Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852», sayfa 16

When the victims were mustered the next morning previous to the arrival of the tumbrils which were to bear them to death, the jailer declared that the number was short by one; that he was bound to furnish the full complement of twenty-eight, which he asserted was the number he had read off the night before. He was requested to refer to the list, and read it again; but, by some strange management this could not be found.

"Gentlemen," said the jailer, "you must manage it among you somehow: it is as much as my own head is worth – though to be sure heads are at a discount just now – to send short weight in bargains of this sort. Be so good as to settle it among yourselves." At these words a volunteer stepped forward. "What signifies a day or two more or less?" he cried, "I will go! Gentlemen, do not trouble yourselves – the affair is finished!" A light murmur of applause was deemed a sufficient reward for his gratuitous act of self-devotion, which under different circumstances might have won an immortality of fame. The voluntary victim could have been barely five-and-twenty. He was allowed to lead off the dance in the grim tragedy of the morning. He did so with an alacrity altogether and exceedingly French. I do not recollect his name; his exploit was no more than a three days' wonder.

From what reason I know not, but it began to be rumored that one of the Englishmen ought to have completed the condemned list; and suspicions of dishonorable conduct on the part of Paine were freely whispered about. They were perhaps founded on the fact of his being constantly in communication with the jailer, who brought him almost daily dispatches from some of his Jacobin friends. It was reported sotto voce that he had bribed the jailer to erase his name from the list; though, as he had never been brought to trial, nor, as far as I know, was aware, any more than myself, of the specific charge made against him, I do not see that that was very probable – a form of trial at least being generally allowed to prisoners.

When my manuscript was ready I sent for a printer, and bargained with him, for a pretty large impression of the book, in a cheap and portable form. Nearly two months were occupied in getting through the press, owing to the amount of business with which the printers of Paris were at that time overloaded. When the whole edition was ready for delivery, I sent for a bookseller of my acquaintance, and gave him an order upon the printer for the whole of them, with directions to sell them at the low price of ten sous, or five-pence each, about equal to two-thirds of the cost of their production, supposing the whole number to go off, which, in my ignorance of the book-trade and of the literary likings of the Parisians, I looked upon as the next thing to a certainty.

This undertaking off my hands, my mind felt considerably more at ease, and I became capable of enjoying the few pleasures which my hazardous position afforded. The study of human nature, of which I had thought but little previous to my confinement, now became my only pursuit. I had acquired the habit of writing in the prosecution of my translation; and I now continued the habit by journalizing the events which transpired in the prison, and jotting down such portions of the biography of the several inmates as I could make myself master of. Mr. Paine shut himself closely in his cell, and I rarely saw any thing of him; and he appeared to have given up all communication as well with the world without as that within his prison.

In July came the fall of Robespierre, who wanted animal courage to play out the desperate game he had planned. I was the first who got the information, and in five minutes it was known to all my fellow-prisoners. In a few days I was set at liberty. I parted with the author of the "Rights of Man" and the "Age of Reason" at the door of the prison, and never set eyes on him afterward. I flew to my residence in the Rue St. Honoré. As I expected, everything of value had been plundered and the place gutted, my faithful servant having first been enlisted and packed off to the army. I resolved upon returning home. As a French citizen I had no difficulty in obtaining a passport for the coast; and within a month I was in London.

Twenty years had passed over my head, and Paris was in possession of the allied powers, when, in 1814, I again visited it. Fortunately, owing to services which I was enabled to render to British officers high in command, I found myself in a position to vindicate my claim to the value of the property I had left behind me, and for the sake of which there is little doubt that I had been secretly proscribed and cast into a revolutionary prison. I eventually recovered the whole amount of my loss, the quartier in which I had resided having to make it good. It now occurred to me to call upon the bookseller to whom I had confided the 3000 copies of Baxter's treatise, with a view, if practicable, to a settlement. I was lucky enough to find him at his old place; and upon my inquiry as to the fate of my work, he informed me, to my perfect amazement and mortification, that the whole of the copies were yet upon his shelves, and that he was ready to hand me over the entire impression, of which, as he might well be, he expressed himself desirous of being relieved. He assured me that he had employed the usual means to push them off, but that he had not been able, in a single instance, to effect a sale. He regretted to say that it was the most decided failure in the literary line that had ever come under his observation; not, he was pleased to observe, from any defect in point of literary ability, but solely from the fact that matter of that nature was totally unfit for the Parisian market. The whole edition was returned upon my hands; not a single copy had been sold in twenty years, although offered at a price below the cost of production. Still I never repented the attempt, mistaken though it proved to be. It afforded me occupation during some wretched months of confinement, and comforted me with the hope that, were I to die by the guillotine, I might leave a voice behind me which might be of use to my fellow-creatures.

A CELEBRATED FRENCH CLOCK-MAKER

The superiority of French clocks and watches has been achieved only by the laborious efforts of many ingenious artisans. Of one of these, to whom France owes no little of its celebrity in this branch of art, we propose to speak. Bréguet was the name of this remarkable individual. He was a native of Neuchatel, in Switzerland, and thence he was removed, while young, to Versailles, for the purpose of learning his business as a horologist. His parents being poor, he found it necessary to rely on his own energy for advancement in life.

At Versailles, he served a regular apprenticeship, during which his diligence in improving himself was almost beyond example. He became greatly attached to his profession; and soon, by studious perseverance his talents were developed by real knowledge. At length the term of apprenticeship expired, and as the master was expressing to the pupil the satisfaction which his good conduct and diligence had given him, he was struck with astonishment when he replied: "Master, I have a favor to ask of you. I feel that I have not always as I ought employed my time, which was to have indemnified you for the cares and lessons you have spent on me. I beg of you, then, to permit me to continue with you three months longer without salary." This request confirmed the attachment of the master to his pupil. But scarcely was the apprenticeship of the latter over, when he lost his mother and his stepfather, and found himself alone in the world with an elder sister – being thus left to provide, by his own industry, for the maintenance of two persons. Nevertheless, he ardently desired to complete his necessary studies, for he felt that the knowledge of mathematics was absolutely indispensable to his attaining perfection in his art. This determined purpose conquered every obstacle. Not only did he labor perseveringly for his sister and himself, but also found means to attend regularly a course of public lectures which the Abbé Marie was then giving at the College Mazarin. The professor, having remarked the unwearied assiduity of the young clockmaker, made a friend of him, and delighted in considering him as his beloved pupil. This friendship, founded on the truest esteem and the most affectionate gratitude, contributed wondrously to the progress of the student.

The great metamorphosis which was effected so suddenly in the young clockmaker was very remarkable. There is something very encouraging in his example, affording as it does a proof of the power of the man who arms himself with a determined purpose. At first, the struggle with difficulties appears hard, painful, almost impossible; but only let there be a little perseverance, the obstacles vanish one after the other, the way is made plain: instead of the thorns which seem to choke it, verdant laurels suddenly spring up, the reward of constant and unwearied labor. Thus it was with our studious apprentice. His ideas soon expand; his work acquires more precision; a new and a more extended horizon opens before him. From a skillful workman, it is not long before he becomes an accomplished artist. Yet a few years, and the name of Bréguet is celebrated.

At the epoch of the first troubles of the Revolution of 1789, Bréguet had already founded the establishment which has since produced so many master-pieces of mechanism. The most honorable, the most flattering reputation was his. One anecdote will serve to prove the high repute in which he was held, even out of France. One day a watch, to the construction of which he had given his whole attention, happened to fall into the hands of Arnold, the celebrated English watch-maker. He examined it with interest, and surveyed with admiration the simplicity of its mechanism, the perfection of the workmanship. He could scarcely be persuaded that a specimen thus executed could be the work of French industry. Yielding to the love of his art, he immediately set out for Paris, without any other object than simply to become acquainted with the French artist. On arriving in Paris, he went immediately to see Bréguet, and soon these two men were acquainted with each other. They seem, indeed, to have formed a mutual friendship. In order that Bréguet might give Arnold the highest token of his esteem and affection, he requested him to take his son with him to be taught his profession, and this was acceded to.

The Revolution destroyed the first establishment of Bréguet, and finally forced the great artist to seek an asylum on a foreign shore. There generous assistance enabled him, with his son, to continue his ingenious experiments in his art. At length, having returned to Paris after two years' absence, he opened a new establishment, which continued to flourish till 1823, when France lost this man, the pride and boast of its industrial class. Bréguet was member of the Institute, was clockmaker to the navy, and member of the Bureau of Longitude. He was indeed the most celebrated clockmaker of the age; he had brought to perfection every branch of his art. Nothing could surpass the delicacy and ingenuity of his free escapement with a maintaining power. To him we owe another escapement called 'natural,' in which there is no spring, and oil is not needed; but another, and still more perfect one, is the double escapement, where the precision of the contacts renders the use of oil equally unnecessary, and in which the waste of power in the pendulum is repaired at each vibration.

The sea-watches or chronometers of Bréguet are famous throughout the world. It is well known that these watches are every moment subject to change of position, from the rolling and pitching of the vessel. Bréguet conceived the bold thought of inclosing the whole mechanism of the escapement and the spring in a circular envelope, making a complete revolution every two minutes. The inequality of position is thus, as it were, equalized on that short lapse of time; the mechanism itself producing compensation, whether the chronometer is subjected to any continuous movement, or kept steady in an inclined or upright position. Bréguet did still more: he found means to preserve the regularity of his chronometers even in case of their getting any sudden shock or fall, and this he did by the parachute. Sir Thomas Brisbane put one of them to the proof, carrying it about with him on horseback, and on long journeys and voyages; in sixteen months, the greatest daily loss was only a second and a half – that is, the 57,600th part of a daily revolution.

Such is the encouraging example of Bréguet, who was at first only a workman. And to this he owes his being the best judge of good workmen, as he was the best friend to them. He sought out such every where, even in other countries; gave them the instruction of a master of the art; and treated them with the kindness of a father. They were indebted to him for their prosperity, and he owed to them the increase of fortune and of fame. He well understood the advantages of a judicious division of labor, according to the several capabilities of artisans. By this means, he was able to meet the demand for pieces of his workmanship, not less remarkable for elegance and beauty than for extreme accuracy. It may indeed be said, that Bréguet's efforts gave a character to French horology that it has never lost. So much may one man do in his day and generation to give an impetus to an important branch of national industry.

BLEAK HOUSE. ⁵

BY CHARLES DICKENS

CHAPTER VIII. – Covering a Multitude of Sins

It was interesting, when I dressed before daylight, to peep out of window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like two beacons, and, finding all beyond still enshrouded in the indistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the day came on. As the prospect gradually revealed itself, and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and fill up so fast, that at every new peep, I could have found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly, my candles became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. But so from rough outsides (I hope I have learnt), serene and gentle influences often proceed.

Every part of the house was in such order, and every one was so attentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys: though what with trying to remember the contents of each little store-room, drawer, and cupboard; and what with making notes on a slate about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and china, and a great many other things; and what with being generally a methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little person; I was so busy that I could not believe it was breakfast-time when I heard the bell ring. Away I ran, however, and made tea, as I had already been installed into the responsibility of the tea-pot; and then, as they were all rather late, and nobody was down yet, I thought I would take a peep at the garden, and get some knowledge of that too. I found it quite a delightful place; in front, the pretty avenue and drive by which we had approached (and where, by-the-by, we had cut up the gravel so terribly with our wheels that I asked the gardener to roll it); at the back, the flower-garden, with my darling at her window up there, throwing it open to smile out at me, as if she would have kissed me from that distance. Beyond the flower-garden was a kitchen-garden, and then a paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard, and then a dear little farm-yard. As to the house itself, with its three peaks in the roof; its various shaped windows, some so large, some so small, and all so pretty; its trellis-work against the south front for roses and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable, welcoming look; it was, as Ada said, when she came out to meet me with her arm through that of its master, worthy of her cousin John – a bold thing to say, though he only pinched her dear cheek for it.

Mr. Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast, as he had been over-night. There was honey on the table, and it led him into a discourse about bees. He had no objection to honey, he said (and I should think he had not, for he seemed to like it), but he protested against the overweening assumptions of bees. He didn't at all see why the busy bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't do it – nobody asked him. It was not necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes. If every confectioner went buzzing about the world, banging against every thing that came in his way, and egotistically calling upon every body to take notice that he was going to his work and must not be interrupted, the world would be quite an insupportable place. Then, after all, it was a ridiculous position, to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone, as soon as you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion of a Manchester man, if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He must say he thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The drone said, unaffectedly, "You will excuse me; I really can not attend to the shop! I find myself in a world in which there is so much to see, and so short a time to see it in, that I must take the liberty of looking about me, and begging to be provided for by somebody who doesn't want to look about him." This appeared to Mr. Skimpole to be the drone philosophy, and he thought it a very good philosophy – always supposing the drone to be willing to be on good terms with the bee: which, so far as he knew, the easy fellow always was, if the consequential creature would only let him, and not be so conceited about his honey!

He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of ground, and made us all merry; though again he seemed to have as serious a meaning in what he said as he was capable of having. I left them still listening to him, when I withdrew to attend to my new duties. They had occupied me for some time, and I was passing through the passages on my return, with my basket of keys on my arm, when Mr. Jarndyce called me into a small room next his bed-chamber, which I found to be in part a little library of books and papers, and in part quite a little museum of his boots and shoes, and hat-boxes.

"Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce. – "This, you must know, is the Growlery. When I am out of humor, I come and growl here."

"You must be here very seldom, sir," said I.

"O, you don't know me!" he returned. "When I am deceived or disappointed in – the wind, and it's easterly, I take refuge here. The Growlery is the best used room in the house. You are not aware of half my humors yet. My dear, how you are trembling!"

I could not help it: I tried very hard: but being alone, with that benevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so happy, and so honored there, and my heart so full —

I kissed his hand. I don't know what I said, or even that I spoke. He was disconcerted, and walked to the window; I almost believed with an intention of jumping out, until he turned, and I was reassured by seeing in his eyes what he had gone there to hide. He gently patted me on the head, and I sat down.

"There! There!" he said. "That's over. Pooh! Don't be foolish!"

"It shall not happen again, sir," I returned, "but at first it is difficult – "

"Nonsense!" he said, "it's easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a good little orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my head to be that protector. She grows up, and more than justifies my good opinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend. What is there in all this? So, so! Now, we have cleared off old scores, and I have before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again."

I said to myself, "Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really is not what I expected of you!" and it had such a good effect, that I folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself. Mr. Jarndyce, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to me as confidentially, as if I had been in the habit of conversing with him every morning for I don't know how long. I almost felt as if I had.

"Of course, Esther," he said, "you don't understand this Chancery business?"

And of course I shook my head.

"I don't know who does," he returned. "The lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It's about a Will, and the trusts under a Will – or it was, once. It's about nothing but Costs, now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about Costs. That's the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away."

"But it was, sir," said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub his head, "about a Will?"

"Why, yes, it was about a Will when it was about any thing," he returned. "A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune, and made a great Will. In the question how the trusts under that Will are to be administered, the fortune left by the Will is squandered away: the legatees under the Will are reduced to such a miserable condition that they would be sufficiently punished, if they had committed an enormous crime in having money left them; and the Will itself is made a dead letter. All through the deplorable cause, every thing that every body in it, except one man, knows already, is referred to that only one man who don't know it, to find out – all through the deplorable cause, every body must have copies, over and over again, of every thing that has accumulated about it in the way of cartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which is the usual course, for nobody wants them); and must go down the middle and up again, through such an infernal country-dance of costs, and fees, and nonsense, and corruption, as was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a Witch's Sabbath. Equity sends questions to Law, Law sends questions back to Equity; Law finds it can't do this, Equity finds it can't do that; neither can so much as say it can't do any thing, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel appearing for A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel appearing for B; and so on through the whole alphabet, like the history of the Apple Pie. And thus, through years and years, and lives and lives, every thing goes on, constantly beginning over and over again, and nothing ever ends. And we can't get out of the suit on any terms, for we are made parties to it, and must be parties to it, whether we like it or not. But it won't do to think of it! When my great-uncle, poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the beginning of the end!"

"The Mr. Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have heard?"

He nodded gravely. "I was his heir, and this was his house, Esther. When I came here, it was bleak, indeed. He had left the signs of his misery upon it."

"How changed it must be now!" I said.

"It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its present name, and lived here shut up: day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit, and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the mean time, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me have been blown out of the house too; it was so shattered and ruined."

He walked a little to and fro, after saying this to himself with a shudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat down again with his hands in his pockets.

"I told you this was the Growlery, my dear. Where was I?"

I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House.

"Bleak House: true. There is, in that city of London there, some property of ours, which is much at this day what Bleak House was then – I say property of ours, meaning of the Suit's, but I ought to call it the property of Costs; for Costs is the only power on earth that will ever get any thing out of it now, or will ever know it for any thing but an eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street of perishing blind houses, with their eyes stoned out; without a pane of glass, without so much as a window-frame, with the bare blank shutters tumbling from their hinges and falling asunder; the iron rails peeling away in flakes of rust; the chimneys sinking in; the stone steps to every door (and every door might be Death's Door) turning stagnant green; the very crutches on which the ruins are propped, decaying. Although Bleak House was not in Chancery, its master was, and it was stamped with the same seal. These are the Great Seal's impressions, my dear, all over England – the children know them!"

"How changed it is!" I said again.

"Why, so it is," he answered much more cheerfully; "and it is wisdom in you to keep me to the bright side of the picture." (The idea of my wisdom!) "These are things I never talk about, or even think about, excepting in the Growlery, here. If you consider it right to mention them to Rick and Ada," looking seriously at me, "you can. I leave it to your discretion, Esther."

"I hope, sir – " said I.

"I think you had better call me Guardian, my dear."

I felt that I was choking again – I taxed myself with it, "Esther, now, you know you are!" – when he feigned to say this slightly, as if it were a whim, instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But I gave the housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to myself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on the basket, looked at him quietly.

"I hope, Guardian," said I, "that you may not trust too much to my discretion. I hope you may not mistake me. I am afraid it will be a disappointment to you to know that I am not clever – but it really is the truth; and you would soon find it out if I had not the honesty to confess it."

He did not seem at all disappointed: quite the contrary. He told me, with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very well indeed, and that I was quite clever enough for him.

"I hope I may turn out so," said I, "but I am much afraid of it, Guardian."

"You are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives here, my dear," he returned, playfully; "the little old woman of the Child's (I don't mean Skimpole's) Rhyme.

 
'Little old woman, and whither so high?' —
'To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.'
 

You will sweep them so neatly out of our sky, in the course of your housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days, we shall have to abandon the Growlery, and nail up the door."

This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old Woman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame Durden, and so many names of that sort, that my own name soon became quite lost among them.

"However," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to return to our gossip. Here's Rick, a fine young fellow full of promise. What's to be done with him?"

O my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point!

"Here he is, Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting his hands in his pockets and stretching out his legs. "He must have a profession; he must make some choice for himself. There will be a world more Wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be done."

"More what, Guardian?" said I.

"More Wiglomeration," said he. "It's the only name I know for the thing. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will have something to say about it; – Master Somebody – a sort of ridiculous Sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a back room at the end of Qualify Court, Chancery-lane – will have something to say about it; Counsel will have something to say about it; the Chancellor will have something to say about it; the Satellites will have something to say about it; they will all have to be handsomely fee'd, all round, about it; the whole thing will be vastly ceremonious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I call it, in general, Wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be afflicted with Wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell into a pit of it, I don't know; so it is."

He began to rub his head again, and to hint that he felt the wind. But it was a delightful instance of his kindness toward me, that whether he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face was sure to recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine; and he was sure to turn comfortable again, and put his hands in his pockets and stretch out his legs.

"Perhaps it would be best, first of all," said I, "to ask Mr. Richard what he inclines to himself."

"Exactly so," he returned. "That's what I mean! You know, just accustom yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet way, with him and Ada, and see what you all make of it. We are sure to come at the heart of the matter by your means, little woman."

I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was attaining, and the number of things that were being confided to me. I had not meant this at all; I had meant that he should speak to Richard. But of course I said nothing in reply, except that I would do my best, though I feared (I really felt it necessary to repeat this) that he thought me much more sagacious than I was. At which my guardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh I ever heard.