By Charles James Lever

Illustrations by A. D. M’Cormick

The Novels Of Charles Lever Edited By His Daughter London Downey And Co., Limited 12 York St. Covent Garden 1898

CONTENTS NOTICE MAURICE TIERNAY CHAPTER I. ‘THE DAYS OF THE GUILLOTINE’ CHAPTER II. THE RESTAURANT ‘AU SCELERAT’ CHAPTER III. THE ‘TEMPLE’ CHAPTER IV. ‘THE NIGHT OF THE NINTH THERMIDOR’ CHAPTER V. THE CHOICE OF A LIFE CHAPTER VI. ‘THE ARMY SIXTY YEARS SINCE’ CHAPTER VII. A PASSING ACQUAINTANCE CHAPTER VIII. ‘TRONCHON’ CHAPTER IX. A SCRAPE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES CHAPTER X. AN ARISTOCRATIC REPUBLICAN CHAPTER XI. ‘THE PASSAGE OF THE RHINE’ CHAPTER XII. ‘A GLANCE AT STAFF-DUTY’ CHAPTER XIII. A FAREWELL LETTER CHAPTER XIV. A SURPRISE AND AN ESCAPE CHAPTER XV. SCRAPS OF HISTORY CHAPTER XVI. AN OLD GENERAL OF THE IRISH BRIGADE CHAPTER XVII. LA ROCHELLE CHAPTER XVIII. ‘THE BAY OF BATHFRAN’ CHAPTER XIX. A RECONNAISSANCE CHAPTER XX. KILLALA CHAPTER XXI. OUR ALLIES CHAPTER XXII. THE DAY OF ‘CASTLEBAR’ CHAPTER XXIII. THE TOWN-MAJOR OF CASTLEBAR CHAPTER XXIV. THE MISSION TO THE NORTH CHAPTER XXV. A PASSING VISIT TO KILLALA CHAPTER XXVI. A REMNANT OF ‘FONTENOY’ CHAPTER XXVII. THE CRANAGH CHAPTER XXVIII. SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES CHAPTER XXIX. THE

BREAKFAST AT LETTERKENNY CHAPTER XXX. SCENE IN THE ROYAL BARRACKS CHAPTER XXXI. A BRIEF CHANGE OF LIFE AND COUNTRY CHAPTER XXXII. THE ‘ATHOL’ TENDER CHAPTER XXXIII. A BOLD STROKE FOR FAME AND FORTUNE CHAPTER XXXIV. GENOA IN THE SIEGE CHAPTER XXXV. A NOVEL COUNCIL OP WAR CHAPTER XXXVI. GENOA DURING THE SIEGE CHAPTER XXXVII. MONTE DI PACCIO CHAPTER XXXVIII. A ROYALIST ‘DE LA VIEILLE ROCHE’ CHAPTER XXXIX. A SORROWFUL PARTING CHAPTER XL. THE CHATEAU OF ETTENHEIM CHAPTER XLI. AN ‘ORDINARY’ ACQUAINTANCE CHAPTER XLII. THE ‘COUNT DE MAUREPAS,’ ALIAS———— CHAPTER XLIII. A FOREST RIDE CHAPTER XLIV. AN EPISODE OF ‘94 CHAPTER XLV. THE CABINET OF A CHEF DE POLICE CHAPTER XLVI. A GLANCE AT THE ‘PREFECTURE DE POLICE’ CHAPTER XLVII. THE VILLAGE OP SCHWARTZ-ACH CHAPTER XLVIII. A VILLAGE ‘SYNDICUS’ CHAPTER XLIX. A LUCKY MEETING CHAPTER L. THE MARCH ON VIENNA CHAPTER LI. SCHÖNBRUNN IN 1809 CHAPTER LII. KOMORN FORTY TEARS AGO CHAPTER LIII. A LOSS AND A GAIN CHAPTER LIV. MAURICE TIERNAY’S ‘LAST WORD AND CONFESSION’

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

‘Maurice Tiernay was first published as a serial in ‘The Dublin University Magazine,’ commencing in the issue for April 1850, and ending in the issue for December 1851. It was first published in book form (as a volume of The Parlour Library) with the following title-page (undated):

Maurice Tiernay | The | Soldier of Fortune | By the Author of | ‘Sir Jasper Carew’ | etc. etc. I London, | Thomas Hodgson, | 13 Paternoster Bow.

The earliest edition which has Lever’s name on the title-page is one published in Leipzig in 1861. This edition has the following title-page:

Maurice Tiernay | the | Soldier of Fortune, | by | Charles Lever, I Author of ‘Charles O’Malley,’ etc. I Copyright Edition. | In two VOLUMES | VOL. I. | LEIPZIG | BERNHARD TAUCH-NITZ I 1861.

NOTICE

The strangeness of some of the incidents, and the rapidity with which events so remarkable succeeded each other, almost deterred the writer from ever committing them to the press; nor was it till after much consultation, and some persuasive influence on the part of friends, that he at length yielded and decided upon so doing. Whether in that determination his choice was a wise one, must be left to the judgment of the reader; for himself, he has but to say that to ponder over some of these early scenes, and turn over, in thought, some of his youthful passages, has solaced many a weary hour of an age when men make few new friendships, and have almost as few opportunities to cultivate old ones.

That the chief events related in these pages—such, for instance, as every detail of the French invasion, the capture of Wolfe Tone, and the attack on Monte di Faccio—are described with rigid exactness, the writer is most sincere in the expression of his conviction. For the truth of incident purely personal, it is needless to press any claim, seeing that the hero owns no higher name than that of—A Soldier of Fortune.

CHAPTER I. ‘THE DAYS OF THE GUILLOTINE’

Neither the tastes nor the temper of the age we live in are such as to induce any man to boast of his family nobility. We see too many preparations around us for laying down new foundations, to think it a suitable occasion for alluding to the ancient edifice. I will, therefore, confine myself to saying, that I am not to be regarded as a mere pretender because my name is not chronicled by Burke or Debrett. My great-grandfather, after whom I am called, served on the personal staff of King James at the Battle of the Boyne, and was one of the few who accompanied the monarch on his flight from the field, for which act of devotion he was created a peer of Ireland, by the style and title of Timmahoo—Lord Tiernay, of Timmahoo the family called it—and a very rich-sounding and pleasant designation has it always seemed to me.

The events of the time, the scanty intervals of leisure enjoyed by the king, and other matters, prevented a due registry of my ancestors’ claims; and, in fact, when more peaceable days succeeded, it was judged prudent to say nothing about a matter which might revive unhappy recollections, and open old scores, seeing that there was now another king on the throne ‘who knew not Joseph’; and so, for this reason and many others, my greatgrandfather went back to his old appellation of Maurice Tiernay, and was only a lord among his intimate friends and cronies of the neighbourhood.

That I am simply recording a matter of fact, the patent of my ancestors’ nobility, now in my possession, will sufficiently attest: nor is its existence the less conclusive, that it is inscribed on the back of his commission as a captain in the Shanabogue Fencibles—the well-known ‘Clear-the-way-boy s’—a proud title, it is said, to which they imparted a new reading at the memorable battle aforementioned.

The document bears the address of a small public-house called the ‘Nest,’ on the Kells road, and contains in one corner a somewhat lengthy score for potables, suggesting the notion that his Majesty sympathised with vulgar infirmities, and found, as the old song says, ‘that grief and sorrow are dry.’

The prudence which for some years sealed my greatgrandfather’s lips, lapsed, after a time, into a careless and even boastful spirit, in which he would allude to his rank in the peerage, the place he ought to be holding, and so on: till at last, some of the Government people, doubtless taking a liking to the snug house and demesne of Timmahoo, denounced him as a rebel, on which he was arrested and thrown into gaol, where he lingered for many years, and only came out at last to find his estate confiscated, and himself a beggar.

There was a small gathering of Jacobites in one of the towns of Flanders, and thither he repaired; but how he lived, or how he died, I never learned. I only know that his son wandered away to the east of Europe, and took service in what was called Trenck’s Pandours—as jolly a set of robbers as ever stalked the map of Europe, from one side to the other. This was my grandfather, whose name is mentioned in various chronicles of that estimable corps, and who was hanged at Prague afterwards, for an attempt to carry off an archduchess of the empire, to whom, by the way, there is good reason to believe he was privately married. This suspicion was strengthened by the fact that his infant child, Joseph, was at once adopted by the imperial family, and placed as a pupil in the great military school of Vienna. From thence he obtained a commission in the Maria Theresa Hussars, and subsequently, being sent on a private mission to France, entered the service of Louis xvi., where he married a lady of the Queen’s household—a Mademoiselle de la Lasterie—of high

rank and some fortune; and with whom he lived happily till the dreadful events of 17—, when she lost her life, beside my father, then fighting as a Garde du Corps, on the staircase at Versailles. How he himself escaped on that day, and what were the next features in his history, I never knew; but when again we heard of him, he was married to the widow of a celebrated orator of the Mountain, and he himself an intimate friend of St. Just and Marat, and all the most violent of the Republicans.

My father’s history about this period is involved in such obscurity, and his second marriage followed so rapidly on the death of his first wife, that, strange as it may seem, I never knew which of the two was my mother—the lineal descendant of a house, noble before the Crusades, or—the humble bourgeoise of the Quartier St. Denis. What peculiar line of political action my father followed I am unable to say, nor whether he was suspected with or without due cause; but suspected he certainly was, and at a time when suspicion was all-sufficient for conviction. He was arrested, and thrown into the Temple, where I remember I used to visit him every week; and whence I accompanied him one morning, as he was led forth with a string of others to the Place de Grève, to be guillotined. I believe he was accused of royalism; and I know that a white cockade was found among his effects, and in mockery was fastened on his shoulder on the day of his execution. This emblem, deep dyed with blood, and still dripping, was taken up by a bystander, and pinned on my cap, with the

savage observation, ‘Voilà, it is the proper colour; see that you profit by the way it became so.’ As, with a bursting heart, and a head wild with terror, I turned to find my way homeward, I felt my hand grasped by another—I looked up, and saw an old man, whose threadbare black clothes and emaciated appearance bespoke the priest in the times of the Convention.

‘You have no home now, my poor boy,’ said he to me; ‘come and share mine.’

I did not ask him why. I seemed to have suddenly become reckless as to everything present or future. The terrible scene I had witnessed had dried up all the springs of my youthful heart; and, infant as I was, I was already a sceptic as to everything good or generous in human nature. I followed him, therefore, without a word, and we walked on, leaving the thoroughfares and seeking the less frequented streets, till we arrived in what seemed a suburban part of Paris—at least the houses were surrounded with trees and shrubs; and at a distance I could see the hill of Montmartre and its windmills—objects well known to me by many a Sunday visit.

Even after my own home, the poverty of the Père Michel’s household was most remarkable: he had but one small room, of which a miserable settle-bed, two chairs, and a table constituted all the furniture; there was no fireplace, a little pan for charcoal supplying the only means for warmth or cookery; a crucifix and a few coloured prints of saints decorated the whitewashed walls; and, with a string of wooden beads, a cloth skull-cap, and a bracket with two or three books, made up the whole inventory of his possessions; and yet, as he closed the door behind him, and drew me towards him to kiss my cheek, the tears glistened in his eyes with gratitude as he said—

‘Now, my dear Maurice, you are at home.’

‘How do you know that I am called Maurice?’ said I, in astonishment.

‘Because I was an old friend of your poor father, my child; we came from the same country—we held the same faith, had the same hopes, and may one day yet, perhaps, have the same fate.’

He told me that the closest friendship had bound them together for years past, and in proof of it showed me a variety of papers which my father had intrusted to his keeping, well aware, as it would seem, of the insecurity of his own life.

‘He charged me to take you home with me, Maurice, should the day come when this might come to pass. You will now live with me, and I will be your father, so far, at least, as humble means will suffer me.’

I was too young to know how deep my debt of gratitude ought to be. I had not tasted the sorrows of utter desertion; nor did I know from what a hurricane of blood and anarchy Fortune had rescued me; still I accepted the père’s benevolent offer with a thankful heart, and turned to him at once as to all that was left to me in the world.

All this time, it may be wondered how I neither spoke nor thought of my mother, if she were indeed such; but for several weeks before my father’s death I had never seen her, nor did he ever once allude to her. The reserve thus imposed upon me remained still, and I felt as though it would have been like a treachery to his memory were I now to speak of her whom, in his lifetime, I had not dared to mention.

The père lost no time in diverting my mind from the dreadful events I had so lately witnessed. The next morning, soon after daybreak, I was summoned to attend him to the little church of St. Blois, where he said mass. It was a very humble little edifice, which once had been the private chapel of a château, and stood in a weed-grown, neglected garden, where broken statues and smashed fountains bore evidence of the visits of the destroyer. A rude effigy of St. Blois, upon whom some profane hand had stuck a Phrygian cap of liberty, and which none were bold enough to displace, stood over the doorway; except this, not a vestige of ornament or decoration existed. The altar, covered with a white cloth, displayed none of the accustomed emblems; and a rude crucifix of oak was the only symbol of the faith remaining. Small as was the building, it was even too spacious for the few who came to worship. The terror which prevailed on every side—the dread that devotion to religion should be construed into an adherence to the monarchy, that submission to God should be

interpreted as an act of rebellion against the sovereignty of human will—had gradually thinned the numbers, till at last the few who came were only those whose afflictions had steeled them against any reverses, and who were ready martyrs to whatever might betide them. These were almost exclusively women—the mothers and wives of those who had sealed their faith with their blood in the terrible Place de Grève. Among them was one whose dress and appearance, although not different from the rest, always created a movement of respect as she passed in or out of the chapel. She was a very old lady, with hair white as snow, and who led by the hand a little girl of about my own age; her large dark eyes and brilliant complexion giving her a look of unearthly beauty in that assemblage of furrowed cheeks, and eyes long dimmed by weeping. It was not alone that her features were beautifully regular, or that their lines were fashioned in the very perfection of symmetry, but there was a certain character in the expression of the face so different from all around it,

as to be almost electrical in effect. Untouched by the terrible calamities that weighed on every heart, she seemed, in the glad buoyancy of her youth, to be at once above the very reach of sorrow, like one who bore a charmed fate, and whom Fortune had exempted from all the trials of this life. So at least did I read those features, as they beamed upon me in such a contrast to the almost stern character of the sad and sorrow-struck faces of the rest.

It was a part of my duty to place a footstool each morning for the ‘Marquise,’ as she was distinctively called, and on these occasions it was that I used to gaze upon that little girl’s face with a kind of admiring wonder that lingered in my heart for hours after. The bold look with which she met mine, if it at first half abashed, at length encouraged me; and as I stole noiselessly away, I used to feel as though I carried with me some portion of that high hope which bounded within her own heart. Strange magnetism! it seemed as though her spirit whispered to me not to be downhearted or depressed—that the sorrows of life came and went as shadows pass over the earth—that the season of mourning was fast passing, and that for us the world would wear a brighter and more glorious aspect.

Such were the thoughts her dark eyes revealed to me, and such the hopes I caught up from her proud features.

It is easy to colour a life of monotony; any hue may soon tinge the outer surface, and thus mine speedily assumed a hopeful cast; not the less decided, that the distance was lost in vague uncertainty. The nature of my studies—and the père kept me rigidly to the desk—offered little to the discursiveness of fancy. The rudiments of Greek and Latin, the lives of saints and martyrs, the litanies of the Church, the invocations peculiar to certain holy-days, chiefly filled up my time, when not sharing those menial offices which our poverty exacted from our own hands.

Our life was of the very simplest; except a cup of coffee each morning at daybreak, we took but one meal; our drink was always water. By what means even the humble fare we enjoyed was procured I never knew, for I never saw money in the père’s possession, nor did he ever appear to buy anything.

For about two hours in the week I used to enjoy entire liberty, as the père was accustomed every Saturday to visit certain persons of his flock who were too infirm to go abroad. On these occasions he would leave me with some thoughtful injunction about reflection or pious meditation, perhaps suggesting, for my amusement, the life of St. Vincent de Paul, or some other of those adventurous spirits whose missions among the Indians are so replete with heroic struggles; but still with free permission for me to walk out at large and enjoy myself as I liked best. We lived so near the outer boulevard that I could already see the open country from our windows; but fair and enticing as seemed the sunny slopes of Montmartre—bright as glanced the young leaves of spring in the gardens at its foot—I ever turned my steps into the crowded city, and sought the thoroughfares where the great human tide rolled fullest.

There were certain spots which held a kind of supernatural influence over me—one of these was the Temple, another was the Place de Grève. The window at which my father used to sit, from which, as a kind of signal, I have so often seen his red kerchief floating, I never could pass now, without stopping to gaze at—now, thinking of him who had been its inmate; now, wondering who might be its present occupant. It needed not the onward current of population that each Saturday bore along, to carry me to the Place de Grève. It was the great day of the guillotine, and as many as two hundred were often led out to execution. Although the spectacle had now lost every charm of excitement to the population, from its frequency, it had become a kind of necessity to their existence, and the sight of blood alone seemed to slake that feverish thirst for vengeance which no sufferings appeared capable of satiating. It was rare, however, when some great and distinguished criminal did not absorb all the interest of the scene. It was at that period when the fierce tyrants of

the Convention had turned upon each other, and sought, by denouncing those who had been their bosom friends, to seal their new allegiance to the people. There was something demoniacal in the exultation with which the mob witnessed the fate of those whom, but a few weeks back, they had acknowledged as their guides and teachers. The uncertainty of human greatness appeared the most glorious recompense to those whose station debarred them from all the enjoyments of power, and they stood by the death-agonies of their former friends with a fiendish joy that all the sufferings of their enemies had never yielded.