What was the reason of Rochefort's abominable campaign against the martyr from the Devil's Island? Since he styled himself a democrat, the champion of liberty and justice, the enemy of tyranny-one would have expected to see the fierce old journalist fighting vigorously for Dreyfus. The fact is, Rochefort was a mass of contradictions, an imp of perversity: at once brutal and humane, gentle and bloodthirsty, simple and vain; the most chaotic Frenchman that ever died. Search his autobiography, in three portly volumes: not once do you find him resting, smiling, or reflecting-it is all thunder and lightning, an everlasting storm. Exile duels-fines and imprisonment-wild, delirious attacks upon the Government of the day. No one escaped; for fifty years, in the columns of the Figaro, the Lanterne, the Intransigeant, and finally in the Patrie, Rochefort pursued Presidents and politicians with his unique, extravagant vocabulary. M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader, was "a decayed turnip"; M. Georges Clemenceau, "a loathsome leper"; M. Briand, "a moulting vulture." As for M. Combes, to the guillotine with him-and to the Seine with M. Delcassé-and a rope and a boulevard lamp-post for M. Pelletan. Then President Loubet was "the foulest of assassins"; President Fallières, "the fat old satyr of the Elysée"; and Mme. Marguerite Steinheil, "the Black Panther."

For the life of me I could trace nothing of the "panther" in Mme. Steinheil during the ten terrible days that she sat in the dock of the dim, oak-panelled Paris Assize Court. As for her "blackness," Rochefort was referring to her clothes. Never even in Paris (where a widow's weeds are perhaps excessively lugubrious) have I seen deeper mourning: heavy crape bands round the accused woman's black dress, stiff crape bows in the

widow's cap, a deep sombre border to the handkerchief which she clenched tightly, convulsively in her blackgloved hand. Then, under her eyes, dark, dark, shadows-which turned green as the trial tragically wore on. Impossible not to sympathize with the prisoner who, with all her follies and faults, was certainly not the murderess of her husband and mother. Not the shadow of a proof against herbut what cared Rochefort for evidence and arguments? Leaning forward in his seat in the press-box, his sallow face distorted with fury, he fixed the "Tragic Widow" with his steely cruel eyes. ("I think he was trying to hypnotize me certainly to terrify me," relates Mme. Steinheil in her Memoirs.) Again and again he cracked his lozenges; gesticulated angrily with his large yellow hand. During the adjournments, he held forth violently in the corridors of the Law Courts. Not only was Mme. Steinheil the murderess of her mother and husband, but she was also the assassin of President Félix Faure. She poisoned him in the Elysée, at the instigation of the Jews, who knew that so long as Faure remained President there would be no revision of the Dreyfus affair. So, a triple murderess-and "crack, crack" went the lozenges. Later, when it became certain that Mme. Steinheil would be acquitted, Rochefort declared that judge and jury had been "bought"; and that the Government had all along protected the "Black Panther." His hands were trembling, the sallow face had turned livid, when at one o'clock in the morning the jury filed into the dim, stifling court to deliver their verdict. It was "Not Guilty" on all counts-and then a scene of the wildest enthusiasm. Cries of "Vive Mme. Steinheil," and "Vive la Justice!" Rocking and swaying to and fro on the rickety benches, the barristers cheered, applauded, and flung their black képis into the air.

Up, too, went the képis of the charming women barristers; more shouts and bravoes from the journalists and the public at the back of the Court. And Mme. Steinheil? She had fainted, and was being carried out of the dock by the Municipal Guards. And Henri Rochefort? Shaking, speechless with rage he roughly pushed his way out of Court-cracking his lozenges with such savagery that he must have very nearly broken his teeth.

However, as I have said, there were two Henri Rocheforts-and the virtues of the second almost made amends for the vices of the first.

The second Rochefort quickly revealed himself at the age of twenty. He was a medical student, and, on witnessing a surgical operation, fainted. Said the surgeon to the student's father, the aristocratic old Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay: "Your son is either a remarkable fellow, or a fool." Shortly afterwards young Rochefort harangued the surgeon and his fellow students upon the "iniquities" of vivisection; and that ended his short medical career. Another outburst at the Hotel de Ville, where Rochefort next accepted a petty clerkship at a pound a week. His colleagues were underpaid and overworked: a scarcity of light and utter lack of ventilation in the dusty, shabby office-rooms, resulted in cases of acute anæmia and consumption. "We must have light-floods of it. We must have air-great, healthy draughts of it," shouted youthful Rochefort to a high official. "I'm strong enough myself and don't care; but look at your other clerks. Martyrs, victims! "De l'air, de la lumière, nom de Dieu!" It is reported that the high official-a stout, pompous, apoplectic soul-was struck dumb by Rochefort's invasion of his private sanctum. At last he gasped, "If you were not the son of a Marquis." But Rochefort inter

rupted, "My father is dead. He died a fortnight ago. But I have no predilection for titles. My name is Henri Rochefort." For all that, Rochefort was something of an aristocrat-"la race" remained, in spite of his assumption of democracy. He was, in fine, a democrat-aristocrat-most chaotic of combinations: and therein lay the secret of his turbulence and incoherency. Like all French aristocrats, he was a militarist at heart. He was the ally of Boulanger. He was the hottest champion of Paul Déroulède, when that well-meaning but impossible "patriot" attempted his celebrated coup d'état, on the morning of President Félix Faure's funeral, by establishing General Roget as a military dictator in the Elysée. He was, furthermore, an anti-Semite. "Pale, white blood," he cried disdainfully of the French noblesse. His own blood was vigorously red-but tinged indelibly with blue. Yes; "la race" remained, persistedclashed inevitably with the true spirit of democracy. And hence, the chaos, the thunder-and-lightning; from out of which there nevertheless shone tenderness, chivalry, and a love of beautiful things. He loved music, sculpture, pictures and whilst urging on France to declare war against England over the Fashoda affair, announced in my hearing that he would rather annex a portrait by Reynolds than a province in the Soudan. He loved animals, and animals loved him. Wild fury of Rochefort when a bull-fight was advertised to take place at Enghien-lesBains, a fast, tawdry little gambling resort on the outskirts of Paris. When the Government declined to forbid it, down to Enghien went Rochefort and a number of friends. Sallowfaced old Rochefort seized hold of the "impresario" who was organizing the bull-fight, and shook him. "I and my friends are going to wreck your arena," he shouted. Nor did he release the

"impresario" until the latter had promised that the bull-fight should not take place. Then, if Rochefort had been all vindictiveness and luridness, how could it possibly have come to pass that he was the guest of the greathearted Victor Hugo, when both of them were exiles in Brussels? And if the hoarse-voiced, steely-eyed old journalist had been all venom and savagery, how came it that he was the devoted, admiring friend of that very noble, if disconcerting, apostle of humanity-Louise Michel, "the Red Vir

gin."

Michel

Londoners may remember the frail, thin, shabby little woman who denounced social injustices in a dingy hall in a back street off Tottenham Court Road some ten years ago. In appearance she was nothing-until she spoke. And when Louise spoke, ah dear me, how one realized the miseries grimly and heroically endured by the poor of this topsy-turvy world! The shabby, frail, little figurewith the big, inspired eyes-became galvanized. From London to Paris, from Paris to every European capital, travelled the "Red Virgin"-incomparably eloquent, the woes and sufferings of her fellow-creatures at once crushing and supporting her. Herself, she cared nothing for. The same old threadbare black dress; the eternal dim attics and meagre food; the same old self-sacrifice, the same old despair, the same old breakdowns from weakness and exhaustion.

Rochefort-Victor Henri Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay-sought her out in her attics. When the "Red Virgin" was travelling and lecturing abroad, Rochefort instructed his foreign correspondents to look after her. He bought her a country house, which she promptly sold; he gave her an annuity, which she mortgaged; he arranged that his tradespeople should serve her in his name: but house, annuity, pro

visions-everything went to the poor. "I can do nothing with her," Rochefort once told me. "I believe the only time she takes food is when I insist upon feeding her myself. She is at once sublime and adorable and ridiculous! When I tell her she is killing herself, she replies, "Tant pis, mon petit Henri. But you yourself will die one of these days.'" A week later, Louise Michel expired suddenly, from exhaustion, at Marseilles. Sallowfaced, white-headed, red-eyed old Rochefort was the chief mourner at the funeral. As he walked, bent, trembling, behind the hearse of the "Red Virgin"-crack, crack went the loz

enges.

The month of June, 1912. Rochefort's daily article in the Patrie missing; and again missing the next day, and the day after that-the first time octogenarian Rochefort has "missed" his daily lurid article for fifty-two years.

On the fourth day, there appears in the Patrie the following intimation: "I shall soon reach my eighty-second year; and it is now half a century since I have worked without a rest even in prison or in exile, at the hard trade of a journalist, which is the first and the most noble of all professions-when it is not the lowest. I think I have earned the right to a rest. But it will only be a short one. My old teeth can still bite."

However, the "rest" in the country is prolonged-and the teeth don't "bite" again. Eyesight becomes misty. Hearing next fails. Behold Rochefort in a dressing-gown, stretched on an invalid's chair in a drowsy country garden-whence he is transported, as a last hope, to Aix-les-Bains: where he dies.

The 30th June, 1913. Day of Rochefort's funeral. All Paris lining the boulevards and streets as the cortège, half-a-mile long, passes by. A crowd

of all kinds and conditions of Parisians. Here's M. Jaurès, "the decayed turnip." There's M. Clemenceau, "the loathsome leper." Over there, M. Briand, "the moulting vulture." And their heads are uncovered; there's not the faintest resentment in their minds; as the remains of lurid yet kindly old Rochefort are borne away round the corner under a magnificent purple pall. The Contemporary Review.

Round the corner; and up the steep hill to the vast, rambling Montmartre Cemetery. Tombs, shadows, silence, mystery within the cemetery walls; but beyond them, the hectic arms of the Moulin Rouge, and the lurid lights of night restaurants. In this mixed atmosphere contradictory, lies Henri Rochefort: an appropriate restingplace.

John F. Macdonald.

I. said

"Grandpapa," Anne-Hilarion, "please to tell me what is 'ven-al-ity?' Mr Elphinstone looked up. “Eh, what, child?”

"I read in this great book," proceeded Anne-Hilarion, in his clear, precise, and oddly stressed English, "This ven-al-ity co-in-cid-ing with the spirit of in-de-pend-ence and en-cro-ach-ment com-mon to all the Pol-y-gars pro-cured them-"

"God bless my soul, what book have you got hold of?" demanded the old man, but before he could finish pulling himself out of his arm-chair by the fire there was a knock at the library door, which, opening, revealed an elderly woman in a cap.

a

"Master Anne's bedtime," said she, in

Scotch accent and severely, and stood waiting. Almost at the same moment there appeared by her side an old man of obviously Continental nationality. In his hands was a salver; on the salver, a china bowl. "M. le Comte mangera-t-il ici avant de monter, ou dans sa chambre?" he inquired.

The little Franco-Scottish boy who was both "Master Anne" and "M. le Comte" looked from his retainers to his grandfather. What he desired was so clearly visible in his expression that Mr. Elphinstone, whipping off his spectacles, said,

"He will have his bread-and-milk down here, Baptiste. I will ring for you, Elspeth, a little later."

The housekeeper retired, with a tightening of her tight lips, and Baptiste, advancing victoriously, placed the steaming bowl on the table, beside the volume of Orme's "British India" which had been engaging the child's attention. Anne-Hilarion, who had screwed himself round in his chair, turned his dangling legs once more table-wards.

For a few minutes nothing was heard in the large book-lined room but the noise of a spoon stirring the contents of a bowl, while the old gentleman by the fire resumed his reading. But presently the spoon grew slower in its rounds, and Mr. Elphinstone, looking up, beheld a large silent tear on its way to join the bread-and-milk. "My child, what is the matter?" he exclaimed in dismay. "Is it too hot?" M. le Comte produced a handkerchief. "I think," he said falteringly, "that I want my papa."

"My poor lamb," murmured the old man. "I wish to God I could give him to you! See now, my bairn, if you were to bring your bowl here, and sit on grandpapa's knee?" He held out his arms, and the small boy slipped from his chair, went to him, and, climbing to his lap, wept a little,

silently, while his bread-and-milk steamed neglected on the table. Mr. Elphinstone's faded apple cheek was pressed tightly on the top of the brown, silky head, and the deep frilled muslin collar round Anne-Hilarion's throat was crumpled, unregarded, against his breast.

It was a July evening of 1795 that filled the big London house with dying radiance; but though it was high summer there was a fire in the library, because Mr. Elphinstone was an old man and a sedentary, and still felt England cold after long years in India, and because M. le Comte de Flavigny had had whooping-cough in the spring. By that fire there sat now with Mr. Elphinstone two shadows. One was a real shade, Janet Elphinstone, Marquise de Flavigny, whom her son could scarcely remember, though to her father it seemed only yesterday that she, a child, had slept thus on his knee, all rosy and tumbled. The other, God help him, might be a shade too by this time-her husband, the French émigré, René-Constant, Marquis de Flavigny, gone with hundreds of other Royalist exiles on that ill-fated expedition to Quiberon concerning which sinister rumors were even now afloat. And that was why, however much AnneHilarion desired it, he could not have his father back this evening

II.

"I wonder how far it really is to France," speculated M. le Comte next day, sitting at the window of his nursery and looking down into the square. "It does not help that Elspeth should say 'a great way' and that Baptiste should tell me how very ill he was when he came over with M. le Marquis years ago. I know that one goes there in a boat; I wish I had a boat. I might have asked the gentleman who told me stories about the sea that day at Richmond, when grand

papa took me there in the spring, for he was lieutenant de marine. I wish that M. de Soucy would come here again, and I would ask him. If he were not so poor he would consent to dine with us more often, grandpapa says."

The Comte de Flavigny had a fairly extensive acquaintance among the colony of French émigrés in London, Mr. Elphinstone keeping open house for any of his son-in-law's friends. Among these more or less destitute gentlemen Anne-Hilarion especially favored a former companion-in-arms of his father's, a certain Chevalier de Soucy, older than the Marquis, but almost fantastically devoted to him, yet prevented, by a wound recently received in one of the many small gun-running expeditions on the Breton coast, from enlisting with his friend in the émigré regiments destined for Quiberon. So he was still in his lodgings in Golden Square, eking out a living by teaching his native tongue.

And Anne-Hilarion, sitting this morning on his window-seat, thought a good deal about M. de Soucy. He had no chimerical visions of setting out for France by himself, for his was a singularly sane mind. But it did appear to him that, with a little encouragement, M. le Chevalier, who had seemed so disappointed at having to remain behind, might be induced to go, privately as it were, and to take him with him-not, of course, to fight, but just to find papa. The difficulty was that the Chevalier, ruined by the Revolution, was very poor. Grandpapa said so, and indeed M. de Soucy himself, always with a laugh. But if he, Anne-Hilarion, proposed such an expedition, it was surely his duty to defray its cost. Could he do this? He had, in his money-box, a crown-piece which would not go through the hole in the lid, and which grandpapa had therefore introduced by means less