indicating that the colonel of twenty-one resembled Thackeray's young cornet, in having " a still-lingering liking for toffy."

To M. Constantin Maugars.

Thou wilt receive my dear friend with this a basket of gingerbread of the country. It is said to be very good. Thou wilt give us thy opinion. There is a packet too for Legrand. As we have not had time to divide it thou wilt give him the smaller half. Farewell mon cher we all embrace thee. The basket

contains two packets at least I think. If not thou must share it thus.

1 pound of ginger-nuts.

2 of almond cracknels for Legrand and the rest for thee.

The next letter, in a graver strain, gives notice of the enlistment of Constantin's younger brother, Hippolyte, who seems to have been packed off to the wars as a mauvais sujet.

Oh my friend I foresee with pain that he will have passions which may well bring trouble upon him. I have wept to see him and I have recalled with grief the moments when I have like him abandoned all that I ought most to respect. Alas how happy I should have been if like him I had found friends who would have helped me to amend. This will convince thee that thou hast nought to desire as to my watchfulness over thy brother. Write as soon as thou receivest this. Adieu my friend. I have but just the time to write to thee. For the last two days almost all of us are under arms. Adieu my friend. Didst thou get the gingerbread ?

MARCEAU-DESGRAVIERS.

P.S. We scarcely know that we have quitted our part of the country everyone is so amiable to us.

To the next letter there is a significant postscript:

Hippolyte has got two days in the salle de discipline. It will teach him to obey. On the eve of marching for the frontier, we have one of poor Marceau's attempts, pathetic in its stoplessness, at reconciliation with his family:

19 July 1792.

Mama if there is a circumstance specially afflicting to a soul of sensibility it is when after yielding to the impulse of his heart in striving to console a mother a son still sees himself forgotten and remains an isolated being in the midst of his kinsfolk. I pray you to leave me no more in suspense as to your indifference or your affection and to be pleased to impose on me yet new obligations. It is in these sentiments that I shall never cease to be with respect Your most humble and most affectionate son

Give my love to my brothers and sisters.

To this there was no reply.

MARCEAU.

Marceau had the unwelcome task of guarding the commissioners arrested by Lafayette at Sedan. He excused himself to them as a soldier under orders. "But be not uneasy," he added, "I shall set

to work at once to repair this involuntary insult to the representatives of the people." Accordingly, that night he spoke strongly to his battalion about Lafayette's crime of lèse-nation, and thus kindled the first spark of the dissension which ended in Lafayette's taking flight across the frontier. Rumour adds that Marceau, presenting his sabre at the breast of a wavering officer, and crying "Frenchmen! the defence of the frontier is a more sacred duty than fidelity to a general," restrained the whole army from following its leader to the camp of the enemy. "This lad has saved France," said Kersaint, one of the arrested ones, when he embraced Marceau in the National Assembly.

Hearing that his widowed mother, struggling on in a small draper's business at Chartres, had been robbed, the neglected sonwho had already renounced in her favour his share of the succession -sold two horses and sent her the proceeds. "I know not if she will thank me," he wrote to Emira. "I did it to satisfy my conscience." He sent for one of his younger brothers to come out to him, and found for one of his sisters a home with Emira. The warm messages to old friends continue. He bids Maugars kiss one Madame Chevalier for him. "She cannot take offence. I used to

call her my little cousin. It is so long since I have kissed a pretty woman that even at this distance it will do my heart good. Assure thy papa thy mama thy aunt and everybody of my respect." The next letter, written after the surrender of Verdun, "that execrable town," breathes bitterness against the officers who had counselled the surrender, and against the soldiers whose desertion had been made their pretext for it.

O my friend my heart bleeds to have to write thus of my co-citizens. Three hundred cowards have abandoned their flag. I regret to have been judged worthy to command them. How unhappy is he who suffers and finds no remedy. I must see indiscipline reign in our army. I blush to own that our troops are more dreaded than the enemy. Should this go on France will find herself deserted by all men of honour and by me among them. I prefer poverty to ignominy and

would fain hear it said Marceau was virtuous and he was not a coward.

My respects to thy papa and thy mama.

M. D.

It is I who have been to the King of Prussia's camp and have drawn up the articles of capitulation.

This last postscript was all that Marceau could bear to write about what was to the last a painful subject to him-that though he alone, of all the garrison in council, had supported the Commandant Beaurepaire in his resolve to hold out, yet to him, as the youngest officer, there fell the hateful task of carrying to the enemy the terms of sur

render. The story goes that the bandage placed on his eyes while crossing the lines was soaked through with his 'tears.

Marceau not only lost baggage, horses, and 400 livres of savings, but found himself involved in the condemnation of all his brother officers as traitors to their country. Now, however, Emira stood him in good stead. She had a respectful admirer in the engraver Sergent, deputy to the National Assembly, and, through Sergent's exertions, Marceau obtained a recognition of his claim to exemption from judgment, and even received a vote of thanks from the nation. Still his misfortunes were not ended. Having been transferred as a captain of cuirassiers to the Germanic Legion in the Vendée, he was again included with other officers in a sweeping charge of incivisme. Arrested and "loaded with fetters" (which may or may not have been literal iron), Marceau appeared before the tribunal at Tours "with that timidity which really is the accompaniment of innocence," and made his defence simply and calmly. "This is the first time that I have seen Marceau," said one of the judges, the agent in mission Goupilleau, "but if he is not as true a Republican as he is a brave soldier, I will never trust man again." The agent Bourbotte, who had been Marceau's accuser, acknowledged his error, and embraced the prisoner before the tribunal. A few days later, after the loss of Saumur, Marceau found himself, with seven cuirassiers only, posted (by a treachery, as some have supposed, like that practised on Uriah) outside the walls of the town. Retreating step by step, they fell in with a troop of Vendeans carrying along with them a prisoner, girt, as Marceau's quick eye detected, with the tricoloured scarf. Bursting on the enemy in a charge which left three out of his seven men dead on the field, he seized Bourbotte in his arms, and dismounting, bade him take his horse. "Better," he exclaimed, "that a soldier like me should perish than a representative of the people." At this moment a fourth man dropped. "My captain," he gasped, "I can fight no more; take my horse and save yourself." Marceau accepted the offer, and, with his three remaining men, cut his way to a place of safety, bringing off with him the rescued prisoner. For this feat Marceau was created Major on the field, and his appointment as General of Brigade was solicited from the Convention.

After rallying the fugitives in the defeat of Chantonnay (September 8, 1793), and contributing to the victory of Mortagne (October 15), where he took the place of the wounded General Bard, Marceau found himself bivouacked with his men, within a league of General Kléber, whom he knew only by reputation. With the ardour of

"Where is your troop?"

youth, he then and there set out, at 10 p.m., and intimated to Kléber his desire to be acquainted with him. asked Kléber, sternly. "A league hence." "Then go back to it at once; you have done wrong to leave it. We shall have time enough to make acquaintance with each other." The young man withdrew disconcerted; however, on the morrow Kléber met him with all the warmth he could desire, and from that day they were as brethren, or, considering the difference in age, as godfather and godson in chivalry.

Marceau had the glory of retrieving the day at Chollet (October 17, 1793), when the advanced column, following the example set it by the agent in mission Carrier,' fled in panic before it had seen the enemy. "Let Carrier pass ! cried Kléber in scorn, as the dastard spurred through his ranks, "he will come back to kill after the victory." But there would have been no victory had not Marceau, by a judicious manoeuvre, brought his artillery unperceived within pistol-shot of the enemy, and then, with one volley, laid low whole files. The Vendeans fled in confusion, and from that day the tide of fortune was turned.

Kléber and Marceau had much to bear from those pests the agents in mission, who took on themselves to act as masters, to reverse the decisions of the military chiefs in council, and unblushingly to favour those officers who talked the biggest about patriotism and the love of humanity. At Dol, Marceau, when pursuing the flying enemy, had the mortification of seeing his own men turned into fugitives by the arrival of a reinforcement under General Muller, with general and staff so drunk that they gave the wrong orders. Many such vexations followed :—the rout at Antrain, brought about by General Westermann's yielding to the foolish impatience of the agent Prieur, and only not resulting in complete defeat because Marceau rallied men enough to make a stout defence of the bridge; the delay in the relief of Angers, caused by Marceau's loyal obedience to his superior's orders, and yet imputed as a fault to him by that very superior, General Rossignol, with the aggravation of an insinuation by another of the generals, Robert, "that their young comrade had not been sorry to rest for a day in the pleasant town of Châteaubriand." Marceau had to hear himself sworn at by Prieur, with the doubtful alleviation, " After all, we know that it is less thy fault than thy counsellor Kléber's. To-morrow we will set up a tribunal to guillotine him." Kléber has recorded how Marceau came across, in great distress, at 11 p.m. to warn him, and how, upon this, he set

'Carrier's name will at once call to memory the Noyades of Nantes. "Shame on those cruel eyes, that bore to look on torture, and dare not look on war!"

off to the agents' common bedchamber, and had an explanation with Prieur, which ended in the latter's muttering, in a semi-amicable manner from under the blankets, "Come, come, Kléber, vive la République." But they were not yet out of their troubles, for Rossignol and Prieur wrote conjointly to the War Minister that Kléber was 66 a good soldier, but aristocrat"; and that Marceau was "a conceited little intriguer, something of a Girondin, and not sufficiently friendly and open with the patriots"; and the next post, though it brought to Marceau his brevet of general of brigade, and commander-in-chief till the arrival of General Thurreau, brought also the destitution of Kléber. Probably by inadvertence, there came with this a permission to the new-made commander to keep back this destitution at his discretion; and Marceau hereupon refused to accept the command save under the direction of Kléber. "I will take all the responsibility," he said, "I ask only to lead the vanguard at the moment of danger." "Be it so, my friend," replied Kléber, we will fight, or be guillotined, together."

At Le Mans, again, the "incorrigible temerity" of Westermann led Marceau, against his better judgment, to risk an attack without waiting for the main body under Kléber-"a passing success," writes Baron Ernouf, "for which he might have paid dear had he had to do with adversaries less war-worn and unused to surprises." As it was, Marceau found himself exposed in flank and rear, and he sent in all haste to entreat Kléber to come up. "Marceau is a child," remarked Kléber, on receiving the message. "He has done a silly thing and it is well he should feel it ; still we must make haste to get him out of the mess." Accordingly he marched ten leagues and arrived at midnight, in time to enable Marceau, "overwhelmed with fatigue," to draw off and renew the attack at daybreak, "when few remained save those who had not the strength to flee." "There were horrible scenes," continues Ernouf; our comfort must be, that the true soldiers were not responsible for them." Here comes the tale which panegyrists have dilated into a representation of "the modern Scipio" covering with his cloak and defending at the sword's point a Vendean warrioress who, in the direst straits, threw down her arms, and cried "O Marceau! save me!" Now the credit of this incident must be given in the first instance to the adjutant-general Savary, to whom, when about to mount and follow the main column under Marceau and Kléber, two grenadiers brought a young girl, who gave her name as Angélique Desmesliers, swept away from her mother and sister in the hurry of flight, and craving only to be shot and thus escape a worse fate. Savary reassured her, spoke of the duty