CLUBS.

CAFE CARON CLUB.

THERE were several clubs at Verdun formed by the English. That which met at Caron's coffee-house was originally created at Fontainbleau, and was the best provided with books, maps, gazettes, pamphlets, &c. It consisted of one hundred and twenty members, and was the most in the style of a club in England; the others resembled the Resources on the continent. Though some of the young dashers were memhers, yet the serious whist-players, the quidnuncs, and the steadier people of a certain age, gave the tone. This club was the most difficult to enter; a vacancy was filled up immediately; and the price, on account of the number of its members, was only half that of the other clubs; it was but six livres a

month, whereas the others cost twelve. It is highly honorable to this society that they never paid any base attentions to General Wirion, nor was their meeting-room ever profaned by his presence.

When a number of detenus were in September, 1805, sent to Valenciennes, the vacancies were filled up by prisoners of war, and this club continued nearly on the same footing, till the 6th of February, 1807, when the general ordered it to be dissolved.

A free-born Englishman might ask what authorised the general to meddle in the private amusements of the pri soners. Such an interference would have offended the detenus themselves in the beginning; but by this time their spirit was sufficiently broken to submit to any thing. One of the members, being accused of usury, and other disgraceful practices, it was proposed to erase his name from the list; but for fear that the affair should be misrepresented, one

of the directors informed the general of their intention; the general answered, that if four members would state their motives, and signify their desire that the person in question should quit the society, he would force him to do so. When the president returned with the four signatures, Wirion recommended to him, in order to avoid any noise, to dissolve the club, and afterward to reelect all the members, except the obnoxious person. This took place, the club was dissolved, all the books and other property of the club were sold by auction, and his name was omitted on the new list of members.

The ex-member was burning for vengeance on the society; he satisfied it in the following manner. Some French printer, being no admirer of the Corsican, had contrived, when re-printing a French dictionary, to give an explanation of the word Spoliateur, which may

be translated thus: "Despoiler, one who despoils and lays waste to every thing, a Buonaparte."

The police at Paris having discovered this insertion, had prohibited the edition, but it circulated in the provinces. The club had bought it for their library, and though it had been in common use for two years, no one had noticed the word Spoliateur, or conceived that the work contained any thing treasonable. The excluded member alone knew the mystery, and that it was a prohibited book. When the auction took place, he bought it; carried it to the general, and denounced the club as a treasonable society. The general pretended to believe him, and sent two gendarmes to go and dissolve the club; nay, as an opportunity of shewing his loyalty, and ingratiating himself with the new government, was not to be lost, he had the effrontery to accuse the president, Lieu

tenant Barker, of the royal navy, with having had the sheet printed for the use

of the club, and in his feigned zeal he would have sent him to Bitsche, had not some other English, who possessed the same edition, upon examining their dictionaries, found in them the same treasonable explanation of the word Spoliateur. Lieutenant Barker was set as liberty, but the informer was gratified in his vengeance against the club.

Though Lieutenant Barker being a true prisoner of war, and not a detenu, is not strictly a subject for this work, yet I cannot refrain from mentioning the following circumstances, which every lover of his country will peruse with equal pleasure. Lieutenant Barker being confined by a severe illness to his apartment, the windows of which looked upon the river, saw a little child fall into the water. Notwithstanding his ill state of health, he dofft his coat, ran