I said these words slowly and deliberately, and giving them all the impressiveness I was able.
"Come this way, friend," said he, and, assisting me to arise, he led me a short distance off, and desired me to sit down on the steps in front of the altar railing. "Now, you may speak freely. I am the General Massena, and I have only to say, that if you really have intelligence of any value for me, you shall be liberally rewarded; but if you have not, and if the pretense be merely an effort to impose on one whose cares and anxieties are already hard to bear, it would be better that you had perished on sea than tried to attempt it."
There was a stern severity in the way he said this, which for a moment or two actually overpowered me. It was quite clear that he looked for some positive fact—some direct piece of information on which he might implicitly rely; and here was I now with nothing save the gossip of some English lieutenants—the idle talk of inexperienced young officers. I was silent. From the bottom of my heart I wished that I had never reached the shore, to stand in a position of such humiliation as this.
"So, then, my caution was not unneeded," said the general, as he bent his heavy brows upon me. "Now, sir, there is but one amende you can make for this; tell me, frankly, have others sent you on this errand, or is the scheme entirely of your own devising? Is this an English plot, or is there a Bourbon element in it?"
"Neither one nor the other," said I, boldly; for indignation at last gave me courage. "I hazarded my life to tell you what I overheard among the officers of the fleet yonder; you may hold their judgment cheap; you may not think their counsels worth the pains of listening to; but I could form no opinion of this, and only thought, If these tidings could reach him he might profit by them."
"And what are they?" asked he, bluntly.
"They said, that your force was wasting away by famine and disease; that your supplies could not hold out above a fortnight; that your granaries were empty, and your hospitals filled."
"They scarcely wanted the gift of second sight to see this," said he, bitterly. "A garrison in close siege for four months may be suspected of as much."
"Yes; but they said that as Soult's force fell back upon the city your position would be rendered worse."
"Fell back from where?" asked he, with a searching look at me.
"As I understood, from the Apennines," replied I, growing more confident as I saw that he became more attentive. "If I understood them aright, Soult held a position called the 'Monte Faccio.' Is there such a name?"
"Go on," said he, with a nod of assent.
"That this could not long be tenable without gaining the highest fortified point of the mountain. The 'Monte Creto,' they named it."
"The attempt on which has failed!" said Massena, as if carried away by the subject; "and Soult himself is a prisoner! Go on."
"They added, that now but one hope remained for this army."
"And what was that, sir," said he, fiercely. "What suggestion of cunning strategy did these sea wolves intimate?"
"To cut your way through the blockade, and join Suchet's corps, attacking the Austrians at the Monte Ratte, and by the sea road gaining the heights of Bochetta."
"Do these heroic spirits know the strength of that same Austrian corps?—did they tell you that it numbered fifty-four thousand bayonets?"
"They called them below forty thousand; and that now that Bonaparte was on his way through the Alps, perhaps by this, over the Mount Cenis—"
"What! did they say this? Is Bonaparte so near us?" cried he, placing a hand on either shoulder, as he stared me in the face.
"Yes; there is no doubt of that. The dispatch to Lord Keith brought the news a week ago, and there is no secret made about it in the fleet."
"Over Mount Cenis!" repeated he to himself. "Already in Italy!"
"Holding straight for Milan, Lord Keith thinks," added I.
"No, sir, straight for the Tuileries," cried Massena, sternly: and then, correcting himself suddenly, he burst into a forced laugh. I must confess that the speech puzzled me sorely at the time, but I lived to learn its meaning, and many a time have I wondered at the shrewd foresight which even then read the ambitious character of the future emperor.
"Of this fact, then, you are quite certain?—Bonaparte is on his march hither?"
"I have heard it spoken of every day for the last week," replied I; "and it was in consequence of this that the English officers used to remark, if Massena but knew it he'd make a dash at them, and clear his way through at once."
"They said this, did they?" said he, in a low voice, and as if pondering over it.
"Yes; one and all agreed in thinking there could not be a doubt of the result."
"Where have you served, sir?" asked he, suddenly turning on me, and with a look that showed he was resolved to test the character of the witness.
"With Moreau, sir, on the Rhine and the Schwarzwald; in Ireland with Humbert."
"Your regiment?"
"The Ninth Hussars."
"The 'Tapageurs,'" said he, laughing. "I know them, and glad I am not to have their company here at this moment; you were a lieutenant?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, supposing that, on the faith of what you have told me, I was to follow the wise counsel of these gentlemen, would you like the alternative of gaining your promotion in the event of success, or being shot by a peloton if we fail."
"They seem sharp terms, sir," said I, smiling, "when it is remembered, that no individual efforts of mine can either promote one result or the other."
"Ay, but they can, sir," cried he, quickly. "If you should turn out to be an Austro-English spy; if these tidings be of a character to lead my troops into danger; if, in reliance on you, I should be led to compromise the honor and safety of a French army—your life, were it worth ten thousand times over your own value of it, would be a sorry recompense. Is this intelligible?"
"Far more intelligible than flattering," said I, laughing; for I saw that the best mode to treat him was by an imitation of his own frank and careless humor. "I have already risked that life you hold so cheaply, to convey this information, but I am still ready to accept the conditions you offer me, if, in the event of success, my name appear in the dispatch."
He again stared at me with his dark and piercing eyes; but I stood the glance with a calm conscience, and he seemed so to read it, for he said:
"Be it so. I will, meanwhile, test your prudence. Let nothing of this interview transpire; not a word of it among the officers and comrades you shall make acquaintance with. You shall serve on my own staff; go now, and recruit your strength for a couple of days, and then report yourself at head-quarters when ready for duty. Latrobe, look to the Lieutenant Tiernay; see that he wants for nothing, and let him have a horse and a uniform as soon as may be."
Captain Latrobe, the future General of Division, was then a young, gay officer of about five-and-twenty, very good looking, and full of life and spirits, a buoyancy which the terrible uncertainties of the siege could not repress.
"Our general talks nobly, Tiernay," said he, as he gave me his arm to assist me; "but you'll stare when I tell you that 'wanting for nothing' means, having four ounces of black bread, and ditto of blue cheese per diem; and as to a horse, if I possessed such an animal, I'd have given a dinner-party yesterday and eaten him. You look surprised, but when you see a little more of us here, you'll begin to think that prison rations in the fleet yonder were luxuries compared to what we have. No matter: you shall take share of my superabundance, and if I have little else to offer, I'll show you a view from my window, finer than any thing you ever looked on in your life, and with a sea-breeze that would be glorious if it didn't make one hungry."
While he thus rattled on, we reached the street, and there calling a couple of soldiers forward, he directed them to carry me along to his quarters, which lay in the upper town, on an elevated plateau that overlooked the city and the bay together.
From the narrow lanes, flanked with tall, gloomy houses, and steep, ill-paved streets, exhibiting poverty and privation of every kind, we suddenly emerged into an open space of grass, at one side of which a handsome iron-railing stood, with a richly ornamented gate, gorgeously gilded. Within this was a garden and a fish-pond, surrounded with statues, and further on, a long, low villa, whose windows reached to the ground, and were shaded by a deep awning of striped blue and white canvas. Camelias, orange-trees, cactuses, and magnolias, abounded every where; tulips and hyacinths seemed to grow wild; and there was in the half-neglected look of the spot something of savage luxuriance that heightened the effect immensely.
"This is my Paradise, Tiernay, only wanting an Eve to be perfect," said Latrobe, as he set me down beneath a spreading lime-tree. "Yonder are your English friends; there they stretch away for miles beyond that point. That's the Monte Creto, you may have heard of; and there's the Bochetta. In that valley, to the left, the Austrian outposts are stationed; and from those two heights closer to the shore, they are gracious enough to salute us every evening after sunset, and even prolong the attention sometimes the whole night through. Turn your eyes in this direction, and you'll see the 'cornice' road, that leads to La Belle France, but of which we see as much from this spot as we are ever like to do. So much for the geography of our position, and now to look after your breakfast. You have, of course, heard that we do not revel in superfluities. Never was the boasted excellence of our national cookery more severely tested, for we have successively descended from cows and sheep to goats, horses, donkeys, dogs, occasionally experimenting on hides and shoe leather, till we ended by regarding a rat as a rarity, and deeming a mouse a delicacy of the season. As for vegetables, there would not have been a flowering plant in all Genoa, if tulip and ranunculus roots had not been bitter as aloes. These seem very inhospitable confessions, but I make them the more freely since I am about to treat you 'en Gourmet.' Come in now, and acknowledge that juniper-bark isn't bad coffee, and that commissary bread is not to be thought of 'lightly.'"
In this fashion did my comrade invite me to a meal, which, even with this preface, was far more miserable and scanty than I looked for.
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
MORBID IMPULSES
"Please, sir, it's seven o'clock, and here's your hot wa'ar." I half awoke, reflected moodily on the unhappy destiny of early risers; and finally, after many turns and grunts, having decided upon defying all engagements and duties, I fell asleep once more. In an instant I was seated in the pit of Her Majesty's Theatre, gazing upon the curtain, and, in common with a large and brilliant audience, anxiously awaiting its arising, and the appearance of Duprez. The curtain does rise; the orchestra are active; Duprez has bowed her thanks to an applauding concourse; and the opera is half concluded: when, just as the theatre is hushed into death-like silence for the great aria which is to test Duprez's capacity and power, a mad impulse seizes hold of me. I have an intense desire to yell. I feel as if my life and my eternal happiness depend upon my emulating a wild Indian, or a London 'coster' boy. I look round on the audience; I see their solemn faces; I note the swelling bosom of the cantatrice, the rapt anxiety of the leader, and the dread silence of the whole assembly, and I speculate on the surprise and confusion a loud war-whoop yell would create; and though I foresee an ignominious expulsion, perhaps broken limbs and disgraceful exposure in the public prints, I can not resist the strange impulse; and throwing myself back in my stall, I raise a wild cry, such as a circus clown gives when he vaults into the arena, and ties himself up into a knot by way of introduction. I had not under-calculated the confusion, but I had under-calculated the indignation. In an instant all eyes are upon me—from the little piccolo-player in the corner of the orchestra, to the diamonded duchess in the private box; cries of "Shame! turn him out!" salute me on all sides; my neighbors seize me by the collar, and call for the police; and in five minutes, ashamed, bruised, and wretched, I am ejected into the Haymarket, and on my way to Bow-street.
"Please, sir, it's nine o'clock now; and Mr. Biggs has been, sir; and he couldn't wait, sir; and he'll come again at two."
I sit up in bed, rub my eyes, and awake to consciousness of two facts—namely, that I have not kept a very particular engagement, and that I have had a strange dream. I soon forgot the former, but the latter remains with me for a long time very vividly. It was a dream, I know; but still it was so true to what might have occurred, that I half fancy I shall recognize myself among the police intelligence in my daily paper; and when I have read the "Times" throughout, and find it was indeed a dream, the subject still haunts me, and I sit for a long time musing upon those singular morbid desires and impulses which all men more or less experience.
What are they? Do they belong strictly to the domain of physics or of metaphysics? How nearly are they allied to insanity? May there not be a species of spiritual intoxication created by immaterial alcohol, producing, through the medium of the mind, the same bodily absurdities as your fluid alcohol produces through the directer agency of the body itself? How far can they be urged as extenuating or even defending misdemeanors and crimes? To guide me in my speculations, I run over a few cases that I can call to mind at once.
There is a general fact, that no sooner have you mounted to a great eminence, than a mysterious impulse urges you to cast yourself over into space, and perish. Nearly all people feel this; nearly all conquer it in this particular; but some do not: and there may be a great doubt as to whether all who have perished from the tops of the monuments have been truly suicides. Then, again, with water: when you see the clear river sleeping beneath—when you see the green waves dancing round the prow—when you hear and see the roaring fury of a cataract—do you not as surely feel a desire to leap into it, and be absorbed in oblivion? What is that impulse but a perpetual calenture?—or may not the theory of calentures be all false, and the results they are reported to cause be in reality the results of morbid impulses? I have sat on the deck of a steamer, and looked upon the waters as they chafed under the perpetual scourging of the paddles; and I have been compelled to bind myself to the vessel by a rope, to prevent a victory to the morbid impulses that have come upon me. Are not Ulysses and the Sirens merely a poetic statement of this common feeling?
But one of the most singular instances of morbid impulses in connection with material things, exists in the case of a young man who not very long ago visited a large iron manufactory. He stood opposite a huge hammer, and watched with great interest its perfectly regular strokes. At first it was beating immense lumps of crimson metal into thin, black sheets; but the supply becoming exhausted, at last it only descended on the polished anvil. Still the young man gazed intently on its motion; then he followed its strokes with a corresponding motion of his head; then his left arm moved to the same tune; and finally, he deliberately placed his fist upon the anvil, and in a second it was smitten to a jelly. The only explanation he could afford was that he felt an impulse to do it; that he knew he should be disabled; that he saw all the consequences in a misty kind of manner; but that he still felt a power within, above sense and reason—a morbid impulse, in fact, to which he succumbed, and by which he lost a good right hand. This incident suggests many things, besides proving the peculiar nature and power of morbid impulses: such things, for instance, as a law of sympathy on a scale hitherto undreamt of, as well as a musical tune pervading all things.