TO DAY IN HISTORY

Southland Times, Issue 20489, 17 May 1928, Page 4

TO DAY IN HISTORY

MAY 17. Born: Dr. Edward Jenner, discoverer of vaccination, at Berkeley, 1749; Henry William, Marquis of Anglesey, statesman, 1768; King Alfonso XIII. of Spain, 1886. Died: Heloise, Abbess of Paraclete Abbey, 1163; Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth, 1575; Catherine I of Russia, widow of Peter the Great, 1727; Samuel Boyse, poet 1749; Alexis Claude Clairhaut, mathematician, 1756; Prince Talleyrand at Paris, 1838. Events: The Acropolis (Athens) retaken by Turks from the Greeks, 1827; Relief of Mafeking, 1900; United States destroyer Flotilla in British waters, 1917; Ger-man-Irish plot, 150 Sinn Feiners, including de Valera, Countess Markievicz, Count Plunkett and Arthur Griffith arrested, 1918. . TALLEYRAND. The bon mots of Tallyrand had a great celebrity. There wae something cynical about them but they were also playful. When told that the Duke of Bassano was to come back with Napoleon from Russia, he remarked, with an expression of doubt on his countenance, “Those bulletins are always lying—they told us that all the baggage had been left behind.” Such a fling at a stupid statesman many might have made. Of the execution of the Due d’Enghein he said: “It was worse than a crime—it was a blunder”. Another of his sayings was that language was given to man “not to express his thoughts but to conceal them” is traced back to South, the English divine. So also his reply to the question “What had passed in the council?” “Trois heures,” had a prototype in a saying which Bacon records of Mr. Popham, the Speaker of the House of Commons, who, being asked by Queen Elizabeth what had passed in the Lower House, answered, “Please your majesty seven weeks.” It Is not easy even for a Talleyrand to be original. Some of his acts were practical witticisms, as when, at the death of Charles X. he appeared in a white hat in the republican quarters of Paris, and in the quartier St. Germain put on a crepe; or, when asked by a lady for his signature in her album he inscribed it at the very top of the page so that there might be no order for ten thousand francs written above it. Not long before the death of Talleyrand an English writer, speaking of his brilliant apophthegms, said, “What are they all to the practical skill with which this extraordinary man has contrived to baffle all the calamities of thirty years, full of the ruin of all power, ability, courage and fortune? Here is the survivor of the age of the Bastille, the age of the guillotine, the age of the prison-ship, the age of the sword. And after baffling the Republic, the Democracy, the Despotism, and the Restoration, he figures in his eightieth year as the Ambassador to England, the Minister of France, and retires from those offices only to be Chief Counsellor, almost the co-adjutor of the King, That where the ferocity of Robespierre fell, where the sagacity of Napoleon fell, where the experience of the Bourbons fell, this one old man, a priest in the land of daring spirits—where conspiracy first and soldiership afterwards were the great means of power —should survive all, succeed in everything, and retain, his rank and influence through all change, is unquestionably among the most extra, ordinary instances of conduct exhibited in the world.” THE BURIAL OF HELOISE.

The connection of Heloise with Abelard, their separation, their subsequent lives, spent in pentience and religious exercises, not unmingled with human regrets, have employed a hundred pens. Heloise surviving Abelard twenty-one years, was deposited in the same grave within Paraclete’s white walls. The Chronique de Tours reports that, when the tomb of Abelard was opened for the body of Heloise, Abelard held out his hand to receive her. The author of a modern life of Abelard tells this tale, and, the better to support it, gives instances of similar miracles; as for example, that of a Senator of Dijon, who having been interred twenty-eight years, opened his arms to embrace his wife when she descended into the same tomb. These, being French husbands, may be supposed to have been unually polite; but that posthumous conjugal civilities are not confined to that nation is shown by a ancedote told of the sainted Queen Margaret of Scotland. When, many years after her death, this royal lady was canonized, it was necessary to remove her body from a place in the Dunfermline Abbey, where it lay beside her husband King Malcolm, to a place more convenient for a shrine. It w r as found that the body was so preternaturally heavy that there was no lifting it. The monks were nonplussed. A length one suggested that the Queen refused to be moved without her husband. Malcolm was then raised and immediately the Queen’s body resumed its ordinary weight and the removal was effected. The bodies of Abelard and Heloise, after several migrations, were finally removed in 1800 to the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, near Paris.