sive opinions, as new as his country, the American seems to have received from Columbus rather the mission of discovering new worlds than of creating them. London, from April till September, 1822. RETURN TO EUROPE-ESCAPE FROM SHIPWRECK. On my return from the wilds to Philadelphia, having hastily noted down on the way, like La Fontaine's old man, the observations I have just related, I was disappointed by not finding there the remittances which I expected; this was the beginning of the pecuniary embarrassments in which I have ever since been plunged. Fortune and I began to quarrel as soon as we caught sight of each other. Herodotus gives an account of certain Indian ants which collected together heaps of gold; according to Athenæus, the Sun gave Hercules a golden ship in which to reach the island of Erythia, the retreat of the Hesperides. Although an ant, I have not the honour of belonging to the great Indian family, and although a sailor, I never crossed the water in any other vessel than one made of pine. It was one of this kind which brought me back from America to Europe. The captain gave me my passage on credit. On the 10th of December, 1791, I embarked with several of my fellow-countrymen, who were returning, like myself, to France, from various motives. The ship was bound for Havre. A westerly gale caught us at the mouth of the Delaware, and carried us across the Atlantic in seventeen days. Often scudding under bare poles, it was with great difficulty that the ship could be brought to. The sun never once shone on us. The vessel, steering by a dead reckoning, was swept along before the surge. I crossed the ocean in the midst of shadows; never did it appear to me so sad. I myself was even more sad; I had been deceived and disappointed in my first outset in life. "Palaces are not built on the sea," says the Persian poet Feryd-Eddin. I felt an indescribable weight at my heart, as of the approach of some great misfortune. Gazing over the waves I tried to read my destiny in them, or wrote, more annoyed by the motion they caused than fearful of their threats. Instead of diminishing as we neared Europe, the tempest increased in force, but it blew in an equal continuous gale; and from the uniformity of its rage, resulted a sort of angry calm in the pale sky and leaden sea. The captain, not having been able to sound, became uneasy; he went up into the shrouds, and looked through his glass at the different points of the horizon. A look-out was stationed on the bowsprit, and another on the maintop-mast crosstrees. The sea became short, and the colour of the water changed, signs of land; but of what land? The Breton sailors have a proverb: "Celui qui voit Belle-Isle, voit son île ; celui voit Groie, voit sa joie; celui qui voit Ouessant, voit son sang." qui I had spent two nights walking on deck, amidst the hissing of the waves in the darkness, the whistling of the wind in the rigging, and the constant dashing of the sea over the deck; all around us was one wild tumult of waters. At the beginning of the third night, wearied with the shocks and motion of the vessel, I retired to bed. The weather was dreadful; my hammock creaked and swung with the dash of the sea, which continually broke over the ship, seeming as if it would shake her very planks asunder. I heard coils of cordage falling on all parts of the deck, and felt the peculiar motion experienced when a ship goes about; the hatchway over the ladder between decks was opened, and a voice, as of some one in fear, called to the captain; this voice, heard through the darkness and the roar of the tempest, had something terrible in its sound. I listened, and thought I heard the sailors discussing the bearing of a coast; I threw myself out of my hammock; at that moment a wave burst into the quarter-deck and inundated the captain's cabin; tables, beds, chests, furniture, and arms, rolled over pell-mell, and I gained the deck half-drowned. On emerging from the hatchway, a sublime spectacle was presented to my eyes. The vessel had tried to put about, but not having been able to succeed, had been driven to lee-ward; the fitful light of the moon, now emerging from a mass of clouds, then instantly hidden again, showed on either side of us, through a yellow haze, lines of coast bristling with rocks; the sea threw up waves like mountains in the canal in which we lay engulphed; sometimes their summits foamed and glittered with sparks of fire, at others presented an oily, vitreous surface, marbled with black, copper-coloured, or greenish spots, according to the colour of the bottom which they lashed. For a few moments, the noise of the abyss of waters and of the wind were mingled in one confusion of sound; but a moment after, we could distinguish the flow of the currents, the hissing noise on the reefs, and the roar of the distant surge. From the hold of the vessel issued sounds which made the hearts of the stoutest sailors quake. The ship's prow met the thick mass of waves with a fearful crash, and torrents of water rushed foaming from the helm, as from the opening of a sluice. Amidst this tumult, nothing was so alarming as a certain dull, murmuring sound, like a vase filling. Lighted by a cresset and kept down by leads, books of navigation, charts, and ships' courses were spread out on a hen-coop. The gale had extinguished the binacle-lamp. Every one had a different opinion about the land in sight. We had entered the channel without perceiving it: the ship reeling with every wave, was drifting between the Isles of Guernsey and Alderney. Shipwreck appeared inevitable, and the passengers held fast what they most prized, to save it with themselves. There were some French sailors among the crew; one of them, in default of a chaplain, raised that hymn to Notre Dame de Bons Secours which had been the earliest lesson of my childhood; I now repeated it in sight of the coast of Brittany, almost under the eyes of my mother. The Protestant American sailors joined heartily in the chaunt of their Catholic French comrades ; danger teaches men their weakness and unites their prayers. Passengers and crew, all were crowded together on deck, some clinging to the rigging, some to the sides, some to the capstern, some to the bills of the anchors, to prevent themselves from being swept away by the surge, or thrown into the sea by the heaving of the vessel. The captain cried, "A hatchet! a hatchet!" to cut away the masts; and the rudder, the tiller having been abandoned, swung hither and thither with a harsh grating sound. One attempt might yet be made to save us; the lead showed only four fathoms of water on a bank of sand crossing the current; it was possible that the surge might lift us over this bank, and float us in deep water; but who would venture to seize the helm, and take the safety of the whole crew into his own hands? one false turn of the helm and we were lost. One of those men who spring from events, the spontaneous offspring of peril, came forward: a New York sailor took the deserted post of the steersman. I still see him in his shirt and canvass trousers, with his bare feet, and flying wet hair, holding the tiller in his strong grasp, while, with his head turned, he watched the approach of the wave which was to save or destroy us. mountain of water, embracing the whole of the channel in which we lay, came rolling along in one unbroken mass, like one sea invading another; large white birds, with their calm flight, preceded it like birds of death. The The vessel struck and heeled; not a word was spoken; but every face was blanched. The wave reached us; at the very moment it touched the vessel, our helmsman gave the turn to the rudder; the ship, which was just ready to fall over on her side, presented her stern, and the very wave which seemed about to engulph, lifted and carried us on its crest; soundings were taken, and showed seventeen fathoms ; a loud huzza burst from all lips; we added the cry "Vive le Roi !" Heaven heard it not for Louis XVI.; it only profited ourselves. young, Though now disengaged from the two islands we were not out of danger. We could not succeed in turning the point of the northern coast; at length, the retiring tide carried us with it, and we doubled Cape de la Hague. I had experienced no terror during this near approach to shipwreck, and felt no joy at having been saved; it is far better to yield up life while one is than to be forced to yield it by time. The next day we reached Havre. The whole population crowded to see us. Our top-masts were broken, our boats carried away, our poop cut down, and we shipped water at every pitch of the vessel. I landed on the jetty; on the 2nd of January, 1792, I again trod my native soil, once more destined to vanish before my gaze. I brought with me, not any Esquimaux from the polar regions, but two savages of an unknown race-Chactas and Atala. Revised in December, 1846. London, from April till September, 1822. I GO TO MY MOTHER AT ST. MALO-PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION-MY MARRIAGE. I WROTE from Havre to my brother in Paris, giving the details of my voyage, explaining the motives of my return, and requesting him to lend me the sum necessary to pay my passage. He replied that he had sent my letter to my mother; she did not keep me waiting, but put me in a condition to pay my debts and quit Havre. In her letter she informed me that Lucile was with her, and also my uncle the Count de Bedée and his family. This news determined me to go to St. Malo, where I could consult my uncle on the subject of my approaching emigration. Revolutions, like rivers, swell as they flow; I found the one I had left in France enormously enlarged, and overflowing its banks; I had left it with Mirabeau under la Constituante; I found it with Danton under la Législative. The news of the treaty of Pilnitz, of the 27th of August, 1791, had reached Paris. On the 14th of December, while I was in the midst of tempests, the king announced that he had written to the princes of the Germanic body (especially to the Elector of Trèves), on the subject of the German armaments. The king's brothers, the Prince de Condé, M. de Calonne, Viscount Mirabeau, and M. de Queille, were immediately accused. A previous decree, of the 9th of November, had been directed against the other emigrés; and it was in these already proscribed ranks that I was hastening to place myself; others would, perhaps, have recoiled; but the right of the strongest always inclines me to take the side of the weakest; the pride of victory is to me insupportable. On my way from Havre to St. Malo, I had opportunity to note the divisions and misfortunes of France; châteaux burned or abandoned; the proprietors, scared by threats, had made their escape; the women had taken refuge in the towns. The hamlets and small towns groaned under the tyranny of clubs connected with the central club of the Cordeliers, afterwards united to the The antagonist to this club, the Societé Monarchique or Societé des Feuillans, was no longer in existence; the ignoble denomination of sans-culottes had become popular; the king was called nothing but Monsieur Veto or Monsieur Capet. I was tenderly received by my mother and the rest of my family, who, nevertheless, deplored the inopportuneness of my return. My uncle, the Count de Bedée, was preparing to go to Jersey with his wife, his sons and his daughters. The question was how to find funds to enable me to join the princes. My voyage to America had made a breach in my fortune; my property was almost annihilated in my portion as younger son by the suppression of the feudal rights; the small benefices which should have fallen to me in virtue of my admission into the order of Malta, had been seized by the nation, along with the other possessions of the clergy. This concurrence of circumstances decided on the gravest act of my life; I was made to marry, in order to procure myself the means of going to risk my life in upholding a cause for which I had no love. There lived in retirement at St. Malo a certain M. de Lavigne, a knight of St. Louis, and formerly commandant of L'Orient. The Count d'Artois had been his guest at the latter town, when he visited Brittany, and had been so charmed with his host, that he promised to grant him any thing he might in future like to ask. This M. de Lavigne had two sons; one of them married Mademoiselle de la Placelière. Two daughters, the children of this |