Eugene was not fulfilled. But the mortal hatred of the "Corsican adventurer," which Francis derived from this interview, was displayed on his return, when, after a long silence with the well-known expression of the highest rage in his eyes and at the corners of the mouth, he said, in his Viennese patois, to Prince John of Lichtenstein, "Now that I have seen him, I can't bear him." The meeting of the two emperors was followed by the assent of the Czar to an armistice, although the continuance of the war was the more possible, because by this time Archduke Charles had arrived near Vienna with his army. But confidence in oneself and in one another had entirely disappeared among both Austrians and Russians. The latter marched home, while the former assented to the Treaty of Pressburg. In addition, Austria was bound to pay forty million francs, still outstanding of the one hundred millions of war contribution imposed on the country by Napoleon. Lastly, the Emperor of Austria could not prevent Napoleon issuing from Schönbrunn a proclamation on December 26th, in which he heaped, certainly not unmerited, abuse on the Queen of Naples, an Austrian archduchess; and finally declared that the Neapolitan dynasty had ceased to reign. On his return journey, Napoleon wrote from Munich, where he courted the Princess Augusta on behalf of his stepson Eugene, to his brother Joseph: "It is my intention to seize the kingdom of Naples. Marshal Massena and General St. Cyr are marching there. I nominate you chief of this army. Start for Italy at once." Joseph entered Naples on February 15, 1806, and on the 27th the Emperor wrote: "Disarm the city of Naples, and lay a war-tax of ten millions upon it." On March 8th: "Nations are not won by cajolery." On March 12th: "Impose on the kingdom a tax of thirty millions. You are far too mild and indulgent." On March 23rd: "In a conquered country kindness is humanity." On March 30th, Joseph was nominated by an imperial decree King of Naples, and his brother sent him as ad latus State-Counsellor Miot, to whom he said, on taking leave, "Je fais une famille de rois, qui se rattacheront à un système fédératif.” In the proclamation by which, on December 27th, the victor of Austerlitz informed his army of the conclusion of peace, he flattered the French national vanity very cleverly by calling himself "le souverain du premier peuple de l'univers." The temper of the French was so thoroughly crushed that such an assertion was greeted with delight, and replied to with the greatest subserviency. Thoroughly French coquetry was displayed on both sides after the Emperor's return from the campaign. On January 1, 1806, the Senate had passed a resolution to erect a monument to Napoleon "the Great." Soon after, the president of the legislative body, surpassing the Byzantines in miserable flattery, called Napoleon "the man before whom the universe is silent, but in whom the universe confides: the man who is at once the terror and confidence of the nations;" and, in return for this, the object of such homage tickled "his people" with the assurance, "You French have become the predominant might, which the new organisation of Europe required. You are the guiders of the world. You lay down the law for all nations. Like the brilliant planets which illumine the world, you have taken the chief place in the centre of political movements, in order to give them a healthy direction."

*Cette femme criminelle qui, avec tant d'impudeur, a violé tout ce qui est sacré parmi les hommes.

The treaty of Pressburg deprived Austria of her influence in Italy, and drove her back on Germany. Still she retained her old obstinacy, and sufficiently recovered the storm of 1805 to be able to withstand the far more furious one of 1809 with some degree of honour. As regards Prussia, a short reprieve was granted her in 1805, which she was obliged to buy with no slight humiliation. Two days before the battle of Austerlitz Count Haugwitz was received by Napoleon at Brünn, but politely sent on to Talleyrand at Vienna. Immediately he heard of the result of the battle, Haugwitz is said to have exclaimed, "Thank Heaven, we are saved!" He at once sent off a courier to Napoleon with a congratulation, which the Emperor received with the bitterly true words, "Voilà un compliment dont la fortune a changé l'adresse." On December 7th, Haugwitz obtained an audience of the victor, and was treated as he deserved. Overwhelmed with abuse, he was compelled to endure the insult of the explosive Corsican hurling his hat in his face, and he afterwards boasted of this disgrace, because "it did not make him lose his calmness." In truth, he signed, on December 15th, the notorious treaty of Schönbrunn, by virtue of which Prussia gave up Neufchâtel, Cleves, and Ansbach, and was, in exchange, promised the equally disgraceful and insecure possession of Hanover. When this treaty-Haugwitz had signed it so entirely on his own responsibility that his representative, Hardenberg, assured the English ambassador at Berlin that Berlin was only negotiating to gain time for arming-arrived at the Prussian court on Christmas-day, the war party were furious, and even the king was momentarily aroused. However, after a few miserable intrigues and vacillation, which fully justified Napoleon in writing to his brother Joseph that "the Prussian court was as false as it was stupid," the alliance between France and Prussia was ratified on March 3, 1806. On the day when Frederick William gave his assent there was a furious hurricane in Berlin, and the head of Bellona fell from the battlements of the arsenal, and was dashed to pieces on the pavement in front of the king's palace. But it required no such signs and marvels to prove that Prussia, by her miserable policy of vacillation, had sacrificed the respect of both friend and foe.

In opposition to the ministry, other classes in Prussia yielded to an almost incredible blindness about the power and value of Prussia. This was most visible among the officers, the great majority of whom displayed an utter ignorance of political ideas. These young sabre-rattlers rejoiced in the Prussian garrison towns, because "the white coats had been so unmercifully dusted" at Ulm and Austerlitz, and boasted that "such a thing. would not happen to the blue coats." If Monsieur Bonaparte dared to attack Prussia, he and his Frenchmen would be made to run again in disgrace, as they had done at Rossbach. And it was not merely ensigns, lieutenants, and captains who talked about Rossbach, but men of a very different stamp. Even Blücher wrote: "The French will still find their grave on this side of the Rhine, and those who cross it again will take pleasant news with them, as from Rossbach;" at the very time when the corn was being cut in the fields where the battle of Jena was to be fought.

While the Prussian patriots talked as if these were the days of Frederick the Great, the Berlin Bonapartists declared that Prussia had cause to be satisfied with the results of the complications of 1805. These gentry were specially pleased with the present of Hanover, whose short

occupation, apart from the disgrace, was sorely paid for, because England, at once breaking with Prussia, destroyed her maritime trade by capturing in a few weeks no less than four hundred ships sailing under the black and white flag. The leading English statesmen were far from accepting the destruction of the third coalition so easily as the Prussian did. Pitt died of it: the bitter consciousness of having fought a gigantic struggle for thirteen years unsuccessfully broke his proud heart, after gnawing care had been long destroying his bodily strength. When Lord Malmesbury translated to him the first report of the capitulation of Ulm from a Dutch paper, the effect was a crushing one. But the minister recovered again when, four days after, the news of Trafalgar reached him. At the Lord Mayor's banquet at Guildhall, Pitt's health was drunk for the last time as the "saviour of Europe;" but he declined the compliment with the words: "Europe is not to be saved by any single man.” In December, Pitt, who was weak and ill, heard the news of Austerlitz at Bath, and it killed him. There is reason for believing that from this hour the minister's eye had that expression which has been pathetically called the "Austerlitz look." On returning to London, very ill with a fever, he said to his niece Hester, as he pointed to a map of Europe hanging in his bedroom, "Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years." He, it is true, no longer required the map, but it was pretty frequently used during the next ten years. He died on January 23, 1806, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, near the spot where his great father lay, and close to the one where his great opponent, Fox, would soon lie. With Pitt, Pittism seemed to be buried, and public opinion was so strongly expressed for peace, and a Whig ministry as representatives of that policy, that three days after Pitt's death Lord Grenville was appointed, and Fox became foreign secretary. For a few days or weeks the possibility of a peace was believed in on both sides of the Channel, but it was only for a few days or weeks. On one side of the Channel the omnivorous Napoleonism would come to no agreement, while on the other Charles Fox died in the midst of his preparations for a universal peace. The immediate consequence of the victory of Austerlitz, however, was the final abolition of the Holy Roman Empire and the formation of the Rhenish Confederation, both of which measures, though regarded at the time with horror by patriots, were of material benefit to Germany, by sweeping away those relics of feudalism which oppressed the people of that country more than in any other part of Europe. Not that Napoleon had any such design: on the contrary, he only thought of the excellent food for powder his new satraps would supply him with. On August 1, 1806, the Rhenish confederates made a declaration at Ratisbon that they left the German Empire" for ever." That they had the audacity in this document to speak about "their dignity" and the "purity of their motives" is perfectly natural, for fine words are given to mortals to decorate the lowness of their actions. Ten days later, the Emperor Francis of Austria laid down the crown of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation: he had worn it with dishonour, and lost it with dishonour. We grant, though, that in such times it would have required a giant to wear it with honour. At last the poor old imperial spectre was released: the great exorciser in the Tuileries had uttered the formula which gave it rest.

*

* "Le nouveau cabinet Anglais parâit avoir des principes plus raisonnables que l'ancien," Napoleon wrote, on March 8, 1806, to his brother Joseph.

CHRONICLES OF PARIS.

"IT is quite certain that an exploratory tour wisely directed and conscientiously carried out in Parisian manners will always surpass in interest and in surprises expeditions to Timbuktu, in China, Peru, or Egypt, in Polynesia, among the Tartars, to the kingdom of Siam in Mongolia, or even in the moon, when the means shall have been found out how to get there. Go there! publish your impressions at your return, and I that they shall be less curious in the eyes of the true observer, than the incidents picked up idling along, cigar between the lips, on the soil of Paris, inexhaustible in adventures, strange things, and mysteries.

engage

"If people only knew how to see everything, and when they had seen, if they dared to speak out, voyages all round the world would be nothing to it. Long live this exploratory tour, made already ten thousand times, and always ready to be entered upon again amid Parisian manners! Paris, city of the picturesque, of gaiety, of amusement! The only city in the world where, going out in the condition of an ignoramus, one can come back a consummate philosopher after an hour's walk on the boulevard! Paris, a spectacle beloved by the most distant stranger as much as by the Parisian himself, never did portrait-painter fall more deeply in love with his model than we are with thee!"

nay?

So says the incomparable chronicler of the Indépendance Belge, who delights in the pseudonym of Mané. And wherefore should we say The idea of a "voyage"-such is the word which we have rendered "an exploratory tour"-" à travers certaines mœurs Parisiennes" -certainly puzzles our notions of geography; but what licences of language and expressions do not modern chroniclers permit themselves! They have necessitated the publication of a special dictionary, "Les Excentricités du Langage Français," par M. Lorédan Larchey.

We will give an example. Marguerite Brindamour is heard saying to Hermance la Superbe, who wears with dignity her dress à la Begum, in Cashmere and Chantilly lace (it cost eight thousand francs),

"There is a gentleman who will be the death of me if he persists in Tannhausing me as he has done ever since yesterday."

The verb will not be found in any dictionary. It has been generally current, however, ever since M. Wagner persisted in having his play of "Tannhauser" enacted before a wearied audience.

In the time of M. Paul de Kock the public read his books, and yet were ashamed to speak of them under their proper names. So the phrase became current of "le dernierde M. de Kock"-a phrase which is now used in a very different sense. "In that case I shall be this dernier de M. de Kock," says the husband, who is ignored by his better half.

"La troupe de carton," the pasteboard troup, is a phrase well known in the theatrical world. It is emblematic of mediocrity in the histrionic art, and is borrowed from the pasteboard chicken, which is made to represent the reality at suppers on the stage. "Etre casquette," according to the before-quoted Dictionary of Eccentricities, means to be inebriated, but it has also another meaning, which is to be rough, uncouth, or rudeto "manquer de distinction," as the Parisians have it. The first sense is

argot, "slang," and slang must not be confounded with fashionable eccentricities. It is said of Mademoiselle Agar that she is "casquette." Messrs. Louis Veuillot, Granier de Cassagnac, and P. J. Proudhon, three celebrated writers, but of very different character and merits, are all "casquette"-the first always, the second often, the third sometimes. How delightful it would be if one of the London dailies should subsidise a French chronicler as a correspondent! That we should have our Mané as well as the "Braves Belges." What a relief would all those little "mots" to which such publicity obtains in Paris, those trifles which show how the wind blows, and those exquisite little bits of scandal without which the Parisian cannot digest, be to the monotonous reiterations we are feasted with by the existing class of correspondents upon the Four per Cents. and the status quo at Rome, which has become the bugbear of Europe!

M. Mané's chronicles have been already collected in three different forms, as "Paris Aventureux," "Paris Mystérieux," and "Paris Viveur.” The first edition of the former is exhausted, it is difficult to obtain a copy of the second, the third has only just seen the day. In giving an example of the sources whence such popularity is derived, we should leave the responsibility for veracity with M. Mané, if such a virtue was expected of a Parisian chronicler. What is sought for is grace, wit, and pointthe last especially.

Every one knows that the real name of the heroine of Alexandre Dumas fils, she who afterwards became the Traviata of Verdi, was Marie Duplessy, and that she was one of the stars of the Parisian demi-monde. But every one does not know what M. Mané will tell us "la vérité exacte" upon the amours of that Marie Duplessy, which afterwards gave origin to five acts, and to so many kerchiefs bathed in tears!

I was present "J'assistais" is the word-at the supper (the modern Parisian never dines, he only breakfasts or sups), in which M. Edouard P.-that is the real name of Armand Duval (not being initiated, we are as much in the dark as ever)-found himself for the first time in presence of Marie Duplessy. It was after an opera ball. She had intrigued us a good portion of the night without letting out her individuality. We asked her to supper, still in ignorance as to whom we had to do with. She hesitated at first, but having seen the list of guests, and remarked among them the name of Edouard, with whom she was desirous of making acquaintance, she muttered her acquiescence.

When we were installed in one of those little salons of restaurateurs, in which so many intrigues have been spun and unthreaded, she took off her mask, and we found that we were in luck. I still hear her breaking the ice with Edouard with the following phrase, which has remained engraven in my memory:

66

Monsieur, I often meet you on horseback in the Bois de Boulogne, and your steed seems as if it was happy in carrying such a rider as you.

Such were the auspices under which conversation was inaugurated. Marie had declared that she would sup upon crab, lobster, and prawns (the "souper obligée" of the demi-monde), and driuk nothing but champagne: Edouard would not allow any one but himself to set the captive sparkle of the provincial flasks at liberty. Without metaphor, he in