PERE PANPAN.
"Monsieur Panpan lives in the Place Valois," said my friend, newly
arrived from London on a visit to Paris, "and as I am under a promise to
his brother Victor to deliver a message on his behalf, I must keep my
word even if I go alone, and execute my mission in pantomime. Will you
be my interpreter?"
The Place Valois is a dreamy little square formed by tall houses: graced
by an elegant fountain in its centre; guarded by a red-legged sentinel;
and is chiefly remarkable in Parisian annals as the scene of the
assassination of the Duc de Berri. There is a quiet, melancholy air
about the place which accords well with its traditions; and even the
little children who make it their playground on account of the absence of
both vehicles and equestrians, pursue their sports in a subdued, tranquil
way, hanging about the fountain's edge, and dabbling in the water with
their little fingers. Monsieur Panpan's residence was not difficult to
find. We entered by a handsome porte-cochere into a paved court-yard,
and, having duly accounted for our presence to the watchful concierge who
sat sedulously peering out of a green sentry-box, commenced our ascent to
the upper regions. Seeing that Monsieur lived on the fourth floor, and
that the steps of the spacious staircase were of that shallow description
which disappoint the tread by falling short of its expectations, it was
no wonder that we were rather out of breath when we reached the necessary
elevation; and that we paused a moment to collect our thoughts, and calm
our respiration, before knocking at the little backroom door, which we
knew to be that of Monsieur Panpan.
Madame Panpan received us most graciously, setting chairs for us, and
apologising for her husband, who, poor man, was sitting up in his bed,
with a wan countenance, and hollow glistening eyes. We were in the close
heavy air of a sick chamber. The room was very small, and the bedstead
occupied a large portion of its space. It was lighted by one little
window only, and that looked down a sort of square shaft which served as
a ventilator to the house. A pale child, with large wandering eyes,
watched us intently from behind the end of the little French bedstead,
while the few toys he had been playing with lay scattered upon the floor.
The room was very neat, although its furniture was poor and scanty; and
by the brown saucepan perched upon the top of the diminutive German
stove, which had strayed, as it were, from its chimney corner into the
middle of the room, we knew that the pot-au-feu was in preparation.
Madame, before whom was a small table covered with the unfinished
portions of a corset, was very agreeable--rather coquettish, indeed, we
should have said in England. Her eyes were bright and cheerful, and her
hair drawn back from her forehead a la Chinoise. In a graceful, but
decided way, she apologised for continuing her labours, which were
evidently works of necessity rather than of choice.
"And Victor, that good boy," she exclaimed, when we had further explained
the object of our visit, "was quite well! I am charmed! And he had
found work, and succeeding so well in his affairs? I am enchanted! It
is so amiable of him to send me this little cadeau!"
Monsieur Panpan, with his strange lustrous eyes, if not enchanted, rubbed
his thin bony hands together as he sat up in the bed, and chuckled in an
unearthly way at the good news. Having executed our commission, we felt
it would be intrusive to prolong our stay, and therefore rose to depart,
but received so pressing an invitation to repeat the visit, that, on the
part of myself and friend, who was to leave Paris in a few days, I could
not refuse to comply with a wish so cordially expressed, and evidently
sincere. And thus commenced my acquaintance with the Panpans.
I cannot trace the course of our acquaintance, or tell how, from an
occasional call, my visits became those of a bosom friend; but certain it
is, that soon each returning Sunday saw me a guest at the table of
Monsieur Panpan, where my couvert and serviette became sacred to my use;
and, after the meal, were carefully cleaned and laid apart for the next
occasion. This, I afterwards learned, was a customary mark of
consideration towards an esteemed friend among the poorer class of
Parisians. I soon learned their history. Their every-day existence was
a simple, easily read story, and not the less simple and touching because
it is the every-day story of thousands of poor French families. Madame
was a stay-maker; and the whole care and responsibility of providing for
the wants and comforts of a sick husband; for her little Victor, her
eldest born; and the monthly stipend of her infant Henri, out at nurse
some hundred leagues from Paris, hung upon the unaided exertions of her
single hands, and the scrupulous and wonderful economy of her management.
One day I found Madame in tears. Panpan himself lay with rigid features,
and his wiry hands spread out upon the counterpane. Madame was at first
inconsolable and inexplicable, but at length, amid sobs, half suppressed,
related the nature of their new misfortune. Would Monsieur believe that
those miserable nurse-people, insulting as they were, had sent from the
country to say, that unless the three months nursing of little Henri,
together with the six pounds of lump sugar, which formed part of the
original bargain, were immediately paid, cette pauvre bete (Henri that
was), would be instantly dispatched to Paris, and proceedings taken for
the recovery of the debt? Ces miserables!
Here poor Madame Panpan could not contain herself, but gave way to her
affliction in a violent outburst of tears. And yet the poor child, the
cause of all this sorrow, was almost as great stranger to his mother as
he was to me, who had never seen him in my life. With scarcely a week's
existence to boast of, he had been swaddled up in strange clothes;
intrusted to strange hands; and hurried away some hundred leagues from
the capital, to scramble about the clay floor of an unwholesome cottage,
in company perhaps with some half-dozen atomies like himself, as strange
to each other as they were to their own parents, to pass those famous
mois de nourrice which form so important and momentous a period in the
lives of most French people. Madame Panpan was however in no way
responsible for this state of things; the system was there, not only
recognised, but encouraged; become indeed a part of the social habits of
the people, and it was no wonder if her poverty should have driven her to
so popular and ready a means of meeting a great difficulty. How she
extricated herself from this dilemma, it is not necessary to state;
suffice it to say, that a few weeks saw cette petite bete Henri, happily
domiciled in the Place Valois; and, if not overburdened with apparel, at
least released from the terrible debt of six and thirty francs, and six
pounds of lump-sugar.
It naturally happened, that on the pleasant Sunday afternoons, when we
had disposed of our small, but often sumptuous dinner; perhaps a gigot de
mouton with a clove of garlic in the knuckle; a fricassee de lapins with
onions, or a fricandeau, Panpan himself would tell me part of his
history; and in the course of our salad; of our little dessert of fresh
fruit, or currant jelly; or perhaps, stimulated by the tiniest glass of
brandy, would grow warm in the recital of his early experiences, and the
unhappy chance which had brought him into his present condition.
"Ah, Monsieur!" he said one day, "little would you think, to see me
cribbed up in this miserable bed, that I had been a soldier, or that the
happiest days of my life had been passed in the woods of Fontainebleau,
following the chase in the retinue of King Charles the Tenth of France.
I was a wild young fellow in my boyhood; and, when at the age of eighteen
I drew for the conscription and found it was my fate to serve, I believe
I never was so happy in my life. I entered the cavalry; and, in spite of
the heavy duties and strict discipline, it was a glorious time. It makes
me mad, Monsieur, when I think of the happy days I have spent on the
road, in barracks, and in snug country quarters, where there was cider or
wine for the asking; to find myself in a solitary corner of great,
thoughtless Paris, sick and helpless. It would be something to die out
in the open fields like a worn-out horse, or to be shot like a wounded
one. But this is terrible!--and I am but thirty-eight."
We comforted him in the best way we could with sage axioms of antique
date, or more lively stories of passing events; but I saw a solitary tear
creeping down the cheek of Madame Panpan, even in the midst of a quaint
sally; and, under pretence of arranging his pillow, she bent over his
head and kissed him gently on the forehead.
Pere Panpan--I had come by degrees to call him "Pere," although he was
still young; for it sounded natural and kindly--continued his narrative
in his rambling, gossiping way. He had been chosen, he said, to serve in
the Garde Royale, of whom fifteen thousand sabres were stationed in and
about the capital at this period; and in the royal forest of
Fontainebleau, in the enjoyment of a sort of indolent activity, he passed
his happiest days; now employed in the chase, now in the palace
immediately about the person of the king, in a succession of active
pleasures, or easy, varied duties. Panpan was no republican. Indeed, I
question whether any very deep political principles governed his
sentiments; which naturally allied themselves with those things that
yielded the greatest amount of pleasure.
The misfortunes of Pere Panpan dated from the revolution of eighteen
hundred and thirty. Then the glittering pageantry in the palace of
Fontainebleau vanished like a dream. The wild clatter of military
preparation; the rattling of steel and the trampling of horses; and away
swept troop after troop, with sword-belt braced and carabine in hand, to
plunge into the mad uproar of the streets of Paris, risen, stones and
all, in revolution. The Garde Royale did their duty in those three
terrible days, and if their gallant charges through the encumbered
streets, or their patient endurance amid the merciless showers of
indescribable missiles, were all in vain, it was because their foe was
animated by an enthusiasm of which they knew nothing, save in the
endurance of its effects. Panpan's individual fate, amid all this
turmoil, was lamentable enough.
A few hours amid the dust; the sweltering heat; the yellings of the
excited populace; the roaring of cannon and the pattering of musketry;
saw the troop in which he served, broken and scattered, and Panpan
himself rolling in the dust, with a thousand lights flashing in his eyes,
and a brass button lodged in his side!
"Those villains of Parisians!" he exclaimed, "not content with showering
their whole garde meuble upon our heads, fired upon us a diabolical
collection of missiles, such as no mortal ever thought of before:--bits
of broken brass; little plates of tin and iron rolled into sugar-loaves;
crushed brace-buckles; crooked nails and wads of metal wire;--anything,
indeed, that in their extremity they could lay their hands on, and ram
into the muzzle of a gun! These things inflicted fearful gashes, and, in
many cases, a mere flesh-wound turned out a death-stroke. Few that got
hurt in our own troop lived to tell the tale."
A few more days and the whole royal cavalcade was scattered like chaff
before the wind, and Charles the Tenth a fugitive on his way to England;
a few more days and the wily Louis Philippe was taking the oath to a new
constitution, and our friend, Panpan, lay carefully packed, brass button
and all, in the Hotel-Dieu. The brass button was difficult to find, and
when found the ugly fissure it had made grew gangrened, and would not
heal; and thus it happened that many a bed became vacant, and got filled,
and was vacant again, as their occupants either walked out, or were borne
out, of the hospital gates, before Panpan was declared convalescent, and
finally dismissed from the Hotel-Dieu as "cured."
The proud trooper was, however, an altered man; his health and spirits
were gone; the whole corps of which he had so often boasted was broken up
and dispersed; his means of livelihood were at an end, and, what was
worse, he knew of no other in the exercise of which he could gain his
daily bread. There were very many such helpless, tradeless men pacing
the streets of Paris, when the fever of the revolution was cooled down,
and ordinary business ways began to take their course. Nor was it those
alone who were uninstructed in any useful occupation, but there were also
the turbulent, dissatisfied spirits; builders of barricades, and leaders
of club-sections, whom the late excitement, and their temporary elevation
above their fellow workmen, had left restless and ambitious, and whose
awakened energies, if not directed to some useful and congenial
employment, would infallibly lead to mischief.
Panpan chuckled over the fate which awaited some of these ardent youths:
"Ces gaillards la!" he said, "had become too proud and troublesome to be
left long in the streets of Paris; they would have fomented another
revolution; so Louis Philippe, under pretence of rewarding his brave
'soldats laboureurs,' whom he was ready to shake by the hand in the
public streets in the first flush of success, enrolled them in the army,
and sent them to the commanding officers with medals of honour round
their necks, and special recommendations to promotion in their hands.
They hoped to become Marshals of France in no time. Pauvres diables!
they were soon glad to hide their decorations, and cease bragging about
street-fighting and barricades, for the regulars relished neither their
swaggering stories nor the notion of being set aside by such parvenus;
and they got so quizzed, snubbed, and tormented, that they were happy at
last to slide into their places as simple soldats, and trust to the
ordinary course for promotion."
* * * * *
As for Panpan, his street wanderings terminated in his finding employment
in a lace manufactory, and it soon became evident that his natural talent
here found a congenial occupation. He came by degrees to be happy in his
new position of a workman. Then occurred the serious love passage of his
life--his meeting with Louise, now Madame Panpan. It was the simplest
matter in the world: Panpan, to whom life was nothing without the Sunday
quadrille at the barriere, having resolved to figure on the next occasion
in a pair of bottes vernis, waited upon his bootmaker--every Parisian has
his bootmaker--to issue his mandates concerning their length, shape, and
general construction. He entered the boutique of Mons. Cuire, when, lo!
he beheld in the little back parlour, the most delicate little foot that
ever graced a shoe, or tripped to measure on the grass. He would say
nothing of the owner of this miracle; of her face--which was full of
intelligence; of her figure--which was gentille toute a fait--but for
that dear, chaste, ravishing model of a foot! so modestly pose upon the
cushion. Heaven!--and Panpan unconsciously heaved a long sigh, and
brought with it from the very bottom of his heart a vow to become its
possessor. There was no necessity for anything very rash or very
desperate in the case, as it happened, for the evident admiration of
Panpan had inspired Louise with an impromptu interest in his favour, and
he being besides gentil garcon, their chance rencontre was but the
commencement of a friendship which ripened into love,--and so the old
story over again, with marriage at the end of it.
Well! said M. Panpan, time rolled on, and little Louis was born. This
might have been a blessing, but while family cares and expenses were
growing upon them, Panpan's strength and energies were withering away.
He suffered little pain, but what there was seemed to spring from the old
wound; and there were whole days when he lay a mere wreck, without the
power or will to move; and when his feeble breath seemed passing away for
ever. Happily, these relapses occurred only at intervals, but by slow
degrees they became more frequent and more overwhelming. Madame Panpan's
skill and untiring perseverance grew to be, as other resources failed,
the main, and for many, many months, the whole support of the family.
Then came a time when the winter had passed away, and the spring was
already in its full, and still Panpan lay helpless in bed with shrunken
limbs and hollow, pallid cheeks,--and then little Henri was born.
Pere Panpan having arrived at this crisis in his history, drew a long
breath, and stretched himself back in his bed. I knew the rest. It was
soon after the event last named that I made his acquaintance, and the
remainder of his simple story, therefore, devolves upon me.
The debility of the once dashing soldier increased daily, and as it could
be traced to no definite cause, he gradually became a physiological
enigma; and thence naturally a pet of the medical profession. Not that
he was a profitable patient, for the necessities of the family were too
great to allow of so expensive a luxury as a doctor's bill; but urged,
partly by commiseration, and partly by professional curiosity, both
ardent students and methodical practitioners would crowd round his simple
bed, probing him with instruments, poking him with their fingers, and
punching him with their fists; each with a new theory to propound and
establish; and the more they were baffled and contradicted in their
preconceived notions, the more obstinate they became in their
enforcement. Panpan's own thoughts upon the subject always reverted to
the brass button, although he found few to listen to or encourage him in
his idea. His medical patrons were a constant source of suffering to
him, but he bore with them patiently; sometimes reviving from his
prostration as if inspired, then lapsing as suddenly into his old state
of semi-pain and total feebleness. As a last hope, he was removed from
his fourth floor in the Place Valois, to become an inmate of the Bicetre,
and a domiciled subject of contention and experiment to its medical
staff.
The Bicetre is a large, melancholy-looking building, half hospital half
madhouse, situated a few leagues from Paris. I took a distaste to it on
my very first visit. It always struck me as a sort of menagerie, I
suppose from the circumstance of there having been pointed out to me,
immediately on my entrance, a railed and fenced portion of the building,
where the fiercer sort of inhabitants were imprisoned. Moreover, I met
with such strange looks and grimaces; such bewildering side-glances or
moping stares, as I traversed the open court-yards, with their open
corridors, or the long arched passages of the interior, that the whole of
the inmates came before me as creatures in human shape indeed, but as
possessed by the cunning or the ferocity of the mere animal. Yet it was
a public hospital, and in the performance of its duties there was an
infinite deal of kindly attention, consummate skill, and unwearying
labour. Its associations were certainly unhappy, and had, I am sure, a
depressing effect upon at least the physically disordered patients. It
may be that as the Bicetre is a sort of forlorn hope of hospitals, where
the more desperate or inexplicable cases only are admitted, it naturally
acquires a sombre and ominous character; but in no establishment of a
similar kind (and I have seen many) did I meet with such depressing
influences.
Panpan was at first in high spirits at the change. He was to be restored
to health in a brief period, and he really did in the first few weeks
make rapid progress towards convalescence. Already a sort of gymnasium
had been arranged over his bed, so that he might, by simple muscular
exercises, regain his lost strength; and more than once I have guided his
tottering steps along the arched corridors, as, clad in the gray uniform
of the hospital, and supported by a stick, he took a brief mid-day
promenade.
We made him cheering Sunday visits, Madame Panpan, Louis, the little
Henri, and I, and infringed many a rule of the hospital in regard to his
regimen. There was a charcutier living close to the outer walks, and
when nothing else could be had, we purchased some of his curiously
prepared delicacies, and smuggled them in under various guises. To him
they were delicious morsels amid the uniform soup and bouillon of the
hospital, and I dare say did him neither good nor harm.
Poor Madame Panpan! apart from the unceasing exertions which her
difficult position demanded of her; apart from the harassing days, the
sleepless nights, and pecuniary deficiencies which somehow never were
made up; apart from the shadow of death which hovered ever near her; and
the unvarying labours which pulled at her fingers, and strained at her
eyes, so that her efforts seemed still devoted to one ever unfinished
corset,--there arose another trouble where it was least expected; and
alas! I was the unconscious cause of a new embarrassment. I was accused
of being her lover. Numberless accusations rose up against us. Had I
not played at pat-ball with Madame in the Bois de Boulogne? Yes, pardi!
while Panpan lay stretched upon the grass a laughing spectator of the
game; and which was brought to an untimely conclusion by my breaking my
head against the branch of a tree. But had I not accompanied Madame
alone to the Champs Elysees to witness the jeu-de-feu on the last fete of
July? My good woman, did I not carry Louis pick-a-back the whole way?
and was not the crowd so dense and fearful, that our progress to the
Champs Elysees was barred at its very mouth by the fierce tornado of the
multitude, and the trampling to death of three unhappy mortals, whose
shrieks and groans still echo in my ear? and was it not at the risk of
life or limb that I fought my way along the Rue de la Madeleine, with
little Louis clinging round my neck, and Madame hanging on to my
coat-tail? Amid the swaying and eddying of the crowd, the mounted Garde
Municipale came dashing into the thickest of the press, to snatch little
children, and even women, from impending death, and bear them to a place
of safety. And if we did take a bottle of Strassburger beer on the
Boulevards, when at length we found a freer place to breathe in, faint
and reeling as we were, pray where was the harm, and who would not have
done as much? Ah, Madame! if you had seen, as I did, that when we
reached home the first thing poor Madame Panpan came to do, was to fall
upon her husband's neck, and in a voice broken with sobs, and as though
her heart would break, to thank that merciful God who had spared her in
her trouble, that she might still work for him and his children! you
would not be so ready with your blame.
But there was a heavier accusation still. Did you not, sir, entertain
Madame to supper in the Rue de Roule? with the utmost extravagance too,
not to mention the omelette soufflee with which you must needs tickle
your appetites, and expressly order for the occasion? And more than
that: did you not then take coffee in the Rue St. Honore, and play at
dominoes with Madame in the salon? Alas, yes! all this is true, and the
cause still more true and more sad; for it was under the terrible
impression that Madame Panpan and her two children--for they were both
with us, you will remember, even little Henri--had not eaten of one
tolerable meal throughout a whole week, that these unpardonable acts were
committed on the Sunday. An omelette soufflee, you know, must he
ordered; but as for the dominoes, I admit that that was an indiscretion.
Pere Panpan drooped and drooped. The cord of his gymnasium swung
uselessly above his head; he tottered no more along the corridors of the
hospital. He had ceased to be the pet of the medical profession. His
malady was obstinate and impertinent; it could neither be explained nor
driven away; and as all the deep theories propounded respecting it, or
carried into practical operation for its removal, proved to be mere
elaborate fancies, or useless experiments, the medical
profession--happily for Panpan--retired from the field in disgust.
"I do believe it was the button!" exclaimed Panpan, one Sunday afternoon,
with a strange light gleaming in his eyes. Madame replied only with a
sob. "You have seen many of them?" he abruptly demanded of me.
"Of what?"
"Buttons."
"There are a great many of them made in England," I replied. Where were
we wandering?
Panpan took my hand in his, and, with a gentle pressure that went to my
very heart, exclaimed: "I do believe it was the brass button after all.
I hope to God it was not an English button!"
I can't say whether it was or not. But, as to poor Pere Panpan, we
buried him at Bicetre.