
impertinent interrogator shrink into the smallest possible compass. "An
ape, sir--my pedigree commences where yours terminates."

The father of Alexander Dumas, the republican general of the same name,
was a mulatto, born in St Domingo, the son of a negress and of the white
Marquis de la Pailleterie. By what legitimatizing process the bend
sinister was erased, and the marquisate preserved, we have hitherto been
unable to ascertain.

BELISARIUS,--WAS HE BLIND?

[Transcriber's Note: Greek sections in this article are unclear and have
been transliterated to the best of my ability. The very unclear letters
have been replaced by an asterisk]

The name of Belisarius is more generally known through the medium of the
novel, the opera, and the print-shop than by the pages of history.
Procopius, Gibbon, and Lord Mahon have done less for his universal
popularity than some unknown Greek romancer or ballad-singer in the
middle ages. Our ideas of the hero are involuntarily connected with the
figure of a tall old man, clad in a ragged mantle, with a stout staff in
his left hand, and a platter to receive an obolus in his right,
accompanied by a fair boy grasping his tattered garments, and carefully
guiding his steps.

We shall now venture to investigate the relationship between the
Belisarius of romance, and the Belisarius of history; and we believe we
shall be able to prove that the historical hero died in full possession
of his sight several centuries before the birth of his blind namesake,
the hero of romance; that he was not more directly related to the
unfortunate sufferer, than our disreputable acquaintance Don Juan of the
opera, was to the gallant and presumptuous Don Juan of Austria, the hero
of Lepanto; and that in short, as we say in Scotland, there was no
connexion but the name. In this case, however, the connexion has proved
a pretty close one; for a noble, accomplished and accurate English
historian, Lord Mahon, in his "Life of Belisarius" has considered it
strong enough to advance a plea of identity between the warrior of
history and the beggar of romance.

Such an authority renders the labour of brushing the dust from a few
volumes of Byzantine Chronicles to us "a not ungrateful task;" and one
that we hope will not prove entirely without interest to our readers.
Our object is to re-establish the truth of history, and to restore to
some Greek Walter Scott of the middle ages the whole merit of
constructing an immortal tale, which for centuries has tinged the stern
annals of the Eastern empire with an unwonted colouring of pathos. Lord
Mahon has so fairly stated his case, that we believe his candour has
laid criticism to sleep, and his readers have generally adopted his
opinions.

The truth is, the Belisarius of history, the bold and splendid general
of Justinian, is a hero of the Roman empire, of the Eastern or Byzantine
empire, if you please, but still historically a Roman hero. Now, on the
other hand, the Belisarius of romance, the vision of a noble victim of
imperial ingratitude, is a creation of Greek genius, of modern Greek
genius, if you prefer adding the depreciating epithet, but still of
Greek genius placed in its undying opposition to Roman power.

We must now introduce to our readers the Belisarius of history as he
really lived, acted, and suffered. It is not necessary for this purpose
to recite his military exploits. They are described in the immortal
pages of Gibbon, and minutely detailed in the accurate biography by Lord
Mahon. It will suffice for our purpose to collect a few authentic
sketches of his personal conduct and character, and some anecdotes of
his style of living, from the works of his secretary Procopius, the last
classic Greek writer, and an historian of no mean merit.

Belisarius was born in the city of Germania, a metropolitan see on the
frontiers of the Thracian and Illyrian nations.[9] Thus, though strictly
speaking he was neither a Roman nor a Greek, he considered himself, and
was considered by his contemporaries, a Roman. The dialect of the
inhabitants of Thrace and Illyria is supposed still to possess a
representative in the modern Albanian; but in the time of Justinian,
the language of the higher classes in the cities was Latin, and there
can be no doubt that Belisarius spoke both Latin and Greek with equal
fluency. As far as race was concerned, it seems, however, tolerably
certain, that he was more closely allied in blood to Scanderberg and
Miaoulis than to Scipio or Epaminondas. As he was a man of rank and
family, he became an officer of the imperial guard at an early age.[10]
His tall and vigorous frame, smooth and handsome face, joined to a
smoother tongue, a calm and equable disposition, and a stout heart, made
him the very man to rise rapidly in the Roman service. Accordingly, as
early as the year 526, he appears in a high military command.[11] Like
Marlborough, to whom he bears some resemblance in personal character, he
strengthened his position at court by marrying the Lady Antonina, the
beautiful favourite of the Empress Theodora, though she was as fierce a
shrew as the Duchess Sarah, and wherewithal not so modest, if we give
credit to her husband's secretary.

It was the fashion at the Horse-guards of Constantinople during the
reign of Justinian, to encourage barbarian usages in military affairs.
Hussars from the country of the Gepids, cuirassiers from Armenia and the
ancient seats of the Goths, and light cavalry from the regions occupied
by the Huns, were the favourite bodies of troops. The young nobles of
the Roman empire adopted the uniforms of these regiments; wore long
hair, inlaid armour, and tight nether garments, and never condescended
to invest their persons in the modest equipments of the old Roman
dragoons, or of the modern legionaries whose ranks were officered by
mere provincials.

The reasons which compelled the imperial government to prefer foreign
mercenaries to native troops were based at first on principles of
internal policy, and at last on absolute necessity. Augustus feared the
Roman senators and knights; Constantine had not the means of paying for
good Roman soldiers; and Justinian could not have found a sufficient
number of suitable recruits among the citizens of his wide-extended
empire. The pivot of the administration of Imperial Rome, as of Imperial
Britain, was the treasury, not the Horse-guards. The taxes paid by the
citizens filled that treasury: but a soldier was exempt from taxation;
consequently, it became a measure of unavoidable necessity on the part
of the Roman government to prevent citizens escaping their financial
burdens by becoming soldiers. Had the citizens got possession of arms,
Rome could not have remained a despotism.

On the other hand, the system of Roman tactics rendered it necessary to
procure military recruits of a degree of physical strength far above the
average standard of mankind. When the population of the empire had been
divided into two widely separated social classes of wealthy citizens and
poor cultivators, serfs, or slaves, the supply of recruits furnished by
the richest portions of the empire became very small. The danger of
employing foreign barbarians, who remained isolated amidst an
innumerable population, and surrounded by hundreds of walled towns,
manned by their own municipal guards, was evidently less than that of
entrusting legions of slaves with arms, and teaching them habits of
combination and discipline. The servile wars, which inflicted a mortal
wound on the Republic, would have been renewed, and would probably have
soon destroyed the Empire.[12]

It is customary with historians to discourse on the impolicy of the
Roman emperors in employing barbarian mercenaries; but the fact is, that
their finances did not admit of their purchasing the thews and sinews
required for the service any where but among the barbarians. The system
certainly answered admirably for the imperial government. It upheld the
tyranny of the Cæsars and the terror of the Roman arms for more than a
thousand years; and it might have rendered Rome immortal had she not
committed suicide.

If the system really be so bad as it is often represented, it seems
strange that it should have been adopted with all its imperfections in
British India. But the truth is this; the mercenaries of the Roman
armies were more faithful to their contract than the emperors. It is by
sovereigns and ministers of state, not by generals of mercenaries, that
empires are prepared for destruction. Our Indian empire is always in
greater danger from a conceited Foreign secretary or a foolish
Governor-general than from a rebellion of the native troops. If our
administration be only as wise as that of Imperial Rome, somewhat more
just, and a great deal less avaricious, there seems no reason why a
British government should rule at Calcutta for a shorter period than a
Roman one at Constantinople. The laws of Rome still survive in the
courts of justice of the greater part of Europe; the spirit of the Roman
Republic breathes, at the present hour, in full energy in the Papal
councils; and are we to suppose that the institutions of a more Catholic
philanthropy, in the progress of development under the British
constitution, are less capable of acquiring an inherent vitality?

The age of Belisarius was deeply imbued with the military spirit of the
middle ages; and Belisarius was himself as proud of his accomplishments
as a daring horseman, a good lance, and a stout bowman, as of his
military science. Cavalry was the favourite portion of the army in his
day, and he shared in the general contempt felt for infantry. The
horsemen were sheathed in complete steel; and their helmets,
breast-plates and shields, were impenetrable even to the shafts of the
Persians, who drew their bow-strings to the right ear, and threw
discredit on the prowess of the Homeric archers.[13] The Roman officers,
as must always be the case where cavalry is the principal arm, were
remarkable for personal courage and impetuous daring; and perhaps in the
whole annals of Rome there cannot be found another period in which
headlong rashness was so universally the characteristic of the generals
of the Roman armies.

The favourite position of Belisarius on the field of battle was to
figure like Richard Coeur-de-Lion as a colonel of cuirassiers, not
like Marlborough, to perform the duties of a commander-in-chief.
Procopius prefaces an account of one of his rashest combats by declaring
that he was not in the habit of exposing himself unnecessarily, but on
the occasion in question, he owns that Belisarius fought too much like a
mere soldier in the front rank.

The whole Gothic army advancing to besiege Rome had passed the Tiber
before Belisarius was aware that his troops, stationed to defend the
Milvian bridge, had abandoned their post. On going out to reconnoitre,
he fell in with the enemy. Instead of retreating, he led on the cavalry
that attended him to the charge. He was mounted on his favourite
charger; the Greeks called it Phalion, the barbarians Balan, from its
colour: it was a bay with a white face. Balan was perfectly broken to
his hand, and his armour, wrought by the skill of Byzantine artists, was
too light to incommode his powerful frame, yet tempered to resist the
best-directed arrow or javelin. The person of Belisarius was soon
recognised in the Gothic army, and the shout spread far and wide to the
javelin-men and the archers, "At the bay horse! At the bay horse!" The
bravest of the Gothic chiefs placed their lances in rest, and rushed
forward to bear down the Roman general. The guards of Belisarius, in
that trying hour, showed themselves worthy of their own and, their
general's fame. They closed up by his side, so well as to leave him only
a single enemy. It is ridiculous to attempt describing a personal
encounter thirteen centuries after the event. The duties of Procopius
did not place him at the elbow of Belisarius at such an hour, and even
if he had been there he could have seen but little of what others were
about.

The result of the encounter is matter of history. A thousand Goths fell
in the skirmish, and the bravest of the veteran guards of Belisarius
perished by his side. The barbarians were driven back to their camp; but
when Belisarius imprudently followed them, he was repulsed by the Gothic
infantry forming before the lines, and the Romans were compelled to make
a precipitate retreat. They galloped back to the gates of Rome closely
pursued by fresh squadrons of Gothic cavalry. But as they reached the
walls in disorder, the garrison refused to open the gates, fearing lest
the Goths might force their way into the city with the fugitives, and
believing that Belisarius had perished in the battle. There was now
nothing left for the commander-in-chief but to form a small squadron of
his faithful guards, and make a desperate and sudden charge on the
advancing Goths. The manoeuvre was executed with consummate skill, and
the leading ranks of the enemy were broken, thrown into confusion, and
forced back on the succeeding squadrons by the impetuous charge. The cry
spread that the garrison had made a sally; the obscurity of evening was
commencing, the Goths commenced their retreat; and Belisarius and his
wearied troops were at last allowed to enter Rome. In this desperate
encounter, their respective enemies allowed that Belisarius was the
bravest of the Romans, and Wisand of the Goths. The Roman general
escaped without a wound, but the valiant Goth, borne down in the combat
around the person of Belisarius, was left for dead on the field, where
he remained all the next day, and it was only on the third morning, in
taking up his body for interment, that he was discovered to be still
alive. He recovered from his wounds and lived long afterwards.[14]

Belisarius, unlike the noble barons of more modern days, who were all
pride and presumption in their iron shells, mounted on their dray
horses, but useless when dismounted, did not disdain to add to his
knightly accomplishments that of a most skilful archer. This skill saved
Rome in a dangerous attack. When the Goths advanced their movable
towers against the walls, drawn forward by innumerable yokes of oxen,
Belisarius, placing himself on the ramparts, ordered the garrison to
allow the towers to advance unmolested by the machines to within
bow-shot. Then taking up a long bow, which might have graced the hand of
Robin Hood, and choosing two shafts of a yard in length, he drew the
bowstring to his ear, and shot his shaft at the tower. The Gothic
captain, who was directing its movements from the summit, had trusted
too much to the workmanship of his Milan armour. The fabric was not
equal to that of Byzantium. The shaft pierced him to the heart; he
tottered a moment on the edge of the tower, and then fell headlong
forward. The second shaft brought down another Goth. Belisarius then
ordered his archers to shoot at the oxen, which soon fell, pierced by a
thousand arrows; and the towers that the Gothic army counted on to
enable them to make a general assault, remained immovable until the
Romans could burn them.[15]

Belisarius, fond of cavalry, seems to have overlooked, nay, even to have
neglected, the discipline of the Roman infantry. While besieged in Rome,
he defended the place by a series of cavalry skirmishes, and allowed all
the officers of the infantry who could mount themselves to serve on
horse-back. Some of the native officers of the legionaries, jealous of
their reputation, offered to lead their troops on foot. Belisarius would
hardly allow them to quit the walls, and plainly expressed his want of
confidence in the Roman infantry on the field of battle, while he showed
his utter contempt for the city militia, by keeping it carefully shut up
within the walls. The battle in which the infantry took part proved
unsuccessful; but the officers who led it died bravely, sustaining the
combat after the cavalry had fled.[16]

Yet Belisarius knew well how to appreciate the tactics of the old Roman
legion; and he made use of a singular method of obtaining the great
military advantages to be derived from the possession of a body of the
best infantry. At the battle of Kallinikon, when his cavalry was broken
by the iron-cased horsemen of Persia--the renowned _kataphraktoi_, or
original steel lobsters--the Roman general, with the genius of a Scipio
or a Cæsar, saw that the steadiness of a body of infantry could alone
save his army. He immediately ordered the heavy lancers of his own guard
to dismount, and form square before the feebler and less perfectly
equipped soldiers of the legions of the line. With this phalanx,
presenting its closely serried shields and long lances to the repeated
charges of the _kataphraktoi_, he foiled every attack of the victorious
Persians, and saved his army.[17]

Belisarius, however, acquired more favour at the court of Justinian, and
secured the personal affection of the Emperor more, by slaughtering the
people of Constantinople in a city rebellion, originating out of the
factions of the Circus, than by his exploits against the distant enemies
of the empire. The affair was called the Day of Victory. The scene was
repeated on the 4th of October 1795, in the city of Paris, and was
called the Day of the Sections. The part of the Thracian Belisarius was
then performed by the Corsican Bonaparte. In the tragedy of old, three
thousand citizens were massacred by the mild Belisarius, in that of
Paris, hardly three hundred perished by the inexorable Napoleon.

The personal conduct of Belisarius is presented to us under two totally
different points of view, in the works of his Secretary Procopius. In
the authentic history of the Persian, Vandal, and Gothic wars, he
appears as the commander-in-chief of the Roman armies, his actions are
narrated by a Roman historian, and his conduct is held up to the
admiration of Roman society. In the secret history, on the contrary, we
have, it is true, the same man described by the same author, but the
work is addressed to the Greek race, and not to their Roman rulers, and
it presents Belisarius as the instrument of a corrupt and tyrannical
court, engaged in plundering the people, while crouching under the
oppression of which he was the minister. The history of Procopius was
written for the libraries of the Byzantine nobles; the anecdotes for the
clubs of the Greek people. Though composed in the same language, they
belong not only to two different classes of literature, but even to the
literature of two different races of men.[18]

Belisarius was a fortunate, as well as a great general. His victories
over the Vandals and the Goths prove his military talents; but the
spectacle of their kings, Gelimer and Witiges, the representatives of
the dreaded Genseric and the mighty Theoderic, walking as captives
through the streets of Constantinople, made a deeper impression on men's
minds than the slaughter of the bloodiest battle. Nor was the
restoration of the sacred plate of the Temple of the Jews to the city of
Jerusalem, an event of less importance, in a superstitious age, than the
destruction of a barbarian monarchy. Among the spoils of the Vandals at
Carthage, Belisarius had found in the treasury those sacred vessels
which Titus, nearly five centuries before, had carried away to Rome from
the ruins of Jerusalem. Genseric had transported these relics to Africa,
when he plundered Rome in the year 455. Justinian was generous enough to
revive the long forgotten ceremony of a Roman triumph in order to
augment the glory of Belisarius; and the sacred plate of the Jews was
exhibited to the people of Constantinople amidst the pomp of the
gorgeous pageant. The emperor then commanded them to be removed to
Jerusalem, to be preserved in a Christian church.[19]

The restoration of the sacred spoils of Jerusalem rendered the name of
Belisarius renowned in the eastern world, far beyond the bounds of the
Roman empire; the glory of refusing the throne of the Cæsars of the
west, amazed the barbarians of Europe as far as the filiation of the
Gothic and Germanic races extended. The glory of being deemed worthy of
the empire, was eclipsed by the singular display of personal dignity
which could refuse the honour. When Belisarius was on the eve of putting
an end to the Gothic monarchy by the conquest of Ravenna and the capture
of Witiges, the Goths, reflecting on their national position in the days
of Alaric and Theoderic, when they were only the soldiers of the empire,
offered their submission to Belisarius, and invited him to assume the
dignity of Emperor of the West. Belisarius refused the offer. He had
seen in his Italian campaigns, that the Gothic nobles of Italy were no
longer the same soldiers as the Gothic mercenaries of the imperial
armies.[20] The merit of refusing the empire must have been deeply felt
by Justinian; but the jealousy excited by the renown, which conferred
the option of accepting such power, gradually effaced the impression of
that merit in the breasts both of the feeble emperor, and of his
energetic and ambitious consort, Theodora. Though Belisarius loved money
and splendour, and had more of Pompey than Cæsar in his character, still
the boldest cabinet minister must have felt that lie could no longer
safely be entrusted with the whole military power of the empire. Though
his fidelity remained inviolable, a seditious army could compel him,
even if unwilling, to become its instrument. From the day, therefore,
that Belisarius refused the Empire of the West, a cloud fell over his
military career. It was determined by the imperial administration never
again to entrust him with a force sufficient to proceed in a career of
conquest.

It is needless to dwell on the military events of the life of
Belisarius. Lord Mahon states it as the purpose of his work, to show how
the genius of one man averted the dangers, and corrected the defects,
which beset the tottering empire.[21] Gibbon, in gorgeous phrase, exalts
him to the dignity of being the Africanus of New Rome; and speaks of the
Roman armies as being animated by the spirit of Belisarius, one of those
heroic names which are familiar to every age and to every nation.[22]
But if history is to be composed from the facts recorded by historians,
rather than from their opinions and their distribution of flattery and
censure, it must be owned that Belisarius was only the greatest in a
constellation of gallant warriors. Hilbud, Germanos, and Salomon, were
his worthy companions in arms; and the eunuch Narses was all but his
equal as a general, and greatly his superior as a statesman.

We must now turn to examine the personal conduct of Belisarius. He was
unfortunately too much under the influence of his beautiful wife, though
she was a few years older than her husband. Her close friendship with
the Empress Theodora, her talents, her bold character, and the devoted
attachment she displayed to Belisarius, excuses his too servile
affection. She embarked with him in the African expedition, though
Procopius says that the boldest Roman generals feared the enterprise;
and she accompanied him in Italy. In the historical works of Procopius,
she is represented as an excellent wife; in his secret libel, as a
shameless and profligate woman.

The presence of the Lady Antonina at Carthage and Rome, compelled
Belisarius to keep up a splendid and expensive court. The
commander-in-chief was fond of wealth, Antonina of splendour. The
fortunes of private individuals were still enormous, and rivalled the
wealth of Crassus and the debts of Cæsar.[23] Belisarius, like a noble
Roman, availed himself of his commands in Africa, and Italy, to become
master of sums equalling in amount the mighty accumulations of extortion
collected by the consuls and proconsuls of old Rome, when they plundered
Syria, Egypt, Pontus and Armenia. Of this wealth Belisarius made no
inconsiderable display when at Constantinople. He passed along the
streets, and appeared in the Hippodrome, attended by a numerous and
brilliant suite of Gothic, Vandal, and Mauritanian chiefs, mounted on
the finest horses, and clad in the richest armour, that wealth could
command. In the days of his greatest prosperity, his own guards amounted
to 7000 horsemen; and they were more formidable from their discipline
and military experience than from their numbers. To this band of
well-trained veterans, he owed many of his victories over the Goths in
Italy.[24]

The civil administration of Belisarius was never very successful. His
bad financial management involved his African army in revolt; and in
Italy he overlooked disorders, which at last produced indiscipline in
his own ranks, and famine among the Italians. The expense of supporting
his cohorts of personal guards, and the necessity of securing the
services of the most experienced and boldest troopers in this chosen
corps, induced him to wink at irregularities in Africa and Italy, that
he would have been obliged to punish severely near Constantinople or in
Greece. At Abydos, he had ordered two Huns of the mercenary cavalry to
be hanged for committing a murder; at Rome, he ran the risk of being
murdered himself in the midst of a council of war, by one of his
generals, from having neglected too long to cheek the rapacity and
injustice every where perpetrated under the sanction of his authority.

His own personal conduct, and the manner in which he governed Italy,
cannot be better illustrated than by two examples recorded, not in the
secret libel, but in the public history of his secretary Procopius.

Belisarius deposed the Pope of Rome, as well as the Kings of the Vandals
and the Goths. The account Procopius gives us of this extraordinary act,
is conveyed in so few and in such cautious words, that it is necessary
to notice their brevity. "The Pope Silverius was suspected of holding
treasonable communication with the Goths, who at that time besieged
Rome. Belisarius seized him, and banished him to Greece."[25] But even
if the fact that Pope Silverius had really held treasonable
communication with the Goths, be admitted, still the manner in which he
was condemned by Belisarius affords irrefragable evidence of the
injustice of his civil administration.

As the representative of the emperor, Belisarius held a court with all
the pomp of a sovereign prince. Yet when the Pope, accompanied by his
clergy, presented himself at the palace to answer the summons of the
imperial lieutenant, he was compelled to enter alone into the cabinet,
where the affairs of Italy were decided by the governor-general. In this
hall of audience, the Pope found Belisarius seated, while Antonina was
reclining on a sofa, in the midst of the assembly, and taking an active
part in the business transacted. It was she, and not Belisarius, who
interrogated the pontiff. The general's wife insulted the representative
of Saint Peter with reproaches, while the general remained a silent
spectator of the lady's arrogance, and did not even investigate the
evidence of the Pope's guilt. Prejudged by the suspicions of Belisarius,
and condemned by the anger of Antonina, Silverius was allowed no
opportunity of repelling the accusations brought against him. In the
very presence of the commander-in-chief, his pontifical robes were torn
off; and as he was hurried away, he was hastily covered with the garb of
a monk, and immediately embarked for Greece, to die an exile.

Now, whether it be true or not that Belisarius and Antonina persecuted
the Pope to gratify the revenge of Theodora, who had vainly demanded his
approbation of an heretical favourite, or that they committed this act
of injustice to participate in a large bribe paid by his successor,
there can be no doubt that the manner of the Pope's condemnation,
without trial, must have destroyed all confidence in the justice of
Belisarius throughout Italy, and from this moment every calumny against
his administration would readily find credence.

The second example of the arbitrary government of Belisarius, affords
the means of estimating the extent to which the officers of the army
were allowed to carry their peculation and extortion, as well as the
total disregard of all the principles of judicial administration
displayed by the commander-in-chief himself, in compelling them to
disgorge their plunder. The details of this singular event are reported
by Procopius with minuteness and simplicity, and he concludes his
narration with a distinct condemnation of the injustice of his patron's
conduct. He says, it was the only dishonourable act of his life, but
adds, that in spite of the usual moderation of Belisarius, Konstantinos
was murdered.[26]

Konstantinos, a Thracian general, was one of the bravest and most active
of the Byzantine officers. He led a division of the army against Perugia
and Spoleto; and during the assault of Rome by the Goths, the defence of
the tomb of Hadrian had been confided to him. He defended this strange
fortress with great valour, though his proceedings have been the subject
of execration for the lovers of ancient art ever since, as he used the
innumerable statues with which the tomb was adorned, to serve as
missiles against the enemy.[27]

Præsidius, a Roman of Italy, and a man of some distinction, resided at
Ravenna under the dominion of the Goths. Wishing to escape from their
power, he fled, and sought refuge in a church near Spoleto. The only
objects of great value he had carried away with him, were two splendid
daggers set in gold, and richly adorned with valuable gems.
Konstantinos, hearing of this booty, sent his adjutant to take away the
daggers. Præsidius hastened to Rome, and on arriving complained to
Belisarius, who only requested Konstantinos to arrange the affair. Such
conduct appeared to Præsidius a mockery of justice; and one day, as
Belisarius was riding through the Agora, he laid hold of the reins of
the general's horse, and called with a loud voice, "Is it permitted,
Belisarius, by the laws of the Roman empire, that a suppliant who
implores your protection against the barbarians be plundered by Roman
generals?" In vain the staff officers around ordered Præsidius to let go
the general's bridle, and threatened him with punishment; he refused,
until he received a promise from Belisarius that he should receive
justice. There is something truly Oriental in all this, and very little
in accordance with the principles of the Justinian code: the promise of
Belisarius is considered of more value than the laws of the empire. He
appears in the character of a vizier or a sultan in the Arabian Nights.

Next day a council of the principal officers of the army was convoked in
the palace of Belisarius; and, in the presence of the assembled
generals, Konstantinos was summoned to restore the jewelled daggers to
Præsidius. The attempt to discountenance military license, which had so
long been tolerated, appeared to the rude Thracian a parade of justice,
assumed merely for the purpose of imposing on the Italians; he
conceived, that while surrounded by his colleagues, he might safely
despise what he considered to be a farce. He therefore refused to give
up his plunder, and said gaily that he would rather throw the daggers
into the Tiber than restore them. Belisarius, enraged at the insolent
boldness of his proceeding, exclaimed, "Are you not bound to obey me?"
The reply was, "Yes, in every thing else according to the Emperor's
commission; but not in this matter." On receiving this answer, the
commander-in-chief ordered his guards to be summoned. The order
astonished Konstantinos, who saw the affair was assuming a more serious
aspect than he had foreseen. Well aware that peculation and extortion
were not very heinous offences in the Roman armies, he immediately
suspected the existence of a project to ruin him for some other reason,
and cried out, "Are the guards ordered in to murder me?" "No," said
Belisarius, "only to compel you to restore the plunder which your
adjutant seized in the church at Spoleto." Konstantinos saw the
commander-in-chief enraged, and knew the Byzantine government well
enough to feel his life insecure under the turn affairs seemed taking.
With the quick determination of the daring chiefs who then led the
fierce soldiers of the empire, he resolved to secure revenge, and
perhaps make it the means of escape. Suddenly drawing his sword, he
sprang at Belisarius, and made a thrust at his heart. The
commander-in-chief, struck with amazement, only contrived to escape by
jumping back and dodging behind Bessas, a Thracian Goth of high rank in
the Roman army.[28] Konstantinos turned to escape, but was seized by the
generals Ildiger and Valerian; and the guards entering dragged him from
the council chamber to another room, where he was shortly after murdered
by the order of Belisarius.[29]

Now it must be recollected that we have an account of these two
remarkable events in the life of Belisarius from an eye-witness. The
very reserve of Procopius, who, in the affair of the Pope, omits all
mention of Antonina, and glides over the injustice of the proceedings
from dread of the feminine ferocity of the lady, and the priestly
persecution of the successor of Silverius, who still continued to occupy
the Papal chair when the history was written, affords us an indubitable
warrant for the accuracy of the graphic description of the impressive
scene which attended the murder of Konstantinos. When the History of the
Gothic War was published, many of the generals who had been present at
the council were still living.

These pictures of Belisarius and his times are not very favourable. A
governor-general sitting in council, with his wife on the sofa directing
the despatch of business, and a commander-in-chief holding a council at
which one of his generals of division rushes at him with a drawn sword,
do not give us an exalted idea of the order maintained in society during
the brilliant conquests of Justinian's reign. Reasoning from analogy, it
may appear natural enough that such a governor-general and
commander-in-chief should end his career by having his eyes put out and
by begging his bread.

There was another circumstance which very much increased the probability
of Belisarius dying a beggar. We do not wish to deprive the tale of the
smallest portion of the just sympathy of the latest posterity. The fact
is, Belisarius grew enormously rich during his successful campaigns
against Gelimer and Witiges, and even contrived to accumulate treasures
during his unsuccessful wars with Chosroes and Totila.[30] Like his
friend Bessas and his enemy Konstantinos, as the truth must be spoken,
he did not neglect the golden opportunities he enjoyed of gaining golden
spoils from all sorts of men. Now, from the days of Sylla, to those of
Justinian, not to say a good deal earlier and later, it was the avowed
system of the financiers of Rome to increase the budget by
confiscations. The Ottoman empire, heir to most of the vices and some of
the grandeur of Imperial Constantinople, cherished the system as a part
of its strength, until it adopted the more pitiful vices of Western
Europe. Anastasius--not the ecclesiastical historian of the earlier
Popes, but the hero of the "Memoirs of a Greek," by Mr Thomas Hope--in
his ratiocination on the principles of Ottoman finance, gives us a
compendious abstract of those of Imperial Rome during eleven centuries,
from Augustus to Constantine Dragoses:--

"Regarding each officer of the state only in the light of one of the
smaller and more numerous reservoirs, distributed on distant points to
collect the first produce of dews, and drip, and rills, ere the
collective mass be poured into the single greater central basin of the
Sultan's treasury, you give yourself no trouble to check the dishonesty
of your agent, or to prevent his peculations. You rather for a while
connive at, and favour and lend your own authority to his exactions,
which will enable you, when afterwards you squeeze him out, to combine
greater profit with a more signal show of justice. In permitting a
temporary defalcation from your treasury, you consider yourselves as
only lending out your capital at more usurious interest. Nine long
years, while your work is done for you gratuitously, you feign to sleep,
and the tenth you wake from your deceitful slumber; like the roused
lion, you look round where grazes the fattest prey, stretch your ample
claw, crush your devoted victim, and make every drop of his blood, so
long withheld from your appetite, at last flow into the capacious bowels
of your insatiable _hazné_"--(treasury).[31]

Belisarius was certainly a fatted prey, and it is no wonder that his
inordinate wealth excited the cravings of the minister of finance of the
lavish Justinian and the luxurious Theodora. After his return from the
conquest of Italy, he lived at Constantinople in a degree of
magnificence unrivalled by the proudest modern sovereign. His household
consisted, as we have already seen, of a small army; and as he was fond
of parade, he rarely appeared in public without a splendid staff of
mounted officers. His liberality and his military renown ensured him the
applause of the people whenever he presented himself among them. Such
wealth, such a train of guards, and such popularity, not unnaturally
excited both envy and alarm. Accordingly, when the unsuccessful issue of
the campaigns against the Persians under Chosroes, in 541 and 542, had
diminished the popularity of Belisarius, the Emperor seized the occasion
of rendering him less an object of fear by depriving him of a
considerable number of his guards and great part of his treasures.[32]
The picture Procopius has drawn of Belisarius in his disgrace, is by no
means flattering to the general; it represents him as a mean-spirited
and uxorious courtier. "It was a strange spectacle, and incredible, had
we not been eye-witnesses of the fact, to behold Belisarius, deprived of
all his official rank, walking in the streets of Constantinople almost
alone, dejected, melancholy, and fearing for his life."[33]

Shortly after, Belisarius was partially reinstated in favour and sent to
command in Italy against Totila. In 548, he quitted that country for the
second time, after struggling unsuccessfully against the Gothic monarch.
The jealousy of Justinian had prevented his receiving the supplies
necessary for carrying on the war with vigour; and the want of success
is not to be considered as any stain on the military reputation of
Belisarius. Though he returned ingloriously to Constantinople, still,
even amidst the misfortunes of the Roman arms in Italy, he had not
neglected to save or accumulate wealth, and he was enabled to pass the
rest of his life in great if not in regal splendour.[34]

He enjoyed the glory of his earlier exploits, and the popularity secured
by his equable temperament, undisturbed for eleven years. In the year
559, an incursion of the Huns was pushed forward to the very walls of
Constantinople. The weakness of Justinian, the avarice of his ministers,
and the rapacity of his courtiers, had introduced such abuses in the
military establishments of the capital, that in this unexpected danger
the city appeared almost without a regular garrison. In this difficulty,
all ranks, from Justinian to the populace, turned to Belisarius as the
champion of the empire. The aged hero, finding the imperial guards
useless as a military corps, since it had been converted into a body of
pensioners, appointed by the favour of ministers and courtiers, and its
ranks filled up with shopkeepers and valets--assembled such of the
provincial troops and of his old guards as were living in the
capital.[35] With a small body of experienced veterans, and an army in
which fear at least ensured obedience to his orders, he took the field
against the Huns. Victory attended his standard. He not only drove back
the barbarians, but overtook and destroyed the greater part of their
army.

There was nothing of romance in this last campaign of Belisarius. He
could no longer lead his gallant guards to display his own, and their
valour, in some rash enterprise. His war-horse, Balan, was in its grave,
and his own strength no longer served him to act the colonel of
cuirassiers. But he was, perhaps, all the better general for the change;
and his manoeuvres effected a more complete destruction of the Huns,
than would have resulted from the defeat of their army by the bold
sallies of his youthful tactics.

The glory of the aged hero, and the proofs it afforded of his great
popularity and extensive authority over the military classes throughout
the empire, again revived the jealousy of the court. The ministers of
Justinian perhaps dreaded that the affection of the emperor for his
former favourite might recall Belisarius into public life, and effect a
change in the cabinet. To prevent this, they calumniated him to the
feeble prince, and worked so far on his timidity as to induce the
emperor to withhold those testimonials for great public services which,
it was customary to bestow. The fact that he was persecuted by the
court, endeared Belisarius to the people and augmented the aversion of
the emperor.[36]

Belisarius was now an object of suspicion to the government. And at this
interesting period of his life, all cotemporary history suddenly fails
us. The events of his latter days are recorded by writers who lived more
than two hundred years after his death.[37]

In the year 562, a plot against the life of Justinian was discovered,
and Belisarius was accused by some of the conspirators as privy to it.
The accusation was sure to please the party in power. Several of his
dependents, on being put to the torture, gave evidence against him. He
was suspected by the government; but his conduct during a long life
rendered the charge improbable, and the Roman law never placed any great
reliance on evidence extracted by torture.[38] In this bitter hour, it
must be confessed that Justinian treated Belisarius with more justice
than he had treated the Pope Silverius. A privy council was convoked, at
which the principal nobles, the patriarch, and some of the officers of
the imperial household, were present with the emperor in person.
Belisarius was summoned, and the cause of the conspirators was heard.
Justinian was induced for a moment to believe in his guilt. The order
was given to place him under arrest. He was deprived of the guards that
still attended him, his fortune was sequestered, and he was confined a
prisoner in his palace. Six days after the first examination, the
business of the conspiracy was again investigated, and Justinian did not
retract his previous suspicions. Belisarius was kept under arrest in
his own palace without any further proceedings being directed against
him. These examinations took place on the 5th and 11th of December; and
the text of Malalas must be received as convincing evidence that
Justinian took no stronger measures against Belisarius before the
commencement of the year 563.[39]

On the 19th of July of that year Belisarius was restored by Justinian to
all his honours. Some months of cool reflection had convinced the
emperor, that the extorted evidence of a few dependents against an
opposition leader, ought not not to outweigh the testimony of a long
life of unstained loyalty. The remainder of that life was passed in
tranquillity; and in the month of March of the year 565, the patrician
Belisarius terminated his glorious career, and his fortune reverted to
the imperial treasury. Such is the brief account which we possess of the
last days of the conqueror of the Vandals and the Goths--the restorer of
the spoils of Jerusalem--the deposer of a Pope--the destroyer of the
tomb of Hadrian--and the last of the Romans who triumphed, leading kings
captive in his train.[40] Antonina survived her husband, and lived in
retirement with Vigilantia, the sister of Justinian, but in the
enjoyment of wealth. Before her death she reconstructed the church of St
Procopius, which had been destroyed by fire; and it received, from her
affection for Justinian's sister, the name of Vigilantia.[41]

We must now notice the accounts of the modern Byzantine writers. George
Cedrenus was a monk of the eleventh century, who has left us a history
of the world to the year 1057. It contains many popular stories, but
often transcribes or abridges official documents as well as ancient
historians. In this work we might expect to find any fable, generally
accredited, concerning Belisarius; but the account of his latter days is
in exact conformity with those of Theophanes and Malalas.[42]

John Zonaras had been Grand Drungary, or First Lord of the Admiralty at
Constantinople, before he retired to end his days in a monastery on
Mount Athos. His Chronicle extends from the Creation to the year 1118,
and contains much information not found elsewhere. He is considered as
among the most valuable of the Byzantine historians. He mentions that
Belisarius was compromised in the plot against the life of Justinian;
that he was deprived of his guards and kept prisoner in his house; and
that, when he died, his fortune was taken by the imperial treasury.[43]
Consequently Belisarius was in possession of his fortune at the time of
his death, and it is possible that Justinian may have been his legal
heir.[44]

The chronicle published under the name of Leo Grammaticus, which dates
from the twelfth century, states that Belisarius, having been accused of
plotting against the Emperor Justinian, died of grief.[45]

Such are the historical accounts which the annals of the Byzantine
empire furnish concerning the fate of Belisarius. But, attached to the
collection of Justinian's laws, there is a rescript, which would alone
afford conclusive evidence of the restoration of Belisarius to all his
honours, if we could place implicit reliance on the date it bears.
Unfortunately, however, for our purpose, the authority on which Cujacius
published it, is not sufficiently established to give satisfactory
authenticity to its date. This date is 565, and in the month of March of
this year Belisarius died; and in the month of November Justinian also
followed him. The rescript speaks of Belisarius incidentally as "our
most glorious patrician;" an expression incompatible with his having
suffered any great indignity, or remained in permanent disgrace.[46]

We must now turn from examining public history, to consider popular
feeling. Belisarius, as we have already observed, was the hero of the
Roman world; but another society existed in the very heart of that
world, which hated every thing Roman. This society was Greek; it had its
own feelings, its own literature, and its own church. Of its literature,
Procopius has left us a curious specimen in his Secret History, where
the facts of his public Roman history are presented to the discontented
Greeks, richly spiced with calumny and libels on the Roman
administration. Peculiar circumstances gave the reign of Justinian a
prominent position in the history of the world, as the last great era of
Roman history, and its memory was long cherished with a feeling of
wonder and awe.[47] We must, however, remark, that from the death of
Justinian to the accession of Leo III. the Isaurian, the government of
the Eastern empire was strictly Roman. From the reign of Leo III. to
that of Basil I. the Macedonian (867) if not quite Roman, it was very
far from Greek.

Three centuries after the death of Belisarius and Justinian, new
feelings arose. The Greeks then looked back on the authentic history of
Belisarius as they did on that of Scipio and Sylla,--as a history
unconnected with their own national glory, but marking the last
conquests which illustrated the annals of the Roman empire, and
affording one of those mighty names admirably adapted

     "To point a moral, or adorn a tale."

We must now endeavour to prove that its use for this purpose, in the
manner transmitted to us, was subsequent to the accession of Basil the
Macedonian.

We believe that the blindness and beggary of Belisarius, as recorded in
the Greek romance, of which the memory has become a part of the
tradition of Western Europe, was suggested to the novelist by the fate
of Symbat, an Armenian noble in the Byzantine service, who married the
daughter of the Cæsar Bardas, the uncle of the Emperor Michael III. The
catastrophe of the romance is mentioned by two writers of the twelfth
century. One is the anonymous author of a description of Constantinople,
who was a cotemporary of Zonaras. The other is John Tzetzes, who wrote a
rambling work consisting of mythological and historical notices in Greek
political, civil, or profane verse, as it may be called, (_versus
politici_)--the epic poetry of modern Greece; correctly compared by Lord
Byron to the heroic strain of

     "A captain bold of Halifax who lived in country quarters."

This poet flourished at the end of the twelfth century.

The anonymous Guide-Book, relates that Justinian, envying the glory of
Belisarius, put out his eyes, and ordered him to be placed in the Lauron
with a bowl of earthenware in his hand, that the charitable might bestow
on him an obolus.[48] Tzetzes repeats the same story in his learned
doggrel, only he gives Belisarius a wooden dish in his hand, and
stations him to beg in the Milion or Stadium of Constantinople. But
Tzetzes, who piqued himself on his historical knowledge, candidly tells
his readers, that other chronicles say that Belisarius was restored to
all his former honours.[49]

The notices of a Greek guide-book, and the tales of a popular versifier,
concerning a Roman general, ought certainly to be received with great
caution, when they are found to be at variance with all historical
evidence. In this case, tradition cannot be admitted to have had any
existence for many centuries after the death of Belisarius. The supposed
tradition is Greek,--the authentic history is Roman. But historical
evidence exists to show that all the details concerning the blindness
and beggary of Belisarius have been copied by the author of the romance,
from circumstances which occurred at Constantinople in the year 866.

In that year, the Armenian, Symbat, after assisting his wife's cousin
the Emperor Michael III. (who rejoiced in the jolly epithet of the
Drunkard,) and the future emperor Basil the Macedonian, (who
subsequently murdered his patron the Drunkard,) to assassinate his own
father-in-law Cæsar Bardas, rebelled against his connexion the
Drunkard.[50] He engaged Peganes, the general of the theme of Opsikion,
or the provinces on the Asiatic shore of the Hellespont, in his
rebellion. Peganes was soon taken prisoner by the imperial troops, and
the Drunkard ordered his eyes to be put out and his nose to be cut off,
and he then sent him to stand in the Milion for three days successively,
with a bowl in his hand, to solicit alms. A month after, the news that
Symbat was captured was brought to the emperor, while he was feasting in
the palace of St Mamas. He ordered Peganes to be led out to meet the new
prisoner, that Symbat might be conducted into Constantinople with every
possible indignity. The blind and mutilated Peganes was compelled to
walk before his friend, with a bowl of earthenware in the form of a
censer, filled with sulphur, as if burning incense to perfume him. The
right eye of Symbat was put out, and his right hand cut off, and in this
state he was placed in the Lauron, like a beggar, with a bowl hung
before his breast to receive charity. Three days after, the two rebels
were allowed to return to their houses, where they were kept prisoners.
Symbat regained possession of his sequestered fortune when Basil the
Macedonian became emperor.

Now, even if we admit the possibility of the politic Justinian having
treated Belisarius as Michael the Drunkard treated the unprincipled
Symbat, still it is impossible to compare the words in which the
Guide-book and Tzetzes commemorate the misfortunes of the hero with the
narratives of the punishment of Peganes and Symbat, without feeling that
the former are transcribed from the latter.

To prove this, if necessary, we could quote the words of our
authorities. The earliest account of the punishment of Peganes and
Symbat is given by George the Monk, a Byzantine writer whose chronicle
ends with the year 920. The chronicle of Simeon Metaphrastes, which also
belongs to the tenth century, and that of Leo Grammaticus, give the same
account, almost in the same words. There can be no doubt that they are
all copied from official documents; the style is a rich specimen of the
monastic state-paper abridgment.[51]

The state-paper style was retained in the romance from which the
Guide-book was copied, to impress the feeling of reality on the minds of
the people; while the mention of the obolus, an ancient coin, marked
the antique dignity with which the tale was invested. The obolus had
been, for centuries, unknown in the coinage of Constantinople; and the
word was no longer in use in the public markets of Greece. But besides
this, if the Guide-book is to be admitted as an authority for a
historical fact, it very soon destroys the value of its own testimony
concerning the blindness and beggary of Belisarius; for, only a few
lines after recording his disgrace, it mentions a gilt statue of the
hero as standing near the palace of Chalce.

Such is fame. The real Belisarius, the hero of the history and the
libels of Procopius, being a Roman general, owes his universal
reputation to the creation of an imaginary Belisarius by some unknown
Greek romance-writer or ballad-singer. The interest of mankind in the
conquests and records of Byzantine Rome has become torpid; but the
feelings of humanity, in favour of the victims of courtly ingratitude,
are immortal. The unextinguishable aversion of the Hellenic race to
tyranny and oppression, has given a degree of fame to the name of
Belisarius which his own deeds, great as they were, would never have
conferred. This is but one proof of the singular influence exercised by
the Hellenic mind over the rest of the world during the middle ages. It
may be continually traced in the literature both of the east and the
west. Whenever the sympathies are awakened by general sentiments of
philanthropy among the emirs of the east, or the barons of the west,
there is reason to suspect that the origin of the tale must be sought in
Greece. Europe has been guided by the mind of Hellas in every age, from
the days of Homer to those of Tzetzes; and its power has been maintained
by addressing the feelings common to the whole human race--feelings long
cherished in Greece after they had been banished from western society by
Goths, Franks, and Normans.[52]

There is yet one important reflection which, if the study of the age of
Belisarius and Justinian does not suggest, we have failed to comprehend
its true spirit. In spite of its glory--of its legislative, its legal,
its military, its administrative, its architectural, and its
ecclesiastical greatness, it was destitute of that spiritual power which
rules and guides the souls of men. It was an age entirely material and
selfish. Religion was a mere formula: Christianity slept victorious
amidst the ruins of extinguished paganism. Belisarius could depose one
Pope, and sell the chair and the keys of St Peter to another, without
rousing the indignation of the Christian world. Liberty was an
incomprehensible term. That energy of individual independence and
physical force which excited the barbarians of the north to conquer the
western empire, and enabled the Romans of Byzantium to save the eastern,
was sinking into lethargy. Patriotism was an unknown feeling. Indeed,
what idea of nationality or love of country could be formed by the
privileged classes of Constantinople? Their successors the Turks may be
taken as interpreters of the sentiments of the Byzantine Romans on this
subject, who, while vegetating in Stamboul, gravely tell you that Mecca
is their country.

In short, the spirit of liberty and religion was torpid in the empire of
Justinian, and perhaps in the soul of Belisarius. These two remarkable
men were both governed by the material impulses of military discipline
and systematic administration. Verily, the mission of Mahomet was
necessary to awaken mankind, and rouse the Christian world from its
lethargy to the great mental struggle which, from the hour of the
unfolding of the banner of Islam, has left the minds of men no repose;
and will henceforth compel them to unite the spirit of religion with all
their restless endeavours to realise each successive dream of social
improvement that the human soul shall dare to conceive.

    _Athens, March 20, 1847._

FOOTNOTES:

[9] _Procopius de Bello Vandalico_, lib. i. c. 11. GIBBON (vol. vii. p.
161. note _e_) says that he could not find the Germania, a metropolis of
Thrace, mentioned by Alemanni, in any civil or ecclesiastical lists of
the provinces and cities. Alemanni's authority may be found in _Notitiæ
Græcorum Episcopatuum_, where Germania is the sixty-seventh metropolitan
see dependent on the Patriarch of Constantinople.--(_Codinus de officiis
Magnæ Ecclesiæ et Aulæ Constantinopolitanæ_, p. 380, ed. Paris.) It is
probable that the city Germane of the _Edifices_ of Procopius (iv. 3) is
the same as Germania. There was a fort in its territory, called Germas.
_De Ædif._ iii. 4. Germanos is still a favourite ecclesiastical name
with the Greeks. There is a place on the Gulf of Corinth, in the
territory of Megara, with splendid remains of the military architecture
of an ancient burgh, now called Porto Germano, the ancient
Ægosthenæ.--(_Leake's Travels in Northern Greece_, vol. i. p. 405.)
Herodotus mentions Germanii, [Greek: Germanioi], as an agricultural
tribe of Persians in the time of Cyrus.--(_Clio_, 125.) These various
Germans and Germanians can hardly be blood relations of our Germany or
Deutschland.

[10] _Lord Mahon's Life of Belisarius_, p. 3. _Procopius de Bello Vand._
ii. 6.

[11] _Procopius de Bello Persico_, i. 12. _Clinton's Fasti Romani_. From
this time Procopius was the official secretary of Belisarius.

[12] A good soldier can only be formed from men between eighteen and
forty years of age. In ancient times it required more strength to make a
soldier than in modern. The demand for such men, in an improving state
of society, makes them too valuable to be expended on the game of war,
and hence despots in civilised ages are compelled to use an inferior
class. Good troops must always be highly paid. A good heavy-armed
soldier, in ancient Greece, had half the pay of his captain. The pay of
the celebrated English archers, in the middle ages, was extremely high;
as it required the service of a brave and vigorous yeomanry to give that
corps the efficiency it displayed in so many hard-fought
battles--(_Hallam's Constitutional History of England_, ch. ix. vol. 2.)
Lord Brougham, however, overrates the pay of a mounted archer, in making
it "equal to thirty shillings of our money" a-day.--(_Political
Philosophy_, part iii. p. 237.)

[13] Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, vii. 166. It is impossible to resist
transcribing Gibbon's note.

    [Greek: Neurên men mazô pelasen toxô de sidêron.
    Linxe bios, neurê de meg' iachen achto d' oistos.]

_Iliad_, iv. 124-125.

"How concise--how just--how beautiful is the whole picture! I see the
attitudes of the archer--I hear the twanging of the bow." The figures of
the archers in the Æginetan marbles at Munich, admirably illustrate the
genius of Homer and the taste of Gibbon.

[14] _Procopius de Bello Gotthico_, i. c. 18.

[15] _Procopius de Bello Gotthico,_ i. c. 21.