Iii.--American Life in France: 1851

SEPTEMBER. 6th.— A new plot has been discovered; its headquarters in Paris itself. On the evening of the 3d the police made a descent on certain coffee-houses frequented by Germans and other Continental foreigners, and arrested a number of persons, chiefly refugees. In preparation for this raid, the Mazas prison was cleared of its ordinary occupants, to make room for these graver criminals. The next evening a great number of foreigners met at their accustomed coffee-houses to consult together, so it is said, on the occurrences of the day before. The Prefect of Police, informed, sent out several commissaries, each with a sufficient force, who presented themselves at the different coffee-houses about nine o’clock in the evening and effected the arrest of about one hundred and twenty individuals. This report of a plot occasions a great deal of anxiety, as it is impossible to know whom it may be intended to entangle in its formidable meshes. The arrests have not been confined to foreigners.

The National of yesterday says : “ Among the names of citizens arrested yesterday we see some which belong to the French democracy. We shall not say that we see in this list names that have nothing in common with anarchy ; justice will say it for us. This will not be the first plot which has existed only in the reactionary press and in police reports.

“ We, who know nothing of the facts which have occasioned this razzia of the police, almost dare to affirm that there is no conspiracy ; and our reason is very simple, the democrats have no motive for conspiring.

“ Why should they conspire ? To change the republican form of government ? It is our blood which has won it. To overthrow the Constitution ? We are ready to march in its defence. Is it even — the motive would be very small—to shorten the presidency of M. Louis Bonaparte? It is about to finish of itself. Six months, and the President, by the terms of his oath, will resign to another magistrate the temporary power which has been confided to him. No, the democrats have no motive for conspiring. Their palpable, evident interest is to preserve the public peace.

“ If there are in the country germs of agitation, they are not with us. If the Republic and the Constitution are attacked, it is not by us. It is not we who have an interest in throwing everything into question. We conjure all sensible, impartial men to note that, by the facts and by the very logic of the situation, we are the true conservatives ; that we preach and practise order ; and that the temerities, the adventures, contempt of the laws, provocation to revolt, violation of oaths, are the daily policy of our enemies. It is vain to fill the prisons; the education of the country is made. It is little concerned about plots that it knows only through a police report, and very much about those which display themselves in broad daylight, which fill the columns of the journals of order, and make their way in the world with the stamp of public authority.”

Reports of a coup d'état at hand have been circulating during the past week. How openly this supposed project on the part of the government is discussed, not only in conversation, but in the journals, you may judge by the following extract from a provincial paper, copied into a Paris paper : —

“ There is still a good deal of talk of a coup d'état. It is affirmed that General Magnan has been consulted, and has declared that he does not exercise sufficient influence over the army to be sure of carrying it with him. It is supposed, therefore, that the plan of a coup d'état by means of the army has been renounced and that General Randon is not to resign.”

Treasonable designs on the part of the government almost taken for granted ! Is it surprising that, when such paragraphs as this are going the rounds, the people should be agitated ? that they should consult together as to the course they are to take if these reports should some day prove themselves to be founded ? Does not their duty to their country require them to consider this question ? By Article III. of their Constitution, the Constitution itself is confided “as a trust to the care and patriotism of all Frenchmen.”

That the agitation is not greater is the only wonder. But as the Protestant pastors of old enjoined non-resistance as a mark of fidelity to the religion which would have been discredited by acts of rash resentment, so the republican chiefs now exhort the people to patience and forbearance in the name of the Republic which the elections of 1852 are to restore to them.

The steward of M. Crémieux, M. Larger, was summoned to Lyons to give evidence at the trial for conspiracy, and has been detained there a prisoner. He became known to M. Crémieux at Paris about a year and a half ago, as a member of the republican party. He fell ill and, being poor, was obliged to go to a hospital. M. Crémieux gave orders that his wife and child should want for nothing during his illness. When he recovered, M. Larger was very desirous to acquit himself of the obligation. He declined a subscription which some of his political friends wished to raise for him, and begged earnestly that he might be provided with employment. His conduct won the esteem of M. Crémieux. who placed him in charge of his estate near Crest in Drôme.

M. Crémieux, learning, on his arrival at Lyons, the arrest of M. Larger, went the next day to see the Procureur of the Republic. “ Larger is arrested ? ” Yes, for a political offence.” “ Committed since he has been in my house ?’ “ No.” “ A grave offence ? ” “A very grave one. He is one of the most ultra-demagogues of Paris. He compromised himself after the passage of the law of the 31st May.” “But he has been for a year living more than one hundred and fifty leagues from Paris.” “ All I can say is, that the affair is a grave one.” “ Is he in secret confinement ?” “ He is.”

What may be the duration of this poor man’s imprisonment is not to be surmised. It may be long even before he is brought to trial. In the mean time, his wife and little child are thrown once more upon the charity he was so unwilling to ask.

M. Crémieux himself has just been arrested in the neighborhood of Crest. It was only a brutal jest of the police, but imagine what must be the insolence and tyranny of the police in these unfortunate republican departments, when they can venture upon offering such an insult to a man of the standing of M. Crémieux.

M. Crémieux had gone to Drôme to look after his estate. A commissary of police saw him pass, and recognizing him, “There is M. Crémieux, the republican representative,” he said to a gendarme; “follow him and ask for his passport.” The gendarme, going up behind him, clapped his hand on his shoulder with, “ In the name of the law, I arrest you ! ” It must have been an unpleasant moment for M. Crémieux. The person of the representative is indeed inviolable, unless he be taken in act of crime ; and even then the affair must be carried before the Assembly, and proceedings continued or stayed according to its decision. But who can tell in what day and hour this protection may cease to be one ? In the present instance the affair had no consequences, except the wound to the dignity of an honorable man, and the pleasure which the police undoubtedly find in recollecting this scene and in recounting it.

The neighborhood of Crest was, in the last century, the scene of a more tragical arrest, that of Jacques Roger, the Christian pastor. “ Who are you ? ” asked the officer of the patrol, coming upon a stranger whose reverend mien excited his suspicion. “ I am he whom you have been long seeking, and it is time you found me,” answered Jacques Roger, who, more than seventy years old, might have missed the privilege of martyrdom for his faith, if it had been delayed much longer. He was carried to prison and thence to the gibbet. His body, denied burial, was dragged away and thrown into the Isère, a river which gives its name to a department formerly, like Drôme, a part of Dauphiné ; now a republican department, like Drôme, and, with it, under martial law.

Last evening we were at the French Opera for the first time,— at the Academy of Music, I ought rather to say, for the name this institution received from its founder, Louis XIV., is still the formal one, although it is popularly called the French Opera and the Grand Opera. It is also known as the Theatre of the Nation. The piece was the “ Huguenots.”

If Louis XIV. could look in on his Academy, it would surely give him an emotion to see, instead of the polite Pagan pieces, such as “The Festivals of Cupid and Bacchus,” for example, with which he inaugurated it, dramas like this, in which the interest turns on the fidelity to his religion of the Huguenot hero, and on the devotedness of a young girl, noble and beautiful, who, to share his martyrdom, embraces the proscribed faith. And yet, if Louis XIV. has much of Louis XIV. left in him, he would be too much elated with the elegance of the house, the beauty of the scenery, the perfection of the music,— in short, with the entire success of the work he originated, to be greatly discomposed by the failure of projects for which, without doubt, he would royally decline accountability.

It is Father La Chaise who ought to look in. With what eyes would he survey that calm crowd, so complacently regarding the audacious scene, and from time to time graciously or feelingly applauding! Would he have some regret for all the anguish and desolation that his authority over a weak soul sent through the country whose conscience he aspired to control with the king’s ? For thirty-four years his fleshly hand was heavy upon France; his dead hand weighed upon her for seventy-eight years more. It was Lafayette who shook it off at last; Lafayette coming back from our War of Independence. With the first effort it was done. So mere a phantom of the night was this baleful force, irresistible only because unresisted.

When the “Huguenots” was first performed in Paris, it was not yet fifty years from the time when men of the Reformed Church had no civil rights, since the time when, in the view of the law, they could be neither husbands, fathers, nor sons. A man might have sat at the first representation of that opera, who had himself been subject to these awful disabilities. And now, it is almost impossible to believe that such a state of things has so lately existed. It is almost impossible to believe that the measures which created it could have been deliberately planned and carried out, except in what are called the dark ages. Who will venture to call the age of Louis XIV. a dark age ?

Wherever despotism is there is a dark age. Despotism is the negation of the divine government. Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.

Sunday, September 7th. — We went to the church of the Oratoire. M. Coquerel preached. The question what church we are to go to is now decided. The contrast between the sermon we heard last week and the earnest, eloquent, and thoroughly satisfactory discourse of this morning was too great to permit us to hesitate. The children hardly withdrew their eyes from the preacher. They evidently felt, as I did, that the loss even of a word was indeed a loss. Willie appeared to understand perfectly well. He listened with the closest attention, and was evidently much impressed. There was nothing in the sermon in which all Christians, of whatever sect, could not concur. There was no negation and no dogmatism. The text was from the Epistle to the Hebrews, “Or la foi est une vive représentation des choses qu’on espère, et une démonstration de celles qu’on ne voit point.”

Is there anything of habit and prejudice in the preference that we have for the phraseology of the English Bible ? Do the French when they read the Bible in English feel that it has lost something? M. Coquerel certainly must have felt the full force of the idea which he expounded, or he could not have made his hearers feel it as they did. And yet to me the modern French Bible, written in the language of everyday life, greatly fails of the force and sanctity of our English version. We owe an obligation the more to the inspired translators of the inspired Word, that they have preserved for us and kept familiar to us the language of a more strenuous time, to be our interpreter in great moments and in sacred hours.

September 8th. — I have mentioned that I not unfrequently saw notices of the suspension of mayors or other officials, in different parts of the country, for “demagogism,” or “anarchism,” or some offence of that description. I have seen to-day a letter from one of these mayors. It is addressed by M. Arnault, mayor of Montils in Loireet-Cher, to the prefect of the department : —

“ You have received, you say, information in regard to my conduct, from which it results that I openly profess principles contrary to public order, and that I have not feared to make myself an agent of anarchical propagandism. I do not know, Monsieur le Prefet, who can have given you such information, but you are not, in my opinion, justified in acting upon a denunciation destitute of proof and which has not been made the subject of investigation. If you bad sought the truth, this is what you would have learned; I am a republican under the Republic, and I inculcate republican principles. I am not aware that this conduct is contrary to public order, or that republican principles are anarchical. It is in the name of these principles that you and your superiors are in possession of power.

“ Not wishing to serve any longer an administration which, in a Republic, makes it a crime to be a republican, I resign my functions of mayor and of municipal counsellor of the commune of Montils.”

September 9th. — The new plot is named Le complot franco-allemand. It is called “a plot against the peace of Europe.” The victims are found chiefly in the class of political refugees. Of one hundred and seventy-six persons who have been arrested at Paris, one hundred and fifty are Germans. Arrests, domiciliary visits, perquisitions, continue, both at Paris and through the departments. It is said that this persecution is set on foot in the interests and at the instigation of the despotic powers, by whose countenance Napoleon wishes to strengthen himself, and into whose association he proposes to enter.

The Napoleonist journal, La Patrie, has had the imprudence to reprint this article from the Gazette de Cologne of the 4th September, the day after the domiciliary visits and arrests, connected with this new plot, began at Paris: —

“ The Schwartzenberg cabinet, convinced of the necessity of maintaining the existing state of things, has resolved to support energetically the candidateship of the prince Louis Napoléon. It is desirable to avoid any sudden shock, and for that reason a prolongation of the powers of the President would be preferred.”

The republican papers ask “ what kind of support the Schwartzenberg Cabinet is to give to an unconstitutional candidate in the next elections ? ” and “whether the arrests recently made for the benefit of the Emperor of Austria have anything in common with the promised concurrence of M. Schwartzenberg in the election of M. Bonaparte ? ”

The republicans, disdaining the imputations thrown out against them, of complicity in the pretended plot, espouse the cause of the refugees, and maintain it with courage and candor.

While they constantly declare their intention to make use of none but peaceful and strictly legal means to their ends, they do not deny that the Republic threatens despotisms by its existence, though it will not assail them by arms. They do not dissemble their warm sympathy with the oppressed of every nation.

“ M. Carlier,” says the National, “may clear the old prisons for their reception, and build new ones ; he will never have room for all the republicans who conspire in their hearts the ruin of European tyranny, and who labor for the triumph of universal liberty.”

September 15th.—Again reports of an impending coup d'état. L’Ordre attributes them to changes made in the army of Paris. Certain regiments which remained silent on an occasion when others cried " Vive Napoléon !” and “ Vive l’Empereur ! ” are to be sent to a considerable distance from Paris. L’Ordre, in giving this explanation, disclaims any belief in the rumors which, it says, “have created a panic in some timorous minds.” But it adds that the changes which have been made in the regiments composing the army of Paris “have undoubtedly a certain significance, especially since it is known that the movements of the troops are not decided at the ministry of war, but at the Elysee.”

September 16th. — Martial law has been proclaimed in the department of Ardèche. This measure does not take the public by surprise. It has been for some time impending. M. Léon Faucher, Minister of the Interior, states at length his reasons for demanding it. Let us examine them, and let this example serve for all. When you see in our American papers, “serious disturbances” have broken out in such a department of France, think of Ardèche, and understand that this item comes from some Paris government journal, which thus epitomizes reports from the interior, on which a decree of martial law is in due season to be founded.

Here are the reasons given by M. Léon Faucher, Minister of the Interior, for the imposition of martial law upon the department of Ardèche : —

“ Many points of this department, and in particular the arrondissement of Largentière, have been the centre of seditious demonstrations.

“Arms and powder are manufactured and distributed clandestinely.

“ The configuration of the soil, intersected by ravines and torrents, makes it the asylum of the contumacious, who flee from the other neighboring departments, placed under the régime of the state of siege, and the disposition to disturb order increases with the certainty of impunity.

“ It is evident that the agitation is carried on in this department with the view of forming it to revolt. On recent occasions, particularly at Laurac and at Vinezac, troops of the line and the gendarmerie have been attacked by mobs, and have found themselves under the necessity of having recourse to their arms. The anarchists have not even shrunk from a crime as base as it is odious. An attempt at assassination has been directed against an agent of the public force.

“ This state of things appears to be connected with a continuous system of intimidation and insurrection, organized in the department of Ardèche. Against such elements of anarchy the ordinary means of repression do not suffice. The moment is come to claim the employment of the exceptional measures authorized by Article 106 of the Constitution, and by the law of the 9th August, 1849.

“ I have long hesitated to propose this measure. I was unwilling to recognize that, in yet another department, through the weakness of the good citizens and the temerity of the bad, an exceptional régime had become necessary. But the energy of the defence must equal the audacity of the aggression.”

You will observe that the Minister of the Interior cannot pretend that the disturbances, which are to subject a department of France to martial law, have cost the party of order a single life. The climax of the crimes of the supposed insurgents is an attempt against the life of an agent of the public force. Formidable leaguers, indeed, who, with the best will, cannot compass the death of a single gendarme !

The Minister of the Interior specifies the arrondissement of Largentière as the most seditious part of the department ; Laurac and Vinezac as the most guilty places in the arrondissement. The occurrences at Laurac and Vinezac, which are supposed to justify this representation, have been related at length, and in a tone which shows every disposition to make the most of them, by the Courricr de la Drôme, published at Valence, the chief town of Drôme, one of those unhappy adjoining departments, long since under martial law, whose fugitives find shelter in the recesses of Ardèche. The facts of the narrative I send you are drawn from the account given in that journal. This account is that of the accusers. An accurate statement would probably add and subtract something. It would add, doubtless, the insolence and sneering menaces of the gendarmes ; it would add, probably, the part of that branch of the police called provocateurs, whose business it is to get up the disturbances that are to be put down. It would, perhaps, take something from the crowd of villagers, and a great deal from their part in the “ demonstrations ” of the day. But let us accept the case as presented by the accusation, and see what it amounts to.

On the 10th of August the village of Laurac held its annual fête. Gendarmes were, of course, on hand, all eye and ear. They found no occasion for their services in the cause of order, until about three o’clock in the afternoon, when they directed their steps towards an inn, understood to be the resort of men of advanced opinions. As they entered, songs struck upon their offended ears,—anarchical songs. These proceeded from a party of ultrademagogues, a hundred in number, who had been dining together, and who, so far from obeying when the gendarmes cried silence, continued their seditious songs, intermingling them with yet more seditious cries. The threats of the gendarmes were treated as a jest, and were answered with laughter. In the mean time a crowd began to collect about the house, to the number of five or six hundred men, sympathizers with the party inside. The gendarmes, eight in number, had seized some of the “ringleaders,” and were dragging them off to prison, when they were attacked by this outside crowd with sticks and stones, and obliged to relinquish their captives. They then retired “ in good order” to the Mairie, where their arms were kept, took their carabines, and returned to the attack. They did not succeed in repossessing themselves of their prisoners. After a contest in which they made free use of their weapons, and in which three of their number were disabled, while all received some hard blows, they retreated once more to the Mairie, where they now shut themselves in. The crowd gathered round it. The chief of the gendarmes, seeing from the window a man on whom he could rely, despatched him to Largentière, the chief town of the arrondissement, for aid. At Largentière the rappel was beaten by order of the sub-prefect. Thirty or forty of the National Guard answered it, took their muskets, and set off for Laurac, as escort to the sub-prefect and the procureur. They arrived at about eleven o’clock. The crowd had disappeared. The town was tranquil. Their arrival, and the arrests which followed it, occasioned a renewal of agitation, of which, however, the outward manifestations had soon subsided. The prefect of Ardèche, M. Chevreau, arrived the next day. The inn which was the scene of the disturbance was closed by his order. All fêtes and meetings, of whatever kind, were interdicted for the next three months in the arrondissement of Largentiere.

It does not appear that the gendarmes, heroes of the affair at Laurac, suffered seriously, for they were taken to Largentière the next morning. How it was with the villagers cannot be told. They did not boast of their wounds. The gendarmes could not themselves say how much execution they had done ; they thought they had fired not more than fifteen times, but they flattered themselves that they did a good deal of damage with their swords.

The account given of the “ affair of Laurac” by their accusers proves that the part of the people in it was limited to the rescue and defence of their friends, arrested for singing songs which perhaps the men who electioneered for Napoleon sang with them in 1848. After the rescue was effected the gendarmes were allowed to retire without molestation or hindrance. They went to the town-house at their leisure, took their carabines, and went back to the crowd, which evidently had not followed them. The blows they received were gained in an attempt to recapture their prisoners, during which they fired on the people at least fifteen times, and laid about them freely with their swords. When they desisted from this attempt they were allowed to withdraw to the Mairie, three of their number being, according to their account. disabled, and requiring the aid of the others, so that the whole party must have been at the mercy of the crowd. From the window of this building, surrounded, as it is asserted, by a threatening mob, the chief of the gendarmes was able to call to a man whom he recognized, and send him off with a message to Largentière. This man was not prevented from performing his commission. After his departure the five valid gendarmes, it is represented, defended themselves until the discouraged mob of a hundred times their number dispersed of itself. Is it not evident that the people respected the public building which sheltered their assailants ? Is it not evident that they respected even the “agents of the public force,” from the moment they desisted from making what were considered unjust arrests ? The forbearance of the crowd appears, indeed, even in this prejudiced account, something marvellous ;, and the marvel would be still greater if we believe them really to have been in possession of concealed stores of arms and ammunition, as the report of M. Léon Faucher supposes. In any case, the conduct of this crowd is remarkable, which was not dispersed by being fired upon, nor yet maddened by the sight of friends and townsmen shot down and hacked down. The restraint exercised would seem almost incredible, if we did not suppose it to be the result of a principle, — a line of conduct determined on in advance, and resolutely persisted in.

The prisoners of Laurac were carried to the jail of Largentière. Things remained quiet, at least upon the surface. The authorities were persuaded that these appearances were fallacious, and that the people were brooding rescue and revenge. A report was circulated that on the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, an attack was to be made on the jail of Largentière. Formidable preparations were made to avert the threatened danger. Troops were stationed at Largentière. The prefect, who during the anxious days which intervened between the dreadful 10th and the dreaded 15th had been perpetually on the road between Privas, the capital of the department, and the scene of the projected insurrection, became, at three o’clock in the morning of the fatal day, stationary in the house of the sub-prefect at Largentière. “ Desirous of sharing in every danger which threatened the place, he himself directed the measures necessary for securing the public tranquillity.” The prefect played his part to admiration ; and, indeed, all parties concerned appear to have given satisfaction, except the insurgents, who, notwithstanding the preparations made on their account, absolutely failed to take the place assigned to them in the performances of the day. No wonder that those whose expectations were disappointed should be embittered against the delinquents. “ Here is a new proof of the cowardice of the fomenters of disorder. When they were five hundred against eight, they could attempt assassination ; and now, when the government accepts their challenge, they basely hide in the dark.”

The prefect, before returning to Privas, left “ the most peremptory and severe instructions ” with an aide-decamp of General Rostolan, who arrived from Montpellier with a battalion of the Sixty-seventh Regiment of the line.

The alarms of the day, the extraordinary fatigues of the prefect, the military preparation, must have gone far towards establishing a claim for the aid of martial law. The propriety of its application was discussed ; but the prudent Minister of the Interior found its necessity not yet sufficiently apparent. It was made so by the affair of Vinezac.

Before passing to Vinezac and the sorrows of its fête day, let me note another scene of this 15th of August in Ardèche; a scene in which people and soldiery had their parts, though not those which had been marked out for them by the authorities.

Among the troops ordered to Largentiere to keep the peace on that day, or to prove by their presence that it was in danger, was the Second Battalion of the Fourth Regiment of Light Infantry, stationed at Pont-Saint-Esprit, a town of the department of Card. Marching “in all haste,” according to their orders, these troops arrived at Vallon, a town in this same seditious arrondissement of Largentière, and itself recently the theatre of compromising scenes.

If they had entered Vallon in full military insolence, perhaps some defiant youth would have raised the cry “Vive la république ” ; the bystanders might have taken it up; the commander have punished the insult; soldiers and citizens have confronted each other in hatred; and, all the rest following in course, the 15th at Vallon might have furnished new arguments for martial law in Ardèche. But it was not to be. The regiment to which this battalion belonged had been prostrated by typhoid fever. Those who had not sunk under it were enfeebled. The march had been long, under an August sun, over a broken and difficult country. For miles before, the men had been fainting and falling along the road. The Second Battalion of the Fourth Light Infantry came into Vallon suppliants, and not masters. Now was the time for the turbulent people of Ardèche to seize upon their moment of power. They thronged round and among the soldiery, and bore them away in their arms, vying with each other in affectionate cares for these their alienated brothers. “There was no need of billeting them on the people. Each and all had immediately found a home. Everything in every house was at their disposal.”

Two were beyond the reach of aid; but the others were saved, for who knows what future service? But, at any rate, the peace was kept that day at Vallon.

Now for the affair of Vinezac. The 31st of August was the day on which the village of Vinezac would have celebrated its annual fête, if fêtes had not been prohibited in the arrondissement of Largentière, The sub-prefect of the arrondissement sent a party of soldiers and a force of gendarmerie to the village on the morning of that day, to secure obedience to the mandate of the prefect. No attempt was made to contravene it. The day passed off tranquilly. The armed force had found neither occasion nor pretext to interfere. In the evening the people began to throng the streets. The commandant ordered them to disperse. They dispersed. But some determined “perturbators ” assembled again, here and there, in groups. The sound of a whistle was heard. It was ten o’clock and very dark. A party of soldiers was sent forward upon one of the seditious points. They were met by a shower of stones from unseen hands. They replied by discharging their muskets and then, rushing forward into the darkness, seized on six individuals, supposed aggressors, and carried them prisoners to Largentière.

The next morning the sub-prefect of Largcntière, the procureur, and some other dignitaries, repaired to Vinezac, escorted by a force of gendarmes and a hundred soldiers. They found there a considerable number of people from the neighboring villages. The prefect at once perceived that they were there to celebrate the forbidden fête ; which, only deferred, and not renounced, was, by the connivance of the mayor, to take place that day. “ The number of people assembled could not escape the notice of the sub-prefect, who had reason to believe that they only waited for the departure of the armed force to compensate themselves for the interruption of their seditious pleasures. He ordered the immediate departure of all strangers.”

When this order had been obeyed, the prisoners were brought forth ; for, in the mean time, domiciliary visits and arrests had been going forward. “The prisoners were conducted into the most frequented place of the town. The inhabitants of Vinezac stood in silence to see their guilty fellow-citizens depart to expiate their offences in the prison of Largentière. Eleven individuals, among whom figures the mayor, have been arrested and incarcerated in consequence of the trouble of Vinezac. Such a lesson will, we hope, not be forgotten.”

The writer of this account concludes with a hint to his readers that the version of this affair given by the democrats of the department will probably differ very much from this, the accurate one.

Thus it was that the village of Vinezac brought the doom of martial law upon the department of Ardèche.

Twelve days after this affair, on the 12th of this month, the Minister of the Interior asked and obtained of the President, in behalfof the department of Ardèche, a decree of martial law, assented to yesterday by the Permanent Committee of the Assembly, which held a special meeting for its consideration.

M. Léon Faucher finds that martial law is rendered necessary in Ardèche as much by the weakness of the good citizens as by the temerity of the bad. This admission on the part of the Minister is a significant one. It shows that the department is incredulous of danger; for the danger, if existing, is not of a kind that good citizens are indifferent to.

The people of Ardèche are among the most energetic, laborious, and worthy of France. Their country, from its natural features, would seem to promise more in scenery than in products ; to be more attractive to the pleasuretourist and the artist than to the cultivator. But they, with infinite labor, have terraced their mountains; they have carried up earth and formed successive gardens, each having its own climate, while the warm valleys have yet another; so that this little state rewards its children with the grains and fruits of northern and of southern regions. Numerous branches of industry flourish in Ardèche. In fine, what their country is capable of yielding its people make it yield, and add to the value of its productions what human ingenuity and patient toil can add.

A people like this is not prone to turbulence and uproar, nor tolerant of those who are. Such a people must be competent to maintain tranquillity within its own borders, by the ordinary means at the disposal of its magistrates.

If the Minister of the Interior thinks martial law as salutary, with a view to the good citizens as to the bad, it is because the good citizens are dangerous ; it is because the department itself is dangerous ; dangerous not to France, not to the Republic, but to the designs of those who at this moment have the Republic of France in their power.

The department of Ardèche has a history of its own, a history which, whether taken under its industrial, its religious, or its heroic aspect, is one to be proud of. The department of Ardèche represents ancient Vivarais.

One of the reasons given by the Minister of the Interior for this extreme measure of martial law is that the nature of the country makes Ardèche an asylum for the contumacious of other departments. But who are the guides of these fugitives to the rocky retreats? From whom do they receive food and covering? The impunity of starvation through cold and hunger is one that the government would not grudge them. Plainly they have friends among those who have something to give ; friends trusty and zealous, who are not only ready to bring them succor, but to encounter, for their sake, the danger of needing it themselves.

Nor is it now for the first time that the people of Vivarais incur such risks for men under the ban of power. Not now for the first time does this brave little state shelter the contumacious.

These mountains which receive the refugee republicans are the Cevennes, sacred for how many centuries through this hospitality which it is no dishonor to ask, no proof of guilt to need, and which they have never foregone long enough to lose the habit of it. Within a hundred years these fastnesses have been the asylum of proscribed ministers of Christ ; the only home of men honored throughout the country, and even by those of a different faith.

There are men now living who have pressed hands which have pressed those of Matlhieu Majal on his journey through Vivarais to his trial and death at Montpellier. Within twenty years there may have been people living who stood, little children, beside their parents by the roadside to have a last look from the beloved teacher, perhaps a last word from him as he passed.

Matthieu Majal was seized in the village of St. Agrève, in what is now the arrondissement from Privas, in Ardèche. When the people who poured out from the villages through which he was led came too near, they were fired upon. The prisoner forbade them to attempt his rescue by force, and they obeyed him. At Vernoux, the concourse was so great, that the officer in command, after securing his prisoner in jail, still dreaded his release, and ordered his men to go up on the housetops and fire down upon the unarmed crowd. Several hundred were wounded and many killed. Then the people were rushing for their arms. But their pastors interposed and restrained them. Majal wrote to them from his prison, “Shed no blood.” The people struggled with their rage and conquered it. They stood, silent and still, along the road, while their teachers, passing from one group to another, fortified and composed them by the promises of the Gospel.

They brought against Protestants then the same accusations they bring against republicans now. Majal is questioned in regard to concealed arms, in regard to treasonable correspondence. “ Our ministers preach only patience and loyalty,” answered Majal. “ I know it,” replied his questioner.

His judges, passing sentence upon him, could hardly pronounce it for tears. “We grieve to condemn you,” said they, “but such are the orders of the king.”

And this noble, useful life was cut off at twenty-six years, because such was the will of a miserable being who had no will.

M. L. P.