ing here under Custine, with Houchard, and I dare say they are no better now than they were then. And at seven exactly we shall start. No one will stop our way. The good people at Pirmasens," said he, winking, "hearing that two thousand Frenchmen and six hundred horses may be expected at any moment, will no more stir from their doors than a hen out of her shelter."

We were astonished at his clever manœuvre. "Now, Françoise," said he, "I am going to inspect your larder. I dare say you have got some good wine. Rosenthal, come, let us have a glass. And my men and horses, too, must have their wants satisfied."

They went down together, and immediately I, with our two servants, began to load a waggon with all our best linen, carpets, and moveables of every kind; and yet we were obliged to leave behind many things which would have suited us very well at this present time. Of my own property I only took the two portraits, the great marble clock, and a few valuable pictures, and my mother-of-pearl casket with necklaces, collars, and laces. But we had to leave behind all our terra-cotta hunting-pieces, vases, chandeliers, and a hundred beautiful things that ornamented our rooms. I cannot bear to think of these losses. But we were in such a hurry to get away that they could not be saved.

Below we could hear Zimmer, Rosenthal, and the hussars eating, drinking, and laughing, without a thought of all these misfortunes. The two sentinels kept guard outside, the horses were fed, and so night came on.

At Pirmasens all those people who in the morning were running in a mob to hang us were making all speed to the Hôtel de Ville with the required rations, and we could hear the town-crier shouting at every corner and hurrying on the backward ones.

At seven it was dark. I had put on my best fur-lined cloak, and sat waiting to start. Zimmer made me take a glass of wine; he put a couple of bottles into the bottom of our waggon, and obliged me to eat a little, with the remark that the night would be a rough one.

I could not refrain from tears on leaving that beautiful residence at Pirmasens, where we had spent such happy days, and to which we never expected to return. In half an hour we were in the dark and silent woods. The swirling snowflakes, the gloomy masses of trees, the galloping horsemen before and behind us, the heavy jolts of our conveyance, by degrees took my thoughts off from our past miseries as I quietly rocked my little girl to sleep again.

Zimmer came up now and then with friendly words. "If they have not blown up the bridge we shall get to Bitche to-morrow. The enemy are in Alsace; they invested Landau yesterday, but their columns are not crossing the mountains yet, except perhaps a few regiments of Cossacks. If we do meet a few we shall be obliged to say good morning to them. You are not frightened, are you?"

"Oh, no! I know you are here, Zimmer."
And so we went on talking, but poor Rosenthal

About midnight we had reached the old French territory, and at every little village the people, frightened at the sounds of war, rushed to their windows. They remembered how, twenty years before, Wurmser and Brunswick had been driven over to the right bank by a single battle, but there were now no volunteers of 1792, commanded by such men as Hoche, Kléber, and Marceau. Their bones lie buried everywhere between Madrid and Moscow; the thunder of the cannon will never wake them more. For years they had been fighting for Jerome, for Joseph, or for conscription, and this had not the same effect as the cry of "La patrie en danger!"

About five we came to the edge of the forest, and the fortress of Bitche came in sight at the distance of a couple of leagues. Zimmer reconnoitred the country, saw no signs of the enemy, and prepared to bid us a kindly farewell, telling us that his duty was to observe the movements of the enemy; and that, as we were now in safety, he was obliged to leave us to pursue our way to Phalsbourg. Then he added, "At Phalsbourg it is possible you may find the gates shut. The commander is an old friend of mine; send him this note and the drawbridge will be let down for you. You have a start of twelve hours; don't lose a minute! Hussars, forward!" and they went off like an angry whirlwind in the direction of Hilderbronn, to make up for lost time, while we went on at a trot for the fortress.

We followed minutely all the directions which Zimmer had given us, and the next day, issuing from the defiles of the Graufthal, on the plateau of Phalsbourg, we had but just time to reach the glacis, for the Cossacks were covering the plain. If it had been daylight we should have been lost.

The gates were closed. We sent in our note to Commandant Meunier, who ordered the drawbridge to be let down, and we entered under escort. Scarcely had we gone under the archway of the Hôtel de la Ville de Bâle when the shells began to fall, and compelled us to run for safety to the casemates, where the commandant came to see us and distribute bedclothes. We received rations during the whole time of the siege and blockade. Zimmer was still protecting us.

After the capitulation of Paris and the disbanding of the army we fell very low. Rosenthal hung his head, and passed whole days without speaking.

After the Hundred Days and Waterloo we had a second blockade. The few thousand francs saved from the wreck of our fortunes were soon spent, and then we learnt the death of our excellent friend Zimmer, killed by a cannon-ball at the battle of Ligny.

Poor Rosenthal at one time awoke from his stupor to babble of Catinetta la Marseillaise. He accused her of having stolen from him the crown of Sweden and given it to Bernadotte. He reproached himself for having left his genealogical tree at Pirmasens, and wanted to go back and claim it. All my observations were useless, and I think he would have completely lost his reason if a good man, M. le Pasteur Diderich, had not taught him that all the crowns in the world are not to be compared with the crowns reserved for the elect.

At this time many voices were upraised against Bernadotte for having joined the coalition against France. They were right. Never should a man take up arms against his own country. But as we were

in such trouble, and my first duty was to think of my daughter's future, all that the people were say ing did not prevent me from writing once more to Charles Jean, King of Sweden, to implore his assistance. He replied graciously, and pensioned us, which enabled us to return to Sainte-Suzanne and live creditably.

Here ended Grandmother Françoise's story. I had listened pacing up and down thoughtfully, and, hearing me make no remark, she asked,

"Jean Baptiste, do you believe in destiny? Do you believe that our lot is all written out beforehand?"

That question embarrassed me, and I took a little time to reflect before I answered. "I believe, grandmother, that Catinetta was a good physiognomist -that she saw genius in Bernadotte, courage in Zimmer, cleverness in you, and in Rosenthal credulity and a little folly. With this knowledge it is not so difficult to prophesy. No doubt she predicted in the same way for a good many others. In the midst of the great events and extraordinary agitations which followed, some of her predictions might turn out true; others failed in the usual order of things.

"In every lottery there are big prizes which are necessarily won by somebody, but to know who that somebody shall be is impossible. I believe, too, that an oak cannot grow into a pine, nor a pine become an oak. Their destiny is fixed and marked out by Nature itself.

"Circumstances may favour or delay or suspend the development of men's minds, but they cannot transform them in their very essence, because the germ runs through all the phases of the individual existence of every being that is born and grows and dies. Every one, according to his race or his kind, is subject to all these phases.

"I do not believe in absolute and arbitrary predestination in the case of any man's life, because I believe in the justice of God and the free-will of man."

WHE

HEN Lord-Keeper Williams (1621) told the lawyers that "a proneness to take bribes might be generated from the habit of taking fees," he referred to the customary gratuities that came to the judges and other legal placeholders from suitors for justice and favour, rather than to the payments made to practising lawyers for definite services rendered in the way of their profession. "Fee" was an elastic form, used in different senses. In its strictest sense it signified the separate sum of money paid by suitor or

client, in accordance with court practice or professional usage, to a judge for an official act, to a practising lawyer for a particular service. In its largest sense, the "fees" of a judge covered the dues necessarily rendered to him by suitors for justice, the voluntary offerings by which successful suitors expressed their gratitude for his attention to their interests, and also the customary gifts that came to him in his judicial—or at least, in his official-capacity from persons who, without being suitors in his court at the time of making

the presents, were moved by considerations of affection for his person, or respect for his character, or prudent care for future contingencies, to exhibit in a material and beneficial manner the regard in which they held him.

Like their official precursors, the Common Law judges of Elizabethan England received salaries that, without being insignificant and absolutely contemptible, were insufficient to maintain the pomp with which a judge was required to surround himself—the pomp without which he would have failed to command social homage. In salary, allowances for livery and diet, and assize allowances, the Lord Chief Justice of England received £238 6s. 8d., the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas 182 45., each of the Puisne Justices

148 6s. 8d., the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer £132 17s. 8d., each of the Puisne Barons £79 10s. 8d. The reader has been reminded too often of the depreciation of gold during the last three centuries not to be aware that these sums were considerable in the days of our Virgin Queen. But the largest of them was less than a rising but still struggling barrister made in Westminster Hall when Good Bess ruled the land.

It would have been impossible for judges to live with decency on such stipends and allowances, and no one, sane or insane, wished the judges to try to live upon them. For their adequate remuneration the insufficiently-salaried judges looked to-(1) their court fees, (2) the offerings of suitors grateful for favourable judgments, and (3) the gifts of persons wishing them well or desirous of propitiating them. With these three sources of additional revenue, the Puisne Justice, with only 148 6s. 8d. in regular salary and allowances from the Crown, was perhaps as "well off" as an ordinary Justice of our new Supreme Court with an assured £5,000 a year, paid quarterly, whilst the Lord Chief Justice, with only £238 6s. 8d. in regular annual salary and allowances from the Crown, was very much better paid than Lord Coleridge with £8,000 a year. Without their court fees the judges of olden time could not have made the two ends meet. Without their voluntary gifts from suitors and well-wishers they could not have lived with comfort and dignity. Every one knew that they lived mainly on benevolences, and, with the exception of a few clear-sighted and thoughtful reformers, who saw all the various evils of the system, no one complained that they lived mainly, like men of other vocations, on payments made to them by persons who gave them the most trouble. No judge thought of concealing the chief sources of his income. So long as no one charged him with selling justice-i.e., taking a suitor's money during the suit-people were free to say he got a handsome fee for his pains after the trial. It pleased him to know it was town-talk how highly his labour and judgment had been rewarded by a grateful suitor.

Even by his bitterest assailants it was not urged to Bacon's discredit that he had in thousands of cases accepted the voluntary gifts of successful suitors after trial. The charges against the Chancellor were that he had taken gifts in certain cases during the suit, and that in other cases, where no

money came to his hands pendente lite, he had been influenced by conditional promises of reward after trial and decree. Bacon's fame has been so completely relieved of the stains put upon it by calumny and misconception, there is no need to insist again on his absolute innocence of the malversation and perversion of justice so long and strangely attributed to him. Readers should, however, be reminded of the frankness and precision with which he stated the rule of official duty and honest usage touching gifts made to judges. Describing the acceptance that whilst exposing the receiver to serious suspicion would at least render him guilty of technical corruption, and the acceptance that would cover him with infamy, the Chancellor, after reviewing his official career in relation to the slanders of his enemies, declared it no fault in a judge to receive unsolicited and unpromised gifts after trial. "There be," he wrote, "three degrees, or cases, as I conceive, of gifts or rewards given to a judge. The first is—of bargain, contract, or promise of reward pendente lite. And of this my heart tells me I am innocent-that I had no bribe nor reward in my eye or thought when I pronounced any sentence or order. The second is a neglect in the judge to inform himself whether the cause be fully at an end or no, what time he receives the gift, but takes it upon the credit of the party that all is done, or otherwise omits to inquire. And the third is-when it is received sine fraude after the cause is ended, which, it seems, by the opinions of the civilians, is no offence. For the first, I take myself to be as innocent as any born on St. Innocent's Day in my heart; for the second, I doubt in some particulars I may be faulty; and for the last, I conceive it to be no fault." The Chancellor's "submission and confession," so often spoken of as though it were a penitential admission of the writer's moral turpitude, is found on examination to accord with the account rendered of his behaviour in this memorandum.

On consideration of several accusations, and all the matters to which they related, the fallen Minister was confirmed in his opinion that in some particulars of the second kind he had been faulty. He could not deny he should have kept a more vigilant watch over his servants. He could not deny that on three or four of the occasions pointed to by the articles-on three or four of the many thousand occasions of taking gifts from suitors-he had, through inadvertence or remissness or misinformation, taken a gift guilelessly and honestly before the cause had ended. Hence he was-in the narrow and strictly official sense, but in no other-guilty of corruption. To this technical offence he pleaded guilty, but the confession, of which so much has been said and written to his disadvantage, goes not a letter further. He neither admitted actual guilt nor said aught to justify his judges imputing it to him. The inquiry ended without proof of any kind of malversation or fraud, and to this day no evidence has come to light that Francis Bacon ever accepted fee or reward to pervert justice.

So long as judges were paid with presents it was the practice of our forefathers to give presents

to their social superiors. Originating in usages of ancient Rome, the custom prevailed throughout the middle ages in every European country, even as the custom prevails to this day in Eastern lands. In proportion to his power every person was a receiver of gifts from those over whom he was powerful, from those who, feeling and fearing his influence, were desirous of propitiating it. At Whitehall on New Year's Day, Queen Elizabeth was covered with gifts by persons of every social degree, who wished either to gain her favour or to hold it, or to grow in it-gifts sent in to her Highness in many cases by persons who could ill afford to make the costly offerings. If the Chan

cellor sent in a robe of richest velvet and finest lace, or a piece of cloth of gold, the dustman sent in two bottes of cambric or a gold trinket. There were offerings from peers and bishops, from Lords of the Council and dames of high degree. Gifts came in also from gentlemen of the chamber, maids of honour, grooms in attendance, yeomen of the guard, chaplains, musicians, apothecaries, pastrycooks. To make the inventory of the costly things additional clerks were taken on for several weeks together at the great wardrobe. And what took place at Whitehall on New Year's Day was done on a smaller and less imposing scale and with cheaper materials in every palace and mansion of London, at every castle and manor-house throughout the country. Sir John Trevor's gift of a hundred pound, Fisher's present of hangings valued at 160, and Sir George Reynell's offering of a diamond ring, all came to Bacon on New Year's-tide; and probably most of the presents made him by suitors and worshippers during his tenure of the seals-presents valued at £25,000 a year came to him at the same season.

How people of quality, living on their estates in the country, looked to the New Year's offerings of their tenants for the victualling of their households is shown by careful inventories of the offerings of young pigs and poultry, brawn and spices, to be found even to this day in manorial muniment rooms-lists that were sometimes studied by my lord or my lady of the manor for the purpose of seeing that every tenant gave as freely as a tenant of his acreage ought to give of his substance to his lord's house-steward. Rendering tribute to their lord, the tenants of a great estate rendered tribute of fat capons and other kitchen-stuff to their bailiff. Having propitiated his lord with gifts, the courtier was constrained to propitiate his lord's chief retainers in the same manner. The practice of tipping servants, that has survived so many efforts for its extinction, originated in times when the domestic servants of great households were folk of gentle birth and breeding, and were feed for the sake of their influence.

There were divers other occasions besides New Year's-tide when the poor were expected to give to the rich. Indeed the occasion existed whenever the humble folk has anything worth receiving eggs at Easter, fresh vegetables at Midsummer, orchard-fruit in the autumn. "If the gentlemen that dwell about thee be tyrants." Tyndale says in the "Exposition upon the Sermon on the Mount," for the edification of needy

husbandmen, impatient of the exactions of their rich neighbours, "be ready to fetch home their wood, to plough their land, to bring in their harvest, and so forth; and let thy wife visit my lady now and then with a couple of fat hens or a fat capon, and such like, and then thou shalt possess all the remnant in rest, or else one quarrel or other may be picked with thee to make thee quit of all together. Yea, poll thyself and prevent others, and give the bailiff or like officer now a capon, now a pig, now a goose, and so to thy landlord likewise, or if thou have a great farm, now a lamb, now a calf; and let thy wife visit thy landlady three or four times in the year with spiced cakes, and apples, pears, cherries, and such like. And be thou ready with thine oxen or horses, three or four, or half a dozen days in the year, to fetch home their wood, or to plough their land; yea, and if thou have a good horse, let him have him good cheap, or take a worse for him, and they shall be thy shield and defend thee, though they be tyrants and care not for God, so that no man else shall dare poll thee. . . . Let this, therefore, be a common proverb, 'Be contented of some men, or to be polled of every man!""

Thus the world went with Englishmen in the beginning of the sixteenth century and under Elizabeth. Whilst the pulpit commended to peasants this kind of hypocritical servility as practical Christian meekness, presents were the instruments by which the receivers of the scarcely wholesome doctrine sought to conciliate their oppressors, and make friends unto themselves of the mammon of unrighteousness. And human nature in the rural districts differed less in temper than in outward show from human nature in London and Westminster. The spirit and considerations that moved farmers to propitiate their landlords with gifts of cattle, and farmers' wives to propitiate their landladies with gifts of poultry and fruit, differed little from the spirit and considerations that determined lords and ladies of the Court to conciliate her Highness's judges with silver cups, jewelled rings, superb cabinets, rich hangings of brocaded silk, and gloves filled with gold pieces. The Chancery suitor of one term was likely to be a Chancery suitor again a few terms hence: and his handsome gift, made in acknowledgment of a favourable decree, proceeded too often from a gratitude that had more reference to future advantage than to benefits already conferred. parting with his money he was apt to regard himself as educating the Chancellor to remember him as a person who knew how to recognise and reward judicial merit. If justice went against him in his next suit, he was sure to think resentfully of his former munificence, and was quick to suspect the judge of throwing him over for the sake of a yet larger recompense.

In

Bacon was not the first Chancellor of a lofty nature to be accused of perverting justice for the sake of gold. Immediately after his fall charges of corruption were preferred against Sir Thomas More, who was accused by a disappointed suitor, named Parnell, of being bribed with a silver cup to make a decree in favour of the complainant's adversary in the cause, Master Vaughan.

The

cup, given by Master Vaughan's wife, was a cup of value, and had been placed as a New Year's gift in the Chancellor's hands when the cause was still in litigation. "It is even so, I took the cup into my own hand," said More, admitting, as it seemed for the moment, that he had taken a suitor's present, pendente lite. "Lo!" exclaimed Lord Wiltshire, with exultation, “did I not tell you, my lords, that you would find this matter true?" But, my lords," continued the accused man, with one of his characteristic smiles, "hear the other part of my tale. After having drunk to her of wine, with which my butler had filled the cup, and when she had pledged me, I restored it to her, and would listen to no refusal." Had the cause been at an end the Chancellor would doubtless have kept the vessel. When Mrs. Croker, Lord Arundel's opponent in a Chancery suit, placed in the same Chancellor's hands (pendente lite) a pair of gloves containing forty angels, Sir Thomas accepted the gloves with a gracious smile, but compelled the lady to take back the gold -a reproof so charmingly gentle and courteous that none but a true gentleman could have administered it to so considerable an offender.

If Chief Justice Hale ever heard this story of the humorous Chancellor, he had not profited by the lesson in courtesy when (as Chief Baron of the Exchequer) he made a droll parade of his judicial integrity on the Western Circuit, to the extreme annoyance of the worthy squire who, with equal innocence and civility, had sent him a present of venison. As the giver of the fat buck was plaintiff in a cause upon the list, the Chief Baron regarded the present as one of those gifts which pervert the ways of justice, and determined to give adequate expression to his displeasure. "Is this plaintiff the gentleman who sent me the venison?" inquired the super-virtuous judge as soon as the cause was called for hearing. On receiving an answer in the affirmative, the Chief Baron continued, "Stop a bit, then. Do not yet swear the jury. I cannot allow the trial to go on till I have paid him for his buck." In vain the unfortunate giver of the fat meat assured his lordship that he had done no more than his ancestors had done for centuries to every judge riding the circuit; in vain the county magistrates in court supported their neighbour's statement in extenuation of his offence. "That is nothing to me," said the righteous judge; "the Holy Scriptures say 'A gift perverteth the ways of judgment.' I will not suffer the trial to go on till the venison is paid for. Let my butler count down the full value thereof." "My Lord," said the offender, "I will not disgrace myself and my ancestors by becoming a venison butcher. From the needless dread of selling justice, your lordship delays it. I withdraw my record." It is ill when a worthy man does the right thing in the wrong way. To prevent the scandalous rumours that might arise from so trivial an affair, Hale did well in determining not to accept even so inconsiderable a gift from a suitor, pendente lite; but instead of insulting an honest gentleman with the offer of payment, he should have declined the gift with a few civil words of explanation. Sir Thomas More would have found

an occasion for complaisance and drollery in the incident that occasioned Hale so unreasonable an outbreak of anger.

The popular notion that justice was an epicure to be humoured and managed, like any "sinfully dainty" husband, with savoury dishes and succulent tit-bits, had prevailed in England for centuries before Chief Baron Hale's explosion over the fat buck, and it survived in rural districts almost till yesterday. Fuller tells a droll story of the lady who, after feeding Chief Justice Markham in 1470, with countless cates and delicacies, flew into a lively passion at the adverse judgment he delivered on her cause within an hour of the repast. "I vow," cried the angry gentlewoman, never again to invite a judge to dinner." "Nay, nay," retorted the Chief Justice, vow never to invite a just one!" The crafty suitor with designs on Baron Graham's honesty would have tickled his palate with some new thing in the way of oysters. "They say," the oyster-loving baron remarked, "that oysters sharpen the appetite. Here I am at the end of my sixth dozen, and in truth I don't feel so hungry as I did when I began!"

66

During a tour of the Western Circuit this same judge was invited to dinner by a baronet who was plaintiff in a cause that would come on for hearing at the next assize town. As the baronet's cook and hospitality had the highest reputation, Baron Graham determined not to be squeamish, and went to the dinner, as people might infer from his refusal, if he declined the invitation, that judges could be influenced by so trifling a matter as a good meal. On hearing how the plaintiff had been treating the judge, the defendant in the cause gave a dinner to the whole of the special jury who had been summoned for the trial.

Some forty years since it was told with what scrupulous fairness a well-known and witty Master in Chancery was treated by two country gentlemen on whose controversy respecting a right of fishing in a stream that divided their estates he had consented to arbitrate. It was arranged that, on the first day of the inquisition, the arbitrator should be taken over the squire's estate on the north of the stream, and hear nothing in contradiction of the squire's statement of the case, and that on the morrow he should regard the question in dispute from the baronet's acres on the south of the meandering watercourse, and hear nothing in. opposition to the baronet's story. It was arranged that on both days he should be attended by both of the rival claimants, and that dining at the squire's table on the first day, the trio should sit at the baronet's board on the morrow. The dinner at the squire's house consisted of three fried soles, a roast leg of mutton with vegetables, three pancakes, three pieces of cheese, three small loaves of bread, three pints of ale, and a bottle of sherry, followed by a dessert of three large apples and a magnum of port. The next day, after walking over the baronet's land, the two disputants and their arbitrator had for their repast three fried soles, a roast ieg of mutton with vegetables, three pancakes, three pieces of cheese, three pints of ale, a bottle of sherry, three large apples, and a magnum of port. The magnum having been