LAST WEEK.
THE HEGIRA OF THE BOURBONS.
Young Francis II. is gone at last. When kings fly their first step is decisive. You cannot dally with a crown—clutch the golden prize one minute, and let it fall from your trembling fingers the next. This last of the Neapolitan Bourbons, whilst we are writing, is at Gaeta: but it is most probable when this number of Once a Week is published, that he will even have abandoned that stronghold, and be on his way to a Spanish port, or to the Court of Francis Joseph, the ex officio Protector of small Italian royalties. As soon as Garibaldi is fixed at Naples, whether he administers the country for a time as Dictator, or whether he hands it over to the Sardinian King, really matters not—the Neapolitan army and navy will adhere to the buon stato, or new order of things. It is not likely that the Royal Runaway will suffer himself to be caught like a rat in a trap, or as Gil Blas was caught in the den of the famous Captain Rolando. Gaeta once invested by sea and by land, the situation of any one member of the garrison, from the King to a gunner-boy, would be exceedingly precarious. Not that these are times when fugitive Sovereigns have occasion to fear for their lives, but no doubt Francis II., late of the Two Sicilies, now of Gaeta, would rather be spared the humiliation of a contemptuous dismissal by his enemies. He has given up his kingdom without striking one good stroke in its defence. Courage failed him not at the moment when he directed that the fair city of Palermo should be laid in ashes, even although the operation was not called for on military grounds. He had courage enough when the Queen Mother and the camarilla urged him to continue the cruel system of government which his father had carried out for some thirty years. He had courage enough to stop his ears to the groans and cries of the wretched political prisoners who were incarcerated in his dungeons. But he had no courage when summoned to take the field, and meet the enemy of his name, and the people whom he and his father and grandfather had oppressed. As Macaulay has written—
He—he turns—he flies—
Shame on those cruel eyes,
That bore to look on torture,
But dare not look on war.
The best thing now for Italy, and for Europe, is that this last of the Neapolitan Bourbons should be allowed to take his way quietly to the court of his Spanish cousin, who no doubt will give him a hiding-place. He is still one of the richest men in Europe.
LOUIS NAPOLEON’S ALPENSTOCK.
What a lamentable story was that one of those poor English travellers who fell over a precipice the other day as they were crossing from the Montanvert to Cormayeur! Europe annually sends forth her thousands of travellers to the Swiss mountains, and all things considered it is a wonder that so few accidents occur. Every idle voluptuary of the European capitals—every middle-aged gentleman whose figure owns the affronts of time, and betrays the effects of good living, from the moment he reaches Lucerne or Geneva conceives himself to be instantly converted into a Swiss mountaineer. Now the purchase of Keller’s map, of a little bag like a lady’s reticule, to be slung round the shoulder, and of a long pole tipped with an elegant little chamois horn, can be easily effected; but these possessions, however valuable, will scarcely convert their fortunate owner into a mountaineer. They will not give him the hardness of limb, the enduring breath, the endurance of fatigue so necessary for the man who would grapple with the difficulties of Swiss mountains and passes as one to the manner born. Faint and weary, at the end of a very moderate day’s excursion, you see the way-worn traveller who had left his inn with the rising sun, so light of heart and of foot, that by his side the guides seemed but clumsy and incapable travellers, plodding back, and cursing the hour when he exchanged the amenities of Pall Mall, or the Boulevards, for the stern realities of a stroll amongst the mountains. A man does not become an efficient member of the Alpine Club by a mere act of volition. There are Swiss dreams and Swiss realities—under which head are we to range the aspirations and performances of the latest Swiss travellers, Louis Napoleon and the fair Empress, whose graceful presence half excuses the triumphs of her lord?
Louis Napoleon has regularly commenced operations as a Swiss excursionist. He has bought an alpenstock, for which he has paid as a price the blood of thousands of Frenchmen, and millions of French treasure. It is the custom of Swiss travellers to cause the titles of their achievements to be burnt in upon these mountain-poles as records of their prowess. Upon the alpenstock of Louis Napoleon are now engraved these significant words:
Mont Cenis.
Chamounix.
Chablais.
Faucigny.
Lac de Genève.
What next? It was not for nothing that, with the Empress Eugenie by his side, he went afloat the other day on the Lake of Geneva in that silken-galley which reminds the reader of Cleopatra’s barge. For the name of the Egyptian Queen, read that of the French Empress, and the description may stand:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that
The winds were love-sick; with them the oars were silver;
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water, whilst they beat, to follow faster
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person
It beggar’d all description; she did lie
In her pavilion (cloth of gold, of tissue)
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork Nature.
* * * * From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hit the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs.
