Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/132

 have burned Widow MacCormack's house at Ballingarry, and her family, if necessary. What did a few individuals count in a revolution?' O'Brien said with great feeling that he would not be guilty of the murder of Widow MacCormack's children for any political success whatever.

"At the table d'hôte the same evening I fell into conversation with a Belgian member of the Chamber of Deputies who took a lively interest in Irish affairs. After various questions about our institutions and notabilities, he took away my breath with surprise by suddenly demanding, 'Connaisez-vous Madame Veuve M'Cormack?' After a good deal of wobbling we came to understand each other. He knew nothing of the Ballingarry widow, but there was an Irish lady of the name residing in the Quartier-Louise at that time whom he assumed I ought to know.

"O'Brien brought me to visit M. de Potter, leader of the Ultras in the Belgian revolution, and one of the editors of the Pays Bas, their organ of that era. When Brussels rose, De Potter was taken out of prison and made one of the Provisional Government; but when it was proposed to negotiate with France for a king, he insisted on a republic being declared; his colleagues contended that the Great Powers would not permit Belgium to create a republic in the centre of Europe, and thereupon he retired. Belgium became a monarchy, and in the quarter of a century which followed De Potter has been altogether excluded from public affairs. He is now an old man with white hair, and looks somewhat like George Petrie. He is very garrulous (which is pardonable, I suppose, in one who is visited as a personage), and he is too deferential to his guests for our western ideas. We were introduced to him as Irish patriots by M. Deuputtien, another of the Belgian National party of 1830. He was in prison with De Potter, and he affirms that the leader was not at all a practical politician. It was there he read for the first time the constitution which they were resisting. Deuputtien, as secretary of the Commission, declares that he had the good fortune to strike an effective blow for liberty: he was ordered to write a letter to the Prince of Orange, then besieging Brussels, which amounted to the first step of a submission. He wrote the letter, read it to the Commissioners