Morning journal and courier., 1889-05-09
uteda And who shall say whether it was

uted? And who shall say whether It was
 ever really spokena
 timents that are falsely put into the mouths of kings. Louis XIII, when Gina Mars was condemned to death, could hardly have said: ''I should like to see the face he IS
 cutting at this moment on the scahold," for
 owing to an accident to the executioner
 which necessitated 8 postponement, the King could not have known when 1t took place; and the saying seems to be cor ruption of some words spoken by the Due d'Alencon with reference to the death of the Comte de Sains-Aignan in tumuit at Ant werp, in January, 1888. So the saying at the corpse of Coligny, ''The scent of an ene- my is always goods," is the same saying that Louis XI is made to utter in Scott's "Quentin Durward,' D but of which the first author was really Vitellius. Nor in Bran- tome more correct in ascribing to Charles TX the sentiment that 'fagainst rebels it is cruel to be humane anG humane to be cruel" for it belonged originally, according to d d'Aubigne, to the sermons of Corneille Muis, Bishop of Bitonte, whence Catherine de Medicis derived it and employed it as 8 favorite precept in her advice to her son. At any rate the son made the lesson his own, and in fact, whether in that form an other, the sentiment has always been among the primary political maxims of the powers that be.
 OOEuG Ol Guo CTuclLlc5 hSSOClht6u WILL tue nameof Louis XI vanish on a closer inspect ion Because his father, Charles VII I,died .of 8 disease which prevented his taking food, tradition so far enlarged on the fact as to as- sume that the king preferred to die of hun- ger rather than accept nourishment, which he feared might be poisoned, from his son. It is not true that Louis XI, in seeking for refnements of cruelty, invented iron-barred cages for his prisoners, for these had been in use long before in Italy and Spain. Nor is the horrible story of the execution of the Due de Nemours, and his children made to stand beneath the bleeding scaffold, SUD-
 ported by any contemporary historian. Of
 doubtful authenticity, too, is the anecdote
 of Louis's answer to St. Francis de Paul, when the latter said, "Sire, go to pray God for the repose of your Majesty's soul" "Oh pray only for my body; one must not pray for to much at once."
 It is not diffcult to understand how false stories arise. Mistake has much to say to them; direct transfer good deal; but posi- tive invention has probably most of all We may read, for instance, in M. Thierss His tory, that Napoleon. when dying, said: 'I go to rejoin Kleber, Desaix, Lannes, Massena,
 Bessieres, Duroc, Ney. They will come to meet me. We shall talk of our exploits. unless there,
 as here below, they are afraid of seeing so
 many soldiers together" But this is as
 serted to have all been the invention of French writer who thought this embellish-
 ment of facts perfectly reasonable. So with the words supposed to have been addressed by the Abbe Edgeworth to Louis XVI just before his execution: "Son of St. Louis, rise to heaven" It was invented for effect the evening of the execution by the editor of the Republican, Francais," and was soon spread all over Paris, the Abbe himself be. ing among the last to hear it, and always, when questioned about it, positively deny l ing it. And it was the journalist Q uerlon who in 1765, first invented and published as Mary Stuart's the song so often repeated ! over the world, beginning "Adieu, plaisant pays de france, o ma patrie, La plus cherie," etc. In Brantome's affecting narrative of | the occasion, all she said was, "Adieu, ! France, adieu, France, never methinks shall | see thee again." The song was only Quer- ! Ions embeliishment.
 ! To descend from the words said by, or in l connection with, kings, to those associated 1 iects; the phrase attributed to Rabelais when l dying, "Draw the curtain, the farce is over," | is said to have been the utterance of the Athenian philosopher Demonax, of whom go
 delightful picture is drawn by Lucian. l The saying ascribed to Moliere, "Je ! prends mon bien ou je le trouve," has served l as an excuse for host of literary plaglarists, l who under the aegis of his name take for ! their own whatever and wherever they l please. But Moliere said nothing of the
 sort, or rather he said it with the addition of ! little syllable that makes all the difference. Cyrano 8 companion of Molieres youth, in a ! comedy played st Paris called the "Pedant ! Joue, :" inserted scene derived from conver- 1 sation with Moliere. In later days Moliere determined to make use of his early idea in ] the Fourberies de Scapin, and it was with ! reference to this particular scene that he
 said: ''I take back (reprends) my property ] where I find it.''
 A worldwide celebrity attaches to the
 saying, Thy 8 pas de heros pour son valet de ceambre, and the English writers, when 1 quoting it, generally quote it as Voltaire's; | but in reality it was first said by M. Cornuel,
 who had the art of expressing things wit h | admirable point and terseness. Montague, | it is true, had said before: "Few men have been admired by their servants"; but the | truth so ex xpressed, would never have made 1 it's reputation. There could not be a better illustration than this of the difference be-
 tween, the same thing when said commonly | and when said well. There is deep abyss
 between the two, yet so near are they that l the better might often seem to be but bor- | rowed from the worse.
 l The same thing is conspicuous again in
 La propriete c'est le vol, for which of course | Prudhomme is famous. But it is fair to l charge him with having robbed Brissot, who | in his stPhilosophical Researches on the l right of Property on Robbery considered in l nature" had written. Exclusive property
 is robbery in nature"s He may have read | it and unconsciously remembered it, but Brissot's sentence had long been dead when PrIdhomme gave it new and permanent 1 life.
 1 The expression, the juste milieu, was the | creation of Charles's successor, Louis Pilippe, who used the words in the early days Of his | reign to the deputies of Cadillac: ''We shall l endeavor to keep ourselves in juste milieu ] equally removed from the abuses of the roy- l al power and from the excesses of the popu-
 lar power" But that too ended in revolu- | tion at last.
 The Talleyrandana, published in the rare | and small volume the "Album perdu," con- sist for the most part of stories scattered through a number of books that had seen the 1 light long before Talleyrand. Thus the
 "Album" attributes to Talieyrand the ap- pIopriate phrase with regard to the emigres: "They have learnt nothing and forgotten
 nothing" But the antithesis had been used
 before in 8 letter from le Chevalier de Panat,
 in the year 1796; and who shall say whether | never before.
 l Will there ever be again such battle as l that of Fontenoy, when, a very short distance dividing the French and English armies, Lord
 Charles Hay advanced from the English
 French guards, shoot." and the Comte d'Auteroches, advancing to meet him and l salating him courteously with his sword, re- piled: Monsieur, we never shoot the first,
 shoot yourselves"a This was in accordance
 with the old French military custom to al-
 low the enemy the advantage of the first
 fire; but it would appear from this story that
 the English did the same. Would either side do the same now? It was the same
 Comte d'Auteroches who at the siege of
 Maestricht replied to some one who main-
 tained that the town was impregnable
 ''That word, sir, is not French" The say
 ing was afterward transferred to the word
 Impossible"
 At the battle of Waterloo, did any one
 really utter the famous sentence: "The
 guard dies and does not surrender? 4
 grenadier declared that he heard Cambronne say this twice, but Cambronne himself re-
 jected it as absurd, for the excellent reason that he did surrender and was not dead, and
 at public banquet many years latter he
 openly disavowed it. General Alava, who
 was present when Cambronne surrendered
 his sword to Colonel Halkett, declared that
 he did not open his mouth save to ask for z
 surgeon to heal his wounds. One cannot but suspect that the grenadier in question