An echo in the valley. A rainbow in the cloud. A shadow on the river as it flows. A thrush's note that rings Good-night, so far, so clear, so loud. A little life, that comes, and shines, and goes. The smiles, the tears-the tempest and the sunshine, that we see Thy form alone, dear Walter, dwells in constancy with me; An echo of a merry laugh; a bow of promise bright; A shadow, then, that fell upon my heart; A silent look, that gave a sad, a long and sad Good-night ;- G. T. HE Conciergerie! associations very name came wafted into the ears of men in the days we speak of, history has abundantly set forth, in a certain volume, written throughout in blood, and, happily, concluded in that of its own chief authors. A few days of hopeless despondency, or it might be of feverish gaiety-a mock trial, which was only an additional engine of torture -then the last glimpse of earth and sky over a long vista of unpitying faces palled with the show-such were, on the whole, the happiest anticipations which could present themselves to the mind of one immured within those dismal walls; for it had, ere now, happened that its treacherous gates had been thrown open to the assassin, less merciful than the executioner, and the unhappy prisoners had crowded to the gratings of their windows, not to spy out a means of escape, but to observe in what manner Death might most rapidly, and with the least possible pain, put an end to their sufferings. Full of these and similar gloomy fancies, Heinrich Seeman lay tossing all night upon his miserable straw pallet, and it was not till morning that he found himself sufficiently composed to reflect upon what had befallen him. He had been betrayed, that was clear! An accusation had been trumped up against him-nothing was easier than to frame such a charge in the good year Two of the new era-with the view of getting rid of one who might prove an inconvenient witness. That the charge proceeded from the unknown murderers, who had pressed him into their service the night before, there could not be a VOL V. F doubt. But his father-what reason could they have had for including him? Was it not more likely, that the mention of his own name had suggested the mise en arrestation of the latter? Confused with attempting to solve these and other mysteries, Heinrich was about to give himself up, from sheer exhaustion, to sleep, when his eyes were caught by an unusual sight-a precious stone glistening on his little finger. At first, in his half-waking state, he tried to account with his recollections, and to recall by what means this solitary jewel had escaped the fate of his other trinkets, and remained outside that Conciergerie for valuables, the Mont de Piété. Then suddenly remembering the means by which he had become possessed of it, he sat bolt upright on his pallet, and proceeded to examine it more closely by the feeble glimpse of day-light, which began to struggle through a grating at the foot of his bed. It was a gold ring-most probably meant for the middle finger of a lady, for it fitted his own little finger to a nicety-mounted with the bright yellow stone, known as the topaz. On this was engraved the figure of a lion, by way of crest, surmounted by some letters of a strange character, resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics. Across the stone, and dividing it into two nearly equal portions, lay a thin strip or band of gold, of that compass-like shape known in heraldry as the "bar sinister." As he was examining it, he happened to touch a secret spring, and the stone flying open, showed behind it a box or locket, containing a tiny gold key. "At any rate," thought the Doctor, "here are some data to base an enquiry upon, in case the opportunity should ever present itself As this latter contingency did not seem, at the moment, a very probable one-to speak to the jailor on the subject, would have been like speaking to the stone walls which he guarded-Heinrich had nothing better for it than to close the locket, replace the ring on his finger, and seek oblivion from his present cares in sleep. to me. For three days the young Doctor remained imprisoned in a solitary dungeon, visited only by the jailor aforesaid, and half inclined to cheat the sovereign people of their show, by a voluntary abstinence from the ration of mouldy bread and ditch water which was set before him. He knew enough of the prison regulations then in force, to be aware that accused persons, and even those condemned by the tribunal, were for the most part permitted to mix freely together up to the last moment, and he could not but consider his separate confinement as due to the same mysterious agency which had brought him into his present peril. Still, a superstitious belief in his good Genius did not desert the unfortunate captive, and it was, perhaps, owing to the horoscopes, and the observations drawn from the stars in happier days, that he did not at this crisis, avail himself of the knife, or the other means of selfdestruction which did not appear to be withheld from him. On the fourth day he was startled by the entrance into his cell of a government official, who announced to him that his trial was removed to Strasburgh, whither a vehicle, protected by a guard of three soldiers, was in waiting to convey him. Here was certainly a new, and almost unprecedented feature in his case, which set him thinking. "Ma foi, then!" he could not help exclaiming, "they are making a great man of me, these citizen-rulers of ours, to take the trouble of keeping my head on my shoulders for a journey of a hundred leagues and more. A guard of honour, too! Courage, I shall, at all events, make my entry into my native city, en prince!" "Que sais-je? I execute my orders, that is all. It is no doubt expected that confronted with your accomplices in that hot-bed of counter-revolution, you will be compelled to make more certain revela tions of the plans of the émigrés, and the movements of the enemy on the banks of the Rhine." With a somewhat lighter heart than had throbbed in his bosom during the last seventy-two hours, the young Doctor stepped into the vehicle which was to bear him away. At all events, there were some ten days of God's fair sunlight, of the bracing air, of hill and dale and country prospects to say the least, ten whole days of life, with his head still firmly seated on his shoulders-lying before him. His campanions were three old soldiers, faithful servants of the convention, and the committee of public safety-honest fellows enough apart from their prejudices, and who, viewing him in the light of a political convict on his way to a justly merited punishment, were yet inclined to treat him with that humane watchfulness which might be expected from Mr. Calcraft in a like case. Very often at the inns where they stopped on their way, the three guardians and their prisoner feasted and drank in a right merry fashion together, and Heinrich found the hundred écus, which he kept secreted about him, of great service on these occasions. He remarked that one at least of the trio always remained sober at a time: this irksome duty being taken turn and turn about, so as not to press too heavily on any single individual. There was consequently no opportunity for escape. Widely different from this conduct was that of the population which assembled at various places to witness their passage, and the prisoner had more than once reason to tremble at the sight of the angry visages-not to speak of the blood-stained pikes and rusty muskets, which were directed towards him. He was not sorry, when, on the eighth day of their journey, the distant spire of the cathedral rose tapering from the plain; nor, indeed, is his the only case where the scaffold has come to be looked upon as, relatively, not an uncomfortable anchoring place from the Scylla and Charybdis of a popular mob, and the stroke of the executioner upon the whole a friendly stroke, when compared with the less artistic performance to be expected from an unprofessional quarter. At Strasburgh, he was immediately lodged in prison, and in the same separate confinement that he had undergone in Paris. His enquiries after his family were attended with no result; the solitary jailor with whom he came in contact, knowing, or pretending to know nothing on the subject. After a few days, he was brought to trial before the local tribunal, and condemned to death, with a batch of twenty fellowprisoners (the majority of whom had never before set eyes on each other) for a common conspiracy against the Republic one and indivisible. The affair was managed with such rapidity, as to cause the Doctor to declare in later days that if called upon to give an account of his own trial, he should find himself limited to a description of the chamber, or a short portrait of the personal appearance of the judge. A brief paper was read-half a dozen witnesses deposed to imaginary facts, in an inaudible tone-the remarks of the accused were instantly drowned in an indignant uproar from the body of the hall-some stereotyped form filled up in a large blank book; whereupon, the President adjourned to dinner, and the prisoners were informed that their journey to the next world was appointed for the following morning at 11 a.m. It was in this manner that justice was meted out to offenders in the year Two of the Republic one and indivisible. Although the name of Strasburgh yields, in melancholy associations, to those of Nantes, Lyons, Marseilles, and other towns of the Republic, yet it is not to be supposed that the Drama of the Revolution was acted out there without scenes of blood and cruelty which, at any other time, would have fixed the attention of the world. Wherever a city was delivered into the hands of a servant of the Convention, gloomy fanatic, or monster thirsting for more carnage, there were sure to be repeated the same noyades, fusillades and massacres, to a greater or less extent, according to the material to be worked upon, and, if such an expression may be permitted-according to the "stage-properties at the disposal of the tyrant. Two such persons, uniting between them both characters, the fanatic St. Just, and the tiger Lebas, had obtained Strasburgh for their share, and they boasted that one third of its inhabitants had been put to death by their joint agency. But their foreman in the bloody work-the inferior minister and superintendent of their vengeances-was a wretch who has somehow escaped the pillory of history, and who was named Baudet. This patriot united to his other gentlemanly tastes a great love of variety, and was often plunged into a state of agreeable embarassment, caused by his endeavours to invent some new method for disposing of his victims. Our hero, even in his seclusion in Paris, knew enough of what was passing in all the great cities, not to be surprised at any fate which might await him. He accordingly learnt with composure on the morning after his sentence, that the orders for the erection of the guillotine had been countermanded. Some other form of death was to be adopted for the conspirators due on that day-perhaps a fusillade, possibly a mitraillade with cannon-in short it was not quite certain what citizen Baudet had arranged, and, of his great ingenuity, precontrived for the popular relaxations of the day. "As well die one way as another" said the young Doctor to himself, philosophically. "In all probability, the first discharge will do the business; if not, the soldiers, who are after all, not such bad fellows, will rush in and finish one promptly with their sabres. At least, so I have always read in the accounts of these matters." He could not help, however, shedding many bitter tears at the thought of his family, of whom he had been unable, despite all his bribes to the jailer, to obtain the slightest information. Possibly, this very ignorance in which he was kept, was another of Citizen Baudet's ingenious devices; and, if so, it reflected great credit on its inventor. The bitterness of death was thereby increased tenfold to the unhappy prisoner. In the presence of this absorbing grief, all recollection of the mysterious scene at which he had assisted in Paris some fortnight before, faded |