1831.] [ 35 J 



ST. CROIX ; A TALE OF THE DAYS OF TERROR. 



I HATE heard it asserted that England is pre-eminently distinguished 

 amongst other countries for the individual eccentricity of many of its 

 inhabitants ; but whether this peculiarity is attributed to the influence of 

 climate,, government, or phrenological organization, I at this instant 

 utterly forget, nor is the fact of much importance, as whatever the theo- 

 retical cause, I deny the supposed result. Oddities, as these deformed 

 combinations of human intellect are commonly called, are to be met 

 with every where, and in France, not less than England, as I can attest 

 from personal experience. 



Monsieur St. Croix was the very prince of the whole tribe : a strange 

 compound of the misanthrope and philanthropist, the miser and the fop, 

 fermented by a strong leaven of the irritability and waywardness of 

 insanity. And this man dwelt, three years ago, and probably still 

 dwells, in the most profound seclusion, though in a fashionable street, 

 in the gayest quarter of Paris, where thousands are thronging daily 

 past his abode of misery, unconscious of the existence of such a being, 

 and the fair and the dissipated are hurrying after pleasure to some 

 soiree, or reunion, which to their bounded vision appears the world. 



St. Croix was a man of territory ; he was the proprietor of five hotels, 

 or moderately-sized houses, calculated for the accommodation of a 

 single family (such as Englishmen delight to inhabit), agreeably 



situated between a court-yard and a garden in the Rue . But these 



mansions added little to their possessor's wealth, for three of them, after 

 having been long uninhabited, were fast falling to ruin ; the fourth, 

 which looked as desolate and forsaken as the others, was occupied by 

 himself alone ; and of the fifth, by some strange chance, my family were 

 the last tenants. It was one of this eccentric man's peculiarities, that 

 the love of money, which would have made others eager to see their 

 houses inhabited, was the cause of his preferring that they should 

 crumble to decay. He detested tenants, he said, gentlemen particu- 

 larly, for they were continually demanding repairs and alterations, to 

 all of which, though the rain might pour in torrents through the roofs, 

 and the wind whistle in at every corner, he was invariably inexorable, 

 till one by one his tormentors were fairly driven from their quarters, 

 and he was left in undisturbed possession of his domain. 



The gardens belonging to these deserted mansions, which were only 

 divided from each other by low walls, became from that time his great 

 source of amusement and occupation. I was told that, when he first 

 began his labours, they were as pretty as any thing of the kind can be 

 luxuriant with the vines and laburnums, lilacs, acacias, and Judah trees, 

 which flourish in the very centre of Paris ; but when I knew them, his 

 industry had left neither tree, nor shrub, nor blade of grass, on the 

 whole territory. He boasted with delight that he had levelled every 

 tree with the ground, lest their damp exhalations should injure those 

 buildings which time and neglect were fast hurrying to annihilation. 

 A few stunted miserable cabbages were the only green things visible 

 over the irregular heaps of fresh-turned, or well-trodden earth, which 

 replaced the parterres and grass-plots of former days ; but these were 

 the especial objects of his care, and often have I been awakened at four 

 o'clock on a summer morning, by a broken voice singing La belle 

 Gabriclle at the height of its pitch, before I discovered that Monsieur 



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