24
NOTES AND QUERIES. CD* s. v. JAN. 13, 1900.
that your abdication has become necessary. We
bring you the document to sign.'
" The emperor drew back a little behind his very large table. It was a heavy piece of furniture ; on the emperor's left hand a chandelier of five branches lighted the letter he had begun to write ; in front was a malachite paper-press formed of a great ball fixed on a very massive rectangle.
" During Count Pahlen's speech, pronounced in a very firm voice, the five men had progressively advanced towards the edge of the table ; the second taper was set down beside the inkstand, while the emperor, who was placed on the other side, recoiled involuntarily to increase the distance which sepa- rated him from these men.
" ' Yes,' he said ; ' you are deficient m respect for me ; you think I am too severe with you, and you want to take my place in order to give it to my
more yielding successor. I shall resist that I
shall resist that ' and, as he uttered these words,
the emperor pushed back his chair towards the partition against which he had been almost leaning, and which was close to the wide fireplace in which some embers were dying out.
" ' Sire, we wish for yoiir abdication at any cost; we require it for the public good.' At the moment he pronounced these words Count Pahlen, a tall and powerful man, passed his arm over the table with sufficient rapidity to seize the emperor's hand. The latter recoiled hastily, and endeavoured with his other disengaged hand to open a door pierced in the wall behind him, a secret door by which he probably expected to escape.
"These very violent struggles tilted the table; the two tapers placed upon it fell off and were ex- tinguished, and Count Pahlen, seizing the paper- press with his right hand, struck the emperor on the temple with it while he dragged him towards himself with all his strength. The emperor, whose skull was fractured, sank backwards. The table was rearranged, and Count Pahlen, aided by his accomplices, took the hand of the dying emperor, put a pen into his fingers, and thus signed the abdication of the Emperor Paul I.
" During all this horrible scene I stood there with eyes wide open, motionless and stupefied, and I held in my hand the taper which alone had lighted that chamber of crime. It was by the light of that taper that I saw the posthumous signature affixed.
The day following this sinister adventure my aunt left the palace and fell ill of the shock. After- wards when, restored to health, she recalled those dramatic episodes, it was always impossible for her to analyze the efficient causes of her movements. She has assured me that she felt herself trans- formed into an automaton all whose movements were obligatory. It would have been impossible for her to have acted of herself. No conscious liberty was left her.
I point out this fact because of the rarity of the case, for my aunt was a woman of great powers and of much acuteness of intellect, like most of the women of the eighteenth century, and knew how to observe and to analyze with judgment and sagacity. I have also thought it right to fix this page of' tenebrous history, which gives the true ver- sion of the so-much-debated end of the Emperor Paul I. Indeed, my aunt was the only witness of the scene, and I have written her narrative as she dictated it.
J. LORAINE HEELIS.
9, Morrab Terrace, Penzance,
DR. JOHNSON AND VESTRIS. Apropos of
the note concerning Dr. Johnson and Vestris,
9 th S. iv. 452, the following may be interest-
ing. The late Sir Henry Russell, in some
MS. notes of his father's life, says :
" My father asked Dr. Johnson one day where he had passed the preceding evening. 'Sir,' he said, ' I went to the Opera'; and seeing my father looked surprised, he said, ' Yes, Sir, I went to the Opera to see Vestris dance. I like to see any man do anything that he does better than all the world beside.' "
CONSTANCE RUSSELL. Swallowfield, Reading.
"INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF FAMOUS LITERATURE." I would warn intending sub- scribers to this work that it contains Ame- rican spelling in its most irritating form. I wish some one had warned me. Also it has what I suppose are American emendations, unless they are gross misprints ; for instance, "Far from the maddening crowd " in the place of the well-known line that has been classic for some hundred and fifty years ; " That Timour" instead of " Thou Timour" in Byron's ' Ode to Napoleon.' For a work so much vaunted as this has been, the misprints are singularly numerous. The following are a few instances : Humphry Clinker, when he gets into prison, is made to pay "gareish " instead of garnish; Diderot is stated to be the son of a master "cutter" instead of cutler; Nelson's famous signal is stated to have been "competed " instead of completed. A Latin quotation from * Cranford ' figures as follows : " Dum spiritus regit aruts" It took me some little time to find out what " aruts " meant ; it is a misprint for artus. This is really a very careless misprint. Surely Cowper never put into Johnny Gilpin's mouth the following line (when he got to Ware) : " I carne because your horse could come." It must have been would, but I have not a copy of the poem handy to refer to. An extract from Sain tine's 4 Pic- ciola ' is introduced in this language : " Charney, a political prisoner, has fixed his affections on a flower that grew between the stone of his prison " instead of " between the stones" (I believe really it ought to be " between the flags of his prison "). Omis- sions are conspicuous (if I may be allowed a bull). * Hohenlinden ' is left out, but some dozen pages of the ' Pleasures of Hope ' are in. Brilliant diamond the one ; somewhat ponderous, and nowadays not much appre- ciated metal, the other. Not a word is said about "Junius," though his letter to the king is inserted ; nor of Wolfe, or how his famous 'Burial' came to be written and
