MY MEMOIRS
BY
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
TRANSLATED BY
E. M. WALLER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ANDREW LANG
VOL. II
1822 TO 1825
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1907
CONTENTS
An unpublished chapter from the Diable boiteux—History of Samud and the beautiful Doña Lorenza [1]
The good my flouting at the hands of the two Parisians had done me—The young girls of Villers-Cotterets—My three friends—First love affairs [13]
Adolphe de Leuven—His family—Unpublished details concerning the death of Gustavus III.—The Count de Ribbing—The shoemakers of the château de Villers-Hellon [24]
Adolphe's quatrain—The water-hen and King William—Lunch in the wood—The irritant powder, the frogs and the cock—The doctor's spectre—De Leuven, Hippolyte Leroy and I are exiled from the drawing-room—Unfortunate result of a geographical error—M. Paroisse [34]
Amédée de la Ponce—He teaches me what work is—M. Arnault and his two sons—A journey by diligence—A gentleman fights me with cough lozenges and I fight him with my fists—I learn the danger from which I escaped [48]
First dramatic impressions—The Hamlet of Ducis—The Bourbons en 1815—Quotations from it [57]
The events of 1814 again—Marmont, Duc de Raguse, Maubreuil and Roux-Laborie at M. de Talleyrand's—The Journal des Débats and the Journal de Paris—Lyrics of the Bonapartists and enthusiasm of the Bourbons—End of the Maubreuil affair—Plot against the life of the Emperor—The Queen of Westphalia is robbed of her money and jewels [63]
Account of the proceedings relative to the abstraction of the jewels of the Queen of Westphalia by the Sieur de Maubreuil—Chamber of the Court of Appeal—The sitting of 17 April, 1817 [88]
The last shot of Waterloo—Temper of the provinces in 1817, 1818 and 1819—The Messéniennes—The Vêpres siciliennes—Louis IX.—Appreciation of these two tragedies—A phrase of Terence—My claim to a similar sentiment—Three o'clock in the morning—The course of love-making—Valeat res ludrica [96]
Return of Adolphe de Leuven—He shows me a corner of the artistic and literary world—The death of Holbein and the death of Orcagna—Entrance into the green-rooms—Bürger's Lénore—First thoughts of my vocation [103]
The Cerberus of the rue de Largny—I tame it—The ambush—Madame Lebègue—A confession [109]
De Leuven makes me his collaborator—The Major de Strasbourg—My first couplet-Chauvin—The Dîner d'amis—The Abencérages [117]
Unrecorded stories concerning the assassination of the Duc de Berry. [123]
Carbonarism [132]
My hopes—Disappointment—M. Deviolaine is appointed forest-ranger to the Duc d'Orléans—His coldness towards me—Half promises—First cloud on my love-affairs—I go to spend three months with my brother-in-law at Dreux—The news waiting for me on my return—Muphti—Walls and hedges—The summer-house—Tennis—Why I gave up playing it—The wedding party in the wood [147]
I leave Villers-Cotterets to be second or third clerk at Crespy—M. Lefèvre—His character—My journeys to Villers-Cotterets—The Pélerinage d'Ermenonville—Athénaïs—New matter sent to Adolphe—An uncontrollable desire to pay a visit to Paris—How this desire was accomplished—The journey—Hôtel des Vieux-Augustins—Adolphe—Sylla—Talma [155]
The theatre ticket—The Café du Roi—Auguste Lafarge—Théaulon—Rochefort—Ferdinand Langlé—People who dine and people who don't—Canaris—First sight of Talma—Appreciation of Mars and Rachel—Why Talma has no successor—Sylla and the Censorship—Talma's box—A cab-drive after midnight—The return to Crespy—M. Lefèvre explains that a machine, in order to work well, needs all its wheels—I hand in my resignation as his third clerk [166]
I return to my mother's—The excuse I give concerning my return—The calfs lights—Pyramus and Cartouche—The intelligence of the fox more developed than that of the dog—Death of Cartouche—Pyramus's various gluttonous habits [184]
Hope in Laffitte—A false hope—New projects—M. Lecomier—How and on what conditions I clothe myself anew—Bamps, tailor, 12 rue du Helder—Bamps at Villers-Cotterets—I visit our estate along with him—Pyramus follows a butcher lad—An Englishman who loved gluttonous dogs—I sell Pyramus—My first hundred francs—The use to which they are put—Bamps departs for Paris—Open credit [191]
My mother is obliged to sell her land and her house—The residu—The Piranèses—An architect at twelve hundred francs salary—I discount my first bill—Gondon—How I was nearly killed at his house—The fifty francs—Cartier—The game of billiards—How six hundred small glasses of absinthe equalled twelve journeys to Paris [204]
How I obtain a recommendation to General Foy—M. Danré of Vouty advises my mother to let me go to Paris—My good-byes—Laffitte and Perregaux—The three things which Maître Mennesson asks me not to forget—The Abbé Grégoire's advice and the discussion with him—I leave Villers-Cotterets [213]
I find Adolphe again—The pastoral drama—First steps—The Duc de Bellune—General Sébastiani—His secretaries and his snuff-boxes—The fourth floor, small door to the left—The general who painted battles [223]
Régulus—Talma and the play—General Foy—The letter of recommendation and the interview—The Duc de Bellune's reply—I obtain a place as temporary clerk with M. le Duc d'Orléans—Journey to Villers-Cotterets to tell my mother the good news—No. 9—I gain a prize in a lottery [234]
I find lodgings—Hiraux's son—Journals and journalists in 1823—By being saved the expense of a dinner I am enabled to go to the play at the Porte-Saint-Martin—My entry into the pit—Sensation caused by my hair—I am turned out—How I am obliged to pay for three places in order to have one—A polite gentleman who reads Elzevirs [251]
My neighbour—His portrait—The Pastissier françois—A course in bibliomania—Madame Méchin and the governor of Soissons—Cannons and Elzevirs [263]
Prologue of the Vampire—The style offends my neighbour's ear—First act—Idealogy—The rotifer—What the animal is—Its conformation, its life, its death and its resurrection [272]
Second act of the Vampire—Analysis—My neighbour again objects—He has seen a vampire—Where and how—A statement which records the existence of vampires—Nero—Why he established the race of hired applauders—My neighbour leaves the orchestra [284]
A parenthesis—Hariadan Barberousse at Villers-Cotterets—I play the rôle of Don Ramire as an amateur—My costume—The third act of the Vampire—My friend the bibliomaniac whistles at the most critical moment—He is expelled from the theatre—Madame Allan-Dorval—Her family and her childhood—Philippe—His death and his funeral [295]
My beginning at the office—Ernest Basset—Lassagne—M. Oudard—I see M. Deviolaine—M. le Chevalier de Broval—His portrait—Folded letters and oblong letters—How I acquire a splendid reputation for sealing letters—I learn who was my neighbour the bibliomaniac and whistler [307]
Illustrious contemporaries—The sentence written on my foundation stone—My reply—I settle down in the place des Italiens—M. de Leuven's table—M. Louis-Bonaparte's witty saying—Lassagne gives me my first lesson in literature and history [323]
Adolphe reads a play at the Gymnase—M. Dormeuil—Kenilworth Castle—M. Warez and Soulié—Mademoiselle Lévesque—The Arnault family—The Feuille—Marius à Minturnes—Danton's epigram—The reversed passport—Three fables—Germanicus —Inscriptions and epigrams—Ramponneau—The young man and the tilbury—Extra ecclesiam nulla est salus—Madame Arnault [334]
Frédéric Soulié, his character, his talent—Choruses of the various plays, sung as prologues and epilogues—Transformation of the vaudeville—The Gymnase and M. Scribe—The Folie de Waterloo [349]
The Duc d'Orléans—My first interview with him—Maria-Stella-Chiappini—Her attempts to gain rank—Her history—The statement of the Duc d'Orléans—Judgment of the Ecclesiastical Court of Faenza—Rectification of Maria-Stella's certificate of birth [360]
The "year of trials"—The case of Potier and the director of the theatre of the Porte-Saint-Martin—Trial and condemnation of Magallon—The anonymous journalist—Beaumarchais sent to Saint-Lazare—A few words on censorships in general—Trial of Benjamin Constant—Trial of M. de Jouy—A few words concerning the author of Sylla—Three letters extracted from the Ermite de la Chaussée-d'Antin—Louis XVIII. as author [375]
The house in the rue Chaillot—Four poets and a doctor—Corneille and the Censorship—Things M. Faucher does not know—Things the President of the Republic ought to know [389]
Chronology of the drama—Mademoiselle Georges Weymer—Mademoiselle Raucourt—Legouvé and his works—Marie-Joseph Chénier—His letter to the company of the Comédie-Française—Young boys perfectionnés—Ducis—His work [398]
Bonaparte's attempts at discovering poets—Luce de Lancival—Baour-Lormian—Lebrun-Pindare—Lucien Bonaparte, the author—Début of Mademoiselle Georges—The Abbé Geoffroy's critique—Prince Zappia—Hermione at Saint-Cloud [407]
Imperial literature—The Jeunesse de Henri IV—Mercier and Alexandre Duval—The Templiers and their author—César Delrieu—Perpignan—Mademoiselle Georges' rupture with the Théâtre-Français—Her flight to Russia—The galaxy of kings—The tragédienne acts as ambassador [420]
The Comédie-Française at Dresden—Georges returns to the Théâtre-Français—The Deux Gendres—Mahomet II.—Tippo-Saëb—1814—Fontainebleau—The allied armies enter Paris—Lilies—Return from the isle of Elba—Violets—Asparagus stalks—Georges returns to Paris [430]
The drawbacks to theatres which have the monopoly of a great actor—Lafond takes the rôle of Pierre de Portugal upon Talma declining it—Lafond—His school—His sayings—Mademoiselle Duchesnois—Her failings and her abilities-Pierre de Portugal succeeds [438]
General Riégo—His attempted insurrection—His escape and flight—He is betrayed by the brothers Lara—His trial—His execution [445]
The inn of the Tête-Noire—Auguste Ballet—Castaing—His trial—His attitude towards the audience and his words to the jury—His execution [452]
Casimir Delavigne—An appreciation of the man and of the poet—The origin of the hatred of the old school of literature for the new—Some reflections upon Marino Faliero and the Enfants d'Édouard—Why Casimir Delavigne was more a comedy writer than a tragic poet—Where he found the ideas for his chief plays [465]
Talma in the École des Vieillards—One of his letters—Origin of his name and of his family—Tamerlan at the pension Verdier—Talma's début—Dugazon's advice—More advice from Shakespeare—Opinions of the critics of the day upon the débutant—Talma's passion for his art [480]
[THE MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS]
[BOOK I]
[CHAPTER I]
An unpublished chapter from the Diable boiteux—History of Samud and the beautiful Doña Lorenza
About a fortnight after that wonderful night, during which I had experienced such new and unknown emotions, I was busy in Maître Mennesson's office,—as Niguet was absent seeing after a marriage settlement at Pisseleu, and Ronsin had gone to collect debts at Haramont,—sadly engrossing a copy of a deed of sale, when M. Lebègue, a colleague of my patron, entered the office and, after gazing at me with an amused expression on his face, went into the next room, which was the private office, and took a seat by the side of Maître Mennesson. The cause of my sadness shall be discovered presently.
Maître Mennesson's door, which separated the two offices, I was generally left open, so that he could answer our questions, save when a client closed it to discuss private matters with him; and when this door was left open, we could hear in our office everything that was said in M. Mennesson's room, as he could hear in his office all that went on in ours.
This M. Lebègue, some months before, had married one of M. Deviolaine's daughters by his first marriage: her name was Éléonore. The eldest daughter, Léontine, had been married to a tax collector named Cornu some time before her sister's wedding. The singularity of the name had not prevented the marriage from coming off. The sharp-tongued young girl feared to be jeered at in her turn, and the wittier she became, the more she dreaded even the appearance of being ridiculous. But Cornu was such a good-natured, honest-hearted fellow, everybody was so used to the name, which had been borne by several families in Villers-Cotterets, he was so used to it himself, he responded so naïvely and triumphantly to the remarks of his fiancée, that the matter was settled.
When she was married to him she made up her mind to raise the unfortunate name which fate had given her above even the suspicion of any banter naturally connected with it: she was the most chaste of wives, the tenderest of mothers I have ever known, and her husband, a happy man himself, made her happy too.
But it was not so with her sister, Madame Lebègue, who was three or four years younger, prettier, and far more of a flirt than she was. Her flirtations were innocent enough, I have no doubt, but they were as a rule looked upon maliciously by the gossips of the little town—a matter to which Madame Lebègue in her innocence paid little heed; concerning which, in her indifference to such calumnies, she simply teased her husband. He was a stout, rotund fellow, pockmarked, rather ugly, with a somewhat common-looking face, but a good fellow at heart—although I have been told since that he ruined himself, not from having lent at too low interest, but from an entirely opposite reason. I am wholly ignorant as to the truth of this accusation: I take it to be a calumny similar to the more pleasing and certainly more human accusation levelled against the wife.
It was this man who had just come in, who sat down by M. Mennesson and who was at that moment holding a whispered conversation with him, interspersed with guffaws of laughter. Thanks to the extremely delicate hearing with which I was gifted by nature, and which I had cultivated during hunting, I thought I could distinguish my own name; but I supposed I had not heard correctly, not flattering myself that two such grave personages could be doing me the honour of talking about me. Unluckily for my pride,—and I have indicated to what a pitch this feeling was developed in me, a height that would have been absurd if it had not been painful,—unluckily for my pride, then, I was not kept long in doubt that the discussion was about me.
I have said that M. Mennesson was very fond of a joke and very witty; wherever he could find a joke he would fasten upon it, no matter whether it happened to concern a woman's virtue or a man's reputation. When the frenzy of joking seized him he gave himself up to it unreservedly, heart and soul. Finding nothing, probably, on this day, better to chew, he set upon me; the pasture was poor, but it was far better to crack my sorry bones than to chew at nothing or gulp only the air. After several of those whispered remarks, then, and bursts of stifled laughter, which had disturbed my equanimity, M. Mennesson raised his voice.
"My dear friend," he said, "it is a chapter out of the Diable boiteux re-discovered and still unpublished, which I mean to have printed the next time I go to Paris, to complete Lesage's work."
"Ah! tell it me," Lebègue replied; "I will tell it to my wife, who will pass it on to her sisters, who will tell it to everybody; then our publication will be disposed of in advance."
M. Mennesson began:—
"There was once upon a time at Salamanca a scholar who was descended from a race of Arabs and who was called Samud.[1] He was still so young that if anyone had pulled his nose, milk would most certainly have come out: this did not prevent him from being absurd enough to fancy himself a man; perhaps also—for, to be fair, we must say all there is to say—this ridiculous fancy would not have entered his head had not that happened which we are about to relate."
It may be imagined that I was listening attentively. I had recognised from the very first words that I was undoubtedly the person in question, and I wondered uneasily where the story was going to lead after this beginning—a beginning which, so far as I was concerned, I found more impertinent than graphic.
M. Mennesson went on, and I listened with my ears open, my pen idle in my hand.
"On the day of the feast of Whitsuntide in the year ... I cannot say the exact date of the year, but, any way, it was on the day of the feast of Whitsuntide, which is also the town's feast-time, two beautiful senoras arrived from Madrid and put up at the house of a worthy canon who was the uncle of one of these ladies. It chanced that this canon was the same with whom Samud had learnt the bit of Latin he knew, and as the two lovely Madrid ladies wanted a cavalier who would not put their virtue to the blush, the canon cast his eyes on his pupil, and requested him to place both his arms at the disposal of the new arrivals, to show them the park of Salamanca, which is very wide, very beautiful, and belongs to the Duke of Rodelnas.[2] I will not dwell on the adventures of the first day, beyond just briefly touching upon two events: the first was the meeting between our scholar and an elegant senor from Madrid, who was noticed at once by the Sefiora Lorenza, with whom our scholar was walking arm in arm, dressed, as people of the provinces often are, about a decade behind the fashions of the capital. This young gallant was called Audim. The second was a most serious accident, which happened to the scholar's breeches, just when, in order to give the fair Lorenza a proof of his agility, he had leaped across a ditch fourteen feet wide."
It can be imagined what I suffered as I listened to this secondhand recital of my lovelorn tribulations, which, according to his method of procedure, would not stop short at the two misadventures of the first day. M. Mennesson continued:—
"The beautiful Lorenza was specially impressed by the young gallant's get-up. In complete contrast to the scholar, who was muffled up in a Gothic costume borrowed from the wardrobe of his ancestors, Señor Audim was dressed in the latest fashion, in tight-fitting breeches, ending in charming little heart-shaped shoes, and a dark-coloured doublet turned out by one of the best tailors in Madrid. The scholar had not been unconscious of the particular notice his companion had paid to the handsome Audim's attire, and as it began to dawn on him what influence a coat of a certain cut or trousers of a special shade of colour might have upon a woman, he decided during the night following the fête to please Lorenza no matter at what price, and to have a suit made exactly like the one worn by the young man who seemed destined by fate to become his rival. The most vital part of the costume, and moreover the most expensive, was in the matter of the boots. So he turned his attention to them first of all. On the opposite side of the square where Samud's mother lived, a square called the place de la Fontaine, was the best boot-maker in the town: he had always shod the scholar, but hitherto he had only made shoes for him, the lad's tender years not having put the idea into anyone's head, not even into his own, that he could wear any other covering for his feet than shoes or sandals without risking a too close resemblance to Perrault's venerable Puss in Boots. Great therefore was M. Landereau's[3] surprise when his customer came and boldly asked the price of a pair of boots. He stared at Samud.
'A pair of boots?' he asked. 'For whom?'
'Why, for myself,' the scholar proudly replied.
'Has your mother given you leave to order boots?' 'Yes.'
"The bootmaker shook his head dubiously: he knew Samud's mother was not well off and that it would be foolish of her to allow such extravagance in her son.
'Boots are dear,' he said.
'That does not matter. How much are they?'
'They would cost you exactly four dollars.'
'Good.... Take my measure.'
'I have told you I can do nothing without leave from your mother.'
'I will see you have it.'
"Returning home, the scholar ventured to ask for a pair of boots. The request struck Samud's mother as so extraordinary that she made him repeat his inquiry twice. It was all the more strange as it was the first time the scholar had troubled about his dress. When he was ten they had the greatest difficulty in the world to get him to give up a long pinafore of figured cotton, which he considered far more comfortable than all the breeches and all the doublets on earth; then, from the age of ten to the age of fifteen, he had worn with indifference any garments his mother had thought good to put him in, always preferring dirty and old ones to clean and new, because in them he was allowed to go out in all weathers and to roll about in all kinds of places. So the demand for a pair of boots seemed to his poor mother altogether most unprecedented, and she was alarmed for her son's reason.
'A pair of boots!' she repeated. 'What will you wear them with?'
'A pair of tight-fitting breeches, mother.'
'A pair of tight-fitting breeches! But you must know your legs are as spindle-shaped as a cock's.'
"'Excuse me, mother,' the schoolboy replied, with some show of logic; 'if I have good enough calves to wear short breeches, they are good enough to wear tight-fitting breeches.'
"The mother admired her son's wit, and, half conquered by the repartee, she said,'We might perhaps manage to find the tight-fitting trousers in the clothes-press; but the boots ... where will you find the boots?'
'Why, at Landereau's!'
'But boots would be expensive, my child,' said the poor lady, sighing,'and you know we are not rich.'
'Bah! mamma, Landereau will allow you credit.'
'It is all very fine taking credit, my boy; you know one has to pay some day, and that the longer one puts off paying the more it costs.'
'Oh, mother, please do let me!'
'How much will the boots cost?'
'Four dollars, mother.'
'That is six months' school-money at the rate good Canon Gregorio charges me.'
'You can pay for it in four months' time, mother,' the schoolboy pleaded.
'Still ... tell me what advantage you think this pair of boots and the tight-fitting trousers will bring you?'
'I shall be able to please Doña Lorenza, the canon's niece.' 'How is that?'
'She raves over boots and tight-fitting trousers ... it seems they are the very latest thing in Madrid.'
'But what does it matter to you what the niece of Don Gregorio raves or does not rave over, I want to know?'
'It matters a great deal to me, mother.'
'Why?'
"The schoolboy looked supremely foolish.
'Because I am paying her attentions,' he said."
This dialogue was word for word what had passed between my mother and myself after I returned from Landereau's shop, so I grew hot with anger.
"At the words Because I am paying her attentions," continued the narrator, "Samud's mother was overcome with intense astonishment: her son, whom she still pictured as running about the streets in his long print pinafore, or renewing his baptismal vows taper in hand; her son paying attentions to the beautiful Doña Lorenza!—why, it was one of those absurd things she had never even imagined. And her son, seeing she was unconvinced, drew his hand out of his breast pocket and showed her a bracelet of hair with a mosaic clasp. But he took care to keep it to himself that he had taken this bracelet from Doña Lorenza; she had not given it him, and she was very much distressed at not knowing what had become of it."
Although this account was not very creditable to my honesty, it was dreadfully accurate. I had had that bracelet in my possession for three days; during those three days I had, if not exactly shown it, at least let it be seen by several people, and, among others, by my mother and my cousins the Deviolaines, before whom I posed as a gallant youth; but at length I had been moved by Laure's distress, as she had thought it lost. I gave it back to her, humbly confessing my fault; she forgave me, in consideration, no doubt, of her delight in recovering her trinket, but she would not have let me off so easily had she known my indiscretions.
So the perspiration which had beaded my brow at the beginning of the story, ran down over my face in big drops; yet wishing to learn how far M. Mennesson had been coached in the matter of my sentimental escapades, I had the courage to stay where I was—or rather, I had not the strength to fly. M. Mennesson went on:—
"At this juncture Samud's mother raised her hands and eyes to heaven, and as the poor woman never could refuse her son, she said to him, with a sigh—
'Very well, be it so; if a pair of boots will make you happy, go and order the boots.'
"The schoolboy leapt at one bound from his house to the bootmaker's; he arranged the price at three and a half dollars, to be paid for in four months' time. Next they paid a visit to the clothes-press: they extracted a pair of bright blue trousers striped with gold; they sold the gold lace to a goldsmith for a dollar and a half, which dollar and a half were given to the scholar for pocket-money, his mother guessing that his budding love affairs would naturally bring extra expenses in their train. They decided that the suit he had worn at his first communion should be altered to a more up-to-date cut, on fashionable lines.
"While all these preparations for courtship were going on, the schoolboy continued, in the phrase he had used to his mother, to pay attentions to the beautiful Doña Lorenza; but although he was brave in words and very clever in theory behind her back, he was extremely timid in practice and very awkward when actually before her face. While apparently filled with impatience to be near her, he dreaded nothing so much as being left alone with her; at such times he would lose his wits completely, become dumb instead of talkative, and be still when he should have been active: the most favourable opportunities were given him, and he let them escape. In vain did the impatient lady from Madrid give him to understand that he was wasting time, and that time wasted is never regained; he agreed with her from the very depths of his soul; he was furious with himself every night when he returned home, and in going over the opportunities of the day he vowed not to let these opportunities slip by on the morrow if they occurred again. Then he would read a chapter of Faublas to warm his blood: he would sleep on it, and dream dreams in which he would be astonishingly bold. When day broke, he would vow to himself to carry out his dreams of the previous night. Then, while he was waiting for the boots and the tight-fitting suit, which were being fashioned with a truly provincial slowness, he returned to his short breeches, his bombazin vest, his bottle-blue coat, and resumed his fruitless walk in the forest. He looked with a melancholy eye on the mossy carpet under their feet, not even venturing to suggest to his companion that they should sit down upon it; he gazed sadly on the beautiful green heights above them, under which she delighted to hide herself with him. He would get as far as trembling and sighing, even to pressing her hand, but these were the extreme limits of his boldness. Once only did he kiss the hand of Doña Lorenza,—on the night before he was to introduce himself to her in his suit of conquest,—but it cost him such a tremendous effort to perform this bold act that he felt quite ill after its accomplishment.
"It was on this day that the lovely Doña Lorenza arrived at the conclusion that she must give up all hope of seeing the boy develop into a man, and without saying a word to her clumsy admirer, she took a decisive step. They parted as usual after having spent the evening playing at those innocent games which Madame de Longueville detested so greatly. The next day, as we have said, was to be the vital one. The tailor and the bootmaker kept their word. The young people usually met between noon and one o'clock, and then went for a walk: Senora Vittoria with a young bachelor, from whom I have gathered most of my information; and the schoolboy with Senora Lorenza. Unluckily, the tight-fitting trousers were so tight that they had to have a piece put in at the calf of the leg: this addition took time, and Samud was not quite ready before one o'clock. He knew he was late; he flew hurriedly along to Canon Gregorio's house, where the daily rendezvous took place. His new toilette produced an excellent effect as he passed through the streets: people ran to their doors; they leant out of their windows, and he bowed to them, saying to himself—
'Yes, it is all right, it is I! What is there wonderful in this, pray? Did you think no one else could have boots, tight-fitting trousers and a fashionably collared coat like M. Audim? You are much deceived if you thought anything of the kind!'
"And he went on his way, holding his head higher and higher, persuaded he was nearing a sensational triumph. But, as we have said, the unlucky alteration at the calves had made him nearly an hour late, and when the scholar reached the canon's house both the senoras had gone out! This was but a slight misfortune: the schoolboy had been brought up in the forest of Salamanca, as Osmin in the seraglio of Bajazet, and he knew its every turn and twist. He was therefore just going to rush out in pursuit of the lady of his thoughts, when the canon's sister handed him a letter which Doña Lorenza had left for him when she went out. Samud never doubted that this letter would enjoin upon him to hurry on with all diligence. And it was the first he had received: he felt the honour most keenly; he kissed the letter tenderly, broke the seal, and with panting breath and bounding heart he read the following:—
'MY DEAR BOY,—I have been blaming myself during the past fortnight for imposing upon your good-nature by letting you fulfil the obligation you had most injudiciously promised my uncle in undertaking to be my cavalier. In spite of your efforts to hide the boredom that an occupation beyond your years caused you, I have seen that I have much interfered with your usual habits, and I blame myself for it. Go back to your young playmates, who are waiting for you to play at prisoners' base and quoits. Let your mind be quite at ease on my account; for I have accepted M. Audim's services for the short time longer I remain with my uncle. Please accept my best thanks, my dear child, for your kindness, and believe me, yours very gratefully, LORENZA.'
"If a thunderbolt had fallen at our schoolboy's feet he could not have been more crushed than he was on receiving this letter. On the first reading he realised nothing beyond the shock; he re-read it two or three times, and felt the smart. Then it dawned on him that, since he had taken no pains to prove to the lovely Lorenza that he was not a child, it now remained to him to prove that he was a man, by provoking Audim to fight a Dud with him; and forthwith, upon my word, our outraged schoolboy sent this letter to his rival:—
"'SIR,—I need not tell you upon what provocation I wish to meet you in any of the forest avenues, accompanied by two seconds: you know as well as I do. As you may pretend that you have not insulted me and that it is I who have provoked you, I leave the choice of weapons to you.—I have the honour to remain,' etc.
"'P.S.—-As you will probably not return home till late to-night, I will not demand my answer this evening, but I wish to receive it as early as possible to-morrow morning.'
"Next morning, on waking, he received a birch rod with Don Audim's card. That was the weapon selected by his rival."
The reader can judge the effect the conclusion of this story had upon me. Alas! it was an exact account of all that had happened to me. Thus had terminated my first love affair, and so had ended my first duel! I uttered a shriek of rage, and dashing out of the office, I ran home to my mother, who cried out aloud when she saw the state I was in.
Ten minutes later I was lying in a well-warmed bed and Doctor Lécosse had been sent for: he pronounced that I was in for brain fever, but as it was taken in time it would not have any serious consequences. I purposely prolonged my convalescence, be it known, so as not to go out until the two Parisians had left Villers-Cotterets. I have never seen either of them since.
[1] hardly need point out that "Samud" is the anagram of "Dumas."
[2] "Rodelnas" is the anagram of "d'Orléans," as "Samud" is the anagram of "Dumas," and as "Audim," to be used shortly, is that of "Miaud."
[3] The narrator did not trouble to give an anagram for the name this time.
[CHAPTER II]
The good my flouting at the hands of the two Parisians had done me—The young girls of Villers-Cotterets—My three friends—First love affairs
Still, like François I. after the battle of Pavia, I had not lost everything by my defeat. First there remained to me my boots and my tight-fitting trousers, those two dearly coveted articles, which became the envy and admiration of those young companions upon whom the lovely Laure had so cruelly thrown me. Besides, in the fortnight spent in the company of those two smart girls, I had learnt the first lesson that only the society of women can give. This lesson had taught me to realise the need for that care of my personal appearance which had hitherto never presented itself to my mind as a thing to be daily attended to. Beneath the ridiculous if vanity in changing my mode of dress, underneath the unlucky attempt that I, a poor country lad, had made to attain to the elegant style of a Parisian, there appeared the first dawnings of true elegance—that is to say, of neatness.
I had rather good hands, my nails were well shaped, my teeth were large but white, and my feet were singularly small considering my size. I had been ignorant of all these possessions until they had been pointed out to me by the two Parisian girls, who gave me advice as to how I could enhance the value of my natural gifts. And I continued to follow their advice for my own personal satisfaction, after at first following it to please them, to such purpose that by the time they left I had really stepped across the boundary which separated childhood from youth. The crossing had certainly been a rough one, and I had accomplished it with tears in my eyes, coquetry holding one of my hands and chagrin the other. Then—as jaded travellers, when they enter a fresh country, suck bitter fruits, which, however much they set the teeth on edge, leave behind them an irresistible desire to suck other fruits,—when my lips had touched the apple of Eve that men call love, I yearned to make another attempt, even though it should be more painful than the first, and so far as its young girls were concerned, few towns could boast themselves as well favoured as Villers-Cotterets. Never was there such a large park as ours, not even at Versailles; no lawns were greener, not even those at Brighton; nor were any studded with more exquisite flowers than the park of Villers-Cotterets, with its lawns and flower-beds. Three very distinct classes disputed among themselves for the crown of beauty—the aristocracy, the middle classes, and a third class for which I cannot find a name, a pleasant intermediary between the middle class and the people, which belongs to neither, and to which class the dressmakers, seamstresses, and women-shopkeepers of a town belong.
The first class was represented by the Collard family, to whom I have already alluded in connection with my childhood. Of the three madcap young girls who roamed the forest of Villers-Cotterets as free as the butterflies and swallows, two had become wives: one, Caroline, had married the Baron Capelle; the other, Hermine, had married the Baron de Martens; Louise, the third, who was but fifteen, was the most captivating little maiden imaginable. Their mother—whose birth and history as the daughter of Madame de Genlis and the Duc d'Orléans I have related—and her three children were the aristocratic centre round which the young men and maidens of the neighbouring castles revolved; and among the former of these were some of the best blood in the country—the Montbretons, the Courvals, and the Mornays. None of these families lived in Villers-Cotterets itself: they lived in the castles around. Only on great occasions did the hives swarm and then we saw these golden-winged bees flying about the streets of the town and down the avenues of the park.
The second class was represented by the Deviolaine family. Two out of the five daughters of M. Deviolaine were married, as I have said—namely, Léontine and Éléonore; three remained, Cécile, Augustine and Louise. Cécile was twenty years of age, Augustine sixteen; Louise was still a mere child. Cécile had preserved her whimsical and capricious spirits, the same mocking and animated features; her actions were more masculine than feminine; her complexion was tanned by the sun, as she never took the trouble to protect herself from its rays. Augustine, on the contrary, had a skin as white as milk, large tranquil blue eyes, dark chestnut hair, forming an admirable framework round her face, sloping shoulders charmingly moulded, and a figure that was not too slender; unlike her sister Cécile, she was gracefully feminine in all her ways. Raphael would have been puzzled to choose between her and Louise Collard for a model for his Madonna, and like the Greek sculptor, he would have selected beautiful points from them both to reach that perfect standard to which Art everywhere attains when it surpasses Nature.
The other young girls of the middle class grouped themselves round the Deviolaine family. The two Troisvallet girls, Henriette and Clementine: Clementine, dark with beautiful black hair, strangely attractive eyes, a Roman complexion, of the type of Velletri or Subiaco, and a head like one of Augustine Carrachi's. Henriette was tall, fair, rosy, slender, gracious, and as pliant in her gentle youthfulness as a rose, as a blade of corn, as a willow tree: she had that type of face which is half sad, half merry; the transition between angel and woman, showing all the common needs of earth, yet full of heavenly aspirations too. Then the two charming girls Sophie and Pélagie Perrot; Louise Moreau, a sweet young girl, who has since become the admirable mother of a family; Éléonore Picot, of whom I have spoken—an excellent woman, saddened by the death of her brother Stanislas, and the shameful charge that had weighed for a short time upon her brother Auguste. Then there were others, too, whose names I have forgotten, but whose fresh faces still appear in my mind's eye like the phantoms of a dream or like the apparitions which glide out of German streams or are reflected in the lochs of Scotland as they pursue their nocturnal rounds.
Lastly, after the middle classes, came, as I have said, the group of young girls which I cannot class in the social hierarchy, but which held the same place in that small world of ours shut in by the green girdle of its beautiful forest, that lilies of the valley, Easter daisies, cornflowers, hyacinths and pompon roses hold among flowers. Oh! but it was a pretty sight to see them on Sunday, in their summer dresses, with pink and blue sashes, their tiny bonnets trimmed by their own hands and put on in a hundred varieties of coquettish ways—for in those days not one of them dare wear a hat; it was a delight to see them free of all constraint, ignorant of any etiquette, playing, racing, lacing and interlacing their charming round bare arms in long chains. What exquisite creatures they were! What delightful young things! It is of little interest to my readers, I am well aware, to know their names; but I knew them, I loved them, I spent my earliest years among them, those gentle opening days in the morning of life; I wish to tell their names, I wish to paint their portraits, I wish to describe their different charms, and then I hope they will pardon my indiscretions for my very indiscretions' sake.
I must mention first and foremost two charmingly romantic and coquettish damsels—Joséphine and Manette Thierry: Joséphine dark, rosy, with an ample figure and regular features, a perfect creature, whose beautiful teeth completed a ravishing whole. Manette, a dessert apple, a girl who was always singing to make herself heard, always laughing to show off her teeth, ever running to let her feet, her ankles, even the calves of her legs, be seen; Virgil's Galatea, whose very name she was ignorant of, flying to be pursued, hiding so as to be seen before she hid.
What has become of them? I have seen them since, looking very miserable: one was at Versailles, the other in Paris—the fallen, faded fruits of that rosary on which I spelled out the first phrases of love. They were the daughters of an old tailor, and lived close to the church, which was only separated from them by the town hall. Louise Brézette lived nearly opposite them; I have already mentioned her. She was the niece of my dancing-master; a sturdy flower of fifteen, whom I had in my mind while I wrote my fictitious history of that Tulipe noire, the masterpiece of horticulture vainly sought after, vainly pursued, vainly expected by Dutch amateur gardeners. The hair of beautiful Madame Ronconi, which inspired one of Théophile Gautier's most wonderful articles, and which made coal look grey and the wings of a crow pale, when placed side by side with it, was not more black, more blue, more shiny than Louise Brézette's hair when it reflected the sun's rays from its dark and sombre depths as from the heart of polished metal. Oh! what a lovely blooming brunette she was, with her flesh as firm and bright as a nectarine's; her pearly teeth lighting up her face from under the faint ebony down on her coral lips! One could feel life and love bubbling up beneath, needing only the first passion to make everything burst forth into flame! This luxuriant young girl was religious, and, as such an organisation as hers must love something, she loved God.
If you took a few steps towards the square, a little farther up the rue de Soissons, bearing to the left, there was a door and a window, comprising the whole frontage of a tiny house. In the window hung hats, collars, bonnets, lace, gloves, mittens, ribbons—the whole arsenal, in short, of womanly vanity; behind the door floated certain curtains, intended to prevent inquisitive glances from looking into the shop, but which, whether by some strange mischance, or from the obstinacy of the rod upon which they slid, or from the caprices of the wind, always left on one side or the other some impertinent aperture through which the passer-by could see into the shop and at the same time allowed those inside the shop to see out into the street. Above this door and this window the following inscription was painted in large letters:—
Mesdemoiselles Rigolot, Milliners
Truly those who stopped in front of the opening which I have indicated, and who managed to cast a glance inside the shop, did not lose their time nor regret their pains. What we mean by this has no sort of connection with the two proprietors of the establishment, who were both old maids, having long since passed their fortieth year, and, I presume, having lost all pretension to inspire any other sentiment than respect.
No, what we have in view concerns two of the most adorable faces you can imagine, placed side by side as though to set one another off: one was a blonde, and the other a brunette. The brunette was Albine Hardi; the blonde was Adèle Dalvin. The brown head,—do you know the lovely Marie Duplessis, that charming courtesan full of queenly grace, upon whom my son wrote his romance la Dame aux camélias?—well, she was Albine. If you do not know her, I will describe Albine to you. She was a young girl of seventeen, with a dead brown complexion, large brown velvety eyes, and eyebrows so black that they seemed as though they had been drawn with a pencil, the curve was so firm and so regular. She was a duchess, she was a queen; better still than either, if you will, she was after the fashion of a nymph of Diana's train: slight, slender, straight and finely built, a huntress whom it would have been a splendid sight to see with a plumed helmet on her head, an Amazon flying before the wind, leading a troop of clamorous pikemen, guiding a baying hound. Upon the stage her appearance would have been magnificent, almost supernatural. In ordinary life, people were tempted to think her too beautiful, and for some time nobody dared to make love to her, it seemed so likely that their love would be wasted and that she would not make any response to it. The other, Adèle, was fair and pink-complexioned. I have never seen prettier golden hair, sweeter eyes, a more winning smile; she was more inclined to be gay than melancholy, short rather than tall, plump rather than thin: she was something like one of Murillo's cherubs who kiss the feet of his Virgins—half veiled in clouds; she was neither a Watteau shepherdess, nor one of Greuze's peasant girls, but something between the two. One felt it would be a sweet and easy thing to love her, although it might not be so easy to be loved by her. Her father and her mother were worthy old farmer folk, thoroughly honest but vulgar, and it was all the more surprising that so fresh and sweet-scented a flower should have sprung from such a stock. But this is always the case when folks are young: it is youth that lends distinction, as it is spring which lends freshness to the rose.
Round these young people whom I have just described, smiled and pouted a bevy of young girls, the smallest being mere infants, whom I have since seen succeed the youthful generation in which I lived. I have sought in vain to find in these later children the virtues I found in those who preceded them.
Until the arrival of the two strangers in Villers-Cotterets I had not even noticed the springtide crown of stars and flowers to which all ranks of society contribute. When the two strangers had left, the bandage that had sealed my eyes fell off, and I could say not merely "I see" but "I live." I found myself placed by my years exactly between the children who still played at prisoners' base and at quoits—as the abba's niece had aptly put it—and youths beginning to turn into men. Instead of returning to the former, as my beautiful Parisian had advised me, I attached myself to the latter, and drew myself up to my full height to prove my sixteen years. And when anyone asked my age, I told them I was seventeen.
The three youths with whom I was most intimate were, first, Fourcade, director of the school of self-improvement, sent from Paris to Villers-Cotterets; he was my vis-à-vis in my début as a dancing man. He was a thoroughly well-bred, well-educated young fellow, son of a man very honourably known in foreign affairs; his father had lived in the East for many years and had been Consul at Salonica. His affections were fixed upon Joséphine Thierry, and he spent with her all the time he could spare from his teaching. My second companion was Saunier; he had been a fellow-pupil with me under the Abbé Grégoire; he was second clerk of M. Perrot the lawyer; his father and grandfather were blacksmiths, and in the idle period of my early youth I spent a large portion of my time in their forge, notching their files and making fireworks out of iron filings. Saunier divided his leisure-time between two passions—one, which I verily believe came before the other, was for the clarionette; the other was for Manette Thierry. The third of my intimate friends was called Chollet; he served as a link, in the matter of age, between Fourcade and Saunier. He lived with one of my cousins, called Roussy, the father of the child of whom I had been godfather, when nine months old, along with Augustine Deviolaine. He was studying the cultivation of forest-land. I know nothing about his relations; they were probably wealthy, for whenever I called on him there were five-franc pieces scattered about on the mantelpiece and two or three gold pieces always shone out ostentatiously from the midst of them, dazzling my eyes and impressing me profoundly with his riches. But my admiration was entirely devoid of envy—I have never envied either a man's money or his possessions. I know not whether this arose from pride or from simpleness of mind. I might have taken for my motto Video nec invideo. Chollet had had no education at all, but he was not wanting in a certain natural quick-wittedness, and he was a fine-looking young fellow, his magnificent eyes and splendid teeth redeeming an otherwise common-looking face, pitted with smallpox. He did his best to make Louise Brézette change her love for the Creator into love for the creature.
These were my three most intimate friends. The upshot was, that when it became necessary for me in my turn to make a choice, although I had been brought up half with M. Deviolaine's family and half with M. Collard's, it was neither in aristocratic society nor in middle-class circles, which would have made fun of me, that I sought my initiation in the delightful mystery of life we call falling in love, but in that society to which my three friends almost exclusively addressed themselves. And I had no difficulty in understanding their preference. I do not hesitate to state fully and freely that they were very wise in their choice. There was but one step to take to follow in their path. I needed only someone upon whom to fasten my affections: the wish to love was not wanting. Every one of the young girls I have mentioned had some love affair on hand of a more or less serious character. They all enjoyed most delightful liberty, the result no doubt of the confidence their parents placed in their good sense; but for some reason or other we had quite an English custom in Villers-Cotterets—a free and easy association between young people of both sexes, which I have never seen in any other French town; a liberty all the more surprising, since all the parents of these maidens were perfectly respectable people and had a profound conviction in the depths of their hearts that all the barques launched upon the flood of the Tender Passion were decked with white sails and crowned with orange blossoms. And what was more singular still, it was true in the case of the majority of the ten or twelve couples of lovers which formed our circle.
I waited patiently for one of these knots to be untied or severed. While I waited, I went to every party and took part in all the walks and all the dances; it was an excellent apprenticeship, which familiarised me beforehand with that monster whom Psyche touched without seeing and whom I, on the contrary, had seen but not touched. Chance favoured me, after six weeks or two months of playing second fiddle. One of these engagements was hardly made before it was broken: a farmer's son, named Richou, wished to marry his neighbour, Adèle Dalvin. The parents of the young man, who were better off than those of the young girl, opposed these budding loves, and the fair one was released.
I had learnt much during those six weeks by watching others; besides, this time, I was not entangled with a sarcastic and exacting Parisian girl, who knew the world so much better than I did. No, my love affair was with a young girl more shy than myself, who mistook my pretended courage for genuine, and who, like the frog in the fable that jumped in the pond when a frightened hare passed by it, was good enough to fear me and to prove to me that it was possible to come across someone even more timid than myself. It can be seen how such a change in the position of things gave me assurance. The rôles were now completely reversed. This time I was the attacking party and someone else was on the defensive, and this someone was making such an obstinate resistance that I soon realised my attack was useless and that I should only succeed in breaking down the serious resistance offered me after, maybe, a long and patient wooing: the citadel was not to be stormed. Then began for me those first days, the reflection of which has lasted throughout the whole of my life: that delicious struggle of love, which asks unceasingly and is not discouraged by an eternity of refusal; the obtaining of favour after favour, each of which, when gained, fills the soul with ecstasy; the early fleeting dawn of life which hovers above the earth, shaking down handfuls of flowers upon the heads of mortals, and then, under the influence of the rising sun, adds consciousness to its joy and is soon enveloped in the ardent heat of passion.
Indeed, it was a happy time for me. In the morning, when I awoke, my mother's smile greeted me and her lingering kisses hung on my lips; from nine to four o'clock came my work—work, it is true, which would have been tiresome if I had been obliged to understand what I wrote, but which was easy and welcome, for while my hands and eyes were copying, my mind was free to commune with my own happy thoughts; then, from four till eight o'clock, I was with my mother; and after eight, joy, love, life, hope, happiness!
At eight in summer evenings, at six in winter, our young friends, also free when I was, came to join us at some convenient meeting-place; held out their faces or their cheeks to be kissed, pressed our hands, without taking pains, out of mistaken coquetry or hypocritical make-belief, to conceal their delight at meeting us once more; then, if it were summertime, and fine weather, the park invited us with its mossy sward, its dusky avenues, the breeze trembling among the leaves, and on moonlight nights there were wide spaces of alternate light and darkness; at these times a solitary passer-by could have seen five or six couples walking, at duly specified distances, to ensure isolation without loneliness, heads inclined towards one another, hands clasped in hands, talking in low tones, modulating their words to sweet intonations, or preserving a dangerous silence; for during such silences the eyes often spoke what the lips did not dare to utter. If it were winter or bad weather, we all met at Louise Brézette's: her mother and her aunt nearly always withdrew to the back room, giving up to us the two front ones, which we seized upon for ourselves; then, lit by a single lamp in the third room, near which Louise's mother would sew while her aunt read the Imitation of Christ or The Perfect Christian we chatted, squeezed against one another, generally two on one chair, repeating the same story we had said the night before, but finding what we had to say ever new.
At ten o'clock our soirées broke up. Each boy took his particular girl home. When they reached the house door, she granted her cavalier another half-hour, sometimes an hour, as sweet to her as to him, as they sat together on the bench outside the door, or stood in the garden path which led to the maternal parlour, from the interior of which from time to time a grumbling voice might be heard calling—a voice that was answered ten times before being obeyed, "I am coming, mamma." On Sundays we met at three o'clock, after vespers; and we walked, danced, waltzed, not going home until midnight.
Then there were fêtes in the neighbouring villages, less grand, less aristocratic, less fashionable, certainly, than those of Villers-Cotterets, to which we went in happy bands, and from which we returned in silent separate pairs.
It was at one of these fêtes that I met a young man a year younger than myself. I must ask permission to speak of him fully, for he had an immense influence over my life.
[CHAPTER III]
Adolphe de Leuven—His family—Unpublished details concerning the death of Gustavus III.—The Count de Ribbing—The shoemakers of the château de Villers-Hellon
I first met Leuven at a fête in the beautiful village of Corey, a league's distance from Villers-Cotterets—a village buried in the centre of great woods, like a nest among high branches. I had left my companions for an instant in the course of the dance, and I had gone to some distance to pay a visit to an old friend of my father, a farmer, whose farm was nearly a quarter of a league from the village. I took a pretty path at the foot of a hill to get there, hedged on both sides by hawthorn in full blossom, and studded with daisies, their golden centres fringed by pink-tipped petals.
Suddenly, at a bend in the path, I saw three people coming towards me, in a ray of sunlight which bathed them in light; two were well known to me, but the third was a complete stranger. The two I knew were Caroline Collard, who, as previously related, had become Baroness Capelle. The other was her daughter, Marie Capelle, then only three years old, who to her misfortune was to become Madame Lafarge. The third person, the stranger, looked at first sight like a German student; he was a youth of between sixteen and seventeen, and was dressed in a grey jacket, an oilskin cap, a waistcoat of chamois leather and bright blue trousers, almost as tight-fitting as mine, but with this difference, that while my topboots covered up my breeches, his, on the contrary, were covered up by his trousers. This young man was tall, dark and gaunt, his black hair cut as short as bristles; he had good eyes and a strikingly defined nose; his teeth were as white as pearls, and he had a carelessly aristocratic bearing; he was the Viscount Adolphe Ribbing de Leuven, future author of Vert-Vert and of Postilion de Long-jumeau son of Count Adolphe-Louis Ribbing de Leuven, one of the three Swedish noblemen who were inculpated in the murder of Gustavus III., King of Sweden.
These Counts Ribbing de Leuven were of an old and noble family, used to carrying on royal intrigues and to treat on equal terms with the powerful ones of earth. It was a Ribbing who rose in 1520 against the tyrant Christiern who had caused his two children to be murdered. There was a sad and melancholy legend in the family, connected with the beheading of these two children, the one aged twelve and the other only three. The executioner had cut off the head of the eldest and had seized hold of the second to execute him too, when the poor mite said in childish accents, "Oh, please do not soil my collar as you have soiled my brother Axel's, for mamma would scold me." The executioner had two children of his own just the same ages as these. Moved by the words, he flung down his sword and ran off, overwhelmed with remorse. Christiern sent soldiers after him and he was killed.
Adolphe's father, with whom I have since become very friendly and who loves me like a father, was then a man of fifty; extremely distinguished in appearance, with a charming nature, although perhaps a little too sarcastic, and of indomitable courage. He had been educated at the Military School in Berlin, and had come to France when quite young as a captain in one of Louis XVI.'s foreign mercenary regiments—those regiments which did him far more harm than any good their loyal services rendered him. He had been presented to Marie-Antoinette by the Count de Fersen and, under the patronage of that illustrious favourite, the queen gave him a most favourable reception. He remembered poor. Marie-Antoinette with most respectful veneration, and thirty years after her death I often heard him speak of her with a voice full of tears. He was recalled to Sweden towards the close of the year 1791. He was betrothed to one of his cousins, whom he worshipped, and, intending to marry her on his return, he learnt on his arrival at Stockholm that, by the order of King Gustave III., her hand had been disposed of and she was the wife of the Count d'Essen. In his first transport of despair, Count Ribbing provoked a quarrel with her husband. A duel ensued, and the Count d'Essen fell with a sword-wound through his chest which kept him chained for six months to his bed.
Sweden was greatly disturbed at this period: the king insisted upon enforcing his Diet to accept the deed of union and of security, and at Geft the coup d'état took place which invested the king with sole power in the making of peace and war. A tremendous strife had been waged for a long period between the regal power and the nobility. Though the king was married in 1766 to Sophie-Madeleine of Denmark, he had no heir to his crown even in 1776. And the Swedish nobility attributed the queen's sterility to the same cause as that of Louise de Vaudemont, Henri III.'s wife. As in the case of the last of the house of Valois, Gustavus had his favourites, and their familiarity with him led to their making the most extraordinary suggestions to their prince. After a time, the courtiers made up their minds to remonstrate with the king about the queen's barrenness and to tell him he ought to try to remedy this deficiency by every means in his power. Gustavus promised to see what could be done in the matter. Then, so folks said, a curious thing happened. The evening of the day on which he had pledged his word to the Swedish lords, he took his equerry Monck to the queen's chamber and, in the presence of the confused and blushing queen, he explained to the equerry the service he required of him; then he withdrew and shut the door of the royal chamber upon the pair. Some time later the queen's pregnancy was proclaimed, and she gave birth to a prince, who after his father's death reigned under the title of Gustavus IV., until the Swedish Parliament proclaimed his deposition in 1809. I knew his son very well in Italy, where he travelled under the name of the Count de Wasa.
In 1770, Gustavus III., then twenty-four years of age, came to France as the Count de Haga. He had an interview with a kind of sorceress who predicted future events in her hypnotic trances; she had scarcely touched his hand before she told him to beware of the year 1792, as he would incur danger of death from firearms during the course of it. Gustavus was a brave man; he had often exposed himself to danger. He several times repeated the prediction laughingly, but it never troubled him.
Inconsequence of the Diet of 1792, by which the nobles had lost the rest of their privileges, there arose a conspiracy. The principal ringleaders were Ankarström, Count de Ribbing, Count de Horn, Baron d'Erenswaerd and Colonel Lilienhorn. Ankarström and Ribbing had private reasons for hatred against the king, besides the general grievances which embittered the aristocracy against the sovereign. Through the king's intervention Ankarström had lost a lawsuit which had deprived him of half his fortune. Count de Ribbing, as we have seen, owed a grudge against the king for a far more grievous loss than that of a lawsuit, namely, the loss of his lady-love. In the case of the other nobles the projected murder of Gustavus was simply an incident in the life of a clan. They decided to perpetrate the murder at a masked ball, which was to take place in the Opera House, on the night of 15 and 16 March 1792. On the night before, the king received an anonymous letter, warning him of the plot and telling him that he was to be assassinated on the following night.
"Ah yes," said Gustavus, "the very same thing was predicted twenty-two years ago to the Count de Haga; but he put no more faith in the prophecy than the King of Sweden does to-day;" and, shrugging his shoulders, he crumpled the note between his hands and threw it into the fireplace. Nevertheless, people averred that Gustavus went disguised on the night of the 14-15 to consult the famous sibyl Arfredson, who confirmed the French somnambulist's prediction and the warning contained in the anonymous letter, telling him he would be murdered before three days had gone by. Whether from actual courage or from incredulity, Gustavus would not change any of his previously arranged plans nor take any precaution: at eleven o'clock that night he went to the masked ball. Lots had been drawn the night before to settle which of the conspirators should kill the king, and Gustavus was so greatly detested by his nobles that each one was eager to have the dangerous honour of firing the fatal shot. The lot was drawn by Ankarström.
It is said that one of the conspirators offered to give him all the wealth he then possessed, as well as all that which he was to inherit at a future date, if he would change places with him; but Ankarström refused. When the time came, Ankarström suddenly bethought him that he might mistake one of the nobles for the king, as several of them were dressed in similar costumes. But the Count de Horn reassured him. "Fire boldly," said he, "at the one to whom I shall say, 'Good-day, handsome masquerader.' He will be the king."
At two in the morning Gustavus was strolling about, leaning on the arm of the Count d'Essen, whom he had married to de Ribbing's fiancée, when the Count de Horn approached him and said, "Good-day, handsome masquerader."
The next moment a dull report was heard, and Gustavus tottered, crying out—
"I am killed!"
Except those who were round about the king no one had perceived what had happened. The pistol was concealed in a muff; the report had been drowned amidst the buzz of conversation and the strains of the orchestra, and the smoke remained buried in the muff. But at the king's exclamation, and on seeing him fall back fainting in the arms of d'Essen, everyone ran up; in the commotion that followed it was quite easy for Ankarström to put himself at a distance from the king and even to leave the hall; but in his flight he dropped one of his pistols. The pistol was picked up, hot and still smoking. Next day every gun-seller in Stockholm was questioned, and one of them recognised the pistol as one he had sold to Ankarström. An hour later, Ankarström was arrested at his own house, and a special commission was appointed to try him. He confessed to, but gloried in, his crime. As to his accomplices, he declined under any conditions whatever to reveal their names. The trial dragged on slowly; it was hoped against hope that Ankarström would give away the conspirators; finally, on 29 April 1792, forty-four days after the murder, he was condemned. The sentence was that he was to be beaten with rods for three days, then beheaded. In spite of the length and the ignominy of the punishment, Ankarström remained firm to the very end. While being taken in the cart to his execution, he looked with perfect equanimity upon the thousands of spectators who thronged round the scaffold. When he mounted the scaffold he asked for a few minutes in which to make his peace with God. It was granted him. He knelt down, prayed and then gave himself up to the executioners. He was not quite thirty-three years of age.
Ribbing, who had been arrested at the same time as Ankarström, was but twenty-one: it was intended to condemn him to death like Ankarström, and the Duke of Sudermania, regent over the kingdom during the minority of Gustavus IV., was urging forward the trial, when a mystic, a disciple of Swedenborg, sought him out and told him that the master had appeared to him, and had declared that not only was Ribbing innocent, but that every hair which fell from his head would cost a day of the life of the Duke of Sudermania. The duke, a Swedenborgian himself, was terrified at this warning, and Ribbing, instead of sharing Ankarström's fate, was condemned to perpetual exile. And as less could not be done for the Count de Horn and for Lilienhorn than was done in the case of Ribbing, they both obtained the same favour. The confiscation of their property followed upon the sentence of exile. Fortunately, in the case of the Count de Ribbing, the confiscation of property could not be put into execution until after the death of his mother: she enjoyed the property in her own right, during her lifetime, and she was still quite young.
The count left for France, where the Revolution was then at its height, and he arrived in time to witness the events of 2 and 3 September and 21 January. His adoration for the queen made him loud in his denunciation of the events of those dreadful days. He was arrested and, although already a regicide, was on the point of being delivered up to the revolutionary tribunal as too sympathetic with royal misfortunes, when Chaumette set him free, gave him a passport and helped him to escape from Paris. The count then went to Switzerland; he was so young and so good-looking that he went by the name of "the beautiful regicide." He was introduced to Madame de Staël, who took him much into her confidence. The letters (some two or three hundred) which the Count de Ribbing received from Madame de Staël during the lifetime of the illustrious authoress of Corinne, proved that this friendship was not of a temporary nature. Madame de Staël was surrounded by a circle of friends, several of whom already knew the Count de Ribbing. This little court was half political and half literary; its chief purpose at that time was to rescue, hide and protect emigrants against the persecutions of the magistrates in the Swiss cantons whose hands were continually being forced by the demands of the Revolutionary Government of Paris.
After 9 thermidor, the Count de Ribbing could return to France, where he bought three or four châteaux and two or three abbeys at a very low price. Among these châteaux were Villers-Hellon, Brunoy and Quincy. The count had acquired all these properties simply on the recommendations either of friends or of his solicitor. Villers-Hellon was, among others, quite unknown to him. One day he made up his mind to pay a visit to the lovely estate people had praised so much. Unluckily, the time was ill-chosen for seeing all its charms: the communal authorities of Villers-Hellon had handed over the château to an association of shoemakers who made shoes for the army, consequently the worthy disciples of St. Crépin had taken possession of the domain, had set up their workrooms in the salons and in the bedrooms and, the better to communicate with one another, they had made openings through the ceilings. When they had any oral communication to make, they made it by means of these peep-holes without having to leave their seats; if they had to come up or downstairs to see one another, they put ladders through these holes and so saved the turns and twists of the proper staircase. One can imagine how greatly such tenants would detract from the appearance of the château the count had just bought. The sights, and above all the smells, about the place so disgusted him that he fled precipitately back to Paris. Some days later he recounted his misadventure in his own witty way to M. Collard, then connected with the commissariat department of the army. M. Collard was more accustomed to the value of material goods than the noble exile, and he then and there offered to take over his purchase. M. de Ribbing consented, and Villers-Hellon became from that moment the property of M. Collard. Happily, the Count de Ribbing had still two or three other châteaux where he could reside instead of in the one he had just sold. He chose Brunoy, which later he gave up to his friend Talma, as he had Villers-Hellon to his friend Collard, and then he established himself in the château of Quincy.
During the whole of Napoleon's reign the Count de Ribbing lived very quietly, spending his winters in Paris and his summers in the country, devoting himself to agriculture and to fishing in his ponds, in which, once, he caught such an enormous pike that when it was put in the scales with Adolphe at the other end, the pike was actually the heavier. Napoleon offered M. de Ribbing military positions more than once—offers which he I declined, on account of the Conqueror's love of invasion, fearing he might one day be compelled to carry arms against Sweden.
On the second return of the Bourbons to power, their revenge for past political events pursued M. de Ribbing to his private retreat. He was obliged to exile himself again, crossed the frontier, and under an assumed name went to live in Brussels with his wife and son. But the incognito of the Count de Ribbing was soon to betray him under circumstances that will give some idea of his character. In Brussels, the count found himself at the same table with some foreign officers who, inflated with pride at the victory of Waterloo, abused France and Frenchmen right and left. One colonel, who was covered with decorations, especially distinguished himself by his exaggerated attacks. The conversation was carried on in German, but as the Count de Ribbing had been brought up in Berlin, German was almost like his mother tongue; he did not therefore lose a single word of the conversation, although he pretended he was not taking any notice. Suddenly he rose, and, advancing with his usual coolness to the colonel, he slapped him right and left across the face, accompanying the blows with a statement of his name and titles, and then he quietly returned to his seat. Cauchois-Lemaire, then only a young man, was at the same table, so was the poet Arnault, who was already an old man; both, at great risk to themselves, offered their services to the Count de Ribbing as seconds. Happily these services were not required: the colonel would not fight.
The roll of the Thirty Eight enriched Brussels at the expense of France,—Arnault, Excelmans, Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angély, Cambacérès, Harel, Cauchois-Lemaire were all exiled. M. de Ribbing attached himself to them, and, with them, founded le Nain Jaune—a journal that soon earned itself a European reputation.
Following upon an article published by the count in this journal, the Prussian Government demanded that the author of it should be handed over to them. This meant nothing less than imprisonment for life in a castle—Prussia is still, as one knows, the land of castles, and it has long been the land of imprisonments. However, King William left the Count de Ribbing the choice of being delivered over to Prussia or to France—somewhat after the fashion of the cook who gives a fowl its choice between being boiled or roasted. M. de Ribbing chose France. He was taken prisoner, flung into a post-chaise with his son, and driven to the borders of Condé. There he looked about him, to discover from which of his old friends he could ask hospitality. The nearest happened to be M. Collard, so he took his way towards Villers-Hellon.
It need hardly be said that he was received with open arms. He had been living but three days in that lovely place—changed so greatly since the days of the bootmakers that it was almost beyond recognition—when I met his son, Adolphe de Leuven, with Madame Capelle on his arm, and holding little Marie by the hand.
[CHAPTER IV]
Adolphe's quatrain—The water-hen and King William—Lunch in the wood—The irritant powder, the frogs and the cock—The doctor's spectre—De Leuven, Hippolyte Leroy and I are exiled from the drawing-room—Unfortunate result of a geographical error—M. Paroisse
I had not come across any members of the Collard family for a long time. Madame Capelle I adored, as she took pity on my youthfulness when people made fun of my peculiarities—peculiarities which I will not hide from myself I possessed to a certain extent. She introduced me to de Leuven as a young friend of hers and asked me to lunch with them next day in the forest to improve our acquaintance; it was also arranged that, following upon the lunch, I should spend two or three days at the château of Villers-Hellon. Of course I accepted the invitation. The fête of Corey was on the way, with its delightful entertainments of dancing and merriment. I can think of nothing more delightful than returning home, at ten or eleven o'clock at night, under the dense moving vault of the tall trees: in the solemn stillness of the night it seemed like some ancient Elysium, with mute shades walking under in the darkness; for the shades that pace our terrestrial Elysiums speak so low, so very low, that we swear they are dumb. I had been obliged to return to Villers-Cotterets to take back Adèle, and to make her understand, without hurting her feelings, how important it was that I should maintain friendly intercourse with the Collard family. She was such an excellent, good-hearted, straightforward girl, that she soon understood, and although feeling a little jealous at lending me to that group of aristocratic and beautiful young girls, who were fine enough to inspire jealousy in the heart of a princess, she gave me up for three days.
I set off at nine next morning to reach the arranged meeting-place by ten o'clock. Everybody had spent the night at Corey, at M. Leroy's house, and I also should have done the same had I not been urgently recalled to Villers-Cotterets by the necessity above stated. But what was a distance like that? I had strong legs and boots which could defy those of Tom Thumb's giant himself. In less than three-quarters of an hour, I caught sight of the first houses in the village, and the pond as it lay quiet and shining like a mirror at the foot of the valley. Adolphe de Leuven was walking on its banks. I did not expect that anyone would be up at the farm so early, and I joined Adolphe. He had a pencil and tablets in his hand, and he who was usually so phlegmatic was gesticulating in such a fashion that I should have trembled for his reason, had I not imagined he was practising a fencing exercise. When he saw me he stopped and blushed slightly.
"What are you doing there?" I asked.
"Why, I am composing poetry," he said, with some confusion. I looked him in the face as though I could hardly believe my ears.
"Poetry!... do you really write poetry?"
"Why, yes, sometimes," he answered, laughing.
"To whom are you writing verses?"
"To Louise."
"What! Louise Collard?"
"Yes."
"Well, I never!"
The notion of composing poetry to Louise Collard, charming though she was, had never come into my head. Louise seemed to me still the same pretty child in short frocks with lace-trimmed drawers—nothing more.
"Ah! so you are making verses to Louise, are you: what for?" I went on.
"You know she is going to be married."
"Louise? No, I did not know that. To whom?"
"To a Russian. Therefore the marriage must be prevented." "Prevented?"
"Yes; such a delightful girl must not be allowed to leave France."
"True, true; I shall be very sorry if she leaves France. I am very fond of her; aren't you?"
"I? I have only known her three days."
"It would be a good thing to hinder her from leaving France; but how shall we do it?"
"I have written my verses; you write some too."
"I!"
"Yes, you. You have been brought up with her, and it will please her."
"But I do not know how to write poetry. I have never done anything but crambo with the Abbé Grégoire and he always told me I did badly."
"Oh, nonsense! when you are in love it comes of itself."
"But I am in love and it hasn't come; so let me see your verses."
"Oh, it is just a quatrain."
"Well, let me see it."
Adolphe drew his tablets forth and read me these four lines:—
"Pourquoi dans la froide Ibérie,
Louise, ensevelir de si charmants attraits?
Les Russes, en quittant notre belle patrie,
Nous juraient cependant une éternelle paix!"
I stood astounded. This was real poetry—poetry after the style of Demoustier. So a poet stood before me: I felt as though I ought to bow down before him.
"How do you like my quatrain?" asked de Leuven.
"Heavens! it is beautiful."
"Good!"
"And you are going to give it to Louise?"
"Oh no; I dare not do that. I shall write it in her album without saying anything to her, and when she turns over the leaves she will come across my lines."
"Bravo!"
"Now what shall you do?"
"What about?"
"About this marriage."
"Oh, well, as I am quite unable to make a quatrain as good as yours, I shall say to her, 'Are you really going to marry a Russian, my poor Louise? I tell you, you are making a great mistake.'"
"I do not fancy that will have so much effect as my quatrain," said Adolphe.
"Neither do I; but what else can I do? One can only use one's own weapons. Now, if the Russian would meet me in a pistol Dud, I am quite sure he would never marry Louise!"
"You are a sportsman, then?"
"Rather. How could you imagine one would not be, surrounded by such a forest? Oh, stop! there is a water-hen!"
I pointed it out to him with my finger, flushing it with my stick as it swam among the reeds of the pond.
"Shoo!"
"Is that a water-hen?"
"Of course it is. Where do you come from not to know a water-hen?"
"I come from Brussels."
"I thought you were a Parisian."
"I was indeed born in Paris; but in 1815 we left Paris, and we lived in Brussels until three years ago, when my father and I were compelled to leave."
"Who compelled you to go?"
"Why, William!"
"Who is William?"
"William? He is King of the Netherlands. Didn't you know that the King of the Netherlands was called William?"
"Not I."
"Well, then, it oughtn't to seem so odd to you now that I do not know a water-hen."
Indeed, as it appeared, we were both ignorant on some points; and my ignorance was more culpable than de Leuven's.
He grew another cubit taller in my estimation. Not only was he a poet, but he was of sufficient importance in the world for this King William to be uneasy about him and his father, to the extent of banishing them both from his realms.
"And now you are living at Villers-Hellon?" said I.
"Yes. M. Collard is an old friend of my father."
"How long shall you live here?"
"As long as the Bourbons will allow us to remain in France."
"Ah! then you have fallen out with the Bourbons too?"
"We have quarrelled with most kings," said Adolphe, with a laugh.
This phrase, uttered with magnificent indifference, quite finished me off. Luckily, at that moment, our fair companions appeared on the threshold of the farm, a bevy of pink and white damsels. Two or three chars-à-bancs were in readiness to take them to the appointed place. The gentlemen were to go on foot. The rendezvous was barely a quarter of a league's distance from the village. A long table of thirty covers was laid under a leafy canopy, ten paces off a limpid, clear purling spring called the Fontaine-aux-Princes. All these young folks, maidens, mothers, children, seemed like so many woodland flowers opening to the sweet-breathed breeze: some pale, that sought for shade and solitude; others of brilliant hues, seeking light and stir and the sunshine of admiration.
Oh! those glorious woods, those shady depths, the haunts of my cherished moods of solitude, I have revisited you since; but no shade glides now beneath your green vaults and in your dark alleys.... What have you done with all that delightful world which vanished with my youth? Why have not other generations come in their turn, pale or rosy, lively or careless, noisy or silent like ours? Has that ephemeral efflorescence disappeared for ever? Is it really wanting, or is it that my eyes have lost the power of seeing?
We returned that night to Villers-Hellon. Everything was so beautifully arranged in that luxurious little château that each of us had a separate room and bed, and sometimes there were as many as thirty or forty of us there.
I have related what nocturnal persecutions poor Hiraux was made a victim of when he came to see us at les Fossés. It was now our turn to undergo the like. Our rooms were prepared beforehand for the pantomime that followed. The family doctor, Manceau, was the stage manager. He had replaced an old doctor from Soissons named M. Paroisse. I will explain presently why this change took place. The assistant stage managers were Louise, Cécile and Augustine. The appointed victims were Hippolyte Leroy, de Leuven and myself. Hippolyte Leroy was at this period a young man of between twenty-five and twenty-six. He was a cousin of M. Leroy de Corey. He had been one of the body-guard, and was now Secretary to the Inspection at Villers-Cotterets. Later, he became my cousin, by his marriage with Augustine Deviolaine. Our three rooms communicated with one another. We retired to our rooms about half-past twelve. De Leuven was the first to get into bed. He had scarcely lain down before he began to complain of a most intolerable tickling: his bed was sprinkled with the stuff charlatans sell which they call scratching powder. Those unacquainted with this powder should recall the famous scene in Robert Macaire, where the two heroes of the book find a trunk, and in that trunk a quantity of tiny packets, containing some unknown substance, whose property was revealed when they touched it. In about five minutes' time Adolphe de Leuven began to scratch himself like both Robert Macaire and Bertrand put together. We offered de Leuven our sincere sympathy. We advised him to rub it off as best he could, to wrap himself in his bed-curtain and to sleep on a couch. Then we went to our own beds, quite convinced that we should find them like Adolphe's. But we searched them in vain: they seemed perfectly free from any preparation of the like nature. We lay down. In five minutes' time Hippolyte Leroy uttered a sharp cry. In stretching himself, he felt a piece of string at the foot of the bed; he pulled this thread, and in doing so, he untied a bag full of frogs. The frogs, gaining their liberty, hastened to disport themselves about the bed, and it was the contact of his human flesh with their animal hide which produced Hippolyte's yell above mentioned. He flung off the bed-clothes and leapt out of bed. The frogs leaped out after him. He had been given good measure; there were quite two dozen of them.
I was beginning to think I was the only one spared, when I thought I heard a great stirring inside a cupboard against which the head of my bed had been put. I looked at the lock. It was keyless. However, I felt no doubt that some sort of animal was shut up in that cupboard. Only, what sort of an animal was it? I was not kept long in suspense: as one o'clock struck a cock crowed at the head of my bed, and renewed his crowing every hour till day came. I did not deny Christ, like St. Peter, but I confess I took His name in vain. We fell asleep by seven o'clock,—de Leuven in spite of his itching powder, Hippolyte Leroy in spite of his frogs, and I in spite of my cock,—when Manceau entered our rooms and woke us by telling us that as he had heard in roundabout ways we had spent a bad night, he had come to offer us his professional services: Manceau denounced his own handiwork!
We had slept so badly, through that horrible night, that, with terrible imprecations, we had consigned our persecutor, whoever he might be, to the infernal regions. Manceau, as I have said, denounced himself: expiation must follow the crime; our sworn oath must be fulfilled. At a sign, de Leuven shut the door: I fell upon Manceau, Hippolyte gagged him; we stripped him naked, we wrapped him in a sheet off Adolphe's bed, we tied him up like a sausage, we took him down a disused staircase and we deposited him in the most unfrequented part of the park, in the very middle of the little river, at a place where he could stand, but where, entangled as he was, he ran great risk of losing his foothold at the first step he took. We then quietly returned to our beds, and resumed our interrupted sleep.
We went down to the morning meal at ten o'clock. Our arrival was eagerly expected. Everybody burst out laughing when we came within view. The young ladies each played a part: some pretended to scratch, others imitated in a low voice the croaking of frogs, and others simulated the crowing of a cock. We were quite imperturbable: we merely asked carelessly where Manceau was. Nobody had seen him. We sat down to table. The fowl was tough, Cécile remarked; one would have said it was an old cock which had crowed all the night. Augustine asked where the frogs were that she had seen, she said, in the kitchen the night before. Had they been moved?... Were the frogs lost?... The frogs must be found again. Louise asked Adolphe if he was not attacked by a contagious affection; for since he had offered her his arm to lead her into the dining-room, her skin had felt fearfully irritable.
"If Manceau were here," I said to Louise, "you could ask him for a prescription to allay it."
"But, joking apart, where is Manceau?" asked Madame Collard.
Silence again, as at the first inquiry. Matters were becoming serious, and folks began to be uneasy about the dear doctor: it was not his custom to absent himself at meal-times. They sent to ask the porter if Manceau had gone out to attend some sick person in the village. The porter had not seen Manceau.
"I believe he is drowned!" I said.... "Poor fellow!"
"Why should he be?" asked Madame Collard.
"Because yesterday evening he proposed a bathing party to us; but we slept so well we missed meeting him in his room as arranged. As we did not turn up, he must have gone alone to bathe."
"Oh, good gracious!" exclaimed Madame Collard, "the poor doctor! he cannot swim."
A chorus of lamentations went up from the ladies at these words, by the side of which the wailing of the Israelites in exile was a trifle. It was settled that Manceau should be searched for immediately after the meal was over.
"Good!" said de Leuven in a whisper to me,—"I will take the opportunity while everybody is out to write my verses in Louise's album."
"And I," I replied, "I will stand sentinel at the door to prevent your being disturbed."
Everything happened as had been arranged. The whole beehive of the castle swarmed into the garden. The older men—M. de Leuven the father, M. Collard, M. Méchin—stayed in the drawing-room to read the newspapers. Hippolyte played billiards with Maurice. De Leuven and I went upstairs to Louise's room, which was next to M. Collard's, and whilst I watched on the landing, he wrote his four lines in the album.
He had scarcely finished the last, when we heard loud shouts, and upon going to look out of the window, we saw Louise and Augustine running towards the castle. Cécile, who was braver, had remained stoutly where she was, and had looked towards the river with more curiosity than alarm.
"Bravo!" said I to Adolphe, "Manceau has made his appearance."
We quickly went down.
"A ghost! a ghost!" cried Louise and Augustine; "there is a ghost in the river!"
"Oh! my God," said de Leuven—"can it be that the spirit of poor Manceau is already borne down below?"
It was not his spirit, but his body. By dint of struggling with his cords, Manceau had freed one arm, then both; his two arms freed, he had taken the handkerchief off his mouth: when ungagged, he had called out for help; unfortunately, the gardener was at the opposite end of the garden. He had tried hard to untie the cords which bound his legs, as he had done those binding his hands; but, to do so, he would have to put his head under the water; and, as Madame Capelle had said, the unlucky doctor did not know how to swim, and was restrained from any such attempt by the fear of being suffocated. At last his cries attracted the attention of the young girls; but at sight of the figure wrapped in a sheet and making despairing gesticulations, fear had taken possession of them, and not having the least notion that Manceau would be discovered in the middle of the river, shrouded in such a garment, they had shrieked at the apparition and had flown away. They sent to the unhappy Manceau the gardener for whom he had called so loudly. He clamoured vehemently for his clothes. He had been in the river from seven in the morning until noon, and although it was towards the end of July, the bath was infinitely too protracted, and had made him somewhat chilly. He was put to bed with a hot bottle. From that moment Manceau was the object of general pity, and we of universal execration. For, God be merciful to him a sinner, Manceau had been cowardly enough to denounce us. It was in vain for de Leuven to show his hands as red as crabs and to offer to show the rest of his body, which was as red as his hands; in vain did Hippolyte collect the frogs scattered about his room and bring them into the drawing-room; in vain did I fetch the cock, with which I had held discourse all the night, from the barnyard: nothing moved our judges; we were banished from society, for deliberate attempted homicide in the matter of Doctor Manceau. So we promised ourselves to drown him out and out the first chance we got.
Banished from the society of the ladies, I took refuge in the billiard-room, where Maurice gave me my first lesson in billiards. We shall see that this lesson stood me in good stead, and that, four years later, at a solemn occasion in my life, I practised the art of cannoning, wherein I had made some progress. Our punishment lasted throughout that evening, which the young ladies spent in Louise's room, as it was raining. De Leuven made several attempts to get into that chamber, but was repulsed each time. A great change had come over him since four o'clock in the afternoon, after a conversation he had had with his father, in which the elder man had seemed to me to sneer at him strangely.
Adolphe grew very restless, almost gloomy, and although he was determinedly kept out of Louise's room—where she was holding a gathering of her girl-friends, as I have mentioned—he went back persistently again and again. "Ah! I see," I said to myself, after a moment's reflection, "he wants to obtain news of his quatrain and to know how it has succeeded." And, satisfied with my reasoning, I did not look any farther for the cause of de Leuven's insistence. But I regretted I had not the means with which partial nature had endowed Adolphe, to cause my shortcomings to be forgiven. I was pursued by this regret when in Hippolyte's room, where we withdrew, questioning each other what had become of de Leuven, who had not been seen for an hour, when suddenly we heard a great noise in the midst of which we could make out the words, "Stop thief!" echoing through the castle. As we were still dressed, we dashed out of our room and quickly descended the staircase. At the foot of the staircase was M. Collard in his nightshirt, holding Adolphe by his coat collar. It was an extraordinary sight. M. Collard looked furious and Adolphe exceedingly penitent. In the meantime, M. de Leuven, who had not yet gone to bed, arrived on the scene, as imperturbable as ever, his hands in his trousers pockets, chewing a toothpick, after his usual fashion. This toothpick was an indispensable item in M. de Leuven's life.
"Well, well! What is the matter now, Collard? What have you against my boy?"
"What have I? what have I?" shrieked M. Collard, growing more and more exasperated. "I have something that cannot be overlooked."
"Ah! what has he done, then?"
"What has he done?... I'll tell you what he has done!—--"
"Forgive me, father," said Adolphe, trying to get in a word or two of justification,—"forgive me, father, but M. Collard is mistaken.... He believes——"
"Hold your tongue, you scoundrel!" yelled M. Collard, kicking him.
Then, turning to the Count de Ribbing, he said—
"Listen, my dear de Leuven, and I will tell you where I have found this son of yours."
"But I must protest, dear M. Collard, it was solely and simply to——"
"Be quiet!" interrupted M. Collard. "Come with us: you shall clear yourself if you can."
"Oh," said Adolphe, "that will not be difficult."
"We shall see!"
Pushing the youth before him, he signed to the count to go inside his room, and, following himself, shut the door and double-locked it.
We withdrew in silence, Hippolyte, myself and the other spectators of that curious scene. Adolphe returned at the end of a quarter of an hour. He looked so crestfallen that we dared not question him for details. We went to bed in ignorance of the cause of all the disturbance.
But after Hippolyte had fallen asleep de Leuven came to me and told me the whole story. This was what had happened.
As I have said above, Adolphe had written the wonderful quatrain in Louise's album that morning. When it was finished he left the young lady's room as fast as possible. Towards four o'clock, Adolphe, who had not been able to contain the news, drew his father aside and repeated his quatrain to him.
M. de Ribbing listened gravely until the last syllable of the fourth line, and then he said—
"Say it over again, please."
Adolphe repeated it obediently:—
"Pourquoi dans la froide Ibérie,
Louise, ensevelir de si charmants attraits?
Les Russes, en quittant notre belle patrie,
Nous juraient cependant une éternelle paix!"
"There is but one slip," then said M. de Ribbing.
"What?" asked Adolphe.
"Oh, nothing much ... you have mistaken the South for the North—Spain for Russia."
"Oh!" cried Adolphe, aghast, "upon my word, so I have! ... I have put Ibérie for Sibérie."
"I understand," said the count, "it makes a better rhyme, but is less accurate." And, shrugging his shoulders, he went off humming a little air and chewing his toothpick.
Adolphe stood dumbfounded. He had signed his unlucky quatrain with his full name. If the album were opened and the quatrain were read he would be disgraced! This sword of Damocles, hung over the unlucky poet's head, had distracted him all the evening. It was to get hold of Louise's album that he had made the obstinate efforts to enter her room I have detailed. But, as we have seen, his attempts had been fruitless.
When night came, Adolphe took a desperate resolve: he would go into Louise's room when she was asleep, seize her album and destroy the tell-tale page.
This resolution he put into execution about eleven o'clock. The door opened without creaking too much, and Adolphe, who squeezed himself through as softly as possible on tiptoe, with but the one end, one hope and one desire of reaching the album, had thus invaded his young friend's maiden chamber. All went well as far as the album. It was on the table and Adolphe took it, put it in his vest, determined to regain possession by hook or by crook of the four lines which had made their author so unhappy, when suddenly he ran against a little table, which fell and in falling awakened Louise. Louise, startled, cried out, "Thief, thief!" At the cry of "Thief, thief!" M. Collard, whose room adjoined his daughter's, rushed out of bed in his nightshirt, flung himself on de Leuven on the landing, collared him, and, as we have seen, suspecting poor innocent Adolphe of quite another crime, dragged him into his chamber. His father followed them and closed the door behind him. There, everything was explained, thanks to the album, which Adolphe had been careful not to let go. M. Collard was convinced de visu of the geographical error Adolphe had committed; he thoroughly understood the importance of that error, and, reassured in the matter of motive, he was soon satisfied about the deed. So neither Louise's reputation nor Adolphe's suffered any blemish from this occurrence.
As they continued to punish Hippolyte and me next day, for Manceau's little adventure, we left Villers-Hellon without saying a word to anyone, and took the road to Villers-Cotterets. Strange to say, I have never re-entered Villers-Hellon since. The young girls' ostracism lasted thirty years. Only once have I since seen Hermine, and that was at the rehearsal of Caligula, when she was Madame la Baronne de Martens. Only once have I since seen Louise, and that was at a dinner given at the Bank, when she was Madame Garat. Only once have I since seen Marie Capelle, a month before she became Madame Lafarge. I never saw either Madame Collard or Madame Capelle again. Both are now dead. But when I close my eyes, in spite of those thirty years of absence, I can still see them all, the dead and the living.
I promised to tell the story of the old doctor who was Manceau's predecessor, and it would be unfair to my readers to break my word. M. Paroisse lived at Soissons. A thinly scattered practice allowed him to dine once a week at Villers-Hellon, where he was always made heartily welcome. This lasted for ten years. One day M. Collard received a large manuscript signed by the worthy doctor. It was the bill for his visits. He had charged twenty francs for each visit, and the sum total was something alarming. M. Collard paid him, but told M. Paroisse from henceforth not to come to Villers-Hellon unless he were specially sent for. It was in consequence of this incident that Manceau was installed in the castle as the regular medical attendant to the family. I forget what became of Manceau ... I fancy the poor devil is dead. Happily, this was not in consequence of the enforced bath we gave him.
[CHAPTER V]
Amédée de la Ponce—He teaches me what work is—M. Arnault and his two sons—A journey by diligence—A gentleman fights me with cough lozenges and I fight him with my fists—I learn the danger from which I escaped
After the unjust sentence that was passed upon us in Villers-Hellon, I returned to Villers-Cotterets, and, disgusted with my sojourn in the aristocratic regions whence I had just been cast forth, I returned with delight to the world I preferred to theirs, wherein I could find complete satisfaction for all my heart-longings and all my proud cravings. Adèle at first received me back very coldly, and I had to endure a fit of the sulks for some hours. At the end of that time, little by little her pretty face cleared, and she ended by smiling upon me with the freshness and sweetness of an opening flower. One might have said of this lovely child that her smile itself was like a rose. While these youthful love affairs were in progress—all of them, alas! of the ephemeral character of love at sixteen—there were friendships taking root in my heart that were to last the whole of my life.
I have already spoken of Adolphe de Leuven, who suddenly took a prominent place in my life, apart from my childish friendships. Here let me also be allowed to say a word about another friend, who was to finish in certain other directions the work of opening out future vistas before me that had been begun by the son of Count de Ribbing. One day we saw a young man of twenty-six or twenty-seven go along the streets of Villers-Cotterets, wearing the uniform of an officer of Hussars with an unusually stately grace. No one could possibly have been handsomer or more distinguished in appearance than this young man. His face perhaps might have been criticised as a trifle too feminine-looking, if it had not been for a fine sword-cut which, without spoiling in any way the regularity of his features, began at the left side of his forehead and ended at the right corner of his upper lip, adding a touch of manliness and courage to his gentle features. His name was Amédée de la Ponce. I do not know what chance or whim or necessity led him to Villers-Cotterets. Had he come as an idle tourist, to spend his income of five or six thousand livres in our town? I do not know.... It is probable. He liked the country, he stayed among us and, at the end of a year of residence, he became the husband of a charmingly pretty young girl, Louise Moreau, a friend of my sister. They had a beautiful fair-haired child, whom I should much like to see to-day: we nicknamed it Mouton, on account of its gentleness, the whiteness of its skin and its flaxen hair.
I lost sight of you such a long while ago, my dear de la Ponce! Whatever part of the world you may be in, if you read these pages, you will find therein a testimony of my ever living, sincere and lasting friendship for you. For, my friend, you did a great deal for me. You said to me: "Believe me, my dear boy, there are other things in life besides pleasure and love, hunting and dancing, and the silly ambitions of youth! There is work. Learn to work ... that is the true way to be happy." And you were right, dear friend. Apart from the death of my father, the death of my mother and the death of the Duc d'Orléans, how is it I have never experienced a sorrow that I have not crushed beneath my feet or a disappointment that I have not overcome? It is because you introduced me to the only friend who can give comfort by day and by night, who is ever near, who hastens to console at the first sigh, who lends healing balm at the first tear: you made me acquainted with work. O dear and most excellent Work,—thou who bearest in thy strong arms that heavy burden of humanity which we call sorrow! Thou divinity, with hand ever stretched open and with face ever smiling!... Oh! dear and most excellent Work, thou hast never cast the shadow of deception on me ... my blessings upon thee, O Work!
De la Ponce spoke Italian and German as fluently as his own language; he offered to teach them to me in my leisure moments—and God knows I had plenty of spare moments at that time.
We started with Italian. It was the easiest language—the honey of which Horace speaks, the gilding that clothes the outside of the cup of bitter drink given to a sick child. One of the books out of which I learnt Italian was Ugo Foscolo's fine novel, which I have since translated under the title of the Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis. That book gave me an idea of, an insight into and a feeling for romantic literature of which previously I had been totally ignorant. In two months' time I could talk Italian fairly correctly, and I began to translate poetry. I much preferred this to my sales and my marriage contracts and the drawing up of bonds and transfers at Maître Mennesson's. Furthermore, a change took place in the office greatly to the advantage of my literary education, but not to my legal education. Niguet, that precious head clerk who had told tales to M. Mennesson of my love-disappointments, had bought in a neighbouring village a lawyer's practice, which I believe Lafarge had been obliged to sell as he had not been able to find the wherewithal to take it up; and Paillet, a friend of mine, who was six or eight years my senior, had succeeded Niguet as head clerk over me. Paillet was well-to-do; he had a delightful property two leagues from Villers-Cotterets; his tastes were luxurious; consequently, he let me off more readily than Niguet (who was an old Basochian[1] without any fun in him and entirely wrapped up in his business) to pursue the simple luxuries I could indulge in, namely, shooting, flirting and dancing.
So it came about that instead of encouraging me in treading the narrow and difficult path of a provincial solicitor, Paillet allowed me to cast my eyes abroad, instinctively understanding, doubtless, that the work they had put me to was not what I was cut out for. It can easily be seen that Paillet exercised material influence over my future destiny, apart from the moral influence exercised by de la Ponce and de Leuven. I was then perfectly happy in the love of my mother, and in a younger and sweeter love growing up side by side with hers without injuring it, and in the friendship of de la Ponce and of de Paillet, when de Leuven came to complete my happiness: I lacked nothing save that golden mean of which Horace speaks; had I had that too, I should have had scarcely aught to wish for.
Suddenly we heard that M. Deviolaine was going to retire with his family to his estate of Saint-Remy, and let his house at Villers-Cotterets to the Count de Ribbing. So the house wherein I had been brought up, the house peopled for me with a host of memories, was to pass from the hands of a relative into the hands of a friend The beautiful garden had taken M. de Leuven's special fancy; he hoped to give vent in it to his hobby for gardening interrupted by the successive sales of Brunoy and Quincy. Furthermore, the count had not met with any more persecution, and whether it was because Louis XVIII. did not know of his being in France, or whether the king closed his eyes to the fact, he was left in undisturbed peacefulness.
De Leuven and his father settled, then, in Villers-Cotterets, where Madame de Leuven joined them in a fortnight's time. As for de la Ponce, he rented a house at the end of the rue de Largny, the first house on the left as you come from Paris: it had a large garden and a fine courtyard. My time was soon divided into three portions—one was devoted to my friendships, another to love-makings, and the third to my legal work. The reader may suggest that my mother was perhaps a little neglected in all this. Is a mother ever forgotten? Is she not always there, whether present or absent? Did I not go in and out of my home ten or twenty times a day? Did I not kiss my mother each time I went in? Every day de Leuven, de la Ponce and I managed to meet. Generally it was at de la Ponce's house: we transformed the courtyard which I have mentioned into a shooting range, and every day we used up twenty or thirty balls. De Leuven had excellent German pistols (Kukenreiter). These pistols were marvellously true, and we soon were able to shoot with such precision, all three of us, that when anyone doubted our powers, we would take it in turn to hold the piece of cardboard which served as a target, whilst the others fired. And we never any of us received a single graze! I remember one day after heavy rain we found I do not know how many frogs in that gloomy, damp courtyard. Here was novel game for us to pot at, and we exterminated every frog with our pistols. Every little while de Leuven read us a fable or an elegy of his own composition; but he was cured of making geographical errors by the nocturnal misadventure at Villers-Hellon and no longer mistook the South for the North, or Spain for Siberia. One morning great news spread through the town. Three strangers had just come to stay with M. de Leuven: M. Arnault and his two sons, Telleville and Louis Arnault. M. Arnault, the author of Germanicus and of Marius à Minturnes, was at that time a splendid-looking old man of sixty, still full of life in spite of his curling white locks, which were as fine as silk. He had a most superabundant flow of spirits and excelled at repartee; he could strike as rapidly at his object as the most accomplished fencing-master could parry a blow or deal a right-handed stroke. The only fault one could find with this wit was its keen, biting edge; but, like bites made by healthy teeth, the poet's bites never left poison behind them. M. Arnault had made the acquaintance of the Count de Ribbing at that famous table d'hôte where the latter had struck the foreign colonel in the face. Since that day, M. de Leuven, Frenchman at heart, and M. Arnault, Frenchman in mind, had struck up a friendship which though broken by death was continued between their children. Telleville Arnault was a handsome young officer of a charming disposition and of tested valour. He had fought a Dud over Germanicus with Martainville which had made a great sensation in the literary world. Louis was still a young lad of about my own age.
I prudently kept from visiting Adolphe all the time M. Arnault and his sons were staying with his father; but M. Deviolaine having invited them to a rabbit shooting in the Tillet woods, I was present, and the acquaintance which began by chance during the walks in the park was sealed gun in hand. Telleville had a little gun made by Prélat, with which he did wonders. This gun had a barrel not fourteen inches long, which filled me with wonder, for I still believed in length of barrel and hunted with siege-guns.
When M. Arnault left Villers-Cotterets, he took de Leuven with him. It was heart-breaking to me to see Adolphe depart. I had two memories of visits to Paris, one in 1806, the other in 1814. These two recollections sufficed to make me passionately envious of the lot of every favoured being who was going to Paris. I remained behind with de la Ponce, and I redoubled my devotion to the study of Italian. I was soon sufficiently far advanced in the language of Dante and of Ariosto to be able to pass on to that of Schiller and of Goethe; but this was quite a different matter. After three or four months' work, de la Ponce put one of Auguste Lafontaine's novels in my way: the task was too difficult, I soon had enough of it. German was dropped, and I have never had the courage to take it up again. My first serious dramatic impression dates from this period. Some nabob who had done business through M. Mennesson, out of unheard-of generosity, left a hundred and fifty francs to be divided among the lads in the office. M. Mennesson distributed it in the following way: thirty-seven francs fifty cents each to Ronsin and myself, seventy-five francs to Paillet. It was the first time I had found myself possessed of so much money. I wondered what I should do with it.
One of the four great fêtes of the year was approaching, when we should have Sunday and Monday as holidays. Paillet proposed we should both club our thirty-seven francs fifty cents to his seventy-five francs, and that we should go and sink this fabulous sum of fifty crowns in the delights that Soissons, the seat of the sous-prefecture, could offer us. The suggestion was hailed with joy. Paillet was deputed cashier, and we boldly took seats on the diligence for Paris, which passes through Villers-Cotterets at half-past three in the morning, and arrives at Soissons at six o'clock. Paillet and Ronsin each took a place in the coupé, where one was already taken, and I went inside, where there were four other passengers, three of whom got out at la Vertefeuille, a post three leagues away from Villers-Cotterets, the fourth continuing his journey to Soissons. From la Vertefeuille to Soissons, therefore, I was left alone with this person, who was a man of forty years or thereabouts, very thin of body, pale of face, with auburn hair and well groomed. He had laid great stress on my sitting near him, and, in order to leave me as much room as possible, squeezed himself as closely into a corner of the coach as he could. I was much touched by this attention, and felt sensibly drawn to the gentleman, who had condescended to treat me with so much consideration.
I slept well and anywhere in those days. So, as soon as we got out of the town I fell asleep, only to wake when the horses were changed, and I should most certainly not have waked up then if the three passengers who left us had not trodden on my toes as they got out, with the habitual heavy-footed tread travellers indulge in at the expense of those who remain behind. When the passenger saw I was awake, he began to talk to me, and asked me, in a kindly, interested way, my age, my name and my occupation. I made haste to supply him with full particulars, and he seemed much interested therein. I told him the object of our journey to Soissons; and, as I coughed while I related my tale, he good-naturedly offered me two different sorts of cough lozenges. I accepted both, and in order to get the full benefit of them I put them both in my mouth together; then, although I found the gentleman's conversation agreeable and his manners fascinating, there was something even more seductive and pleasing than that conversation and those manners, namely sleep, so I wished him a good-night, and, with plenty of room to dispose myself in, I settled down in the corner parallel with his, with my back upon one seat and my feet on the other. I do not know how long I had slept when I felt myself awakened in the oddest fashion in the world. My sleeping fellow-traveller had apparently passed from mere interest to a more lively expression of his sentiments, and was embracing me. I imagined he had a nightmare, and I tried to awake him; but as I saw that the more soundly he slept, the worse his gesticulations became, I began to strike him hard, and as my blows had no effect, I cried aloud with all my might. Unluckily, they were descending the hill of Vaubuin and they could not stop the coach; the struggle therefore lasted ten minutes or more, and without in the least knowing what danger I was combating, I was just about to succeed in getting the better of my enemy, by turning him over under my knee, when the door opened and the conductor came to my rescue. Paillet and Ronsin were sleeping as I should have slept if my travelling-companion had not waked me up by his overpowering friendliness. I told the conductor what had happened and blamed him for having put me along with a somnambulist or a madman, begging him to put me in any other corner of the coach convenient to him, when, to my intense astonishment, whilst the traveller was readjusting his toilet, which had been considerably damaged by my struggle with him, without uttering any sort of complaint against me, the conductor began apostrophising him in the severest terms, made him get down out of the coach, and told him that, as there only remained three-quarters of a league from where we were to the hôtel des Trois-Pucelles, where the coach stopped, he must have the goodness to do it on foot, unless he would consent to mount up on the roof, where he could not disturb anybody else. The gentleman of the auburn locks hoisted himself on the roof, without opening his lips, and the diligence started off again. Although I was now alone once more and consequently more at my ease inside the coach, I was too much excited by the struggle I had just gone through, to think of going to sleep again. I could hear the conductor, in the cabriolet, relate my story to my two fellow travelling-companions, and apparently he presented it to them under a gayer light than that in which I had looked at it myself, for they roared with laughter. I did not know what there could be to laugh at in an interchange of fisticuffs with a somnambulist or a maniac. A quarter of an hour after the gentleman had been installed on the imperial, and I reinstated in the carriage, I heard by the heavy sound of the coach wheels that we were crossing under the drawbridge. We had reached our destination.
Five minutes after we had left the coach, Paillet and Ronsin told me why they had laughed, and it sounded so ridiculous that I rushed off in search of my gentleman of the cough lozenges almost before they had finished; but I searched the imperial in vain in every corner and cranny:—he had disappeared.
This nocturnal struggle upset me so greatly that I felt dazed the whole of the day.
[1] Translator's note.—Member of the Society of Law Clerks.
[CHAPTER VI]
First dramatic impressions—The Hamlet of Ducis—The Bourbons en 1815—Quotations from it
Among the pleasures we had promised ourselves in the second capital of the department of Aisne we had put the theatre in the first rank. A company of pupils from the Conservatoire, who were touring in the provinces, were that night to give a special performance of Ducis's Hamlet. I had absolutely no idea who Hamlet was; I will go farther and admit that I was completely ignorant who was Ducis. No one could have been more ignorant than I was. My poor mother had tried to induce me to read Corneille's and Racine's tragedies; but, I confess it to my shame, the reading of them had bored me inexpressibly. I had no notion at that time what was meant by style or form or structure; I was a child of nature in the fullest acceptance of the term: what amused me I thought good, what wearied me—bad. So I read the word tragedy on the placard with some misgivings.
But, after all, as this tragedy was the best that Soissons had to offer us to pass away the evening, we put ourselves in the queue waiting outside; in good time, and in spite of the great crowd, we succeeded in getting into the pit.
Something like thirty-two years have rolled by since that night, but such an impression did it make upon my mind that I can still remember every little detail connected with it. The young fellow who took the part of Hamlet was a tall, pale, sallow youth called Cudot; he had fine eyes, and a strong voice, and he imitated Talma so closely, that when I saw Talma act the same part, I almost thought he imitated Cudot.
As I have said, the subject of literature was completely unknown to me. I did not even know that there had ever existed an author named Shakespeare, and when, on my return, I was instructed by Paillet that Hamlet was only an imitation, I pronounced, before my sister, who knew English, the name of the author of Romeo and of Macbeth as I had seen it written, and it cost me one of those prolonged jokings my sister never' spared me when occasion offered. Of course on this occasion I delighted her. Now, as the Hamlet of Ducis could not lose in my estimation by comparison, since I had never heard Shakespeare's spoken of, the play seemed to me, with Hamlet's grotesque entrance, the ghost, visible only to himself, his struggle against his mother, his urn, his monologue, the gloomy questionings concerning the fear of death, to be a masterpiece, and produced an immense effect upon me. So, when I returned to Villers-Cotterets, the first thing I did was to collect together the few francs left over from the trip to Soissons and to write to Fourcade (who had given up his place to Camusat, of whom I spoke in connection with old Hiraux, and who had returned to Paris) to send me the tragedy of Hamlet.
For some reason or other Fourcade delayed sending it to me for five or six days: so great was my impatience that I wrote him a second letter, filled with the keenest reproaches at his negligence and want of friendliness. Fourcade, who would never have believed anyone could accuse a man of being a poor friend because he did not hurry over sending Hamlet, sent me a charming letter the gist of which I did not appreciate until I had studied more deeply the question of what was good and what was bad, and was able to place Ducis's work in its due rank. In the meantime I became demented. I asked everybody, "Do you know Hamlet? do you know Ducis?" The tragedy arrived from Paris. At the end of three days I knew the part of Hamlet by heart and, worse still, I have such an excellent memory that I have never been able to forget it. So it came to pass that Hamlet was the first dramatic work which produced an impression upon me—a profound impression, composed of inexplicable sensations, aimless longings, mysterious rays of light which only made my darkness more visible. Later, in Paris, I again saw poor Cudot, who had played Hamlet. Alas! the grand talent that had carried me away had not obtained him the smallest foothold, and I believe he has long since given up hope—that daughter of pride so hard to kill in the artist's soul—the hope of making a position on the stage.
Now—as if the spirit of poetry, when wakened in me, had sworn never to go to sleep again and used every means to that end, by even succeeding in making Maître Mennesson himself his accomplice—scarcely had I returned from Soissons, when, instead of giving me a deed of sale to copy out or a bond to engross, or sending me out on business, Maître Mennesson gave me a piece of poetry of which he wanted three copies made. This piece of poetry was entitled Les Bourbons en 1815.
M. Mennesson, as I have said, was a Republican; I found him a Republican in 1830, and when I saw him again in 1848 he was still a Republican. And to do him justice, he had the courage of his opinions through all times and under all regimes; so freely did he express his opinions that his friends were frightened by them and made their observations thereon with bated breath. He only shrugged his shoulders.
"What the devil will they do to me?" he would exclaim. "My office is paid for, my clientèle flourishing; I defy them to find a flaw in any of my contracts; and that being the case, one can afford to mock at kings and parsons."
Maître Mennesson was right, too; for, in spite of all these demonstrations, all these accusations of imprudence made by timid souls, his practice was the best in Villers-Cotterets and improved daily. At this very moment he was in the seventh heaven of delight. He had got hold of a piece of poetry, in manuscript, against the Bourbons—I do not know how. He had read it to everybody in the town, and then after reading it to everybody, when I came back from Soissons, he, as I have said, ordered me to make two or three copies of it, for those of his friends who, like himself, were anxious to possess this poetical pamphlet. I have never seen it in print, I have never read it since the day I copied it out three times, but such is my memory that I can repeat it from beginning to end. But lest I alarm my readers, I will content myself with quoting a few lines of it.
This was how it began:—
"Où suis-je? qu'ai je vu? Les voilà donc ces princes
Qu'un sénat insensé rendit à nos provinces;
Qui devaient, abjurant les prejugés des rois,
Citoyens couronnés, régner au nom des lois;
Qui venaient, disaient-ils, désarmant la victoire,
Consoler les Français de vingt-cinq ans de gloire!
Ils entrent! avec eux, la vengeance de l'orgueil.
Ont du Louvre indigné franchi l'antique seuil!
Ce n'est plus le sénat, c'est Dieu, c'est leur naissance,
C'est le glaive étranger qui leur soumet la France;
Ils nous osent d'un roi reprocher l'échafaud:
Ah! si ce roi, sortant de la nuit du tombeau,
Armé d'un fer vengeur venait punir le crime,
Nous les verrions pâlir aux yeux de leur victime!"
Then the author exclaims—in those days authors all exclaimed—abandoning general considerations for the detailed drawing of individuals, and passing the royal family in review:—
"C'est d'Artois, des galants imbécile doyen,
Incapable de mal, incapable de bien;
Au pied des saints autels abjurant ses faiblesses,
Et par des favoris remplaçant ses maîtresses;
D'Artois, dont rien n'a pu réveiller la vertu,
Qui fuit a Quiberon sans avoir combattu,
Et qui, s'il était roi, monterait à la France
Des enfants de Clovis la stupide indolence!
C'est Berry, que l'armée appelait à grands cris,
Et qui lui prodigua l'insulte et le mépris;
Qui, des ces jeunes ans, puisa dans les tavernes
Ces mœurs, ce ton grossier, qu'ignorent nos casernes.
C'est son frère, avec art sous un masque imposteur,
Cachant de ses projets l'ambitieuse horreur!
Qui, nourri par son oncle aux discordes civiles,
En rallume les feux en parcourant nos villes;
Ce Thersite royal, qui ne sut, à propos,
Ni combattre ni fuir, et se croit un héros!
C'est, plus perfide encor, son épouse hautaine,
Cette femme qui vit de vengeance et de haine,
Qui pleure, non des siens le funeste trépas,
Mais le sang qu'à grands flots elle ne verse pas!
Ce sont ces courtisans, ces nobles et ces prêtres,
Qui, tour à tour flatteurs et tyrans de leur maîtres,
Voudraient nous ramener au temps où nos aieux
Ne voyaient, ne pensaient, n'agissaient que par eux!"
Then the author ends off his discourse with a peroration worthy of the subject and exclaims once more in his liberal enthusiasm:—
"Ne balonçons done plus, levons-nous! et semblables
Au fleuve impétueux qui rejette les sables,
La fange et le limon qui fatiguaient sous cours,
De notre sol sacré rejetons pour toujours
Ces tyrans sans vertu, ces courtisans perfides,
Ces chevaliers sans gloire et ces prêtres avides,
Qui, jusqu'à nos exploits ne pouvant se hausser,
Jusques à leur néant voudraient nous abaisser!"
Twelve years later the Bourbons were hounded out of France. It is not only revolutionary bullets which overturn thrones; it is not only the guillotine that kills kings: bullets and the guillotine are but passive instruments in the hands of principles. It is the deadly hatred, it is the undercurrent of rebellion, which, so long as it is but the expression of the desires of the few, miscarries and spends its fury; but which, the moment it becomes the expression of general requirements, swallows up thrones and nations, kings and royal families.
It is easy to understand how the Messéniennes of Casimir Delavigne, which appeared in print the same time as these manuscript pamphlets, seemed pale and colourless. Casimir Delavigne was one of those men who celebrate in song revolutions that were accomplished facts, but who do not help revolutions in the making. The Maubreuil trial was the outcome of the piece of poetry from which I have just quoted these brief extracts—a most mysterious and ill-omened business, in which names, if not the most illustrious in Europe, yet at least the best known at that time, were mixed up with acts of thievery and premeditated assassination.
Probably I am the only person in France who now thinks of the "affaire Maubreuil." Perhaps also I am the only person who has kept a shorthand account of the sittings of that terrible trial, during which the horrors of the dungeon and secret torture were employed in the endeavour to drive a man mad whom they dare not kill outright, to whom they could not succeed in giving the lie. I made a copy at the time from a manuscript in a strange and unknown hand, which gave an account of the sittings. Later, I read the account the illustrious Princess of Wurtemberg took down in her own writing, first for her husband, Marshal Jérôme Bonaparte, and then intended to be included in her Memoirs, which are in the hands of her family, and are still unpublished.
[CHAPTER VII]
The events of 1814 again—Marmont, Duc de Raguse, Maubreuil and Roux-Laborie at M. de Talleyrand's—The Journal des Débats and the Journal de Paris—Lyrics of the Bonapartists and enthusiasm of the Bourbons—End of the Maubreuil affair—Plot against the life of the Emperor—The Queen of Westphalia is robbed of her money and jewels
Let us now try to clear away the litter left by the events of the year 1814. When the Almighty prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem, He said to Ezekiel, "I will make thee eat thy bread prepared with cow-dung" (Ezek. iv. 15). Oh! my God, my God! Thou hast served us more hardly than Thou didst the prophet, and hast made us eat far worse than that at times!
Napoleon was at Fontainebleau, the empress at Blois; a Provisional Government, occult and unknown, carried on its operations on the ground floor of a house in the rue Saint-Florentin. Is it necessary that I should add that the house in the rue Saint-Florentin belonged to M. de Talleyrand? On 16 March Napoleon had written from Rheims:—
"DEAR BROTHER,—In accordance with the verbal instructions I gave you, and the wishes expressed in all my letters, you must on no account allow the Empress and the King of Rome to fall into the hands of the enemy. You will not have any news from me for several days. If the enemy advances upon Paris in such force that you decide any resistance to be useless, send away my son and the regent, the grand dignitaries, ministers, officers of the Senate, presidents of the State Council, chief officers of the Crown, Baron de la Bouillerie and the treasure, towards the Loire. Do not desert my son, and remember that I would rather know that he was in the Seine than that he had fallen into the hands of the enemies of France. The fate of Astyanax, prisoner of the Greeks, has always seemed to me the unhappiest in history.
"NAPOLEON"
This letter was addressed to Joseph. The treasure referred to by Napoleon was, be it understood, his own private possessions. On 28 March the departure of the empress was discussed. MM. de Talleyrand, Boulay (de la Meurthe), the Duc de Cadore and M. de Fermon were of opinion that the empress should remain. Joseph, with the emperor's letter in his hand, insisted upon her departure. It was decided that she should leave on the following day, at nine o'clock in the morning. Afterwards M. de Talleyrand was blamed for having urged that Marie-Louise should stay in Paris. A pale and cold smile flitted over the vast chasm which served the diplomatist for a mouth.
"I knew that the empress would defy me," he said, "and that, if I advised her going, she would stay. I urged that she should stay to further her departure."
O monseigneur, Bishop of Autun! you put into the mouth of Harel, in le Nain Jaune, the famous epigram, "Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts." And, monseigneur, you were eminently capable of exemplifying the truth of the saying yourself.
On the morning of 29 March, through the uncurtained windows of the Tuileries, the empress's women could have been seen in the dubious light of the growing dawn, by the still more dubious light of lamps and dying candles, running about, pale with fatigue and fear, after a whole night spent in preparing for the journey. The departure, as we have said, was fixed for nine o'clock. At ten o'clock the empress had not yet left her apartments. She was hoping to the last that a counter order would arrive either from the emperor or from Joseph. At half-past ten the King of Rome clung to the curtains of the palais des Tuileries in tears; for he too, poor child, did not want to go.
Alas! at a distance of seventeen years between, three children, all suffering through the mistakes of their fathers, clung in vain to those same curtains: for sixty years the Tuileries was little more than a royal hostelry wherein the fleeting dynasties put up in turn. By a quarter to eleven, the empress, clad like an amazon in brown, stepped into a carriage with the King of Rome, surrounded by a strong detachment of the Imperial Guard. On the same day and at the same hour, the emperor set off from Troyes for Paris with his flying squadrons. It is well known that the emperor was arrested at Fromenteau, but what follows is not known, or but imperfectly known.
When time and occasion serve—apropos of the July Revolution, probably—we shall revert to one of the men whom fate, for some unknown reason, branded with a fatal seal. We refer to Marmont. We will show what he was, rather than what he did: he was superb, during that retreat, in which he left neither gun nor prisoner in the hands of the enemy; superb when—like a lion at bay against the walls of the customhouse at Paris, surrounded by Russians and Prussians, in the main street of Belleville, his right arm still in a sling, after the battle of Arapiles, holding his sword in his left hand, mutilated at Leipzig, his clothes riddled with bullets, wedged in between the dead and the wounded who fell all round him, with only forty grenadiers behind him—he forced his way to the barrier where he abandoned, pierced with wounds, the fifth horse that had been killed under him since the beginning of the campaign! Alas! why did he not cross Paris from the barrier of Belleville to the barrier of Fontainebleau? Why did he stop at his house in the rue Paradis-Poissonnière? Why did he not go to Napoleon, with his coat in shreds and his face blackened with powder? How determinedly fate seemed to oppose him! How different would have been the verdict of the future! But we, who are now a part of that future, and well-nigh disinterested spectators of all those great events, we who by nature are without private hatreds, and by position have nothing to do with political animosities, it is for us to enlighten posterity, for we are poised between the worlds aristocratic and democratic, the one in its decadence and the other in its adolescence: it is ours to seek for truth wherever it may be buried, and to exalt it wherever it may be found.
And now, having defined our position, let us return to Napoleon and Marie-Louise. Let us pass over several days and say naught of great betrayals and shameful dishonour; even so we are not, unhappily, at the end of these things. From 29 March to 7 April the following events happened:—
On 30 March, Paris capitulated. On the 31st, the Allied armies entered the capital. On I April, the Senate appointed a Provisional Government. On the 2nd, the Senate declared Napoleon to have forfeited the throne. On the 3rd, the Legislative Body confirmed the forfeiture. On the 4th, Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son. On the 5th, Marmont treated with the enemy. On the 6th, the Senate drew up a scheme for a constitution. On the 7 th, the troops of the Duc de Raguse rose in insurrection and refused to obey his orders. Also, Napoleon made his plans for withdrawing across the Loire.
It will be seen that the Government of the rue Saint-Florentin had been quick about its work. The empress remained at Blois, where she learnt in rapid succession the declaration of dethronement by the Senate, the emperor's first abdication and the defection of the Duc de Raguse. On the 7th, she learned in the morning of the recall of the Bourbons.
Until that moment, as a cloud hid the future from sight, the self-seekers watching and waiting had not yet ventured to show their hands in her presence. But at the news of the return of the Bourbons everyone sought to make his peace with the new power. The same thing that happened to Napoleon happened to Marie-Louise. It was a race as to who could most openly and with the greatest speed desert her; it was a race of ingratitude, it was a steeplechase of treason.
She had left Paris a week before, the daughter of an emperor, the wife of an emperor, the mother of a king! Orléans had saluted her, as she passed through, with the pealing of its bells and the firing of its artillery. She had a court around her, a treasure in her arms; two peoples, those of France and Italy, some forty millions of souls, were her subjects. In a week she lost rank, power, inheritance, kingdom; in an hour she found herself left alone with a poor deserted child, and treasure that was speedily taken away from her. God forbid that I should pity the lot of this woman! But those who betrayed her, those who deserted her, those who immediately robbed her could not plead the excuse of an unknown future still hid from them.
On the 7th, as we have said, the whole court fled. On the morning of the 8th, the two kings, Jérôme and Joseph, also left. On the evening of the 8th, General Schouwaloff arrived with orders from the sovereigns to take her from Blois to Orléans and from Orléans to Rambouillet. Finally, on the morning of the 9th, this announcement appeared in the Moniteur:—
"The Provisional Government having been informed that by order of the sovereign whose dethronement was solemnly pronounced on 3 April, considerable funds were taken away from Paris, during the days which preceded the occupation of that city by the allied troops:
It is decreed—
"That these funds be seized wherever they may be found, in whose-soever hands they may be found, and that they be deposited immediately in the nearest bank."
This order was elastic: it did not make any distinction between the public treasure of the nation and the emperor's private property. Moreover, they confided the execution of this order to a man whose hatred for the fallen house would naturally incline him to the most violent measures. They chose M. Dudon. I am happily too young to be able to say who this M. Dudon was; I have therefore asked the Duc de Rovigo, whose accuracy is well known. Here is his reply to my questions:—
"M. Dudon was imprisoned at Vincennes, for having deserted his post, for having left the army of Spain and, full of cowardly fears himself, for having communicated them to whomsoever he met."
Nevertheless, M. Dudon hesitated; he looked about for an intermediary; he did not dare to put his hand directly upon this wealth, which was so much needed to pay for past treacheries and defections to come.
Again, what has M. le Duc de Rovigo to say? Let him be unto us the bronze mouthpiece of truth: I write under his dictation.
"An officer of the special police corps, M. Janin de Chambéry, who is now a general officer, was made use of. He had been charged to escort the money. This young man, seeing the way to make his fortune, gave himself up to M. Dudon. He collected his regiment, carried off, with a very high hand, the coffers which contained the Emperor Napoleon's treasure (for they had not yet been unloaded) and set off for Paris, which he reached without striking a blow."
But even all this did not satisfy them: they had robbed the empress, they would now kill the emperor. "Only the dead do not return," said the man who was felicitously styled the "Anacreon of the guillotine."
So many sayings have been attributed to M. de Talleyrand that we may well borrow one from Barère for a change. Moreover, it must be acknowledged that the question what to do with Napoleon, on 31 March, was a very awkward one. We must not be too angry with the people who wished to rid themselves of him. Who were these people? Maubreuil himself shall name them. A conference was being held in the house in the rue Saint-Florentin.
"Yes," said the president to someone who had not yet opened his lips,—"yes, you are right; we must rid ourselves of this man."
"We must!" cried the other members in concert.
"Well, then, that is decided: we will get rid of him."
"Only one other thing is lacking," said one of the members of the conventicle.
"What is that?"
"The principal thing: the man who will deal the blow."
"I know the man," said a voice.
"A trustworthy man?"
"A ruined man, an ambitious man—one who has fallen from a high position and would do anything for money and a position."
"What is his name?"
"Maubreuil."
This took place on the evening of 31 March. That same day, Marie-Armand de Guerry, Count de Maubreuil, Marquis d'Orvault, had fastened the cross of the Legion of Honour, which he had won bravely in Spain, to his horse's tail, and showed himself thus in the boulevards and on the place Louis XV. He even did better than this in the place Vendôme. He tied a rope round the neck of the emperor's statue, and, with a dozen other worthy men of his kidney, pulled with might and main; then, seeing that his forces were not strong enough, he attached the rope to his horse. Even that was not enough. They then asked for a relay of horses from the Grand-duke Constantin, who refused, saying, "It is no business of mine."
Now, who went to seek this relay? Who made himself Maubreuil's emissary? A very great lord, upon my word, a most excellent name, renowned in history! True, this most puissant seigneur, the bearer of this honourable name, had to forget a slight obstacle—namely, that he owed everything to the emperor. You ask his name. Ah! indeed, search for it as I have done. Maubreuil had indeed fallen from a high rank, as his patron Roux-Laborie had said. There! I see I have named his patron, though I did not mean to name anyone. Never mind! let us continue.
Maubreuil, who was of an excellent family, had fallen indeed. His father, who had married, for his second wife, a sister of M. de la Roche-jaquelein, was killed in the Vendéean Wars, together with thirty other members of his family. M. Roux-Laborie, then Secretary to the Provisional Government, answered for Maubreuil. He did more: he said to M. de Talleyrand, "Come, come! here I am tearing off another mask without thinking what I am doing; upon my word, so much the worse! Since that pale face is unmasked, let it remain!" He did much more: he said to M. de Talleyrand, "I will bring him to you." But M. de Talleyrand, who was always cautious, exclaimed, "What are you thinking of, my dear sir? Bring M. de Maubreuil to me! Why so? He must be conducted to Anglès, he must go to Anglès! You know quite well it is Anglès who is attending to all this." "Very well, be it so; I will take him there," replied the Secretary to the Provisional Government. "When?" "This very evening." "My dear fellow, you are beyond price." "Take back that word, monseigneur." And Roux-Laborie bowed, went out and ran to Maubreuil's house. Maubreuil was not at home.
When Maubreuil was not at home, everyone knew where he was. He was gaming. What game was it? There are so many gambling hells in Paris!
Roux-Laborie ran about all night without finding him, returned to Maubreuil's house and, as Maubreuil had still not returned, he left word with his servant that he would expect Maubreuil at his house the next day, 1 April. He waited for him the whole day. Evening came and still no Maubreuil.
It is distracting to a man of honour to fail in his word. What would M. de Talleyrand think of a man who had promised so much and performed so little? Twice during the day he wrote to Maubreuil: his second note was as pressing as time was. This is what he said—
"Why have you not come? I have expected you all day. You are driving me to desperation!"
Maubreuil returned to change his dress at six o'clock that evening. He found the note: he ran off to Roux-Laborie.
"What is it?"
"You can make your fortune."
"I am your man, then!"
"Come with me."
They entered a carriage and went to M. Anglès'. M. Anglès was at the house in the rue Saint-Florentin. They rushed to the house in the rue Saint-Florentin; M. Anglès had just gone out. They asked to see the prince.
"Impossible! the prince is very busy: he is in the act of betraying. True, he is betraying in good company,—he is betraying along with the Senate." The Senate was next day going to declare that the emperor had forfeited his throne.
Be it remembered that it was this same Senate—Sénat conservateur—which, on the return from the disastrous Russian campaign, fifteen months earlier, had said to the emperor—
"Sire, the Senate is established for the purpose of preserving the fourth dynasty; France and posterity will find it faithful to this sacred duty, and every one of its members will be ever ready to perish in defence of this palladium of the national prosperity."
We must admit that it was drawn up in very bad French. It is also true that it was drawn up by very poor specimens of Frenchmen.
The next day, Maubreuil and Roux-Laborie returned. The prince was no more visible than on the previous evening; the prince was at the Luxembourg. But it did not matter: they could be introduced into his cabinet presently, which was occupied at the moment. Besides, perhaps he might return. "We will wait," said Roux-Laborie.
And they waited a short while in the green salon,—that green salon which became so famous, you will remember, in history,—they waited, reading the papers. The newspapers were very amusing. The Journal des Débats and the Journal de Paris above all vied with each other in being facetious and witty.
"To-day," said the old Journal de l'Empire, which since the previous evening had donned a new cassock and now called itself the Journal des Débats,—"to-day His Majesty passed in front of the colonne Vendôme ..."
Forgive me if I pause a moment: I am anxious that there should not be any confusion. His Majesty! You would imagine that this meant the Emperor Napoleon, to whom a week before the Journal de l'Empire had published these beautiful lines:—
I
"'Ciel ennemi, ciel, rends-nous la lumière!
Disait AJAX, et combats contre nous!'
Seul contre tous, malgré le ciel jaloux,
De notre Ajax void la voix guerrière:
Que les cités s'unissent aux soldats;
Rallions-nous pour les derniers combats!
Français, la Paix est aux champs de la gloire,
La douce Paix, fille de la Victoire.'
II
Il a parlé, le monarque, le père;
Qui serait sourd à sa puissante voix?
Patrie, honneur! c'est pour vos saintes lois,
Nous marchons tous sous la même bannière.
Rallions-nous, citoyens et soldats,
Rallions-nous pour les derniers combats!
Français, la Paix est au champ de la gloire,
La douce Paix, fille de Victoire.
III
Napoleon, roi d'un peuple fidèle,
Tu veux borner la course de ton char;
Tu nous montras Alexandre et César;
Oui, nous verrons Trajan et Marc-Aurèle!
Nous sommes tous tes enfants, tes soldats,
Nous volons tous à ces derniers combats,
Elle est conquise aux nobles champs de gloire,
La douce Paix, fille de la Victoire."
For, indeed, it is very easy to call a man His Majesty five days before his abdication and a monarch and a father whom one has just addresssed as Ajax, Alexander, Cæsar, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. Undeceive yourselves! To-day, His Majesty is the Emperor Alexander; as for that other emperor, the Emperor Napoleon, we shall see, or rather we have already seen, what has become of him since his return from the isle of Elba. After having been a monarch, a father, Ajax, Alexander, Cæsar, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, he has become TEUTATÈS. Ah! what a villainous fall was there!
Let us proceed, or we shall never finish: we have had more trouble in getting over this word Majesty than Cæsar had in crossing the Rubicon.
"To-day His Majesty passed in front of the colonne de la place Vendôme, and looking at the statue, he said to the noblemen who surrounded him, 'Were I placed so high, I should be afraid of being giddy.' So philosophic a remark is worthy of a Marcus Aurelius."
Pardon me, Monsieur Bertin, to which Marcus Aurelius do you refer? Is it the one to whom you recently compared Napoleon, or some other Marcus Aurelius with whom we are unacquainted? Ah! Monsieur Bertin, you are like Titus: you have not wasted your day, or rather your night! We will relate what happened during the night in which Monsieur Bertin worked so energetically, and in the course of which the serpent changed his tricoloured skin for a white skin and the Journal de l'Empire became the Journal des Débats. It has to be admitted, however, that during the night of 20-21 March 1815 you resumed your old tricoloured skin which you had sold Monsieur Bertin, but which you had not delivered up.
Now let us pass on to the Journal de Paris. "It is a good thing to know," quoth the Journal de Paris, "that Bonaparte's name is not Napoleon, but Nicolas."
Really, Mr. Editor, what an excessively sublime apotheosis you make of yesterday's poor emperor! Instead of showing base ingratitude, like your contemporary, you flatter outrageously. Bonaparte did no more than presume to call himself Napoléon,—that is, the lion of the desert,—and here you make him Nicolas, which means Conqueror of the peoples. Ah! my dear Mr. Editor, if your Journal de Paris had been a literary paper, like the Journal des Débats, you would have known Greek like your confrère—that is to say, like an inhabitant, and you would not have made such blunders. But you did not know Greek. Let us see if you are better acquainted with French. We will complete the quotation.
"It is a good thing to know that Bonaparte's name is not Napoléon, but Nicolas; not Bonaparte, but Buonaparte; he cut out the U in order to connect himself with a distinguished family of that name."
"You know that the Balzacs of Entraigues make out that you do not belong to their family," said someone once to M. Honoré de Balzac, the author of Père Goriot and of les Parents pauvres.
"If I do not belong to their family," retorted M. Honoré de Balzac, "so much the worse for them!"
We will return to the Journal de Paris, and let it have its say:—
"Many people have amused themselves by making different anagrams from the name of Buonaparte by taking away the U. The following seems to us to depict that personage the best: NABOT PARÉ."[1]
What a misfortune, Mr. Editor, that in order to arrive at such a delightful conclusion you have been obliged to sacrifice your U, like the tyrant himself!
Now, as a sequel to the verses in the Journal des Débats, we must quote some lines from the Journal de Paris; they only amount to a single strophe, but it alone, in the eyes of all lovers of poetry, is fully equal to three. Besides, these lines are of great importance: M. de Maubreuil actually waxes prophetic in the last line.
TESTAMENT DE BONAPARTE
"Je lègue aux enfers mon génie,
Mes exploits aux aventuriers,
A mes partisans l'infamie,
Le grand-livre à mes créanciers,
Aux Français l'horreur de mes crimes,
Mon exemple à tous les tyrans,
La France à ses rois légitimes,
Et l'hôpital à mes parents."
Finally, to conclude our series of quotations, we promised to return once more to the Journal des Débats. There shall be no cause for complaint: we will return to it twice. We will place a double-columned account, with its Doit and its Avoir, before our readers' eyes. There was only an interval of fourteen days between the two articles, as can be seen from the dates.
"JOURNAL DES DÉBATS "JOURNAL DE L'EMPIRE
PARIS, 7 mars 1815 PARIS, 21 mars 1815
(PEAU BLANCHE) (PEAU TRICOLORE)
DOIT AVOIR
Buonaparte s'est evade de l'île La famille des Bourbons est partie
d'Elbe, où l'imprudente magnanimité cette nuit; on ignore encore en
des souverains alliés lui avait route qu'elle a prise. Paris offre
donne une souveraineté, pour prix l'aspect de la sécurité et de la joie;
de la désolation qu'il avait portée les boulevards sont couverts d'une
dans leurs États. foule immense, impatiente de voir
l'armée et LE HÉROS qui lui est
Cet homme, qui, en abdiquant le rendu. Le petit nombre de troupes
pouvoir, n'a jamais abdiqué son qu'on avait eu l'espoir insensé de
ambition et ses fureurs, cet homme, lui opposer s'est rallié aux aigles, et
tout couvert du sang des générations, toute la milice française, devenue
vient, au bout d'un an, essayer de nationale, marche sous les drapeaux
disputer, au nom de l'usurpation, la de la gloire et de la patrie. SA
légitime autorité du roi de France; MAJESTÉ L'EMPEREUR a traversé
à la tête de quelques centaines deux cents lieues de pays avec la
d'ltaliens et de Polonais, il ose rapidité de l'éclair, au milieu d'une
mettre le pied sur une terre qui le population saisie d'admiration et de
repoussa pour jamais. respect, pleine du bonheur présent
et de la certitude du bonheur à
Quelques pratiques ténébreuses, venir.
quelques manœuvres dans l'ltalie,
excitée par son aveugle beau-frère, Ici, des propriétaires se félicitant
ont enflé l'orgueil du LACHE GUERRIER de la garantie réelle que leur assure
de Fontainebleau. Il s'expose ce retour miraculeux; là, des
à mourir de la mort des héros: Dieu hommes bénissant l'evènement inespéré
permettra qu'il meure de la mort qui fixe irrévocablement la
des traîtres. La terre de France liberté des cultes; plus loin, de
l'a rejeté. Il y revient, la terre de braves militaires pleurant de joie de
France le dévorera. revoir leur ancien général; des
plébéiens, convaincus que l'honneur
Ah! toutes les classes le repoussent, et les vertus seront redevenus le
tous les Français le repoussent premier titre de la noblesse, et
avec horreur, et se réfugient dans le qu'on acquerra, dans toutes les
sein d'un roi qui nous a apporté la carrières, la splendeur et la gloire
miséricorde, l'amour et l'oubli du pour les services rendus à la patrie.
passé.
Tel est le tableau qu'offrait cette
Cet insensé ne pouvait donc marche ou plutôt cette course triomphale,
trouver en France de partisans que dans laquelle L'EMPEREUR
parmi les artisans éternels de troubles n'a trouvé d'autre ennemi que le
et de révolutions. misérables libelles qu'on s'est vainement
plu à répandre sur son passage,
Mais nous ne voulons ni de troubles contraste bien étrange avecni de révolutions. Ils désigneront les sentiments d'enthousiasme qui
vainement des victimes pour leur éclataient à son approche. Ces sentiments,
TEUTATÈS; un seul cri sera le cri justifiés par la lassitude des
de toute la France: onze mois qui viennent de s'écouler,
ne le sont pas moins par les garanties
MORT AU TYRAN! VIVE LE ROI! que donnent à tous les rangs les
proclamations de SA MAJESTÉ, et
Cet homme, qui débarqua à Fréjus qui sont lues avec une extrême
contre tout espoir, nous semblait avidité. Elles respirent la modération
alors appelé de Dieu pour rétablir qui accompagne aujourd'hui la
en France la monarchie légitime; force, et qui est toujours inséparable
cet homme, entrant par sa noire de la véritable grandeur.
destinée, et comme pour mettre le
dernier sceau à la Restauration, P.S.—Huit heures du soir
revient aujourd'hui pour peser
comme un rebelle sur cette même L'empereur est arrive ce soir au
terre où il fut reçu, il y a quinze palais des Tuileries, au milieu des
ans, par un peuple abusé, et détrompé plus vives acclamations. Au moment
depuis par douze ans de où nous écrivons, les rues, les
tyrannie." places, les boulevards, les quais,
sont couverts d'une foule immense,
et les cris de VIVE L'EMPEREUR!
retentissent de toutes parts, depuis
Fontainebleau jusqu'à Paris. Toute
la population des campagnes, ivre
de joie, s'est portée sur la route de
Sa Majesté, que cet empressement
a forcée d'aller au pas."
M. de Maubreuil and Roux-Laborie had no need to feel bored with such entertainment as the above before their eyes! Therefore, although they were in the green salon nearly an hour, they thought they had hardly been in it ten minutes when the door of the cabinet of the Prince de Talleyrand opened. They entered.
Now do not fancy we are writing a romance: it is history, the record, not of fair and pleasant events, but of sad and ugly ones. If you doubt it, consult the report drawn up by MM. Thouret and Brière de Valigny, deputies of the procureur impérial, in the month of June 1815, about this affair, and laid before one of the Chambers of the Court of First Instance of the Seine. If Napoleon had returned but to restore unto us this official paper, it would have been almost sufficient to justify his return.
M. de Maubreuil was taken inside M. de Talleyrand's study. Roux-Laborie made him sit down in the prince's own armchair, and said to him—
"You are anxious to recover your position, to retrieve your broken fortunes; it depends upon yourself whether you obtain far more than even that which you desire."
"What must I do?" asked Maubreuil.
"You have courage, resolution: rid us of the emperor. If he were dead, France, the army, everything would be ours, and you would receive an income of 200,000 livres; you would be made a duke, lieutenant-general and governor of a province."[2]
"I do not quite see how I could accomplish it."
"Nothing easier."
"Tell me how."
"Listen."
"I am listening."
"It is not unlikely that there may be a great battle fought near here in a couple of days. Take a hundred determined men, whom you can clothe in the uniform of the Guards, mingle with the troops at Fontainebleau, and it will be quite easy, either before or during or after the battle, to render us the service I am commissioned to ask of you."
Maubreuil shook his head.
"Do you refuse?" asked Roux-Laborie quickly.
"Not so. I am only thinking that a hundred men would be difficult to find: luckily one would not need a hundred; a dozen would be sufficient. I shall perhaps be able to find them in the army, but I must have power to advance them two or three ranks, and to give them pecuniary recompense, in proportion to the service they will have to undertake."
"You shall have whatever you want. What do ten or a dozen colonels, more or less, matter to us?"
"That's all right."
"You therefore accept?"
"Probably ... but I ask until to-morrow to think it over."
And Maubreuil went out, followed by Roux-Laborie, who was very uneasy because of the delay requested. However, Maubreuil reassured him, promising to give him a definite answer next day. We can understand Maubreuil's hesitation: he had been introduced into the prince's study, he had sat in the prince's chair, but, after all, he had not seen the prince. Now, when one stakes one's head at another's bidding, one prefers to see the person who holds the cards.
Next day they returned to the house. Maubreuil accepted. Roux-Laborie breathed again.
"But," added Maubreuil, "on one condition."
"What is that?"
"I do not look upon your word alone as sufficient authority. I want solid security for your promises. I wish to see M. de Talleyrand himself and to receive my commission from him."
"But, my dear Maubreuil, can't you see how difficult that would be?..."
"I can quite see that; but it must be thus or not at all."
"Then you wish to see M. de Talleyrand?"
"I wish to see M. de Talleyrand and to receive my orders direct from him."
"Oh! oh!" said the lawyer, striking his friend on the chest, "one might think you were afraid!"
"I am not afraid, but I wish to see M. de Talleyrand."
"Very well, so be it," said Roux-Laborie: "you shall see him, and since you demand his guarantee, you shall be satisfied. Wait a few minutes in this salon."
And he went in to M. de Talleyrand. A moment later, he came out.
"M. de Talleyrand is going out; M. de Talleyrand will make you a sign with his hand; M. de Talleyrand will smile upon you. Will that satisfy you?"
"Hum!" returned Maubreuil; "never mind! we will see."
M. de Talleyrand passed out, made the prearranged gesture, and smiled graciously upon Maubreuil.
It is Maubreuil, be it understood, who relates all this.
The gesture seduced Maubreuil, the smile carried him away; but Maubreuil wanted something else—he wanted 200,000 francs. They hesitated, they chaffered, they had not the money—there were so many betrayals to pay for! But, thanks to the decree of the 9th, they made a haul of 13 millions—the private moneys of Napoleon. They did it conscientiously, not leaving anything to Marie-Louise, either money or jewellery: she was reduced to the point of being obliged to borrow a little china and silver from the bishop, with whom she stayed. So they had 13 millions—without reckoning the 10 millions in bullion deposited in the cellars of the Tuileries, on which they had already laid violent hands. This made 23 millions they had already borrowed of Napoleon. What the deuce did it matter? They were quite justified in taking two hundred thousand francs from this sum in order to assassinate him! So they took two hundred thousand francs, and they gave them to Maubreuil.
Maubreuil rushed off to a gambling-house and lost a hundred thousand francs that night. Was he going to assassinate Napoleon for a hundred thousand francs? Not he, indeed!... It was not enough. He had recourse to M. A——. M. A—— was a man of imagination. An idea came into his head.
"The Queen of Westphalia is following in Napoleon's wake ...?"
"Yes."
"We may suppose that the Queen of Westphalia carries the crown jewels with her?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, seize what she has and you will have a good catch."
"Yes, but I want authority to do that."
"Authority? What do you mean?"
"A written order."
"Signed by whom?"
"Signed by you."
"Oh, if that is all, here goes!"
And M. A—— took a pen and signed the following order.
"Pardon me, you say, who is M. A——?"
Good gracious! you have but to read, the signature is at the foot of the order:—
"OFFICE OF THE POLICE
"It is ordered that all officials under orders of the police générale of France, prefects, superintendents and officers, of whatsoever grade, shall obey the commands that M. de Maubreuil shall give them; they shall carry out his orders and fulfil his wishes without a moments delay, M. de Maubreuil being charged with a secret mission of the highest importance.
"ANGLÈS"
This was not enough. Maubreuil wanted another order, a similar one, signed by the Minister of War: he had settled with the civil power, it remained to put himself right with the military. He went to look up the Minister of War. He obtained a similar order to the one we have just given. The Minister of War was General Dupont. There are some very ill-fated signatures! On 22 July 1808 this signature was at the foot of the capitulation treaty of Baylen. On 16 April 1814 it was at the foot of Maubreuil's commission! The one handed over to the enemy, without striking a blow, the liberty of fourteen thousand men; the other gave up the life and the gold of a queen to a thief and an assassin!
In the face of such errors one is proud to be able to boast that one has never put one's name save in the forefront of a play, be it good or bad, save at the end of a book, be it bad or good!
Besides these two orders, Maubreuil possessed himself of three others in the same terms: one from Bourrienne, Provisional Director of the Posting Arrangements ... de Bourrienne, do you understand?—But this was not the Bourrienne who was the emperor's secretary?... Excuse me, even the same ... where would have been the infamy of the thing, had it not been so? He placed the posts at the disposition of M. de Maubreuil: one from General Sacken, Governor of Paris; one from General Brokenhausen. Thanks to these two last orders, Maubreuil, who had the police already at his disposal through Anglès' order, the army through Dupont's, the posts through Bourrienne's, got possession also of the allied troops under command of the Russian and Prussian generals.
True, on 3 April, the day following that on which the Journal des Débats and the Journal de Paris issued those clever articles with which the reader is already acquainted, two charming verses, which we propose to bring before your notice, were sung at the Opera, by Laïs, to the tune of Vive Henri IV., national air though it was:—
Vive Alexandre!
Vive ce roi des rois!
Sans rien prétendre,
Sans nous dicter des lois,
Ce prince auguste
A le triple renom,
De héros, de juste,
De nous rendre un Bourbon.
Vive Guillaume!
Et ses guerriers vaillants!
De ce royaume,
Il sauva les enfants;
Par sa victoire,
Il nous donne la paix,
Et compte sa gloire
Par ses nombreux bienfaits.
Really, it gives one a certain amount of pleasure to see that these lines are almost as poor as the prose of the Journal des Débats and of the Journal de Paris!
So Maubreuil had his five orders all correct, in his pocket. Armed with these, he could act, not against Napoleon direct,—that was too risky a business,—but against the Queen of Westphalia. And, on the whole, was it not a good stroke of business to have made them pay the price of assassinating Napoleon, and then not to assassinate him?
This is what Maubreuil proposed to do. First of all, he allied himself with a person called d'Asies, who, in virtue of his plenary powers, he appointed Commissioner Royal. Next, he put himself on the watch at the corner of the rue du Mont-Blanc and the rue Saint-Lazare. The Queen of Westphalia was lodging at Cardinal Fesch's house. Her departure was fixed for the 18th. The orders were signed on the 16th and 17th. Maubreuil was well informed of the Princess Catherine de Wurtemberg's movements. On the 18th, at three o'clock in the morning, the ex-Queen of Westphalia entered her coach and started off en route for Orléans. Princess Catherine was cousin of the Emperor of Russia, and travelled with a passport signed by him and by the Emperor of Austria. Two great names, were they not? Alexander and Francis! Maubreuil had gone on in advance. He learnt from the post-master at Pithiviers (now you see how useful was M. de Bourrienne's authorisation) that the princess would take the road which ran by the Bourgogne. Then he hid himself at Fossard, the posting-house a half-league from Montereau. There was not the slightest danger that Maubreuil would make any mistake, he knew the princess too well for that—he had been her equerry. On the 21 st, at seven o'clock in the morning, the princess's carriage came into sight on the road. Maubreuil rushed out, at the head of a dozen cavaliers, stopped the carriage, obliged the ex-queen to enter a kind of stable, into which all her luggage was removed, piecemeal. There were eleven boxes, and cases: Maubreuil demanded the keys of them. The princess had no means of resistance: she gave him them without appearing to recognise him in any way, without deigning to address a word to him. Maubreuil saw this, but took no notice: he sat down quietly to his breakfast, with d'Asies, in a room on the ground floor of the inn, waiting for a detachment of troops which, taking advantage of his powers, he had requisitioned from Fontainebleau.
Let us, however, be just to Maubreuil. As the weather was bad, as it rained, as it was very cold, he invited his past sovereign to come into the inn; but as she would have been compelled to share the same room with him, she preferred to remain in the courtyard. A woman who had compassion on her fellow-woman brought her a chair, and she sat down. Maubreuil finished his breakfast, and a lieutenant arrived from Montereau, with a dozen men, Mamelukes and infantry. Some sort of explanation had to be given to this officer and to these soldiers; callous though Maubreuil was, it was not to be supposed that he would say, "You see me for what I am—a robber."
No, it was Princess Catherine who was a thief. Princess Catherine had been stopped by Maubreuil because she was carrying off the crown jewels. Four sentries were posted to prevent any travellers coming near—unless such travellers came in a carriage; in which case, willy nilly, the carriage must be requisitioned. Some merchants came from Sens leading a stage-waggon. The stage-waggon and the two horses harnessed thereto were confiscated by Maubreuil. They loaded this stage-waggon with the princess's trunks. Only then did she deign to address a word to Maubreuil, who had been apologising to her for his mission.
"For shame, monsieur!" she said; "when a man has shared bread with another, he should not undertake such a mission to their detriment.... You are doing an abominable act!"
"Madame," replied Maubreuil, "I am but the commander of the armed force. Speak to the commissioner: I will do whatever he orders."
The commissioner, as we know, was d'Asies. It was a case of Robert Macaire and Bertrand. But the poor princess did not know this, and took d'Asies for a real commissioner.
"Monsieur," she said, "you are robbing me of all I possess. The king has never given any such orders.... I swear to you, on my honour and by my faith as a queen, I have nothing that belongs to the Crown of France."
D'Asies drew himself up.
"Do you take us for thieves, madame?" he said. "Let me tell you that we are acting as ordered. All those boxes must be taken."
As he said that, d'Asies caught sight of a small square box tied round with tape. He put his hand under it. The little case was very heavy.
"So ho!" he said.
"That little chest, monsieur," said the princess, "contains my gold."
D'Asies and Maubreuil exchanged glances which said as well as words could say, "Your gold, princess; that is exactly what we are looking for."
They withdrew and made a pretence of deliberating. Then, after this cogitation, they came up, and gave orders to the commander of the Mamelukes to take this box away with the others. The princess still disbelieved her eyes and ears.
"But," she cried, "you cannot possibly be taking my private jewels and money! You will leave me and my suite stranded on the highway!"
Then her courage failed this noble creature, the daughter of a king, the wife of a king, the cousin of an emperor. Tears came into her eyes: she asked to be allowed to speak to Maubreuil. Maubreuil came to her.
"What is to become of me, monsieur?" she said. "At least give me back this money: I need it to continue my journey."
"Madame," replied Maubreuil, "I do but carry out the orders of the Government: I must give up your luggage in Paris intact. I can only give you the hundred napoleons in my own purse."
Acting upon the Count de Furstenstein's advice, the princess accepted this offer, thinking it a last token of devotion from a man who had been in her service. Besides, she thought he would give her leave to return to Paris, where she would regain possession of her money. But this was not to be: they made her re-enter her carriage, and the princess continued her journey to Villeneuve-la-Guyare, under the escort of two soldiers, while her boxes, her gold, her jewels, piled on the post-waggon, were sent back to Paris. Had the princess resisted, the two infantry men were ordered to use violence in compelling her to continue her journey. She then asked at least to be allowed to send one of her own servants along with her boxes, as escort. But as the demand was considered outrageous, it was refused.
So the princess's carriage went forward to Villeneuve-la-Guyare. Maubreuil's and d'Asies' consciences were quite easy:—had not the princess a hundred napoleons wherewith to provide her needs? At the next post-house Maubreuil's purse was opened to pay. They found it contained only forty-four napoleons. They left the purse and the forty-four napoleons there and then in the hands of the justice of the peace at Pont-sur-Yonne. When Maubreuil left Fossard, he forbade the post-master to supply horses to anyone before three o'clock.
So far so good. Now they could give their attention to the second part of their mission—the least important to Maubreuil—that of killing the emperor.
It was the 21st of April. On the 19th, the emperor, deserted by everyone, was alone save for a single valet. It was an opportune moment: unluckily, they let it slip. They were lying in wait for the princess in the rue Saint-Lazare; they could not be everywhere at the same time. On the 20th, the day after, the emperor bade farewell to his Guards. It was not in the midst of that pack of brigands that he could be attacked. On the 21 st, as we have seen, they were busily engaged. And it was just at that moment that the emperor left for Fontainebleau, with the commissioners of the four Powers.
Bah! even if they had not killed the emperor, what mattered it? Since they had robbed the Queen of Westphalia, and taken her gold and her jewels, it was just as good. The emperor was not killed.
They returned to Paris, where they spent the night in gambling, losing part of the princess's eighty-four thousand francs. The little chest had contained eighty-four thousand francs in gold. Next day, Maubreuil presented himself at M. Anglès'. He was in despair—first at having lost part of his gold, then for having missed Napoleon. M. Anglès was not in despair: he was furious—furious because the Emperor Alexander knew everything, and the Emperor Alexander was furious. The Emperor Alexander swore that he would avenge his cousin.
The Journal de Paris did not know that Nicolas means Conqueror of peoples; but M. Anglès, Minister of the Police, knew well enough that Alexander spells he who grinds men down. M. Anglès had no wish to be ground down. He therefore advised Maubreuil to fly.
"Fly!" said Maubreuil. "What of the police?"
"Bah! Am I not responsible for them?"
This assurance did not in the least set Maubreuil's mind at ease. He rushed off to the house of M. de Talleyrand: M. de Talleyrand slammed the door in his face. Is it likely that M. de Talleyrand would recognise a highway robber? Nonsense!
Maubreuil fled. He had not got three leagues before he was apprehended (empoigné, as they called it under the Restoration), and thrown into a dungeon, from which he was released on the emperor's return and to which he returned on the accession of Louis XVIII. After two fresh releases and two fresh arrests, Maubreuil, who never believed they would dare to try him, appeared at length before the Royal Court of Douai, the Chamber of the Court of Appeal. The affair created a tremendous scandal, as can very well be imagined. M. de Talleyrand denied, M. Anglès denied, Roux-Laborie denied; everybody denied, except Maubreuil. Maubreuil not only confessed the whole thing, but, from being the accused, he turned accuser. Of course the papers were expressly forbidden to report the proceedings. But Maître Mennesson had a friend who was present at the trial. This friend, no doubt a shorthand writer, took down, transcribed, verified and forwarded him his report. I made two or three copies of this account and distributed them by order of our zealous, faithful and loyal Republican notary. And I kept a copy of the proceedings myself. I do not know that this report has appeared in any history. It is a curiosity, and I give it here.
[1] A dressed-up dwarf.
[2] When one writes of such matters as these, two authorities are better than one. Besides the report of MM. Thouret and Brière de Valigny, see Vaulabelle's Histoire des deux Restaurations, vol. ii. p. 15.
[CHAPTER VIII]
Account of the proceedings relative to the abstraction of the jewels of the Queen of Westphalia by the Sieur de Maubreuil—Chamber of the Court of Appeal—The sitting of 17 April, 1817
Enter the Sieur de Maubreuil. Placed at the prisoner's bar, he looked fixedly at M. de Vatimesnil, the king's counsel, and spoke to him as follows:—
"M. le procureur du roi," he said, "you have called me an appropriator of treasure, it is false. I have never been an appropriator of treasure. The journalists have made use of your last speech to spread an odious interpretation on my trial; but I am above their reproaches."
They endeavoured to silence the Sieur de Maubreuil, but he went on with renewed pertinacity:—
"I appeal to all Frenchmen here present, I place my honour in your safe keeping. To-morrow I may be poisoned or assassinated."
The warders laid hands on M. de Maubreuil; but he shook himself free of them, and went on:—
"Yes, I quite expect it. They may shoot me in my cell; the police may carry me off and make away with me, as happened to my cousin, M. de Brosse, who, in the month of February, presented a petition to the Chamber in my favour; but I place my honour in the custody of the Frenchmen who are here present. Hear what I have to say to you."
Here the prisoner raised his voice.
"I accepted the commission to murder the emperor, but I accepted it only in order to save him and his family. Yes, my countrymen, I am not a miserable thief, as they are trying to make out. Frenchmen! I call you all to my aid. No, I am not a thief! No, lam not an assassin! On the contrary, I accepted a commission to save Napoleon and his family. It is true that, during the first outburst of my royalist enthusiasm, I did, along with several other people, attach a rope to the neck of Napoleon's statue, on the 31st of March, to pull it down from its pedestal in the place Vendôme; but I here acknowledge publicly that I served a thankless cause. Though I did insult Napoleon's statue, I have done good to him in the flesh. No, I am not an assassin! Frenchmen, my honour is in your hands. You will not be deaf to my entreaties."
Again they tried to stop M. de Maubreuil's mouth, but the harder they tried to silence him the louder he spoke.
"I accepted," he continued, "a commission to save Napoleon, his son and his family; I admit that, bribed, deluded and entangled by the Provisional Government to do it, I was foolish enough to tie the cross of the Legion of Honour to my horse's tail; I bitterly repent of doing so. I have donned that cross of heroes again now: see, here it is on my breast; I won it in Spain in fair fight."
Here the Sieur de Maubreuil succumbed to the efforts they made to drown his voice. The whole time he had been speaking, the president and the judges had been fruitlessly endeavouring to enforce silence. In vain did the president shout, "Warders, take him away, take him away! Do your duty, warders!" Maubreuil writhed, clutching hold of the bar, and, nearly strangled by the warders, he still went on:—
"M. le président, my respect for you is unbounded, but your acts and words are useless: they wished to assassinate the emperor, and I only accepted the commission which has brought me here in order to save him."
There was a tremendous noise, an uproar and shouts among the audience. Many Vendéens were present, relatives and friends of the prisoner, who was related to the family of la Roche-jaquelein. Before the prisoner was brought in, these had tried to influence public opinion in his favour, by talking of the mystery which enshrouded his mission, and by pointing out his unblemished devotion to the royal cause. Picture to yourself, then, their dismay when they saw the line of defence he adopted; their confusion when they heard their client speak so diametrically opposite to their expectations; their astonishment when they heard the name of Napoleon pronounced with respect by the prisoner, at a time when the conqueror of the Pyramids and of Marengo was only spoken of as Buonaparte; at the title of Emperor given to a man whom King Louis XVIII., dating the beginning of his reign from 1795, declared never to have reigned!
Me. Couture, M. de Maubreuil's counsel, was then allowed to speak. We will not report his speech, which was very long. He pleaded more on a legal technicality than on the matter of the charge. He spoke in the first instance of the injustice of Maubreuil being the only one arraigned, while d'Asies, Cotteville, and others who had acted in concert with him, were in full enjoyment of their liberty. He added that the trunks having been deposited without verification at M. de Vanteaux's, it could not be established who had abstracted the eighty-four thousand francs in gold. He referred to the marvellous manner in which some of the jewels that had been thrown by an unknown hand into the Seine had been recovered by a man named Huet, an ex-employé of the police, who, when fishing, had drawn up two diamond combs caught in his hooked line. Me. Couture went on to assert that the prisoner, to whom a mission of the gravest importance had been entrusted, ought not to be tried by an ordinary Court, and to prove his point, Me. Couture read the five different orders which had authorised M. de Maubreuil to call into requisition all the officials of the kingdom. The tenor of these orders was as follows:—
The first, signed by General Dupont, War Minister, authorised M. de Maubreuil to make use of the army, which was to obey all his demands, and commanded the authorities to furnish him with all the troops he might require, as he was charged with a mission of the highest importance. The second, signed by Anglès, Minister of Police, ordered all the police force throughout the kingdom of France to lend assistance to M. de Maubreuil to the same end. The third, signed by Bourrienne, Director-General of the Posts, ordered all post-masters to supply him with whatever horses he should require, and to consider themselves personally responsible for the least delay they might occasion him. The fourth, signed by General Sacken, Governor of Paris, enjoined the Allied troops to assist M. de Maubreuil. Finally, the fifth, which was in Russian, was addressed to those officers who did not understand French and who could not therefore have obeyed the preceding orders. From these documents Me. Couture argued that the king's council alone must have had cognisance of M. de Maubreuil's mission, and alone ought to decide the case.
After having replied to Me. Couture's pleading, the king's procurator set forth his reasons for regarding the tribunal correctionnel as incompetent in the present case, since the charges brought against the Sieur de Maubreuil constituted a crime, and were not those of a simple misdemeanour; that it was a question of a robbery under arms committed on the highway, and not merely a case of breach of confidence. For it was vain, he said, to try to allege the unlimited power with which the prisoner was vested; no power could authorise a citizen to run counter to existing laws; for if such a contention could be maintained it could be pursued to its logical conclusion and, in that case, it might be excusable to commit a murder or burn down a village. "As a matter of fact," continued M. de Vatimesnil, "we are advised that Maubreuil, acting as a Government agent, was endowed on that very count with a far graver responsibility, and the law ought to be set in force against him with the greater severity. No mission could excuse a man for having ill-treated a person travelling on the highways with a passport, and his crime assumed still graver proportions when that person happened to be an august princess, sprung from an illustrious house, allied to all the crowned heads of Europe, and travelling under the protection of a passport from her illustrious cousin, the Emperor of Russia, a princess who was entitled to double respect, both from her rank and because of the reverses of fortune she had recently experienced." "And," exclaimed the king's counsel, "with what indignation ought we to be seized, when we hear the accused uttering such libellous fables to avoid the course of justice! Who are those Frenchmen he addresses, whom he invokes to his aid? What faith could be put in such an unlikely story, as that he had received a mission against a person travelling under the safeguard of the most solemn treaties, signed by all the allied sovereigns? and if he did accept such a mission, was it not doubly mean to have accepted money for carrying it out, and then to have deceived those whom he pretended had given it him? Should he not be regarded henceforth as one of those hateful creatures known of all men, who, under pressure of an accusation, hatches conspiracies, and denounces unknown fellow-citizens, to the sole end of arresting or diverting justice?"
The Sieur de Maubreuil had listened to all this tirade with fiery impatience, and his solicitor had only been able to pacify him by allowing him the pen and paper which he demanded. When M. de Vatimesnil's speech was over, Maubreuil passed what he had just written to the president, then rose and said:—"M. le président, as a man who expects to be assassinated at any moment, I place this political deposition in your hands. Frenchmen, it is my honour I am bequeathing to all you who are here present. As a man on the brink of appearing before God, I swear that it was M. de Talleyrand who, by means of M. Laborie, sent me; that the prince forced me to sit down in his own arm-chair; that he offered me two hundred thousand livres income and the title of duke, if I accomplished my mission satisfactorily;[1] furthermore, the Emperor Alexander offered me his own horses; but, I repeat, if I accepted the mission I am blamed for, it was to save the emperor and his family."
Here they again compelled Maubreuil to stop speaking, and the warders, taking hold of him by his shoulders, forced him down into his seat.
Then his lawyer, Me. Couture, rose, addressed the king's counsel once more, and begged for pity's sake that no notice should be taken of his client's mad words.
"Alas!" he cried, "the man whom you see before you, monsieur, is no longer M. de Maubreuil, but only the remains, the shade of M. de Maubreuil. A detention of three years, three hundred and ninety days of which has been spent in solitary confinement without communication with a soul, without even seeing his own counsel, has deranged his reason. He is now nothing but the ruins of a man. For the love of humanity, do not take account of a speech which can only tell against him!" The judges, greatly embarrassed by what they had just heard, although their business was but to decide on the simple question of the competence or incompetence of their tribunal, deferred sentence until the following Tuesday, 22 April.
Probably the delay was arranged, so those in court thought, in order to receive instructions from the château, and to act in accordance with those instructions.
THE SITTING OF 22 APRIL
Maubreuil was led in. He had scarcely entered the prisoner's dock before he violently pushed away the guard and cried out, "You have no right to maltreat me like this, warders; you have made me suffer quite enough the three years I have been in prison. It is a dastardly wicked thing! We are here before justice and not before the police! Let me rather be shot immediately than delivered over longer to the tortures of which I have been the victim for three years! No, never was greater cruelty exercised in the Prussian fortresses, in the dungeons of the Inquisition under the foundations of Venice! I am cut off from the world; my complaints are hushed up; my lawyer is forbidden to print and distribute my defence. I here express before all, my gratitude for his zeal and his devotion; but I am in despair that he has not based his defence on the information I have given him: he has not dared to do so."
Here silence was again imposed on the prisoner. The president then read the sentence, pronouncing that the tribunal de police correctionnelle declared its incompetence, and sent the prisoner to the assizes, on the ground that if the facts which had been laid bare were proved, they constituted a crime, and not a simple misdemeanour.
When the prisoner heard the sentence of incompetence to deal with the case pronounced he sighed deeply, and his face, changed by a long captivity, expressed dejection and despair. But he rallied his strength and cried—
"The blood of twenty-nine of my relations was shed for the Bourbons in Vendée and at Quiberon! I too am to be sacrificed to them in my turn! They wish to destroy me, my groans are to be stifled. I am to be made out a madman! It is a diabolical plot! No, I am not mad; no, I was not mad when my services were required by them! Frenchmen, I repeat to you what I told you at the last sitting: they asked me to take the life of Napoleon! Write to Vienna, to Munich, to St. Petersburg. Yes, yes,"—pushing away the warders, who sought to impose silence upon him,—"yes, they demanded of me the blood of Napoleon.... M. le président, they have handled me with violence! M. le président, they will maltreat me! M. le président, they will put my feet in irons! But, come what may, to the last moment I will proclaim it: they asked me to take Napoleon's life! the Bourbons are assassins!..."
These last words were pronounced by the accused as he struggled with the police, while they led him away by force.
Here the shorthand report concludes: I have not altered a word of the statement, a certified copy of which is under my eyes.
On the 18th of the following December, Maubreuil was arraigned to appear before the Court of Assizes at Douai, and succeeded in escaping before the trial. On 6 May 1818, judgment was issued, condemning him to five years' imprisonment by default and to pay five hundred francs fine, for being a dishonest trustee.
Maubreuil, having taken refuge in England, returned on purpose to deal M. de Talleyrand the terrible blow which struck him down, on the steps of the church of Saint-Denis, during the funeral procession of Louis XVIII.
"Oh! what a cuff!" exclaimed the prince, as he picked himself up.
How can people deny M. de Talleyrand's presence of mind after that! M. Dupin could not have done better.
This obscure, strange, mysterious Maubreuil affair did the Bourbons of the Restoration the greatest possible harm. To the Count d'Artois and M. de Talleyrand it was what the affair of the necklace was to Marie-Antoinette and the Cardinal de Rohan—that is to say, one of those hidden springs from which revolutions derive power for the future; one of those weapons the more dangerous and terrible and deadly for being dipped so long in the poison of calumny.
[1] We see by this that, according to Maubreuil, it was M. de Talleyrand himself with whom he had had to deal. We have not wished to endorse the accusation blindly and, in our account, we have accepted the intermediate agency of Roux-Laborie.
[BOOK II]
[CHAPTER I]
The last shot of Waterloo—Temper of the provinces in 1817, 1818 and 1819—The Messéniennes—The Vêpres siciliennes,—Louis IX.—Appreciation of these two tragedies—A phrase of Terence—My claim to a similar sentiment—Three o'clock in the morning—The course of love-making—Valeat res ludrica
I am not sure who said—perhaps I said it myself—that the Revolution of 1830 was the last shot of Waterloo. It is very true. Setting aside those whose family interest, position or fortune attached them to the Bourbon dynasty, it is impossible to conceive any idea of the ever growing feeling of opposition which spread throughout the provinces; it got to such a pitch that, without knowing why, in spite of every reason that my mother and I had to curse Napoleon, we hated the Bourbons far more, though they had never done anything to us, or had even done us good rather than harm.
Everything tended to the unpopularity of the reigning house: the invasion of French territory by the enemy; the disgraceful treaties of 1815; the three years' occupation which had followed the second restoration of the Bourbons; the reactionary movements in the South; the assassination of Ramel at Toulouse, and the Brune assassination at Avignon; Murat, who was always popular, in spite of his stupidity and his treachery, shot at Pizzo: the proscriptions of 1816; defections, disgraceful deeds, shameful bargains, came to light daily; the verses of Émile Debraux, the songs of Béranger, the Messéniennes of Casimir Delavigne and the tabatières à la charte, the Voltaire-Touquets and Rousseaus of all kinds, unpublished rhymes of the type I have quoted; anecdotes, true or false, attributed to the Duc de Berry, in which the ancient glories of the Empire were always sacrificed to some youthful aristocratic ambition; all, down to the king with his black gaiters, his blue coat with gilt buttons, his general's epaulettes and the little tail of his wig,—all tended, I say, to depreciate the ruling power—or rather, worse still, to make it absurd.
Vêpres siciliennes was played at the Odéon on 23 November 1819 with overwhelming success. It would be difficult to explain why, to anyone who has read the piece dispassionately. Why did a crowd wait outside the doors of the Odéon from three o'clock? Why was that splendid building crowded to suffocation, instead of there being, as usual, plenty of room for everyone? Just to hear four lines thought to contain an allusion to the political encroachments in which the king's favourite minister was said to indulge. These are the four lines. They seemed innocent enough on the face of them:—
"De quel droit un ministre, avec impunity,
Ose-t-il attenter à notre liberté?
Se reposant sur vous des droits du diadème,
Le roi vous a-t-il fait plus roi qu'il n'est lui-même?"
All the same, these four lines roused thunders of applause and rounds of cheering. And then one heard on every side the concert of admiration which all the Liberal papers sounded in praise of the patriotic young poet. The whole party petted him, praised him, exalted him.
Some time after the Vêpres siciliennes had been played at the Odéon, the Théâtre-Français, on 5 November 1819, put Louis IX. on the stage. This was the Royalist reply which the leading theatre gave to the Nationalist tragedy at the Odéon.
At that period Ancelot and Casimir Delavigne were about equally celebrated and, in the eyes of impartial critics, Louis IX. was as good as Vêpres siciliennes. But all the popularity, all the applause, all the triumph went to the Liberal poet. It was as though the nation were breathing again, after its suspension of animation from '93 onward, as though it were urging the public spirit to take the path of liberty.
I recollect that because of the noise these two controversial plays made throughout the whole of the literary world, I, who was just beginning to feel the first breath of poetry stir within me, was anxious to read them. I wrote to de Leuven, who sent me both the Liberal and the Royalist work. The Liberal work was the most praised, and, with that in my hand, I ran to announce to our young friends, Adèle, Albine and Louise, the good fortune which had befallen us from Paris. It was decided that the same evening we should read the masterpiece aloud, and, as I was the owner of the work, I was naturally promoted to the office of reader.
Alas! we were but simple children, without knowledge of either side of the case, artless young folk, who wanted to amuse ourselves by clapping our hands and to be stirred to the heart by admiration. We were greatly surprised at the end of the first act, more surprised still by the end of the second, that so much fuss and noise should have been aroused by, and so much praise bestowed upon, a work, estimable, no doubt, in its way, but one which did not cause a single thrill of sentiment or passion, or rouse an echoing memory. We did not yet understand that a political passion is the most prejudiced of all passions, and that it vibrates to the innermost feeling of a disturbed country. Our reading was interrupted at the second act, and the tragedy of Vêpres siciliennes was never finished, at any rate as a joint reading. Our audience had naïvely confessed that Montfort, Lorédan and Procida bored them to death, and that they much preferred Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots and other fairy tales of like nature. But this attempt did not satisfy me. When I went home to my mother, I read not only the whole of Vêpres siciliennes but also Louis IX.
Well, it is with feelings of great satisfaction that I date from that time the impartial appreciation for contemporary works which I possess—an appreciation borrowed far more from my feelings than from my judgment; an appreciation which neither political opinion nor literary hatred has ever been able to influence: my critical faculty, when considering the work of my confrères, asks not whether it be the work of a friend or of an enemy, whether of one intimately known to me or of a stranger. However, I need hardly say that neither Vêpres siciliennes nor Louis IX. belong to that order of literature which I was to be called upon later to feel and to understand, whose beauties I endeavoured to reproduce. I remained perfectly unmoved by these two tragedies, although I slightly preferred Louis IX. I have never read them again since, and probably I shall never re-read them; but I feel convinced that if I were to re-read them, my opinion upon them would be just the same to-day that' it was then. What a difference there was between the tame and monotonous feeling I then experienced and the glowing emotion Hamlet roused in me, though it was the curtailed, bloodless, nerveless Hamlet of Ducis! I had an innate instinct for truth and hatred of conventional standards; Terence's line has always seemed to me one of the finest lines ever written: "I am a man, and nothing that is human is alien unto me." And I was fast laying claim to my share in that line. I was growing more manly every day; my mother was the only person who continued to look upon me as though I were still a child. She was therefore greatly astonished when one evening I did not return at my usual time of coming home—and when at last I did come in, towards three in the morning, my heart leaping joyfully, I slipped into my room, which for the last three months I had obtained leave to have to myself, apart from my mother, foreseeing what was going to take place. I found my mother in tears, seated by my window, where she had been watching for my return, ready to give me the lecture such a late, or rather, early, return deserved!
After more than a year of attentions, signs, loving-making, little favours granted, refused, snatched by force, the inexorable door which shut me out at eleven o'clock would be softly reopened at half-past eleven, and behind that door I found two trembling lips, two caressing arms, a heart beating against my heart, burning sighs and lingering tears. Adèle too had managed to get a room to herself, apart from her mother, just as I had. This room was better than an ordinary room: it was a tiny summer-house which projected into a long garden enclosed only by hedges. A passage between the room occupied by her brother and the room occupied by her mother led to the garden, and consequently to the summer-house, which was only separated from the passage by a staircase leading to the first storey. It was the door of this passage, opening on one side into the street, and on the other, as I have said, into the garden, which was reopened to me at half-past eleven at night and was not closed behind me until three in the morning, on that night when my mother stood anxiously waiting, all in tears, at the window of my room, just ready to go and seek for me in the six hundred houses of the town. But what plagued my mother still more was—as I quickly discovered—that though she had not the least doubt as to the reason for my misconduct, she could not guess who was the young lady at the bottom of it. She had not seen me come back the way she had expected. The reason for that was simple enough. The little girl who had given her heart to me, after more than a year's struggle, was so pure, so innocent, so modest, that although my love and pride were ready to reveal everything, my conscience told me that honour and every fine feeling I had demanded that the secret be kept with the utmost care. Therefore, so that no one should see me at such an hour, either in the neighbourhood of her house, or in the street leading to it, when at three in the morning I came out of the blest passage that had served me in good stead, I made my exit by a little by-street, and gained the fields. From the fields I entered the park, leaping a ditch like the one over which I had given proofs of my agility to Mademoiselle Laurence, under such different circumstances, at Whitsuntide. Finally, from the park I reached what was called with us the "manège," and I re-entered the town by the rue du Château. It so happened, therefore, that my mother, who was watching in an entirely opposite direction, did not see me return, and, not guessing the ruse I had made use of to foil the cruel and ready slander little towns are so prone to set going, should matters so turn out, she puzzled her wits in despair to know where I had come from. My mother's ignorance and the suspicions that grew up in her mind later in connection with another girl had a sufficiently serious influence upon my future life for me to dwell on the subject for a moment: these details are not so trivial as they may appear at first sight. Is it not the case that some minds regard everything as trivial, whilst others (and I am much inclined to think that these latter, without wishing to speak evil of the former class of people, are the true thinkers and the true philosophers), who try to follow the thread Providence holds in His hands, with which He guides men from birth to death, from the unknown to the unknown, look upon every detail as of importance, because the slightest has its part in the great mass of details which we call life? Well, I was well scolded by my mother, who did not scold me long,
I however, for I kissed her the whole time she scolded me; besides, her uneasiness was somewhat allayed, and with the eye of a mother and perhaps even more with the insight of a woman, which sees to the very heart of things, she saw I was profoundly happy. Joy is as much a mystery as sorrow; excessive joy approaches so nearly the border of pain, that, like suffering, it too has its measure of tears. My mother left me to go to bed, not because she was tired out, poor mother! but because she felt I wanted to be alone with myself, with my recent memories, which I clasped as closely to my throbbing heart as one holds to one's breast a young nestling which is trying to fly away.
Oh! but Maître Mennesson's office was deserted that day! How beautiful the park looked to me! The tall trees with their whispering leaves, the birds singing above my head, and the frightened roebuck on the skyline—all seemed to make a frame which could scarce contain my smiling thoughts, my thoughts which danced like a joyous nymph! Love—first love —the welling-up of the sap, opens out life to us! It flows through the most secret recesses of our being; it gives life to the most remote of our senses; it is a vast realm wherein every man imprisoned in this world imprisons in turn the whole world in himself.
[CHAPTER II]
Return of Adolphe de Leuven—He shows me a corner of the artistic and literary world—The death of Holbein and the death of Orcagna—Entrance into the green-rooms—Bürger's Lénore—First thoughts of my vocation
In the meantime, de Leuven returned to Villers-Cotterets, after five or six months' absence. His return was to open out new fields for my ambitions—ambitions, however, which I believed were capable of being fulfilled. If you throw a stone into a lake, however large the lake may be, the first circle it will make round it, after its fall, will go on growing and multiplying itself, even as do our days and our desires, until the last one touches the bank—that is to say, eternity.
Adolphe returned and brought Lafarge back with him. Poor Lafarge! Do you remember the brilliant head clerk, who returned to his native place in an elegant carriage, drawn by a mettlesome steed? Well, he had bought a practice, but there the progress of his rising fortune had stopped. By some inconceivable fatality, although he was young, good-looking, clever, perhaps even because he possessed all these gifts, which are perfectly useless to a lawyer, he had not found a wife to pay for the practice, so he had been obliged to sell it again, and, disgusted with the law, he had taken to literature. De Leuven, who had taken notice of him in Villers-Cotterets, found him out in Paris and returned with him. Some of his ancient splendour still stuck to the poor fellow, but you might seek in vain for any real stability at the base of his fresh plans for the future; those fleeting clouds hardly got beyond the stage of hopes. During his stay in Paris a great change had come over Adolphe's character—a change which was to react on me.
At M. Arnault's house, in which he had been a guest, Adolphe had had a closer view of the literary world than he had previously caught glimpses of in the house of Talma. He had there made the acquaintance of Scribe, who was already at the zenith of his fame. He met Mademoiselle Duchesnois there, who at that time was Telleville's mistress, and who recited Marie Stuart. There he became acquainted with M. de Jouy, who had finished his Sylla; Lucien Arnault, who had begun his Régulus; Pichat, who, while composing his Brennus and thinking out his Léonidas and William Tell, was facing a future in which, his first wreath on his head and his first palm in his hand, Death lurked, waiting for him. He had then dropped from these lofty heights in the regions of art to inferior places, where he became acquainted with Soulié, who was publishing poems in the Mercure; with Rousseau, that Pylades of Romieu whom Orestes had left one day at the turning of the road which led to his sub-prefecture; with Ferdinand Langlé, the fickle lover of poor little Fleuriet, upon whom, it is said, a notorious poisoner tried the deadly powder with which he was later to kill his friend; with Théaulon, that delightful person and indefatigable worker, who worked only in the hope that some day he would be able to be idle, but who never had time to be idle, who was cradled for a brief time in the arms of Love, but who was never really to rest until he lay on the bosom of Death. This poor Epicurean, who by dint of imagination saw his life in rosy garb, although for him it was clothed in black, wrote these four lines on the door of his study: they express at once his easy carelessness and his gentle philosophy—
Loin du sot, du fat et du traître,
Ici ma constance attendra:
Et l'amour qui viendra peut-être,
Et la mort qui du moins viendra!
Death came, poor Théaulon! Came all too soon, for thee as for Pichat, for Soulié, for Balzac; for there are two Deaths charged by Providence with the task of hurling men into eternity: the one inexorable, icy, impassive, obeying the sad laws of destruction; the Death of Holbein, the Death in the cemetery of Bâle, the Death which is ever intermingled with life, hiding its skeleton face under the most capricious of masks, veiling its bony body beneath the king's mantle, in the gilded dress of the courtesan, under the filthy rags of the beggar, walking side by side with us; an invisible but ever present spectre; a lugubrious guest, a sepulchral comrade, the supreme friend who receives us in its arms when we fall over the edge of life, and who gently lays us to rest for ever under the cold damp stones of the tomb;—the other, sister of the above, daughter too of Erebus and of Night, unexpected, spiteful, lies in ambush at a turning-point of happiness or prosperity, ready like a vulture or a panther to pounce or spring out upon its prey; this is the Death of Orcagna, the Death of the Campo-Santo in Pisa; Death in life, envious, with cadaverous hue, hair flying wildly in the wind, eyes flashing like those of a lynx, the Death which took Petrarch in the midst of his triumph, Raphael in the midst of his love affairs; before whom all joy and glory and riches pale; that power which, passing rapidly, heedlessly and inexorably over the unfortunate victims who appeal to it, strikes down in the midst of their flowers, their wine and their perfumes, the handsome youth crowned with myrtle, the lovely maiden rose-crowned, the laurel-wreathed poet, and drags them brutally to the grave, their eyes open, their hearts yet beating, their arms stretched out towards the light, the day and the sunshine! Orcagna! Orcagna, great sculptor, great painter and, above all, great poet! how many times have I trembled as I touched the hand of a beloved child, or kissed the face of a mistress who had made me happy! for I had an inward vision of that Death of the Campo-Santo at Pisa, passing in the distance, dark, threatening like a sailing cloud; then, the next day, I heard the words, "He is dead!" or "She is dead!" and it was almost always a young genius whose light had gone out, a young soul that had gone to its Maker.
This then, was the world de Leuven had seen during his stay in Paris, and he brought a reflection of its unknown brilliance to me, the poor provincial lad, buried in the depths of a little town. De Leuven had done more than look into it: he had entered the tabernacle, he had touched the ark! He had been permitted the honour of having some of his work read before M. Poirson, the high priest of the Gymnase, and before his sacristan, M. Dormeuil. Of course the work was declined after it had been read; but—like the pebble which lies near the rose and shares the scent of the queen of flowers—there remained to de Leuven, from his declined work, an entry into the green-rooms. Oh! that entree to the green-rooms, what a weariness it is to those who have attained it, whilst by those who have not attained it, it is regarded as the most coveted thing on earth! Adolphe, however, had been in it for such a short time that ennui had not yet had time to spring up, and so the dazzling glow of the honour still remained with him. It was the spirit of this enchantment which he transferred to me. At that time, Perlet was at his best, Fleuriet in the heyday of her beauty, Léontine Fay at the height of her popularity. The latter, poor child, at the age of eight or nine, had been forced to learn a craft in which a grown-up woman might have succumbed; but what did that matter? They had consoled themselves in advance for everything, even for her death; for they had already made so much money out of her, that, in the event of her death, they could afford to go to her burial in fine style.
Adolphe's return, then, was a great event to me; like Don Cléophas, I hung on the cloak of my fine diable boiteux, and he, telling me what he had seen in the theatres, made me see also. What long walks we took together! How many times did I stop him, as he passed from one artiste to another, saying, after he had exhausted all the celebrities of the Gymnase, "And Talma? And Mademoiselle Mars and Mademoiselle Duchesnois?" And he good-naturedly held forth upon the genius and talent and good-fellowship of those eminent artistes, playing upon the unknown notes of the keyboard of my imagination, causing ambitious and sonorous chords to vibrate within me that had hitherto lain dormant, the possession of which astonished me greatly when I began to realise their existence. Then poor Adolphe little by little conceived a singular idea, which was to make me share, on my own behalf, the hopes he had indulged in for himself; to rouse in me the ambition to become, if not a Scribe, an Alexandre Duval, an Ancelot, a Jouy, an Arnault or a Casimir Delavigne, at least a Fulgence, a Mazère or a Vulpian. And it must be admitted the notion was ambitious indeed; for, I repeat, I had never received any proper education, I knew nothing, and it was not until very much later, in 1833 or 1834, on the publication of the first edition of my Impressions de Voyage, that people began to perceive I had genius. In 1820 I must confess I had not a shadow of it.
A week before Adolphe's return had brought to me the first vivifying gleam of light from the outside world 3 the hemmed-in and restricted life of a provincial town had seemed to me the limit of my ambition, a salary of say fifteen or eighteen hundred francs 3 for I never dreamt of becoming a solicitor: first because I had no vocation for it; for although I had spent three years in copying deeds of sale, bonds and marriage contracts, at Maître Mennesson's, I was no more learned in the law than I was in music, after three years of solfeggio with old Hiraux. It was evident, therefore, that the law was no more my vocation than music, and that I should never expound the Code any better than I played on the violin. This distressed my mother dreadfully, and all her kind friends said to her—
"My dear, just listen to what I say: your son is a born idler, who will never do anything."
And my mother would heave a sigh, and say, as she kissed me, "Is it true, my dear boy, what they tell me?"
And I would answer naïvely, "I don't know, mother!"
What else could I reply? I could see nothing beyond the last houses in my natal town, and even though I might find something that responded to my heart inside the city boundary, I searched in vain therein for anything that could satisfy my mind and imagination.
De Leuven made a gap in the wall which closed me in, and through that gap I began to perceive something to aim at as yet undefined on the infinite horizon beyond.
De la Ponce also influenced me at this period. As before related, I had translated with him the beautiful Italian romance—or rather diatribe—of Ugo Foscolo, that imitation of Goethe's Werther which the author of the poem called Sépulcres contrived, by dint of patriotic feeling and talent, to develop into a national epic. Moreover, de la Ponce, who wished to make me regret that I had abandoned the study of the German language, translated for my benefit Bürger's beautiful ballad Lénore. The reading of this work, which belonged to a type of literature of which I was completely ignorant, produced a deep impression on my mind; it was like one of those landscapes one sees in dreams, in which one dares not enter, so different is it from everyday surroundings. The terrible refrain which the sinister horseman repeats over and over again to the trembling betrothed whom he carries off on his spectre-steed,
"Hourra!—fantôme, les morts vont vite!"
bears so little resemblance to the conceits of Demoustier, to Parny's amorous rhymes or to the elegies of the Chevalier Bertin, that the reading of the tragic German ballad made a complete revolution in my soul. That very night, I tried to put it into verse; but, as may well be understood, the task was beyond my powers. I broke the wings of my poor fledgeling Muse, and I began my literary career as I had begun my first love-making, by a defeat none the less terrible because it was a secret one, but quite as incontestable in my own estimation.
What mattered it? These were indubitably my first steps towards the future God had destined, untried totterings like the steps of a child just learning to walk, who stumbles and falls as soon as he tears himself away from his nurse's leading-strings, but who picks himself up again and, aching after every fall, continues to advance, urged forward by hope, which whispers in his ear, "Walk, child, walk! it is by means of suffering that you become a man, by perseverance that you become great!"
[CHAPTER III]
The Cerberus of the rue de Largny—I tame it—The ambush—Madame Lebègue—A confession
Six months passed by between my first love-makings and my first attempts at work. Besides our meetings at Louise Brézette's every night, Adèle and I used to see each other two or three times a week, in the summer-house, which, to our great delight, her mother had allowed her to have as her new chamber. It was necessary for Adèle to open the door of the passage-way for me, and for me to pass in front of her mother's bedroom door: these two courses were fraught with so many dangers that I had for a long time been contemplating some other means of access to my lady-love. After much pondering, I settled upon a way. I carefully examined the topography of the surrounding district and discovered, three doors off Adèle's house, a door, which led through a kind of passage into a small garden. One wall and two hedges separated this garden from Adèle's. I carefully studied the position all round, from Adèle's garden, to which I had free entree during the daytime, and I saw that all difficulties would be overcome if I could open the street door, cross the passage, enter the garden, scale the wall and stride over the two hedges. Then I had only to knock on the outside shutter, Adèle would open to me, and the thing would be done. But, as I had noticed, the door had to be opened and the passage crossed.
The door was locked, and the passage was guarded at night by a dog who was less a match from his size and from the fight he might make, than from the noise he could set up. It took me a week to make my investigations. One night I ascertained, Muphti (that was the dog's name) barking loudly all the time, that the lock only turned once, and that I could open the door with my knife-blade; the remaining seven nights I cultivated Muphti's acquaintance, seducing him little by little, by poking bits of bread and chicken bones under the door. The last two or three nights, Muphti, grown used to the windfalls I brought him, impatient for my arrival, expecting me long before I appeared, heard me come when I was twenty paces off, and, at my approach, scratched with both paws at the door and whined gently at the obstacle that separated us. On the eighth day, or rather the eighth night, feeling sure that Muphti was now no longer an enemy but an ally, I opened the door, and, according to my expectations, Muphti leapt upon me in the greatest friendliness, delighted to find himself in direct communication with a man who brought him such dainty scraps: I had only one fault to find with his greeting, namely, that it was expressed in rather too noisy a fashion. However, as all enthusiasm calms down in time, Muphti's enthusiasm died down, and, passing into expressions of a gentler affection, allowed me to venture farther. I chose, for my first attempt at housebreaking, a dark, moonless autumn night: I stepped very lightly, with my ears on the alert; I advanced without making a single grain of sand crunch beneath my feet. I thought I heard a door open behind me; I hastened my steps; I reached a large patch of beans growing up on sticks, into which I flung myself as did Gulliver in his wheat-field, with Muphti hidden between my legs, his neck held between both my hands, ready to be able to intercept the slightest sound he might wish to make—and there I waited. It was indeed one of the inhabitants to whom the passage belonged: he had heard the noise. In order to find out what caused it, he took a turn in the garden, passed within a couple of steps of me, without seeing me, coughed as though he were beginning with a cold, and went indoors again. I let Muphti go; I made for the palings; I leapt to the other side of the wall; I straddled over the two hedges, and I ran to the shutters. But I did not need to knock. Before I reached them, I heard someone breathing, I saw a shadow, I felt two trembling arms stretch out to enfold me and drag me inside the summer-house, and the door shut behind us.
Oh! had I only been a poet in those days, what ravishing lines I could have made in honour of those first flowers which flourished in the garden of our love! But, alas! I was not a poet then, and I had to be satisfied with repeating to Adèle Parny's and Bertin's elegies, which I believe only bored her. I have already remarked, apropos of Vêpres siciliennes what good taste this little girl possessed.
I left her, as usual, towards two or three in the morning. As usual, also, I returned by the park, and reached home by a roundabout way. I have explained the way I took, and how I had to leap a wide ditch so as to reach the park from the open country. In order to avoid making the same jump three or four times a week, which was a very perilous feat on dark nights, I made a very big heap of stones in one corner of the ditch, so that I had only to make for this particular corner and then make my jump in two leaps.
On this particular night, as I leapt into the ditch, I noticed a shadow four paces off me, that looked slightly less caressing than that which had awaited me in the garden, and drawn me inside the summer-house. This shadow held an actual, stout stick—not the shade of one—in all its knotty reality. Directly I attained to manhood's estate, and whenever danger faced me, whether by night or by day, I may proudly record that I always marched straight on towards that danger. I walked right up to the man with the stick. The stick rose, and I clutched it in my hand. Then followed, in that dark ditch, one of the severest tussles I have ever had in my life. I was indeed the person he was lying in wait for, the person he wished to meet. The man who was waiting for me had blackened his face; consequently I could not recognise him; but without recognising him I guessed who he was. He was a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five; I was scarcely eighteen, but I was well broken in to all physical exercises, especially to wrestling. I succeeded in taking hold of him round the body and twisting him under me. His head struck on a stone with a heavy sound. No word passed on either side; but he must have been hurt. I felt him fumbling in his pocket, and I knew he was hunting for his knife. I seized his hand above the wrist, and managed to twist him so that his fingers opened, and the knife dropped. Then, by a quick move, I got hold of the knife. For one second a terrible temptation assailed me, to do what was indeed my right, namely, to open the knife and to plunge it into my antagonist's breast. That moment a man's life hung by a thread: had my anger broken that thread, the man would have been killed! I had sufficient control over myself to get up. I still held the knife in one hand, I took the stick by the other, and, fortified by these two weapons, I allowed my adversary to rise too. He took a step backwards, and stooped to pick up the stone against which he had hurt his head; but just as he was lifting himself up, I hit him with the end of the stick on the chest and he fell back ten paces. This time he seemed to lose consciousness completely, for he did not get up again. I climbed the embankment from the ditch and got away from the place as fast as I could: this unexpected attack had revealed such a spirit of hatred that I feared treachery might follow. No one else put in an appearance, and I reached home very much upset, I must confess, by this incident. I had certainly escaped from one of the most serious dangers I had ever incurred in my life.
This event brought very serious consequences to a person who had had nothing to do with the affair, and led me to commit the only evil action I have to reproach myself with during the course of my life. The blame attaching to this evil deed is all the greater as it was committed against a woman. I can only say that it was committed without any premeditation. I reached home, as I have said, very glad to have escaped with nothing worse than a few bruises, and very proud at the end of the fray to have overthrown my enemy.
Next morning I went to de la Ponce. As such an attack might be renewed under more disadvantageous circumstances than those from which I had just escaped, I wanted to borrow from him the pocket-pistols I had seen in his rooms. It was difficult to borrow them from him without telling him why I wanted them. I told him. But as it would have revealed, or almost revealed, the house I came away from, if I had told him the true locality of the struggle, I indicated another place altogether. I selected, hap-hazard, a spot near the manège, in a little narrow street, where three houses had their entrances. The first of these three houses was inhabited by Hippolyte Leroy, the ex-body-guardsman of whom I have already spoken in connection with our misadventures at M. Collard's, and who was soon to become my cousin by marrying Augustine; the second by the de Leuven family; and the third by the lawyer to whom Maître Mennesson had related the misadventures of my early love-making and who, as I have already mentioned, had married Éléonore, the second daughter of M. Deviolaine by his first marriage. I have related also, when speaking of M. Lebègue, how the charming nature and sociable spirit of his wife had roused suspicion and dislike in a little town, where superiority of any kind is a reason for jealousy. Now I had told others besides de la Ponce of the nocturnal attack of which I had very nearly been a victim; and to others also, as well as to de la Ponce, in order to divert suspicions, I had mentioned the same locality by the manège of which I have just spoken. Where could I have been coming from, at two in the morning, when I was attacked near the manage! It could not have been from Hippolyte Leroy's; it could not have been from Adolphe de Leuven's. It must then have been from M. Lebègue's—or rather, from Madame Lebègue's. This wicked suggestion, entirely incorrect as it was, could only be supported by some semblance of a foundation.
I was a very easy prey to being teased, perhaps because I laid myself open to it by my defenceless condition, and neither Madame Lebègue nor her sisters spared me. Madame Lebègue was pretty, witty and a flirt: she waved the most charming and gracious gestures imaginable to her friends at a distance; whilst at closer quarters she allowed them to look at, admire and even kiss her hand, with that aristocratic indifference assumed by women who are the possessors of pretty hands. It was her only sin, poor woman. The crime was great, but the hand was pretty. I was exceedingly fond of Madame Lebègue; I liked her, I can confess to-day, with a feeling that might even have got beyond the bounds of friendly affection, if she had consented to more; but she had never given me the least encouragement, and whenever I was near her, her superior wit, her woman-of-the-world manners, her fine-lady airs, would send me into the deepest depths of that shyness of which I had given such glaring proofs during my earliest love-makings.
One day, without knowing whence this rumour had sprung, without suspecting the cause that had given rise to it, I heard it whispered that I was Madame Lebègue's lover. I ought at once to have quenched this rumour with indignant denials; I ought to have treated the calumny with the justice it deserved. I was wicked enough to refute it half-heartedly, and in such a fashion that my vain denial bore every appearance of a confession. And of course the ill-natured rumour served my own purposes to perfection. Poor silly fool that I was! I had a momentary delight, an hour's pride, in this rumour, which ought to have made me blush with shame, for I had allowed an untrue statement to be believed. I soon suffered for my mean action. First of all, the rumour set me at variance with the person herself whom it concerned: Madame Lebègue thought me more guilty than I was; she accused me of having started the scandal. She was mistaken there: I had allowed it to live, allowed it to grow, that was all. True, that was bad enough. She forbade me her house, the house my mother and I both loved, and it became hostile to us both ever after. Madame Lebègue never forgave me. On two or three occasions during my life I have felt the prick of the needle of the vengeance she vowed against me. I never attempted to return the injuries received; I felt, in my heart of hearts, I had deserved them. Whenever since I have met Madame Lebègue, I have turned away my head and lowered my eyes before her glance. The guilty one tacitly confessed his crime. To-day he openly avows it. But now the confession has been made, I can boldly face the rest of the world of men or women and say, "You may look me in the face and try to make me blush, if you can!"
The day after my struggle I had the curiosity to visit the scene of battle. I had not been mistaken: the stone on which my enemy's head had crashed was stained with blood at its sharpest end, and the colour of a few hairs, stuck to the bloody stone, confirmed my suspicions—which now became a definite certainty when furnished with this last proof. That night I saw Adèle: she was still ignorant of what had happened to me. I told her everything; I told her whom I suspected: she refused to believe it.
Just at that moment, a surgeon, named Raynal, went past; I had seen him that morning come from the direction which led to the house of my wounded enemy. I went up to him.
"What is the matter?" I asked him. "Why have you been sent for this morning?"
"What is the matter, boy?" he replied in his Provençal accent.
"Yes."
"Why, he cannot have seen plainly last night, and, hurrying home, he gave himself a knock in the chest against a carriage pole. It was such a violent blow that he fell on his back and split his head open in falling."
"When shall you pay him a second visit?"
"To-morrow, at the same time as to-day."
"Very well, doctor; tell him from me that, last night, passing by the same place where he fell, after him, I found his knife, and I send it back to him. Tell him, doctor, that it is a good weapon, but that, nevertheless, a man who has no other arms but this with him is unwise to attack a man who possesses two such pistols as these...."
I fancy the doctor understood.
"Oh yes; very good," he said. "I'll tell him, never fear."
I presume that the man who owned the knife also understood, for I never heard the matter spoken of again, although, fifteen days later, I danced vis-à-vis with him at the park ball.
[CHAPTER IV]
De Leuven makes me his collaborator—The Major de Strasbourg—My first couplet-Chauvin—The Dîner d'amis—The Abencérages
I had naïvely told de Leuven of my failure to translate Bürger's beautiful ballad; but as he had made up his mind to make me a dramatic author, he consoled me by telling me it was his father's opinion that some German works were absolutely untranslatable, and that the ballad of Lénore was first among these. Seeing that de Leuven did not lose hope, I gradually regained mine. I may even venture to say that, a few days after this, I achieved a success.
Lafarge had laughed hugely at de Leuven's idea of making me his collaborator. For, indeed, what notice would the Parisian stage take of an uneducated child; a poor provincial lad, buried away in a small town in the Ile-de-France; ignorant both of French and foreign literatures; hardly acquainted with the names of the great; feeling only a tepid sympathy with their most highly praised masterpieces, his lack of artistic education having veiled their style from him; setting to work without knowing the theory of constructing a plot, an action, a catastrophe, a dénoûment; having never read to the end of Gil Blas, or Don Quixote, or le Diable boiteux—books which are held by all teachers to be worthy of universal admiration, and in which, I confess to my shame, the man who has succeeded to the child does not even to-day feel a very lively interest; reading, instead, all that is bad in Voltaire, who was then regarded as the very antithesis of politics and religion; having never opened a volume of Walter Scott or of Cooper, those two great romance-writers, one of whom understood men thoroughly, the other of whom divined God's workings marvellously; whilst, on the contrary, he had devoured all the naughty books of Pigault-Lebrun, raving over them, le Citateur in particular; ignorant of the name of Goethe, or Schiller, or Uhland, or André Chénier; having heard Shakespeare mentioned, but only as a barbarian from whose dunghill Ducis had collected those pearls called Othello, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, but knowing by heart his Bertin, his Parny, his Legouvé, his Demoustier.
Lafarge was unquestionably in the right, and Adolphe must have had plenty of time to waste to undertake such a task, the hopelessness of which alone could take away from its ridiculousness. But Adolphe, with that Anglo-German stolidness of his, manfully persevered in the work undertaken, and we sketched out a scheme of a comedy in one act, entitled the Major de Strasbourg: it was neither good nor bad. Why the Major of Strasbourg, any more than the Major of Rochelle or of Perpignan? I am sure I cannot tell. And I have also completely forgotten the plot or development of that embryonic dramatic work.
But there was one incident I have not forgotten, for it procured me the first gratification my amour-propre received. It was the epoch of patriotic pieces; a great internal reaction had set in against our reverses of 1814 and our defeat of 1815. The national couplet and Chauvinism were all the rage: provided you made Français rhyme with succès at the end of a couplet, and lauriers with guerriers, you were sure of applause. So, of course, de Leuven and I were quite content not to strike out any fresh line, but to follow and worship in the footsteps of MM. Francis and Dumersan. Therefore our Major de Strasbourg was of the family of those worthy retreating officers whose patriotism continued to fight the enemy in couplets consecrated to the supreme glory of France, and to the avenging of Leipzig and Waterloo on the battlefields of the Gymnase and the Varies. Now, our major, having become a common labourer, was discovered by a father and son, who arrived on the scene, I know not why, at the moment when, instead of digging his furrows, he was deserting his plough, in order to devote himself to the reading of a book which gradually absorbed him to such an extent that he did not see the entrance of this father and son—a most fortunate circumstance, since the brave officer's preoccupation procured the public the following couplet:—
JULIEN (apercevant le major)
N'approchez pas, demeurez où vous etes:
Il lit ...
LE COMTE
Sans doute un récit de combats,
Ce livre?
JULIEN (regardant par-dessus l'épaule du major, et revenant à son père)
C'est Victoires et Conquêtes.
LE COMTE
Tu vois, enfant, je ne me trompais pas:
Son cœur revole aux champs de l'Allemagne!
Il croit encor voir les Français vainqueurs....
JULIEN
Mon père, il lit la dernière campagne,
Car de ses yeux je vois couler des pleurs.
When my part of the work was done, I handed it over to de Leuven, who, I ought to mention, was very indulgent to me; but this time, when he came to the couplet I am about to quote, his indulgence ascended into enthusiasm: he sang the couplet out loud—
"Dis-moi, soldat, dis-moi, t'en souviens-tu?"
He sang it over twice, four times, ten times, interrupting himself to say—
"Oh! oh! that couplet will be done to death if the Censorship lets it pass."
For, from that time, the honourable institution called the Censorship was in full vigour, and it has gone on increasing and prospering ever since.
I confess I was very proud of myself; I did not think such a masterpiece was in me. Adolphe ran off to sing the couplet to his father, who, as he chewed his toothpick, asked—
"Did you make it?"
"No, father; Dumas did."
"Hum! So you are writing a comic opera with Dumas?"
"Yes."
"Why not make room in it for your froide Ibérie? It would be just the place for it."
Adolphe turned on his heels and went off to sing my couplet to Lafarge.
Lafarge listened to it, winking his eyes.
"Ah! ah! ah!" he cried, "did Dumas compose that?"
"Yes, he made it."
"Are you sure he did not crib it from somewhere?"
Then, with touching confidence, Adolphe replied—
"I am quite certain of it: I know every patriotic couplet that has been sung in every theatre in Paris, and I tell you this one has never yet been sung."
"Then it is a fluke, and he will soon be undeceived."
De la Ponce read the couplet too; it tickled his soldierly taste, remainding him of 1814, and he took an early opportunity to compliment me on it.
Alas! poor couplet, but indifferently good though thou wert, accept nevertheless thy due meed of praise, at any rate from me. Whether gold or copper, thou wert, at all events, the first piece of literary coin I threw into the dramatic world! Thou wert the lucky coin one puts in a bag to breed more treasure therein! To-day the sack is full to overflowing: I wonder if the treasure that came and covered thee up was much better than thyself? The future alone will decide—that future which to poets assumes the superb form of a goddess and the proud name of Posterity!
The reader knows what an amount of vanity I possessed. My pride did not need to be encouraged to come out of the vase in which it was enclosed and swell like the giant in the Arabian Nights: I began to believe I had written a masterpiece. From that day I thought of nothing else but dramatic literature, and, as Adolphe was some day to return to Paris, we set ourselves to work, so that he could carry away with him a regular cargo of works of the style of the Major de Strasbourg. We never doubted that such distinguished works would meet with the success they deserved, from the enlightened public of Paris, and open out to me in the capital of European genius a path strewn with crowns and pieces of gold. What would the well-disposed people say then, who had declared to my mother that I was an idle lad and that I should never do anything? Go spin, you future Schiller! Spin, you future Walter Scott! spin!... From this time a great force awoke in my heart, which held its place against all comers: determination—a great virtue, which although certainly not genius, is a good substitute for it—and perseverance.
Unluckily, Adolphe was not a very sure guide; he, like myself, was groping blindly. Our choice of subjects revealed that truth. Our second opera was borrowed from the venerable M. Bouilly's Contes à ma fille. It was entitled le Dîner d'amis. Our first drama was borrowed from Florian's Gonzalve de Cordoue: it was entitled les Abencérages.
O dear Abencérages! O treacherous Zégris! with what crimes of like nature you have to reproach yourselves! O Gonzalve de Cordoue! what young poets you have led astray into the path upon which we entered so full of hope, from which we returned shattered and broken.
Poor lisa Mercœur! I saw her die hugging to her heart that Oriental chimera; only she stuck fast to it, like a drowning man to a floating plank; while we, feeling how little it was to be relied on, had the courage to abandon it and to let it float where it would on that dark ocean where she encountered it and stuck to it.
But then we did not know what might be the future of these children, wandering on the highways, whom we sought to seduce from their lawful parents, and whom we saw die of inanition, one after the other, in our arms.
These labours took up a whole year, from 1820 to 1821. During that year two great events came about, which passed unnoticed by us, so bent on our work were we, and so preoccupied by it: the assassination of the Duc de Berry, 13 February 1820; the death of Napoleon, 5 May 1821.
[CHAPTER V]
Unrecorded stories concerning the assassination of the Duc de Berry
The assassination of the Duc de Berry hastened the down-fall of M. Decazes. A singular anecdote was circulated at the time. I took it down in writing at the house of my lawyer, who was a collector of historical documents. As well as I can remember, it was as follows. Three days before the Duc de Berry's assassination, King Louis XVIII. received a letter couched in these words:—
"SIRE,—Will your Majesty condescend to receive a person at eight o'clock to-morrow night, who has important revelations to make specially affecting your Majesty's family?
"If your Majesty deigns to receive this person, let a messenger be sent at once to find a chip of Oriental alabaster, which rests on the tomb of Cardinal Caprara, at Ste. Geneviève.
"In addition to this, your Majesty must obtain, by means of some other agent, a loose sheet of paper, out of a volume of the works of St. Augustine [here the exact designation was given], the use of which will be indicated later by the writer of this letter.
"Under penalty of not obtaining any result from the promised revelations, you must not begin by sending to the Library, nor by sending at the same time to the Library and to Ste. Geneviève. The safety of the person who desires to offer good advice to His Majesty depends upon the execution of the two prescribed acts in their given order."
The letter was unsigned. The mysterious bearing of this letter attracted the attention of Louis XVIII., and he sent for M. Decazes at seven o'clock on the following morning. Please be careful to note that I am not relating a historical fact, but an anecdote from memory, which I copied something like thirty years ago. Only later and in quite different circumstances of my life, it recurred to my mind as does effaced writing under the application of a chemical preparation.
So, as indicated above, Louis XVIII. sent next morning for M. Decazes.
"Monsieur," he said, as soon as he saw him, "you must go to the church of Ste. Geneviève; you must descend to the crypt, where you will find the tomb of Cardinal Caprara, and you must bring away the thing, no matter what it is, that you will find on the tomb."
M. Decazes went, and when he reached Ste. Geneviève, he went down to the crypt. There, to his great surprise, he found nothing on the tomb of Cardinal Caprara but a fragment of Oriental alabaster. However, his orders were precise: we might rather say they were positive. After a moment's hesitation, he picked up the bit of alabaster and took it back to the Tuileries. He expected the king to jeer at the servile obedience that brought him only an object so worthless, but quite the reverse was the case, for at the sight of the bit of alabaster the king trembled. Then, taking it in his hand and examining it minutely, he placed it on his desk.
"Now," said Louis XVIII., "send a trusted messenger to the Royal Library; he must ask for the works of St. Augustine, the 1669 edition, and in volume 7, between pages 404 and 405, he will find a sheet of paper."
"But, sire," asked M. Decazes, "why should not I myself go rather than entrust this commission to another?"
"Out of the question, mon enfant!" "Mon enfant" was the pet name by which the king called his favourite minister.
A trusted messenger was sent to the Royal Library: he opened St. Augustine at the given pages and found the paper described. It was a simple matter to take it away. The paper was a very thin, blank folio sheet oddly snipped here and there. While Louis XVIII. was searching for the mysterious revelations hidden in the jagged paper the secretary brought him a missive containing a leaf of the same size as that from the St. Augustine, but inscribed with apparently unintelligible letters. At the corner of the envelope in which this leaf came were written the two words: "Most urgent." The king understood that there was a connection between the two events and a likeness between the two leaves. He placed the cut sheet of paper over the written sheet and saw that the letters shown up through the holes in the upper leaf made sense. He dismissed the secretary and intimated to M. Decazes to leave him alone, and when both had gone, he made out the following lines:—
"King, thou art betrayed! Betrayed by thy minister and by the P.P. of thy S——.
"King, I alone can save thee. MARIANI."
The reader will understand that I do not hold myself responsible for this note any more than for the rest of the anecdote. The king did not mention this note to anyone; but, that evening, the Minister of the Police,[1] who was dismissed next day, issued orders to find a man named Mariani.
The following day, which was Sunday the 13th of February, the king on opening his prayer-book at mass found this note inside:—
"They have found out what I wrote; they are hunting for me. Do your utmost to see me, if you would avoid great misfortunes for your house. I shall know if you will receive me, by means of three wafers which you should stick inside the panes of your bedroom windows."
Although the king was greatly interested by this last letter of advice, he did not think it sufficiently urgent to attend to it as directed. He waited and hesitated, and then left matters till the morrow. That evening there was a special performance at the Opera, when Le Rossignol, les Noces de Gamache, and le Carnaval de Venise were played. The Duc and Duchesse de Berry were present. About eleven o'clock, at the close of the second act of the ballet, the duchess, feeling tired, told her husband that she wished to leave. The prince would not allow her to go alone, but himself conducted her out of the Opera House. When he reached their carriage, which stood in the rue Rameau, just as he was helping the princess up the step, and saying to her, "Wait for me, I will rejoin you in a moment," a man darted forward rapidly, passed like a flash of lightning between the sentinel on guard at the door of exit and M. de Clermont-Lodève, the gentleman-in-waiting, seized the prince by the left shoulder, leant heavily against his breast and plunged a thin, sharp small-sword, with a boxwood hilt, in his right breast. The man left the weapon in the wound, knocked three or four curious bystanders spinning and disappeared immediately round the corner of the rue de Richelieu and under the Colbert Arcade. For the moment nobody noticed that the prince was wounded; he himself had hardly felt any pain beyond the blow of a fist.
"Take care where you are going, you clumsy fellow!" M. de Choiseul, the prince's aide-de-camp, had exclaimed, pushing the assassin to one side, thinking he was simply an unduly inquisitive bystander. Suddenly the prince lost his breath, grew pale and tottered, crying out, as he put his hand to his breast—
"I have been assassinated!"
"Impossible!" exclaimed those about him.
"See," replied the prince, "here is the dagger." And giving effect to his words, he drew out and held up the bloodstained sword from his breast. The carriage door had not yet been shut. The duchess sprang out, trying to catch her husband in her arms; but the prince was already past standing, even with this support. He fell gently back into the arms of those surrounding him, and was carried into the drawing-room belonging to the king's box. There he received immediate attention.
By the mere appearance of the wound, the shape of the dagger and the length of its blade, the doctors recognised the serious nature of the case, and declared that the prince must not be taken to the Tuileries. They therefore carried him to the suite of rooms occupied by M. de Grandsire, the Secretary to the Opera Company, who lived at the theatre. By a singular coincidence, the bed on which the dying prince was laid was the same on which he had slept the first night of his joyful re-entry into France. M. de Grandsire was at that time at Cherbourg and he had lent this very bed to put in the Duc de Berry's room. Here the prince learnt the arrest of his murderer. He asked his name. They told him it was Louis-Pierre Louvel. He seemed to search his memory and then, as if speaking to himself, he said, "I cannot recollect ever having injured this man."
No, prince, no, you did nothing to him; but you bear on your forehead the fatal seal which carries the Bourbons to the grave or into exile. No, prince, you have not injured the man, but you are heir to the throne and that is sufficient in this country for the hand of God to be laid heavily upon you. Look back, prince, on what has happened to those who, for the last sixty years, have handled the fatal crown to which they aspired. Louis XVI. died on the scaffold. Napoleon died at St. Helena. The Duc de Reichstadt died at Schoenbrünn. Charles X. died at Frohsdorf. Louis-Philippe died at Claremont. And who knows, prince, where your son, the Count de Chambord, will die? Where your cousin the Count de Paris? I ask the question of you who are about to know the secret of that eternal life which hides away from us all the mysteries of life and of death. And we would further point out to you, prince, that not one of your race will die in the Tuileries, or will rest as kings in the tombs of their fathers.
But it was a good and noble heart that was about to cease to beat amidst all the distracting events of that period. And when Louis XVIII., who had been informed of the assassination, came at six in the morning, to receive his nephew's last wishes, the first words of the wounded prince were—
"Sire, pardon the man!"
Louis XVIII. neither promised nor refused to pardon.
"My dear nephew, you will survive this cruel act, I trust," he replied, "and we will then discuss the matter again. It is of grave import, moreover," he added, "and it must be looked into most carefully at some future time."
These words had scarcely been uttered by the king when the prince began to fight for his breath; he stretched out his arms and asked to be turned on his left side.
"I am dying!" he said, as they hastened to carry out his last wish.
And, indeed, they had hardly moved him when, at the stroke of half-past six, he died.
The grief of the duchess was inexpressible. She seized scissors from the mantelpiece, let down her beautiful fair hair, cut it off to the roots and threw the locks on the dead body of her husband.
The sorrow of King Louis was twofold: not knowing that the Duchesse de Berry was pregnant, he deplored even more than the death of a murdered nephew the extinction of a race.
When he withdrew to the Tuileries, he remembered the events of the two preceding days—the letter received on the very morning of the assassination, the warning of some great calamity threatening the royal family. Then, although there was nothing more to be expected from the mysterious stranger, the legend that we have given goes on to say that Louis XVIII. dragged his aching limbs to the window and stuck the three wafers on its panes as a signal of welcome to the unknown writer of the letters. Two hours later, the king received a letter wrapped in three coverings:—
"It is too late! Let a confidential person come and meet me on the pont des Arts, where I will be at eleven o'clock to-night.
"I rely on the honour of the king."
At a quarter-past eleven the mysterious stranger was introduced into the Tuileries and conducted to the king's private chamber. He remained with Louis till one o'clock in the morning. No one ever knew what passed in that interview. The next day, M. Clausel de Coussergues proposed, in the Upper House, to impeach M. Decazes as an accomplice in the assassination of the Duc de Berry.
Thus, at the same time that the Napoleonic and Liberal party were disseminating the skits against the Bourbons which we have quoted, and distributing copies of the proceedings of the Maubreuil trial, the Extreme Right was attacking by similar means the Duc d'Orléans and M. Decazes; each in turn undermining and destroying one another, to the advantage of a fourth party, which was soon to make its appearance under the cloak of Carbonarism—we mean that Republican element which Napoleon, when he was dying in the island of St. Helena, prophesied would dominate the future.
But before tackling this question, one word more about Louvel. God forbid that we should glorify the assassin, no matter to what party he belonged! We would only indicate, from the historical point of view, the difference that may exist between one murderer and another. We have related how Louvel disappeared, first round the corner of the rue de Richelieu and then under the Colbert Arcade. He was just on the point of escaping when a carriage barred his course and compelled him to slacken his pace. During this moment of hesitation, the sentinel, who had thrown down his gun to pursue him and who had lost sight of him, had a glimpse of him again and redoubled his speed, caught up with him and seized him round the waist, a waiter from a neighbouring café; at the same time seizing hold of him by his collar. When he was captured, the assassin did not attempt any fresh effort. One would have thought that from motives of self-preservation he would have struggled to escape, but his one attempt at flight seemed to satisfy him, and had they let go their hold, he would not have taken his chance to regain liberty. Louvel was taken to the guard-house below the vestibule of the Opera.
"Wretch!" exclaimed M. de Clermont-Lodève, "what can have induced you to commit such a crime?"
"The desire to deliver France from one of its cruellest enemies."
"Who paid you to carry out the deed?"
"Paid me!" cried Louvel, tossing his head,—"paid me!" Then with a scornful smile he added, "Do you think one would do such a thing for money?"
Louvel's trial was carried to the Upper Chamber. On 5 June he appeared before the High Court. On the following day he was condemned to death. Four months had been spent in trying to find his accomplices, but not one had been discovered. He was taken back to the Conciergerie, an hour after his sentence had been pronounced, and one of his warders came to him.
"You would like," said the man to the prisoner, who throughout his trial had preserved the utmost calm and even the greatest decorum,—"you would like to send for a priest?" "What for?" asked Louvel.
"Why, to ease your conscience."
"Oh, my conscience is at ease: it tells me I did my duty."
"Your conscience deceives you. Listen to what I say and make your peace with God: that is my advice."
"And if I confess, do you suppose that will send me to Paradise?"
"May be: the mercy of God is infinite."
"Do you think the Prince de Condé, who has just died, will be in Paradise?"
"He should be, he was an upright prince."
"In that case, I would like to join him there; it would amuse me vastly to plague the old émigré."
The conversation was here interrupted by M. de Sémonville, who came to try and extract information from the prisoner. Finding he could not get anything from him, he said to Louvel—
"Is there anything you want?"
"Monsieur le comte," replied the condemned man, "I have had to sleep between such coarse sheets in prison, I would like some finer ones for my last night."
The request was granted. Louvel had his fine sheets and slept soundly between them from nine at night till six o'clock the next morning. On 6 June, at six in the evening, he was taken from the Conciergerie: it was the time of the famous troubles of which we shall speak presently. The streets were blocked, and there were spectators even on the roofs. He wore a round red cap and grey trousers, and a blue coat was fastened round his shoulders. The papers next day announced that his features were changed and his gait enfeebled.
Nothing of the kind: Louvel belonged to the family of assassins to which Ravaillac and Alibaud were akin—that is to say, he was a man of stout courage. He mounted the scaffold without bombast and also without any trace of weakness, and he died as men do who have sacrificed their lives to an idea.
His cell was the last in the Conciergerie, to the right, at the bottom of the corridor; it was the same in which Alibaud, Fieschi and Meunier had been kept.
[1] M. Decazes, Ministre de l'Intérieur, had charge of the police.
[CHAPTER VI]
Carbonarism
I will now (1821) give some details of the Carbonari movement—a subject on which Dermoncourt and I had held long conversations. Dermoncourt was an old aide-decamp of my father, whose name I have often mentioned in the earlier chapters of these Memoirs—he was one of the principal leaders in the conspiracy of Béfort.
You will recollect the troubles of June; the death of young Lallemand, who was killed whilst trying to escape and was accused after his death of having disarmed a soldier of the Royal Guard. It was thought that the dead could be accused with impunity. But his father defended him. The Censorship—sometimes a most infamous thing—prevented the poor father's letter from appearing in the papers. M. Lafitte had to take his letter to the Chambers and to read it there before he could make its contents known to the public. I give it in the form in which Lallemand sent it to the newspapers, when they refused to publish it:—
"SIR,—Yesterday my son was beaten to death by a soldier of the Royal Guard; to-day he is defamed by the Drapeau blanc, the Quotidienne and the Journal des Débats. I owe it to his memory to deny the fact cited by those papers. The statement is false! My son did not attempt to disarm one of the Royal Guard; he was walking past unarmed when he received from behind the blow that killed him. LALLEMAND"
The military conspiracy of 19 August was the outcome of the troubles of June. The chief members of the lodge Des Amis de la Verité were involved in that conspiracy. They afterwards separated. Two of the affiliated members, MM. Joubert and Dugier, set out for Italy. They reached Naples in the midst of the Revolution of 1821—a Revolution during which patriots were shamefully betrayed by their leader, François. The two named above threw themselves into the Revolution and were affiliated to the Italian Carbonari, while Dugier returned to Paris, a member of a higher grade in the Society. This institution, as yet unknown in France, had greatly appealed to Dugier, and he hoped to be able to establish it in France. He set forth the principles and aims of the Society to the executive council of the lodge des Amis de la Vérité on whom they produced a profound impression. Dugier had brought back with him the rules of the Italian Society and he was authorised to translate them. This task he accomplished; but the type of religious mysticism which formed the basis of these rules was not in the least congenial to French minds. They adopted the institution, minus the details which, at that epoch, would have made it unpopular; and M. Buchez—the same who on 15 May had tried to make Boissy-Anglas forgotten—and MM. Bazard and Flottard were deputed to establish the French Carbonari upon a basis better suited to French conditions of mind and thought. On 1 May 1821, three young men, then unknown, none of them thirty years old, met for the first time in the depths of one of the poorest quarters of the capital, in a room which was very far removed from representing, even to its owner, the golden mean spoken of by Horace. They sat at a round table, and with grave and even gloomy faces—for they were not ignorant of the terrible work to which they were going to devote their lives—they defined the first tenets of that Society of Carbonari which changed the France of 1821 and 1822 into one vast volcanic disturbance whose flames' burst out at the most opposite and unexpected quarters, at Effort, la Rochelle, Nantes and Grenoble. What was still more remarkable, the work which these three revolutionary chemists were preparing had only one object in view, namely, to draw up a code for future conspirators, leaving everyone perfectly free to agitate against anything he individually chose, provided he conformed to the main rules of the association. The following is a résumé of these rules: "Since might is not right, and the Bourbons have been brought back by foreigners, the Carbonari band together to secure for the French nation free exercise of their rights—namely, the right to choose what form of government may be most suited to the country's needs."
It will be seen that nothing was clearly defined; but in reality a Republican form of government was being shadowed forth. This, however, was not to be proclaimed until thirty-seven years later, and only then to be struck dead from its birth, by the very hand to which it owed its being. It need hardly be said that the hand was the hand of Napoleon: it is a family tradition of the Napoleons to strangle liberty as soon as it has produced a first consul or a president; even as in the case of those beautiful aloes which only flower once in fifty years and perish when they have brought forth their brilliant but ill-fated blossoms, which are but barren and deadly flowers.
The division of the Carbonari into higher, central and private lodges is well known. None of these lodges was allowed to contain more than twenty members—thus avoiding the penal law directed against societies which comprised over twenty members. The Higher Lodge was composed of the seven founders of the Carbonari. These seven founders were Bazard, Dugier, Flottard, Buchez, Carriol, Joubert and Limperani. Each Carbonaro was expected to keep a pistol and fifty cartridges in his house, and he had to hold himself in readiness to obey orders sent him by his commanders from the Higher Lodge, whether by day or night.
While the Society of Carbonari was being organised with its upper lodge of seven members above named, something of the same kind of thing was being established in the Chamber—only less active, vital and determined in character. It was called the Comité directeur, and its title sufficiently indicates its purpose. This Comité directeur was composed of General la Fayette, his son Georges de la Fayette, of Manuel, Dupont (de l'Eure), de Corcelles senior, Voyer-d'Argenson, Jacques Koechlin, General Thiars and of MM. Mérilhou and Chevalier. For military questions the committee added Generals Corbineau and Tarayre. The Comité directeur and the Higher Lodge were in close communication with one another. At first their meetings were only intended for general discussions; for the young Carbonari treated the old Liberals with contempt, and the latter reciprocated the feeling. The Carbonari charged the Liberals with feebleness and vacillation; the Liberals, in their turn, accused the Carbonari of impertinence and frivolity. They might as well have accused one another of youth and age. Furthermore, the Carbonari had organised the whole plot of Béfort without saying a single word to the Comité directeur.
However, Bazard was in league with la Fayette, and well aware of the general's burning desire after popularity. Now, popular feeling in 1821 was on the side of the party in opposition. The farther they advanced, the more popular they became. Bazard wrote to the general asking him to authorise the use of his name as of one in co-operation with them, and the request was granted. La Fayette possessed this admirable characteristic: he yielded at the first pressure, without having taken the initiative personally, and he went farther and more to the point than most people. The secrets of the Upper Lodge were revealed to him and he was asked to join it. He accepted the invitation, was received into their number and became one of the most active conspirators of Béfort. In this he risked his head, just as much as did the humblest of the confederates. The boldest members of the Chamber followed him and enlisted with him in the same cause. These were Voyer-d'Argenson, Dupont (de l'Eure), Manuel, Jacques Koechlin and de Corcelles senior. They did not have long to wait for a recognition of their self-sacrificing devotion. When the Revolution was set afoot they adopted the groundwork of the constitution of the year III. Five directors were appointed, and these five were la Fayette, Jacques Koechlin, de Corcelles senior, Voyer-d'Argenson and Dupont (de l'Eure).
Carbonarism had its military side; indeed it was more military than civil in character. They relied strongly and with good reason upon the army in all their movements. The army was abandoned by the king, abused by the princes, sacrificed to privileged parties and three parts given over to the Opposition. Lodges were established in most regiments, and everything was so well arranged that even the very movements of the regiments served as a means of propaganda. In leaving the town where the president of the military lodge had been quartered for three months, six months or a year, as the case might be, he received half a piece of money, the other half being sent on in advance to the town where his regiment was going—either to a member of the Higher or Central Lodge. The two halves of the coin were fitted together, and the conspirators were thus put into communication. By this means soldiers became commercial travellers, as it were, charged with the spread of revolution throughout France. Thus we shall find that all insurrections which broke out were as much military as civil.
Towards the middle of 1821 all plans were laid for a rising in Bordeaux as well as at Béfort, at Neuf-Brisach as well as at Rochelle, at Nantes and Grenoble, at Colmar and at Toulouse. France was covered with an immense network of affiliated societies, so that the revolutionary influence had expanded, unnoticed but active, into the very heart of social life, from east to west, from north to south. From Paris—that is, from the Higher Lodge—all orders were issued for the animation and support of the propaganda; as the pulsations of the heart send the life-giving blood to all parts of the human body. Everything was in readiness. Information had been received that, thanks to the influence of four young men who had been previously compromised in the rebellion of 19 August, the 29th infantry, a regiment consisting of three battalions, severally stationed at Béfort, Neuf-Brisach and at Huningue, had been won over to the Carbonari. These four young men were a guardsman called Lacombe, Lieutenant Desbordes and Second-Lieutenants Bruc and Pegulu, to whom were joined a lawyer named Petit Jean and a half-pay officer called Roussillon. Furthermore, there was Dermoncourt, who had been placed on half-pay and who lived in the market town of Widensollen, a mile away from Neuf-Brisach; he was engaged in the coming insurrection to lead the light cavalry which was stationed in barracks at Colmar. So much for the military operations.
The civil side of the conspiracy was also in motion and conducted by MM. Voyer-d'Argenson and Jacques Koechlin, who possessed factories, near Mulhouse and Béfort, and who exercised great influence over their workpeople, almost all of whom were discontented with the Government that had given back to the nobles their ancient privileges, and to the priests their old influence. These malcontents were eager to take part in any rising into which a leader might be ready to urge them. So, towards the close of 1821, the Higher Lodge in Paris received the following news:—
At Huningue, Neuf-Brisach and at Béfort the 29th infantry was stationed, commanded by Lieutenants Carrel, de Gromely and Levasseur; at Colmar was the light cavalry headed by Dermoncourt; at Strasbourg they had a stand-by in the two regiments of artillery and in the battalion of pontoniers at Metz in a regiment of engineers, and better still the military school: finally, at Spinal they had a regiment of cuirassiers, MM. Koechlin and Voyer-d'Argenson could be relied upon not only for a rising at Mulhouse, but also all along the course of the Rhine where private lodges were stationed; making a total of more than 10,000 associates amongst the retired officers, citizens, customs officers and foresters: all were men of determined character and ready to sacrifice their lives.
About this time, my poor mother, on reckoning up her income, found we were so poor that she bethought her of our friend Dermoncourt, in hopes that he might perhaps have still some relations with the Government. So she decided to write and beg him to make inquiries with respect to that unpaid pension of 28,500 francs owing to my father for the years VII and VIII of the Republic. The letter reached Dermoncourt about 20 or 22 December—eight days before the outbreak of insurrection. He replied by return of post, and on 28 December we received the following letter:—
"MY GOOD MADAME DUMAS,—What the devil possesses you to imagine that I could have maintained relations with that rabble of scoundrels who manage our affairs at the present moment? Nay, thank heaven, I have retired, I have nothing at all to do either by means of pen or sword with what is going on. Therefore, my dear lady, do not count on a poor devil like me for anything beyond my own miserable pittance of 1000 francs per annum; but look to God, who, if He does watch what goes on here below, should be very angry at the way things are done. There are two alternatives: either there is no good God, or things would not go on as they are; but I know you believe in the good God—so put your trust in Him. One of these days things will be altered. Ask your son, who must be a tall lad by now, and he will tell you that there is a saying by a Latin author called Horace to the effect that after rain comes fine weather. Keep your umbrella open, then, a little longer and, if fine weather comes, put it down and count on me.
"Be hopeful; without hope, which lingers at the bottom of every man's heart, there would be nothing left to decent folk but to blow out their brains.
"BARON DERMONCOURT"
This letter said very little and yet it said a good deal: my mother gathered that something lay behind it and that Dermoncourt was in the secret.
On the day following the receipt of our letter this is what was happening at Béfort: carrying out the plan of the conspirators, the signal was sent to Neuf-Brisach and Béfort at the same moment; and at the identical hour and day, or rather the same night, these two places took up arms and raised the tricolour standard. The insurrection took place on the night of 29-30 December. A Provisional Government was proclaimed at Béfort and then at Colmar. This Government, as we have already mentioned, consisted of Jacques Koechlin, General la Fayette and Voyer-d'Argenson. Twenty-five or thirty Carbonari had received orders to set out to Béfort. They started without a moment's delay, and arrived on the 28th in the daytime. On the 28th, just as Joubert, who had preceded them to Béfort, was preparing to leave the town in order to lead them in, he met M. Jacques Koechlin. M. Koechlin was looking for him to tell him a singular piece of news. M. Voyer-d'Argenson, who with himself and General la Fayette formed the revolutionary triumvirate, had indeed come, but had shut himself up in his factories in the valleys behind Massevaux, stating that he did not wish to receive anyone there, but that the instructions brought were to be kept for him.
"All very well, but what are we to do?" asked Joubert.
"Listen," said M. Koechlin: "I will go myself to Massevaux; I will look after d'Argenson and draw him out, willy nilly, whilst you must try by what means you can to hurry up the arrival of la Fayette."
Whereupon the two conspirators left, the one, M. Koechlin, post haste, as he said, to Massevaux, a little village off the main road, perhaps seven miles from Béfort and equidistant from Colmar; the other, Joubert, posted off to Lure, a small town on the road to Paris, twenty leagues from Béfort. There a carriage stopped, and he recognised two friendly faces inside, those of two brothers, great painters and true patriots, Henri and Ary Scheffer; with them was M. de Corcelles junior. Joubert very soon made them acquainted with what was happening. Ary Scheffer, the intimate friend of General la Fayette, retraced his steps to go and look for him at his castle of La Grange. The others returned with Joubert to Béfort to announce that the movement was delayed. Thus the 29th and 30th passed in useless waiting. On the night between those two days General Dermoncourt, becoming impatient, sent to Mulhouse an under-foreman called Rusconi, belonging to M. Koechlin. This man had been once an officer in the Italian army and had followed Napoleon to Elba. He was sent to inquire whether anything had been learnt by M. Koechlin. Rusconi set off at ten o'clock a.m., covered nine stiff leagues of country in driving rain, and reached M. Koechlin's house at ten o'clock that night: he found him entertaining ten of his friends, and he took him aside to inquire whether he had news of the conspiracy. M. d'Argenson would not budge; there was no news yet from la Fayette; it was supposed he was being detained by Manuel. In the meantime General Dermoncourt was to be patient, and he should be informed when it was time to act.
"But," demanded the messenger, "for whom is he to act?"
"Ah! there lies the difficulty," replied M. Koechlin: "the generals want Napoleon II.; the others, with Manuel at their head, want Louis—Philippe; General la Fayette wants a Republic ... but let us first overthrow the Bourbons and then all will come clear."
Rusconi left, hired a carriage, journeyed all that night, reached Colmar at ten o'clock next day, and from Colmar he went on foot to Widensollen, where he found the general ready for action. Nothing had been done during his absence. This is what had happened. Ary Scheffer had found la Fayette at La Grange. The general, who belonged to the Chamber and whose absence would have been remarked if he stayed away longer, did not wish to reach Béfort until the decisive moment. He promised to set out that night on one condition—that M. Ary Scheffer should make all speed to Paris to persuade Manuel and Dupont (de l'Eure), the last two members of the Provisional Government, to come and take part in the rebellion; he must also bring back Colonel Fabvier, a man of judgment and courage, to take command of the insurgent battalions. Ary Scheffer started for Paris, met Manuel, Dupont and Fabvier, and got Manuel and Dupont to promise to set out that same night. He took Colonel Fabvier in his carriage and again set out after la Fayette, followed by Manuel and Dupont.
Whilst this string of carriages was bearing the revolution at full speed along the road from Paris, whilst M. Jacques Koechlin, preceded by Joubert and Carrel, was nearing Béfort, and whilst Colonel Pailhès, unaware of the arrival of Fabvier, was preparing to take command of the troops, and Dermoncourt, with horse ready saddled, awaited the signal, Second-Lieutenant Manoury, one of the chief associates, was changing guard with one of his comrades and installing himself at the main gate of the town, at the same time that the other initiated members were warning their friends that the moment had come and that in all probability the rising would take place during the night of 1 January 1822. Now the evening of 1 January had come. Only a few hours more and all would burst forth. In the meanwhile night approached. At eight o'clock the roll was called. After roll-call the non-commissioned adjutant, Tellier, went the round of all the sergeant-majors, ordering them to their rooms, where each company put flints to the muskets, packed knapsacks and prepared to march. The sergeant-majors returned to supper with Manoury. Twenty paces from the place where Manoury and his sergeant-majors supped, Colonel Pailhès went to the Hôtel de la Poste to dine with a score of the insurgents, and as the host of a posting-inn is generally one of the principal ringleaders, no one was anxious, and the dining-room was decorated with tricoloured flags and cockades and eagles. And, indeed, what had they to fear? No officer occupied the barracks, and at midnight the insurrection broke out.
Alas! none knew what an accumulation of unlooked-for misfortunes was to escape out of the Pandora's box which men call fate!...
A sergeant whose six months' furlough had expired that evening and who in consequence of his long absence knew nothing of what was going forward, reached Béfort on the evening of 1 January just in time to answer to the roll-call and to assist in the preparations. When these preparations were accomplished, he wished to show proof of his promptness and zeal to his captain by going to tell him the regiment was ready.
"Ready for what?" asked the captain.
"To march."
"To march where?"
"To the place which has been appointed."
The captain gazed at the sergeant.
"What is it you say?" he asked again.
"I say that the knapsacks are packed, captain, and the flints are in the muskets."
"You are either drunk or mad," cried the captain; "take yourself off to bed."
The sergeant was just about to withdraw, in fact, when another officer stopped him and questioned him more minutely, gathering by the accuracy of his replies that it was really the truth.
"How could such an order be given unless the two captains had known of it?"
"Who gave the order?... Doubtless it must have been the lieutenant-colonel?"
"No doubt," the sergeant replied mechanically.
Both the captains rose and went to find the lieutenant-colonel. He was equally astonished and as much in the dark as they were.
The order must have come from M. Toustain, deputy-governor and commander-at-arms of the fortress of Béfort. They all three went to M. Toustain. He had not heard anything of the rumour they brought him; but suddenly an idea struck him. It was a plot. The two captains at once rushed back to the barracks to order the knapsacks to be unstrapped, the flints to be taken out of the muskets and the soldiers to be confined to the barracks.
In the meantime the deputy-governor visited the posts. The two officers rushed to the barracks and M. Toustain began his inspection. One of the first posts he came to was that guarded by Manoury. As he came nearer he saw by the light of his lantern a group of four people. This group struck him as looking suspicious and he accosted them. They were four young men dressed like citizens. The king's lieutenant interrogated them.
"Who are you, gentlemen?" he asked.
"We are citizens of this neighbourhood, commandant."
"What are your names?"
Whether from carelessness or from surprise, or whether they did not want to lie, these four youths gave their names—
"Desbordes, Bruc, Pegulu and Lacombe."
The reader will recollect that they had all four been in the insurrection of 19 August, and their names had been blazoned in the papers, so they were perfectly familiar to the deputy-governor; he called to the head of the guard, Manoury, and ordered him to arrest the four young men, to put them under a guard, and then to give him five men to go out and clear the entrance to the suburbs. Scarcely had the deputy-governor gone a hundred steps, when he perceived what looked to be twenty-five or thirty persons taking flight: some of them were in uniform; amongst them he recognised an officer of the 29th. M. Toustain sprang on him and stretched out his hand to seize him by the collar; but the officer freed himself, and presenting a pistol at close quarters, fired full at M. Toustain's chest, the bullet hitting the cross of St. Louis, which it broke and flattened. The shock was quite enough, however, to knock down the commandant. But he soon got to his feet, and as he saw that his five men were no match against thirty, he returned to the town and stopped at the guard-house to take up Bruc, Lacombe, Desbordes and Pegulu. All four had disappeared: Manoury, one of the officers, had set them free and had disappeared with them. The deputy-governor marched straight to the barracks and put himself at the head of the battalion. This he led to the market-place, sending his company of grenadiers to guard the gate of France and to arrest whoever should attempt to go out. But he was already too late—for all the insurgents were outside the town. After leaving his two chiefs, the non-commissioned officer who had let out everything met Adjutant Tellier, he who had given the order to pack up knapsacks and put flints to the guns. He told him what had happened and the measures that had been taken. Tellier realised that all was lost: he ran to the Hôtel de la Poste, and opening the door, shouted out in the midst of the supper party the terrible words—
"All is discovered!"
Two officers, Peugnet and Bonnillon, still misbelieved and offered to go to the barracks; indeed, they went. Ten minutes later they ran back: the news was but too true, and there was only just time for flight. And they fled.
That was how the deputy-governor encountered Peugnet and his friends outside the gate of France, for it was Peugnet whom he tried to arrest and who fired the pistol-shot which flattened the cross of St. Louis.
Pailhès and his supper companions had scarcely left the hotel when Carrel and Joubert arrived upon the scene. They had come to announce, in their turn, the discovery of the conspiracy. They only found in the dining-room Guinard and Henri Scheffer, who were just leaving it themselves. But not being natives of that country, they did not know where to fly! Guinard, Henri Scheffer and Joubert mounted a carriage and took the road to Mulhouse. M. de Corcelles junior and Bazard set out to meet la Fayette in order to turn him back. When near Mulhouse, Carrel quitted his three companions, took to horse and returned to Neuf-Brisach, where his battalion was stationed. At the gate of Colmar he met Rusconi on the road, the same fellow who, the evening before, had been at Mulhouse.
General Dermoncourt still waited, placing Rusconi as sentinel to bring news to him. Rusconi knew Carrel and learnt from him that all had been discovered and that the conspirators were fleeing.
"But where will you go?" asked Rusconi.
"Ma foi, I shall go to Neuf-Brisach to resume my duties."
"That does not seem to me a prudent course."
"I shall keep a look-out and at the first alarm I shall decamp.... Have you any money?"
"I have a hundred louis belonging to the conspiracy, take fifty of them."
"Give them to me, and then take my horse and go and warn the general."
The exchange was made, and Carrel continued his journey on foot, while Rusconi reached the general's country house at a gallop. The general was just rising. Rusconi acquainted him with the failure of the enterprise at Béfort, but Dermoncourt refused up to the last to believe it.
"Ah, well," he said, "the failure of Béfort must mean success at Neuf-Brisach."
"But, general," said Rusconi, "perhaps the news has already got abroad and measures have been taken to frustrate everything?"
"Then go to Colmar to make inquiries, and I will go to Neuf-Brisach: return here in two hours' time."
Each went his way. When Rusconi reached Colmar he entered the Café Blondeau for news. All was known.
Whilst making his inquiries, a magistrate who was a friend of General Dermoncourt found means to warn him that two orders of arrest had been issued, one against himself and the other against the general. Rusconi did not wait to learn more, but set off immediately for Widensollen. He arrived at midnight, and found the general was sleeping peacefully: he had been to Neuf-Brisach and had satisfied himself that all attempts at rising were now impossible after what had occurred at Béfort. At Rusconi's fresh news and at his wife's urgent entreaty, General Dermoncourt decided to leave Widensollen for Heiteren. There he sought refuge with a cousin, an old army-teacher. Two hours after their departure the soldiers and a magistrate appeared at Widensollen.
Baroness Dermoncourt sent the general word of this by their gardener, urging him to fly without a moment's loss of time. They discussed the possibility of crossing the Rhine, and decided that on the following day they would pretend to go on a hunting excursion among the islands which lay opposite Geiswasser. Geiswasser is a small hamlet situated on this side of the Rhine, inhabited by fishers and customs officers.
The pretext was all the more plausible as the islands were teeming with game and General Dermoncourt had, together with M. Koechlin of Mulhouse, rented several of them for shooting. At dawn they set out with dogs and guns. They had hired the boatmen overnight and found them ready. About nine o'clock, in a mist which prevented seeing ten paces ahead, they embarked and told the boatmen to make for mid-stream. They landed at one of the islands. Rusconi and Dermoncourt alone remained in the boat, whilst those who had nothing to be afraid of pretended to go and shoot.
"Now, my men, I have business on the other side the Rhine," the general said to the boatmen. "You must have the goodness to take me across."
The boatmen looked at each other and smiled.
"Willingly, general," they replied. A quarter of an hour later Rusconi and Dermoncourt were in Breisgau.
When he had put foot on the Grand Duke of Baden's territory, he drew a handful of sovereigns from his pocket and gave them to the boatmen.
"Thanks, general," they replied; "but there was really no need for that. We are true Frenchmen and we would not like to see a brave man like yourself shot."
These boatmen knew about Béfort and were perfectly aware that they were conducting fugitives and not a hunting party.
The general retreated to Freiburg and from there he went to Bâle. On 5 and 6 January we read the full details of the conspiracy in the papers.
The name of Dermoncourt took such a prominent part in the proceedings that we were quite sure if he were arrested his arrears of half-pay would never be settled.
These particulars explained his letter, and we were able to understand what sort of fine weather to expect after the rain. Instead of the barometer rising to "Set fair," it had dropped to "Stormy."
My poor mother was obliged to keep her umbrella open, as Dermoncourt had advised. Only the umbrella was such a dilapidated one that it no longer served to ward off showers.
In other words—to abandon our metaphor—we had come to the end of our resources.
But hope was still left me.
You ask from what quarter?
I will tell you.
[CHAPTER VII]
My hopes—Disappointment—M. Deviolaine is appointed forest-ranger to the Duc d'Orléans—His coldness towards me—Half promises—First cloud on my love-affairs—I go to spend three months with my brother-in-law at Dreux—The news waiting for me on my return—Muphti—Walls and hedges—The summer-house—Tennis—Why I gave up playing it—The wedding party in the wood
I hoped that de Leuven would be able to get our comedies and melodramas put upon the stage.
M. de Leuven, his father, finding that no stir was made about his presence in France, made up his mind to risk returning to Paris. Adolphe naturally followed his father. His departure, which under any other circumstances would have filled me with despair, now overwhelmed me with delight, our ideas being what they were. De Leuven took away our chefs-d'œuvre: we never doubted that the directors of the various theatres for which they were destined would receive them with enthusiasm!
Thanks to our two vaudevilles and our drama, we would turn aside a tributary of that Pactolus which, since 1822, had watered M. Scribe's dominions. I would set sail on that tributary, with my mother, and rejoin de Leuven in Paris. There a career would open before me, strewn with roses and bank-notes. It can be imagined how anxiously I waited Adolphe's first letters. These first letters were slow in coming. I began to feel uneasy. At last one morning the postman (or rather post-woman, an old dame, whom we called "Mother Colombe") turned her steps in the direction of our house. She held a letter in her hand; this letter was in Adolphe's handwriting and bore the Paris postmark.
The directors—for reasons Adolphe could not fathom—did not put themselves out to make that fuss over our chefs-d'œuvre he thought he had the right to expect of them. However, Adolphe did not despair of getting them a hearing. If he could not succeed in this, he would have to submit the manuscripts to the critics, which would be most humiliating! In spite of the gleams of hope which still shone through the epistle, the general tone of the letter was doleful. In conclusion, Adolphe promised to keep me well posted concerning his doings.
I awaited a second letter. The second letter was more than a month in coming. And then, alas! practically all hope had fled. The Dîner d'amis, borrowed from M. Bouilly, had not sufficient plot; the Major de Strasbourg was too much like the Soldat Laboureur, which had just been played at the Variétés with such great success.
And as for the Abencérages, every boulevard theatre had received a play on that subject for the last ten, fifteen, or twenty years.
Even supposing, therefore, that ours were received, it did not carry us far.
Still, we had not yet lost all hope in the matter of the Dîner d'amis and the Major de Strasbourg.
After vain attempts to gain access at the Gymnase and the Varietés, we tried the Porte-Saint-Martin, the Ambigue-Comique and the Gaieté.
As for the unlucky Abencérages, its fate was sealed.
I shed as bitter a tear over it as Boabdil shed over Grenada, and I awaited Adolphe's third letter with very gloomy forebodings.
Our cup of humiliation was full to the brim: we were refused everywhere. But Adolphe had several plays on the way with Théaulon, with Soulié and with Rousseau. He was going to try to get them played, and when played, he would use the influence gained by his success to demand the acceptance of one of our efforts. This was but poor comfort and uncertain expectancy. I was greatly cast down.
In the meantime an event had taken place which would have filled me with high spirits under any other circumstances. M. Deviolaine was appointed keeper of the forests of the Duc d'Orléans; he left Villers-Cotterets and went to Paris to take over the management of the forestry department. Two ways of helping me lay open to him: he could take me into his office, or he could give me open air work. Unluckily, since my affair with Madame Lebègue, the family had given me the cold shoulder. This did not discourage my mother, who saw an opening for me in one or other of these two careers, from approaching M. Deviolaine.
It will be remembered that M. Deviolaine, although he was not an old soldier, could never disguise the truth. He replied to my mother—
"Why, certainly, if your rascal of an Alexandre were not an idle lad, I could find a berth for him; but I confess I have no confidence in him. Besides, after the goings on there have been, not necessarily his, but in which at all events he has not denied a share, everybody here would make a dead set against me."
Still my mother urged her case. She saw her last hope fading.
"Very well, then," said M. Deviolaine; "give me some time to think over things, and later we will see what can be done."
I awaited my mother's return with the same impatience with which I had awaited Adolphe's letters. The result was not more satisfactory.
Two days before, we had received a letter from my brother-in-law, who was a receiver at Dreux: he invited me to spend a month or two with him. We had become so poor, alas! that the economy my absence would produce would go a long way towards compensating my mother for her loss at my departure. It was, moreover, my first absence: my mother and I had never been parted except during that wonderful visit to Béthisy, when the Abbé Fortier had given me my first lessons in hunting. There was also another person in the town from whom it was a cruel wrench to tear myself. It can be guessed to whom I refer.
Although our liaison had lasted more than three years, counting more than a year of preliminary attentions, I still loved Adèle very dearly, and the azure of our sky had hardly had so much as a light cloud upon it during that period—an almost unique experience in the annals of a courtship. Yet the poor girl had been feeling sad for some time. While I was but nineteen, she was already twenty years old; and our love-making, though delightful child's play, not only promised nothing for her future, but rather compromised it. As no one thought ill of our relations with each other, Adèle had received two or three offers of marriage, all of which she declined, either because they did not quite meet her views or because she would not sacrifice our love to them. Was she not in danger of suffering from the same disappointment which a certain hero of our acquaintance, almost a fellow-countryman, experienced? After having despised perch, carp and eel, would she not be compelled to sup with frogs? The prospect was not alluring, hence her melancholy. Poor Adèle! I perceived that my departure was as necessary for her welfare as for my own. We wept abundantly, she more than I, and it was quite natural she should shed the most tears, seeing she was to be consoled the soonest.
My going away was settled. We had now reached the month of July 1822. Only another week—eight days and eight nights!—a last week of happiness, remained to me; for some presentiment warned me that this week would be the last. The moment of parting came. We vowed fervently never to forget one another for one single hour; we promised to write to each other at least twice a week. Alas! we were not rich enough to afford the luxury of a letter a day. At last we said our final farewell. It was a cruel farewell—a separation of hearts even more than a corporeal separation.
I cannot explain how I got from Villers-Cotterets to Dreux—although I can recollect the most trivial details of my youth, almost of my babyhood. It is evident I must have gone through Paris, since that is the direct route; but how could I forget having passed through Paris? I cannot tell whether I stopped there or not. I have not the faintest recollection whether I saw Adolphe or not. I know I left Villers-Cotterets, and I found myself at Dreux! If anything could have distracted my attention, it would have been that stay with my sister and my brother-in-law. Victor, as I have already mentioned, was a delightful fellow, full of wit, of repartee, of resource. But, alas! there were too empty places in my heart which were difficult to fill.
I stayed two months at Dreux. I was there at the beginning of the shooting season. They told me a story of a three-legged hare, a sort of enchanted creature seen by all sportsmen, known by all sportsmen, shot at by all sportsmen; but after each shot the queer beast shook its ears and only ran the faster. This hare was all the better known, I might say all the more popular, because it was nearly the only one in the countryside. We had not gone a quarter of a league from the house, on the 1st of September, before a hare rose up near me. I gave chase, I fired and it rolled over. My dog brought it to me: it was the three-pawed hare! The sportsmen of Dreux united in giving me a grand dinner. The death of this strange hare, and certain shots that brought down two partridges at the same time, gave me a reputation in the department of Eure-et-Loir which has lasted until to-day. But none of these honours showered upon me, however exalted they were, could make me stay beyond the 15th of September.
Adèle's letters had become less and less frequent. Finally they ceased altogether.
I left on the 15th of September. I do not remember any more than about my going, whether I went back through Paris or not. I found myself back at Villers-Cotterets, and the news that met me on my arrival was—
"Do you know that Adèle Dalvin is going to be married?"
"No, I had not heard it, but it is quite likely," I replied.
Oh! what were the elegies of Parny on Éléonore's faithlessness, or Bertin's lamentations on the infidelity of Eucharis; oh, my God, how bloodless they seemed, when I tried to re-read them, with my own heart wounded!
Alas! poor Adèle! she was not making a love match: she was going to marry a man double her own age; he had lived for years in Spain, and he had brought home a small fortune. Adèle was making a prudent marriage.
I determined to see her the very night I returned. You remember how I paid my visits to Adèle. I entered the usual way, by slipping back the bolt of the lock, I opened the door, I met Muphti again, and he gave me such a greeting that he almost betrayed me by his demonstrations; then, with my heart thumping as it had never yet beaten, I scaled the wall and leapt over the two hedges. I felt quite ill when I was once more in the garden; I leant against a tree to get my breath. Then I went to the pavilion; but the nearer I drew, and the better I could see things in the darkness, the more I felt my heart tighten. The shutters were quite wide open, instead of being closed; the window, instead of being shut, was half open. I leant on the window-sill: everything was dark inside. I pushed the two flaps, I knelt on the sill. The room was empty: I felt the bedside with my hands; the bed was unoccupied. It was evident that Adèle had guessed I would come, that she had deserted the room, leaving it easy for me to gain an entrance therein, in order to show me her intentions. Ah yes! I guessed ... I understood everything. What good could it do to meet, since all was over between us? I sat down on the bed and I gave thanks to God for the gift of tears, since He had willed us to endure sorrow.
The marriage was fixed for fifteen days hence. During those fifteen days I kept almost entirely to the house. I went to the park on Sunday, but only to play tennis. I was very fond of that game, as of all games of skill; I was rather good at it; for I had very strong muscles and I could hold out through the longest game and sometimes even longer; this strength of mine was a terror to other players. On this particular day, when I wanted to overcome my mental feelings by great physical fatigue, I gave myself up to the game with a kind of frenzy. One ball, which I sent as high as a man, hit one of the players and knocked him down; he was the son of a brigadier de gendarmerie, called Savard. We ran up to him, and found that the ball had luckily hit him on the top of his shoulder, a little above the biceps, just where the shirt-sleeve gatherings come. Had it gone six inches higher I should have killed him on the spot, for it would have reached his temple. I threw down my racquet and I gave up the game: I have never played it since. I went home, and I tried to find distraction in working. But I could not set myself to my task: one works with heart and mind combined. Adolphe had possession of my thoughts; Adèle was in the act of breaking my heart.
The wedding-day drew near; I could not stay in Villers-Cotterets on that day. I arranged a bird-snaring party with an old comrade of mine, a playmate of my younger days, who had been somewhat neglected since de la Ponce and Adolphe had not only taken hold of my affections but were influencing my life. He was a harness-maker called Arpin.
In the evening we went to prepare our tree: it was in a lovely copse, a quarter of a league or so from the pretty village of Haramont, which I have since attempted to make famous in Ange Pitou and Conscience l'innocent. At the foot of this tree, all whose branches we cut off, to make way for our lime twigs, we built a hut of branches and covered it with fern fronds, Next day, we were at our post before daybreak; when the sun rose and shone on our stiff tree, we found the sport had begun. It was a strange thing that, although when younger I had taken such pleasure in this sport that I often lay sleepless the night before, this present snaring had no power to distract my heart from the anguish weighing upon it.
O Sorrow, thou sublime mystery by which a man's spirit is raised and his soul expanded! Sorrow, without which there would be no poetry, for poetry is nearly always made up of joy and hope in equal parts, with an equivalent amount of sorrow!
Sorrow, which leaves its trace for life; a furrow moistened by tears, whence Prayer springs, the mother of those three heavenly, noble daughters, whose names are Faith, Hope and Charity! The benediction of a poet is ever thine, O Sorrow!
We had taken bread and wine with us; we had breakfasted and had dinner; the catch was plentiful, and would have been entirely satisfactory at any other time. We had reached the day's end, the hour when the blackbird whistles or the robin sings, when the first shadows creep silently to the heart of the wood;—suddenly I was startled from my reverie (if one can so call a formless chaos of thoughts through which no light had shone) by the sharp sound of a violin and by happy shouts of laughter. Violin and laughter came nearer, and I soon began to see through the trees that a player and a wedding party were coming from Haramont and going towards Villers-Cotterets; they were taking a narrow side-path, and would pass within twenty paces of me—young girls in white dresses, youths in blue or black clothes, with large bouquets and streaming ribbons.
I put my head out of our hut and uttered a cry. This wedding party was Adèle's! The young girl with the white veil and the bouquet of orange blossom who walked in front, and gave her arm to her husband, was Adèle! Her aunt lived at Haramont. After mass they had been to the wedding breakfast with the aunt; they had gone by the high road in the morning; they were returning at night by the shorter way. This short cut, as I have said, ran within twenty paces of our hut. What I had fled from had come to find me! Adèle did not see me; she did not know that she was passing near me: she was leaning against the shoulder of the man to whom she now belonged in the eyes of man and of God, while he had his arm round her waist and held her closely to him.
I gazed for a long time on that file of white dresses which, in the growing darkness, looked like a procession of ghosts. I heaved a sigh when it had disappeared. My first dream had just vanished, my first illusion been shattered!
[CHAPTER VIII]
I leave Villers-Cotterets to be second or third clerk at Crespy—M. Lefèvre—His character—My journeys to Villers-Cotterets—The Pélerinage à Ermenonville—Athénaïs—New matter sent to Adolphe—An uncontrollable desire to pay a visit to Paris—How this desire was accomplished—The journey—Hôtel des Vieux-Augustins—Adolphe-Sylla—Talma
During my absence a place had been offered me as second or third clerk, I do not know exactly which, with M. Lefèvre, a lawyer at Crespy. It was a very desirable place, because the clerks were lodged and boarded. My keep had become such a burden on my poor mother, that she consented for the second time to part with me in order to save my food. She made up my little bit of packing—not much bigger than a Savoyard's on leaving his mountains—and off I set. It was three and a half leagues from Villers-Cotterets to Crespy: I did the journey on foot one fine evening, and I duly arrived at M. Lefèvre's.
M. Lefèvre was, at that period, a fairly good-looking man of thirty-four or thirty-five, with dark brown hair, a very pale complexion, and a well-worn appearance physically. You could recognise he was a man who had lived a long while in Paris, who had taken many permissible pleasures, and still more forbidden ones. Although M. Lefèvre was confined to a little provincial town, he might be styled a lawyer of the old school: he had ceremonious ways with his clients, ceremonious manners with us, lofty domineering airs with the world at large. M. Lefèvre seemed to say to all those who had business with him, "Pray appreciate the honour I am bestowing upon you and your town, in condescending to be a lawyer in the capital of a canton when I might have been in practice in Paris."
There was one thing that specially called forth from me feelings of admiration for M. Lefèvre, and it was this: he went to the capital, as they call it in Crespy, some eight or ten times a year, and he never lowered himself to take the diligence: when he wanted a conveyance he would call the gardener. "Pierre," he would say, "I am going to-morrow, or this evening, to Paris; see that the post-horses are ready in the chaise at such and such an hour."
Pierre would go: at the appointed hour the horses would arrive, rousing the whole district with their bells; the postillion, who still wore a powdered wig and a blue jacket with red lapels and silver buttons, would fling himself clumsily, heavily-booted, into the saddle, M. Lefèvre would stretch himself nonchalantly in the carriage, wrapped in a big cloak, take a pinch of snuff from a gold box, and say with an air of careless indifference, "Go on!" and at the word the whip cracked, the bells jingled and the carriage disappeared round the corner of the street for three or four days. M. Lefèvre never told us the day or hour of his return: he would return unawares, for he delighted in taking his world by surprise.
But M. Lefèvre was not a bad sort of man. Although cold and exacting, he was just; he rarely refused holidays when they were asked for, but, as we shall see, he never pardoned holidays taken without leave.
My brother-in-law's mother lived at Crespy, so I had a ready entree into the society of that little town. Alas! alas! what a different world it was from our three-tiered society of Villers-Cotterets of which I have spoken, and above all from our own charming little circle of friends! All the good family of Millet, with whom we had taken shelter during the first invasion, had disappeared: the mother, the two brothers, the two sisters, had all left Crespy and lived in Paris. I have since come across the mother and the eldest sister: they were both in want. I was dreadfully bored in the heart of that ancient capital of Valois! so sick of it that I very often returned home to sleep at my mother's at Villers-Cotterets, when Saturday evening came, taking my gun for a shoot on the way; then I would shoulder my gun at six on Monday morning, and, shooting all the time, I returned to Maître Lefèvre's before the office opened.
Thus things went on for three months. I had a pretty room looking into a garden full of flowers; the evening sun shone into the room; I had paper, ink and pens in abundance on my table; the food was good, I looked well enough, and yet I felt I could not possibly continue to live thus.
During one of my Sunday excursions I turned in the direction of Ermenonville. Ermenonville is about six leagues from Crespy, but what were six leagues to such legs as mine! I visited the historic places of M. de Girardin, the desert, the poplar island, the tomb of the Unknown. The poetic side to this pilgrimage revived my poor drooping Muse a little, like a wan, sickly butterfly coming out of its chrysalis in January instead of May. I set to work. I wrote partly in prose, partly in verse, and under the inspiration of a charming young society damsel named Athénaïs—who knew nothing about it-a bad imitation of the Lettres d'Émilie by Demoustier, and of the Voyages du chevalier Berlin. I sent the work to Adolphe when it was finished. Since I could not achieve success by the stage, I might perhaps attain it by publishing. I gave it the essentially novel title of Pélerinage à Ermenonville. Adolphe, naturally enough, could not do anything with it; he lost it, never found it again, and so much the better. I cannot recollect a single word of it.
As a matter of fact, Adolphe was not succeeding any better than I was. All his hopes fell to the ground, one after another, and he wrote me that we should never do anything unless we were together. But, to be together, it would be necessary to leave Crespy for Paris, and how was this to be done, in the state of my purse, which even on those happy days when my mother sent me some money never contained more than eight or ten francs.
So it was a material impossibility. But infinite are the mysteries of Providence. One Saturday in the month of November, M. Lefèvre announced to us in his usual fashion—by ordering Pierre to have the horses ready by seven next morning—that he was going to pay one of his monthly visits to Paris. Almost simultaneously with his giving this order, at the conclusion of dinner (another of his habits), the cook came and told me a friend wanted to see me. I went out. It was Paillet, my old head clerk; like myself, he had left Maître Mennesson. He was living temporarily on his farm at Vez, where he lodged in the top of a tower, compared with which the tower of Madame Marlborough, however vaunted it may be, is a mere trifle. The tower of Vez was really wonderful, the only remains left standing of a stout castle of the twelfth century—the ancient nest of vultures now peopled by rooks. Paillet had come over on horseback, to learn the price of corn, I believe. He was from time to time head clerk in the provinces or second clerk in Paris; but his real business, his actual life, was that of a property-owner. We took a turn round the ramparts. I was in full tide of pouring out my grievances to this good friend, who loved me so devotedly, and who sympathised with me to the utmost, when, all of a sudden, I struck my forehead and burst out with—
"Oh, my dear fellow, I have an idea ...!"
"What is it?"
"Let us go and spend three days in Paris."
"And what about the office?"
"M. Lefèvre goes to Paris himself to-morrow; he usually stays away two or three days; we shall have returned in two or three days' time."
Paillet felt in his pockets and drew out twenty-eight francs.
"There, that is all I possess," he said. "And you?"
"I? I have seven francs."
"Twenty-eight and seven make thirty-five! How the deuce do you think we can go to Paris on that? We need thirty francs, to begin with, simply for a carriage to get there and back."
"Wait a bit: I know a way...."
"Well?"
"You have your horse?"
"Yes."
"We will put our things into a portmanteau, we will go in our hunting-clothes, with our guns, and we will shoot along the route; we can live on the game, and so it will cost us nothing."
"How do you make that out?"
"It is simple enough: from here to Dammartin, surely we can kill a hare, two partridges and a quail?"
"I hope we can kill more than that."
"So do I, hard enough, but I am putting it at the lowest. When we reach Dammartin we can roast the hinder portion of our hare, we can jug the front half, and we can drink and eat."
"And then?"
"Then?... We will pay for our wine, our bread and our seasoning with the two partridges, and we will give the quail to the waiter as a tip.... There will only remain your horse to trouble about! Come, come, for three francs a day we shall see wonders."
"But what the dickens will people take us for?"
"What does that matter?—for scholars on a holiday."
"But we only have one gun."
"That will be all we shall need: one of us will shoot, the other will follow on horseback; in this way, as it is only sixteen leagues from here to Paris, it will only mean eight for each of us."
"And the keepers?"
"Ah! that is our worst difficulty. Whichever of us is on horseback must keep watch; he will warn the one who is poaching. The cavalier must dismount from his horse, the sportsman will get up, spur with both heels and clear out of the place at a gallop. The keeper will then come up to the cavalier, and finding him walking along with his hands in his pockets, will say, 'What are you doing here, sir?' 'I?... You can see quite well for yourself.' 'Never mind, tell me.' 'I am walking.' 'Just a minute ago, you were on horseback.' 'Yes.' 'And now you are on foot?' 'Yes.... Is it against the law for a man first to ride and then to walk?' 'No, but you were not alone.' 'Quite possible.' 'Your companion was shooting.' 'Do you think so?' 'Good heavens! why, there he is on horseback carrying his gun.' 'My dear sir, if he is there with his gun on horseback, run after him and try to stop him.' 'But I can't run after him and stop him, because he is on horseback and I am on foot.' 'In that case you will be wise, my friend, to go to the nearest village and drink a bottle of wine to our health.' And at this, one of us will hold out a twenty-sous piece to the honest fellow, which we will reckon in among our profit and loss; the gamekeeper will bow to us, go and drink our health, and we shall pursue our journey."
"Well, I never! that is not badly conceived," cried Paillet. "... They tell me you are writing things."
I heaved a sigh. "It is exactly for the purpose of going to ask de Leuven for news of the plays I have written that I want to go to Paris.... And then, once in Paris——"
"Oh!" interrupted Paillet, "once in Paris, I know a little hotel, rue des Vieux-Augustins, where I usually put up, and where I am known; once in Paris, I shall not be anxious."
"Then it is settled?"
"Why, yes!... it will be a joke."
"We will start for Paris?"
"We will."
"Very well, then, better still, let us start to-night, instead of to-morrow! We can sleep at Ermenonville, and to-morrow evening, leaving Ermenonville early, we shall be in Paris."
"Let us leave to-night."
We went our way, Paillet to his inn, to have his horse saddled; I to Maître Lefèvre's, to get my gun and to put on my shooting-clothes. A shirt, a coat, a pair of trousers and a pair of boots were sent off by the third clerk to Paillet, who stuffed them into a portmanteau; these things accomplished, I shouldered my gun and awaited Paillet outside the town. Paillet soon appeared. It was too late for shooting: our only thoughts were to gain the country. I jumped up behind. Two hours later, we were at Ermenonville.
It was the second or third time I had visited the Hôtel de la Croix: so far as I can remember, I was not a profitable customer; but my antecedents were by no means bad, rather the reverse. We were well received. An omelette, a bottle of wine and as much bread as we wanted, constituted our supper. Next day, our account, including the horse's stabling, came to six francs—leaving twenty-nine. Paillet and I looked at one another, as much as to say, "Dear me! how money does fly!" And after two or three sage noddings of the head, we continued our journey, going across country to Dammartin, where we meant to lunch. Lunch did not trouble us: it lay in the barrel of our gun, and we set forth to find it. The country round Ermenonville is full of game and well guarded; so we had hardly gone a quarter of a league before I had killed two hares and three partridges with six shots of my gun. I ought to confess with due humility that these two hares and three partridges belonged to M. de Girardin-Brégy.
Now, when my dog was retrieving the third partridge, Paillet gave the prearranged signal. The figure of a gamekeeper appeared on the skyline, boldly defined against the white fleecy sky, like one of those shepherds or country rustics in huge leggings that Decamps or Jadin put in their landscapes, as a contrast to a lonely and twisted elm-tree.
The manœuvre had already been discussed. In an instant I was on horseback, spurring the horse with both heels, and carrying off with me the incriminating plunder. The dialogue between Paillet and the gamekeeper was lengthy and animated; but it ended as I had predicted. Paillet majestically drew a twenty-sous piece from the common purse, and our total expenditure had reached the sum of seven francs. That was our loss; but on the profit side of our account we had two hares and three partridges. Paillet joined me again; I remained on horseback and he took his turn at hunting. So we alternated. By ten o'clock in the morning we were at Dammartin, with three hares and eight partridges. Of the two gamekeepers we ran across since our last, one had loftily refused the twenty sous, the other had basely accepted. Our funds were now reduced to twenty-seven francs. But we were more than half-way there; and we had three hares and eight partridges to the good! As I had foreseen, we paid our way, and generously, with a hare and three partridges. We could have paid our way in larks.
By eleven o'clock, we were off again, and we made straight tracks for Paris, which we reached at half-past ten that night, I on foot and Paillet on horseback, with four hares, a dozen partridges and two quails. We had a marketable value of thirty francs of game with us.
When we reached the Hôtel des Vieux-Augustins, Paillet made himself known and imposed his conditions. He told our host we had made a big bet with some Englishmen. We had wagered that we could go to Paris and back without spending a halfpenny, so we wished to gain the bet by selling our game to him. He engaged to board and put us up, horse and dog included, for two days and two nights, in exchange for our twelve partridges, four hares and two quails. Besides this, when we left he put us up a pasty and bottle of wine. On these conditions, our host declared he would make a good thing out of us, and offered us a certificate to certify that, at least while with him, we had not spent a son. We thanked him and told him our Englishmen would take our word for it.
Paillet and I took our bearings and went to get a bath. With all economy possible, we had had to deduct the sum of three francs fifty from our remaining balance; we were thus left with twenty-three francs fifty. We had spent rather less than a third of our wealth; but we had arrived, and bed and board were assured us for forty-eight hours.
In spite of the fatigue of the journey, I slept but ill: I was in Paris! I envied my dog, who, laid down at the foot of my bed, free from imagination, tired out in body, and indifferent to his resting-place, was taking a nap. Next day I woke up at seven o'clock. In a twinkling I was dressed.
De Leuven lived in the rue Pigale, No. 14. It was nearly a league from the rue des Vieux-Augustins, but, good gracious! what did that matter? I had covered ten or a dozen leagues the day before, without reckoning the ins and outs, and I could surely manage one to-day. I set out. Paillet had business of his own to attend to; I had mine. We should probably meet at dinner-time, or perhaps not until night. I left the rue des' Vieux-Augustins by the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs and walked straight ahead. I saw a passage where a crowd of people were going in and coming out. I went down seven or eight steps until I thought I was lost. I wanted to ascend again, but I felt ashamed. I continued on my way and alighted on the rue Valois. I had made acquaintance, first go off, with the ugliest passage in Paris, the passage of the rue Neuve-des-Bons-Enfants. I went down another passage which opened out before me, and I found myself in the Palais-Royal. I went all round it: half the shops weren't opened. I stopped in front of the Théâtre-Français and I saw on the poster—
"To-morrow, Monday, Sylla, a Tragedy in verse, in five
acts, by M. de Jouy."
I vowed fervently that somehow or other I would get access to the common purse and I would see Sylla. All the more because I read in large letters on the same poster—
"M. TALMA will take the part of Sylla"
However, since it would be much better to go with the help' of Adolphe, I immediately inquired my way to the rue Pigale, and started off for it. After many turnings and twistings, I reached my destination at about nine in the morning. Adolphe was not yet up; but his father was walking in the garden. I went up to him. He stopped, let me approach, held out his hand to me, and said—
"So you have come to Paris, then?"
"Yes, Monsieur de Leuven."
"For some stay?"
"For two days."
"What have you come for?"
"I have come to see two people—Adolphe and Talma."
"Ah! is that so? You have become a millionaire, then, or you would not commit such extravagances."
I told M. de Leuven how Paillet and I had accomplished the journey. He looked at me for a minute, then he said—
"You will get on, you have will-power. Go and wake Adolphe; he will take you to see Talma, who will give you tickets; then come back and lunch together here."
That was the very thing I wanted. I took stock of the interior topography of the house, and rushed off. I only opened two wrong doors before I found Adolphe's: one was Gabriel Arnault's door; the other, Louis Arnault's. I lost my way on the first landing: Louis put me right. I reached Adolphe's room at last. Adolphe slept like the Seven Sleepers. But had I had to deal with Epimenides I would have wakened him. Adolphe rubbed his eyes, and could not recognise me.
"Come, come," I said, "it is really I; wake up and get dressed. I want to go to Talma."
"To Talma! What for? You don't mean to say you have a tragedy to read to him?"
"No, but I want to ask him for some tickets."
"What is he playing in now?"
I fell from my state of exaltation. Adolphe, living in Paris, did not know what Talma was acting! What was the idiot thinking of? No wonder he had not yet got my Pélerinage d'Ermenonville placed, or any of our plays acted. Adolphe got out of bed and dressed himself. At eleven o'clock we were ringing the bell of a house in the rue de la Tour-des-Dames. Mademoiselle Mars, Mademoiselle Duchesnois and Talma all lived side by side. Talma was dressing, but Adolphe was an habitué of the house: they let him in. I followed Adolphe, as Hernani followed Charles-Quint; I, naturally, behind Adolphe.
Talma was extremely short-sighted: I do not know whether he saw me or not. He was washing his chest: his head was almost shaved—this astonished me greatly, for I had heard it said, many times, that in Hamlet, when the father's ghost appears, Talma's hairs could be seen standing on end. I must confess that Talma's appearance, under the above conditions, was far from being artistic. But when he turned round, with his neck bare, the lower part of his body wrapped in a large sort of white linen wrapper, and he took one of the corners of this mantle and drew it over his shoulder, half veiling his breast, there was something so regal in the action that it made me tremble.
De Leuven laid bare our request. Talma took up a kind of antique stiletto, at the end of which was a pen, and signed an order for two seats for us. It was a member's order. Besides the actors' order which were received on days when they were acting, members had the right to give two free tickets every day.
Then Adolphe explained who I was. In those days I was just the son of General Alexandre Dumas: but that was something. Besides, Talma remembered having met my father at Saint-Georges's. He held out his hand to me, and I longed to kiss it. Full of theatrical ambitions as I was, Talma was like a god to me—an unknown god, it is true, as unknown as Jupiter was to Semele; but a god who appeared to me in the morning, and who would reveal himself to me at night. Our hands clasped. Oh, Talma! if only you had been twenty years younger or I twenty years older! But at that time the whole honour was mine.
Talma! I knew the past: you could not guess the future. If anyone had told you, Talma, that the hand you had just held was to write sixty to eighty dramas, in each of which you—who were looking out for rôles all your life—would have found one which you would have acted to perfection, you would not have allowed the poor youth to go away thus, blushing at having seen you, proud at having shaken hands with you! But how could you see anything in me, Talma, since I had not discovered it myself?
[CHAPTER IX]
The theatre ticket—The Café du Roi—Auguste Lafarge—Théaulon—Rochefort—Ferdinand Langlé—People who dine and people who don't—Canaris—First sight of Talma—Appreciation of Mars and Rachel—Why Talma has no successor—Sylla and the Censorship—Talma's box—A cab-drive after midnight—The return to Crespy—M. Lefèvre explains that a machine, in order to work well, needs all its wheels—I hand in my resignation as his third clerk
I went back to de Leuven's house hugging the order in my pocket. With the possibility of procuring another by the means of it, I would not have parted with it for five hundred francs! I was filled with pride at the thought of going to the Théâtre-Français, with an order signed "Talma." We lunched.
De Leuven raised great difficulties about going to the play: he had an engagement with Scribe, a meeting with Théaulon, an appointment with I don't know how many other celebrities besides, that night. His father shrugged his shoulders, and de Leuven raised no more objections. It was arranged that we were to go to the Français together; but, as I wanted to see the Musée, the Jardin des Plantes and the Luxembourg, he arranged to meet me at the Café du Roi at seven o'clock. The Café du Roi formed the corner of the rue de Richelieu and the rue Saint-Honoré. We shall have more to say about it later.
After luncheon, I set out by myself and went to the Musée. At six o'clock, I had tramped the tourists' round—that is to say, having entered the Tuileries by the gate of the rue de la Paix, I had passed under the Arch, visited the Musée, gone along the Quays, examined Nôtre-Dame inside and out, made Martin climb up his tree and, under cover of being a stranger—a title which only a blind man or an evilly disposed person could dispute—I had forced my way through the gates of the Luxembourg.
I returned at six o'clock to the hotel, where I found Paillet. Upon my word, we dined well! Our host was a conscientious man, and he gave us soup, a filet with olives, roast beef and potatoes à la maître d'hôtel, the worth of two hares and four partridges, which we absorbed under other guises. I urged Paillet in vain to come to the Français with us: Paillet was formerly a second clerk in Paris; he had friends, or perhaps it would be more truthful to say girl-friends, of other days, to see again; he refused the offer, pressing though it was, and I set off for the Café du Roi, not comprehending how there could be anything more vitally important than to see Talma, or, if one had already seen him, than to see him again. I reached our rendezvous some minutes before Adolphe. Paillet had foreseen that I should probably have some indispensable expenses: he had generously drawn three francs from the common purse and given them to me. After this, a total of twenty francs fifty centimes remained to us.
I went into the Café du Roi and sat down at a table; I calculated what would cost me the least; I concluded that a small glass of brandy would give me the right to wait, and at least to look as though I was a habitué of the establishment; so I ordered one. Now, I had never managed to swallow one drop of that abominable liquor; however, although obliged to order it, I was not obliged to drink it. I had scarcely taken my seat when I saw one of the regular customers (I judged he was a regular attender, because I saw that he had nothing at all on the table before him) get up and come towards me. I uttered a cry of surprise and joy: it was Lafarge. Lafarge had gone a step lower towards poverty: he wore a coat shiny at the elbows, trousers shiny at the knees.
"Why, surely I am not mistaken, it is really you?" he said.
"It is really I. Sit down here."
"With pleasure. Ask for another glass."
"For you?"
"Yes."
"Take mine, my dear fellow. I never touch brandy."
"Then why did you ask for it?"
"Because I did not like to wait till Adolphe came in without asking for something."
"Is Adolphe coming here?"
"Yes. We are going to see Sylla together."
"What! you are going to see that filth?"
"Filth, Sylla? Why, it is an enormous success!"
"Yes, the success of a wig."
"The success of a wig?" I echoed, not understanding. "Certainly! Take away from Sylla his Napoleonic locks, and the piece would never be played through."
"But surely M. de Jouy is a great poet?"
"In the provinces he may be thought great, my dear boy; but here we are in Paris, and we see things differently."
"If he is not a great poet, he is at least a man of infinite resource." "Well, perhaps he might have been thought clever under the Empire; but you see, my boy, the wit of 1809 is not the wit of 1822."
"Still, I thought that l'Ermite de la Chaussée-d'Antin was written under the Restoration."
"Why, certainly; but do you think l'Ermite de la Chaussée-d'Antin was by M. de Jouy?"
"Most certainly, since it appears under his name."
"Oh, what sweet simplicity!"
"Then who wrote it?"
"Why, Merle."
"Who is Merle?"
"Hush! he is that gentleman you see over there in a big coat and a wide-brimmed hat. He has ten times more wit than M. de Jouy."
"But if he has ten times M. de Jouy's wit, how is it he has not a quarter of his reputation?"
"Oh, because, you see, my boy, reputations, as you will find later, are not made either by wit or talents, but by coteries.... Just ask for the sugar; brandy makes me ill if I drink it neat. Waiter! some sugar."
"But if brandy upsets you, why drink it?"
"What else can one do?" said Lafarge; "if one passes one's life in cafés, one must drink something."
"So you spend all your time in cafés?"
"Nearly all: I can work best so."
"In the midst of all the noise and talking?"
"I am used to that: Théaulon works thus, Francis works thus, Rochefort works thus, we all work thus. Don't we, Théaulon?"
A man of thirty to thirty-five, who had been writing rapidly, on quarto paper, something that looked like dialogue, at this interpellation lifted up his pale face—red about the cheek bones—and looked at us kindly.
"Yes," he said; "what is it? Ah! it is you, Lafarge? Good-evening." And he resumed his work.
"Is that Théaulon?" I asked.
"Yes; there's a man of ready wit for you! only he squanders and abuses his ready wit. Do you know what he is doing now?" "No."
"He is writing a comedy, in five acts, in verse."
"What! he can write poetry here, in a café?"
"In the first place, dear boy, this is not a café: it is a kind of literary club; everybody you see here is either an author or a journalist."
"Well," I said to Lafarge, "I have never seen a café where they consumed so little and wrote so much."
"The deuce, you are framing already. You almost made a witticism just then, do you know?"
"Well, then, in return for the witticism I have almost perpetrated, tell me who some of these gentlemen are."
"My dear fellow, it would be useless: you need to be a Parisian to be acquainted with reputations which are wholly Parisian."
"But I assure you, my dear Auguste, I am not so provincial in such matters as you think I am."
"Have you heard of Rochefort?"
"Yes. Has he not composed some very pretty songs and two or three successful vaudevilles?"