The Jesuits’ nest beckoned up to the height
      Where pious John Carroll had laid it,
    And the General knelt at the cell but to tell
      His offence; yet or ever he said it,
    A voice in the speech of his Bretagny home,
      From within, where the monk was to listen,
    Exclaimed like a soldier:  “Ah me! mon ami,
      Take my place and a sinful one christen!

    “For mine was the band that brought exile to you;
      Cadoudal, the Chouan, my master,
    Broke my sword and my heart, and I lost when I crost,
      Both honor and love to be pastor. 
    A knight of the king and my lady at court,
      At the call of Vendee the despised,
    Into Paris I stole with a few, one or two,
      As assassins, to murder disguised.

    “On the third of Nivose, in the narrowest street,
      And never a traitor one to breathe it,
    We prepared to blow up Bonaparte with a cart,
      And a barrel of powder beneath it. 
    He came like a flash, dashing by, but behind,
      Poor folks and his escort in feather,
    And the child that we put, sans remorse, by the horse,
      Were torn all to pieces together.”

    “To the guillotine both of my comrades were sent,
      But the Church, saving me for the tonsure,
    Hid me off in the wilds, and my dame, to her shame,
      To be Pere sold me out from a Monsieur;
    And now she is clad in the silk of the court,
      And I in the wool of confessor,—­
    Hate me not, ere hence you go, Jean Victor Moreau! 
      And with France be my fame’s intercessor!”

    “Limoelan! priest! is it you that I hear
      In this convent by Washington’s river? 
    Ah!  France, how thy children are hurled round the world,
      Like the arrows from destiny’s quiver! 
    Take shrift for thy crime!  Be thou pardoned with peace,
      Poor exile of Breton, my brother!”
    And the cannon of Dresden Moreau gave release,
      The bells of the convent the other.

CRUTCH, THE PAGE.

I.—­CHIPS.

The Honorable Jeems Bee, of Texas, sitting in his committee-room half an hour before the convening of Congress, waiting for his negro familiar to compound a julep, was suddenly confronted by a small boy on crutches.

“A letter!” exclaimed Mr. Bee, “with the frank of Reybold on it—­that Yankeest of Pennsylvania Whigs!  Yer’s familiarity!  Wants me to appoint one U—­U—­U, what?”

“Uriel Basil,” said the small boy on crutches, with a clear, bold, but rather sensitive voice.

“Uriel Basil, a page in the House of Representatives, bein’ an infirm, deservin’ boy, willin’ to work to support his mother.  Infirm boy wants to be a page, on the recommendation of a Whig, to a Dimmycratic committee.  I say, gen’lemen, what do you think of that, heigh?”