Page:The Cornhill magazine (Volume 1).djvu/283

 brûlés en la cour du Palais. And a MS. note at the foot of the Arrêt states that the books were burnt on the 7th accordingly.

Thus much, therefore, is all but certain; some member of Mr. Stanley's mission, or other confidential subordinate, was present in the Cour du Palais when that arrêt was executed, and reported it to his principal, who reported it to Mr. Pitt: and Francis was at that time a clerk in Pitt's office, which was in constant communication with Stanley's mission. We do not know the names of the individual clerks who were attached to that mission, or passed backwards and forwards between Paris and London in connection with it. But we do know that Francis had been twice employed in a similar way (to accompany General Bligh's expedition to Cherbourg, and Lord Kinnoul's mission to Portugal). Evidently, therefore, he was very likely to be thus employed again. He may then assuredly have witnessed with his own bodily eyes what no Englishman, unconnected with that mission, could well have witnessed: may have stood on the steps of the Palais de Justice, watched the absurd execution taking place in the courtyard below, and treasured up the details as food for his sarcastic spirit; or (to take the other supposition) he may have read at his desk in the office that curious despatch of Mr. Stanley's; may have retained it in his tenacious memory; and, writing a few years afterwards, may have thought proper, for the sake of effect, to represent himself as an eye-witness of what he only knew by reading.

All this I once detailed to Macaulay, who, as I have said, was much interested by the argument, and took an eager part in discussing it. But one circumstance (I said) perplexed me, and seemed to interfere with the probabilities of the case. How came Junius, whose excessive fear of detection betrays itself throughout so much of his correspondence, and led him to employ all manner of shifts and devices for the sake of concealment, to give the public, as if in mere bravado, such a key to his identity as this little piece of autobiography affords?

The answer is plain, replied Macaulay on the instant, with one of those electric flashes of rapid perception which seemed in him to pass direct from the brain to the eye. The letter of Bifrons is one of Junius's earliest productions—its date, half-a-year before the formidable signature of Junius was adopted at all. The first letter so signed is dated in November, 1768. In April, the writer had neither earned his fame, nor incurred his personal danger. A mere unknown scatterer of abuse, he could have little or no fear of directing inquiry towards himself.

But (he added) I much prefer your first supposition to your second. It is not only the most picturesque, but it is really the most probable. And unless the contrary can be shown, I shall believe in the actual presence of the writer at the burning of the books. Remember, this fact explains what otherwise seems inexplicable, Lady Francis's imperfect story, that her husband "was at the court of France when Madame de Pompadour drove out the Jesuits." Depend on it, you have caught Junius in the fact. Francis was there.