street on the left bank of the Seine, far away from the glare and glitter of the modern Paris. The Rue de Loches was the name of the street, and the colonel's house, number sixteen, was on the shady side of it — a big, dingy mansion, with a grass-grown court-yard, a walled garden, and windows into which the sun never seemed to shine. The ghostly pictures on the wall and the heavy furniture were in keeping with this dismal dwelling. The colonel's family consisted merely of his wife and daughter; the former haggard and nervous, the latter plain and stupid, with a frightened look, I thought, in her dull eyes. Madame la baronne spoke little, and mademoiselle, like most well-brought-up French girls, was as mute as a fish.

The only attraction in number sixteen, Rue de Loches, was the gay good-humor, tempered by the dignified shrewdness of an experienced man of the world, of its master. M. Duplessis, even to me, seemed singularly agreeable, and gained a still larger share of Cecil's regard. It so happened that my pupil had a turn for military subjects, less, perhaps, for dress and drill than for the scientific side of a soldier's life, and his boyish curiosity appeared to please the colonel, who himself was, as he said jestingly, merely a worn-out war-horse turned out to grass, but ready to respond to the first twang of the trumpet. So it came about that Cecil and the baron made frequent excursions, now to be present at the trial of a rifled cannon, now to go over fortifications, see a review, or ramble through the arsenal, without my being of the party.

was nothing very notable about my visitor, plump, middle-aged Frenchman, with tight coat, well-waxed mustaches, and the imperialist chintuft, nothing, except the feline quickness and keenness of his eyes, which I felt to be reading me as easily as if I carried my character, in large print, outside my waistcoat.

"I gather from this card,” said I, somewhat bashfully, "that you belong, M. Carnet, to the

"To the police! " rejoined my new acquaintance,-"yes, monsieur, I have the honor to belong to the police. It is now my duty, in compliance with instructions from head-quarters, to apprise you that your pupil- Sir Manvers - is deceiving you."

"That Cecil Manvers-my pupil-is deceiving me?" I repeated, in utter incredulity. The subchief of the French detective department lifted his high shoulders in a shrug that Brasseur on the stage might have envied.

"It is my painful, my distressing duty," he said, in a thick whisper, "to disturb, monsieur, your beautiful confidence in your youthful friend. What will you, sir? Young men will be young men. It is part of the herculean task of our superior police to drop a word of warning to parents and guardians who are hoodwinked. I do so now. Sir Manvers-that youth so discreet - he spends his evenings in a private gambling-house, full of the worst company, rive gauche, Rue de Loches, number sixteen."

On me this extraordinary assertion produced very much the effect of a sudden plunge into cold It often happened, too, after the expeditions I water. It fairly took away my breath, and I sat have described, that Cecil Manvers went to drink gasping and staring in blank amazement. Then tea à l'Anglaise, and pass the evening at the I rallied my wits sufficiently to reply. There baron's house. I felt, on this head, no mis-had, I said, been some preposterous mistake. Mr. givings, such as would have beset me had I Cecil Manvers passed his evenings in the society allowed my charge to go out alone into gayer of a quiet French family, of good position, company. To theatre and opera, or to those that of Colonel the Baron Duplessis. balls and evening receptions of the Parisian But here M. Carnet broke in, arching his eyegreat world to which Lord Hunsdon's letters brows: procured us easy access, I always accompanied "Eh, eh, the Baron Duplessis?" said he, dryly; Cecil. But I was not sorry when he seemed to "I was not aware that to his epaulettes of cologrow indifferent to dance and drama, and to pre-nel he added the baronial coronet. Well, Monfer spending his hours in the quiet Rue de sieur Baker, I have dropped you a hint, well Loches. Why not? I was thankful for the op-intentioned, foi de Carnet! Watch more strictly portunity of finishing my versified translation of Horace, a work from which I hoped to derive fame and fortune. And then, too, I had such complete confidence in Cecil and in his military mentor. What harm, in such company, could accrue to him? Mademoiselle's eyes were not bright enough to win his young affections, and the baronne's weak tea, and trictrac at four sous points, would not be likely to derange his nerves or empty his pockets.

over your pupil, for the intimacy of the Duplessis household is apt to prove costly to a neophyte. And"-this more seriously-"should you require help from the police to cut the knot of this imbroglio, you have only to seek me,-me, Jules Carnet, at your service. The address I have pencilled, see, on this card, seven, Rue Joachim. I replace, for the next few nights, the commissary at that Bureau."

And, with a flourish and a bow, he was gone.

Left alone, my reflections were very bitter. I could not doubt the truth or the timeliness of the warning that had been conveyed to me, and without loss of time I set out for the Rue de Loches.

"A monsieur," hinted the concierge one day, thrusting his bald head into the room where I sat cudgelling my brains, as I strove to convert Lesbia and Chloe into honest English girls, "wishes much to see monsieur." The stranger was not far off, as the janitor of our furnished hotel thus spoke, and perhaps was accustomed It was very dark, and as I crossed the bridge a to the process of self-introduction. At any rate fine, chilly rain began to fall; but I scarcely I soon found myself looking up from the oblong heeded it, and pressed on. I reached the Rue de piece of pasteboard, on which were lithographed Loches, and, just as I had raised my hand to the the words: "Jules Carnet, Sous-chef: Brigade bell-handle of number sixteen, I noticed that de Sûreté," at the owner of name and card, who the gate was, contrary to custom, slightly ajar. stood bowing there before me, a glossy hat of Instinctively I pushed it open, passed in, and the bell-crown pattern, affected by loyal followers silently reclosed it behind me. No one observed of the new emperor, in his gloved hand. There me as I crossed the grass-grown court-yard, and.

Chartreuse the while with appreciative relish. The only one who looked careworn and anxious was the colonel himself. I did not, however, linger long to play the part of eaves-dropper. Clearly, if I would save Cecil, I must lose no time in summoning rescue. Noiselessly, cautiously, I threaded my way through the darkling antechambers and down the solitary staircase. I reached the court-yard. It was empty, and the porter's lodge dark and deserted. Softly unclosing the gate, I glided out into the street, and, mindful of the address which M. Carnet had given me, flew rather than walked to number seven, Rue Joachim.

alms-giver. What else could more delight the intense Parisians?

6

A few of Rivet's anecdotes, extracted almost at random, will, perhaps, freshen in some minds their portrait of the stout old Hugoistfor it would be a little unfair to call him an egoist; and assuredly he is nobody's else -ist. As some one once remarked about Dr. Horace Bushnell, in the days of the doctor's earlier freedom, so it may be said of Hugo, "He is a man after his own heart."

One day he told this story about his own childhood - his father, be it remembered, was one of Napoleon's generals: "When I was five The Inspector of Police listened with eager or six years old I was crying. My father, who interest to my story. Twice he interrupted me, heard me, did not reprove me, but this is the with an urbane apology for the rudeness of the way he punished me: Why, the poor, dear, act, that he might apply his lips to the mouth- little girl,' he said, in a cool, ironical manner, piece of a call-pipe that communicated with the what's the matter with her? Who has been lower salle of the Bureau, and when I had fin-making her cry? She shan't be found fault ished he rubbed his hands and almost purred, in with; it's right for little girls to cry. But how's feline fashion, over the news I had brought. this ? What have you been dressing her in boy's clothes for? Make her a pretty frock at once; and to-morrow she shall go and take a walk in the garden of the Tuileries.' Sure enough, the nurse put a girl's dress on me next day, according to order, and took me to walk at the Tuileries. I was well mortified, as you may, perhaps, imagine. But I never cried again from that day until I had become a man grown."

"A great haul for the net of the law!" he murmured blandly; "Georges Le Moine-for your corpulent friend, Mr. Baker, can be no other - runaway forçat, burglar, and assassin, much wanted in his own quarters åt Toulon; then old Vinet, of Lyons, dit Trompe-la-loi; then the Duplessis himself, who has a long score to pay to settle with Justice; and the two minor villains, Jacques Peach and Jean Baptiste Tellier, thrown in to complete the batch of jail-birds. Now, my children!" he added loudly, and the door opened, disclosing four gendarmes and eight agents, armed to the teeth; "be quick and silent. This gentleman will guide us. Only one of this gibier-de-potence is likely to make serious resistance. I mean Le Moine. If he does 19

64

Very well, inspector," answered an agent of police, as he examined the lock of his pistol.

But there was no fighting. The whole rascally gang gave proof of the most abject cowardice, when pounced on by the police, and did not even attempt to use the weapons which four out of the five had concealed about their persons. In prison, each made a confession damaging to the defence of the remainder, and I believe all were ultimately sentenced to long terms of imprisonment at Toulon or Lambessa, while I received praises, unmerited I am sure, for the share I had taken in providing for the safety of my pupil. Cecil Manvers is Lord Hunsdon now, and has long since learned to profit by the follies of his youth; but we are fast friends, and my former charge has never forgotten the debt of gratitude which he declares himself to owe me for my coolness on that night in the Rue de Loches.

ANECDOTES OF VICTOR HUGO. Gustave Rivet, an impassioned admirer of Victor Hugo, has just issued a little volume about him, called, Victor Hugo at Home, which is an attractive picture of the greatest living French writer. It is bathed in adorations. He calls the old poet, always, "The Master," with a capital M; or "The great Master;" and "The eternal Man." He fairly gambols and rolls over before him in pure worship. But still the book shows, all by itself, if we did not know it otherwise, that Victor Hugo is extensively idolized among the Parisians. Why not? He is an immense power, as poet, romancer, republican,

A story added just here of this same rough old soldier-father illustrates his ways, and the dislike of Napoleon's soldiers for priests, and the state of things while the French occupied Spain, all at once. General Count Hugo was governor of three of the Spanish provinces, with his head-quarters at Toledo, when he learned that the cardinal-archbishop of Toledo was accustomed, at the end of high mass, to omit the name of the French king Joseph, saying not 'God save King Joseph," but "God save the king!" The general, convinced that the priest said" Ferdinand " to himself, determined to witness the fact, and to correct the practice; and accordingly, in direct violation of his established custom, he attended divine service. His official place in the church was close to the high altar, but well out of sight; and he waited. Sure enough, when the time came the cardinal chanted, "God save the king, and —” He got no further. The governor roared out, using an expression perfectly untranslatable, "Here, are you making fun of us, down there? Begin that over again, and say Joseph, if you please!" The cardinal-archbishop of Toledo was stunned for a moment; but he bowed respectfully, and completed the service, beginning back at the words, "God save King JOSEPH."

Victor Hugo is now seventy-six; and he can remember to have seen, while a little boy, with his father in Madrid, the triumph with which the chains, fetters, and torturing machines taken out of the prisons of the Inquisition, were borne through the streets. The startling statement is added, not only that Ferdinand reëstablished the Inquisition in 1814, but that a Jew was burned at the stake in Valladolid as lately as in 1824.

There is a curious tale of an architect and purist in language, who informed a travelling party, of which Hugo was one, that he (the architect) had been so revolted at Hugo's using the new and barbarous word gamin, in the romance of Claude Gueux, that he had solemnly

notified his son not only never to read, but never to open a book of Hugo's, on pain of being disinherited. In fact, Hugo did take up the word in 1834, and transfer it into literature, where it has remained. But it was slang.

When Notre Dame de Paris was published, it sent crowds of visitors to the old cathedral. One day Victor Hugo was himself escorting a lady over the building; and when they had reached the ringer's chamber, above the gallery, their guide, throwing open the door of a kind of small cell, gravely informed them, "There! that is where Victor Hugo wrote his romance. He lived there, and never left his room once from the beginning to the end of his book. There is his table, his chair, and his bed." The author listened without changing a feature. "How was he for eating ?" he inquired, quietly. -"Oh, he was very good about that," said the guide; "he lived just as we did." So Hugo smiled without remark, and paid the usual fee for seeing his chamber that he had never been

into.

But he has been victimized more wickedly than that: often and often, while travelling, has he come upon his name carved on some stone or monument; or signed to the verses in which some tourist has recorded impressions of the landscape in a hotel register.

good fortune at different times to save a number of lives, especially after his return from exile, while he was a representative, after the quelling of the insurrection in Paris in June, 1871. Once he found three of the "communards," blindfolded and set up against a wall, and some of the national guards, or city trainbands, just about to fire on them; and, remarks Hugo, somewhere, "there is nothing so ferocious as a grocer who is making no sales!". but he managed to stop the execution and save the men's lives.

Perhaps the most striking trait-and to those who can understand it, the most lofty one — of all those recorded in the book is the case with which Hugo has been, and is, and will be, deceived and cheated by pretended admirers, and, above all, by applicants for aid. But as the world goes, any nobly charitable soul will be deceived so often, so repeatedly, so easily, that the inferior superiorities around who detect the cheats will despise such gullibility. It belongs to the highest love and charity to confide; and that the abuse of trust does not destroy trustfulness is the very truth that Christ knew, over and above Timon. The anecdotes of the ready benevolence of the poet are really lovely with this royally divine sweetness of charity, and they are all the more effective, as the narrator tells them with a funny French innocent wonder, without the least apprehension of their psychology.

One day an old lady sent Hugo some verses written, she said, by her grandson, a boy of eighteen; she thought them fine and affecting; and she ventured to forward them as a token of One experience of Victor Hugo's will be respect to the poet, and to ask his opinion of appreciated by most people with money, the them. "I shall give the good lady pain," incessant stream of begging letters that assaults observed the poet to his friends, "for I shall not him. These-like those written to Mr. Astor, reply. Her grandson's verses are simply some Mr. Vanderbilt, Mr. Lenox, to everybody pubof mine, that he has copied out of my Contem-licly known to be rich are of the strangest and plations. I can't very well tell her that I think my own verses fine, for I cannot encourage plagiarism; nor can I tell a grandmother that her grandson has been lying to her."

A tale of an ink-bottle, occupying more room in the book than it is worth, shows, however, that Hugo has, in France at least, arrived at that sort of literary canonization in which the saint hatches "relics." It appears that he bought a bottle of ink to write his well-known pamphlet Napoleon the Little, and just used it up in the work. With the last drops he wrote on the label (the performance, it must be allowed, looks just a little self-conscious) two lines of French doggerel, ·

"De cette bouteille sortit

Napoléon le Petit;"

most heterogeneous kind. They include not only requests for charity, but applications for money to lay out roads, to establish business concerns, to drain swamps; they are for sums of twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred thousand francs. Frequently it is an outright gift that is demanded. Two days' receipts of applications to Hugo of this sort once footed up to demands for 240,000 francs, or about $18,000. A notary who had defaulted with trust funds wanted $20,000 to save his family from dishonor. An entire stranger dropped in one day to mention that he had lost a sum of 19,000 francs in the Garden of Acclimation, and would M. Hugo lend him that amount for a few months? Another day, the card of a Spanish nobleman was sent up, and the gentleman himself was shown in. He was well dressed in black, wore

or, as it may be paraphrased, in verses just decorations, and had the appearance of a secreabout as good,

"Out of this stand did crawl
Napoleon the small."

tary of embassy. To M. Hugo's inquiry in what way he could serve his visitor, the latter quietly answered in Spanish, "Señor count" (Victor Hugo is a count by descent), "I have not This wonderful ink-bottle the poet bestowed the means to buy me a dinner; I wish to ask you on the lady who copied the MS. for the press, for five francs" (i.e., $1.00). Hugo, stupefied, and she seems to have been ravished with mechanically took the five francs from his delight at the gift. Then a certain Doctor pocket and handed them over. The Spanish Yvan, beholding it, became half frantic with noble received them, thanked him, and with a desire to possess it; ultimately did possess it; low and polite bow made his exit. Once some and, lastly, the prince Jerome Napoleon, in woman wrote, "If you do not send me fifty those days a worshipper of Hugo, equally fran- francs I shall be dead by to-morrow noon."—"I tic, absolutely seized it from Yvan, and carried did not believe one word of it," said Hugo, it off. "but I sent her the fifty francs."-"You ought There are many accounts of Hugo's kind to have refused," observed some one who was deeds in the book; and he has had the great present; "you are cheated every day in this

manner. You let yourself be abused."-"Very insisted on seeing him-on hearing him; the true," said Victor Hugo; "but it is often very whole multitude escorted him all the way to his difficult to refuse. When I remember that for destination at the house of M. Paul Meurice, and once the distress may be real, it makes me will-even within that short distance he had to address ing to be imposed on a hundred times." them twice. Five months afterwards, 214,000 votes elected him representative from Paris to the Bordeaux legislative assembly.

This chapter of Hugo's experience closes in this little book with the following grotesque incident, which Hugo recounted himself:

During the siege of Paris he endured as much "The other day, when I came home, I found starvation as anybody; and, like the rest of the an artillery private at the door, who forthwith Parisians, ate rat, horse, cat, ass, all the beasts made the military salute, and said, 'Great citi- in creation; so that, as he says in his Terrible zen! As I read the Rappel' (a republican sheet Year, "Our stomachs became Noah's ark." in which Hugo was interested) I am out of favor With epigrams, jokes, and compliments he with my colonel. I am cannoneer in regiment upheld the courage of his guests against the so-and-so; and I have lost my trowsers for stable Germans without the walls, or the old horse duty. Public property. If I do not have them upon the table, sometimes not greatly less forthcoming at once five years in irons! The hated by the delicate Parisian eaters. He told trowsers are worth forty sous, but to procure M'lle Judith Gautier one day in a lively quathem without notice, as I must, will require fif- train that if she would come again he would teen francs. Great citizen! I have come to roast Pegasus himself for her, so that she might apply to you for that sum.' In fact," added taste a horse's wing. The horse-steak, on Hugo, "I think he called me, Father of the another occasion, seemed likely to disturb quite Democracy.' And I handed him the fifteen too violently the much-enduring interiors of the francs." Everybody laughed. "Wait," said company, when "the Master" ingeniously adHugo, "that is not all. Four or five days after-mitted, in two verses of punning rhyme, half of wards my friend Spuller was dining with me, whose meaning must do for this occasion, that and I told him the story. When I was through he himself, although he had only eaten horse, Spuller gravely said, A couple of days ago, felt as though he had swallowed a saddle; and when I came home, I found a cannoneer wait- the confession amused the guests out of their ing for me, who said, “Honorable citizen! As nausea. I read the République Française" (a republican sheet in which Spuller was interested) "I am out of favor with my colonel-stable trowsers -public property-five years in irons - forty sous-fifteen francs"-the whole thing over again exactly. I only gave him five francs, however, and he left in high content.' And I told Spuller, You cut him down to five francs, because he did not call you great citizen; and if he had called you father of the democracy, as he did me, he would have got his fifteen francs!" One of the queer personages who were more or less attached to Victor Hugo during his exile in Guernsey was an old republican, Hennet de Kesler. A conversation between them about Les Misérables shows the homely familiarity of manners, as well as the genuine independence of thought, in which the little colony lived; not to mention the funniness of the criticism in Although Hugo detests the priestly party, and which it ends. Kesler had been maintaining is detested by them, and although he is not what that Eponine was a grander character, and we should call "a member of a church," he beevery way a finer creation, than Cosette, because lieves in God and in immortality, On this point Eponine had risen from a lower beginning to Rivet tells a curious dialogue of Hugo's with his the dignity of a genuine love. Some argument friend Kesler, already mentioned, who was a followed, in which Hugo, without absolutely materialist. Hugo was arguing in favor of a denying Kesler's view, urged the merits of belief in a future state, against Kesler and VicCosette. But he made no impression on Kesler, tor Schoelcher, and alleged that he was conwho closed the sitting with the majestic utter-scious in himself that he is immortal. ance, "See here, Victor Hugo, -you don't understand that book!"

The details which Rivet gives of Hugo's return to Paris in September, 1870, show how great was his popularity in Paris. "An immense crowd blocked up the Northern Railway station and all the streets around it. It was ten o'clock at night when Victor Hugo arrived; but neither current political events nor the delay of hour after hour dispersed the crowd, so intent were they upon welcoming the return of him who had for twenty years spoken in the stead of his gagged country. The great citizen was received with thousands of acclamations. His carriage could get forward only at a walk; all Paris

One day Théophile Gautier praised a new book of Hugo's in his intensest manner, by saying, in Gautierian argot or slang, that the book was one of " the highest cocassity." A friend, puzzled by the term, asked (naturally enough) if Gautier meant that there were ill-chosen words or faults of construction in it. Gautier's answer, characteristically whimsical, shows the sort of admiration felt for the old poet by his followers. He replied with deliberate gravity, "If I should have the misfortune to believe any verse of Hugo's was bad, I should not dare confess it to myself-alone-in a cellar-without a candle!"

Talleyrand, according to Hugo, when sugartongs were introduced, and it began to be expected that people would use them instead of their fingers, observed, quietly, "In my time people used to wash their hands."

"I am not," said Kesler.

"Now, just attend for a moment," said the poet; "you know what a cancelled proof is. Now, here: Dante, one day, writes a couple of verses; then he goes out. The verses, left by themselves, begin to talk to each other. The first says, 'Only think what good fortune! Dante has written us. We are immortal.'. I'm not so sure of that,' says the other. 'You don't think yourself immortal!' exclaims the first. I do; I'm sure of it. I feel it in me.' — Well,' says the second, 'I don't feel it in me. I have no such consciousness. Just here Dante returns. He reads over his two verses; he cancels the second, and lets the first stand.

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