Chapter 18

She asked her confessor to place the executioner so that she need not gaze on Degrais, who, you _will remember_, tracked her to England, and ultimately arrested her at Liège. After she had mounted the ladder to the scaffold she was exposed to the public for a quarter of an hour, while the executioner arranged her for execution. This raised a murmur of disapproval among the people, and it was a great cruelty. It seems that some say she was a saint; and after her body had been burned, the people crowded near to search for bones as relics, but little was to be found, as her ashes were thrown into the fire. And, it may be supposed, that we now inhale what remains of her. It is to be hoped that we shall not inhale her murderous instincts also.

She had two confessors, of whom one counselled her to tell everything, the other nothing. She laughed, and said, "I may in conscience do what pleases me best."

I was pleased to hear what you think of this horrible woman; it is not possible that she should be in Paradise; her vile soul must be separated from others.

_Devotion_

You ask me if I am devout. Alas! No, which is a sorrow to me; but I am in a way detached from what is called the world. Old age, and a little sickness give one time to reflect. But, my dear child, what I do not give to the world, I give to you; so that I hardly advance in the region of detachment; and you know the true way towards a devout life lies in some degree of effacement, first of all, of that which our heart holds dearest.

One of my great desires is to become devout. Every day I am tormented by this idea. I do not belong to God, neither do I belong to the Devil; this indecision is a perpetual torment to me, although between ourselves, I believe this state to be a most natural one. One does not belong to the Devil, because one fears God: also, one does not belong to God, because His law is hard, and one does not like to renounce oneself. These are the luke-warm, and their great number does not surprise me at all; I can enter into their reasonings; but God hates them; therefore we must cease to serve in this state--and there is the difficulty.

I am overwhelmed by the death of M. du Mans; I had never thought of death in connection with him. Yet he has died of a trifling fever, without having had time to think either of heaven or of earth. Providence sometimes shows its authority by sudden visitations, from which we should profit.

What you say as to the anxieties which we so often and so naturally feel about the future, and as to how our inclinations are insensibly changed by necessity, is a subject worthy of a book like Pascal's; nothing is so satisfying, nothing so useful as meditations of this kind. But how many people of your age think this? I know of none; and I honour your sound reasoning and courage. With me it is not so, especially when my heart afflicts me; my words are indifferently good; I write as those who speak well; but the depth of my feeling kills me. This I feel when I write to you of the pain of separation. I have not myself found the proverb true, "To cloak oneself according to the cold." I have no cloak against cold like this. Yet I manage to find occupation, and the time passes somehow. But in general it is true that our thoughts and inclinations turn into other channels, and our sorrows cease to be such.

_Love of Life_

You ask me, dear child, if I am still in love with life. I must confess that I find its sorrows grievous, but my distaste for death is even stronger. It is sad to think I must finish my life with death, and if it were possible I would retrace my steps. I find myself embarked on life without my consent, and am in a perplexing situation. I shall have to take leave of life, and the fact overwhelms me: for how, or by what gate, shall I pass away? When will death come, and in what disposition will it find me? Shall I suffer a thousand pains which will make me die in despair? Shall I die in a transport of joy? Shall I die of an accident? How shall I stand before God? What shall I have to offer Him? Shall I return to Him in fear and necessity, and be conscious of no other feeling but terror? What can I hope for? Am I worthy of Paradise? Or worthy only of Hell? What an alternative! What perplexity! Nothing is so mad as to leave one's safety thus in uncertainty; but nothing is more natural; and the foolish life I lead is perfectly easy to understand. I plunge myself into these thoughts; and I find death so terrible, that I hate life more because it leads to death, than because it leads me through troublesome places. You will say I wish to live for ever. Not at all; but if I had been asked, I would willingly have died in my nurse's arms, for I should thus have avoided many sorrows and would have secured heaven with certainty and ease.

_The Order of God_

Providence wills order; but if order is nothing other than the will of God, almost all that occurs is done against His will: all the persecutions, for instance, against St. Athanasius; all the prosperity of ill-doers and tyrants--all this is against order and therefore against the will of God. We must surely hold to what St. Augustine says, that God permits all these things so that he may manifest His glory by means that are unknown to us. St. Augustine knows no rule nor order but the will of God. If we did not follow this doctrine, we should be forced to conclude that almost everything is contrary to the will of Him who made it, and this seems to me a dreadful conclusion.

I should like to complain to Father Malebranche about the mice which eat everything here; is that in order? Sugar, fruit, preserves, everything is devoured by them. And was it order last year, that miserable caterpillars destroyed the leaves of our forest-trees and gardens, and all the fruit in the country-side? Father Payen, most peaceable of men, has his head broken; is that order? Yes, Father, all that is doubtless good. God knows how to dispose of it to His glory, though we know not how. We must take it as true, for if we do not regard the will of God as equivalent to all law and order, we fall into great difficulties.

You are such a philosopher, my very dear child, that there is no way of being happy with you. Your mind runs on beyond our hopes to picture to itself the loss of all we hope for; and you see, in our meetings, the inevitable separation that is to follow. Surely that is not the way to deal with the good things Providence prepares for us; we should rather husband and enjoy them. But after having made this little reproach, I must confess in all honesty that I deserve it just as much as you. No one can be more daunted than I am by the flight of time, nor feel more keenly beforehand the griefs which ordinarily follow pleasures. Indeed, my daughter, life mingles its good and ill: when one has what one desires, one is all the nearer to losing it; when it is further from us, we dream of finding it. So we must just take things as God sends them. For my part, I would cherish the hope of seeing you without mixing in with other feelings; and look forward to holding you in my arms next month. I wish to believe God will allow us this perfect joy, although it would be the easiest thing in the world to mix it with bitterness, if we so desired. All that remains, my very dear one, is to breathe and to live.

_The Prince of Orange and England_

The Prince of Orange has declared himself protector of the religion of England, and has asked to have charge of the education of the young Prince. It is a bold step, and several of the English nobility have joined him. We are all hoping that the Prince of Orange has made a mistake, and that King James II. will give him a good beating. He has received the Milords, confirmed the attachment of those most devoted to him, and has declared entire liberty of conscience. But we understand that the King of England has united all his people round him, by affording a greater degree of religious liberty.

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What shall we say of this English nation? Its customs and manners go from bad to worse. The King of England has escaped from London, apparently by kind permission of the Prince of Orange; the Queen will arrive at St. Germain in a day or two. It is quite certain that war will be declared against us soon, if indeed we are not the first to declare it. We are sending the Abbé Testu to St. Germain to help in establishing there the King and Queen of England and the Prince of Wales. Our King of France has behaved quite divinely to these Majesties of England; for to comfort and sustain, as he has done, a betrayed and abandoned king, is to act in the image of the Almighty.

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It is good news that the King of England has left this morning for Ireland, where they are anxiously awaiting him. He will be better there than here. He is travelling through Brittany like lightning, and at Brest he will find Marshall d'Estrée with transport and frigates ready. He carries large treasure, and the King has given him arms for ten thousand men; as his Majesty of England was saying good-bye, he said, laughing, that he had forgotten arms for himself, and our King gave him his own. Our heroes of romance have done nothing more gallant. What will not this brave and unfortunate King accomplish with these ever victorious weapons? He goes forth with the helmet and cuirass of Renaud, Amadis, and our most illustrious paladins, supported by unexampled generosity and magnanimity.

_Old Age_

So you have been struck by Madame de la Fayette's words, inspired by so much friendliness. I never let myself forget the fact that I am growing old; but I must confess that I was simply astonished at what she said, because I do not yet feel any infirmity to keep me in mind of my advancing years. I think of them, however, and find that life offers us hard conditions: here have I been led, in spite of myself, to the fatal period at which one must die--old age. I see it; old age has stolen upon me; and my only desire is to go no further. I do not want to travel along that road of infirmities, pains, the loss of memory, the disfigurements to which I look forward as an outrage; yet I hear a voice saying in my ear--"You must pass down that road, whether you like it or not, or else you must die"; and this second alternative is as repugnant to nature as the first. This is the inevitable lot of whoever advances too far along the course of life. Yet, a return to God's will, and submission to that universal law which has condemned us all to death, is enough to seat reason again on her throne, and to give us patience. Do you too have patience, my darling; don't let your love, too tender, cause you tears which your reason must condemn.

Your brother has come under the Empire of Ninon de Lenclos; I fear it will bring evil; she ruined his father. We must recommend him to God. Christian women, or at least who wish to be so, cannot see disorder like his without sorrow.

But what a dangerous person this Ninon is! She finds that your brother has the simplicity of a dove, and is like his mother; it is Madame de Grignan who has all the salt of the family, and is not so simple as to be ruled. Someone, meaning to take your part, tried to correct her notion of you, but Ninon contradicted him and said she knew you better. What a corrupt creature! Because you are beautiful and spirited she must needs add to you another quality without which, on her principles, you cannot be perfect. I have been deeply troubled by the harm she is doing to my son. But do not speak of the matter to him; Madame de la Fayette and I are doing our best to extricate him from his perilous attachment.

We have been reading for our amusement those little Provincial Letters. Heavens, what charm they have! How eagerly my son reads them! I always think of my daughter, and how worthy of her is the incomparable justice of their reasoning; but your brother says that you complain that the writer is always saying the same thing. Well, well; all the better! Is it possible that there should be a more perfect style, or a finer, more delicate or more natural raillery? Could anything be more worthy of comparison with Plato's "Dialogues"? But after the first ten letters, what earnestness, solidity, force and eloquence! What love for God and for truth, what exquisite skill in maintaining it and making it understood, characterise these eight last letters with their so different tone! I understand that you have read them only hurriedly, enjoying the more amusing passages; but that is not how one reads them at leisure.

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ROBERT SOUTHEY

The Life of Nelson

Robert Southey, man of letters and poet-laureate, was born at Bristol on August 12, 1774, and received at various schools a desultory education, which he completed by an idle year at Oxford. Here he became acquainted with Coleridge; and Southey, who had practised verse from early boyhood, and acquired a strong taste for the drama, being also an ardent republican and romanticist, was easily enlisted by the elder poet in his scheme for a model republic, or "Pantisocracy," in the wilds of America. They married two sisters, the Misses Fricker, and a third sister married Robert Lovel, also a poet. The experiment of pantisocracy was fortunately never carried out, and Southey's career for the next eight years was exceedingly fragmentary; but in 1803 there was a reunion of the three sisters at Keswick, though one of the husbands, Lovel, was dead. Here Southey entered steadily and industriously on the life of an author for livelihood; it was by no means unremunerative. Southey's output of work, both prose and verse, was very voluminous, and its quality could not but suffer. He was appointed poet-laureate in 1813; and received a government pension of £160 a year from 1807, which was increased by £300 a year in 1835. He died on March 21, 1843. In a prefatory note to that peerless model of short biographies, the "Life of Nelson," which appeared in 1813, and is considered his most important work, Southey describes it as "clear and concise enough to become a manual for the young sailor, which he may carry about with him till he has treasured up the example in his memory and in his heart."

_I.--A Captain at Twenty_

Horatio, son of Edmund and Catherine Nelson, was born on September 29, 1758, in the parsonage of Burnham Thorpe, a Norfolk village, where his father was rector. His mother's maiden name was Suckling; her grandmother was an elder sister of Sir Robert Walpole, and this child was named after his godfather, the first Lord Walpole. Mrs. Nelson died in 1767, leaving eight children, and her brother, Captain Maurice Suckling, R.N., visited the widower, and promised to take care of one of the boys.

Three years later, when Horatio was twelve years old, he read in the newspaper that his uncle was appointed to the Raisonnable, and urged his father to let him go to sea with his Uncle Maurice.

The boy was never strong, but he had already given proofs of a resolute heart and a noble mind. Captain Suckling took an interest in him, and sent him on a first voyage in a merchant ship to the West Indies, and then, as coxswain, with the Arctic expedition of 1773, when Horatio showed his courage by attacking a Polar bear.

A voyage to the East Indies followed, and gave him the rank of midshipman. But the tropical climate reduced him almost to a skeleton; he lost for a time the use of his limbs, and was sent home as his only chance of life. He returned under great depression of spirits. In later years he related how the despair was cleared away by a glow of patriotism, in which his king and country came vividly before his mind. "Well, then," he exclaimed, "I will be a hero, and, confiding in Providence, I will brave every danger!"

On April 8, 1777, he passed his examination for a lieutenancy, and was appointed to the Lowestoft frigate, Captain Locker, then fitting out for Jamaica. Privateers under American colours were harassing British trade in the West Indies, and Nelson saw much active service. He was removed to the Bristol flagship, then to the command of the Badger, then to the Hinchinbrook, and before the age of twenty-one he had gained a rank which brought all the honours of the service within his reach.

An expedition was at this time projected to seize the region of Lake Nicaragua, and thus to cut the communication of the Spaniards between their northern and southern possessions; and in pursuit of this policy Nelson was sent with a small force, early in 1780, to Honduras. Here, after deeds of great gallantry, his command was almost annihilated by the deadly climate, and he himself was so reduced by dysentery that he was compelled to return to England.

His next ship was the Albemarle, twenty-eight guns, in which he was kept, to his great annoyance, in the North Sea for the whole winter of 1781-2, and was sent in the spring to Quebec. The Albemarle then served on the West Indian station until tidings came that the preliminaries of peace had been signed, and she returned to England, and was paid off in 1783.

"I have closed the war," said Nelson, in one of his letters, "without a fortune; but there is not a speck on my character. True honour, I hope, predominated in my mind far above riches." He did not apply for a ship, because he was not wealthy enough to live on board in the manner which was then customary.

But, after living for a time in lodgings in St. Omer's in France, he was appointed to the Boreas, going to the Leeward Islands, and on his arrival in the West Indies in 1784, found himself senior captain, and therefore second in command on that station.

The Americans were at this time trading with our islands, taking advantage of the register of their ships, which had been issued while they were British subjects. Nelson knew that, by the Navigation Act, no foreigners, directly or indirectly, were permitted to carry on any trade with these possessions; and also that the Americans had made themselves foreigners with regard to England.

Contrary to the orders both of the admiral and of the governor, he insisted that our ships of war were not sent abroad to make a show of, and seized four American vessels at Nevis; and when the matter was brought into court at that place he pleaded his own cause, and the ships were condemned.

While the lawsuit was proceeding, Nelson formed an attachment to a young widow, Mrs. Nisbet, niece of the President of Nevis, and was married to her on March 11, 1787. She was then in her eighteenth year, and had one child, a son, Josiah, who was three years old. They returned together to England and took up their abode at the old parsonage, where Nelson amused himself with farming and country sports, and continued a relentless campaign against the speculators and fraudulent contractors attached to the naval service in the West Indies. After many vain attempts to secure a ship, he was at last appointed, on January 30, 1793, to the Agamemnon, sixty-four guns.

_II.--In the Mediterranean_

The Agamemnon was ordered to the Mediterranean under Lord Hood, and Nelson was sent with despatches to Sir William Hamilton, our envoy to the court of Naples. Sir William, after his first interview with him, told Lady Hamilton that he was about to introduce a little man to her who could not boast of being very handsome, but who would one day astonish the world. Thus that acquaintance began which ended in the destruction of Nelson's domestic happiness, though it threatened no such consequences then. Here also began that acquaintance with the Neapolitan court which led to the only blot on Nelson's public character.

Having accomplished this mission, Nelson was sent to join Commodore Linzee at Tunis, and shortly afterwards to co-operate with General Paoli and the Anti-Gallican party in Corsica. At this time, 1794, Nelson was able to say, "My seamen are now what British seamen ought to be, almost invincible. They really mind shot no more than peas." And again, after capturing Bastia, "I am all astonishment when I reflect on what we have achieved! I was always of opinion, have ever acted up to it, and never had any reason to repent it, that one Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen." The Agamemnon was then dispatched to co-operate in the siege of Calvi with General Sir Charles Stuart, at which Nelson lost the sight of one eye; and later played a glorious part in the attack by Admiral Hotham's squadron on the French fleet. This action saved Corsica for the time.

Nelson was made colonel of marines in 1795, a mark of approbation which he had long wished for; and the Agamemnon was ordered to Genoa, to co-operate with the Austrian and Sardinian forces. The incapacity and misconduct of the Austrian General de Vins, however, gave the enemy possession of the Genoese coast. The Agamemnon, therefore, could no longer be useful on this station, and Nelson sailed for Leghorn to refit, and then joined the Mediterranean fleet under Sir John Jervis.

England at that time depended too much on the rotten governments of the Continent, and too little upon itself. Corsica was therefore abandoned by Britain, and Nelson, after superintending the evacuation of Corsica, was ordered to hoist his broad pennant on board the Minerva frigate. He then sailed for Gibraltar, and proceeded westward in search of the admiral.

_III.--St. Vincent and the Nile_

Off the mouth of the Straits of Gilbraltar he fell in with the Spanish fleet; and on February 13, 1797, reaching the station off Cape St. Vincent, he communicated this intelligence to Sir John Jervis, and was directed to shift his broad pennant on board the Captain. On the following morning was fought the battle of Cape St. Vincent. The British had only fifteen ships of the line against twenty-seven Spanish ships, but Britain, largely through Nelson's intrepidity, secured an overwhelming victory. The commander-in-chief was rewarded with the title of Earl St. Vincent, and Nelson was advanced to the rank of rear-admiral and received the Order of the Bath.

Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson was now removed to the Theseus, and was employed in the blockade of Cadiz, where he went through the most perilous action in which he was ever engaged. Making a night attack upon the Spanish gunboats, his barge, carrying twelve men, was attacked by an armed launch carrying twenty-six men; the admiral was only saved by the heroic devotion of his coxswain; but eighteen of the enemy were killed, the rest wounded, and their launch taken.

Twelve days later Nelson sailed at the head of an expedition against Teneriffe, and on the night of July 24, 1797, made a boat attack on the port of Santa Cruz. On this occasion he was wounded in the right elbow, and the arm had to be amputated. The small force, which had made its way into the town, capitulated on honourable terms, and the Spanish governor distinguished himself by the most humane and generous conduct to his enemies. There is no doubt that Nelson's life was saved by the careful attentions of his stepson, Nisbet, who was with him in the boat.