Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

"How many villains have escaped me; Broglie, Besenval, Condé, Comte d'Artois, &c. And why did they let go that Marquis de Lambert? He wept, and I heard a young man say to him, 'Wretch, you should have wept when you received the horrible order to slaughter a whole people if it should persist in claiming its rights. Coward, you were ready to assassinate women, old men, children; you were the general of an army of hangmen, and you know not how to die. You shall shall not escape the Lanterne.' And yet he has escaped."

In his quality of Attorney General of the Lanterne, Camille subsequently demands that in each of the eighty-three departments at least one Lanterne shall be devoted to the purposes of vengeance, and proceeds to name the agents who are to perform this service, declaring that "Insurrection and the Lanterne are the most holy of duties." The 'Discours de la Lanterne' did not reach the extensive sale of 'La France Libre;' but it procured for the author an increase of popularity on which he greatly prides himself. In a letter to his father, he writes:

[ocr errors]

"I have made myself a name. People now say, 'there is a pamphlet by Desmoulins ;'-and not a man of the name of Desmoulins has written a pamphlet.' Three days ago, being in the vestibule of the StatesGeneral, and some one having named me, I saw everybody, and especially the deputies of the three orders, look at me, with a curiosity that flattered my self-love."

In addition to this glory, Desmoulins reaped a further reward for his patriotic virtue, in an invitation to dinner with Count Mirabeau— a grand event, of which he does not fail to inform his friends at Guise-and soon after he can even write that he has been for eight days past a guest at the Hotel de Mirabeau.

"We have become great friends," he writes, "at least he calls me his dear friend. Every moment he takes my hand and shakes it; afterwards he goes to the Assembly, resumes his dignity as he enters the vestibule, and does wonders; after which, he returns to dinner with an excellent company, and sometimes his mistress, and we drink capital wines. I feel that this table is too delicate-too abundant, and will corrupt me. His claret and maraschino have a value which I vainly seek to hide from myself, and I have all the difficulty in the world to resume afterwards my republican austerity, and detest the aristocrats whose crime is to like these good dinners. It seems to me that I ought to feel myself very happy, recollecting what my position was at Guise, and that now I am the dinner guest and the friend of Mirabeau, and have the reputation of being an excellent citizen aud a good writer."

But all this felicity was not without alloy, Camille, great and glorious as he was, had still something to wish for. He is in want of shirts, and of a bed of his own, and writes repeated petitions to his father for assistance to procure these and similar luxuries, protesting that all the profit of his writings have been reaped by the publishers. He was at this time thirty years of age, and his father apparently had replied by reminding him of the claims of his brothers and sisters, to which Camille modestly rejoins-"I have brothers and sisters; yes, but there is this difference, that nature has given me wings, and that my

brothers cannot feel like me the chain of the necessities that confine me to the earth.”

The supplications for the small sum of six louis are vehemently repeated for some time, and then suddenly cease-from which it may be inferred that they have been successful. The apparent poverty of Camille at this period does seem to afford a presumption that the charge brought against him of being bribed by the Duke of Orleans was unfounded; but it by no means amounts to proof, for his other means of existence must have been trifling, and his habits were evidently dissolute.

The first decided improvement in his fortunes, arose from his marriage with a beautiful and amiable girl, who brought him a large portion, and to whom he was besides sincerely attached. The tender affection with which he regarded her to the last moment of his life, is the one redeeming feature of his character, and had it been prolonged, there is little doubt that her influence would have manifested itself in the increasing purity and integrity of his conduct. As it was, he did but drag her down with him to destruction. The contract of his marriage was signed by sixty friends, of whom three years afterwards, only two remained to him, the rest being in exile, in prison, or devoured by the guillotine. These two were Danton and Robespierre, the former the fellow victim, the latter, the destined murderer of the happy bride and bridegroom.

The share which Desmoulins had in organising the scenes of the 20th of June, and the 10th of August, is well known; and when Danton became Minister of Justice, he was, as he says himself, hoisted (hissé) to be his secretary; and according to M. Fleury, in concert with him, prepared the massacres of September. They afterwards joined in the attempt to resist the tyranny of Robespierre, and began the attack in the journal of Le Vieux Cordelier, in which he ventured to utter the word " clemency," to many an innocent sufferer a ray of hope in the long night of terror, but to him who had uttered it, the sentence of death

Turn we now for a moment to the closing scene of the life that has rushed on with the headlong destructive force of a torrent, and is now dashing down to the abyss. In the prison of the Conciergerie, a group of prisoners is assembled for the last fatal toilette. The colossal figure of Danton is again in repose, for he has recovered his composure after the natural anger and disgust, excited by the mockery of a trial; but Camille has abandoned himself to passionate lamentations, for himself, his wife, his infant son. His struggles, cries, and imprecations, when required like the rest, to submit to the executioner, to have his head shaved, are like those of an enraged child. He has to be bound with strong cords. Danton submits calmly and coldly to every outrage. A sound of wheels is heard; it is the cart, which is come to bear to swift death, all those young, vigorous men. Without is an enormous crowd, roaring and bellowing with impatience. As the tumbril moves on, there are cries, howlings,

cursings. Danton answers only with a look of proud disdain-Camille Desmoulins with supplications for mercy, with shrieking assurances that the people are deceived, betrayed. In the strength of his delirium, he bursts the cords that confine him-tears his clothes to tatters, but still the fatal tumbril moves on. It passes under the windows of Robespierre, who softly observes, "Poor Camille, I would fain have saved him." There are two other carts preceding them to the guillotine, but they are soon emptied. Swiftly the heads fall, the attendant officials have had sufficient practice, and are expert. Camille's last thought is for his wife, "Oh ma bien aimee, je ne te verrai plus." Ten days after this, the wife, so well and deservedly beloved-nay, even the baby boy, and the father, not less innocent of any offence worthy of death, became the prey of the same fierce reptile.

6

We have only one remark to add with respect to the Etudes Revolutionnaires.' They are evidently one sided. We have nothing to object to the accuracy of M. Fleury's representations, but it is necessary to be careful, that the truth, which is not the whole truth, does not produce the effect of falsehood. It is possible, and often easy, in writing history, by a skilful selection of facts, to produce almost any impression we please, without the slightest positive departure from veracity.

5.-The Prem Ságar, or, the Ocean of Love; being a History of Krishna, translated into Hindi by Lallu Làl. A new edition, with a Vocabulary. By E. B. Eastwick, M.R.A.S. Also a Translation

of the above, by E. B. Eastwick. Hertford: (printed for the Hon. East India Company,) S. Austin. 1851.

"AT a time" says the translator, "when the translation of the Vedas is unfolding to the world the religion of the Hindus as it existed in the dim ages of antiquity, a translation of the 'Prem Ságar' may be thought opportune, displaying, as it does, the religion of that great nation at the present day." The Prem Ságar' is a mythological romance on the history of Vishnu's avatar in the form of "Krishna,' which, in that strange series of developments that characterises the Indian mythologies and religions, has gradually risen from being merely an adjunct and episode, to a widely pervading doctrine and belief. In the Vedas, Krishna,-nay more, even Vishnu himself, is unknown; Indra and Fire are the two divinities, who, under various names and forms, were worshipped by those ancient Sages, whose thoughts have only so recently been made audible to European ears. In the heroic poems, which belong to a later era (probably five or six centuries before Christ), Vishnu plays an important part, and, as Rama and Krishna, enters the arena of human strife, to deliver the world from the tyranny of evil; but it is very questionable whether in either of the poems, as they originally stood, the hero was at first anything more than human; and especially is this the case with the Ramayana, where the passages, which allude to the divinity

of Ráma, are so few and unconnected, that nothing would have been easier than their interpolation in after times. It is in the 'Puranas,' which belonged to the centuries after our era, that the avatars of Vishnu, and especially that as Krishna, assume their modern form, and to this period must be assigned the later book at the close of the Mahabharata, called the 'Harivata,' which is a complete History of Krishna. The 'Prem Sagar' is a Hindi version of the Braj Bhakka translation of the tenth chapter of the 'Bhagavat Purána.'

The Hindu mind has been at long intervals, from the earliest times, subject to changes, which have broken the long monotony that preceded them.

From time to time men have arisen, who have seen the corruptions of their age and the follies of its belief, and have laboured to alleviate its sorrows and supply its wants. All these changes seem to have been originally moral; corruption and sin were felt to be all-withering, and by turns mild philanthrophy and stern asceticism assayed the task of regenerating the age. Or these changes the earliest with which we are acquainted, was Buddhism, which probably sprang out of Brahmanism, about 600 B.C.; and in the mildness of its precepts we can distinctly see the character of its author. Then seem to have followed various attempts to regenerate Brahmanism from within ; particularly by the followers of Siva, with their tremendous penances and cruel rites, and those of Vishnu, with their doctrines of faith and moral purity.

The worship of Krishna, in its modern form, probably rose about five or six centuries after our era, and various interesting questions are connected with it, which we can only briefly allude to here ;—we mean the connexion between it and Christianity, which is especially seen in the work before us.

At the outset of the inquiry we are struck by the similiarity of the names Krishna and Christ, but the likeness is by no means confined to such vague features, it extends widely both to incidents and doctrines, though of course presenting much distortion. Krishna is no sooner miraculously born in the family of Yadu (Judah ?) than his life is sought by the wicked king, Kans, who destroys all the children of the race of Yadu; Krishna, however, escaping by being carried from Mathura to Gokul. There is a transfiguration scene, in which we have all the grotesqueness of the later Hindu imagination; and many of the miracles are reproduced,—for instance, the restoration to life of the son of the widow of Nain, &c. The following will serve as a specimen of these interesting traces of resemblance; few will fail to acknowledge therein something more than a casual likeness to the prophecy in Genesis iii. 15.

"On the divine Krishna approaching, the serpent came and cast its folds around his whole body. Then the divine Krishna became so bulky that be

*The devatas proclaim his birth, like the angels; and shepherds come and offer their gifts to the babe.

effected his object by Kali's instant release of him. Again, when the serpent, darting forth hissings, was raising his head against him, so Krishna was ever protecting himself. At length the divine Krishna, perceiving that the inhabitants of Bráj were much distressed, suddenly started up and mounted on the head of Kali :

6

Assuming the weight of the three worlds, he became ponderous;

From hood to hood, he, dancing, stepped, the stamp of his foot sounded in measured time.'

Then indeed Kali began to expire from the weight, and Krishna dashing down his hoods, caused him to protrude his tongue, from which streams of blood began to flow. When the pride of his poison and strength had left him, then he perceived in his mind that the first male had become incarnate, otherwise (thought he,) in whom would be sufficient power to escape from my poison?' Perceiving this, he gave up all hope of life, and became still and motionless."

The Sanscrit student will find this adventure fully related in the 69th section of the Harivansa.' Many other no less interesting resemblances may be found on a careful perusal; and we would refer those of our readers who may be curious of further information on the subject, to Mr. Eastwick's translation itself, and the second volume of M. Garcin de Tassy's 'Histoire de la Litterature Hindoui.'

We must not omit to mention the highly creditable way in which the original text is printed; the type is very clear, and great care seems to have been taken to render the work accurate, and the edition indeed, in all respects, will bear a most favourable comparison with any published in India.

« PředchozíPokračovat »