fine arts. This taste of mine was the cause of a terrible blowing up I
got from my father. The jury of the Salon of 1836 refused a picture of
Marilhat's--I think it was his first. Some of the artists who had seen
the young painter's work thought this decision unjust. They grumbled,
and their grumbling got as far as the newspapers. I was curious enough
to go and see the picture at Durand-Ruel's. It was a view of Rome by
twilight, seen between great umbrella pines, I thought it a splendid
picture, and spurred somewhat, I confess, by a spirit of contradiction,
I was seized with an eager desire to acquire it. But I had not a
halfpenny of my own, there was my difficulty! To overcome it, I laid
siege to my aunt Adelaide, who doted on her brother's children as if
they had been her own, and who never (and well the rogues knew it!)
could resist their wheedling. I succeeded, as I had hoped, and
Marilhat's picture became my property. But certain of the jury went and
complained to the King, and I was greeted with, "Oho! so you are going
to set yourself up in opposition! I've trouble enough already with
those artists! It's the Civil List (that means it's me) that takes them
in at the Louvre. I can't be the only judge as to what is accepted and
what isn't. I have to have a jury, the Institute is good enough to
undertake the job--all its members are dying of fright, and I shield
them under my own responsibility, just as I do my ministers, although
it's contrary to the letter of the law--and it's you, one of my own
sons, who comes and sets an example of insubordination! Much obliged to
you, sir!"

My picture was inspected all the same I need hardly say the
grand-parents pronounced it frightful, a regular daub. I hung my head
under this double-barrelled censure, and drooped my ears like a whipped
spaniel, but I stuck to my opinion, and likewise to my Marilhat. I
think it was shortly after this little adventure that I added another
"daub" to my "gallery." One morning as I was busy modelling (for I
dabbled in sculpture too) in my sister Marie's studio, Ary Scheffer
came in, and began telling me about an unknown artist he had met, quite
young, a man of undoubted talent, who was in a terribly
poverty-stricken condition. Six hundred francs would take him out of
his difficulties, and he would give two small pictures, pendants, which
he had just finished, in exchange.

"What do they represent?" I inquired.

"They are both landscapes, connected with episodes in Walter Scott's
novels. One represents the charge of Claverhouse in the Covenanters,
and the other the Army of Charles the Bold crossing the Alps. Come!"
added Scheffer, turning to me. "Be good-natured. If you have six
hundred francs, give them to me!"

I chanced to have the money, and gave it him. "What's your protege's
name?" asked I.

"Theodore Rousseau." Fancy that great artist selling his pictures in
pairs, as furniture, in fact--for bread!

In 1836, too, on February 28, I was present at the first performance of
Les Huguenots, an opera which enchanted me. The action, the music, the
stage setting, the interpretation, made an ensemble that was unique, a
work of art that defied comparison. Nothing on the stage to my mind,
has ever surpassed the duet in the fourth act as created and sung by
Nourrit and Mlle. Falcon. Inspired by the musical and dramatic
situation, these two artists were completely carried away, and their
emotion was as infectious as it was apparent. Mlle. Falcon had a way of
interrupting her singing, to speak the words, "Raoul, ils te tueront!"
with an expression into which her whole soul was thrown, which was the
very embodiment of passion. Ah! Passion indeed! Passion it is that
thrills in every page of that admirable book of Merimee's, La Chronique
de Charles IX., which has given birth in succession to those two
masterpieces, Le Pre aux Clercs and Les Huguenots. And what indeed
would life be without passion? If Fieschi's crime marked the year 1835
with a crimson letter, 1836 was the year of Alibaud's attempt. The
history of my father's reign is nothing but an innumerable succession
of such attempts, some of which came to the birth, while others, again,
miscarried. Alibaud, as my readers are aware, fired point-blank at the
King with a walking-stick gun, which he steadied on the door of the
carriage, as it passed slowly through the Tuileries archway, and missed
him, except that his whiskers were singed by the wad. Neither my
father's courage nor that of my mother and aunt, who were with him,
failed them for a moment. I saw them get out of the carriage at
Neuilly, without for an instant suspecting the risk they had run.

But the time soon came for me to go to sea again, and I was ordered to
join the frigate Iphigenie, of which my old captain, M. de Parseval,
had taken command, as full lieutenant, and we started for the Levant
station. The recollection of a very extraordinary accident which
occurred during this cruise remains with me. We were in the
Archipelago, off the Island of Andros. I had just come off the first
night watch, at midnight, and had got into bed, when I heard somebody
say our consort, a twenty-gun brig, the Ducouedic, Commander Bruat, was
making signals of distress, I got back on deck without delay. The
brig's lights had disappeared. Nothing could be seen of her. It was
blowing great guns, with a heavy sea. We continued in a state of great
anxiety till morning. At last, by the first rays of daylight, we saw
our consort dismasted. She signalled to us for a tow, which was quite
impracticable in the state of the sea. All we could do was to stand by
her, while she tried to get to Syra with her foresail, the only one
left her. This she succeeded in doing. But the extraordinary thing is
that what dismasted her was the contrary action of a tremendous roll,
and a heavy squall, which came just at midnight, when the whole crew
was mustered on deck, to change the watch, and that the mainmast with
all its spars and gear and the maintopmast as well, fell on to the deck
without hurting anybody.

Except for this one accident, all the interest of this fresh cruise of
mine lay on the side of the picturesque. Greece with her mythological,
poetic, and historical memories, and the great severe outlines of her
landscapes, struck me with admiration. But this was quickly
overshadowed by the impression made upon me by my first glimpse of
Asia--the Mussulman East, which Lamartine's Voyage and Decamps'
pictures had made me long so eagerly to know. My joy, therefore, may be
conceived, when I saw, as I landed at Smyrna, the living image of
Decamps' masterpiece, La Patrouille de Smyrne, now at Rotterdam,
passing by me--the very same police officer trotting along on his
hunched-up Turcoman horse, surrounded by his policemen, regular
bandits, running beside him, covered with brilliant rags and glistening
weapons. This worthy police agent, whose name was Hadgy-Bey (which we
promptly turned into "Quat'Gibets"), very soon became our ally. I did
his likeness. He was all smiles whenever we met, and he winked at all
our young midshipmen's pranks One they played was rather too strong,
and roused the fury of the Turks. Smyrna was at that time the most
Eastern of Eastern towns, full of tortuous bazaars, and narrow alleys
winding in and out, in which circulation, difficult enough at all
times, sometimes became impossible for hours, when long strings of
camels, fastened together with ropes, were going along them. Nothing
could have been more vexatious than these blocks, which man and beast
alike seemed to take pleasure in prolonging, whenever the Giaours
seemed annoyed by them.

What, think you, did our middies do? A great many of them together (for
we had a very strong naval squadron at Smyrna just then) hired donkeys,
tied them together with long cords, mounted them, each rider with a
long pipe in his mouth and affecting a quiet Eastern gravity of
demeanour, and off they started.

This farandole, which was quite a kilometre long, went round and round
the bazaars all day, up and down and in and out, stopping all the
traffic, as if a real caravan was passing' through. At first the "true
believers" were puzzled, but when they realized they were being laughed
at they grew furious, and rushed off to get "Quat'Gibets," who held his
fat sides and roared with laughter when they told him what was amiss.
Our midshipmen gave him a regular ovation. We were avenged on camels
and camel men alike. The neighbourhood of Smyrna was delightful, and
brigandage quite unknown. Civilization had not yet taught that
refinement of the art, as practised nowadays, whereby people are
carried off and called upon to get themselves ransomed, on pain of
having their noses or ears, or finally their heads, cut off. It was
quite safe to go anywhere, to canter far along the road to Magnesia, or
to stop and take coffee beside some cool spring in the shadow of the
huge plane-trees, and watch the whole East pass by--caravans from
Diarbekir, half-wild Turcoman tribes, bashi-bazouks from the four
corners of Asia, all of them worthy subjects for an artist's pencil,
and I never stopped drawing them. Coming back to the town, which had
been cooled by the sea-breeze, the "Imbat," we used to spend our
evenings in the Levantine or Armenian society of the place, amongst
grandfathers who were still faithful to their old costume, wrapped in
kaftans, and charming young ladies, with Tacticos on their heads, and
their beautiful figures, which no stays had ever tortured, draped in
half-oriental costumes. Native music, soft and plaintive, sounded, as
we would watch Mademoiselles Peiser, Athanaso, Fonton, Tricon, &c.,
dance the Romaika. Nothing exists, nowadays, of what was so seductive
then. The Orient has kept its sunshine and its colouring, but that
horrible cosmopolitanism has invaded everything. Everywhere there are
stays! and stays steal charm away!

We were young and gay at the time I speak of, and passionate too! Two
of my brother lieutenants fought a duel, much more serious than those
pin-prick encounters which are now the fashion. They fought with
pistols, on the very marine promenade where they had been joking with
young ladies the evening before. Just as the seconds gave the signal to
fire, the sun rose on the horizon. Its first ray glinted on a breast
button on the uniform of one principal: the other man's bullet, as
though drawn by some fatal attraction, struck the button, and killed
our unhappy comrade dead. A midshipman carried off a charming Greek
lady, who was discovered in his cabin after his ship had got out to
sea. And many another strange incident occurred! On leaving Smyrna, the
Iphigenie cruised all about the Archipelago, and along the Anatolian,
Caramanian, and Syrian coasts. Whenever I was not on duty my pencil was
in my fingers, for I had the most enchanting and picturesque of models
under my hand. From Tripoli in Syria I climbed to the top of Mount
Lebanon, whence I saw an immense panorama, with the ruins of Baalbec
and the Desert. We picnicked with the patriarch of the Lebanon and his
monks, under the world-famed cedars, and Bruat had a perfect duel of
jokes there with a witty ship's surgeon named Camescasse, who was one
of our party. I remember a funny saying of this same Camescasse, about
a brother medico of his who retired into Brittany, where his practice
was specially among the local aristocracy. He always called him "The
Avenger of the People."

At Eden, the chief town of the Maronites, the old shiek Boutrouss-Karam
received me with the greatest honours, and I was half drowned with
sprinklings of rose-water, the smell of which I detest. Apart from my
presence, there was a great fete going on at Eden for the marriage of
Boutrouss-Karam's daughter, and the whole Maronitenation had hurried to
it in their best clothes. Such handsome types, such costumes, such
turbans! I was one of the bride's witnesses: she and I had each to keep
a bracelet balanced on our heads during the whole of the ceremony. The
bride shook, and her bracelet fell down. After the ceremony she
received me unveiled. She was a fine tall dark girl, but not a pretty
woman. From Jaffa I journeyed to Jerusalem, and travelled all through
the Holy Land, with a feeling of deep emotion, which was only disturbed
by one vexatious incident. On the day I was to go to the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, a great crowd had got there before me, and a quarrel,
which degenerated into a general melee, forthwith arose between Greeks,
Jews, and Armenians. It was only by dint of hard knocks that the
Turkish police made way for me to enter the Holy Place, and to crown
the scandal, just as I knelt in deep devotion, before the altar, the
organ began to play the Marseillaise. There was yet another episode
during my stay at Jerusalem. The Governor of the Province waited upon
me to say he had Mehemet Ali's orders to place himself at the disposal
of the son of the King of France, and to do whatever he desired. I
caught the ball on the hop, and replied he was just in time, for I had
just been going to ask his leave to enter the Mosque of Omar, which
stands on the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon. It should be added
that this fine mosque, which is next in holiness in Mussulman eyes to
that at Mecca, and which is now open to all the world, had at that date
never been seen except by the famous traveller Ali Bey.

Governor Hassan Bey tugged his beard when he heard my request, and
seemed very much put out indeed. After a moment's silence he made up
his mind, and said, "Come to-morrow: I'll take you there myself." The
next day I kept my appointment, bringing Bruat and two or three
officers who were making the same trip with me. We entered the mosque,
which is really very beautiful, and went all over it. The Imaums and
Softas, the priests and students, had cast horrified glances upon us
from the moment of our entry. Suddenly one of them began to intone in a
falsetto voice a sort of Litany, to which the crowd replied in chorus.
Soon the Litany turned into angry shouts, and the crowd, led by an old
Negro Imaum, in a yellow robe, who seemed to have worked himself into a
perfect paroxysm of fury, rushed at us with threatening gestures. This
was by no means reassuring, but Hassan Bey was equal to the emergency.
Seizing me by the arm, he put me behind him, with Bruat and the other
gentlemen grouped round me. Then he ordered a dozen Kavasses he had
brought with him to charge, which they did, laying out heavily with
their sticks. Not content with that, he had the most turbulent of the
Softas seized, thrown down at his feet, and beaten without mercy. The
blows hailed down on the poor wretch as if they had been beating a
carpet. This determined attitude cowed the crowd, which fell back to
the far end of the mosque, grumbling. "We will go now," said the Bey.
Once we were outside, he shut us up in a neighbouring mosque, which was
empty, begging us to wait there for him. Soon we heard a great noise
and yelling outside. Presently Hassan Bey reappeared smiling, and let
us out. The crowd had disappeared, and a battalion of Egyptian infantry
had taken its place. Advised by the Bey, we left Jerusalem a day after
this scuffle, with much regret on my part. The sight of all the spots
which are glorified by the splendid stories of our religious history
had impressed me deeply. My imagination had conjured up the very
pictures in Royaumont's illustrated Bible, out of which I had learnt
both the Old and the New Testament. And just as I was about to start,
when I opened the window of the room I occupied in the Latin convent, I
saw just in front of me the picture in that same Bible which represents
David, with hands uplifted in admiration, as he gazes at Bathsheba, the
wife of Uriah the Hittite. I was the David, and Bathsheba was a woman,
looking really magnificent in her eastern robes, who was sitting on the
terrace facing me. Only she was not combing out her hair like the woman
in the Bible picture: she was hunting it for vermin!

I returned from Jerusalem by the Dead Sea, Nazareth, and Acre.

As we were riding along one night, to escape the heat, not far from
Nazareth, we met a troop of horsemen headed by an individual in
Egyptian dress, who announced himself as Ibrahim Aga, sent by Soliman
Pasha to meet me. Just as I was calling up the dragoman to translate
what I had to say to him, Ibrahim Aga said to me in a drawling voice,
"Don't give yourself that trouble, it isn't the least necessary. I am
the Marquis de Beaufort, captain on the staff." He was in fact one of
the very many French officers, who were detached to the Egyptian army
then lying in cantonments in Syria, after its victories over the Turks
at Homs and Konieh. I had seen and greatly admired these troops all
over Syria and at Acre. I was soon to see Soliman Pasha--in other
words, Colonel Selves, a Frenchman, who had organized them, and under
the energetic and iron-willed son of Mehemet Ali, Ibrahim Pasha, had
led them to victory. I beheld a little man, whom long residence in
Egypt had quite orientalized in appearance but who had preserved all
the vivacity of his Gallic wit. The Iphigenie returned to France by
Malta, where I made the acquaintance of Lord Brudenell, since
celebrated under the name of Lord Cardigan, for his famous Balaclava
charge and of Major Rose, a charming fellow, who later became the Sir
Hugh Rose of the Crimean War, and after that Field-Marshal Lord
Strathnairn of the Indian Mutiny. At that moment Major Rose commanded
the 42nd Highlanders, the famous "Black Watch," a splendid regiment,
especially so then, when it consisted of nothing but veterans of
Herculean build. It furnished the Guard of Honour that received me at
the Palace of the Grand Masters when I went to pay my respects to the
governor, and the salute of that splendid body of men in full-dress
uniform and feathered bonnets, with their colours lowered to the
ground, their band playing God save the Queen, and their bagpipes
shrieking under the arches of the palace, was a most striking sight.
That was the first time I heard the bagpipes of the Highland regiments.
I have often heard them since, and they always remind me of that
wonderfully dramatic incident in the great Indian Mutiny, the relief of
Lucknow. In Lucknow, the capital of the kingdom of Oude, a handful of
British soldiers, with the women and children who had escaped the
massacre, had taken refuge in a huge and strongly built place called
the Residency. Isolated in the heart of India, besieged for months on
end, without any outside news, starving, decimated by sickness and the
enemy's fire, women and soldiers alike, with true British pluck, and
having lost all hope of succour, had no thought but to sell their lives
as dearly as possible. All at once the noise of the daily cannonade and
the rifle fire seem to be doubled, and unaccustomed shouts are heard,
like the national "hurrah." The cheering seems to get nearer, but the
Sepoys have so often cheered derisively! Suddenly another sound strikes
on the ear of the besieged. The bagpipes! The bagpipes! And soon they
make out the famous Highland march, The Campbells are coming!
Reinforcements they were, collected from all quarters, English and
Scotch, soldiers and sailors too, commanded by old Lord Clyde of
Balaclava fame. By main force they carried the works the mutineers,
tenfold their strength, had thrown up round Lucknow, bringing
unhoped-for succour from the mother country, nay, bringing actual
salvation with them. A wonderful moment!

I got back to Paris to hear the news of the failure of the first
expedition against Constantine, and the brilliant part my brother
Nemours had played in that terrible business. I never doubted that
signal revenge would soon be taken for the check, and I was in despair
that my being a sailor stood in the way of my asking to be allowed to
have a share in it.

Meanwhile, I was present at a fresh attempt on my father's life. A man
of the name of Meunier fired a pistol at him the day the Chamber of
Deputies was opened. Some movement in the crowd shook the would-be
assassin's arm, but the bullet came into the carriage, smashing the
front window, and my brothers and I were all cut with the broken glass.
I remember a very characteristic remark by one of the Deputies on this
occasion. After the King had departed, as the Members of the Chamber
were talking over the attempt, one of them said, "Ought we to
congratulate the King?"

"Certainly," was the reply; "we always do it."

Shortly afterwards an emulator of Fieschi invented a perfected machine
which should have mowed us all down at the earliest opportunity, but he
was discovered, and destroyed himself, just as he was going to be
arrested, carrying the secret of his accomplices with him.

Amidst political agitation and ministerial ambitions, with which I
troubled myself but very little, the marriage of my eldest brother, the
Duc d'Orleans, and its attendant festivities, took place. The wedding
was at Fontainebleau; there was a great fete at the Hotel de Ville in
Paris, and the formal inauguration of the Museum at Versailles.

The marriage was settled without my brother and Princess Helene ever
having seen each other. Impatient to know her, and anxious to be the
first to greet her on French soil, my brother went to meet her at
Nancy, where she was to arrive with her mother and a lady in waiting.
He rushed forward, saw three ladies, caught his fiancees hand and
carried it to his lips. Not at all! It was the lady-in-waiting's. This
momentary hitch was soon forgotten, and when the Princess entered the
Cour du Cheval-Blanc at Fontainebleau, in her state coach and eight,
amidst the roar of cannon and the beating of drums, we all went down
the great staircase to receive her, with the King at our head, just
like the great lords going down the staircase at Chenonceaux in the
second act of the Huguenots. It was Champs-Elysees, and through the
Gardens to the Tuileries, we on horseback and the Princesses in the
state carriages, with the Orleans state liveries, surrounded by an
immense multitude of people, all the women in brilliant spring
toilettes, and in the loveliest weather, was a splendid sight too. Then
there was a very fine ball at the Hotel de Ville--rather clouded,
though, by a prediction coming from all quarters, that it would be the
occasion of another attempt on my father.

Old Prince Talleyrand, who was almost dying, begged my eldest brother
to go and see him, so that he might add his warning to all the others.
Raising himself to a sitting posture, and with death in his face, he
said: "It won't be a knife or a pistol, it will be a hail of
paving-stones thrown from the roofs, which will crush you all!" We were
grateful for the warning, and we were glad it did not come to pass.
Nothing happened, either in the street or at the ball, where we were
surrounded by an army of chosen 'guests,' and from which we were driven
back at a great pace, escorted by squadrons of cuirassiers, who
glittered in the torchlight. But the crowning point of the fetes was
the inauguration of the Versailles Museum, that museum and dedicated by
my father "To all the Glories of France!" Others besides himself have
given the sadness of irony to that inscription! Every revolution must
be paid for with a price!

On the occasion of this inauguration the King gave a dinner to twelve
hundred people in the galleries of the Palace. Each of us had to
preside over a table, and I should have found mine a somewhat tiresome
task, if among my guests I had not met some very clever men, whose
conversation amused me much. Such were Alphonse Karr, Leon Gozlan,
Nestor Roqueplan, &c.

After dinner there was a theatrical performance--the Misanthrope, given
for the first time with Louis XIV. dresses, acted by Perrier, Provost,
Samson, Firmin, Menjaud, Monrose, and Regnier, with Mmes. Mars, Plessy,
and Mante; and then one act of Robert le Diable, with Duprez,
Levasseur, and Mile. Falcon--and the ballet.

After the performance there was a general promenade in the galleries,
which were lighted up brilliantly. I lay claim to two good ideas, which
came to me during the evening. The first was to plague the King and the
ministers to such an extent, after the act out of Robert le Diable,
that Meyerbeer, whom I fetched, was then and there nominated an officer
of the Legion of Honour, a commonplace distinction enough nowadays, but
which at that time was very exceptional. The second was to ask the
King, also, if he would graciously permit the artists who had taken
part in the performance to join the guests in the promenade in the
galleries. Of this permission I was myself the bearer, and I naturally
extended it to the corps de ballet. When all these young ladies in
their morning dress, and many of them bandbox in hand, appeared walking
about amongst the gaily bedizened folk, some of the fine ladies turned
up their noses. But the medley was a charming one, nevertheless.

CHAPTER IV

1837-1838

After the wedding festivities I went back to sea, a lieutenant still,
on board the Hercule, 100 guns--Captain Casy. Captain, petty officers,
crew, all hands in fact save a few officers, were Provencal. Before a
week was out I caught myself talking with their accent!

We were bound for South America Gibraltar was our first port, and our
reception by the governor, Sir Alexander Woodford, Lady Woodford, and
their charming children was of the kindest. I have a recollection of it
which I treasure all the more in that later in the day I had to do with
another governor with whom I had no cause at all to be satisfied. From
Gibraltar we went to Tangier, the Moorish town I was to bombard some
years afterwards, but where on this occasion I fought with wild boars
only under the guidance of that first-class sportsman, Mr. Drummond
Hay. The beauty of the eyes and colouring and the originality of the
costume of the Jewish girls at Tangier delighted me, but not to the
extent of chasing a certain melancholy from my heart, which had clung
about it ever since the beginning of my cruise, through the long night
watches, and even amidst the amusements of our stays in port. I was
thinking of HER! There always is a HER when one is only twenty! After
Tangier the ship stopped at Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, to take in water,
and during this operation I organized a scientific expedition to the
famous Peak of Teneriffe, which is nearly twelve thousand feet high,
and from which my professor M. Pouillet had asked me to take some
scientific observations. My brother officer, Rigaud de Genouilly, one
of the ship's lieutenants, accompanied me. After two days climbing and
bivouacking for one night at a great height, we were only about five or
six hundred feet or so from the summit, when we were caught up by a
messenger bringing us the captain's orders to get back as fast as we
could. A despatch boat had just anchored at Santa Cruz bringing news
that in consequence of some foreign complication a French squadron had
been ordered to Tunis, and would probably go on to the East. The
Hercule was to join it immediately. We tore down the mountain,
rejoicing in the thought that we were most likely going to do some
firing, and after a passage of twenty days, spent in all sorts of
fighting drill, we cast anchor in the Bay of Tunis, only to have a
bucket of cold water thrown over our heads. The complications on which
we had built a whole structure of danger and glory had passed away. The
squadron we were to have joined had departed, and orders awaited us to
resume our interrupted cruise, and bear away for South America. One
piece of news was we were told was that the expedition which was to go
and avenge our last year's defeat at Constantine was fitting out at
Bona, and that my brother Nemours commanded one of the brigades. Now my
big ship was to revictual at Algiers, and I besought the captain, who
had a free hand, to touch at Bona and give me a chance of seeing my
brother. The passage from Tunis to Bona was delayed by calms, and when
we got in, I found to my great regret that the expedition had started,
but that a small column was being formed which was to join it, starting
on the following morning. At this news I rushed to my captain, and
calling all the resources of persuasion and every wile of diplomacy to
my aid, I strove to convince him that there would be time for me,
during his revictualling, whereat I should be practically useless, to
make a rush to the expeditionary force and get back again, and that if
the King, my father, knew I had happened to be where I was, he would be
much displeased at my turning my back on an enterprise which was to
avenge our national honour. There were no telegraph wires in those
days, and I contrived to get the desired permission. Twenty-four hours
later I turned soldier for the nonce, and started off, mounted and
accoutred and full of fresh dreams of glory, destined once more to
disappointment--a disappointment shared by various engineer and
artillery officers and three Prussians, Messieurs von Willisen,
[Footnote: H. de Willisen, aide-de-camp to the Prince of Prussia, who
afterwards became the Emperor William, was in chief command of the
Holstein army.] von Noville, and Oelrichs, who had arrived too late to
start with the expeditionary force, and, like myself, were endeavouring
to rejoin it. What shall I say about the march of the column to which I
was attached upon Constantine? It lasted over twelve days of fearful
weather, during which no discomfort was spared us. Torrents of rain,
rivers in flood, snowfalls, men dying of cold, stragglers whose shouts
for help only brought us to them to find them lying headless on the
ground, and last of all, a terrible outbreak of cholera, which one of
the regiments in the column brought with it from France. And we had the
mental agony to boot of being kept ever so long at the foot of a
mountain, the Raz el Akbah, which was so sodden that no gun nor vehicle
could get up it, even with triple teams, and listening to the firing of
the attacking batteries before Constantine without being able to get
there.

One day, during this delay, the chief medical officer, by way of
consolation, greeted us with these words at breakfast: "Bad news,
gentlemen; we have just discovered that the cesspools of the hospital
(a miserable hut) have burst, and for the last twenty-four hours they
have been leaking into the spring where we get our drinking water."

"Hang it all, doctor, you really might have kept that to yourself," we
all cried in a breath!

Amid all this suffering and discomfort, physical and moral, the
courage, spirits, good humour and downright gaiety of the soldiers
never failed for a single moment. I had never seen them before under
such trying circumstances, and I thought them quite admirable, and
their officers too,--the very embodiment of devotion. One day, the rear
guard detachment had dropped some way behind the main column, and found
itself stopped by an impetuous torrent, which was swelling visibly
under a deluge of rain. The first men who tried to cross were carried
off their feet, thrown down, and only pulled out with great difficulty.
Without a moment's hesitation all the officers plunged into the water,
though it was up to their arm-pits, and holding on to each other's arms
they formed a sort of animated dam, above which they made their men
cross over, and it was all done in the simplest way. Frenchmen of all
classes, soldiers, sailors, what-not, a splendid race they are, when
the spirit of obedience and discipline inspires them with a sense of
duty! At last we came in sight of Constantine, and shortly after of a
body of cavalry, the Third Chasseurs d'Afrique, sent out to meet us.
From an officer detached in advance we learnt the place had been taken
by assault three days previously, and that the Comte de Damremont,
general in command, had been cut in two by a round shot, while he was
talking to my brother Nemours. Very soon, galloping up to the
Coudiat-Ati, I was in the arms of that good brother, who had behaved so
brilliantly during the whole campaign. He was in the act of inspecting
his brave little army, and we finished the inspection together. Then he
scanned me from top to toe, and the smart soldier spoke instead of the
brother "You can't go about like that, haven't you anything else to put
on?"

"I'm afraid I haven't," I sadly replied, with a humiliated glance at my
short jacket, my trousers turned up with a bit of gutta percha, and my
straw hat covered with waxed cloth, none of which had been improved by
camping out in the mud. The only soldier-like things about me were my
sword and my lieutenant's epaulettes. But they manufactured me a cap, a
naval lieutenant, Fabre Lamaurelle, who had come up with me, lent me
his coat, and so I became presentable.

The sight of the breach excited me greatly, and my first care was to
mount it. If my readers will call up the appearance of the buildings
pulled down when a new street is opened in Paris, they will get some
idea of the picture the top of the breach presented. It was a chaos of
ruins, caused by cannon shot and explosions, without any apparent way
out. The ground was like the moraine of a glacier, scattered over with
caps, epaulettes, and human remains. A soldier of the 2nd Light
Infantry was standing sentry beside a big stone.

"What are you doing there?"

"Do you see that bit of a blue cloak down that hole? The colonel is
underneath that stone, and the bayonets sticking out of the rubbish
belong to the men he was leading. The explosion buried them all alive!"

A terrible trial that explosion was for assaulting columns scattered
through a labyrinth of ruins, and barricaded lanes, and fired at from
all sides by an invisible foe.

But nothing dismayed our brave fellows for an instant. I was told that
at the moment of the catastrophe, when the staff, which was following
the progress of the fight with anxious ears, for there was no seeing
anything, saw the cloud caused by the explosion shrouding the
neighbourhood of the breach, and hundreds of wounded and burnt and
maimed men coming down it, they thought the assault had been repulsed
and that the game was up.

Lamoriciere, commanding the first attacking column, was carried back
blinded, and to everybody's astonishment the commanding officer of the
2nd column, Colonel Combes, was seen returning also. He advanced, sword
in hand, to the General commanding, over whose face an expression first
of wonder and then of anger spread, at the sight of a commanding
officer quitting his post. Nothing daunted, the colonel informed him,
in a few curt sentences, of the state of the fight, and of his own
confidence in its success, ending with these words: "It will be another
glorious day for France and for those who live to see the end of it."
He saluted, tottered--he was dead! No sign of his had betrayed that he
was mortally wounded.

As I listened to the tale I asked General Vallee,--"But what would you
have done, General, if the assault had been repulsed?"

"We should have begun again." As he said it he pressed his lips
together with that fearfully stern expression which, with his short
stature, had earned him the nickname in the army of "Little Louis XI.,"
and an officer behind me who wad heard my question and the answer,
added in an undertone, "And he had taken all his precautions."

"What do you mean?"

"When he was told, the night before the assault, that the ammunition
was giving out, he ordered one round to be kept in reserve for the
battery that played upon the breach--"

"Well?"

"Don't you understand? He meant to fire on the attacking column if it
gave any sign of wavering. He did it once in Spain at the siege of
Tarragona."

There was another scene of war at the opposite end of the town from the
breach at the Kasbah. During the assault all the non-combatant
Mussulman population had taken refuge there, crowding and cramming it
up to the very edge of the ramparts that crowned the precipices of the
Rummel, and either from sheer terror or by dint of the pressure of the
crowd, a cascade of human beings fell from the ramparts on to the rocks
and terraces of the precipice. Heaps of corpses, men, women and
children, but especially women, were caught here and there, and on one
of the heaps an old white-bearded Arab was turning over the dead, one
by one, seeking doubtless for some one who was dear to him.

Having no official position in the army, and as I could not well rest
on laurels I had not won, I spent my time sketching. I began, of
course, with the breach, and installed myself, for that purpose, beside
a human head severed from the trunk, which lay on the ground alongside
of a dead horse in the torn open belly of which a dog had made its
lair. While I was drawing, I heard a bugle sounding a march and soon I
saw the bugler coming out. Upon the breach; behind him marched a
sub-lieutenant, sword in hand, and then in place of men, a string of
donkeys, led by about a dozen Zouave irregulars. Puzzled, I went up to
the bugler and, stopping him, I asked what he was blowing for. "Why,"
he replied rocking from one foot to another with his bugle on his hip,
"this is the volunteer company from Bougie going back to headquarters."

"What?"

"Those are the rifles on the donkeys, there--everybody killed in the
assault; there is nobody left but us." He began blowing again. The
donkeys passed on and I bared my head to them.

Confident in the impregnability of his town, the Bey of Constantine had
left his harem there and the ladies of it were shut up in the palace,
which had been turned into head-quarters, and where I was living with
Nemours. As may be imagined, this harem gave me subjects for many
sketches, which disappeared, unluckily for me, in the sacking of the
Tuileries on February 24th, 1848. In one of the courtyards, planted
with orange-trees and roses, and surrounded by the elegant Moorish
balconies of the Bey's Palace, there was a little door, which had been
confided to the care of the vivandiere of the 47th Regiment and of a
sergeant major of spahis, of the name of Bel-Kassem. It was the door
into the harem and gave access to several courts, surrounded by
galleries, both on the ground floor and first story, on which opened
spacious rooms carpeted with divans and cushions and with shelves all
round piled with quantities of things, knick-knacks, and, above all,
stuffs, especially silken ones. The women--there were over two hundred
of them--spent their lives night and day alike, squatting or lying on
the cushions in these apartments. They were divided into two
categories. The negresses, who formed the great majority, occupied two
court-yards, and these courts exhaled a fetid odour which poisoned the
whole of the Bey's palace, whenever the wind blew from that quarter.
The white and sallow-complexioned women all lived together, they all
wore Arab dress, with more or fewer trinkets, and there were some
pretty women among them. Two were Greeks and there was one really
beautiful Moorish woman, called Ayescha. I did her likeness, and that
of the chief eunuch as well. He was a negro, growing grey, with a
deceitful hypocritical eye all muffled up in very fine haiks which
showed nothing but the tip of his nose, and legs which were entirely
guiltless of calf. That sitting would have been a good subject for a
picture--I drawing, the ladies of the harem hanging over me watching me
work, and the negro standing and swearing as he stood, while Ayescha
went to and fro lavishing the quaintest caresses on him, to keep him in
good temper.

One evening, General Vallee had an entertainment got up for him in the
harem. There were great illuminations, singing, music with tambourine
accompaniment and the danse du ventre. Amongst those present was
General de Caraman, who commanded the artillery. He was seized with
cholera just as he was going away, and was dead by six o'clock the next
morning. Such is life! Several adventures arose out of the fact of the
harem's presence. One fine night, when everybody was asleep, two of the
officers of infantry irregulars on guard took it into their heads to
knock at the door, and were filled with delighted surprise on hearing
the gentle voice of the good-natured cantiniere reply, "Is that you?
Well upon my word," and the door opened. But within less than two
minutes the frightful uproar caused by two hundred women shrieking at
once roused the whole of head-quarters, and our two officers tore full
pace back to the guardroom and got the men under arms. This scare, and
it may be some others too, added to the pestiferous smell from the
negresses' quarters, made the authorities resolve to get rid of all
this human cattle and distribute it amongst the most well-to-do of the
Mussulman population. I went to look on at their departure, which was
presided over by a major on the staff, assisted by a detachment of
irregulars. The women had been warned the evening before, and leave had
been given for each to take away as much as she herself could carry. So
they had spent the whole night rolling as many precious stuffs round
their waists as they could support the weight of, and we found
ourselves face to face with human balloons, like monstrous gourds. They
could hardly walk, even when held up by the soldiers, and getting
through the doorways was more difficult still. Some of them, hauled at
in front and pushed from behind, shot through like the cork of a
champagne bottle. Others, who could not squeeze through at all, were
made over to the soldiers to be reduced to the necessary size, the
whole thing accompanied by a chorus of shouts and objurgations of every
kind. But to pass from the harem to graver subjects. On October 18th, I
was present at the military funeral of the Comte Damremont. It was a
moving sight. Some few hundred yards from the spot where he had been
killed, just at the foot of the breach, a cenotaph had been built of
sand-bags, on which the coffin, with his General's cloak, and his sword
and white feathered hat laid on it, had been placed. The weather had
gone into mourning too, for the occasion. It was a very gloomy day. The
whole Arab population was looking on, squatting on the walls. On the
top of the breach were planted the colours of the 47th Regiment. Below
it the Zouaves' drums rolled a funeral march, while the officers did
obeisance for the last time to the remains of their former general. And
what officers they were too! How many future men of mark there were in
that assemblage, which, not to mention its chiefs, numbered Captains
Niel, Canrobert, MacMahon, St. Arnault, Le Boeuf, Ladmirault, Morris,
Leflo, and many another in its ranks!

The army left Constantine in two detachments. I returned with the
second, which escorted the general in command, who had fallen sick, and
an enormous convoy of fever patients and cripples of all sorts. It was
a dreary journey back, for the column was decimated by cholera, and the
road was strewed with corpses. Every minute soldiers were to be seen
dropping their muskets and writhing in the most awful convulsions. My
brother, who commanded the rear-guard, spent his whole time having the
poor wretches picked up and tied into mule litters. They were thence
drafted into the ambulance wagons, which were crowded already, and
there they died like flies. As soon as a man died, the other occupants
of the wagon united their efforts and heaved him overboard. When the
convoy started every morning a row of corpses marked the spot the
wagons had been on during the night. A detachment of engineers covered
them over with a little soil, but we had hardly moved off before the
Arabs swooped down from all directions and uncovered and stripped them.

I was ill myself by the time the columns got to Bona--fever had me in
its grip, but thanks to severe physicking I was almost my own man again
by the time I rejoined my ship at Algiers. She went to sea almost at
once. I had a relapse at Senegal, but the ocean passage completely
cured me, and I was quite in smooth water by the time we reached the
South American coast. Rio de Janeiro was our first port. I need not
enlarge on the magnificent view presented by the Bay of Rio, which has
been so frequently described by travellers. It was during this stay in
harbour that I first saw the young princess who was later to become the
Princess de Joinville, the devoted companion of my whole life. During
this stay, too, I made an expedition to Minas, the gold mine country, a
long journey on mule-back, through the magnificent monotony of the
virgin forest. One of the mines I went to see, called Gongo-Soco, was
worked by the labour of four hundred slaves, and owned by an English
company who made an enormous profit out of it. I went down it, and,
under the guidance of some Cornish miners, I had a try with a pick and
succeeded in getting out several nuggets as thick as my little finger.
As the vein was principally manganese, we were black all over when we
came out of the mine, but a body of negresses came at once to wash us.
Another expedition I made into the "camp" initiated me into a sort of
sport which was new to me--hunting wild horses with a lasso. After
having admired the extraordinary skill of the camperos in doing this, I
tried it myself, and that not altogether unsuccessfully--it is a
fascinating occupation.

To finish up our stay at Rio, we gave the emperor and his family, and
the whole of society both foreign and Brazilian, a ball on board our
ship. Towards the end of the evening, I turned a young lion I had been
given in Senegal loose in the ball-room, and his appearance somewhat
disturbed the figures of the cotillon.

From Rio the Hercule called in succession at Guiana, Martinique and
Guadaloupe. The low shores of Guiana are clothed with mangrove swamps,
the trees of which seemed scarlet, so covered were they with red
ibises! Nothing more gay-looking can be imagined than the Cayenne
River, and the pretty town standing on its banks--the wooden houses all
separated from each other by gardens in which the tropical vegetation
displays an unexampled luxuriance and variety. Flowers of every hue,
set among huge calabash trees, gigantic palms of every kind, such as
the traveller's palm with its immense fan-shaped leaves, bread-fruit
trees, and many more, charm the eye with a wealth of colour which must
be seen before it can be realized. Though the Cayenne River may be
charming, the other arms of the Guiana delta, great rivers, hedged in
by thick dark forest walls, are far gloomier to the sight. But those
magnificent forests, peopled with creatures of all sorts, and
especially with an infinite number of birds, of the most varied and
dazzling plumage, have the irresistible attraction that hangs about
life in the wilds.

I went up several of these rivers, such as the Aprouague and the Mana
River, and visited the carbets, or villages, of several Indian tribes,
the Norags, and the Galibis, which last were still quite savage at the
time of which I write, armed with bows and arrows, and obtaining a
light by rubbing two bits of stick together--a thing I actually saw
them do. Men and women alike were red-skinned, tartar-eyed, their
smooth hair dyed with "rocou," a sort of madder, and with a small strip
of cotton passed between the legs as their only garment. The women were
particularly frightful. Almost all of them had huge stomachs, which
they held up with their hands just like a monkey's pouch, and all wore
a kind of tight bracelet above and below their knees and ankles, which
caused the intervening parts to swell, and gave their legs the
appearance of skewers with Dutch cheeses on them. Apart from the
savages, the general impression of Guiana remaining with me is that of
a great hot-house, in which everything was as improbably huge as in one
of Gustave Dore's illustrations--where I came across apricots as big as
my head, and caimans ten yards long. As regards the inhabitants, I
recollect Creoles, enervated by the climate, who were as kindly as they
were intelligent; pale-faced women, languorous and seductive, with soft
low murmuring voices; and lastly, just as I passed through, a negro
drum-major of the National Guard, with a great big busby and a plume
that was a dream!

My recollection of Martinique and Guadaloupe bring them back to me as
lovely green islands of volcanic outline. The former especially struck
me as being exceedingly picturesque, its hills covered with
pleasant-looking habitations with the peaks of the Carbet veiled in the
dark clouds brought by the trade winds, for background. I had to review
the troops on the Savana, the promenade of Fort Royal, but I confess I
took more interest in the costume of the beautiful quadroons, or
quarterbred mulatto women, than in the review itself. This costume is
worth describing. A brilliant-coloured bandanna, knotted round the head
in the most fanciful manner, no stays of course, nothing but an
embroidered chemise, showing a magnificent outline, and a
bright-coloured skirt, yellow or rose-coloured, trained at the back,
but gathered up on one side, to show a beautiful bare leg. When I add
that these women often have a creamy white complexion which many a
European would envy, the proud exclamation of the old householder,
dragged I know not why before a court of justice, will be appreciated.
To the Judge's question "What is your profession?" he replied "My
profession! I keep up the supply of Mulattos!" "Je fais des mulatres!"
It was in the days of the greatest prosperity of our beautiful Antilles
that the old boaster spoke. When I arrived, this was already on the
wane, and it really was tiresome not to be allowed to talk about
anything but sugar and emancipation by the Creoles.

Nowadays what we call progress has done its work, and these colonies,
which used to be an element of national wealth, employing a whole navy
of merchantmen, and which served as nursery for the sailors of our
warships, are now no more than machines for electing Radical Deputies,
and thus increasing the number of agents of the national destruction.

At Martinique, we joined the flag of the admiral in command of the
station. I have served under many admirals, one more eccentric than the
other. One of the first, an excellent seaman, had one passion only,
music--and his instrument was the double bass. He spent his time
performing solos on this cumbrous instrument, which he would then put
away in a small apartment known in the old-fashioned navy as la
bouteille. Sometimes the sea-water came through the port, and flooded
everything. When the admiral fetched his double bass out, and began his
tunes, he would notice from the sound that the body was full of water,
and then every sort of dodge would be resorted to, to get the liquid
poured out by the sound holes. The poor admiral! There is a story that
his double bass was victim one day of the spite of certain seamen, who
marked their displeasure by pouring something less clean than sea-water
into the big fiddle. This same gallant admiral having gone ashore once
upon a time, at St. Louis in Senegal, and finding the bar there
continued so impassable that he could not rejoin his ship, sent her
round to Goree, and went there himself overland slung under a camel's
belly, and armed with an umbrella,--which proved his complete ignorance
of the miracles of the Prophet Mohammed.

My commanding officer at the time of which I write was another oddity.
Imagine a thin little man, as hot as pepper, adorned with a hooked nose
and chin, one as huge as the other. A real old-fashioned gentleman,
always tightly buttoned up in the most irreproachably correct of
garments, and with all the exquisite and formal politeness of the old
school. Everybody was fond of the good old fellow, who heightened the
oddity of his appearance on board his own ship by wearing a huge straw
hat like the bell-crowned hat Eugene Sue puts on the head of M. Pipelet
in the Mysteres de Paris, and a song had been composed about him, which
we used to sing together and the chorus of which began "Bon! bon! de la
Bretonniere! Bon Bon!"--la Bretonniere being his name. This same
officer saved Admiral Magon's ship after Trafalgar, and later on he
commanded the Breslaw at Navarino and showed the most consummate
bravery there. His flagship was the Didon, which ship, having run
aground several times, had earned the nickname of "Dido the touching"
(la touchante Didon). Poor old Didon! I had sailed with her before and
the sight of her gave me the same feeling of grateful recollection that
stirs within a man who meets an old love. After a short cruise with the
whole squadron the admiral led the way to the British island of Jamaica.

*******

We had hardly cast anchor before he sent to ask the British Governor
when he would receive him, and, the appointment duly made, he sent for
me to go with him. An aide-de-camp received us at the landing-stage,
silently pointed to the governor's carriage, which awaited us, and
disappeared. The carriage in question was a phaeton with room for two
people in it, and a little seat behind for the groom, who was standing
at the horses' heads with true British correctness. Says the admiral to
me, "Are we to go in that?"

"Yes, sir."

"But," and he took two steps to the rear, "there isn't any coachman."

"You are to drive yourself, sir."

With a half turn to the right he replied, "I! Impossible! I've never
been able to get a horse to go in my life. Do you know how to drive?"

"A little, sir."

"Then take the reins, sir!"

Into the carriage then we got, to the great satisfaction of the groom,
who had guessed rather than understood the misgivings of the French
admiral in the cocked hat. At first, things went pretty well. The groom
showed me the way to Spanish Town, saying "left" or "right" as the case
might be, when, presently we came to a great market crowded with
negresses with blue cotton stuffs twisted round their haunches, all
screaming at the top of their voices. The horses in our phaeton took
fright at the noise, their alarm communicated itself to the negresses,
who ran away, upsetting everything. I lost command of the horses, which
swerved to one side, knocking over the heaps of gourds and water melons
and bananas. There was a terrible scene of confusion. The admiral clung
on with both hands, never stopping shouting "Oh the devil! the devil!
the devil!" However we got through without any serious accident. On the
return journey, conscious of my own incapacity, I offered to give up my
place as whip to the admiral, but he refused with a most determined
"No, no, no; oh NO!"

At the time of my visit, Jamaica was still celebrated for its rum, and
my father had charged me not to forget to bring him a barrel, a
commission I did not fail to execute. But a lamentable accident
happened in connection with that same barrel. It was brought back to
France and duly placed in the cellars at Neuilly, and had been
forgotten for ever so long, when one fine day the King, recollecting
it, ordered some of the contents to be handed round at the end of
dinner. All the guests smacked their lips before-hand; but
disappointment awaited them, and the first taste was followed by a
general grimace of horror. It was simply beastly. Enquiries were set on
foot and here is their result! A distinguished mental specialist, who
had been ordered to take a sea voyage for the benefit of his health,
which had broken down, had got leave from the Minister for Naval
Affairs to sail on board the Hercule. Deeply interested as he was in
his own special subject, he had occupied himself during all our stays
in port in collecting brains, both human and animal, which he
immediately labelled and shut up in a barrel of alcohol, which was
exactly like my barrel of rum. The two barrels had got mixed and my
father and his guests had been drinking rum flavoured with brains!

Our squadron dispersed on leaving Jamaica. The admiral, I think, was to
go to San Domingo, we ourselves to Havana. One of our ships, a
beautiful despatch boat, the Fabert, bore us company the first day. In
the evening, the weather being calm, her commander, a lieutenant, M. de
Pardeillan, came on board us to dine. Little did we think, as we
accompanied him to the head of the companion, that we were bidding him
an eternal farewell. The ship, the crew, and their young captain all
disappeared, and have never been heard of again. The sea swallowed them
all up, and the sea has kept the secret.

As we entered Havana, I was struck by the sight of a whole fleet of
strange-looking ships which lay at anchor under the Morro citadel. They
were long boats, built for speed, with immense sloping spars, like
racing yachts. They were not warships, though they were heavily armed.
They were slavers, for the negro trade was still in full swing in Cuba.
The demand for black labour being constantly on the increase, the
slavers went to fetch it from Africa, and brought it back at all risks,
in spite of the British cruisers. But this importation of black cattle,
which had been humane and kindly enough while it was free, had grown
frightfully barbarous since the successful landing of each cargo had
been exposed to every chance imaginable. The trade, nevertheless, fed
the extraordinary prosperity of the fair Spanish colony, Queen of the
Antilles, and especially that of her capital town, the Havana. The stir
in the port itself was prodigious, and how shall I describe the
animated appearance of the streets, the splendid houses, and the
innumerable churches that met my gaze, and the evidence of luxury
betrayed everywhere, and by everything I saw?

In the days of his wandering exile, my father had sojourned at Havana,
and my first care was to seek out the friends he had left behind him
there. Thanks to them, I soon found myself at home, in the Montalvo,
Penalver, Arminteros, Arastegui, O'Reilly and de Arcos families, whose
charming companionship formed the chief delight of my own stay. My
cousinship with the Queen of Spain caused me to be received with great
honour, also, by the authorities, especially by the Captain General,
Espeieta. A review was arranged for me on the Paseo Tacon, and of that
same review I have an undying recollection. Let my readers imagine a
line formed by the Espana, Barcelona and Habana regiments, the
artillery, and a lancer regiment, splendid troops all of them, under
the command of General Count de Mirasol, with his baton slung at his
buttonhole. And, facing this line, another of the most exquisitely
charming aspect. All the volantes in Havana drawn up in battle array!
The said volantes, peculiar to the place, are gigs without hoods or
aprons, perched on two huge wheels, and each drawn by one horse in
silver-mounted trappings, ridden by a calassero or negro postilion in
flaming livery, laced on every seam. In each volante two ladies
lounged, in evening dress, low-necked, bare-headed, and armed with
fans. Every pretty woman in Havana was there, talking to the occupiers
of the next carriage, looking on and being looked at, and all under a
lovely tropical sunset, which lighted up the sea, whence a soft
refreshing breeze was blowing, on one side, and on the other a forest
of cocoa palms with the fortress of Principe rising above them. The
ensemble of the picture and its details were alike charming, and to us
sailors, just off the sea, it was heightened by contrast. These Havana
ladies add all the charm of Spaniards to a mingling of Creole
indifference with the confidence of well-born women. Their eyes and
complexions are magnificent, their wrists and ankles exquisitely
delicate, and their feet! I never saw anything like them--the feet of a
Chinese woman, only natural, not produced by torture, I brought away a
precious souvenir from Havana, in the shape of a shoe which I knew to
be genuine, but which never met with anything but incredulity till the
sacking of the Tuileries in 1884 bereft me of it altogether.

I remember yet a beautiful excursion in the interior of the island,
partly by rail, partly by volante, along splendid avenues of palmettos,
and thick shady mango trees, to the country house belonging to Dona
Matilda de Casa Calvo, Marquise de Arcos, where I spent two days in the
pleasantest of company, and where Lord Clarence Paget, who was of the
party, astonished us by his talent as a singer. Our delightful stay in
port was brought to a close by a ball given to me by the town of Havana
at the Societad Philarmonica. I had just been dancing that pretty
dance, a sort of slow valse, which is called the Habanera, and I was
walking with my partner, a beautiful Spanish Mexican, with tiny feet,
under the arcades which ran round the patio, when she pulled a
straw-covered cigarette out of her pocket and lighted it. "Don't you
smoke?" she enquired.

"No, Mademoiselle."

"Oh, but yes, I'm sure you will smoke," and she took her cigarette from
her pretty lips and gave it to me to smoke, which I did without
hesitation. That sudden conversion has been a durable one. But I have
often regretted that I could not begin it all over again!

Twenty-four hours later, at two o'clock in the morning, I was wakened
in my cabin by a violent shock. The Hercule had just run aground in the
dangerous waters of the Bahama Channel. Whatever the weather may be,
the running aground of a huge body like a hundred gun ship is a serious
matter. To crown our disgrace, the corvette La Favorite, which sailed
in company with us and had followed us blindly, ran aground at the same
instant. Luckily it was almost calm, and the great Hercule lay quietly
on the sand like a stranded whale. Whenever the least suspicion of a
swell came, she gave a shudder, a sort of wag of her tail, which was
very alarming. If the swell increased she would soon go to pieces, and
every boat we had to launch would never be enough to save the crew. It
was one of those anxious moments in a sailor's life when each man makes
it his business to conceal his own feelings. We set hard to work to get
down a big anchor on the deep-water side. Once it was down and the
cable taut, we began to lighten the ship, pouring all the water
overboard, and getting ready to put the guns over the side. Then
daylight came, and showed us our real position. A long way off we could
see a low island on the coast of Florida, called Looe-Key. The dawn
also showed us, in the offing, the British corvette Pearl, commanded by
our pleasant comrade of some days before, Lord Clarence Paget, who had
sailed from Havana at the same time as we ourselves. As soon as he
perceived our position he hurried to our assistance, and steering with
all the decision and seafaring good sense of the British sailor, he got
as close as possible to us, put down his two anchors at once, and came
to us, saying, "I bring you the only thing I can, a fixed point to work
on."

We thanked him cordially, but, just at that moment, thanks to our
having lightened the ship, and also to the tide, which fortunately
began to rise, the Hercule swayed for a few minutes on her sandy bed,
and then began to float. A sigh of relief broke from every breast,
especially from those of the captain and the unlucky officer of the
watch, whose carelessness had been the original cause of the accident.

A few hours more, and everything but a trifling leak had been put to
rights, and we were on our way to the United States--to a new country,
a young nation, which attracted me as by instinctive sympathy. On our
very arrival in the Chesapeake river, I came across a characteristic
trait. "Can you speak French?" I asked the pilot who hailed us.
Instantly he answered me, in English, "No, I only speak American!" The
claim to separate nationality extended even to the language.

Shortly afterwards I went ashore, and, armed with an itinerary, kindly
drawn up for me by Michel Chevalier, in which he had mentioned all he
advised my seeing, both as to men and things, during the short time at
my disposal, I started on a hasty tour through that splendid country.
That first glimpse of America fulfilled all my expectations, and
delighted me. A young country it was in very deed. Nature itself, to my
European eyes, had a pureness of atmosphere, a richness of vegetation,
a freshness, a general air of youth, unknown in our older countries.
Man too, in his gait, in his independence of mind, and his boldness of
enterprise, betrayed an exuberant vigour of which our populations,
enervated by disappointing experiences, and crushed by routine as they
are, have grown incapable.

As I desired to get from Norfolk in Virginia to Washington, I started
by the Roanoke Railway, on the first day of my trip, and thus crossed
an immense marsh, the "Dismal Swamp." The rails we ran on being laid
open-work fashion on huge piles fifteen feet above the marsh, the whole
road rocked under the weight of the engine, so much as to disturb the
waters of the swamp and startle the numberless snakes and turtles
inhabiting it. It was a most novel sensation. Further on, betwixt
Baltimore and Philadelphia, the train having to cross an arm of the
sea, steamed on full pace; the engine, uncoupling itself, ran ahead on
to a siding, while our train was carried by its own impetus on to the
upper deck of a steam ferry-boat, moored at the end of the line. It
stopped exactly at the right spot, and while the boat crossed the arm
of the sea, we went below and dined at a splendid buffet on the lower
deck, waited on by the prettiest of barmaids.

Further on yet, between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in that rich
Allegheny country where the coal-beds lie on the surface, and coal
costs five francs a ton, and whence petroleum oil was soon to gush
forth, the travelling was done by canal in the flat country, and by
funicular railways in the mountains, by means of boats built in
sections which hooked together on the water, and were taken apart when
there was a question of climbing up inclined planes. All public works
and means of communication were full of daring things like these, while
in Europe (I speak of the year 1838) we were still at our first
timorous essays at railway travelling.

I travelled through Virginia, passing by all those spots where four and
twenty years later I was to watch the bloodiest battles of the War of
Secession, that first and awful convulsion of the great Republic's
manhood. Reaching Washington, I was most courteously received by
President Van Buren. How often since then I have been back at the White
House, under Presidents Tyler, Buchanan, and Lincoln! How many a
curious scene I have witnessed there, under the rule of the last-named
President, rich as it was in dramatic incident! During that first stay
of mine at Washington I made the acquaintance of three of the greatest
men in the United States--Calhoun, Webster, and Clay--Calhoun of
Carolina, the impassioned Southerner; Webster, the eloquent
representative of New England Puritanism; and Clay of Kentucky, with
his angular face and powerful frame, and a curious mixture of extreme
gentleness and energy in his manner and ways--the very type of the
Western population, the advance-guard of civilization. I was present at
several sittings of the Senate, and heard these gentlemen speak with an
authority which seemed to fascinate their auditors. Washington as a
city, did not interest me at all--bits of town, scattered about in an
ocean of dust, which later on I knew as an ocean of mud; hotels crowded
with canvassers, all devouring so hurriedly at table d'hote time, that the
first arrivals were rising from table when the last ones were sitting
down, and all this amidst a noise of jaws that reminded me of the dogs
being fed in a kennel; the whole population, whether politicians or
canvassers, chewing and spitting everywhere; little society or none at
all, save that formed by the foreign diplomats, most of them clever
men, but bored by their isolation, and consequently disposed to see
everything around them with unfavouring eyes. One of the chief members
of this society at the time of my sojourn was the British Minister, Mr.
Fox, a diplomatist of the old school, past master in forms, and
proprieties, and social refinements--everything that the English sum up
in the word "proper." I was told that one day as he was leaning against
the chimney-piece in a drawing-room where dancing was going on, in deep
conversation with I know not what other personage, an American couple
came and stood just in front of him in a country-dance. Soon the young
man began to show signs of anxiety; his voice grew thick, his cheeks
swelled alternately, and he cast anxious glances at the chimney-piece.
At last he could hold on no longer, and with the most admirable
precision, he shot all the juice of his quid into the fireplace just
between Mr. Fox and his interlocutor. "Fine shot, sir!" the old
diplomat contented himself with saying, with a bow. It may have been
that little incidents of this kind cast a chill on international
relations!

[Illustration with caption: southern scout]

Philadelphia delighted me. It is a cheerful town, with streets planted
with fine trees. The prison there, the first built on the solitary
system, occupied me for a whole day. I went over every corner of it, in
the company of the directors, and of any other officials who could
inform me on the subject. It will be known to my readers that the
system in this prison, at the time of which I write, was that of
absolute seclusion in cells--complete isolation in fact--during the
whole term of sentence. Soon afterwards I visited Auburn Prison, in New
York State, where the condemned person was subjected to a different
regime,--cells at night, but work in common, though in silence, during
the day. I have been over many prisons since, for I have always held
that the management of such places is a pretty reliable thermometer of
the moral condition of the country to which they belong. I know of some
foul ones in states which set up to be very civilized. In France we are
lamentably behindhand in the matter. Though we have some prisons which
are model, we have a great many more which are shamefully behind the
times. For my own part, I have come to the conclusion, from all I have
seen and heard, that seclusion in cells at night, with work in common
during the daytime in small easily managed workshops, or better still,
in the open air as at Portland Prison in England, is the penitentiary
system which offers the fewest drawbacks. I say drawbacks, for no such
system can offer advantages. All the holding forth of philanthropists
about the sad fate of criminals is empty noise. A prison must be a
place of punishment; it can never be an abode of reformation, nor of
reclamation.

Let us pass, from the prisons, to Mr. Norris's great steam engine, and
especially locomotive engine works, which Michel Chevalier had told me
to be sure to go and see; and most interesting, truly, they were. Great
improvements in the construction of locomotives originated in these
works. Mr. Norris had also had a very original and exceedingly American
idea--to make a great orchestra of musical instruments played by steam
instead of by human lungs. I heard, or at all events I was told I
heard, the "Hunting Chorus" in Robin Hood performed by this orchestra,
in which the conductor's baton was replaced by a tap. It was horrible!

After Philadelphia came Niagara, wonderful and peerless. I admired its
picturesque grandeur, but I admired the rapids before the fall every
bit as much. The mighty power of the huge river, the overflow of all
those great lakes, pouring in foaming fury over its rocky bed, for such
a distance and through such splendid scenery, is indescribably
striking. In the midst of the lovely country of the Hudson Highlands,
stands West Point, the famous military school where all the officers of
the American army are educated. I was the guest, while there, of
Colonel de Russy, who was in command, and my stay was full of interest.
There is a curious point about the school, and it is not the least of
the surprises reserved for us by the American democracy. The cadets do
not enter by examination, but by favour. The Senators, or
representatives of each State in the Union, have a right to a certain
number of nominations. The President has the same. Their choice, as a
rule, falls on lads of intelligence, and the only thing asked of them
on joining, is to give proof of a healthy constitution. They know
nothing, and have to learn everything in the school, at which they
consequently spend four years. Well, in spite of the absence of
selection or competition for entrance, the result is quite excellent.
The knowledge, spirit of discipline and duty of the American officer,
and his adaptability to no matter what task, leave nothing to be
desired.

Everybody knows New York, that huge cosmopolitan city, the commercial
capital of the New World, where colossal fortunes are made and lost
with the giddiest rapidity. Its position as being the chief artery of
human activity, is incomparable, but the town--qua town--has this point
in common with all huge agglomerations of commercial buildings. It is
utterly commonplace. I merely passed through it on my way to rejoin my
ship at Newport, but with me there came on one of those splendid
steamers, veritable floating palaces indeed, which the Americans excel
in building, a huge picnic, at which 150 New York ladies were present.
The night passage across Long Island Sound in lovely weather, with all
this gay party dancing and supping, was most delightful.

I left the United States with a feeling of the deepest gratitude for
the sympathetic, almost affectionate, welcome I had everywhere
received, and the most sincere admiration for that great democracy,
ambitious without being envious, where shabby class rivalry is unknown,
where each man endeavours to rise by his own intelligence, worth, and
energy, but where no one desires to drag others down to the level of
his own idleness or mediocrity.

A great community, in which nobody would for a moment suffer the State
to take to itself the right to interfere between father and child by
denying the free disposal of his property, and thence his paternal
authority to the parent.

A great community, where no man need be a soldier unless he chooses,
and where all are free to bring up their children as they think fit, to
practise the religion that pleases them best, and to combine in perfect
freedom for the endowment of church or school. What an example, in many
matters, the young nation sets the old! We left Newport on our return
to France, and after a quick passage of nineteen days, the Hercule
anchored in Brest Roads, on July 10th, 1838.

CHAPTER V

1838

Before six weeks were out, I was at sea again, on my way to Mexico. My
orders to sail reached me at Luneville, where my brother Nemours had
taken refuge, with a cavalry command, from the desperate endeavours of
the grand-parents to get him married, and whither I had followed him
with the same object. Thanks to my brothers, my memory is crowded with
recollections of Luneville and the camp there, beginning with that of
an unlucky captain who ruined his career by stopping his squadron at
galloping drill, before the prostrate form of General Comte de
M--commanding the division, stretched on the broad of his back by a
lively charger with the ringing word of command--"Obstacle!"

During my short visit I lived with my brother in the Chateau, where one
general whiled away his sleepless hours by playing the French horn,
much to the enjoyment of everybody else! Our evenings were spent at the
theatre, where there was a ballet A corps de ballet at Luneville! The
wily manager had got out of the difficulty by composing a choregraphic
scenario called Les Sabotiers, in which the only sign of skill asked of
the lady performers was to swing the sabots on their feet in cadenced
time. A great noise they made, which did not, however, prevent the
Mayor of Luneville from falling asleep regularly every evening in the
municipal box, where he sat enthroned perched on a curule chair as high
as that of Thomas Diafoirus. He even fell off it, during a performance
at which I was present, and so noisily that the shock interrupted the
evolutions of the ballet; and all the officers of the garrison who
filled the stalls, rose with an anxiety which may have been somewhat
affected, and would not be reassured until Mr. Mayor had been fished up
out of the depths of his box, and replaced upon his perch. I recollect,
too, an ascent of the Donon, one of the peaks of the Vosges, with a
charming family of the name of Chevandier, and in the loveliest weather
What a view there was! All Lorraine, all Alsace, with the spires of
Strasbourg--that beautiful country which my forefathers of the old
monarchy had made so truly French. Alas! Alas!

I went back to my duty. I sailed from Brest on the 1st of September,
under the orders of Admiral Baudin, a man who had a whole career of
valiant deeds behind him. One-armed, tall in stature and energetic in
countenance, he straightway inspired respect, and one soon learnt to
recognize him as a commander as intelligent as he was resolute, and
even impassioned. His flag was hoisted on the frigate Nereide. I
followed, with a small corvette of which I had been given command, and
which I had hastily commissioned. Except for the torpedo-boats, and
such small flotilla craft, I do not believe the whole of our present
navy contains such a small vessel as she was She was armed with four
thirty-pounders, and sixteen carronades, mere children's toys, and her
crew amounted to 100 men. But how pretty she was, careening over, level
with the water, with her huge spars sloping backwards; and how
charmingly she was named--La Creole! She was my first command, and I
was twenty! We were bound on an expedition which might give us a chance
of fighting, and I hoped in my turn to follow the example of my elder
brothers, who had so well upheld the honour of our race at Antwerp and
in Africa.

My emotion on leaving France under such circumstances will be readily
understood. My old aide de-camp Hernoux, and Bruat, escorted me outside
the entrance to the port, and returned in the pilot's boat. The last
link with the soil of the mother-country was broken, Forward then, my
boy!

In a few days we were before Cadiz, that lovely Andalusian city. An
African sun had come to heighten its beauty, and it looked like some
exquisite carving in the whitest marble, rising fairylike out of a
sapphire sea. My landing in the evening was just as full of charm. I
hurried to the Alameda, the public promenade, where the silence was
unbroken, save by the plash of the waves breaking at the foot of the
ramparts, or the whisper of the breeze amongst the palm-trees. I caught
sight of mysterious couples sitting in the shadows of the alamos, black
dresses and mantillas blending with the men's "capas," and from these
formless groups a stifled murmur rose, with the noise of fans, like the
beating wings of an imprisoned bird. I wandered through the streets and
the Plazo Santo Antonio. I saw delightful balconies and glistening eyes
that shone behind the lattices; exquisite forms glided over the white
flags on which the moonlight fell. I saw, in fine, a city, a whole
population, instinct with the breath of love, and I caught the
complaint myself. I dreamt of scaling balconies, and of kisses and
tender words, jealous rivals draped in black cloaks, and knife-thrusts
at street corners under the lamps, and all the struggle and danger and
triumph without which life is not life at all.

There happened to be a bull-fight, during our short stay in this port,
at the Puerto de Santa Maria--one of those bull-fights celebrated in
that famous song that every Spaniard hums even nowadays, "Los Toros del
Puerto." I took good care not to miss it, and I will take still better
care not to describe it, although the chief "espada" was Chiclanero,
the handsomest of all those handsome fellows, and the one who was said
to have roused the most violently passionate fondness in the fair sex.
Fifty years ago there were no railroads in Andalusia, nor carriages
either. Majos and Majas (Goya's Majos and Majas still existed in those
days) arrived on horseback from all quarters under the burning
September sun, and no words of mine can give any idea of the motley
crowd in the most brilliant costumes, the perfect orgie of colour
presented by the neighbourhood of the plaza, on which, as a finishing
touch to the quaintness of the scene, a squadron of yellow dragoons did
duty as police! From Cadiz we sailed in company with the frigates La
Gloire and La Medee and two steam corvettes which we had found there,
and reached Cape Saint Antonio, the most westerly point of Cuba, after
a thirty-six days' passage. Once there, the admiral took all the water
and provisions out of the Gloire and the Creole, and sent us to
revictual at Havana, while he went on his way to Mexico and Vera Cruz.
With my habitual extreme indifference to politics (having, in fact,
always hated them), I have forgotten to say WHY we were going to
Mexico. It was the eternal old story. Demands timidly made and then
spurned, insufficient force for action merely increasing the insolence
of our opponents, and then the necessity for sending a large and
expensive expedition to finish up with. A score of war-vessels,
including four frigates and two bomb-vessels, were soon to be collected
before Vera Cruz, with a certain number of troops to be landed, and to
deal authoritatively with the Mexican Government. Meanwhile we were to
go, Captain Laine and I, to Havana, to lay in provisions, take
everything we could to the squadron on board, and also, so the admiral
had told me confidentially, I was to endeavour personally to get
together all the plans and information possible concerning the towns on
the Mexican coast and the fort of Saint Juan d'Ulloa, which had all
once been Spanish. Nothing could have suited me better than this run to
Havana, where we anchored four days later, and of which place I had
carried away such pleasant memories seven months before. And as soon as
I had paid and returned my official visits, I hurried to the Tacon
Theatre, where, in a stage box that I knew right well, I beheld the
charming woman who had begun my education as a smoker so prettily
during my first visit.

We got the worst of news from Mexico. While Admiral Baudin was hurrying
thither by forced marches, as it were, the ships that had got there
before us had well-nigh raised the blockade. The frigate Herminie had
started for France, which she never was to reach. She was wrecked at
the Bermudas. The Iphigenie, which Captain de Parseval still commanded
had been obliged to depart too, with nothing but a remnant of her crew,
the yellow fever, which was then raging, having made terrible ravages
on board. I heard of the death of many a good friend. Captain de
Parseval had only one officer left (Kerjegu, who in later days was my
colleague in the National Assembly) and one cadet, to help him to get
his frigate away. There had been a tempest too, which had done a great
deal of damage to our cruisers. I saw two come in, the Eclipse,
Commander Jame de Bellecroix, and the Laurier, Captain Duquesne, which
had been dismasted in the gale, and which had rigged up temporary
spars, by means of which they had contrived to crawl into port. All the
sails of the Laurier had been carried away, and she was quite helpless
in the storm, so her captain, Duquesne, and his second officer,
Mazeres, lashed themselves on deck, after having sent the crew below.
The violence of the wind laid the ship so completely over on her beam
ends that Lieutenant Mazeres, who was carried overboard by a wave,
caught hold of the maintop and managed to get back on deck. A moment
later the two masts of the brig were broken by the fury of the sea, and
thus she regained her balance and was saved.

Leaving all these cripples to patch themselves up as best they could,
Captain Laine set sail with his frigate and gave me orders to follow.
We reached Sacrificios, the nearest anchorage to Vera Cruz, after a
rapid passage. Here we learnt that the captain of the Medee, M. Leray,
had been sent on a mission to Mexico. Then the admiral himself went off
to Xalapa, to confer with the Mexican ministers. Meanwhile the blockade
went on, enlivened by privations of every kind, short rations of water,
yellow fever, and so forth. Our water was brought from Havana; it came
in barrels, and was frequently black and nauseous when it came out of
them. Yellow fever stalked abroad. I lingered one night, fishing over
the side of the ship, until eleven o'clock, with a strong, healthy,
first-class cadet, who had been under me in the watch on board the
Didon. A foreboding of some sort seemed to weigh on his mind. I tried
to cheer him up, but all in vain. By six o'clock next morning the
terrible "vomito" had carried him off. Poor Gouin! I was very fond of
him. We buried him on the Sacrificios islet, that gloomy cemetery which
later on the Zouaves christened the "Jardin d'Acclimatation."

But little happened to vary the monotony of those weeks of waiting. I
had gone in my boat one day to take soundings in shore, along the coast
stretching from Vera Cruz to Anton Lizardo, when I saw a squadron of
Mexican Lancers in their great white hats, looking like a squadron of
picadors from a bull-ring, come galloping over the sand-hills. It was
more than likely these gentry might fire their carbines at us, and we
had no arms to reply with. So I bethought me of an expedient, which
turned out quite successful. Instead of retiring as fast as we could
row, I ordered my crew to lie motionless on their oars, while with the
help of two men I made as though I were carefully preparing, loading,
and laying a heavy gun, which was nothing more than a large-sized
telescope with which I happened to be provided. The effect was
electric. We saw the Mexican squadron make off full tear in every
direction, to the delight of my crew. One night we had another
adventure. The admiral sent me, with Messrs. Desfosses and Doret, and
two engineer officers, Commandant Mangin-Lecreux and Captain Chauchard,
to make rather an odd sort of reconnaissance. To understand its nature,
my readers must know that the fort of Saint Juan d'Ulloa is set on a
great reef, separated from Vera Cruz by a narrow arm of the sea. On the
edge of the reef looking towards the town, the walls of the fort, into
which huge iron rings for mooring big ships are built, go
perpendicularly down into the sea. On the opposite side the glacis runs
into a sort of large lake formed by two arms of the reef, level with
the surface of the sea. The admiral wanted to know whether the bed of
this lake was level, whether it was fordable, and whether, in case of
necessity, the glacis and the walls of the fort could be reached from
it, after they had been gutted by the big guns.

We started, then, one fine night, reached the belt of reef far away
from the fort, landed, and walking through the water, which was half
way up to our thighs at the start, we bent our course towards the fort,
taking soundings before us, as we went, with long sticks. We found much
the same depth everywhere, and a sandy bed covered with short seaweed.
The sea had doubtless cast all the sand by degrees over the coral reef,
and the currents had levelled it. After a long and tiring march through
the water, during which we had to stop and take breath every now and
again, whispering to each other, like Raffet's engraving of a similar
reconnaissance, "Smoking is forbidden, but you can sit down if you
like," we had got quite close to the glacis when we heard a shout of
"Alerta!" from the sentries. Commandant Mangin, who was determined to
touch the glacis with his hand, was a few steps ahead of us. Suddenly a
noise arose within the fort, and in the twinkling of an eye we saw
about fifty soldiers appear on the crest of the glacis, with their
musket barrels glancing. They rushed down at full speed and sprang into
the water after us. We of course made off as fast as ever we could. For
some minutes it was a downright trial of speed, and Commandant Mangin
was all but caught. But though hostilities were imminent, they had not
yet actually begun. So the soldiers did not fire, and they soon tired
of pursuing us. We got back without any difficulty, except that great
fishes, whose every movement was visible in the phosphorescent water,
would rush between our legs. Sharks, perhaps! There were numbers of
them in those parts.

The admiral had learnt what he wanted to know. A few days more and the
ball opened. The admiral brought the three frigates, Nereide, Gloire,
and Iphigenie (this last came back from Havana with her crew completed
by that of Duquesne's brig), and the two bomb-vessels, broadside on,
and attacked the fort. I had asked leave to share in the fun, and, to
my great grief, he had refused it. He considered my ship too small and
insignificant. "I can't possibly take you. I have put the frigate Medee
aside too, for I don't consider her guns heavy enough." He sent me to
watch the firing of the bomb-vessels, and rectify it if necessary.

Before the firing began an incident occurred in which I was directly
concerned. As the attack appeared imminent, the ships anchored or
moored close to the fort hastened away, and they all passed close to
the point where I was posted. At that moment the admiral signalled to
me, "Ship in sight looks suspicious; stop her" Ambiguous as our
signalling code is, this order seemed evidently to point to seizing one
or several of the vessels just leaving the port. Of these there were
four, to wit, a Belgian ship, chartered by the admiral to take off the
French subjects resident at Vera Cruz if they should be threatened. It
could not be that one. Then there was an American vessel, a quasi
warship, flying a pennant and armed, what is called a revenue schooner.
Thirdly, the British steam-packet Express, also armed and flying a
pennant, commanded by a lieutenant in the British Navy, and borne on
the Navy List as a ship of war. It could be neither of these two, to my
thinking. There only remained a Hamburg vessel, which I ordered to go
and anchor under the guns of the corvette Naiade. But at this instant a
lieutenant in one of the Nereide's boats came to me and shouted, "The
admiral desires you will take the Mexican pilots off all ships going
out of port."

"Off the English packet too?" I inquired.

"The admiral gave no details, he said all pilots."

Though it seemed a serious matter to me, considering the touchiness of
the English, to take a man off one of their warships, I had no course
but to act. The Express had passed astern of me, and I had exchanged
friendly greetings with her captain, Lieutenant Cooke, with whom I was
acquainted. She was far away already. I hoisted the British flag, and
backed my action with a shot across her bow. She brought to, waited for
the boat and officer I sent, and the following conversation ensued:--

My Officer.--"My orders are to ask you for your pilot."

Lieutenant Cooke.--"I want him to get to Sacrificios."

My Officer.--"It isn't a mere request I make you."

Lieutenant Cooke.--"If I don't give him up, shall you take him by
force?"

My Officer.--"We trust you will give him up with a good grace, and that
we need have no recourse to violence."

Lieutenant Cooke.--"That's very well, sir," and the conversation closed
with a shake of the hand, once the British commander had cleared
himself of responsibility. So the pilot entered my boat, whence the
admiral instantly had him fetched. The American revenue schooner gave
hers up without making any difficulty, only declaring the admiral
responsible for any accident that might happen to the ship for want of
a pilot.

I have related this incident of the pilot of the Express in detail
because it gave rise to a heated discussion in the British Parliament,
during which I was personally taken to task and made responsible for a
"violation of international law."

But the admiral gives the signal to open fire, and the cannonade
begins. In one moment I am wrapped in smoke. I not only cannot see to
watch the firing, I cannot even see where I am going. The lead gives
very little depth, and I see the mud disturbed by my keel rising on the
surface of the water. I cannot stay where I am, so I crowd on sail and
get out of the smoke. I repeat my petition for leave to take part in
the fight to the admiral by signal. His heart is touched, and he
answered by the welcome word "Yes," and then I go down the line of
frigates, all hotly engaged, especially the Iphigenie. Every minute or
two I saw splinters of wood flying into the air, cut out by the shot
striking her. She had a hundred and eight in her hull, without counting
her spars. There were eight in her foremasts alone. It was a perfect
miracle everything did not come by the board. That gallant old fellow
Parseval kept walking up and down the poop, rubbing his hands whenever
a shot struck near him. It was really a fine sight. We waved our hands
to each other, and I went and took up my position at the end of the
line of frigates. There I stayed, going to and fro under sail, amid a
little racket of my own making.

There were hard times within the fort. There had been several
explosions already, and it occurred to me to load al my guns with shell
and turn them on a sort of tower, called in fortification a cavalier,
whence the fire was particularly lively. I had very good gunners, but
from my place as commanding officer I could not see where the shots
took effect for the smoke. My second officer who was forward, could
judge better than me. At the first shot he shouted to me "Good! in the
cavalier." The second, "In the cavalier." The third, "In the cavalier."
The fourth--nothing was to be seen. A huge cloud of smoke white above,
black below, rose from the fort, slowly to a great height above it.
When it cleared a little, driven by the wind, there was no cavalier at
all. The whole thing had blown up. My crew shouted with delight, and
the captain of one of the guns performed a brilliant hornpipe. Was it
my shells? Or did the bombs from the bombship do the job? Not one of my
brave fellows on the Creole have the shadow of a doubt. Every man has a
right to his own opinion.

The fire slackened, and I went to take the admiral's orders. The fort
surrendered during the night. The garrison, two thousand strong,
evacuated the place, and a convention was concluded with the general in
command at Vera Cruz for the abstention of both sides from further
hostilities. We then occupied the fort, and the admiral gave me orders
to moor the Creole under its walls, and together with Comte de Gourdon,
commanding the Cuirassier, to put prize crews on board the vessels of
the Mexican Navy lying there. With the exception of one pretty
corvette, the Iguana, which has been incorporated with our own navy,
these prizes were not worth much.

The unlucky fort was in a terrible condition. Shot and shell and
explosions had destroyed everything. A horrible smell rose from the
numerous corpses buried everywhere under the rubbish. Wherever battle
had not done its work the most revolting filth reigned supreme, and all
this under an equatorial sun and in the midst of the yellow fever. The
crew of the Creole was at once set to sanitary work, in company with
the detachment of engineer sappers attached to the expedition. We dug
out the corpses and towed them out to sea, and several very meritorious
instances of self-sacrifice occurred which were duly and publicly
recognised by the admiral.

My aide-de-camp, M. Desfosses, had drawn up a little code of signals,
by means of coloured shirts, with the house of our consul at Vera Cruz,
in case of any emergency. Within five days of the taking of the fort we
learnt by these signals that the French subjects within the town were
in great danger. We immediately sent all our boats to the mole, which
was thronged by a distracted crowd of men, women, and children, all of
whom we received and transferred to the fort.

At the same time our consul informed us that Santa Anna, who had been
appointed generalissimo, had just arrived with troops, that he had
declared the convention null and void, &c., &c., and that we must be
prepared for anything. The admiral, who was some way off, with the
squadron, at the Green Island anchorage, was at once warned. Luckily it
was fine. If it had not been, no communication with him would have been
practicable The admiral himself came that very night, and took up his
quarters on board the Creole. In his usual resolute way, he had at once
decided to forestall the enemy's action, and, taking advantage of its
surprise, to execute such a coup de main with the feeble means at his
disposal, as would make it impossible for the city and forts of Vera
Cruz to harm us for some time to come at all events. Our night was
therefore spent in preparation. The boats of the squadron came in one
after the other without any mishap, bringing all the men who could be
landed. Counting the three companies of artillery holding the fort,
these amounted to about eleven hundred men. We set out between four and
five o'clock in the morning in a thick fog. A portion of the troops
disembarked, commanded by Captain Parseval, were to scale the small
fort on the left of the town with ladders, and then go round the
ramparts, spiking the guns, and destroying everything they came across.
Another body, under Captain Laine, was to do the same thing on the
right-hand side. And a third column in the centre was to land on the
mole, blow up the sea gate, and march on General de Santa Anna's
headquarters to try and seize his person. My own company, numbering
about sixty men, formed the advance guard of this last column, the bulk
of which consisted of the three companies of artillery.

We started then, with our oars muffled to deaden the noise. We could
hardly find our way in the twilight, and had to strain our eyes to see
the mole through the mist. The great gate of the city was closed, no
sentry outside it. Everything was asleep. We landed in dead silence,
and the column formed up. The sappers ran on ahead, laid the powder
bag, and masked it, then a sergeant of sappers lighted the match and
shrank back behind a projecting bit of wall. Bang! The mask of the
petard just grazed our heads, and one side of the gate lay on the
ground. At the same moment firing began in the direction of Parseval's
column. "Forward! God save the King!" We caught sight of the guard at
the gate bolting off, and then lost it in the fog. There wasn't a cat
in the streets. The noise of the musketry fire had driven in anybody
who might have been out. Led by a guide we passed at a swinging pace
down a street which brought us to the Mexico gate. Here the fog lifted
a little. A few shots and bayonet thrusts got rid of the guard at the
gate. Just at this moment a barouche galloped up from within the town.
It was drawn by six mules with picturesque-looking postilions, in
broad-brimmed hats. It was the barouche which had brought Santa Anna,
trying to get into the open country. We shot down two or three of the
mules, but the carriage was empty.

We then received a heavy discharge of musketry from about a hundred and
fifty soldiers who forthwith disappeared down a side street. They were
the headquarters guard. Off we tore after them, and were just in time
to see the last of them go into a big house which my guide informed me
was the headquarters of the military governor. A huge court with
galleries running round it, and above them on the first floor more
arcades, adorned with flowers in pots and climbing plants, met our gaze
when we entered. A sharp fire poured from the first floor the instant
we appeared in the courtyard. Hesitation would be fatal. We must get
upstairs and bring those folk to their senses. A narrow stairway was
the only road. Well, every man must own to some weakness! When I saw
that staircase, up which I should have to go first, and receive the
first volley alone when I got to the top, I wavered for a moment, and
waving my sword, I shouted, "Volunteers to the front!" My
quartermaster, a Parisian, rushed to the staircase, and the sight
brought me back to a sense of my duty. I rushed after him. We raced
against each other, and I had the satisfaction of getting to the top a
good first, followed indeed by my whole company. There was nothing so
very terrible about it after all. At first we found ourselves in a sort
of vestibule; an ill-directed fire, which wounded two of our officers
only, pouring on us through the doors and windows. Then each of us set
to work on his own account. A second boatswain, of the name of Jadot,
and I threw ourselves against a door and broke it in with our
shoulders. When it gave, I was shot forward by my men pushing on behind
me, and hurled into a room full of smoke and Mexican soldiers. One of
them, in a white uniform and red epaulettes (I see his straight Indian
hair and wicked eye yet), was aiming at me with the barrel of his
musket close to my face. I had just time to say to myself, "I'm done
for." But no, there was no shot, the gun fell on my feet, and I saw my
gentleman roll under a sofa carrying the sword with which Penaud, my
lieutenant, had run him through as quick as lightning, stuck between
his ribs.

I believe I rid myself of another great big fellow next, and then, the
first start having been given, there was a general rout, and I found
myself in another room at the end of which I saw several officers, one
a general, standing together very calmly, with their swords sheathed. I
rushed forward with the boatswain Jadot, to protect them from my men,
who were somewhat excited, and the fight was over. The name of the
general, a tall fair handsome fellow, was Arista. In later days he
became President of the Mexican Republic. He surrendered his sword to
me, and I had him taken downstairs, and left him in the hands of
artillery Commandant Colombel, who sent him to the fort. As for Santa
Anna, we could not find him, though his bed was still warm. We took his
epaulettes, and his commanding officer's baton, and Jadot the
boatswain, who had lost his own straw hat in the scuffle, put on his
gold tipped one.

I lost no time in quitting the house, which was full of blood, and
where I was sickened by the sight of the bodies of two wretched women
who had been killed by the fire through the doors Once outside I met
Captain Laine, coming by the ramparts, and carrying out his task of
destruction as he went. He urged me to march with my company on a point
in the town where Parseval's column was keeping up a steady fire,
keeping an eye meanwhile on the churches, the towers of which were
reported to be armed with cannon. I set out on this true "course au
clocher" and presently got to a large building from which we were fired
upon.

We entered. It was the hospital. There was another shindy in a big room
on the ground floor, full of sick, standing up or kneeling on their
beds, scantily covered with red blankets, and all shouting "Gracia!"
"Mercy!" It was a horrible sight. All the poor wretches were more or
less far gone in yellow fever. We went in at one door and hurried out
at the other, and at last we got into a long straight street, at the
end of which we saw a large house with musketry fire crackling from
every window like a great set piece of fireworks. This huge and solid
building, set astride on the ramparts, with doors on to the town, and
doors into the country, was called the "la Merced barracks. Full of
troops as it was, and with reinforcements constantly coming in from
outside, it had stopped Parseval's column ever since the morning, and
was soon to stop Laine's as well. One great door faced the street up
which we were going. Of course it was shut. We brought a gun to bear on
it, and sent a shell into it. Amid the smoke of the discharge, mingled
with the sort of fog that was still hanging, we thought the door was
broken in, and rushed forward. But when we got near we found the cursed
thing was intact, and we were forced to throw ourselves back into the
side streets for shelter, for in one instant the whole head of our
column, six or seven being officers, had been killed or wounded. We
then set to work, sappers, artillerymen, sailors, and all, to throw up
a barricade across the street, so as to bring up a battery of guns, and
break that door right down before beginning the attack afresh. But just
on this the admiral arrived and the chiefs in command took counsel with
him. Considering half our crews were on shore and that the slightest
change in the weather might prevent their getting back on board ship,
and considering too that the admiral's object had been attained, he
gave orders for us to re-embark. The return journey offered no
difficulty, except at the very last moment, when nobody was left on the
mole but the admiral and a few officers. Then, a great sound of
cheering and of warlike music was heard in the town. It was Santa Anna
coming to drive the Frenchmen into the sea. Out he came, on horseback,
on to the mole, at the head of his men, but the launches from the
frigates which were still lying on each side of the jetty fired grape
shot into the head of the column, and laid everybody low,--Santa Anna
and the rest of them. Some fanatics rushed to the end of the mole in
spite of this, to try and shoot the admiral point blank, and he was in
great danger. His coxswain and the midshipman on duty, Halna Dufretay
(an admiral and a senator when he died), covered him with their own
bodies and were both severely wounded. His secretary, who was with him,
and who carried a double-barrelled rifle, killed two Mexicans in two
shots. A great friend of mine was killed there too, a charming young
fellow who had a great future before him--Chaptal, a first-class cadet.
It was known that I was much attached to him and I was given his
aiguillettes (which I sent to his family) as a remembrance of him. When
I got back to the Creole, bringing two of my midshipmen, Magnier de
Maisonneuve and Gervais, with me, both severely wounded, the admiral
sent me orders to fire a shell into the "la Merced" barracks every five
minutes. This closed the day of my baptism of fire. The military
operations of the campaign were over. The fort of Saint Juan d'Ulloa
remained in our hands in pledge. It was the diplomats' business to
complete the work. The admiral dismissed the greater number of his
ships and soon sent me off to Havana, which place I did not reach
without falling in with two of those violent squalls which are called
norte in the Gulf of Mexico. I was to lie there on the watch, ready to
attack privateers if the Mexican Government should resort to that form
of warfare--the fleetness of the Creole fitting her specially for such
service. Meanwhile my visit was very pleasant to me, after the horrors
of Sacrificio and the yellow fever. The commander of an English
corvette, the Satellite, gave a dinner to M. de Parseval, two other
captains and myself, which was so cordial that towards dessert one of
the captains, who shall be nameless, passed his hand gently across his
brow and, murmuring "I don't feel very well," sank straightway
underneath the table. We took him by the legs and shoulders, Parseval
and the English captain and I, but Parseval and the Englishman laughed
so much that we had some trouble in getting him to a bed, on which we
laid him and where he slept till morning. I know not whether it was for
this wound and feat of arms that his native town raised a statue in his
honour.

Of course I sought and found all my former Havanese acquaintances. One
alone was invisible, the lady of the cigarette. In vain I placed myself
night after night before her box. Nobody there! In vain I paid visits
to houses I knew she frequented. The covers were all blank. I was
sorely grieved. So then I bethought me of a stratagem. The Creole set
sail hurriedly, with much bustle, to go and look for a Mexican ship,
reported, so they said, to be at sea. As soon as the day closed in I
made all sail for the port, and leaving my second officer in command,
with orders to pick me up at four o'clock next morning at a certain
distance and in a certain line from the harbour lights, I jumped into
my boat and went ashore. With a bound I was in the theatre. There she
was! And I laugh still when I think of her grandparents' faces when
they saw me appear; but they raised the quarantine forthwith, and when,
soon after, I gave a ball on board the Iphigenie, that charming young
lady was its chief ornament. Beautiful and quaint that ball was, breezy
with victory and duty well performed, the glorious scars of the old
Iphigenie mingling with the splendour of the flowers and the lights.

After staying a month at Havana, as there was no question of pirates, I
was ordered to take the Creole back to Brest, where I arrived in March,
1839. My monkey was the first to see and point out the land from the
top of the rigging. I had hardly got into the roadstead before the
maritime prefect boarded me to tell me I was made a knight of the
Legion of Honour. The worthy admiral insisted on receiving me as such
before the guard, which had been turned out. He drew his sword to give
me the accolade, and made me a little speech, under the fire of which I
did not flinch, though he was deeply moved.

CHAPTER VI

1839

Scarcely had I landed from the Creole when I received the distressing
news of the death of my sister Marie, Duchess of Wurtemberg. It was the
first mourning in our family, the first break in that numerous circle
of tenderly attached brothers and sisters. I adored my sister, who was
a most remarkable woman, witty, as passionate in her antipathies as in
her affections, an artist to the very tips of her fingers. Her death
was a deep sorrow to me, and it saddened my short stay among my own
people. A short stay it was indeed, for I only came ashore in March,
and June found me at the entrance of the Dardanelles, attached to the
staff of Admiral Lalande, commanding our squadron in the Levant.

I had rather a funny little adventure on my way to take up my duty. I
had asked the then Minister of the Interior, M. Duchatel, to give
orders that there should be no official reception when I passed through
Toulon--no firing of guns, nor authorities waiting at the city gates,
nor troops drawn up, all that wearisome and commonplace ceremonial
which I had been through I know not how many times already. The
minister had given his promise, and, strong in his assurance, I was
just getting there quietly in my travelling-carriage, when the sight of
a mounted gendarme, who galloped off the moment he caught sight of us
just after we got through the pass of Ollioules, made me suspect some
treachery or other. Without a second's hesitation I jumped out of the
carriage, the moment the gendarme was out of sight, and desiring my
valet to go on with it, struck across the fields on foot to the
harbour. I had not been mistaken, for soon I heard twenty-one guns
greeting the entrance of my empty vehicle into Toulon, doubtless amid
what the stereotyped official phrase would call, and with good reason
this time, a scene of indescribable enthusiasm.

Important events were occurring in the east in rapid succession at the
time I joined Lalande's squadron. The recommencement of the struggle
between ancient Turkey and that youthful Egypt which the genius of
Mehemet Ali had created, had just ended in the final defeat of the
Turks in the battle of Nezib--a defeat which was closely followed by
the death of Sultan Mahmoud, the last of the determined autocrats of
the race of Othman. Action on the part of the European fleet might
arise at any moment, owing to these complications and the rivalries
thereby excited between England and Russia--great Eastern powers both
of them. Our sole preoccupation therefore during our cruise in the
Dardanelles was to get our ships into such condition that they might
make a good show in the event of anything of the kind occurring. I have
related elsewhere how we succeeded, under the powerful will of Admiral
Lalande, in reconstituting such a fighting fleet as we had never
possessed since the Revolution swept away at one fell swoop the whole
of the navy of Louis XVI., with its body of first-class officers, and
all that collection of traditions both as to discipline and knowledge
which it had gradually acquired.

The admiral's great merit lay in reconstituting these traditions, which
have taken deep root and are carefully treasured still. And the curious
thing, the peculiar trait, about him was that, though he desired
certain results, he would have nothing to do with the means to
attaining them. This state of warlike efficiency was not obtained
without trouble. Constantly under sail, and overtaxed with rough and
unaccustomed forms of drill as the crews were, demoralized too by
accidents--men killed or arms and legs broken--the result insisted on
by the chief in command was only reached by treating them with extreme
severity. On board the Jena, the flagship, corporal
punishment--nowadays found useless, and therefore very properly
abolished--was of daily occurrence. But the admiral ignored it, never
would have it even mentioned to him. He left all that to his flag
captain, my friend Bruat, a most energetic officer. I never heard one
word of reprimand from Admiral Lalande's lips, and once I saw him get
into a fury with one of his captains, who had appealed to his
disciplinary authority. The scene is worth describing.

This worthy captain (his name was Danican) commanded the ship Jupiter,
on which I had taken passage from Toulon to join the squadron, and one
of my earliest duties was to present the new comer, with his staff, to
the admiral. These gentlemen stood in a circle in the great cabin round
Captain Danican, armed to the teeth, cocked hat in hand, and his
sword-belt buckled high up round his little body. There they waited.
"Pere Danican,' as he was familiarly called, a veteran sailor, whose
name is borne by one of the streets in St. Malo, had the most splendid
service record, with this item in particular, that he had been reported
as killed in a fight with the English. He had been struck in the belly
by grape-shot, lost consciousness, and laid out with the rest of the
dead, of whom a list was being made before throwing them overboard one
after the other, when the battle was over They were actually swinging
him backwards and forwards to heave him over the side, when one of his
comrades called out, "Hold on. Let Danican alone. We'll give him a
funeral"--to which ceremony the old Breton owed his life, though it did
not soften the by no means placid character of the strict old
disciplinarian.

And accordingly, something in his eye, when the admiral came skipping
in smilingly, with a commonplace "Good-day, Danican" "Good-day
gentlemen," warned me we were going to have a scene. "Admiral," he
shouted in a voice of thunder, "I have the honour to present the staff
of the ship Jupiter to you--and I take this opportunity, Admiral, of
telling you that it would be impossible to be more dissatisfied with
these gentlemen than I am!" This tirade concluded by a violent wave of
his cocked hat, while the officers stood motionless and stared at the
deck. A thunderbolt falling out of heaven would not have startled the
admiral more than this speech. I never saw any man so put out of
countenance. He shuffled his feet, gave a forced laugh, and not finding
anything to say, stammered some disconnected words, "I trust . . . my
dear. . . Danican .... a regard for duty . . . these gentlemen ....!"
We put a stop to the distressing scene by low bows of dismissal, and
everybody went off in a rage--the officers with their captain, the
captain with the admiral for not supporting discipline, and the admiral
with everybody, including, it may be, his own self.

Nobody was satisfied, which is indeed the invariable consequence of
weakness, for the love of vulgar popularity was the weakness of our
eminent chief, so deeply respected on other accounts. This same
weakness caused him to end his days as a Deputy of the most colourless
opinions.

I cruised for six months outside the Dardanelles, first with the Iena
and afterwards with the Belle-Poule, which had joined the squadron and
of which I had been given command--six months which offered nothing in
the way of wild gaiety, beyond the routine of my duty. True, we saw the
sun rise over Mount Ida every morning, but we never saw the shadow of a
goddess. The utmost we did in the short breathing spaces between our
drills and cruises between Cape Baba and the Isles of Tenedos, Lemnos
and Imbro, was to land at the slaughter-house of the contractor to the
squadron, irreverently styled Charognopolis, for an excursion to the
ruins of Troy, to shoot snipe in the marshes of Simois, or get a hare
on the tomb of Patroclus.

This monotony was broken, however, by the appearance of the Turkish
fleet, which we saw issuing, forty strong, from the Dardanelles,
sailing along in confusion, driving before a strong breeze--altogether
a most stately sight.

We took station abreast of the squadron, saluting the Capitan Pasha,
who on his side ordered his fleet to heave to--a manoeuvre which was
performed amid a fine confusion. A steam launch at once came towards
us. It bore the second in command of the fleet, Osman Pasha, sent by
the Capitan Pasha to request an interview with Admiral Lalande. He
consented and boarded the Turkish ship, taking me with him.

During our passage to the Capitan Pasha's flag-ship, Osman Pasha led us
below, closed all the cabin doors with an air of mystery, and with the
help of a young Armenian dragoman he told us a long story, which I will
sum up in a few words. Constantinople, so he said, was being laid waste
by fire and sword. On the death of Sultan Mahmoud, Kosrew Pasha, who
was no better than a Russian agent, had seized the reins of power. He
stuck at nothing, so long as he kept them. The real Turks, the faithful
Mussulmans, were losing their heads by the hundred; the head of the
faith himself, the Sheik el Islam, had not been spared. He refused to
consecrate the new Sultan until he wore the venerated turban of Othman
upon his head instead of the revolutionary fez, and for this he was
strangled at midnight, with great pomp it is true, and amid the salvos
of artillery due to his exalted rank (a poor consolation, I thought to
myself!). The lives of Osman Pasha himself and of his chief, the
Capitan Pasha, hung by a thread. Wherefore they had both resolved,
instead of fighting against Mehemet Ali, as everybody believed they
would, to make common cause with him, so as to unite all the Mussulman
strength in one single alliance, and make one of those concentrated
efforts which have been the dream of every period and every country
which has been torn by revolution. In plain English, the two chiefs in
command were carrying the unconscious fleet into an act of defection
which was intended to save their own heads. They wanted the admiral's
approbation, which he refused. Then they asked for a French warship to
go with them as a sort of lifeboat, which he promised them, and above
all, they begged that no word, glance, or gesture of ours, during the
visit we were about to pay, might betray the secret confided to us. We
then boarded the Capitan Pasha's flagship, where we had a reception
that was truly oriental in its mingled pomp and duplicity--we alone,
amidst the crowd of courtiers, officers, and foreign representatives
surrounding this commander-in-chief, about to turn traitor, being
possessed of his secret. Not to mention that as we went along the gun
decks, we saw the Turkish gunners smoking their pipes beside the heaps
of cartridges piled between the guns. A highly oriental sight also, and
far from tranquillizing!

By evening the Turkish fleet had disappeared over the horizon, and the
only other recollection my memory holds of this period is that of a
reconnaissance along the northern coast of the Dardanelles, and the
peninsula between Gallipoli and the Gulf of Saron, which reconnaissance
I made with several other officers, under colour of a sporting
expedition in a Turkish boat called a sakoleve and with a view to an
ultimate military occupation of the peninsula. Mayhap the notes made
during this expedition were of use when Gallipoli was occupied in 1854,
at the beginning of the Crimean War.

In the course of the autumn, I beheld Constantinople, that most
wonderful of landscapes, for the first time in my life. And to begin
with, the thing which struck me most were the sunsets over the huge
city. Nothing can give any idea of how magnificent they are, with the
towers and thousand mosques of Stamboul standing out like a mysterious
vision in the misty golden haze, an enchanted city of aerial palaces
hanging in mid-air. In those days the soft evening mists I speak of
were ideal in their transparence, which no smoke ever dimmed, for the
factories and steamboats which now hang their black plumes over
Constantinople were then unknown. Instead of steamers, there were only
those delightful caiques, laden with brightly-dressed passengers,
gliding silently along in their thousands, and leaving as it were
tracks of glistening spangles in their wake. Nothing can ever efface
that sight from my recollection.

Among the caiques, which are quite peculiar to the Bosphorus, was one I
met many a time, and which was indeed well known to everybody. It
belonged to a sister of the late Sultan Mahmoud, celebrated in
Constantinople for her love affairs--a sort of Marguerite de Bourbon,
for whose fleeting favours several people had paid with their heads.
Three oarsmen, splendid white-skinned fellows with long fair
moustaches, and athletic frames scarcely concealed beneath their white
drawers and striped silk gauze shirts, sent their mistress's caique
flying through the water. She was a tall woman, with piercing eyes and
an aristocratic air--always seated between two lovely maids of honour.
I say lovely, for the Turkish woman, when she is unobserved, when she
knows her own beauty and meets eyes whose admiration she desires to
rouse, always finds means of permitting her veil the most delightful if
indiscreet revelations. Consequently I was always on the look-out to
try and get a sight of the Sultana's caique. It must be remembered I
was just off a cruise after long months spent in warlike solitude on
board ship. So, though St. Sophia, with its size and its legend, had
struck me as being the most profoundly devotional edifice I had ever
seen--an impression which the sight of St. Peter's at Rome and of the
Cathedral of Seville has never removed--my attention and curiosity were
much more drawn to the earthly representatives of the houris promised
to the faithful, than to the monuments of the Faith.

The curiosity I speak of led me on a certain Friday to the Sweet Waters
of Asia. I found the loveliest of scenes lying before my eyes that
delicious afternoon towards the end of August. Imagine an immense
meadow, broken up by clumps of trees, sloping down to the swift blue
waters of the Bosphorus, on the other side of which ran wooded hills
dotted with mosques and minarets and gaily painted country houses.
Close to the edge of the water stands a kiosk, and an elegantly-carved
marble fountain. And around the kiosk is a sort of promenade shaded by
huge plane-trees. Under these plane-trees a hundred, or thereabouts,
gaily adorned and plumed arabas, now standing unharnessed in the
meadow, had deposited an army of the smartest Turkish ladies. Some of
them sat beside the water, others round the fountain, others again
followed little pashas mounted on ponies led by eunuchs. What with the
richness of the landscape, the truly oriental light, and the variety
and splendour of the dresses, the whole sight was really fairy-like. We
were very desirous of studying it in detail, and at close quarters. A
line of soldiers cut off the portion of the grove of plane-trees
reserved to women only. But our ambassadress and her daughters, who had
come at the same time as ourselves, had a right to enter it, and we
hurried after them. At first the officer commanding the guard tried to
stop us. However, after a colloquy with the dragoman of our Embassy, he
contented himself with begging us to go through quickly. The ladies of
the Embassy having seated themselves among the Turkish ladies, we did
likewise, and, in spite of the angry glances of the eunuchs, by dint of
mutual curiosity and a little flirtation we spent several hours quite
delightfully. Lots of pretty women, and forbidden fruit into the
bargain. No more veils, no more feredjes. We could scrutinize the
exquisite costumes at our leisure.

When I say "No more veils" I ought rather to say nothing but an excuse
for a veil--a gauze chin covering leaving nose and eyes and eyebrows
bare, and so transparent across the mouth, that where that mouth was a
pretty one, to cover it at all was but an extra piece of coquetry.

All these women were chatting, eating, amusing themselves, some
sitting, some lying down, going and coming, hanging about near the
ladies of the Embassy, to examine the details of their dresses too. If
instantaneous photography had existed in those days, what an infinity
of charming and picturesque groups might have been snatched. I did
venture to make one or two rapid sketches on the sly; but there were
too many eyes upon me, and besides it was an abuse of the toleration
which was being shown us. I could not tear myself away from this most
exceptional sight, which will never be seen again, now the Turkish
ladies have adopted European fashions--boots and petticoats, and stays,
deceiving stays!

But every good thing comes to an end, and besides, as the day wore on,
a great cloud of smoke rose over Constantinople, and steadily increased
in volume. It was evidently a fire. In that country, where all the
buildings except the mosques and a house here and there are wooden--a
fire is a terribly serious thing. Was it Stamboul, or was it Pera, and
with Pera our hotel, that was blazing? Carried along by the sinewy
strokes of our caiqchis, and aided by the current, we went swiftly down
the Bosphorus, landed at Dolma-Batche, and rapidly climbed the Cemetery
Hill. Thence I saw a striking sight. The whole quarter below, called
Kassim Pasha, lying between Pera and Galata, was in flames. Over three
hundred houses were sparks, already burnt out. The wooden houses,
kindled by falling crackled like faggots, and we could see the
conflagration spreading like a spot of oil. Fifty houses away from
those actually on fire, people were turning out, throwing doors and
windows and furniture into the streets, without warning of any kind.
Drawing nearer the scene of the fire, we came upon a troop of
vile-looking fellows, the rioters of our country, grafted onto the
Mussulman fanatic--kavasses were raining blows with their sticks on
this crowd of volunteers (or thieves); firemen, bare-armed and
turbanless, hurried along, with their fire pumps on their shoulders,
shouting shrilly and knocking over people as they went; troops kept
coming up from all quarters, horsemen trotted up at full speed, and
packs of terrified dogs tore wildly through the streets, howling with
pain. It was a singular sight indeed.

Seeing the flames kept gaining ground, and were already licking the
first houses in the European quarter in Pera, I sent orders for the
crews of two of our ships, anchored at Tophana, to land, slipped on my
uniform, and put myself at their head, resolved to try and save the
Frank town. Luckily it was calm, or the attempt would have been quite