loathes his idleness. Through an open
window you may look into his plain study,
of which the walls are covered with striped
paper. You may see hanging there, a
portrait of a little child and a map of the world.

Who may this man be? What was he?
A testy East India captain with a liver
complaint, a disappointed Indigo planter,
a crusty widower with a lagging Chancery
suit? No. It is Night now, but Day was.
Ten years before, he stood on the steps of a
throne in Nôtre Dame with the chief of the Catholic
church behind him, with the
dignitaries of that church, the princes of his empire,
the marshals of his armies, the ladies of his
court, the flower of his subjects on his right
hand and on his left. He was arrayed in
velvet, satin, and gold, laurels on his head and
a sceptre in his hand. He was Napoleon the
Great, Empereur et roi; now he is General
Bonaparte, a prisoner at St. Helena, at the
beck and call of an English orderly officer.
The portrait of the little child is that of the
King of Rome, whose melancholy double, the
pale young man in a white coat, is to
be Metternichised in Vienna yonder, and the
map is of the world which was to have been his
inheritance.

Again. We are in the pit of an Italian
theatre. Wax tapers, in bell-shaped shades,
flare round the dress-circle, for we are in the
eighteenth century, and as yet gas and fish-
tail burners are not. Gaudy frescoes decorate
the front of the tiers of boxes; the palisade of
the orchestra is surmounted with a spiked
chevaux-de-frise; the occupants of the pit wear
cocked-hats and wigs, and, in the dress circle,
the beaux wear laced ruffles and sparkling-
hilted swords, and the belles powder and
patches. In one of the proscenium-boxes is
the Grand Duke, sitting, imposing in
embroidery; behind him are his suite, standing
humble in ditto. The corresponding loge on
the other side of the proscenium is empty.
The first act of the opera is over, and an
intermediary ballet is being performed. An
impossible shepherd, in blue satin trunks, a
cauliflower wig, and carrying a golden crook,
makes choregraphic overtures, to live with him
and be his love, to an apocryphal shepherdess
in a robe Pompadour and hair-powder. You
would see such a pair nowhere else save in
Arcadia, or in Wardour Street, and in Dresden
China. More shepherds and shepherdesses
execute pastoral gambadoes, and the
divertissement is over. Then commences the second
act of the opera. About this time, verging on
half-past nine in the evening, you hear the
door of the vacant private box open. An easy
chair is brought down to the front, and a book
of the opera, a bottle of essences, and a golden
snuff-box are placed upon the ledge before it.
Anon enters unto these an infirm, staggering,
broken-looking old man, with a splendid dress
hanging in slovenly magnificence on his half-
palsied limbs. He has a bloated countenance,
marbled with purple stains, a heavy eye-lid
and a blood-shot eye that once must have been
bright blue. Every feature is shattered,
weary, drooping, and flaccid. Every nerve is
unstrung: the man is a wreck, and an
unsightly one. His flabby hands are covered
with rings, a crumpled blue ribbon crosses his
breast, and round his neck hangs another
ribbon, from which dangles something that
sparkles, like a diamond star. Finally, he
is more than three parts inebriated. It is easy
to understand that from his unsteady hand,
from the dozing torpor into which he
occasionally falls, from the querulous incoherence
of his speech, from the anxiety manifested by
the thin, pale, old man in uniform, with the
cross of a commander of Saint Louis, and the
hard featured gentlemen with silver thistles in
their cravats, who stand on either side of their
master, and seem momentarily to fear that he
will fall out of his chair. The beaux and
belles in the dress circle do not seem to
express much curiosity at the advent of this
intoxicated gentleman. They merely whisper
"E il Signore Cavaliere: he is very far gone
to-night," or words to that effect. The
spectacle is no novelty. The opera is that most
beautiful one by Gluck, Orfeo. The Orpheus
of the evening, in a Grecian tunic, but
bewigged and powdered according to orthodoxy,
is singing the sublime lament, " Che farò senza
Euridice? " The beautiful wailing melody
floats upwards, and for a moment the belles
forget to flirt, and the beaux to swagger.
Cambric handkerchiefs are used for other
purposes than to assure the owner that the
rouge on the cheeks holds fast, and is not
coming off. What is the slovenly magnifico
opposite the Grand Duke doing? During the
prelude he was nodding his head and breathing
stertorously; but as the song proceeds, he
sits erect in his chair; his blue eye dilates;
a score of years of seams and furrows on his
brows and cheeks vanish: he is a man. But
the strain concludes, and his Excellency bursts
into a fit of passionate weeping, and has
recourse to the bottle of essences.

His Excellency has not spent a pleasant
day. He has been bullied by his chaplain,
snubbed by his chamberlain, and has had a
deadly quarrel with his favorite. Moreover
his dinner has disagreed with him,
and he has drunk a great deal more, both
before and after it, than is good for him. Are
these tears merely the offspring of maudlin
drunkenness; or has the music touched some
responsive chord of the cracked lyre, sent
some thoughts of what he was through his
obfuscated brain clouded with wine of Alicant
and strong waters? Have the strains he has
heard to-night, some mysterious connection
(as only music can have) with his youth, his
dead happiness, his hopes crushed for ever;—
with the days when he was Charles Edward
Stuart, pretending to the Crown of England;
when he rode through the streets of
Edinburgh at the head of the clans amid the
crooning of the bagpipes, the shouts of his