THE FRENCH CONVULSIVES. 



fully, ' then I have killed you ! you who understood me so well. Oh, you 

 were a real treasure ! There it is the treasure ! With thee have fled my 

 peace, my affections ! If you did hut know the advantage of living but two 

 nights longer, you had not died, were it only to please me. Poor creature ! 

 Ha! Jane, three hundred thousand crowns! Ah! if that does not awake 

 you no she is dead !' " 



The discovery of his secret, the fear of losing his treasure, pro- 

 duce a mental malady, which ends in the destruction of the old 

 usurer. He is constantly lost in an overwhelming thought, devoured 

 by a desire which burns up his entrails, but more grievously torn by 

 the ever-recurring anguish of the contest he has sustained within 

 himself since his passion for gold had turned against itself. He had 

 not the common consolation of the miser, of brooding over his treasure. 

 At once the robber and the robbed, and without the secret of the one 

 or the other, he possesed and possessed not his treasures a new and 

 fanciful species of torture, but ever terrific. In vain he uses the 

 strongest narcotics his vigils were most frightful ; he was alone with 

 silence and night, remorse and fear with all those thoughts which 

 men have embodied with most success. " At length," concludes our 

 author, " that man so powerful, that heart so steeled by a political 

 and commercial life, that genius unknown to history, yielded to the 

 horrors of the torture which he had created for himself. Overcome 

 by some thoughts more piercing than those he had resisted until then, 

 he cut his throat." 



Such is the story of Master Cornelius, a being who, we imagine, 

 is meant to illustrate in his person the most vivacious and most mate- 

 rialized of all ideas the idea by which man represents himself by a 

 fictitious being, whom he creates, and calls " Properly" The inci- 

 dents are not very picturesque, but are skilfully narrated ; and the 

 politic character of Louis XI. is drawn with considerable power and 

 fidelity. 



Madame Firmiani, which follows it, is still less dramatic in its 

 form ; but sets forth in strong colours the false ideas, prevalent in 

 society, with regard to the real nature of debts ; and exhibits the 

 meanness and dishonesty of those who consider themselves men of 

 honour, and the wide spread misery they inflict by their thought- 

 lessness in contracting obligations. Madame Firmiani, a woman of 

 feeling and discernment, fully impressed with those ideas, places 

 them in their true colours before the eyes of her lover, and persuades 

 him to merit her esteem, by sacrificing his remaining property for 

 the payment of his debts, and by having the courage and honour to 

 gain his livelihood by his own industry. 



If the tale of Madame Firmiani is wanting in dramatic effect, it is 

 only to give a stronger relief to that of the Red Inn, which is next in 

 order. It is a tale of murder, under extraordinary circumstances, 

 recounted by a German to the assembled company at an inn ; and the 

 violent impression it produces upon a rich army contractor of the 

 party points him out as the perpetrator of the crime. The selection 

 of the circumstances, the dramatic power of the narration, and the in- 

 creasing strength of the indications of guilt betrayed by the mur- 

 derer as the narrative proceeds, impart a profound interest. 



