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"Le 23.-Fine weather, cold. Arrived at Arlon at eleven o'clock in the evening. Found Bouillé, learnt that the King was taken; the detachments not done their duty. The King wanting in resolution and head."

The Count now took up his residence at Brussels, where he was joined by his friend Craufurd, and henceforth employed his whole time until the execution of the Queen in attempting to save her. Although well knowing the fate that would await him if discovered, he wished to return to Paris. His correspondence with Marie Antoinette was constant. Here is a letter from her, written on the 29th of June:

"I exist..

How anxious I have been about you, and how I grieve to think of all you must have suffered from not hearing of us! Heaven grant that this letter may reach you! Don't write to me, it would only endanger us, and above all, don't return here under any pretext. It is known that you attempted our escape, and all would be lost if you were to appear. We are guarded day and night. No matter Keep your mind at ease. Nothing will happen to me. The Assembly wishes I cannot write more...

to deal gently with us. Adieu.

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The Field-Marshal de Fersen was very anxious that his son should now return to his own country, where a great career awaited him, but the Count refused to entertain the idea. Count Ferson writes from Vienna, August 1791:

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"20th August.-The confidence with which the King and Queen of France have honoured me impose upon me the duty of not abandoning them on this occasion, and of serving them whenever in future it is possible for me to be of use to them. Í should deserve all censure were I to do otherwise. I alone have been admitted into their confidence, and I may still, from the knowledge I have of their position, their sentiments, and the affairs of France, be of service to them. I should reproach myself eternally as having helped to bring them into their present disastrous position without having used every means in my power to release them from it. Such conduct would be unworthy of your son, and you, my dear father, whatever it may cost you, would not you yourself disapprove of it? It would be inconsistent and fickle, and is far from my way of thinking. As i have mixed myself up in the cause, I will go on to the end. I shall then have nothing to reproach myself with, and if I do not succeed-if this unhappy prince finds himself forsaken, I shall, at least, have the consolation of having done my duty, and of having never betrayed the confidence with which he has honored me."

Baron de Stael, then Swedish ambassador at Paris, who through his wife was suspected of intriguing in favour of the new order of things, seems to have endeavoured on all occasions to counteract the efforts of his former friend. It is singular that Gustavus, a fanatical adherent of the French royal family, should have allowed him to remain in his service.

Count Fersen writes to Marie Antoinette :

"Staël says dreadful things of me. He has corrupted my coachman and taken him into his service; which has annoyed me very much. He has prejudiced many persons against me, who blame my conduct, and say that in what I have done I have been guided solely by ambition, and that I have lost you and the King. The Spanish ambassador and others are of this opinion; he is at Louvain, and has not seen any one here. They are right; I had the ambition to serve you, and I shall all my life lament my not having succeeded, I wished to repay in some part the benefits which

• The Count went to Vienna to induce the Emperor Leopold to assist his sister.

it has been so delightful to me to receive from you, and I hoped to prove that it is possible to be attached to persons like yourself without interested motives. The rest of my conduct should have shown that this was my sole ambition, and that the honour of having served you was my best recompense."

Connt Fersen remained at Brussels, and numerous plans for the relief of the royal family were engaged in by his advice. In February, 1792, he determined, in spite of the extreme danger, to proceed to Paris to see again the King and Queen. He departed from Brussels on Sunday the 12th, and arrived in Paris on Monday evening.

There is the following entry in his journal:

"Went to the Queen. Passed in my usual way, afraid of the National Guards. Did not see the King.

"Le 14, Tuesday.-Saw the King at six o'clock in the evening, he does not wish to escape, and cannot on account of the extreme watchfulness; but in reality he has scruples, having so often promised to remain, for he is an honest man.'"

Count Fersen had a long conversation with the Queen on the same evening, in which they talked about the details of the journey from Varennes, and the Queen related what insults they had received: how the Marquis de Dampierre, having approached the carriage at St. Menehould, was murdered in their sight, and his head brought to the carriage; how insolently Pétion behaved, who asked her for, pretending not to know, the name of the Swede who drove them from the palace, to whom Marie Antoinette answered that she was not in the habit of knowing the names of hackney coachmen."

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Count Fersen remained in Paris till the 21st, when with his companion he left for Brussels, where he arrived on the 23d. They were arrested several times, but got through by informing the guards that they were Swedish couriers. On the subject of the flight to Varennes we give one more extract. Just before the execution of the Queen, Drouet, commissary of the Convention, was arrested by the Austrians in attempting to escape from Maubeuge. He was brought to Brussels, and Count Fersen went to see him.

66 Sunday, 6th October.-Drouet* arrived at 11 o'clock. I went with Colonel Harvey to see him in the prison of St. Elizabeth. He is a man of from 33 to 34 years of age, six feet high, and good-looking enough if he were not so great a scoundrel. He had irons on his hands and feet. We asked him if he were the postmaster of Saint Menehould who had stopped the King at Varennes: he said that he had been at Varennes, but that it was not he who had arrested the King. We asked him if he had left Maubeuge from fear of being taken. He said No, but to execute a commission with which he was charged. He kept his coat closed to prevent the chain, which led from his right foot to his left hand, being seen. The sight of this infamous villain incensed me, and the effort that I made to refrain from speaking to him (in consideration for the Abbé de Limon and Count Fitz-James) affected me painfully. Another officer who was taken with him maintained that the Queen was in no dan ger, that she was very well treated, and had everything she could wish. The scoundrels, how they lie!-An Englishman arrived in Switzerland, said he had paid 25 louis to be allowed to enter the prison where the Queen was; he carried in a jug of water-the

*

Drouet was the postmaster at St. Menehould, not the postmaster's son, as is generally believed. He was afterwards exchanged.

room is underground, and contains only a poor bed, a table, and one chair. He found the Queen seated with her face buried in her hands-her head was covered with two handkerchiefs, and she was extremely ill dressed;-she did not even look up at him, and of course it was understood that he should not speak to her. What a horrible story! I am going to inquire into the truth of it."

The Count never saw Marie Antoinette again, but he still contrived to correspond with her until her removal to the Conciergerie. Then all hope seemed over.

Count Fersen's sufferings were extreme during the period of apprehension before the Queen's execution. He attempted in vain, through Count Mercy, to prevail on the allies to march on Paris. But the Austrians were more intent on seizing the French fortresses, and the English on the siege of Dunkirk, than in making a desperate campaign on behalf of the royal family. These are the last accounts in Count Fersen's journal respecting the Queen.

"Here are some particulars about the Queen. Her room was the third door to the right, on entering, opposite to that of Custine; it was on the ground floor, and looked into a court which was filled all day with prisoners, who through the window looked at and insulted the Queen. Her room was small, dark, and fetid; there was neither stove nor fireplace; in it there were three beds: one for the Queen, another for the woman who served her, and a third for the two gendarmes who never left the room. The Queen's bed was, like the others, made of wood; it had a palliasse, a mattress, and one dirty torn blanket, which had long been used by other prisoners; the sheets were coarse, unbleached linen; there were no curtains, only an old screen. The Queen wore a kind of black spencer (caraco'), her hair, cut short, was quite grey. She had become so thin as to be hardly recognizable, and so weak she could scarcely stand. She wore three rings on her fingers, but not jewelled ones. woman who waited on her was a kind of fishwife, of whom she made great complaints. The soldiers told Michonis that she did not eat enough to keep her alive; they said that her food was very bad, and they showed him a stale, skinny chicken, saying. This chicken has been served to Madame for four days, and she has not eaten it.' The gendarmes complained of their bed, though it was just the same as the Queen's. The Queen always slept dressed, and in black, expecting every moment to be murdered or to to be led to torture, and wishing to be prepared for either in mourning. Michonis wept as he spoke of the weak state of the Queen's health, and he said that he had only been able to get the black spencer and some necessary linen for the Queen from the Temple, after a deliberation in Council. These are the sad details he gave me."

The

Marie Antoinette was executed on the 16th of October, 1793. It was not till four days afterwards, on the 20th, that the news arrived at Brussels.

The following are extracts from Count Fersen's journal.

"Sunday, October 20th.-Grandmaison tells me that Ackerman, a banker, received a letter from his correspondent in Paris, telling him that the sentence against the Queen had been passed the evening before; that it was to have been carried into execution directly, but that circumstances had retarded it; that the people (that is, the paid people) were murmuring that it was 'ce matin que Marie-Antoinette doit paraître la fenêtre nationale.' Although I have been prepared for this, and have in fact expected it ever since the removal from the Conciergerie, yet the certainty has quite prostrated me. I went to talk of this misfortune with my friends Madame Fitz-James and the Baron'de Breteuil; they wept with me, above all. Madame FitzJames. The Gazette' of the 17th speaks of it. It was on the 16th at half-past eleven that this execrable crime was committed, and Divine vengeance has no burst upon these monsters!

"Monday, 21st.-I can think of nothing but my loss; it is dreadful to have no actual details, to think of her alone in her last moments without consolation, without a creature to speak to, to whom to express her last wishes; it is horrible. Those hellish monsters! No, without revenge on them my heart will never be satisfied."

Gustavus III. had fallen by the hands of an assassin at a masked ball. The King of France had already been beheaded, the Princesse de Lamballe murdered by the mob of Paris in a manner too horrible to relate, and now the Queen, who trusted him and him alone, had been dragged in a cart with her hands tied behind her to the place of execution and subjected to the insults of a brutal populace. What alleviation could there be to a blow like this? Count Fersen was soon recalled to Sweden by the Regent, and henceforth he interested himself mainly in the affairs of his country. He was much in the confidence of the young King Gustavus IV., and on that unfortunate monarch's expulsion from the throne, Count Fersen, then the chief of the nobility and Grand Marshal, still remained an adherent of the House of Vasa. This was the cause of his disastrous end. Count Fersen, whilst assisting at the funeral of Prince Charles of Holstein, who had been selected to succeed to the throne of Sweden, was murdered in the most cowardly and cruel manner by the mob of Stockholm. His last words were an appeal to God, before whom he was about to appear, to spare his assassins, and this happened in 1810, on the twentieth of June, the anniversary of his daring enterprise.

Temple Bar.

THE

LIBRARY MAGAZINE.

MARCH, 1879.

CHAPTERS ON SOCIALISM.

PRELIMINARY NOTICE.

Ir was in the year 1869 that, impressed with the degree in which even during the last twenty years, when the world seemed so wholly occupied with other matters, the socialist ideas of speculative thinkers had spread among the workers in every civilised country, Mr. Mill formed the design of writing a book on Socialism. Convinced that the inevitable tendencies of modern society must be to bring the questions involved in it always more and more to the front, he thought it of great practical consequence that they should be thoroughly and impartially considered, and the lines pointed out by which the best speculativelytested theories might, without prolongation of suffering on the one hand, or unnecessary disturbance on the other, be applied to the existing order of things. He therefore planned a work which should go exhaustively through the whole subject, point by point; and the four chapters now printed are the first rough drafts thrown down towards the foundation of that work. These chapters might not, when the work came to be completely written out and then re-written. according to the author's habit, have appeared in the present order; they might have been incorporated into different parts of the work. It has not been without hesitation that I have yielded to the urgent wish of the editor of this Review to give these chapters to the world; but I have complied with his request because, while they appear to me to possess great intrinsic value as well as special application to the problems now forcing themselves on public attention, they will not, I believe, detract even from the mere literary reputation of their author, but will rather form an example of the patient labour with which good work is done. January, 1879. HELEN TAYLOR.

INTRODUCTORY.

In the great country beyond the Atlantic, which is now well-nigh the most powerful country in the world, and will soon be indisputably so, manhood suffrage prevails. Such is also the political qualification of France since 1848, and has become that of the German Confederation,

L. M.-L.-9.

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