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besides his fiery young men, who were mere subalterns, with only their swords and courage. And he was much criticized for his alliance with this man of power, Augustin Robespierre. He had joined hands, as the Permons and their like said, with Barras and Fréron, and now with the two Robespierres, men of blood, when he had no stomach for murder and little for vengeance. Indeed, when he came up to Paris, a little later, and found this same Sallicetti, his betrayer, outlawed and hiding in the closet of his friend, Madame Permon, he let him go. Numerous, too, were the Royalists he at his own risk had saved. He was naturally conscious of this magnanimity, and the criticisms hurt.

"Why can they not be practical?" he said once to Marmont, who had more sagacity than the impetuous Junot and had not yet shown the Judas stripes. "The Revolution has been almost ruined by theorists. Every crowned head in Europe is massing his troops against us or intriguing with his spies within. They hate us because they fear Liberty will cross our borders into theirs. The Royalists are hatching plots, and many provinces have revolted. Firmness to the point of liberal executions is the only thing that will stop insurrection. It is no wonder that many have gone insane, that among others the innocent have perished. Better that a few of these die than that the Revolution fail. Not only France but the world would be the loser. Civilization would go back three hundred years.

"Take your Robespierre now Maximilien I refer to he would guillotine all who disagree with his

theories; but, monster that he is, he has kept us together, put down revolt, held our armies with their faces to the foe. And none can deny that he is incorruptible. With all his opportunities he has enriched himself by not one sou.

"What the idealist calls casuistry, Marmont," he concluded in disgust, "is sometimes nothing but common sense!"

But the Robespierres could help him no longer. They also were answering questions-questions more categorically put, by the august Revolutionary Tribunal at Paris, in the old apartments of the queen. That is, Augustin was trying to answer them. Maximilien had been a great talker; but he could scarcely mumble now, with his lower jaw shot away and the blood staining that faultless blue swallowtail and a jabot as snowy as Stanislas Fréron's. But no answers ever satisfied these arbitrary judges, and next day the guillotine fell. The head with the stained bandage and broken jaw was held up to the cheering crowd; and the Reign of Terror was forever over.

The fair body of France had gone through many throes, these past five years, and in this Revolution, as in all, there had been three estates: that of the constitutionalists and StatesGeneral; then of the Assembly and half-measures; and at last of the extremists, the Convention and the Terror, when the men of iron and blood, assassins, fanatics, strangely and complexly motivated, but not all without patriotism, ruled. Now was to come the reaction, sadder still, that follows the agony, when peace is at hand, but a distorted peace, cynical and corrupt, and

which has to mitigate it none of those fires of ecstasy which burn bright even as they shrivel and destroy.

The last spasm Napoleon himself was to see, when he reached Paris, in another May, 1795, with three of his young men, Marmont, Junot, and Victor-Masséna, Desaix, and Muiron having perforce been left behind. Quite a band too, all nearly equal in age and matching their chief in mettle, if not in temper and vision-paladins all, like those of Charlemagne. And their number was to be augmented by other youngsters who would travel with him the paths of glory. For wherever men were gathered together, his eyes were eagerly yet coolly watching, searching for new recruits.

Older men, too, he had allied to himself; and one, the austere Carnot, was to prove a valuable ally, shortly after his arrival, when Napoleon was ordered to Vendée, there to be transferred to the infantry. Now in those years, as to-day, the artillery looked down on the infantry; and Napoleon smarted at the demotion. So promptly he sat down and wrote the War Department:

"Many soldiers can direct a brigade better than I. Few have commanded artillery with greater sucI refuse to accept."

cess.

It might have gone badly with him, had not Carnot, also Barras and Fréron, stepped in. And Barras could use him now. For the people of Paris, angered at the new Constitution and egged on by the Royalists, planned to storm once more the Tuileries where the new government sat. Barras was in command of the Army of the Interior and needed

The

some one to handle his guns. little meddler of Toulon was the man. True, Barras also appointed four other young generals to help take charge of events. But no one seemed aware of that. All government and populace saw and heard was the smallest of the five.

The situation was reversed from that of August 10, three years before, when the city rose against the king. The attackers then were a ragged mob; now the rebels had thirty thousand well drilled militia besides hastily armed Royalists and malcontents. And there were within the palace environs only seven thousand troops to defend the Convention.

But one man rather surprisingly changed these odds. On that August night only as hypothetical commander, he made his rounds. Where before he had placed his cannon only in fancy, he disposed them now with a dread actuality.

But again there was a lack of guns. guns. No time was to be lost, and he persuaded Barras to send a certain Captain Murat-another of his young men to Sablons for more cannon. A wise precaution, the government said, praising Barras! For this messenger, young Captain Murat, was dashing, expeditious. Swiftly he returned with the guns, rattling over the cobbles of Paris. Swiftly they were placed, as Napoleon directed, on bridge-heads at the river, at the street intersections; at every point, in fact, he had picked out that night three years before.

In the morning the Royalist columns formed; but it was four o'clock before they struck. One could see them everywhere, their bayonets

glistening far up the streets running north and south. From the windows, too, muskets protruded-as in the riots at Ajaccio. Paris was a bigger town, but that had been another lesson that could be applied on a larger scale. So never mind those forty-odd thousand, forty against seven. His guns were at every corner, pointing up the crossstreets and commanding the Rue St.-Honoré, over which the rebels must come, from the Palais Royal, past the old yellow church of St.Roch to the convents.

But now some one had fired, from a house or over a barricade. They were coming on-just a square away. He gave the word. Those guns, always obedient to their little commander, spoke once, twice, several times. Hundreds lay dead-the Royalist columns broke, ran, hid in the old yellow church, cowered under the blue painted sky and the white sculptured figures of its altar, or scampered off toward the Madeleine. Over the river, too, he had placed his guns well. There the rebels broke and ran quite as fast. A few minutes of fighting, and he was master of the situation.

So peace was restored. People grumbled for a little while; complained that Barras had wantonly killed his fellow-citizens. It was, said Barras, all Napoleon's fault. Soon they forgot to grumble. It was a good measure, after all. Now Barras said it was he, and not Napoleon, that had handled things so well. But it was too late. The word had gone the rounds. That young Corsican emigrant was coming man!

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Barras frowned. The meddler was hard to handle. Better win his support by promoting him again. On the tenth of October he persuaded the Convention to appoint this Bonaparte second in command of the Army of the Interior; on the sixteenth he was made a general of division; on the twentieth he took full command. Faster now. Indeed things were looking up!

And now he could have an extra uniform, a horse and carriage—two or three if he liked. or three if he liked. These he had not desired as a luxury, but because, as he wrote Joseph, it would "enable me to go about my business with greater despatch." And he moved from lodgings to a hotel of his own.

Nor did he reserve all his good fortune for himself. He bade Joseph see that "all the family are abundantly provided for. None must want for anything." There was Lucien, for instance. He had made a fool of himself by marrying an innkeeper's daughter because he was behind in his board bill and then had got himself in jail. Moreover the bride was going to have a baby. But he must be looked out for. There were many poor, too, now in Paris. He would distribute free bread.

Barras also had an idea, for which the time was ripe, he decided, after looking Napoleon over.

"You should enlarge your acquaintance, general," he said. "Come to my salon. You will find there ladies of great beauty and charm-the fair Madame Tallienthe widow Beauharnais."

The brusque young Corsican was to be launched in society.

(To be continued)

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CENSORSHIP: The question of censorship is up again, this time with reference to the theater. The plays in New York are said to be, some of them at least, of a character that calls for vigorous correction. If the public will not do its duty, we are told the government should interfere.

The question is vital for many people, even though they have not seen the plays that are making the trouble. Vital, even though we disagreed as to which plays were good and which bad. We know that the theater, more than any other form of art, has an immense emotional effect upon its audience, and it is sensible to suppose that this effect may either do harm or do good. What could be more obvious than that an intelligent society should entertain itself exclusively with the art which in some sense will do it good?

Many of us, however, are immediately roused on the other side. We believe that censorship of art, like other forms of restraint, will always injure somewhat the very person supposed to be benefited, even when the censorship can be intelligently applied. In literature, however, we are quite sure that no censorship is at the moment possible which by any stretching of the word could be called intelligent. Our

reasons for this position, omitting for the moment the whole problem of liberty and responsibility, is that we do not yet understand sufficiently what is the effect of any good play on the minds and the hearts of those who see it.

To oppose censorship lays us open at once to the charge of moral indolence, or perhaps turpitude. Since the object is to improve the world, why, we are asked, should we oppose any method which will further this end? We find ourselves strangely on the defensive. In the face of so much good-will and of such admirable intention, we lose some of the courage of our conviction, perhaps, and conclude that the experiment might as well be tried for the sake of the race at large. But in some moments our courage comes back, and we are moved, as I am now, to protest that not every method is a good one, even though it is intended to serve a good end. I should like to question the whole method of censorship.

When we object to any proposed censorship, we often say that the problem would solve itself, if the sensible and moral part of the community, by far the majority, would only indorse the good plays and stay away from the others. This simple

program is usually applauded; I have at times suggested it myself and felt that I was saying a wise thing. Yet I know how quickly I should get into trouble if I confessed publicly to my admiration for certain plays. In any choice of the half-dozen finest things Shakspere wrote, I should include "Measure for Measure." In spite of its subject, and in spite of its astounding frankness of speech, it impresses me as one of the noblest studies of human nature in any language, one of the most moral, one of the deepest, and essentially one of the purest. Yet I doubt whether the police would let this play go on in New York to-day with Shakspere's text unexpurgated. Some highly personal stories in the Old Testament, involving certain of the patriarchs and kings, seem to me noble and beneficial to readers of any age, and quite in their place in a canon of sacred Scripture. Yet I should expect even the gentlest censor to make it impossible to present them on the stage as they are presented in the Bible. My reason for expecting such drastic action is that wherever censorship has been applied, in moving pictures, for example, the work of expurgation has gone even further than I am here suggesting.

The illustrations here cited of literary masterpieces which we hold up to reverence in the schools and in the churches, but against which we should probably be on our guard if they came fresh from the pen to-day, suggest a phase of censorship which most of us usually overlook. In our desire to purge the drama of what is base and degrading, we are likely to brand with those evil terms what in

the masters we pretend to revere, and anybody with an alert mind will see the contradiction. Censorship, if it should ever exist, ought to be complete. If you are going to protect the morals only of the citizen who is spending his two hours on occasion in a theater, you are wasting your time, and provoking ironic comment. During the other portions of his life he may be exposedwho knows?-to the Bible, for example. Or he may be reading Homer, or he may come down to such comparatively recent authors as Fielding, or he may wander into foreign languages and read Balzac or Tolstoy. If certain influences in the theater are likely to do him harm, ought we not to protect him also from the scandals and misbehaviors which the newspapers report? Even his own relatives may occasionally forget themselves and set him a bad example; ought we not to rescue him promptly?

To this argument I know the advocates of censorship will probably give little attention. The question will seem to them absurd. They will cut through it to the heart of the matter, as they say, and will remind me that after all there is a difference between a good healthy play and a rotten one, and the rotten ones should not be permitted on the stage.

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WHAT IS A GOOD PLAY?-Very well. All we need, then, is to know what is a good play. Some of us will define dramatic excellence in terms of the subject-matter, or rather in terms of something excluded from the plot or the dialogue. A good play

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