The Express.
London, England, 1859-01-27 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 27, 18!39.

any otilsial rank, they of course were present. The I
diplomatic. seeps was not completely represented ;
the Premien minister, for instance, Hear Brassier do

int• Simon, did not attend, nor Ina he & th•

opera on Sunday evening in the court theatre. In
the afternoon the King introduced the Prince to his
daughter, the Prinoesa Clotilda, having first sent Gene-
ral Gialdini to usher the Prince into his presenee;
he then escorted him himself into the apartments of
the Princess, where he left them alone together for
an hour. In the evening there woe a family dinner
party. Different rumours are current about the
personal feelings of the bride, but her look expresses
fixed resolution. To-day it is said by some that the
contract is to be signed; but, from my own inquiries,
I learn that it will not be for some days to come. I
believe I can venture to state that the order for the

concentration of the troops on the Ticino has been
suspended for the present. The same thing has
been done, I hear, on the Austrian side, for they
have withdrawn the two regiments of Uhlans and
the three battalions of Chusenrs.
" The Orand Duke Constantine has interested
himself, it would seem, in behalf of the marriage;
and it was in consequence of his representations that
his brother, the Emperor Alexander, sent an auto-
graph letter to the King Victor Emmanuel, and thus
greatly influenoed him in his decision to bestow the
hand of his daughter on Prince Napoleon."

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

(now ova owx

PARIS, WEDNINIDAY EVINIXO.

The rumour was circulated to-day at the Bourse,
that Austria had made overtures for a congress to
settle erlsting difficulties. I cannot myself attach
much importance to this news, which I think may
be explained in this way :—lt is stated in several
quarters, and I am inclined to think accurately,
that the Emperor Napoleon's speech will announce
the settlement of the question of the Danube.
Austria, if looking to a war in Italy, must naturally
wish to stand as well as possible with the
powers parties to the treaty of Paris upon
all questions properly appertaining to that
treaty. It would be a matter of course to call
the conference together to register the final regula-
tions for the navigation of the Danube. Hence,
probably, the rumour of the day. But it is, more-
over, just possible that Austria may have devised a
form for hinting her willingness to discuss in the
congress the means of avoiding such a calamity as a
war. I utterly disbelieve, however, that she is ready
to treat on the basis of the surrender of the Italian
provinces, or even that of their reorganisation under
an Austrian archduke without their being occupied
by Austrian troops, and on any other basis no con-
gram could satisfy the wishes of either Sardinia or
Franco.

In Paris news of warlike preparations pour in
from all sides, and indeed with such intensity that
war would seem to be not a question of weeks bat
of days. I know of companies of artillery with
live-sixths of their men excused from regular duty,
because they are making cartridges. So pressing is
the demand for horses for the cavalry that orders
have been given to buy horses of nine years
old--an age far exceeding the regulation
standard. All the aide-major surgeons in
the military hospitals of Paris and Marseilles
have been ordered to hold themselves in readiness
for active service, and their places are supplied by
young surgeons. The commercial quay of La
Jebette, at Marseilles, is being cleared for war
purposes. Letters from Toulon state that 62 war
teaaspeets are to be ready for March 1. I could
multiply similar symptoms almost indefinitely.
no, Bourse was very buoyant on the strength of
the report of a congress above alluded to. The
Bente rase 60c. for cash and 800. for account,
closing at 69k. and 89fr. de. Mobilier rose 281 r.
75e. The Orleans railway rasa 131 r. 75c.; Eastern
and Western 10fr. each, and the other lines about
6fr. The market closed very firm.
The

that the reason for
the seizure of the indepeadasee yesterday, was (a
I inspected) that it persisted in affirming the exist-

. .
enoe of the treaty between France and Sardinia,
denied by the Mositeur. I do not know how far
the seizure of a journal will be accepted in the
chanceries of Europe as evidence upon a question of
fact. The Iledependamee still persists in its original
assertion, and was again seized this morning; bat
at about 4 o'clock it was released.

Instances of oppression sometimes occur in this
country so monstrous, and withal so ridiculous, that
they escape censure, or even notice, under corer of
their improbability. They are so absurd that
scarcely any weight of evidence can bring the mind
to receive them ma absolutely and unconditionally
true. lam quite sure that if It were to be stated in
any club, drawing-room, tavern, or tap-room in
England, that in France in this second half of the
nineteenth century, any individual who might lend
a book to his neighbour was thereby guilty of a penal
offence, nine-tenths of the hearers would reject the
story as utterly incredible. Your readers will say
already—" this must be a perverse way of stating
the case; it may possibly be that if the book were 11
immoral, irreligious, or seditious, the fact of lending
it might under certain circumstances constitute an
offence known to the French law ; it is quite con-
sistent with all we know that the law
may be cruelly strained to serve political
purposes, but it cannot be that the mere
fact of lending a book is per as regarded as a
crime." Fact, however, which is proverbially
stranger than fiction, shows that it is even so. To
put the cue in the simplest form—if I were to take
down from my bookshelves the " Vicar of Wake-
field," and lend it to any French gentleman (say to
the Procureur-General) who might wish to improve
himself in the English language, I should be liable
to fine and imprisonment for having " hawked books
without a license." The law which leads to this

monstrous result was, it is tree, passed (or the pur-
pose of putting a cheek upon professional hawkers,
who, it was alleged, poisoned the minds
of the peasantry by diffusing incendiary
publications among them. But the law al-
' cers of Napoleon 111. have never been
equalled in the art of twisting penal statutes to
serve a purpose to which they were manifestly
never intended to apply. They have decided, and
have brought courts of justice to indorse their
decision, that the handing over by one private indi-
vidual to another of any book, pamphlet, or printed
paper, not bearing the nawker's mark ( estampellu),
is a contravention of the statute. In pursuance of
this interpretation, an old woman in • country
village was some time ago condemned for lending
a duly authorised newspaper to her next-door neigh-
bour. The recent case which has led to these re-
marks is reported in the Druit, a French legal jour-
nal, whose reports are accepted as authentic in the
law courts. The scene is in the Correctional Tribunal
of Colmar, with a judge named de Darbas in the
presidential chair. There, on January 20, a
pensioner in en almshouse, one Jacques Bessner,
a protestant, was indicted for having lent to
an old acquaintance, Corneille by name, a shoemaker
at Colmar, a certain pamphlet in the German lan-