A large and brilliant party had assembled at the chateau de Vermont, the residence of the gay and opulent Comte de Villeroi and his lady, to celebrate the christening of their first born, when in the midst of a splendid banquet, an alarm was given that the house was surrounded by police and gens d'armes, who required in the king's name a surrender of the persons of the Comte and Comtesse de Villeroi, they standing attainted of foul and treasonable murder! The confusion and dismay which seized all parties upon this terrible catastrophe, it is impossible to describe; but it suffices to state, that the Comte de Villeroi was impeached for, and fully committed for trial on the charge of having feloniously aided and abetted Victorine de Villeroi, (late Montespan,) in wilfully and maliciously causing the death of her late liege husband, Herbert de Montespan, by thrusting a long pin, or bodkin of gold into his right ear, well knowing that the same entering into his brain, would cause his instantaneous dissolution. Master Nicolais, it appeared, in sawing open the skull of the deceased with anatomical science and precision, had found a pin or Golden Bodkin like that described in the indictment, and like what were at this period much used by ladies in fastening up their hair, bearing the initials, V.M. which he perceived had been violently thrust through the orifice of the ear, into the brain of the unfortunate victim. This inference as to the fiendish murderer was inevitable, and just; and the horror-struck practitioner scrupled not to incite the relations of the late marquess to summon witnesses, and lay a criminal information against Victorine de Villeroi as principal in, and Armand de Villeroi as accessary to, this abominable transaction. Upon trial, the innocence of the Comte, as to the slightest knowledge of his wife's secret and heinous crime, was so apparent that it ensured him an honourable acquittal; but the guilt of that wretched woman being established beyond all doubt by the evidence of the goldsmith who had made for her, and engraved her initials upon, the Golden Bodkin, of the domestics who had seen her when their master fell asleep during the vespers at St. Genevieve, put her hand beneath his head as if with the intent of waking, and raising him up, and subsequently by her own confession, her guilt was thus incontrovertibly established. She suffered those extreme penalties of the law which the heinous nature of her crime demanded, and fully justified.

This historiette, in the leading incidents of which, every Frenchman at all acquainted with the Causes Cèlèbres of his country, will detect matters of fact, we have "made a prief of in our notebook," as one of those interesting cases, (not less remarkable because of rather frequent occurrence) which incontestably prove, that under the just government of the Omniscient, who hath willed that "Whosoever sheddeth the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed."—Murder will out!

M.L.B

THE SELECTOR AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

POLAND

Dr. Lardner has commenced a "Library," as a kind of succedaneum to his valuable "Cyclopaedia." Both are styled Cabinet, and the first may be considered an amplification of the second. Two of the Cabinet Library volumes contain a Retrospect of Public Affairs for 1831—not a chronology of shreds and patches, but a well-digested review of the great events of the year—and important indeed they are. The work is the quintessence of an "Annual Register:" it is not so porous and pursy as the last mentioned book, but is a pleasant volume to put in one's pocket and read inside a coach, if the passengers will allow you to do so; and it seems to be a good book for newspaper readers, to arrange their head-pieces, for they are usually crammed with all kinds of recollections, and have but few right-set views. We do not content ourselves with saying the Retrospect is well written, but quote a proof of equal length and interest—for it relates to a country whose fate is anxiously watched by all Europe, nay, by all the world. It is from the author's Chapter on the State of Poland. After some pages on the oppressed Poles, the writer proceeds:—

"Thus the army, both in its numbers and management, was entirely at the mercy and under the direction of Muscovite despotism; the resources of the state were employed, without the legal control of the diet, to strengthen Russian tyranny, the press was enslaved, that no remonstrance might be made against Russian oppression; the citizens were arrested, imprisoned, and punished by a Russian military chieftain, without being brought to trial before the proper native tribunals; the legislative chambers were deprived of their just prerogatives; the national customs, habits, and feelings were hourly insulted; the citizens were beset with an infamous police, an deprived even of the melancholy consolation of complaint; thus, in short, every Polish right was violated—every article of the charter broken—and the whole efforts of an imperial savage, at the head of a strong military force, directed to efface from the countrymen of the Sobieskis and Kosciuszkos all the remains of the Polish character.

"This, it must be allowed, is a picture of tyranny and misgovernment sufficiently appalling to justify the resistance of any people, but more especially that of a people which had long been accustomed to even a licentious freedom, which was proud of its national honour and ancient renown; which entertained such a veneration for its laws and usages as to preserve for two centuries the liberum veto and the rights of elective monarchy, the source of all its calamities; and which had the positive stipulations of its sovereign for the preservation of its national rights. But, like most general pictures, its impression may be diminished by its generality. We shall therefore make no apology for introducing, on the authority of an Englishman who had been twelve years in Poland, a few facts to give the character of precision and truth to the outline. In the fortress of Zamosc twelve state prisoners were found, some of whom had been incarcerated for six years without having undergone a trial, and whose names were only known to the commander of the castle. In the dungeons of Marienanski, in Warsaw, was found a victim of the Russian police, who had been kept in solitary confinement for ten years, and whose fate was entirely unknown to his friends and relatives. Respectable inhabitants of Warsaw were often taken and flogged before the grand duke without the formality of a trial, or the specification of a charge. Some were even, in the same unlawful manner, made to break stones or wheel barrows on the streets or highways like galley slaves. Persons of rank were frequently taken from their homes, immured in prison, and dismissed after several weeks' incarceration without knowing what alleged offence had provoked such a wanton exercise of power contrary to the charter and the privileges of Poland; state offenders were carried out of the country to Russian prisons and attempts were made to give them a journey to Siberia, which were only prevented by the threat of suicide on the part of the victims. The resources of the kingdom were squandered entirely for Russian objects; and the people were oppressed to maintain a Polish and a Russian army. Peculation and pillage was the order of the day. The president of the town of Warsaw, with a salary of between 500l. and 600l. contrived to amass a fortune of 100,000l. in fifteen years, besides living in splendour and squandering twice his legal income. The same unprincipled peculation was practised by other municipal or state officers. The Russian generals were in league with the magistrates and billet-master, to divide the booty received from the inhabitants as the price of exemption from the oppressive quartering of troops on their houses. Spies were employed by the police to watch every man of the least consequence in society, and the nobility were often driven to the country to avoid such dangerous intruders. In several instances members of the diet were banished to their estates, and made to pay the troops that guarded them, for having ventured in the assembly, whose discussions ought to have been free, to express a suspicion of the government, or to hint an opinion contrary to the taste of the grand duke.

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 489, May 14, 1831

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THE SELECTOR AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

POLAND

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