lieved no destiny was too grand or impos- from her lips, soon, through the habit of sible for the boy, simply because he was repetition, became a dream of Paul; he a boy; and with the spirit of self-satis-received the idea upon the first and tenfied egotism so common to grandmothers, derest tablet of his belief, and never she was per uaded that no one could so doubted its fulfilment even when he well train him for a noble and glorious trudged by his mother's side in the futurity as she. mornings, and plied the vocation of a chiffonier. When he was eight years of age, Paul Vauban, with a wicker basket on his back, an a piece of cane two feet in length, and having a bent iron point at one extremity thereof, perambulated the streets of Paris picking up pieces of rag, that he might sell them in order to eke out the subsistence which his brave little mother earned as a scavenger; and at eight years of age, too, this restless, indefinite idea of fate had imparted a restless, unsettled tendency to his cha Francisque Vauban, her son, had been a sculptor, one of those ingenious and skilful workmen who cut marble all day long in the little sheds of the Rue Roquette, for the tombs of the Pêre la Chaise, and who cut years away from their own lives as they do so. Francisque had supported his mother, his wife, and his child, from the manufacture of tombs, until at last he died, and was buried in that piece of ground to the left, as you enter the gate of the Father of Cemeteries, which the municipality of Paris has set aside for the interment of racter. the poor. The wife of Francisque Vauban, like French women in general, was patient, stout-hearted, and hopeful, so she did not spend much time in weeping over her orphan child, but she placed him in his grandmother's lap; and, commissioned by the municipality, she went forth to sweep the streets every morning, winning for her the handsome sum of six francs per week! Marie Vauban, his mother, trained to a life of labour, and full of the spirit of industry, would, when he was twelve years of age, have sent her son to acquire a trade; but his impulses had by that period become habits, and he preferred his rag-gathering for the present, and a throne in perspective, to all the prospects of respectability and certain employment that his mother could present to him. "Ah, fate has in store for him all it While Madame Marie Vauban, with her promised Paul when he was a child," coarse brown boots, her blue kilted pet-grandmere Vauban would say, and ticoat, her broad straw hat, and her short something great will turn up for him one hazel besom, swept the garbage and dirt of these day;" and then the old proof the Faubourg St. Honore into little phetess would shake her head knowheaps, and assisted big Jean Menilmont ingly, and smile as if she was the grand. to load his cart with it, which cart was mother of a king. drawn by a tall, lean, brown horse, and a sleek, meek-looking ass, grandmere Vauban sang warlike songs to her little son at home, and put him through the manual exercise with the poker. I Paul went to the boulangerie for a yard of bread, no less, his grandmother taught him to carry it on his shoulder as if it had been a musket; and if he tumbled in the mud and roared with pain, she con soled him by telling him the old story, that he would be a great man, and sit upon the throne. The vague prophetic notion which so constantly hovered in the brain of grandmere Vauban, and which so habitually found expression "But look, mother," Marie would say, in a gentle remonstrative tone, "we have scarcely any furniture in these two poor chambers, and scarcely any food in this little cupboard. Paul is a great boy now, and could soon earn a good sum each week if he were a workman, so that we might have more comfort in our home, more bread to eat, and better raiment on Sundays." "Paul does very well for a youth of his age," grandmere would reply; "he earns four francs a-week, and you know he only spends one of them upon pleasure." "But it is not respectable for a young and healthy lad to be a chiffonier," is that rag-pickers with imperial ideas Marie would say. "Francisque would wander the streets of every French city, have broken his heart if he had thought or fill the ranks of her regiments, and that Paul would have been content with vaguely dream of a future in which the such a profession." god-like thought of labour holds no part. When verging on eighteen, Paul Vauban was tall, agile, and handsome, and possessed of all that intelligence of look and activity of motion which distinguishes the youth of France. His loose cloth cap hung gracefully down his fair cheek; his clean handsome blouse, albeit he was a rag-picker, fell in graceful folds round his spare tall form, and never did wooden shoes make a more merry clatter than his. "Content!" grandmere would exclaim in a voice of mingled surprise and scorn; "who said Paul would be content? Was Soult content to plant grapes and prune them ? Was Bernadotte always content to carry a haversack on his back? Was he," and she pointed again to the stucco image on the chimney-piece, "was he content to build snow houses, and pass a boy's life at Brienne? No, no, Marie, believe me there is something great in store for Paul. Do you not remember Madame Rouette, the wise woman's prediction?"? At eighteen years of age Paul Vauban was tall, and handsome, and strong, and was still content to grub amongst the dirt and garbage for a livelihood, and to eat the earnings of his poor little scavenger mother. Paul, however, was no longer the frolicsome, unsettled gamin; he was an aimless, discontented youth; the dream that had illumined his boyhood with golden glories and bright sunny anticipations had departed in its flushing, and had left a gloomy unaccountable chagrin in its stead. Although not a habitual sightseer in the Champs Elysee, no one could laugh louder at Monsieur Merryman than Paul Vauban; nor more loudly applaud the fair cantatrice, who sung in the Paphian bowers which were attached to the Elysian cafés; yet none was readier for a brawl, or more prompt to resent an affront than he. He was, indeed, what tens of thousands of his compeers were around hima: Parisian without any purpose in life, and ever ready to war with society according to the present general impulse. Looking at life through the medium of Napoleon and glory, the people of France inevitably, adopt a glorious, brilliant career, as within the possible attainment of all Frenchmen. What the peasants of France became under the régime of the man-slaying, king-making Corsican, every French mother fondly believes that her son may become; and she teaches him to believe so also; the consequence In his character was combined all the humility and abasement of a poor chiffonier, with all the fierce pride and fiery energy of a Frenchman who has been educated in all the fervour of a grand ideal. It was the morning of the 28th of February, 1848, that Paul Vauban, with his basket on his back and his little crooked stick in his hand, pursued his accustomed vocation. The lad was less calm than usual this morning, for he had heard that the people and the authorities were looking menacingly at each other, and were ill at ease; and as he had passed the Ports St. Denis and St. Martin, on his way to the Faubourg St. Honore, he had heard threatening words, and had beheld gestures, that portended anything but peace, from groups of bearded, blouse-clad workmen, assembled at these points. Paul Vauban did not exactly comprehend the meaning of the excitement which he had seen and listened to this morning, but he felt it nevertheless; and vague premonitions of fate seemed to stir his heart and speak to his imagination. He was a chiffonier who would have gladly received at any time a sous from a kind passer-by, and yet he felt at this time more inclined to be proud than ever he had been in his life. "Who knows what fate has in store for me?" he muttered proudly; "Madame Rouette said I should sit upon a throne." With eye and imagination fixed in the clouds, Paul Vauban did not observe that he stumbled upon a little yellow dog which sat at the port of a handsome spired by the fury and pride of an almost maison in the Rue Rivoli; and he was purposeless vengeance. only recalled to his senses when the cur fastened its teeth in its calf, and howled with rage. "Why do you tramp upon my dog, you dirty chiffonier?" cried a gaily-dressed youth, as he rushed at Paul, and menaced him with the riding-whip which he held in his hand. "Why don't you look where you put your dirty feet?" The young gentleman was elegantly and tastefully attired, and his brown beard and moustache were in the most approved fashion of the boulevards and salons. He was tall and slender, and his face was full of that aristocratic expression which is so unbearable to the poor and proud, and so often resented. 65 By my word, fair sir," said Paul, fiercely, "if your dog has not manners enough to give way to a man, he must look out for kicks and cuffs, and learn to take them quietly." It was scarcely a moment, and the furious young chiffonier and the haughty bleeding gentleman were in the centre of a turbulent and noisy crowd, who, taking part with Paul, encouraged him with their cries, as, striking his opponent with his picker, he drove him into the court of his hotel. At the foot of the Rue Rivoli, about twenty National Guards were called together, and quickly formed into a band, as if for the purpose of opposing themselves to the tumult so fortuitously created by the inadvertent stumble of the rag-picker; but Paul Vauban, in a into a fierce and formidable leader of few minutes, had become transformed revolution; and as he waved his little implement in one hand, and bore down the street, followed by a hundred widethroated, iron-handed, bellowing men, the affrighted soldiers melted away from before him. 66 Insolent, do you dare to speak thus Old philosophers, and modern ones to to me?" cried the youth, with flashing boot, are agreed that an insignificant eyes; "thou scum of the sans culottes-spark will create a fearful conflagration; thou sweeping of the canaille, move and modern historians know that aimless, off;" and as he spoke he struck Paul Vauban across the face with his whip. It required but a blow of the chiffonier's hook, and a vigorous tear, to lay open the cheek of his assailant; and then the war of classes, the battle of conditions, had begun. That day, in Paris, pavements and causeway stones were torn from the ground and piled up as breastworks before a fierce and storming people, who shook their bare brown arms on high, and swung their muskets wildly over their heads. That day, in Paris, the lofty lime and acacia trees, that had spread for years their curtain-boughs over the walks of the Boulevards Capucines and Italiens, were dragged from their native earth and cast down across the streets, as fences for the bloused and bearded workmen, who defied the soldiers of France to the fight. And that day, in Paris, the habitually mean and humble, casting down and trampling on the badges of their inferior condition, tore through the streets like madmen, in purposeless men, can, by seizing the moment that fate or accident gives to act, destroy with one blow the systems of ages. Paul Vauban, an humble chiffonier, who, at nine o'clock of the morning of that memorable day would have been thankful for a sous with which to purchase his breakfast, was, at twelve, a wild and daring leader of insurrection; and the quarrel in the Rue Rivoli, which at first was insignificant and personal, became in a few minutes the episode of a grand revolution. There was fighting in the Place du Palais Royale-that fine spacious square at the foot of the Rue St. Honore, into which the variegated stream of the Carnival flows, when mumming and joy are the order of the day in Paris. The omnibuses, which ply to all parts of the faubourgs, from this central point, were now thrown into a motley pile before the guard-house of the Chateau d'Eau; and streams of musketry were pouring from behind them, and dashing their leaden volleys upon the massive masonry of PAUL VAUBAN. 49 Con- sunbeams of mid-day came streaming into this grand apartment just as the agents of destruction and revolution invaded its precincts also. The insurgents suddenly stood for some seconds in profound admiration, as they gazed at the gorgeous appointments of the roof and walls. The sun of light and glory shone in emblematic radiance over the purple throne, and splendid paintings of cornucopiæ were reflected and multiplied by most spacious and gorgeous mirrors. Around the royal chair, and from beneath the royal canopy, hung the richest Gobelin tapestry; and marble tables, covered with golden candelabra, glittered in the sunlight. that grim and iron-bound fortress. spicuous amongst the turbulent host of blouse-clad, bearded combatants, who ever and anon came roaring down the Rue de Musée and the Rue de Chartres to join the fight, was seen a youth with a little rag-picker's hook in one hand and a sabre in the other, who again and again rushed up to the gratings of the guardhouse and dared the soldiers to come on. When the silence of death had settled down over these mangled, roasted soldiers, with powder-begrimed faces, who had stubbornly fallen to defend they knew not what, against men who fought they scarce knew what for, a fierce cry arose of "To the Tuileries!" and Paul Vauban, torn and bloody, was seen rushing through the Rue Valois, and along the Rue Rivoli, with a thousand excited people at his back. How sweetly the green shrubs, and the orange and pomegranate trees of the royal gardens looked that day, as the sun, so fresh and rosy, kissed them, and the peace-breathing spring flowers looked lovingly up to them! How calm, and placid, and majestic, the gigantic statues seemed, as they looked at the gay old palace, with its hundred windows and its abrupt roof; but how natural the fright of the dark bronzes appeared also, when, tearing down the huge iron gates as if they had been fences of straw, the crowd bounded along the broad gravel walks, and rushed towards the central entrance of the palace. "Who goes there?" cried the old soldier who stood upon the escalcade, and who would not leave his post for ten times a thousand men. there?" "Who goes "We come ; hurrah! we come," cried the chiffonier, waving the instrument of his occupation on high, and rushing towards the guard. The guard fired his musket, and Paul Vauban fell down on the gravel walk before his comrades, They lifted him up, pale and bleeding as he was, and, yelling furiously, they bore him into the vestibule of the palace; and then, scarcely knowing what they did, they carried him up the Escalier d'Honneur, and rushed with him into the throne-room. The mellowed "Lay him down here," said a tall, bearded man, in a whisper; and poor, pale, bleeding Paul Vauban was placed, as destiny had decreed, upon a throne. The dying boy looked round him with an air of wild bewilderment, and then he looked curiously down on the gorgeous velvet on which he sat; and then, as he saw the blood oozing from his side and staining its folds, he slowly fell back with a groan, and turned his glazing eyes to the roof. In the centre of that roof there is a beautiful octagonal picture, by Bertholet Flemael, representative of religion. Upon her head she wears an antique crown, and The eyes of she leans upon a sword. the dying chiffonier rested, with a halfregretful, half-hopeful expression, upon her face for a moment; then suddenly rousing himself from his lethargy, he shouted "My destiny is fulfilled," and fell back and died. The rich velvet pall that covered the last throne of the Tuileries was wrapped round the corpse of Paul Vauban, while that seat of kings itself was hurled ig ominiously from a window of the palace, and das .ed to pieces by wild men's feet. When the battle was done, and widows and mothers had come to count what they had lost and won, Marie Vauban and grandmere wept over the body of Paul. "He was brave," said the citizen soldiers who accompanied them ; " he died for his country." "Oh, I wish he had lived for himself and for me," sobbed Marie. "I always knew that fate had something great in store for Paul," cried the "And did he really sit upon the aged woman, with pride. "He fulfilled throne?" asked grandmere, with an his destiny." eager, childlike smile. "Oh, better that he had known and "Yes, madame, and he died upon it," done his duty," sobbed Marie. was the soldier's reply. MAZZINI. BY WILLIAM SHAEN. AT Marseilles Mazzini remained nearly out giving it utterance-all the secrets two years, and during all that time he of its heart. It caught the inspiration— laboured indefatigably to extend and it took its fire-organization commenced consolidate the association of Young Italy. For this purpose he commenced a weekly paper, which was the organ of his party and also called Young Italy. In its pages he first appeared as the political teacher of his countrymen, and he urged his views with such power and eloquence, and exhibited such a thorough knowledge of the wants of his country in everything he wrote, together with such a mingled wisdom and beauty, and such evidence of genius and of virtue, that he irresistibly attracted to himself all the best of those whom his writings reached, and necessarily became, once and for ever, the head of the struggle for the emancipation of Italy a struggle that has never since ceased, and has rarely become even invisible, for any length of time, and that never will cease until his prophecy has become fulfilled, and his dream is a dream no more, but a bright and glorious reality-and Italy is one and free with the Eternal City for her. capital. From Marseilles Mazzini was able, without any very great difficulty, to spread copies of his paper through all parts of Italy. Wherever it was seen it was eagerly read, especially by the young, who are the active and the hopeful. Wherever it was read it produced effects which not only threatened the tranquillity, but evidently endangered the very existence of all the actual governments, founded as they all were, upon the ignorance, the degradation, and the fear of their subjects. The following is Mazzini's own testimony to the power and effect of the National Association:·"The Italian youth had found its men. The language which was addressed to it expressed all which it had long felt with at every point. In the twinkling of an eye the chain of communication was formed from one extremity to the other of the peninsula. Everywhere the principles of La Giovini Italia were preached; everywhere its standard was recognised and hailed. Its members continued to increase; its emissaries were continually meeting each other crossing from province to province. Every day the demand for its publications became louder; presses were set up in some parts of the interior, where small publications, dictated by local circumstances, or reprints of what were sent from Marseilles, were thrown off. Fear was unknown; there was no doubt of success. All this was the result of principles; and all this effected by some young men, without great means, without the influence of rank, without material force, is strong evidence, it appears to me, in favour of the standard they had reared."* Public * Letters on the State and Prospects of Italy, No. 4.- Monthly Chronicle,' No. 19, Sept., 1839. In our former article (See Good,' No. 13, vol. 2. p. 8) we stated in error, writing from memory, that Mazzini's account of Carbonarism was contained in the People's Journal.' It is in his Letters on the State and Prospects of Italy, No. 2.-'Monthly Chronicle,' No. 16, June, 1839. We take this opportunity also of mentioning some typographical errors which occurred in that article, owing to our correcting the press. Some are too obvious to unfortunately not having had an opportunity of need noticing, but the follow ng are important:-P. 4, col. 2, last line, read "is from an article," p. 5, col. 1, line 9 from the bottom, for sound read sacred. Same page, col. 2, lines 15, 16, ;ead Carbonarism. P 6, col. 2, line 12, for found read formed; line 28, for their read these; line 37, read 50.000 men; p. 7. col. 2, line 15 from bottom, for honour read home; p. 8, col. 1, line 28 from the bottom, for to a man read and a grave. |