Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/141

 Kaisenberg : Memoirs of Baroness Cccile dc Conrtot 131 years named but are hardly wide enough in scope to make a book. Fortunately our editor finds at the same moment "a red velvet book," the diary of this Frau von Alvensleben, which contains many of Cecile's oral descriptions of the Revolutionary events she witnessed. The range of contemporary information is thus happily widened, covering the years 1 789-1803. This is all the authentication vouchsafed us by the compiler. Nor does internal evidence increase our confidence. The chronology of this book is in a frightful welter, being either vague, impossible, or self-contradictory. The Baroness Cecile informs us that in July 1783, being then "just twenty," she became lady-in-waiting to the Princess de Lamballe, then living in Savoy (p. 44), that thus "a year went by," that then a letter came from Marie Antoinette asking the Princess to join her at court, which she and the Baroness immediately did. Yet Marie Antoinette's letter is dated June 12, 17S3 (p. 48). Furthermore we are told on page 57 that in 17S4 the two ladies had been at court "about a year. ' ' The matter is already troublesome but it becomes far more com- plicated when Cecile asserts on page 256 that in July, 1783, being then "nearly seventeen," she chanced to be visiting near Brienne, that one evening wandering away from the villa into the fields she suddenly heard an infuriated bellow behind her and turning round " saw to my horror that an enormous black bull, irritated perhaps by my red parasol, was bearing down upon me with blazing eyes and lowered horns." The moment was tense but her life was saved by a " pale-faced boy," wear- ing the uniform of the Brienne cadets, who, running to the rescue, pierced the brute's eye with his sword and sent him " staggering blindly about the field. " It is of course superfluous to remark that this pale- faced boy was none other than Napoleon Bonaparte, who, we know from other sources, was then fourteen years of age. A year later, 17S4, the Baroness was once more at Brienne giving a laurel wreath to her "youthful hero" on the occasion of the annual examination of the cadets (pp. 258-259). It is in connection with the revolutionary calendar that many of the most striking novelties of this book occur. Cecile starts on a journey from the heart of Brandenburg to Paris. Her first letter to her friend is dated Cassel, October 25, 1801. Her second (p. 158 seq.") is dated Strassburg, 3 Brumaire, Year X., and in it she states that she "arrived here the day before yesterday." The art of verifying dates must be lightly regarded by the maker of this book for, curiously enough, 3 Brumaire Year X., translated into English, is precisely October 25, 1801. This kind of retroactive travelling baffles the reviewer. The dates of the sixth and seventh letters (pp. 186 and 190) trans- ferred from the revolutionary calendar are Dec. 6, 1801 and Dec. 24, 1802, yet the context plainly implies an interval of only a few weeks. The author apparently does not fully understand the range of the Years X. and XI., for the Year XI. is evidently considered synchronous with 1802, whereas ten of the eleven letters dated that year fall within 1S03