THE LIFE-GUARDSMAN.* THE author of the Journal of a Bashi
Bazouk has given us in this novel a really vivid series of pictures of the Great Revolution and the First French Empire, treated in much the same manner as a moving panorama. The scene is excellently painted, but the figures only move like active marionettes; nor do we exactly require that they should do otherwise, the shifting of the pictorial outline supplying the explanation of their expressive jerks.
Scene No. 1 is a minute and gorgeous representation of the coronation of Louis XVI., as seen by two young officers, of whom the Life-guardsman, De Brissac, is one. Those who know the grand old cathedral of Rheims, will people it with the assembled thousands, and see in imagination how "the cardinal archbishop, (La Roche Aymon) takes King Louis by the hand, and leads the tired monarch to the Imperial throne, where, the sceptre in his hand, the massive crown on his head, the sword of Charlemagne by his side, Louis the Well-beloved seats himself firmly*, his dukes and nobles ranged round his throne, and even the haughty prelate bowing before him, while the cadenced anthem again rings forth
Vivat rex in teternum.' Suddenly the great gates are thrown open, and as their iron clang is heard, the multitude without floods the church by thousands, gazing on the gorgeous spectacle of their king on his throne." In the next chapter, the scene changes to the Temple, at five o'clock of the day of the King's execution, and Clery on his knees trying vainly to light the fire of damp green wood, while Louis, unrisen, looks at him with a " broad apathetic face." And then we are shown the guillotine ; and the Conciergerie, with its hapless woman-victim, and De Brissac alone on guard in the prison after she had gone to her doom. He reads a paper containing instruc- tions from Royalist conspirators, and as he read "there rose on the breeze the distant hum of the crowd. Again and again the mighty roll of human voices came to his ear. His frame shook as with an ague-fit. He staggered to a seat, and once more buried his face in his hands, as with one sudden burst of silvery sound every church-bell in Paris rang out a glad peal, and he knew the guillotine had done its work, and Marie Antoinette was no more." We are now introduced to such a plot as the novel contains. Mr. Walmsley accepts as probable the escape of the young Dauphin from the Temple in a clothes' basket, and the sub- stitution of a deaf-and-dumb boy in his place ; and he transports the little prince to the coast of Normandy under De Brissac's care, and embarks him in the English ship Wyvern, Captain Leslie. The cruise of the Wyvera is very well described ; and so are the Chouaus of Brittany, and a desperate duel between Be Brissac and a Republican officer in the cave of Fougeres. From thence the scene shifts to the Old Vanguard, Admiral Nelson sitting in the cabin, "studying intently a map of the Irish coast. Dressed in the uniform of his rank, Nelson's figure was as unlike that of a sailor as was well possible. &tart of stature and very thin, almost emaciated, his sallow complexion, sunken eyes, and hair powdered according to the fashion of the day, gave him the appearance of one physically unable to face even the ordinary vicissitudes of a sailor's life, and his grey eyes had in them a deep-rooted melancholy, which added to this. The mouth, however, was large and expressive, the muscles around it contracting nervously when deep thought or excitement moved
• The Life Guardsman. By Hugh Mulleneux Walmsley. London: Bentley.
him, as was the case at that moment." To him enter Leslie and the Dauphin, who is supposed to have forgotten all his own ante- cedents, and to believe himself to be the son of Be Brissac, and his father to have perished at Quiberon. Heigh ! presto ! We are off to Naples, where in a villa overlooking the bay sits Nelson reading despatches. Enter Emma, Lady Hamilton. "She might be five-and-twenty, or she might be years older, for there was an air of childish trust and simplicity about Emma Hamilton's face which was puzzling. Nothing could exceed the beautiful regularity of her features. Her slight, graceful figure was buried. in lace and muslin, and as she moved towards the table the small, beautifully-shaped foot peeped from beneath the folds of her dress. 'Your hand trembles, Horatio,' she said, as she laid hers on his shoulder. You have not thrown off the fever yet.'" Of course we do not lose sight of the Dauphin. He is at Naples, too, and desperately in love with Ida Caraccioli. The hanging of the old Prince, her uncle, is graphically dealt with.
Then Napoleon comes forward, and his loved and lovely Josephine. We are taken to dear charming Pecq (now so desolately surrounded by wrath and ruin), and shown the Empress consoling a farmer's family who had fallen into trouble by borrow- ing money to manufacture beetroot sugar, and there is an astound- ing game at prison bars, played on the lawn at Malmaison, the two adverse camps being " Isabey, Caroline Murat, Didelot, Be Lucy, and Hortense, on one aide, headed by Josephine, Lauriston, Raff, Eugene Beauharnais, the Demoiselles Angine and Ida, led by Napoleon, on the other." Wonderful to say, Napoleon chasing Hortense, tumbles over the roots of a chestnut, and the two fall together ; and the Dauphin, incognito, is just too late to save their fall ! Then came the exchange of prisoners, and loud and long was the discussion. Two of the opposite side at least must be given for Napoleon, and Hortense, she was worth as much, and then the table was laid beneath the chestnut tree, and Louis managed to sit next Ida, on pretence of telling the result of his mission. Amateur theatricals followed, with Raff, Jerome, Isabey, Didelot, and Buonaparte among the audience. "Those were pleasant days at Malmaison." We notice the detail of the chestnut ; all that neighbourhood is or was covered with glorious Spanish chestnuts, and Mr. Walmsley is particularly careful of his details all through the book. The picture of the Imperial party reminds one of Madame d'Eckmuchl's (who only died two years ago) reminis- cence of the old days; when, speaking of the Marshals of France, she said, " Ah, those were days when all the men were thirty years of age, and all the women young !"
In strong contrast stands out the retreat from Moscow ; the Dauphin (for he is there too) driving a sledge, and accompanied by a young girl whom he saves, sees a company of men sitting round a fire under the shelter of a group of pines. "They must be asleep," says the young girl. "What can human creatures be doing out in such weather, and their fire gone out too? They don't move, and yet they must see us -"— ,, The rays of the setting sun struggled out as he neared the group of sleeping men. It glinted over the snow-covered branches of the pines, flashing from their frozen covering in dazzling prismatic colours. It lighted up feebly for a moment the tattered remains of the uniforms of the sleeping men. Louis de Brissac was once more with the Imperial Guard. He called to them in surprise, but not one moved, though the snow was heaping itself silently but surely around them. Again he shouted, and as he did so a cloud of ravens rose from a snow-covered mound near. He shuddered, for he had passed many similar mounds, and wondered what they were, never for a moment thinking that there, sleeping their last sleep, lay the war-worn veterans of the Imperial Guard,—the men of Wagram and of Austerlitz. There they sat, just as they had fallen asleep around the fire, frozen into stone, the rags which remained of their uniforms covered with old sacks or undressed sheep-skins. Not a sign of food lay near As he gazed horror- stricken, a blast of wind stronger than usual came soughing through the trees, shaking the snow in masses from the overladen branches, the frozen human figures falling before its force just as stone statutes would have done, retaining exactly the position in which they had died."
With this striking quotation we close the book. We will not tell the readers what Mr. Walmsley does with the Dauphin. He is but a lay figure after all, and possessing, as we do, such terribly real portraits of him and of all his kin, knowing them so intimately by their pictured faces, their letters, their wills, even their very prayers, there is something to us almost ghastly in the attempted resuscitation of the poor boy-king into a very common- place young man. Surely, had he lived, some memory of the Temple would have ennobled him ; some trace of a father who was morally far from common-place, of a mother who was royally brave, of ancestors on both sides who made splendid mark on the world of men, would have shown itself in him. No! The por- trait of the Dauphin is not credible ; but the scenes through which he moves are described with a singularly bright, facile, and pictorial pen.
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