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![[ Team LiB ] 1.1 Create a Bound List Box It used to be that when you wanted to create a data entry form, you just assigned a recordset to the data control and allowed the users to scroll through the data, making changes as needed. When you're dealing with Client Server or Web applications, this just doesn't cut it. One of the first things you need to do is provide a method to limit the amount of data so that users can pick which record they want to edit/view, without pulling all the fields of a table over the Net—either LAN or Internet. List boxes and combo boxes help with that. In this How-To, you will learn how to set up two data controls: OleDbDataAdapter and DataSet. These controls enable you to populate a list box with one line of code. You want to see a list of customers on your Windows form in a ListBox control. You don't want to write code at this point. You only want to prototype a form, so you just want to use bound data controls. How do you create a list box and bind it using the data controls? Technique To get started with learning about any of the objects used for data in .NET, it's important to talk about what .NET Namespaces are and how to use them. Using .NET Namespaces The .NET Framework contains a big class library. This class library consists of a number of Namespaces. These Namespaces are made up of various classes that allow us to create our objects. All of the objects and classes that make up the .NET objects, such as forms, controls, and the various data objects, can be found in Namespaces. Namespaces also can be made up of other Namespaces. For example, there is a Namespace called System.Data. Although this Namespace has classes in it, such as DataSet and DataTable, it also has Namespaces within it called System.Data.OleDb and System.Data.SQLClient, as well as others. To check out the .NET Namespaces, choose Object Browser from the View menu. You can then expand the System.Data Namespace to see the other Namespaces contained within. If you are positive that the database you are going to be working with is SQL Server, then you would be far better served performance-wise to use the classes found in the System.Data.SQLClient Namespace. However, if you are not sure what database you will be working against, you should use the classes found in System.Data.OleDb. For this book, I am using objects created from the classes in the System.Data.OleDb Namespace. That way, you can use the routines against other databases with less modifications. Tip](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/13214-250627152054-96ea7be8/75/Database-Programming-with-Visual-Basic-NET-and-ADO-NET-Tips-Tutorials-and-Code-1st-Edition-Barker-11-2048.jpg)
![Beware: There is much code here, and you don't want to change it. You can learn a lot from reading it though. As you continue to use the Data Controls shown here, you will become comfortable with changing various properties and getting more power and use out of them. [ Team LiB ]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/13214-250627152054-96ea7be8/75/Database-Programming-with-Visual-Basic-NET-and-ADO-NET-Tips-Tutorials-and-Code-1st-Edition-Barker-18-2048.jpg)
![[ Team LiB ] 1.2 Limit the Data Displayed in a Bound List Box Even populating a list box with a couple of columns from a table full of data can be a big performance hit. This How-To shows you how to create a parameterized SQL statement to limit the items that are displayed in the list box, thus giving you better performance on your forms. You have hundreds of thousands of customers in your database, and you don't want the list box loaded up with the whole customer table. How can you limit the data that is displayed in your list box? Technique You are going to make a copy of the form that you created in How-To 1.1. You will then add a Label and TextBox control that the Select statement contained within the OleDbDataAdapter control will query against to limit the data displayed in the list box. A command button will be added to allow you to call the Fill method of the OleDbDataAdapter control whenever you update the text box, and then you can click the command button (see Figure 1.6 ). Figure 1.6. You can now limit the amount of data loaded into the list box. Steps To get started with this How-To, right-click the form you created in How-To 1.1, which should be listed in the Solutions Explorer. Choose Copy from the pop-up menu. Next, right-click the project in the Solution Explorer, and choose Paste from the pop-up menu. You will now have a new Class object in the Solutions Explorer called Copy Of whatever the previous name of the form was . Rename the new form that you have created to the name you desire. Then, with that form highlighted, click on the Code button above the Solutions Explorer. Change the first line of code to say this: Public Class <Name of the new form>](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/13214-250627152054-96ea7be8/75/Database-Programming-with-Visual-Basic-NET-and-ADO-NET-Tips-Tutorials-and-Code-1st-Edition-Barker-19-2048.jpg)
![Try entering a few other letters, and then try entering no letters. What happens? You limit the list more by the number of letters you enter, and you get all entries when you don't enter any letters. The method displayed here, although simple, is powerful, and it can be used in a variety of ways. You can continue building on this form for the next few How-Tos. If you want to copy your form and start a new one as described at the beginning of the steps for this one, you have the instructions there. Otherwise, by the time you reach How-To 1.8, you will have a data entry form that you can use. Each step, however, is available in the sample solution for this chapter. [ Team LiB ]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/13214-250627152054-96ea7be8/75/Database-Programming-with-Visual-Basic-NET-and-ADO-NET-Tips-Tutorials-and-Code-1st-Edition-Barker-22-2048.jpg)
![[ Team LiB ] 1.3 Bind and View Individual Text Boxes Based Off a Selected List Box Item Using a list box similar to the one in the previous How-To, in this How-To, you will learn how to create additional OleDbDataAdapter s and DataSets and bind them to individual text boxes for viewing data. Although the list box is nice for displaying a couple of fields in my form and limiting the rows displayed, how do you list the detail in individual text boxes by clicking on an item in the list box? Technique You are going to enhance the form that you created in How-To 1.2 to use additional data controls, specifically another data adapter and dataset. You will set up the select statement in the new data adapter to take the selected list box item as a parameter. The dataset will then be filled with data, and some text boxes with the dataset set as the data source will display the current record. You can see an example of this in Figure 1.7 . Figure 1.7. You can bind text boxes to datasets as well as list boxes. Steps To go further with the form with which you have been working, you will want to rename the data adapter, dataset, and list box currently on the form to something more meaningful. You can see this in Table 1.4 . ListBox Name ListBox1 lstCustomers](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/13214-250627152054-96ea7be8/75/Database-Programming-with-Visual-Basic-NET-and-ADO-NET-Tips-Tutorials-and-Code-1st-Edition-Barker-23-2048.jpg)
![brandy; and, finally, we agreed that we would go and see the poor fellow’s corpse, and witness, if necessary, his burial. Flapper, who had joined us, was the first to propose this visit: he said he did not mind the fifteen francs which Jack owed him for billiards, but that he was anxious to get back his pistol. Accordingly, we sallied forth, and speedily arrived at the hotel which Attwood inhabited still. He had occupied, for a time, very fine apartments in this house; and it was only on arriving there that day, that we found he had been gradually driven from his magnificent suite of rooms au premier, to a little chamber in the fifth story: —we mounted, and found him. It was a little shabby room, with a few articles of rickety furniture, and a bed in an alcove; the light from the one window was falling full upon the bed and the body. Jack was dressed in a fine lawn shirt: he had kept it, poor fellow, to die in; for in all his drawers and cupboards, there was not a single article of clothing: he had pawned everything by which he could raise a penny—desk, books, dressing-case, and clothes; and not a single halfpenny was found in his possession.[2] He was lying as I have drawn him, one hand on his breast, the other falling towards the ground. There was an expression of perfect calm on the face, and no mark of blood to stain the side towards the light. On the other side, however, there was a great pool of black blood, and in it the pistol; it looked more like a toy than a weapon to take away the life of this vigorous young man. In his forehead, at the side, was a small black wound; Jack’s life had passed through it; it was little bigger than a mole. . . . . . ‘Regardez un peu,’ said the landlady; ‘messieurs, il m’a gâté trois matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs.’ This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed the landlady four-and-forty francs. In the whole world there was not a soul to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/13214-250627152054-96ea7be8/75/Database-Programming-with-Visual-Basic-NET-and-ADO-NET-Tips-Tutorials-and-Code-1st-Edition-Barker-37-2048.jpg)
![time to be wicked; except in the case of a siege and the sack of a town, when a little licence can offend nobody.’] By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider’s biography, we had grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that experience so remarkable in youth) my whole history—my course of studies, my pleasant country life, the names and qualities of my dear relations, and my occupations in the vestry before religion was abolished by order of the Republic. In the course of my speech I recurred so often to the name of my cousin Mary, that the gentleman could not fail to perceive what a tender place she had in my heart. Then we reverted to The Sorrows of Werther, and discussed the merits of that sublime performance. Although I had before felt some misgivings about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite yearned towards him. He talked about love and sentiment in a manner which made me recollect that I was in love myself; and you know that when a man is in that condition, his taste is not very refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse appearing sublime to him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with his own situation. ‘Candid youth!’ cried my unknown, ‘I love to hear thy innocent story, and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our cares as men, and be boys, as thou art, again!’ Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand. I blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met with one who was so likely to aid me. What a slanderous world it is! thought I; the people in our village call these Republicans wicked and bloody-minded; a lamb could not be more tender than this sentimental bottle-nosed gentleman! The worthy man then gave me to understand that he held a place under Government. I was busy in endeavouring to discover what his situation might be, when the door of the next apartment opened, and Schneider made his appearance. At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new acquaintance, and gave him, to my astonishment, something very like a blow. ‘You drunken, talking fool,’ he said, ‘you are always after your time. Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting until you have](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/13214-250627152054-96ea7be8/75/Database-Programming-with-Visual-Basic-NET-and-ADO-NET-Tips-Tutorials-and-Code-1st-Edition-Barker-58-2048.jpg)
Database Programming with Visual Basic NET and ADO NET Tips Tutorials and Code 1st Edition Barker
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- 5. 1 1.1 Create aBound List Box 1 1.2 Limit the Data Displayed in a Bound List Box 9 1.3 Bind and View Individual Text Boxes Based Off a Selected List Box Item 13 1.4 Edit and Update Data Using Bound Controls 21 1.5 Add and Delete Records Using Bound Controls 27 1.6 Take Care of Error Handling with Bound Controls 32 1.7 Put the Finishing Touches on a Data Bound Form 37 1.8 Bind Data to ComboBox and DataGrid Controls 42 1.9 Drill Down to Data in the DataGrid Control 46 10.1 Create a Report Using Crystal Reports Report Expert 54 10.2 Display a Report That Was Created 64 10.3 Add Calculated Fields to the Crystal Reports Report 70 10.4 Select Whether the Report Will Be Displayed, Printed, or Exported Using Visual Basic .NET Code 73 10.5 Determine Which Records Will Be Printed at Runtime 80 10.6 Print Labels and Control the Order in Which Records Will Be Printed 85 10.7 Create an Onscreen Report That Contains Hyperlinks 90 11.1 Create Windows NT/2000 Users 94 11.10 Use Object Permissions 99 11.11 Use Fixed Database Roles 102 11.12 Create Custom Database Roles 106 11.13 Create Application Roles 109 11.2 Create Windows NT/2000 Groups 111 11.3 Establish a Windows NT/2000 Authentication Mode 114 11.4 Establish Mixed-Mode Authentication 118 11.5 Create a Standard Login 120 11.6 Create a Windows NT/2000 Login 123 11.7 Use a Fixed Server Role 125 11.8 Create a Database User Account 129 11.9 Use Statement Permissions 132 12.1 Use XMLWriter to Create an XML Document 135 12.2 Use XMLReader to Read an XML Document 143 12.3 Work with the XML Document Object Model 147 12.4 Retrieve XML from SQL Server 2000 154 12.5 Work with Datasets and XML 159
- 6. 13.1 Get Startedwith XML Web Services 164 13.2 Create a Simple XML Web Service Using Parameters 172 13.3 Consume XML Web Services 177 13.4 Pass a Dataset Back from an XML Web Service 181 2 2.1 Create a New SQL Server Database from Within Visual Studio .NET 186 2.2 Define Tables and Fields 188 2.3 Define a Primary Key and Other Indexes 193 2.4 Define Relations Between Tables 197 2.5 Define Defaults and Constraints 202 2.6 Create Views 205 2.7 Create Stored Procedures 209 3 3.1 Retrieve Data by Using the DataReader Object 212 3.2 Retrieve Results from SQL Server by Using the DataTable Object 217 3.3 Locate Records with the DataTable Object 219 3.4 Filter and Sort Records Using the DataView Object 223 4 4.1 Edit Data and Update Changes That Are Made to an ADO.NET DataSet Object 229 4.2 Add and Delete Rows in a Dataset with ADO.NET 241 4.3 Execute Parameterized Stored Procedures in ADO.NET 246 4.4 Create and Execute On-the-Fly Batch Updates by Using ADO.NET 249 5 5.1 Use Bound Controls with Web Forms 253 5.2 Validate Data Using Validation Controls 263 5.3 Populate DropDown and ListBox Controls 269 5.4 Display Data Using the Table Control 276 5.5 Display Data Using the Repeater Control 281 5.6 Display, Sort, and Page Data in the DataGrid Control 289 5.7 Add, Edit, and Delete Data Using the DataGrid Control 295 5.8 Hyperlink from a Row in the Data Grid to a Detail Page 306 6 6.1 Retrieve Unique Records Using Only a Select Query 311 6.2 Use Variables and Functions in T-SQL 317 6.3 Use Wildcards and Ranges of Values in a SQL Query 321 6.4 Find Records in a Table Without Corresponding Entries in a Related Table 327
- 7. 6.5 Take Advantageof Using Subqueries 331 6.6 Create, Modify, and Delete Tables 335 6.7 Create a New Table with Data from Existing Tables 342 6.8 Create and Call SQL Server 2000 User-Defined Functions 346 7 7.1 Create a Dialog Box to Connect to a New Database, Including Listing Available SQL Servers and Databases 353 7.2 Back Up and Verify a SQL Server Database 362 7.3 Restore a SQL Server Database 371 7.4 Transfer Tables Between SQL Server Databases 376 7.5 Create a Detach/Attach SQL Server Database Dialog Box 386 8 8.1 Work with Data-Bound Multi-Select List Boxes Using Windows Forms 394 8.2 Use a Single Windows Form to Update Multiple Lookup Tables 403 8.3 Create a Point-and-Click SQL Server Query Tool for Users Using a Windows Form 409 8.4 Make a Generic Search Form in a Visual Basic .NET Desktop Application 417 8.5 Work with Data-Bound Multi-Select List Boxes Using Web Forms 428 8.6 Use a Single Web Form to Update Multiple Lookup Tables 438 8.7 Create a Point-and-Click Query Tool for Users Using a Web Form 454 8.8 Make a Generic Search Form in an ASP.NET Web Application 462 9 9.1 Define a Class in Visual Basic .NET 472 9.2 Create a Class That Implements the Interface You Defined 478 9.3 Use Visual Studio .NET Tools to Speed Up Writing ADO.NET Code 486 9.4 Control the Creation and Behavior of Classes 499 9.5 Implement the Methods That Update the Database 505 9.6 Validate Data Passed to Properties and Communicate Errors to Developers 514 9.7 Write Data Validation Code That Can Be Reused in Other Classes 520 A About the Author 533 Acknowledgments 534 Appendix A. Desktop Development With ADO 535 C Chapter 1. Developing Windows Forms Using Bound Controls 536 Chapter 10. Creating Reports Using Crystal Reports 537 Chapter 11. Managing SQL Server Security 538 Chapter 12. Utilizing XML Data In Your Visual Basic .NET Applications 539
- 8. Chapter 13. CreatingXML Web Services 540 Chapter 2. Creating SQL Server Database Objects From Visual Studio .NET 542 Chapter 3. Viewing Data With ADO.NET 543 Chapter 4. Manipulating Data With ADO.NET 544 Chapter 5. Working With Data In Web Forms 545 Chapter 6. Creating Transact-SQL Commands 546 Chapter 7. Performing Common Database Tasks Using SQL-DMO 547 Chapter 8. Taking Advantage of Data-Driven Techniques 550 Chapter 9. Using Classes With Databases to Make Life Easier 553 Comments 554 Conclusion 555 Copyright 556 Creating SQL Server Objects with ActiveX Data Objects 558 D Dealing with Stateless Programming 560 Differences Between ADO and ADO.NET 563 E Executing a SQL Server Stored Procedure By Using ActiveX Data Objects 564 Executing Batch Updates with ADO and SQL Server 566 I Index 568 Index A 569 Index B 573 Index C 581 Index D 608 Index E 622 Index F 625 Index G 633 Index H 634 Index I 636 Index J 638 Index K 639 Index L 640 Index M 645 Index N 649 Index O 651
- 9. Index P 657 IndexQ 665 Index R 666 Index S 675 IndexSYMBOL 687 Index T 688 Index U 694 Index V 696 Index W 700 Index X 706 Introduction 709 L Looking At the ADO Object Models 710 Looking at the SQL Server DMF APIs 712 M Main Page 714 O Objects That Are Found in ADO.NET 715 Overview of the XML Web Services Infrastructure 719 R Referencing the Type Libraries 721 S Setting References in .NET for the SQL APIs 723 T Table of content 724 Tell Us What You Think! 728 U Using the 'Connection' Object 729 Utilizing Properties for Tables and Columns 732 W Ways of Utilizing XML in .NET 734 What's Covered in 'Database Programming with Visual Basic .NET and ADO.NET: Tips, Tutorials, and Code'? 735 When to Use ADO (Local Database/Single Tier Applications) 737 Who Is This Book For? 738 Working with Tables, Columns, and Rows 739 Working with the ADO 'Recordset' Object 740
- 10. X XML Namespaces in.NET 744
- 11. [ Team LiB] 1.1 Create a Bound List Box It used to be that when you wanted to create a data entry form, you just assigned a recordset to the data control and allowed the users to scroll through the data, making changes as needed. When you're dealing with Client Server or Web applications, this just doesn't cut it. One of the first things you need to do is provide a method to limit the amount of data so that users can pick which record they want to edit/view, without pulling all the fields of a table over the Net—either LAN or Internet. List boxes and combo boxes help with that. In this How-To, you will learn how to set up two data controls: OleDbDataAdapter and DataSet. These controls enable you to populate a list box with one line of code. You want to see a list of customers on your Windows form in a ListBox control. You don't want to write code at this point. You only want to prototype a form, so you just want to use bound data controls. How do you create a list box and bind it using the data controls? Technique To get started with learning about any of the objects used for data in .NET, it's important to talk about what .NET Namespaces are and how to use them. Using .NET Namespaces The .NET Framework contains a big class library. This class library consists of a number of Namespaces. These Namespaces are made up of various classes that allow us to create our objects. All of the objects and classes that make up the .NET objects, such as forms, controls, and the various data objects, can be found in Namespaces. Namespaces also can be made up of other Namespaces. For example, there is a Namespace called System.Data. Although this Namespace has classes in it, such as DataSet and DataTable, it also has Namespaces within it called System.Data.OleDb and System.Data.SQLClient, as well as others. To check out the .NET Namespaces, choose Object Browser from the View menu. You can then expand the System.Data Namespace to see the other Namespaces contained within. If you are positive that the database you are going to be working with is SQL Server, then you would be far better served performance-wise to use the classes found in the System.Data.SQLClient Namespace. However, if you are not sure what database you will be working against, you should use the classes found in System.Data.OleDb. For this book, I am using objects created from the classes in the System.Data.OleDb Namespace. That way, you can use the routines against other databases with less modifications. Tip
- 12. If you knowthat the back end that you will be accessing is SQL Server, then use the SQL Server type data controls because they are optimized for it. Eight data controls are available for Windows forms. Table 1.1 lists these controls and their uses. You can find these controls by clicking on the Data group in the toolbox. Table 1.1. Data Controls Used in Windows Forms Control Name Purpose DataSet This control is used in conjunction with the other data controls, storing the results that are returned by commands and the DataAdapters. Unlike the recordset from ADO and DAO, the DataSet actually brings back a hierarchical view of the data. Using properties and collections in the DataSet object, you can get all the way down to individual tables, rows, and columns. OleDbDataAdapter This control stores and manages the commands you want to use against an OleDb provider such as Jet, Oracle, or SQL Server. The commands for selecting, updating, inserting, and deleting records can be used. The Connection against which to use the commands is also tracked. OleDbConnection This control maintains connection information for an OleDb provider. This control is used with the OleDbDataAdapter. OleDbCommand Similar to the ADO command object, this control allows you to execute SQL statements or stored procedures to either run bulk operations or return data. SqlDataAdapter This control is the same as the OleDbDataAdapter except that it is for use only against SQL Server stores. SqlConnection This control is the same as the OleDbConnection except that it is for use only against SQL Server stores. SqlCommand This control is the same as the OleDbCommand except that it is for use only against SQL Server stores. DataView This control creates multiple views of the same table. This includes looking at data in various states such as deleted, changed, or sorted differently. Creating two types of the data controls just mentioned, OleDbDataAdapter and DataSet, bind them to a list box to display a list of customers. Note that an OleDbConnection control is also created, but Visual Studio .NET creates it. You then add a line of code to fill the dataset. Steps To preview this How-To, open the solution called VB.Net—Chapter1 found in the chapter folder. When you run the project, the first form that comes up is the main switchboard with each of the How-Tos listed for this chapter. Click on How-To 1.1 to open the form for How-To 1.1 (see Figure 1.1). Figure 1.1. Main form and How-To form 1.1 from the first chapter's solution.
- 13. Note You can findthe source code for all the chapters in the book at www.samspublishing.com. After you are there, just type the book ISBN (0672322471). Create a new Visual Studio .NET project using the Windows Application project template. This creates the initial form called Form1 that you will use. 1. Drag the OleDbDataAdapter control from the Data Controls group located in the toolbox and drop it onto the form. The Data Adapter Configuration Wizard appears. Read the introductory screen, and then click Next to choose your data connection. At this point, if you don't see a data connection to Northwind database in the drop-down list of data connections to use, click the New Connection button. You then see the Data Link Properties dialog box with which you are familiar if you have used other Microsoft products such as Visual Studio 6.0. Type (local) for the server name, select Use Windows NT Integrated Security, and select Northwind for the database (see Figure 1.2.) Click OK. Figure 1.2. From now on, this data connection will show up in Visual Studio .NET's Server Explorer on this machine. 2.
- 14. Now you willbe back on the Choose Your Data Connection page of the Data Adapter Configuration Wizard, with the Northwind database in the Data Connection drop-down list. Click Next. This brings you to the page to select the query type on which the data adapter will be based. Leave the default of Use SQL Statements, and click Next. In the text box that asks What Data Should the Data Adapter Load into the Dataset?, type the following: 3. Select CustomerID, CompanyName From Customers Note By default, the Data Adapter Configuration Wizard creates select statements not only for selecting (viewing) data, but also for inserting, updating, and deleting. If you don't need these other options, click the Advanced Options button at the bottom-left corner of the dialog box. Deselect the check box that reads Generate Insert, Update, and Delete statements. You don't need this because we are just using the data to fill a ListBox control. Click OK to close the Advanced Options dialog box. Click Next to see results of your select statement, as shown in Figure 1.3. If you see something 4.
- 15. different from Figure1.3, you either have entered your select statement incorrectly, or you have forgotten to deselect the advanced options. Figure 1.3. Success in creating the data adapter. 4. Click Finished to create a data adapter and connection object. You then see a new data adapter control called OleDbDataAdapter1 and a Connection control called OleDbConnection1. Both controls are in the Components tray below the Form designer. 5. After you have created the first two controls, it is time to create the Dataset object. Right-click on the Data Adapter and choose Generate Dataset from the pop-up menu. This opens the Generate Dataset dialog box. You can keep all the defaults and simply click OK to create a dataset control called DataSet<number>. (The sequential number might vary if you have generated other dataset controls.) 6. Now you are ready to create the ListBox control. Drag the ListBox control from the Windows Forms group in the toolbox and drop it on your form. Stretch the control to the size of your form, and then set the following properties in Table 1.2 on the ListBox control. Table 1.2. ListBox Control Property Settings Needed to Bind a DataSet Control 7. different from Figure 1.3, you either have entered your select statement incorrectly, or you have forgotten to deselect the advanced options. Figure 1.3. Success in creating the data adapter. 4. Click Finished to create a data adapter and connection object. You then see a new data adapter control called OleDbDataAdapter1 and a Connection control called OleDbConnection1. Both controls are in the Components tray below the Form designer. 5. After you have created the first two controls, it is time to create the Dataset object. Right-click on the Data Adapter and choose Generate Dataset from the pop-up menu. This opens the Generate Dataset dialog box. You can keep all the defaults and simply click OK to create a dataset control called DataSet<number>. (The sequential number might vary if you have generated other dataset controls.) 6. Now you are ready to create the ListBox control. Drag the ListBox control from the Windows Forms group in the toolbox and drop it on your form. Stretch the control to the size of your form, and then set the following properties in Table 1.2 on the ListBox control. Table 1.2. ListBox Control Property Settings Needed to Bind a DataSet Control 7.
- 16. Property Setting DataSource DataSet<Number> DisplayMemberCustomers.CompanyName ValueMember Customers.CustomerID Although you have bound the dataset to the correct properties in the ListBox control, if you run the form at this point, you will still see a blank ListBox control on the form. Now it is time for the one line of code in this sample, in the Load event of the form. Click on the View Code button in the Solution Explorer, or choose Code from the View menu. In the Code Editor, select (Base Class Objects) from the Class Name drop-down list, and then select Load from the Methods drop-down list. Next, type the line of code as displayed here, which tells the data adapter to fill the dataset with data: 8. OleDbDataAdapter1.Fill(DataSet1) Be sure to use the names of the controls you created. Listing 1.1 presents the Load event code for the form called frmHowTo1_1 in the samples. Listing 1.1 frmHowTo1_1.vb: Filling the Data Set on Which ListBox1 Is Based Private Sub frmHowTo1_1_Load(ByVal sender As Object, _ ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load Me.OleDbDataAdapter1.Fill(Me.DataSet1) End Sub How It Works When the form called frmHowTo1_1 loads, the Fill method of the OleDbDataAdapter1 is called, with the DataSet1 being passed. Because the DataSource property of ListBox1 was specified as being DataSet1 and the ValueMember and DisplayMember properties are both set appropriately, ListBox1 is populated with the CustomerID and CompanyName from the Customers table in Northwind. Figure 1.4 shows what the final form looks like in Design view, and Figure 1.5 shows what it looks like when running. Figure 1.4. The final design view for your first database how-to.
- 17. Figure 1.5. Thislist is based on the Customers table in the Northwind SQL Server database. Comments In the .NET version of Visual Basic, Microsoft went to considerable effort to make the data controls more robust than ever. One cool thing is that most of the tasks that are done for you in Visual Basic .NET are discoverable. Even though you are using the data controls on your form, Visual Studio creates the code under the covers. You can see this code by clicking on the #Region statement that reads like this: #Region " Windows Form Designer generated code "
- 18. Beware: There ismuch code here, and you don't want to change it. You can learn a lot from reading it though. As you continue to use the Data Controls shown here, you will become comfortable with changing various properties and getting more power and use out of them. [ Team LiB ]
- 19. [ Team LiB] 1.2 Limit the Data Displayed in a Bound List Box Even populating a list box with a couple of columns from a table full of data can be a big performance hit. This How-To shows you how to create a parameterized SQL statement to limit the items that are displayed in the list box, thus giving you better performance on your forms. You have hundreds of thousands of customers in your database, and you don't want the list box loaded up with the whole customer table. How can you limit the data that is displayed in your list box? Technique You are going to make a copy of the form that you created in How-To 1.1. You will then add a Label and TextBox control that the Select statement contained within the OleDbDataAdapter control will query against to limit the data displayed in the list box. A command button will be added to allow you to call the Fill method of the OleDbDataAdapter control whenever you update the text box, and then you can click the command button (see Figure 1.6 ). Figure 1.6. You can now limit the amount of data loaded into the list box. Steps To get started with this How-To, right-click the form you created in How-To 1.1, which should be listed in the Solutions Explorer. Choose Copy from the pop-up menu. Next, right-click the project in the Solution Explorer, and choose Paste from the pop-up menu. You will now have a new Class object in the Solutions Explorer called Copy Of whatever the previous name of the form was . Rename the new form that you have created to the name you desire. Then, with that form highlighted, click on the Code button above the Solutions Explorer. Change the first line of code to say this: Public Class <Name of the new form>
- 20. You see, VSdoes not change the line of code automatically for you. It thinks you have a duplicate Class definition. Now you can see that the icon of the form is correct. You can continue with the steps of the How-To. Select the Data Adapter that you created. In the Properties pane, you will see the CommandText property when click on the SelectCommand property plus sign. Replace the CommandText property with the following comman 1. SELECT CustomerID, CompanyName FROM Customers WHERE (CompanyName LIKE ? + '%') You will learn more about the Select statement in Chapter 3 . However, the WHERE clause used here comp CompanyName to a parameter that will be supplied, as indicated by the ?. This will be performed using co the final step of this How-To. The % is a wildcard that tells the server to make it a fuzzy search. Resize the ListBox control, and leave room at the top of the form for the Label, TextBox, and Command button Create these three controls, setting the properties described in Table 1.3 . Label Text Customer TextBox Name txtCustLimit Text A Command Button Name btnLoadList Text Load List Table 1.3. Label, TextBox, and Command Button Control Property Settings Object Property Setting 2. Double-click the new command button you just created called btnLoadList . Enter the code in Listing 1.2 in th 3.
- 21. Click event ofthe btnLoadList button. This code loads the data entered from txtCustLimit into the parame of the OleDBDataAdapter1 , which was created by using the ? in the Select statement of the data adapter. T Dataset1 is cleared of its data with the Clear method. Finally, DataSet1 is refilled with data based off the valu txtCustLimit , using the data adapter. Listing 1.2 frmHowTo1_2.vb : Submitting a Parameter to a DataAdapter and Filling the Dataset 3. Private Sub btnLoadList_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _ ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnLoadList.Click Me.OleDbDataAdapter1.SelectCommand.Parameters(0).Value = _ Me.txtCustLimit.Text Me.DataSet1.Clear() Me.OleDbDataAdapter1.Fill(Me.DataSet1) End Sub Note There is one big difference here between an OleDbDataAdapter and a SqlDataAdapter . Whereas the OleDbDataAdapter takes a ? to specify a parameter within the Select statement, the SqlDataAdapter requires a named parameter such as @parCustLimit . Therefore, instead of the select statement in step 1 being this: SELECT CustomerID, CompanyName FROM Customers WHERE (CompanyName LIKE ? + '%') It would be this: SELECT CustomerID, CompanyName FROM Customers WHERE (CompanyName LIKE @parCustLimit + '%') The naming of the actual parameter is up to you. Highlight and delete the Load event for the form because you don't want to just fill the event when the form loa You want the user to click btnLoadList . 4. How It Works When the form you created for this How-To loads, or when you're using the form called frmHowTo1_2 , you will see a blank ListBox control with a text box on top with the letter A in it. If you click the command button called btnLoadList , the list box becomes filled with values based on the letter (or letters) in txtCustLimit and on the code described in step 3. Comments
- 22. Try entering afew other letters, and then try entering no letters. What happens? You limit the list more by the number of letters you enter, and you get all entries when you don't enter any letters. The method displayed here, although simple, is powerful, and it can be used in a variety of ways. You can continue building on this form for the next few How-Tos. If you want to copy your form and start a new one as described at the beginning of the steps for this one, you have the instructions there. Otherwise, by the time you reach How-To 1.8, you will have a data entry form that you can use. Each step, however, is available in the sample solution for this chapter. [ Team LiB ]
- 23. [ Team LiB] 1.3 Bind and View Individual Text Boxes Based Off a Selected List Box Item Using a list box similar to the one in the previous How-To, in this How-To, you will learn how to create additional OleDbDataAdapter s and DataSets and bind them to individual text boxes for viewing data. Although the list box is nice for displaying a couple of fields in my form and limiting the rows displayed, how do you list the detail in individual text boxes by clicking on an item in the list box? Technique You are going to enhance the form that you created in How-To 1.2 to use additional data controls, specifically another data adapter and dataset. You will set up the select statement in the new data adapter to take the selected list box item as a parameter. The dataset will then be filled with data, and some text boxes with the dataset set as the data source will display the current record. You can see an example of this in Figure 1.7 . Figure 1.7. You can bind text boxes to datasets as well as list boxes. Steps To go further with the form with which you have been working, you will want to rename the data adapter, dataset, and list box currently on the form to something more meaningful. You can see this in Table 1.4 . ListBox Name ListBox1 lstCustomers
- 24. OleDbDataAdapter Name OleDbDataAdapter1 odaCustomerList DataSet Name DataSet1 dsCustomerList Table 1.4. Changesto Current Objects on the Form Object Property Old Setting New Setting Tip Name your objects at the time you first create them. This is true of your solutions, projects, and forms, as well as controls used on forms. With the .NET languages being so class and code driven, some items take multiple steps to rename. Visual Studio doesn't seem to catch all the places in code that need to be changed. Renaming a form is a good example. Remember that you had to change the Public Class statement in the code to have it match the new name of the form. Drop another Data Adapter control on the form from the Data group of the toolbox. Use the existing data connection, specify that you will use SQL statements, and assign the following select statement that will use a parameter supplied at runtime by using the selected list box item. 1. SELECT CustomerID, CompanyName, ContactName, ContactTitle, Address, City, Region, PostalCode, Country, Phone, Fax FROM Customers WHERE (CustomerID = ?) You can click the Advanced Options button on the select statement page and deselect creating the Insert, Update, and Delete commands. Finish the Data Adapter Wizard and rename the control odaCustomerIndividual . Right-click odaCustomerIndividual and choose Generate Dataset from the pop-up menu. Create a new dataset called dsCustomerIndividual . Click OK. As of this writing, VS places a 1 at the end of name of the dataset you specified. Clean up the name by removing the 1. Now you should have two data adapters: odaCustomerList and odaCustomerIndividual , and two datasets: dsCustomerList 2. 3.
- 25. and dsCustomerIndividual . Nowit's time to add the text boxes. Resize the form so that it allows you to add a column of text boxes with labels beside them. You will then add the labels and text boxes, setting the Text property of the text boxes to the column names in the Customers table as supplied by dsCustomerIndividual. The Text property of text boxes falls under the Data Binding category in the property sheet. Table 1.5 describes the controls and their property settings. Refer to Figure 1.8 for an example of where to place them. Figure 1.8. Letting users know when they can edit data is helpful. Label Text Customer ID Label Text Company Name Label Text Contact Label Text Contact Title Label Text 3.
- 26.
- 27. Name txtContact Text dsCustomerIndividual - Customers.Contact TextBox Name txtContactTitle Text dsCustomerIndividual- Customers.ContactTitle TextBox Name txtAddress Text dsCustomerIndividual - Customers.Address TextBox Name txtCity Text dsCustomerIndividual - Customers.City TextBox Name txtRegion Text dsCustomerIndividual - Customers.Region
- 28. TextBox Name txtPostalCode Text dsCustomerIndividual - Customers.PostalCode TextBox Name txtCountry Text dsCustomerIndividual- Customers.Country TextBox Name txtPhone Text dsCustomerIndividual - Customers.Phone TextBox Name txtFax Text dsCustomerIndividual - Customers.Fax Table 1.5. New Label and TextBox Control Property Settings for the Form frmHowTo1_3 Object Property Setting Now it's time for the code. To start off, you will change the Click event code for the button called btnLoadList. The first three lines of code are basically the same as in the last How-To, except that the name was changed as needed, and some lines were added to comment the code. 4.
- 29. Listing 1.3 frmHowTo1_3.vb: Adding the Call to the RefreshIndividual Subroutine 4. Private Sub btnLoadList_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _ ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnLoadList.Click '— Store the text entered to limit the list box to the ' data adapter's parameter Me.odaCustomerList.SelectCommand.Parameters(0).Value = _ Me.txtCustLimit.Text '— Clear the current data in the dataset Me.dsCustomerList.Clear() '— Fill the customer list dataset Me.odaCustomerList.Fill(Me.dsCustomerList) '— Fill the initial entry's individual dataset RefreshIndividual() End Sub The only new line of code is the one just before the End Sub , which calls the subroutine RefreshIndividual for the first item in the newly populated list box. This subroutine first handles clearing the dataset called dsCustomerIndividual . It ensures that a customer is chosen in the list box and then places the selected item into the parameter value for odaCustomerIndividual . The dataset called dsCustomerIndividual is then filled, displaying the data in the text boxes bound to the dataset. Listing 1.4 frmHowTo1_3.vb : Refreshing the Dataset on Which the Text Boxes Are Based Private Sub RefreshIndividual() '— Clear individual customer dataset Me.dsCustomerIndividual.Clear() '— Check to see if an item was selected If lstCustomers.SelectedIndex <> -1 Then '— Store the selected customer ID into the ' parameter of the SQL data adapter Me.odaCustomerIndividual.SelectCommand.Parameters(0).Value = _ Me.lstCustomers.SelectedItem(0) '— Fill the dataset Me.odaCustomerIndividual.Fill(Me.dsCustomerIndividual) End If End Sub The only other code is required when a new item is selected in the list box. You want to refresh the text boxes with the new data. This code is on the SelectedIndexChanged event for the
- 30. Exploring the Varietyof Random Documents with Different Content
- 31. when, with aheavy heart, we got our books together, and marched in to be whacked by old Swishtail. I promise you he revenged himself on us for Jack’s contempt of him. I got that day at least twenty cuts to my share, which ought to have belonged to Cornet Attwood, of the N—th Dragoons. When we came to think more coolly over our quondam school-fellow’s swaggering talk and manners, we were not quite so impressed by his merits as at his first appearance among us. We recollected how he used, in former times, to tell us great stories, which were so monstrously improbable that the smallest boy in the school would scout them; how often we caught him tripping in facts, and how unblushingly he admitted his little errors in the score of veracity. He and I, though never great friends, had been close companions: I was Jack’s form-fellow (we fought with amazing emulation for the last place in the class); but still I was rather hurt at the coolness of my old comrade, who had forgotten all our former intimacy, in his steeplechases with Captain Boldero and his duel with Sir George Grig. Nothing more was heard of Attwood for some years; a tailor one day came down to C——, who had made clothes for Jack in his school-days, and furnished him with regimentals: he produced a long bill for one hundred and twenty pounds and upwards, and asked where news might be had of his customer. Jack was in India, with his regiment, shooting tigers and jackals, no doubt. Occasionally, from that distant country, some magnificent rumour would reach us of his proceedings. Once I heard that he had been called to a court-martial for unbecoming conduct; another time, that he kept twenty horses, and won the gold plate at the Calcutta races. Presently, however, as the recollections of the fifth form wore away, Jack’s image disappeared likewise, and I ceased to ask or to think about my college chum. A year since, as I was smoking my cigar in the Estaminet du Grand Balcon, an excellent smoking-shop, where the tobacco is unexceptionable, and the Hollands of singular merit, a dark-looking, thick-set man, in a greasy well-cut coat, with a shabby hat, cocked on one side of his dirty face, took the place opposite to me, at the little marble table, and called for brandy. I did not much admire the impudence or the appearance of my friend, nor the fixed stare with which he chose to examine me. At last he thrust a great greasy hand across the table, and said, ‘Titmarsh, do you forget your old friend Attwood?’
- 32. I confess myrecognition of him was not so joyful as on the day ten years earlier, when he had come, bedizened with lace and gold rings, to see us at C—— school: a man in the tenth part of a century learns a deal of worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes naturally forward to seize the gloved finger of a millionaire, or a milor, draws instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband and a tattered cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron squeeze with which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either very affectionate or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this history, know very well the great art of shaking hands; recollect how you shook Lord Dash’s hand the other day, and how you shook off poor Blank, when he came to borrow five pounds of you. However, the genial influence of the hollands speedily dissipated anything like coolness between us; and, in the course of an hour’s conversation, we became almost as intimate as when we were suffering together under the ferule of old Swishtail. Jack told me that he had quitted the army in disgust; and that his father, who was to leave him a fortune, had died ten thousand pounds in debt: he did not touch upon his own circumstances; but I could read them in his elbows, which were peeping through his old frock. He talked a great deal, however, of runs of luck, good and bad; and related to me an infallible plan for breaking all the play-banks in Europe—a great number of old tricks;—and a vast quantity of gin-punch was consumed on the occasion; so long, in fact, did our conversation continue, that, I confess it with shame, the sentiment, or something stronger, quite got the better of me, and I have, to this day, no sort of notion how our palaver concluded.—Only, on the next morning I did not possess a certain
- 33. five-pound note, whichon the previous evening was in my sketch-book (by far the prettiest drawing, by the way, in the collection); but there, instead, was a strip of paper, thus inscribed: ‘IOU Five Pounds. John Attwood, Late of the N—th Dragoons.’ I suppose Attwood borrowed the money, from this remarkable and ceremonious acknowledgment on his part: had I been sober I would just as soon have lent him the nose on my face; for, in my then circumstances, the note was of much more consequence to me. As I lay, cursing my ill-fortune, and thinking how on earth I should manage to subsist for the next two months, Attwood burst into my little garret—his face strangely flushed—singing and shouting as if it had been the night before. ‘Titmarsh,’ cried he, ‘you are my preserver!—my best friend! Look here, and here, and here!’ And at every word Mr. Attwood produced a handful of gold, or a glittering heap of five-franc pieces, or a bundle of greasy, dusky bank-notes, more beautiful than either silver or gold;—he had won thirteen thousand francs after leaving me at midnight in my garret. He separated my poor little all, of six pieces, from this shining and imposing collection; and the passion of envy entered my soul: I felt far more anxious now than before, although starvation was then staring me in the face; I hated Attwood for cheating me out of all this wealth. Poor fellow! it had been better for him had he never seen a shilling of it. However, a grand breakfast at the Café Anglais dissipated my chagrin; and I will do my friend the justice to say, that he nobly shared some portion of his good fortune with me. As far as the creature comforts were concerned I feasted as well as he, and never was particular as to settling my share of the reckoning. Jack now changed his lodgings; had cards, with Captain Attwood engraved on them, and drove about a prancing cab-horse, as tall as the giraffe at the Jardin des Plantes; he had as many frogs on his coat as in the old days, and frequented all the flash restaurateurs and boarding-houses of the capital. Madame de Saint Laurent, and Madame la Baronne de Vaudry, and Madame la Comtesse de Don Jonville, ladies of the highest rank, who keep a société choisie, and condescend to give dinners at five francs a head, vied with each other in their attentions to Jack. His was the wing of the fowl, and the largest portion of the Charlotte-Russe; his was the place at the
- 34. écarté table, wherethe Countess would ease him nightly of a few pieces, declaring that he was the most charming cavalier, la fleur d’Albion. Jack’s society, it may be seen, was not very select; nor, in truth, were his inclinations: he was a careless, dare-devil, Macheath kind of fellow, who might be seen daily with a wife on each arm. It may be supposed that, with the life he led, his five hundred pounds of winnings would not last him long; nor did they; but for some time, his luck never deserted him; and his cash, instead of growing lower, seemed always to maintain a certain level;—he played every night. Of course, such a humble fellow as I could not hope for a continued acquaintance and intimacy with Attwood. He grew overbearing and cool, I thought; at any rate I did not admire my situation as his follower and dependant, and left his grand dinner for a certain ordinary where I could partake of five capital dishes for ninepence. Occasionally, however, Attwood favoured me with a visit, or gave me a drive behind his great cab- horse. He had formed a whole host of friends besides. There was Fips, the barrister, Heaven knows what he was doing at Paris; and Gortz, the West Indian, who was there on the same business; and Flapper, a medical student, —all these three I met one night at Flapper’s rooms, where Jack was invited, and a great ‘spread’ was laid in honour of him. Jack arrived rather late—he looked pale and agitated; and, though he ate no supper, he drank raw brandy in such a manner as made Flapper’s eyes wink: the poor fellow had but three bottles, and Jack bid fair to swallow them all. However, the West Indian generously remedied the evil, and, producing a napoleon, we speedily got the change for it in the shape of four bottles of champagne. Our supper was uproariously harmonious; Fips sang the ‘Good Old English Gentleman;’ Jack, the ‘British Grenadiers;’ and your humble servant, when called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, ‘When the Bloom is on the Rye,’ in a manner that drew tears from every eye, except Flapper’s, who was asleep, and Jack’s, who was singing the ‘Bay of Biscay, O,’ at the same time. Gortz and Fips were all the time lunging at each other with a pair of single-sticks, the barrister having a very strong notion that he was Richard the Third. At last Fips hit the West Indian such a blow across his sconce, that the other grew furious; he seized a champagne-bottle, which was,
- 35. providentially, empty, andhurled it across the room at Fips; had that celebrated barrister not bowed his head at the moment, the Queen’s Bench would have lost one of its most eloquent practitioners. Fips stood as straight as he could; his cheek was pale with wrath. ‘M-m- ister Go-gortz,’ he said, ‘I always heard you were a blackguard; now I can pr-pr-peperove it. Flapper, your pistols! every ge-ge-genlmn knows what I mean.’ Young Mr. Flapper had a small pair of pocket-pistols, which the tipsy barrister had suddenly remembered, and with which he proposed to sacrifice the West Indian. Gortz was nothing loth, but was quite as valorous as the lawyer. Attwood, who, in spite of his potations, seemed the soberest man of the party, had much enjoyed the scene, until this sudden demand for the weapons. ‘Pshaw!’ said he eagerly, ‘don’t give these men the means of murdering each other; sit down and let us have another song.’ But they would not be still; and Flapper forthwith produced his pistol-case, and opened it, in order that the duel might take place on the spot. There were no pistols there! ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Attwood, looking much confused; ‘I —I took the pistols home with me to clean them!’ I don’t know what there was in his tone, or in the words, but we were sobered all of a sudden. Attwood was conscious of the singular effect produced by him, for he blushed, and endeavoured to speak of other things, but we could not bring our spirits back to the mark again, and soon separated for the night. As we issued into the street, Jack took me aside and whispered, ‘Have you a napoleon, Titmarsh, in your purse?’Alas! I was not so rich. My reply was, that I was coming to Jack, only in the morning, to borrow a similar sum. He did not make any reply, but turned away homeward: I never heard him speak another word. . . . . . Two mornings after (for none of our party met on the day succeeding the supper), I was awakened by my porter, who brought a pressing letter from Mr. Gortz:— ‘Dear T.—I wish you would come over here to breakfast. There’s a row about Attwood.—Yours truly, Solomon Gortz.’
- 36. I immediately setforward to Gortz’s; he lived in the Rue du Heldes, a few doors from Attwood’s new lodging. If the reader is curious to know the house in which the catastrophe of this history took place, he has but to march some twenty doors down from the Boulevard des Italiens, when he will see a fine door, with a naked Cupid shooting at him from the hall, and a Venus beckoning him up the stairs. On arriving at the West Indian’s, at about midday (it was a Sunday morning), I found that gentleman in his dressing-gown, discussing, in the company of Mr. Fips, a large plate of bifteck aux pommes. ‘Here’s a pretty row!’ said Gortz, quoting from his letter;—‘Attwood’s off—have a bit of beefsteak?’ ‘What do you mean?’ exclaimed I, adopting the familiar phraseology of my acquaintances:—‘Attwood off?—has he cut his stick?’ ‘Not bad,’ said the feeling and elegant Fips—‘not such a bad guess, my boy; but he has not exactly cut his stick.’ ‘What then?’ ‘Why, his throat.’ The man’s mouth was full of bleeding beef as he uttered this gentlemanly witticism. I wish I could say that I was myself in the least affected by the news. I did not joke about it like my friend Fips; this was more for propriety’s sake than for feeling’s: but for my old school acquaintance, the friend of my early days, the merry associate of the last few months, I own, with shame, that I had not a tear or a pang. In some German tale there is an account of a creature, most beautiful and bewitching, whom all men admire and follow; but this charming and fantastic spirit only leads them, one by one, into ruin, and then leaves them. The novelist, who describes her beauty, says that his heroine is a fairy, and has no heart. I think the intimacy which is begotten over the wine-bottle is a spirit of this nature; I never knew a good feeling come from it, or an honest friendship made by it: it only entices men, and ruins them; it is only a phantom of friendship and feeling, called up by the delirious blood, and the wicked spells of the wine. But to drop this strain of moralising (in which the writer is not too anxious to proceed, for he cuts in it a most pitiful figure), we passed sundry criticisms upon poor Attwood’s character, expressed our horror at his death, which sentiment was fully proved by Mr. Fips, who declared that the notion of it made him feel quite faint, and was obliged to drink a large glass of
- 37. brandy; and, finally,we agreed that we would go and see the poor fellow’s corpse, and witness, if necessary, his burial. Flapper, who had joined us, was the first to propose this visit: he said he did not mind the fifteen francs which Jack owed him for billiards, but that he was anxious to get back his pistol. Accordingly, we sallied forth, and speedily arrived at the hotel which Attwood inhabited still. He had occupied, for a time, very fine apartments in this house; and it was only on arriving there that day, that we found he had been gradually driven from his magnificent suite of rooms au premier, to a little chamber in the fifth story: —we mounted, and found him. It was a little shabby room, with a few articles of rickety furniture, and a bed in an alcove; the light from the one window was falling full upon the bed and the body. Jack was dressed in a fine lawn shirt: he had kept it, poor fellow, to die in; for in all his drawers and cupboards, there was not a single article of clothing: he had pawned everything by which he could raise a penny—desk, books, dressing-case, and clothes; and not a single halfpenny was found in his possession.[2] He was lying as I have drawn him, one hand on his breast, the other falling towards the ground. There was an expression of perfect calm on the face, and no mark of blood to stain the side towards the light. On the other side, however, there was a great pool of black blood, and in it the pistol; it looked more like a toy than a weapon to take away the life of this vigorous young man. In his forehead, at the side, was a small black wound; Jack’s life had passed through it; it was little bigger than a mole. . . . . . ‘Regardez un peu,’ said the landlady; ‘messieurs, il m’a gâté trois matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs.’ This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed the landlady four-and-forty francs. In the whole world there was not a soul to
- 38. love him orlament him. We, his friends, were looking at his body more as an object of curiosity, watching it with a kind of interest with which one follows the fifth act of a tragedy, and leaving it with the same feeling with which one leaves the theatre when the play is over and the curtain is down. Beside Jack’s bed, on his little table de nuit, lay the remains of his last meal, and an open letter, which we read. It was from one of his suspicious acquaintances of former days, and ran thus:— ‘Où es-tu, cher Jack? why you not come and see me—tu me dois de l’argent, entends tu?—un chapeau, une cachemire, a box of the Play. Viens demain soir, je t’attendrai at eight o’clock, Passage des Panoramas. My Sir is at his country.—Adieu à demain. ‘Samedi.’ ‘FIFINE. . . . . . I shuddered as I walked through this very Passage des Panoramas, in the evening. The girl was there, pacing to and fro, and looking in the countenance of every passer-by, to recognise Attwood. ‘Adieu à demain!’— there was a dreadful meaning in the words, which the writer of them little knew. ‘Adieu à demain!’—the morrow was come, and the soul of the poor suicide was now in the presence of God. I dare not think of his fate; for, except in the fact of his poverty and desperation, was he worse than any of us, his companions, who had shared his debauches, and marched with him up to the very brink of the grave? There is but one more circumstance to relate regarding poor Jack—his burial; it was of a piece with his death. He was nailed into a paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of the arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the Barrière de l’Étoile. They buried him at six o’clock, of a bitter winter’s morning, and it was with difficulty that an English clergyman could be found to read a service over his grave. The three men who have figured in this history acted as Jack’s mourners; and as the ceremony was to take place so early in the morning, these men sat up the night through, and were almost drunk as they followed his coffin to its resting-place. MORAL ‘When we turned out in our greatcoats,’ said one of them afterwards, ‘reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d——e, sir, we quite frightened the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our company.’ After the
- 39. ceremony was concluded,these gentlemen were very happy to get home to a warm and comfortable breakfast, and finished the day royally at Frascati’s.
- 40. NAPOLEON AND HISSYSTEM ON PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON’S WORK ANY person who recollects the history of the absurd outbreak of Strasburg, in which Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte figured, three years ago, must remember that, however silly the revolt was, however foolish its pretext, however doubtful its aim, and inexperienced its leader, there was, nevertheless, a party, and a considerable one, in France, that were not unwilling to lend the new projectors their aid. The troops who declared against the Prince, were, it was said, all but willing to declare for him; and it was certain that, in many of the regiments of the army, there existed a strong spirit of disaffection, and an eager wish for the return of the imperial system and family. As to the good that was to be derived from the change, that is another question. Why the Emperor of the French should be better than the King of the French, or the King of the French better than the King of France and Navarre, it is not our business to inquire; but all the three monarchs have no lack of supporters; republicanism has no lack of supporters; St. Simonianism was followed by a respectable body of admirers; Robespierrism has a select party of friends. If, in a country where so many quacks have had their day, Prince Louis Napoleon thought he might renew the imperial quackery, why should he not? It has recollections with it that must always be dear to a gallant nation; it has certain claptraps in its vocabulary that can never fail to inflame a vain, restless, grasping, disappointed one. In the first place, and don’t let us endeavour to disguise it, they hate us. Not all the protestations of friendship, not all the wisdom of Lord Palmerston, not all the diplomacy of our distinguished plenipotentiary, Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer—and, let us add, not all the benefit which both countries would derive from the alliance—can make it, in our times at least, permanent and cordial. They hate us. The Carlist organs revile us with a querulous fury that never sleeps; the moderate party, if they admit the utility of our alliance, are continually pointing out our treachery, our insolence,
- 41. and our monstrousinfractions of it; and for the Republicans, as sure as the morning comes, the columns of their journals thunder out volleys of fierce denunciations against our unfortunate country. They live by feeding the natural hatred against England, by keeping old wounds open, by recurring ceaselessly to the history of old quarrels; and as in these we, by God’s help, by land and by sea, in old times and late, have had the uppermost, they perpetuate the shame and mortification of the losing party, the bitterness of past defeats, and the eager desire to avenge them. A party which knows how to exploiter this hatred will always be popular to a certain extent; and the imperial scheme has this, at least, among its conditions. Then there is the favourite claptrap of the ‘natural frontier.’ The Frenchman yearns to be bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; and next follows the cry, ‘Let France take her place among nations, and direct, as she ought to do, the affairs of Europe.’ These are the two chief articles contained in the new imperial programme, if we may credit the journal which has been established to advocate the cause. A natural boundary— stand among the nations—popular development—Russian alliance, and a reduction of la perfide Albion to its proper insignificance. As yet we know little more of the plan: and yet such foundations are sufficient to build a party upon, and with such windy weapons a substantial Government is to be overthrown! In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of finding favour with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage of being able to refer to a former great professor of them—his uncle Napoleon. His attempt is at once pious and prudent; it exalts the memory of the uncle, and furthers the interests of the nephew, who attempts to show what Napoleon’s ideas really were; what good had already resulted from the practice of them; how cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign wars and difficulties; and what vast benefits would have resulted from them; ay, and (it is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French nation would be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would continue the interrupted scheme. It is, however, to be borne in mind that the Emperor Napoleon had certain arguments in favour of his opinions for the time being, which his nephew has not employed. On the 13th Vendémiaire, when General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a Directory, it may be remembered that he aided his opinions by forty pieces of artillery, and by Colonel Murat at the head of his dragoons. There was no resisting such a philosopher; the Directory was
- 42. established forthwith, andthe sacred cause of the minority triumphed. In like manner, when the General was convinced of the weakness of the Directory, and saw fully the necessity of establishing a Consulate, what were his arguments? Moreau, Lannes, Murat, Berthier, Leclerc, Lefebvre— gentle apostles of the truth!—marched to St. Cloud, and there, with fixed bayonets, caused it to prevail. Error vanished in an instant. At once five hundred of its high priests tumbled out of windows, and lo! three Consuls appeared to guide the destinies of France! How much more expeditious, reasonable, and clinching was this argument of the 18th Brumaire, than any one that can be found in any pamphlet! A fig for your duodecimos and octavos! Talk about points, there are none like those at the end of a bayonet; and the most powerful of styles is a good rattling ‘article’ from a nine- pounder. At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were always propagated the Idées Napoléoniennes. Not such, however, is Prince Louis’s belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in opinion, you will discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent Prince never existed: you will read that ‘the mission of Napoleon’ was to be the ‘testamentary executor of the Revolution;’ and the Prince should have added, the legatee; or, more justly still, as well as the executor, he should be called the executioner, and then his title would be complete. In Vendémiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution’s natural heirs, and made her, as it were, alter her will; on the 18th of Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her property, and kept it until force deprived him of it. Illustrations, to be sure, are no arguments, but the example is the Prince’s, not ours. In the Prince’s eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs the most wise, upright, and merciful. Thirty years ago the opinion had millions of supporters; while millions again were ready to avouch the exact contrary. It is curious to think of the former difference of opinion concerning Napoleon; and in reading his nephew’s rapturous encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as loud and mad in his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to call the ‘bloody Corsican upstart and assassin’? What stories did we not believe of him?—what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?—we, who were living within a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and newspapers, be made as well acquainted with his merits or demerits as any of his own countrymen.
- 43. Then was theage when the Idées Napoléoniennes might have passed through many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter, our neighbours were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange infatuation— adored him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a fiend; and vowed that, under his government, their nation had attained its highest pitch of grandeur and glory. In revenge there existed in England (as is proved by a thousand authentic documents) a monster so hideous, a tyrant so ruthless and bloody, that the world’s history cannot show his parallel. This ruffian’s name was, during the early part of the French Revolution, Pittetcobourg. Pittetcobourg’s emissaries were in every corner of France; Pittetcobourg’s gold chinked in the pockets of every traitor in Europe; it menaced the life of the godlike Robespierre; it drove into cellars and fits of delirium even the gentle philanthropist Marat; it fourteen times caused the dagger to be lifted against the bosom of the First Consul, Emperor, and King,—that first, great, glorious, irresistible, cowardly, contemptible, bloody hero and fiend, Bonaparte, before mentioned. On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to reconsider our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have not changed our opinion about Pittetcobourg. After five-and-thirty years all parties bear witness to his honesty, and speak with affectionate reverence of his patriotism, his genius, and his private virtue. In France, however, or, at least, among certain parties in France, there has been no such modification of opinion. With the Republicans, Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,— crafty, bloody, seeking whom he may devour; and perfide Albion more perfidious than ever. This hatred is the point of union between the Republic and the Empire; it has been fostered ever since, and must be continued by Prince Louis, if he would hope to conciliate both parties. With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory as fine a monument as his wits can raise. One need not say that the imperial apologist’s opinion should be received with the utmost caution; for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally be proud of and partial to him; and when this nephew of the great man would be his heir, likewise, and, bearing his name, step also into his imperial shoes, one may reasonably look for much affectionate panegyric. ‘The Empire was the best of empires,’ cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly, the Prince thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would convince a man with a proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers a certain consultation of
- 44. politicians which isrecorded in the Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who averred that, for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for liberty, and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like leather. Let us examine some of the Prince’s article. If we may be allowed humbly to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite insufficient for those vast public purposes for which he destines it, but is, moreover, and in itself, very bad leather. The hides are poor, small, unsound slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling metaphor, the style is not particularly brilliant, the facts not very startling, and, as for the conclusions, one may differ with almost every one of them. Here is an extract from his first chapter, ‘On Governments in General:’— ‘I speak it with regret, I can see but two Governments, at this day, which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them; they are the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the extremity of the old world, the other at the extremity of the new. Whilst our old European centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in its crater, the two nations of the East and the West march, without hesitation, towards perfection; the one under the will of a single individual, the other under liberty. ‘Providence has confided to the United States of North America the task of peopling and civilising that immense territory which stretches from the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North Pole to the Equator. The Government, which is only a simple administration, has only hitherto been called upon to put in practice the old adage, Laissez faire, laissez passer, in order to favour that irresistible instinct which pushes the people of America to the west. ‘In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast progress which, in a century and a-half, has rescued that empire from barbarism. The imperial power must contend against all the ancient prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralise, as far as possible, all the powers of the State in the hands of one person, in order to destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal franchises have served to perpetuate. The last alone can hope to receive from it the improvements which it expects. ‘But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of Napoleon— thou, who wert always for the west of Europe the source of progress, who possessest in thyself the two great pillars of empire, the genius for the arts
- 45. of peace, andthe genius of war—hast thou no further passion to fulfil? Wilt thou never cease to waste thy force and energies in intestine struggles? No; such cannot be thy destiny: the day will soon come, when, to govern thee, it will be necessary to understand that thy part is to place in all treaties thy sword of Brennus on the side of civilisation.’ These are the conclusions of the Prince’s remarks upon Governments in general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little wiser at the end than at the beginning. But two Governments in the world fulfil their mission: the one Government, which is no Government; the other, which is a despotism. The duty of France is in all treaties to place her sword of Brennus in the scale of civilisation. Without quarrelling with the somewhat confused language of the latter proposition, may we ask what, in Heaven’s name, is the meaning of all the three? What is this épée de Brennus? and how is France to use it? Where is the great source of political truth, from which, flowing pure, we trace American republicanism in one stream, Russian despotism in another? Vastly prosperous is the great republic, if you will: if dollars and cents constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who has read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and the daily disputes on the slave question, praise the Government of the States?—a Government which dares not punish homicide or arson performed before its very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and the pirates of Canada can brave at their will? There is no Government, but a prosperous anarchy; as the Prince’s other favourite Government is a prosperous slavery. What, then, is to be the épée de Brennus Government? Is it to be a mixture of the two? ‘Society,’ writes the Prince axiomatically, ‘contains in itself two principles—the one of progress and immortality, the other of disease and disorganisation.’ No doubt; and as the one tends towards liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and then, with a singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple of Governments, in one of which the common regulating power is as notoriously too weak, as it is in the other too strong, and talks in rapturous terms of the manner in which they fulfil their ‘providential mission’! From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts us to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion of the merits of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the Emperor’s advent in the following grandiose way:—
- 46. ‘Napoleon, on arrivingat the public stage, saw that his part was to be the testamentary executor of the Revolution. The destructive fire of parties was extinct; and when the Revolution, dying, but not vanquished, delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment of her last will, she said to him, “Establish upon solid bases the principal result of my efforts. Unite divided Frenchmen. Defeat feudal Europe that is leagued against me. Cicatrise my wounds. Enlighten the nations. Execute that in width, which I have had to perform in depth. Be for Europe what I have been for France. And, even if you must water the tree of civilisation with your blood—if you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons without a country, wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon the sacred cause of the French people. Ensure its triumph by all the means which genius can discover and humanity approve.” ‘This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end. His task was difficult. He had to place upon new principles a society still boiling with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the same instruments which had been employed for pulling down. ‘The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather than to convince—rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear. For, oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with additional force; having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to combat them, and overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and adopted by the generality, it becomes the basis of new social order. ‘Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion. Armed with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long while excited the hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force of martyrdoms and persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated into the conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant throughout Europe. Religion then laid down her arms of war. It laid open to all the principles of peace and order which it contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was the organising element of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793 it frightened people and sovereigns alike; thus, having clothed itself in a milder garb, it insinuated itself everywhere in the train of our battalions. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed themselves with its moral force —covered themselves with its colours. The adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon obliged to reassume its warlike accoutrements. With the
- 47. contest their fearsreturned. Let us hope that they will soon cease, and that liberty will soon resume her peaceful standards, to quit them no more. ‘The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence of the Revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed. Without the Consulate and the Empire, the Revolution would have been only a grand drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: the Revolution would have been drowned in the counter-revolution. The contrary, however, was the case. Napoleon rooted the Revolution in France, and introduced, throughout Europe, the principal benefits of the crisis of 1789. To use his own words, “He purified the Revolution,” he confirmed kings, and ennobled people. He purified the Revolution in separating the truths which it contained from the passions that, during its delirium, disfigured it. He ennobled the people in giving them the consciousness of their force, and those institutions which raise men in their own eyes. The Emperor may be considered as the Messiah of the new ideas; for—and we must confess it—in the moments immediately succeeding a social revolution, it is not so essential to put rigidly into practice all the propositions resulting from the new theory, but to become master of the regenerative genius, to identify one’s self with the sentiments of the people, and boldly to direct them towards the desired point. To accomplish such a task your fibre should respond to that of the people, as the Emperor said; you should feel like it, your interests should be so intimately raised with its own, that you should vanquish or fall together.’ Let us take breath after these big phrases,—grand round figures of speech,—which, when put together, amount, like certain other combinations of round figures, to exactly 0. We shall not stop to argue the merits and demerits of Prince Louis’s notable comparison between the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of the dying Revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, and, on their deathbeds, making fine speeches, hand over their property to young officers of artillery. We have all read the history of his rise. The constitution of the year III. was carried. Old men of the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris
- 48. sections, Pittetcobourg, aboveall, with his money-bags, thought that here was a fine opportunity for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms: the new constitution had knowledge of a young officer, who would not hesitate to defend its cause, and who effectually beat the majority. The tale may be found in every account of the Revolution, and the rest of his story need not be told. We know every step that he took: we know how, by doses of cannon-balls promptly administered, he cured the fever of the sections—that fever which another camp-physician (Menou) declined to prescribe for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and how the Consulship came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace, exile, and lonely death. Has not all this been written by historians in all tongues?—by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys, secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies-of-honour? Not a word of miracle is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial missions, or political Messiahs. From Napoleon’s rise to his fall, the bayonet marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails of the ‘five hundred,’—now he charges with it across the bloody Arcola—now he flies before it over the fatal plain of Waterloo. Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots in the character of his hero’s government, the Prince is, nevertheless, obliged to allow that such existed; that the Emperor’s manner of rule was a little more abrupt and dictatorial than might possibly be agreeable. For this the Prince has always an answer ready—it is the same poor one that Napoleon uttered a million of times to his companions in exile—the excuse of necessity. He would have been very liberal, but that the people were not fit for it; or that the cursed war prevented him—or any other reason why. His first duty, however, says his apologist, was to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set about his plan in this wise:—
- 49. ‘Let us notforget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the principles of the Revolution. He recalled the émigrés, without touching upon the law by which their goods had been confiscated and sold as public property. He re- established the Catholic religion at the same time that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and endowed equally the ministers of all sects. He caused himself to be consecrated by the Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the Pope’s demand any of the liberties of the Gallican Church. He married a daughter of the Emperor of Austria, without abandoning any of the rights of France to the conquests she had made. He re-established noble titles, without attaching to them any privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred on all ranks, on all services, on all professions. Under the Empire all idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his pedigree—no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had done. ‘The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government is respect to the law. Now, a law has no other power than lies in the interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it. In order to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it should be executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate the principle of equality in all its extension. It was necessary to restore the prestige with which the Government had been formerly invested, and to make the principles of the Revolution take root in the public manners. At the commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes or corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which make the law, or preserve it, from age to age intact.’ Some of these fusions are amusing. No man in the Empire was asked how he was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man’s actions were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to make a host of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what not, whose rank has descended to their children. He married a princess of Austria; but, for all that, did not abandon his conquests—perhaps not actually; but he abandoned his allies, and, eventually, his whole kingdom. Who does not recollect his answer to the Poles, at the commencement of the Russian campaign? But for Napoleon’s imperial father-in-law, Poland would have been a kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still. Why was he to fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his throne? Why did not the
- 50. man of thepeople marry a girl of the people? Why must he have a Pope to crown him—half a dozen kings for brothers, and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks from Astley’s, with dukes’ coronets, and grand blue velvet marshals’ batons? We have repeatedly his words for it. He wanted to create an aristocracy—another acknowledgment on his part of the Republican dilemma—another apology for the Revolutionary blunder. To keep the Republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to rally round the despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for what have we been labouring all this while? for what have bastiles been battered down, and kings’ heads hurled, as a gage of battle, in the face of armed Europe? To have a Duke of Otranto instead of a Duke de la Trémoille, and Emperor Stork in place of King Log. Oh, lame conclusion! Is the blessed Revolution which is prophesied for us in England only to end in establishing a Prince Fergus O’Connor, or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke of Daniel Whittle Harvey? Great as those patriots are, we love them better under their simple family names, and scorn titles and coronets. At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be better arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to adopt any one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no longer confers any patents of nobility, but contents itself with saying, as in the case of M. de Pontois, the other day, ‘Le Roi trouve convenable that you take the title of,’ etc. To execute the legacy of the Revolution, then; to fulfil his providential mission; to keep his place,—in other words, for the simplest are always the best,—to keep his place, and to keep his Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a military despotism, to re-establish honours and titles; it was necessary, as the Prince confesses, to restore the old prestige of the Government, in order to make the people respect it; and he adds—a truth which one hardly would expect from him,—‘At the commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes and corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which preserve the laws.’ Of course, and here is the great risk that all revolutionising people run; they must tend to despotism; ‘they must personify themselves in a man,’ is the Prince’s phrase: and, according as is his temperament or disposition—according as he is a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon—the Revolution becomes tyranny or freedom, prospers or falls.
- 51. Somewhere in theSt. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message of his to the Pope. ‘Tell the Pope,’ he says to an archbishop, ‘to remember that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui marcheront avec moi, pour moi, et comme moi.’ And this is the legacy of the Revolution, the advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of imperial special pleading will not avail against such a speech as this—one so insolent, and at the same time so humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole of the Emperor’s progress, strength, and weakness. The six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the six hundred thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all the rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so crawling and abject but now, becomes, of a sudden, endowed with a wondrous independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham Empress, sham kings, dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and embroideries, pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their hands on, and when the Allies appear before Paris, when for courage and manliness there is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening to the relief of his capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the path of his swift and victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,—where are the great dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the Empire? Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little callow King of Rome? Is she going to defend her nest and her eaglet? Not she. Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and court dignitaries are off on the wings of all the winds—profligati sunt, they are away with the money-bags, and Louis Stanislaus Xavier rolls into the palace of his fathers. With regard to Napoleon’s excellences as an administrator, a legislator, a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his nephew speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose, will be disposed to contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his famous code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; but he established it, and made the law equal for every man in France except one. His vast public works and vaster wars were carried on without new loans or exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away. As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary to confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far more readily than a Government of which the strength is
- 52. diffused in manyconflicting parties. No doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a steam autocrat,—passionless, untiring, and supreme,—we should advance farther, and live more at ease, than under any other form of government. Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their own devices; Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to write leading articles for Cupid, might crown his locks with flowers, and sing ἑρωτα μοὑνον, his natural Anacreontics. But, alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it is for this that the civilised world is compelled to substitute for it something more orderly and less capricious. Good as the Imperial Government might have been, it must be recollected, too, that, since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it. ‘Flying from steeple to steeple,’ the eagles of the former did actually, and according to promise, perch for a while on the towers of Notre-Dame. We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor, the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves in permanence, but spoke no more of the Emperor than if he had never been. Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the Emperor Napoleon II. ‘L’Empereur est mort, vive l’Empereur!’ shouted Prince Lucien. Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played, and as for old Lafayette and his ‘permanent’ representatives, a corporal with a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more Louis Stanislaus Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people. In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his appearance on the frontier. His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and from Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris with a keeper, and in a postchaise; whence, by the orders of the sovereign, it was removed to the American shores, and there magnanimously let loose. Who knows, however, how soon it may be on the wing again, and what a flight it will take?
- 53. THE STORY OFMARY ANCEL ‘GO, my nephew,’ said old Father Jacob to me, ‘and complete thy studies at Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the ministry in these times of trouble, and my excellent friend Schneider will work out the divine intention.’ Schneider was an old college friend of Uncle Jacob’s, was a Benedictine monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, I was at that time my uncle’s chorister, clerk, and sacristan; I swept the church, chanted the prayers with my shrill treble, and swung the great copper incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I toiled over the Fathers for the other days of the week. The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and, without vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily considered that praying was my vocation, and not fighting, as I have found since. You would hardly conceive (said the Major, swearing a great oath) how devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin faster than my own beautiful patois of Alsatian French; I could utterly overthrow, in argument, every Protestant (heretics we called them) parson in the neighbourhood, and there was a confounded sprinkling of these unbelievers in our part of the country. I prayed half a dozen times a day; I fasted thrice in a week; and, as for penance, I used to scourge my little sides, till they had no more feeling than a peg-top: such was the godly life I led at my Uncle Jacob’s in the village of Steinbach. Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a pleasant house were then in the possession of another uncle—Uncle Edward. He was the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather; but Jacob, the elder, had shown a decided vocation for the Church, from, I believe, the age of three, and now was by no means tired of it at sixty. My father, who was to have inherited the paternal property, was, as I hear, a terrible scamp and scapegrace, quarrelled with his family, and disappeared altogether, living and dying at Paris; so far we knew through my mother, who came, poor woman, with me, a child of six months, on her bosom, was refused all
- 54. shelter by mygrandfather, but was housed and kindly cared for by my good Uncle Jacob. Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when she died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was then too young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats. During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left, as I said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in his will that something should be done for me, his grandson. Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that she was an heiress as well as a beauty, which, perhaps, had something to do with the love of these gentlemen. However, Mary declared that she intended to live single, turned away her lovers one after another, and devoted herself to the care of her father. Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr. As for me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of divinity of her, and when we sang ‘Ave Maria’ on Sundays I could not refrain from turning to her, where she knelt, blushing and praying and looking like an angel, as she was. Besides her beauty, Mary had a thousand good qualities; she could play better on the harpsichord, she could dance more lightly, she could make better pickles and puddings, than any girl in Alsace; there was not a want or a fancy of the old hunks, her father, or a wish of mine or my uncle’s, that she would not gratify if she could; as for herself, the sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes except to see us happy. I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that she would do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among my books, her presence ‘would cast a light upon the day;’ how she used to smooth and fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps and gowns for high feast- days; how she used to bring flowers for the altar, and who could deck it so well as she? But sentiment does not come glibly from under a grizzled moustache, so I will drop it, if you please. Amongst other favours she showed me, Mary used to be particularly fond of kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those days; but
- 55. I found thatthe more I grew alive to the extent of the benefit, the less she would condescend to confer it on me; till, at last, when I was about fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of her own wish at least; only sometimes I used to be rude, and take what she had now become so mighty unwilling to give. MARY ANCEL I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when, just as I was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was saluted with a staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by Uncle Edward, and sent me reeling some yards down the garden. The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his purse, now poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished me. I did not think that so much was to be said on any subject as he managed to utter on one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped, he swore, he screamed; and then, from complimenting me, he turned to Mary, and saluted her in a manner equally forcible and significant: she, who was very much frightened at the commencement of the scene, grew very angry at the coarse words he used, and the wicked motives he imputed to her. ‘The child is but fourteen,’ she said; ‘he is your own nephew, and a candidate for holy orders:—Father, it is a shame that you should thus speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession.’
- 56. I did notparticularly admire this speech myself, but it had an effect on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this history commences. The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I must be sent to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the Church were concluded. I was furnished with a letter to my uncle’s old college chum, Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in theology and Greek. I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had heard so much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must quit my pretty cousin and my good old uncle. Mary and I managed, however, a parting walk, in which a number of tender things were said on both sides. I am told that you Englishmen consider it cowardly to cry; as for me, I wept and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the last time, the tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor less than a great wet sponge. My cousin’s eyes were stoically dry; her ladyship had a part to play, and it would have been wrong for her to be in love with a young chit of fourteen—so she carried herself with perfect coolness, as if there was nothing the matter. I should not have known that she cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she wrote me a month afterwards—then, nobody was by, and the consequence was that the letter was half washed away with her weeping: if she had used a watering-pot the thing could not have been better done. Well, I arrived at Strasburg—a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town in those days—and straightway presented myself and letter at Schneider’s door; over it was written— ‘COMITÉ DE SALUT PUBLIC.’ Would you believe it? I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had no idea of the meaning of the words: however, I entered the citizen’s room without fear, and sat down in his antechamber until I could be admitted to see him. Here I found very few indications of his reverence’s profession; the walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and the like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word Tratîre underneath; lists and Republican proclamations, tobacco-pipes, and firearms. At a deal table, stained with grease and wine, sat a gentleman with a huge pigtail dangling down to that part of his person which immediately succeeds his back, and a
- 57. red nightcap containinga tricolour cockade as large as a pancake. He was smoking a short pipe, reading a little book, and sobbing as if his heart would break. Every now and then he would make brief remarks upon the personages or the incidents of his book, by which I could judge that he was a man of the very keenest sensibilities—‘Ah, brigand!’ ‘Oh, malheureuse!’ ‘Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!’ The work which this gentleman was perusing is called The Sorrows of Werther; it was all the rage in those days, and my friend was only following the fashion. I asked him if I could see Father Schneider. He turned towards me a hideous pimpled face, which I dream of now at forty years’ distance. ‘Father who?’ said he. ‘Do you imagine that Citizen Schneider has not thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider—many a man has died for less!’ And he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was hanging in the room. I was in amazement. ‘What is he? Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbé, a monk, until monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of Anacreon?’ ‘He was all this,’ replied my grim friend; ‘he is now a Member of the Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering your head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer.’ He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to give me the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for instruction. Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Würzburg, and afterwards entered a convent, where he remained nine years. He here became distinguished for his learning and his talents as a preacher, and became chaplain to Duke Charles of Würtemberg. The doctrines of the Illuminati began about this time to spread in Germany, and Schneider speedily joined the sect. He had been a professor of Greek at Cologne; and being compelled, on account of his irregularity, to give up his chair, he came to Strasburg at the commencement of the French Revolution, and acted for some time a principal part as a revolutionary agent at Strasburg. [‘Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long under his tuition!’ said the Captain.’ I owe the preservation of my morals entirely to my entering the army. A man, sir, who is a soldier, has very little
- 58. time to bewicked; except in the case of a siege and the sack of a town, when a little licence can offend nobody.’] By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider’s biography, we had grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that experience so remarkable in youth) my whole history—my course of studies, my pleasant country life, the names and qualities of my dear relations, and my occupations in the vestry before religion was abolished by order of the Republic. In the course of my speech I recurred so often to the name of my cousin Mary, that the gentleman could not fail to perceive what a tender place she had in my heart. Then we reverted to The Sorrows of Werther, and discussed the merits of that sublime performance. Although I had before felt some misgivings about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite yearned towards him. He talked about love and sentiment in a manner which made me recollect that I was in love myself; and you know that when a man is in that condition, his taste is not very refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse appearing sublime to him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with his own situation. ‘Candid youth!’ cried my unknown, ‘I love to hear thy innocent story, and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our cares as men, and be boys, as thou art, again!’ Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand. I blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met with one who was so likely to aid me. What a slanderous world it is! thought I; the people in our village call these Republicans wicked and bloody-minded; a lamb could not be more tender than this sentimental bottle-nosed gentleman! The worthy man then gave me to understand that he held a place under Government. I was busy in endeavouring to discover what his situation might be, when the door of the next apartment opened, and Schneider made his appearance. At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new acquaintance, and gave him, to my astonishment, something very like a blow. ‘You drunken, talking fool,’ he said, ‘you are always after your time. Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting until you have
- 59. finished your beerand your sentiment!’ My friend slunk, muttering, out of the room. ‘That fellow,’ said Schneider, turning to me, ‘is our public executioner: a capital hand, too, if he would but keep decent time; but the brute is always drunk, and blubbering over The Sorrows of Werther!’ . . . . . I know not whether it was his old friendship for my uncle, or my proper merits, which won the heart of this the sternest ruffian of Robespierre’s crew; but certain it is, that he became strangely attached to me, and kept me constantly about his person. As for the priesthood and the Greek, they were of course very soon out of the question. The Austrians were on our frontier; every day brought us accounts of battles won; and the youth of Strasburg, and of all France, indeed, were bursting with military ardour. As for me, I shared the general mania, and speedily mounted a cockade as large as that of my friend the executioner. The occupations of this worthy were unremitting. St. Just, who had come down from Paris to preside over our town, executed the laws and the aristocrats with terrible punctuality; and Schneider used to make country excursions in search of offenders, with this fellow, as a provost-marshal, at his back. In the meantime, having entered my sixteenth year, and being a proper lad of my age, I had joined a regiment of cavalry, and was scampering now after the Austrians who menaced us, and now threatening the émigrés, who were banded at Coblentz. My love for my dear cousin increased as my whiskers grew; and when I was scarcely seventeen, I thought myself man enough to marry her, and to cut the throat of any one who should venture to say me nay. I need not tell you that during my absence at Strasburg, great changes had occurred in our little village, and somewhat of the revolutionary rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant place. The hideous ‘Fête of the Supreme Being’ had been celebrated at Paris; the practice of our ancient religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them in concealment, or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime of Christianity. In our poor village my uncle’s church was closed, and he, himself, an inmate in my brother’s house, only owing his safety to his great popularity among his former flock and the influence of Edward Ancel.
- 60. The latter hadtaken in the Revolution a somewhat prominent part; that is, he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended the clubs regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his department, and was loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in his neighbourhood. But owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the peasantry, and their quiet and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury which prevailed in the cities had hardly reached the country people. The occasional visit of a commissary from Paris or Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and to remind the rural swains of the existence of a Republic in France. Now and then, when I could gain a week’s leave of absence, I returned to the village, and was received with tolerable politeness by my uncle, and with a warmer feeling by his daughter. I won’t describe to you the progress of our love, or the wrath of my Uncle Edward when he discovered that it still continued. He swore and he stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed that he would withdraw the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured near her. His daughter, he said, should never marry a hopeless, penniless subaltern; and Mary declared she would not marry without his consent. What had I to do? —to despair and to leave her. As for my poor Uncle Jacob, he had no counsel to give me, and, indeed, no spirit left: his little church was turned into a stable, his surplice torn off his shoulders, and he was only too lucky in keeping his head on them. A bright thought struck him: suppose you were to ask the advice of my old friend Schneider regarding this marriage? he has ever been your friend, and may help you now as before. (Here the Captain paused a little.) You may fancy (continued he) that it was droll advice of a reverend gentleman like Uncle Jacob to counsel me in this manner, and to bid me make friends with such a murderous cut-throat as Schneider; but we thought nothing of it in those days; guillotining was as common as dancing, and a man was only thought the better patriot the more severe he might be. I departed forthwith to Strasburg, and requested the vote and interest of the Citizen President of the Committee of Public Safety. He heard me with a great deal of attention. I described to him most minutely the circumstances, expatiated upon the charms of my dear Mary, and painted her to him from head to foot. Her golden hair and her bright blushing cheeks, her slim waist and her tripping tiny feet; and furthermore, I added that she possessed a fortune which ought, by rights, to be mine, but
- 61. for the miserlyold father. ‘Curse him for an aristocrat!’ concluded I, in my wrath. As I had been discoursing about Mary’s charms, Schneider listened with much complacency and attention: when I spoke about her fortune, his interest redoubled; and when I called her father an aristocrat, the worthy ex- Jesuit gave a grin of satisfaction, which was really quite terrible. Oh, fool that I was to trust him so far! . . . . . The very same evening an officer waited upon me with the following note from St. Just:— ‘Strasburg: Fifth year of the Republic one and ‘indivisible, 11 Ventôse. ‘The citizen Pierre Ancel is to leave Strasburg within two hours, and to carry the enclosed despatches to the President of the Committee of Public Safety at Paris. The necessary leave of absence from his military duties has been provided. Instant punishment will follow the slightest delay on the road. ‘Salut et Fraternité.’ There was no choice but obedience, and off I sped on my weary way to the capital. As I was riding out of the Paris gate I met an equipage which I knew to be that of Schneider. The ruffian smiled at me as I passed, and wished me a bon voyage. Behind his chariot came a curious machine, or cart; a great basket, three stout poles, and several planks, all painted red, were lying in this vehicle, on the top of which was seated my friend with the big cockade. It was the portable guillotine which Schneider always carried with him on his travels. The bourreau was reading The Sorrows of Werther, and looked as sentimental as usual. I will not speak of my voyage, in order to relate to you Schneider’s. My story had awakened the wretch’s curiosity and avarice, and he was determined that such a prize as I had shown my cousin to be should fall into no hands but his own. No sooner, in fact, had I quitted his room than he procured the order for my absence, and was on the way to Steinbach as I met him.
- 62. The journey isnot a very long one; and on the next day my Uncle Jacob was surprised by receiving a message that the Citizen Schneider was in the village, and was coming to greet his old friend. Old Jacob was in an ecstasy, for he longed to see his college acquaintance, and he hoped also that Schneider had come into that part of the country upon the marriage- business of your humble servant. Of course Mary was summoned to give her best dinner, and wear her best frock; and her father made ready to receive the new State dignitary. Schneider’s carriage speedily rolled into the courtyard, and Schneider’s cart followed, as a matter of course. The ex-priest only entered the house; his companion remaining with the horses to dine in private. Here was a most touching meeting between him and Jacob. They talked over their old college pranks and successes; they capped Greek verses, and quoted ancient epigrams upon their tutors, who had been dead since the Seven Years’ War. Mary declared it was quite touching to listen to the merry friendly talk of these two old gentlemen. After the conversation had continued for a time in this strain, Schneider drew up all of a sudden, and said, quietly, that he had come on particular and unpleasant business—hinting about troublesome times, spies, evil reports, and so forth. Then he called Uncle Edward aside, and had with him a long and earnest conversation; so Jacob went out and talked with Schneider’s friend: they speedily became very intimate, for the ruffian detailed all the circumstances of his interview with me. When he returned into the house, some time after this pleasing colloquy, he found the tone of the society strangely altered. Edward Ancel, pale as a sheet, trembling, and crying for mercy; poor Mary weeping; and Schneider pacing energetically about the apartment, raging about the rights of man, the punishment of traitors, and the one and indivisible Republic. ‘Jacob,’ he said as my uncle entered the room, ‘I was willing, for the sake of our old friendship, to forget the crimes of your brother. He is a known and dangerous aristocrat; he holds communications with the enemy on the frontier; he is a possessor of great and ill-gotten wealth, of which he has plundered the Republic. Do you know,’ said he, turning to Edward Ancel, ‘where the least of these crimes, or the mere suspicion of them, would lead you?’
- 63. Poor Edward satetrembling in his chair, and answered not a word. He knew full well how quickly, in this dreadful time, punishment followed suspicion; and though guiltless of all treason with the enemy, perhaps he was aware that, in certain contracts with the Government, he had taken to himself a more than patriotic share of profit. ‘Do you know,’ resumed Schneider, in a voice of thunder, ‘for what purpose I came hither, and by whom I am accompanied? I am the administrator of the justice of the Republic. The life of yourself and your family is in my hands: yonder man, who follows me, is the executor of the law; he has rid the nation of hundreds of wretches like yourself. A single word from me, and your doom is sealed without hope, and your last hour is come. Ho! Grégoire!’ shouted he; ‘is all ready?’ Grégoire replied from the court, ‘I can put up the machine in half an hour. Shall I go down to the village and call the troops and the law people?’ ‘Do you hear him?’ said Schneider. ‘The guillotine is in your courtyard; your name is on my list, and I have witnesses to prove your crime. Have you a word in your defence?’ Not a word came; the old gentleman was dumb; but his daughter, who did not give way to his terrors, spoke for him. ‘You cannot, sir,’ said she, ‘although you say it, feel that my father is guilty; you would not have entered our house thus alone if you had thought it. You threaten him in this manner because you have something to ask and to gain from us: what is it, citizen?—tell us at how much you value our lives, and what sum we are to pay for our ransom?’ ‘Sum!’ said Uncle Jacob; ‘he does not want money of us: my old friend, my college chum, does not come hither to drive bargains with anybody belonging to Jacob Ancel!’ ‘Oh no, sir, no, you can’t want money of us,’ shrieked Edward; ‘we are the poorest people of the village: ruined, Monsieur Schneider, ruined in the cause of the Republic.’ ‘Silence, father,’ said my brave Mary; ‘this man wants a price: he comes with his worthy friend yonder, to frighten us, not to kill us. If we die, he cannot touch a sou of our money; it is confiscated to the State. Tell us, sir, what is the price of our safety?’ Schneider smiled, and bowed with perfect politeness.
- 64. ‘Mademoiselle Marie,’ hesaid, ‘is perfectly correct in her surmise. I do not want the life of this poor drivelling old man: my intentions are much more peaceable, be assured. It rests entirely with this accomplished young lady (whose spirit I like, and whose ready wit I admire), whether the business between us shall be a matter of love or death. I humbly offer myself, Citizen Ancel, as a candidate for the hand of your charming daughter. Her goodness, her beauty, and the large fortune which I know you intend to give her, would render her a desirable match for the proudest man in the Republic, and, I am sure, would make me the happiest.’ ‘This must be a jest, Monsieur Schneider,’ said Mary, trembling, and turning deadly pale: ‘you cannot mean this; you do not know me: you never heard of me until to-day.’ ‘Pardon me, belle dame,’ replied he; ‘your cousin Pierre has often talked to me of your virtues; indeed, it was by his special suggestion that I made the visit.’ ‘It is false!—it is a base and cowardly lie!’ exclaimed she (for the young lady’s courage was up),—‘Pierre never could have forgotten himself and me so as to offer me to one like you. You come here with a lie on your lips —a lie against my father, to swear his life away, against my dear cousin’s honour and love. It is useless now to deny it: Father, I love Pierre Ancel; I will marry no other but him—no, though our last penny were paid to this man as the price of our freedom.’ Schneider’s only reply to this was a call to his friend Grégoire. ‘Send down to the village for the maire and some gendarmes; and tell your people to make ready.’ ‘Shall I put the machine up?’ shouted he of the sentimental turn. ‘You hear him,’ said Schneider; ‘Marie Ancel, you may decide the fate of your father. I shall return in a few hours,’ concluded he, ‘and will then beg to know your decision.’ The advocate of the rights of man then left the apartment, and left the family, as you may imagine, in no very pleasant mood. Old Uncle Jacob, during the few minutes which had elapsed in the enactment of this strange scene, sate staring wildly at Schneider, and holding Mary on his knees: the poor little thing had fled to him for protection, and not to her father, who was kneeling almost senseless at the window, gazing at the executioner and his hideous preparations. The
- 65. instinct of thepoor girl had not failed her; she knew that Jacob was her only protector, if not of her life—Heaven bless him!—of her honour. ‘Indeed,’ the old man said, in a stout voice, ‘this must never be, my dearest child— you must not marry this man. If it be the will of Providence that we fall, we shall have at least the thought to console us that we die innocent. Any man in France at a time like this would be a coward and traitor if he feared to meet the fate of the thousand brave and good who have preceded us.’ ‘Who speaks of dying?’ said Edward. ‘You, brother Jacob?—you would not lay that poor girl’s head on the scaffold, or mine, your dear brother’s. You will not let us die, Mary; you will not, for a small sacrifice, bring your poor old father into danger?’ Mary made no answer. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘there is time for escape: he is to be here but in two hours; in two hours we may be safe, in concealment, or on the frontier.’ And she rushed to the door of the chamber, as if she would have instantly made the attempt: two gendarmes were at the door. ‘We have orders, mademoiselle,’ they said, ‘to allow no one to leave this apartment until the return of the Citizen Schneider.’ Alas! all hope of escape was impossible. Mary became quite silent for a while; she would not speak to Uncle Jacob; and in reply to her father’s eager questions, she only replied, coldly, that she would answer Schneider when he arrived. The two dreadful hours passed away only too quickly; and, punctual to his appointment, the ex-monk appeared. Directly he entered, Mary advanced to him, and said calmly— ‘Sir, I could not deceive you if I said that I freely accepted the offer which you have made me. I will be your wife; but I tell you that I love another; and that it is only to save the lives of these two old men that I yield my person up to you.’ Schneider bowed, and said— ‘It is bravely spoken. I like your candour—your beauty. As for the love, excuse me for saying that is a matter of total indifference. I have no doubt, however, that it will come as soon as your feelings in favour of the young gentleman, your cousin, have lost their present fervour. That engaging young man has, at present, another mistress—Glory. He occupies, I believe, the distinguished post of corporal in a regiment which is about to march to —Perpignan, I believe.’
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