dow the article chosen by Trumeau, discovered that he had a pressing appointment, and hurried away, saying he would call again. The pin was soon approved and paid for, and Athanase, more selfsatisfied than ever, directed his steps towards the Boulevard de Gand, stopping mechanically before the magnificent étalage of Dusautoy. It was almost dusk, and the large plate-glass windows were already illuminated, shedding a bright lustre on the costly materials of this prince of schneiders, tastefully exposed en montre. He had hardly been there a minute when the door opened, and an individual, rushing out, grasped him tightly by the collar, exclaiming, "Ah! enfin je vous tiens, mon gaillard!" "Comment, son gaillard!" echoed the astonished Trumeau. the devil do you mean?" "What His indignant appeal was interrupted by a sharp tap on the shoulder. Turning round, he beheld the jeweller, evidently out of breath, and in a most unmistakeable state of excitement. 66 "My diamond ring!" cried he. "My coat!" shouted the collar-holder. "My prisoner!" quietly interposed the man in plain clothes, taking Athanase by the arm, who, lost in amazement, offered no resistance. "Mais, monsieur," began the first assailant, who was no other than M. Dusautoy's foreman; "mon paletôt !" "Mais, monsieur," remonstrated the jeweller, "a ring worth 3000 franes!" "Soyez tranquilles, messieurs," coolly replied the disguised gend'arme, beckoning at the same time to the driver of a citadine to draw up from the stand to the trottoir; 66 you will have ample time to-morrow to lay your complaints before M. le Commissaire. No violence, sir," added he to Athanase, who was endeavouring, but in vain, to liberate his arm from its bondage, "no violence, or you will repent it. This way." In another minute captor and captive were seated side by side in the citadine, and before the unfortunate Trumeau was roused from the stupor into which he had fallen, he found himself, after having been carefully searched, in a solitary room au violon. His meditations were, as may be expected, not of a very cheering character; he was, in fact, so utterly ignorant of the charges against him that every attempt towards a satisfactory explanation of his imprisonment was necessarily vain; all he could clearly say being that he was a prisoner-why, he knew not. After some hours of restless agitation, exhausted with fatigue, mental and bodily, he threw himself on the floor, and fell into a deep slumber, from which he was only roused by a summons to appear before the commissaire. He found that functionary in his private room, the only persons present, besides the magistrate, his clerk, and two gendarmes, being the jeweller and M. Dusautoy's foreman. "What have you to say, prisoner," was the commissaire's first question, "to the charges made against you?" "Nothing, M. le Commissaire," replied Athanase, "until I know what they are." "A-t-il du toupet!" murmured the foreman to the jeweller. The latter merely shrugged his shoulders, as if to intimate that in his opinion the prisoner was capable of any thing. "All attempts at prevarication or denial are useless," resumed the "Your name?" commissaire, in a sterner tone. "Athanase Trumeau." "Your occupation?" "Employé in the house of Messrs. "Your place of abode ?" "Rue du Paradis Poissonnière, 15." "Very clever," observed the magistrate. Rue du Helder." "You are no novice, I see. Who is the first witness," added he, turning to his clerk. The foreman advanced. "State your charge." "M. le Commissaire, I charge the prisoner with having stolen the paletot he now wears from the magasin of M. Dusautoy." "Prisoner, what have you to say?" "M. le Commissaire, this paletot was purchased by me yesterday chez Place de la Bourse." "Let the party be sent for," said the commissaire to a gend'arme, who immediately left the room. "What is the next charge ?" "M. le Commissaire," said the jeweller, "I accuse the prisoner of having stolen a diamond ring from my shop yesterday evening." "Was any ring found on him?" inquired the commissaire of the remaining gendarme. "No, monsieur. silver." Nothing but a pocket-handkerchief and some "Monsieur le Commissaire," interrupted Athanase, "may I-" "Silence, sir, it will be time for you to speak when the truth of your story has been proved. Stand aside, all of you. Where is the other prisoner?" The gendarme quitted the room, but re-appeared in a moment with two of his comrades, escorting a man attired in a cloak, whom Athanase immediately recognised as the individual he had seen in the jeweller's shop. Nor was the jeweller himself long in making the same discovery; both, therefore, pricked up their ears most attentively, and eyed the new comer with even more interest than curiosity. "Of what is the prisoner accused?" asked the commissaire of one of the gendarmes. "Of purloining from a traiteur's, in the Rue Montorgueil, a couvert d'argent, which was found on him, together with this ring," answered the gend'arme, laying, as he spoke, the articles in question on the table. "My ring!" shouted the jeweller, in a transport of joy. "Monsieur!" exclaimed the prisoner, in an indignant tone, and lifting his arm with a theatrical gesture; "je proteste-" He had scarcely uttered these words, when M. Dusautoy's foreman, who had been intently regarding the accused ever since his entering the room, darted towards him, and hastily drawing aside his cloak, revealed to the astonished gaze of all present a paletot exactly similar to that of Athanase, but considerably the worse for wear. "My coat!" cried the foreman, “j'en étais sûr!” "How is this?" inquired the commissaire; "are there then two coats?" "If monsieur will allow me," replied the foreman, "I think I can answer that question satisfactorily. There are two coats; both, I am proud to say, from our-that is, from M. Dusautoy's ateliers. Onethe original coat-was ordered by the Comte de Sabanoff; the other by M. de L―, one of our young customers, who took a fancy to the pattern. They were made exactly alike, so like, indeed, that even I could not distinguish one from the other. The count's paletot was sent home first, but he having left Paris unexpectedly, it was exposed on view in our étalage, from whence it was stolen about three weeks ago by-I have not the slightest doubt-that individual in the cloak, who was perpetually coming into the shop on some pretence or other, toujours avec son satané manteau, large enough to hide half our stock under. As to the other coat," added the foreman, pointing to the marchand of the Place de la Bourse, who at that moment entered the room, "perhaps this gentleman can give you some information." "We shall soon see," remarked the commissaire. "Am I to understand, sir," continued he, addressing the marchand, "that yonder paletot was sold by you yesterday to the person now wearing it?" "Monsieur has been correctly informed," was the reply. the coat yesterday to that gentleman.” "And how came you by it?" "I did sell That, monsieur, is one of the secrets of our business. It may be sufficient to say, that I purchased it from its original owner, one of our best pratiques, by whose express desire (as he naturally did not wish to appear in the matter) I declared it, on disposing of it to monsieur, to have been the property of a Russian nobleman; whereas in point of fact it was only the copy of a coat which my pratique imagined to be en route for St. Petersburg." "Très bien, M. de L—,” murmured the foreman; "je vais conter tout cela à M. Dusautoy. On n' se laissera pas attraper deux fois. Pas si jobard!" "Then, sir," continued the commissaire, turning to Athanase, “you are not the Baron de Mont-St. Michel, alias Jean Fichet ?" "Not that I am aware of, M. le Commissaire.” "And the paragraph that has gone the round of the papers, putting people on their guard against the pilfering propensities of the said Jean Fichet, and accurately describing his half marron, half chocolate coat, in no way concerns you?" "Allow me to disclaim that honour," replied Athanase, with a polite bow, and a strong emphasis on the word honour. "That being the case, sir," said the commissaire, glancing at the real Simon Pure, whose bravado had given way to a dogged sullenness; "there can be no doubt in the world who is the guilty party. I have, therefore, only to apologise for the unpleasant treatment to which you have been subjected, and to suggest that for your own personal comfort, and in order to avoid a repetition of similar annoyances, you get rid of so compromettant a coat as soon as possible." be "Soyez tranquille, M. le Commissaire," returned Athanase, "I am naturally fond of music, but have no hesitation in saying, if Í allowed to parody Désaugiers, that "Faut d'violon, pas trop n'en faut, may JELLACHLIch, ban of CROATIA. THE Ban Jellachlich! the very name plunges us into the midst of wild reminiscences, barbarous heroism, strange irregular grandeurs! Sclavonie history is rich in all these half savage, but fascinating glories. See how they stride out before us, the two Nicklas Zrinyi, the hero of Szigeth and his descendants, Czerny Georg, leader of the Servians in their war for freedom, and a whole host of others! The Ban!-the very title is full of romantic mysticism. It is as if we heard that the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order or of the Swerdt-Brüder was encamped before the Brandenburg Gate at Berlin. We thought all these mediæval magnificences had disappeared under the peruques, Austrian as well as Prussian, of the eighteenth century. We knew of nothing more venerable than Frederick the Great's pig-tail and Kaiser Franz's jack-boots. But it seems all this not only lives, but lives very energetically and effectively. People are beginning to ask not only what is a Ban, but who is the Ban? And both are very proper questions and well deserving to be answered, as we hope to show before we have closed this paper. A Ban is a very respectable and a very real dignitary-something like our Lord Warden of the Marches, or more resembling still, the old, not new Italian Marchese, or German Margraf, but somewhat higher than all these-a sort of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, as he was wont to be in the times of Henrys and Elizabeths, when he had Desmond insurrections to attend to or in the time of Charles, when the Puritans of the North in fierce revolt against Charles represented the Hungarians as the Catholics under Ormonde for the moment, the Croats and Sclavonians. In olden times there were many of these marches, or borders, or Banats, in the west and south-west provinces, until by successive absorptions they were reduced to one, the united Kingdom of Croatia. Sclavonia, and Dalmatia, which held watch and ward for the Austrian empire, on its most dangerous frontier, against the still more barbarous Turks. The "Ban" or lord," as the name signifies, is the third of the Hungarian barons of the empire, holds in his own land the rank of Palatine and presides at the "Bantafel," or Ban council at Agram as the Hungarian Palatine at the royal council at Pesth. And high as is the honour, it has been raised still higher by the great men, (some of whom have been just noticed) who have held it. Of these none perhaps is even now more famous than the present bearer. And yet we are only at the first or at most at the second chapter of his history. Jellachlich is a Croat-a Croat to our ears sounds something like Cossack. We see a horde in the act of burning their way through defenceless villages, or marching through towns from which their inhabitants had fled, no grass growing where their horses' hoofs once had trod; famine before, and pestilence behind, more dangerous to friend than foe, only a few massacres off from the exploits of the Turcoman and Tartar. The leader of Croats, to keep Croats together, must be the worst Croat of them all. Jellachlich, as a sort of army-elected chief, could only have gained their hearts by much the same qualities as gave Alaric and Attila their soldier sovereignties, daring, active, cunning, cruel; the more barbarian, the more likely to be successful. Such certainly has been very much the Magyar colouring of his portrait, and from old predilections in favour of Magyars, partly owing to that magnificent acclaim, "Moriamur pro Rege nostro Mariâ Theresiâ," and partly, we believe, to their heroism, or at least heroic dress, we are inclined to trust ourselves implicitly to their accuracy. Till lately, we candidly confess, we saw in the Ban little more than a stipendiary of absolutism; hired by the Kaiser, much as Goth or Dacian freebooter was hired and converted into a patrician or consul by the Cæsars of old to bring back, when the empire was crumbling around them, some rebellious fly-away kingdom to a sense of unity and allegiance. The Sclavonic version is of course different; it comes from the hand of an admirer. But there is a third, which is neither Magyar nor Sclavonian, without favour as without hate. Many of the features in the following outline come from one who stood near enough to see, but was clear enough from race-partialities, to see rightly. The Ban is an European prince, in the decent European sense of the word; equal to any in refinement, above most in energy and genius. And it is a singular phenomenon, not less attractive to the philosophic historian than to the poet, the contrast which these broken-down monarchies present to the young democracies. The impulse of progress seems to have worked less wonderfully, to have thrown up less mind, if more minds, than the despair of dissolution. What has come forth from the cauldrons of France, Italy, and Prussia? Yet Austria has made a new Æson out of an old: in her agony she has given birth to Radesky, Windisch-Grätz and Jellachlich. Jellachlich-to begin with the man himself—is no Francesco Sforza, no Condotiere, no buccaneer of fame. He is of a noble, almost of a Ban family. Joseph Jellachlich (Jellacic), Baron Jellachlich de Buszin, is the eldest son of the Baron Franz Jellachlich de Buszin, who, as retired fieldmarshal and proprietor of the 62nd regiment of infantry, now Turszky, died at Agram in the year 1810. Of Croatian parents on both sides, Joseph was born at Peterwardein, on the 16th of October of the same year, on the anniversary of the birth of the celebrated Czerny Georg, thirty years before. In the child, the characters of father and mother were blended; under the latter, during the prolonged absence of his father in the French war, the earlier part of his education was past, and from her gentle teaching were drawn all those soft and kindly affections, that early passion for poetry, and devotion to intellectual pursuits, which so mark him out from his fellows; his indomitable activity, his frank and firm spirit, his unaffected, dashing cheerfulness, he inherits from his father. In his earliest infancy he was remarkable for the quickness of his perception, and the accuracy and tenacity of his memory; as years rolled on, he gave indications of great precision in all he applied to; already indications were visible of that eloquence for which he has since been distinguished. His self-control and presence of mind were far beyond his age. When eight years old he was presented to the Emperor; Kaiser Franz, struck by his intelligence and vivacity, took a particular liking to the boy, and had him forthwith placed in the Theresian Academy, which, despite of its cloistral and even ascetic character, has, somehow or other, turned out, in both the military and civil departments, some of the highest ornaments of the Austrian name. In this school, Jellachlich developed those powers for the ac |