Issoudun, be it said without offence to Paris, is one of the oldest
cities in France. In spite of the historical assumption which makes
the emperor Probus the Noah of the Gauls, Caesar speaks of the
excellent wine of Champ-Fort ("de Campo Forti") still one of the best
vintages of Issoudun. Rigord writes of this city in language which
leaves no doubt as to its great population and its immense commerce.
But these testimonies both assign a much lesser age to the city than
its ancient antiquity demands. In fact, the excavations lately
undertaken by a learned archaeologist of the place, Monsieur Armand
Peremet, have brought to light, under the celebrated tower of
Issoudun, a basilica of the fifth century, probably the only one in
France. This church preserves, in its very materials, the sign-manual
of an anterior civilization; for its stones came from a Roman temple
which stood on the same site.
Issoudun, therefore, according to the researches of this antiquary,
like other cities of France whose ancient or modern autonym ends in
"Dun" ("dunum") bears in its very name the certificate of an
autochthonous existence. The word "Dun," the appanage of all dignity
consecrated by Druidical worship, proves a religious and military
settlement of the Celts. Beneath the Dun of the Gauls must have lain
the Roman temple to Isis. From that comes, according to Chaumon, the
name of the city, Issous-Dun,--"Is" being the abbreviation of "Isis."
Richard Coeur-de-lion undoubtedly built the famous tower (in which he
coined money) above the basilica of the fifth century,--the third
monument of the third religion of this ancient town. He used the
church as a necessary foundation, or stay, for the raising of the
rampart; and he preserved it by covering it with feudal fortifications
as with a mantle. Issoudun was at that time the seat of the ephemeral
power of the Routiers and the Cottereaux, adventurers and free-lancers,
whom Henry II. sent against his son Richard, at the time of his
rebellion as Comte de Poitou.
The history of Aquitaine, which was not written by the Benedictines,
will probably never be written, because there are no longer
Benedictines: thus we are not able to light up these archaeological
tenebrae in the history of our manners and customs on every occasion
of their appearance. There is another testimony to the ancient
importance of Issoudun in the conversion into a canal of the
Tournemine, a little stream raised several feet above the level of the
Theols which surrounds the town. This is undoubtedly the work of Roman
genius. Moreover, the suburb which extends from the castle in a
northerly direction is intersected by a street which for more than two
thousand years has borne the name of the rue de Rome; and the
inhabitants of this suburb, whose racial characteristics, blood, and
physiognomy have a special stamp of their own, call themselves
descendants of the Romans. They are nearly all vine-growers, and
display a remarkable inflexibility of manners and customs, due,
undoubtedly, to their origin,--perhaps also to their victory over the
Cottereaux and the Routiers, whom they exterminated on the plain of
Charost in the twelfth century.
After the insurrection of 1830, France was too agitated to pay much
attention to the rising of the vine-growers of Issoudun; a terrible
affair, the facts of which have never been made public,--for good
reasons. In the first place, the bourgeois of Issoudun refused to
allow the military to enter the town. They followed the use and wont
of the bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages and declared themselves
responsible for their own city. The government was obliged to yield to
a sturdy people backed up by seven or eight thousand vine-growers, who
had burned all the archives, also the offices of "indirect taxation,"
and had dragged through the streets a customs officer, crying out at
every street lantern, "Let us hang him here!" The poor man's life was
saved by the national guard, who took him to prison on pretext of
drawing up his indictment. The general in command only entered the
town by virtue of a compromise made with the vine-growers; and it
needed some courage to go among them. At the moment when he showed
himself at the hotel-de-ville, a man from the faubourg de Rome slung a
"volant" round his neck (the "volant" is a huge pruning-hook fastened
to a pole, with which they trim trees) crying out, "No more clerks, or
there's an end to compromise!" The fellow would have taken off that
honored head, left untouched by sixteen years of war, had it not been
for the hasty intervention of one of the leaders of the revolt, to
whom a promise had been made that _the chambers should be asked to
suppress the excisemen_.
In the fourteenth century, Issoudun still had sixteen or seventeen
thousand inhabitants, remains of a population double that number in
the time of Rigord. Charles VII. possessed a mansion which still
exists, and was known, as late as the eighteenth century, as the
Maison du Roi. This town, then a centre of the woollen trade, supplied
that commodity to the greater part of Europe, and manufactured on a
large scale blankets, hats, and the excellent Chevreautin gloves.
Under Louis XIV., Issoudun, the birthplace of Baron and Bourdaloue,
was always cited as a city of elegance and good society, where the
language was correctly spoken. The curate Poupard, in his History of
Sancerre, mentions the inhabitants of Issoudun as remarkable among the
other Berrichons for subtlety and natural wit. To-day, the wit and the
splendor have alike disappeared. Issoudun, whose great extent of
ground bears witness to its ancient importance, has now barely twelve
thousand inhabitants, including the vine-dressers of four enormous
suburbs,--those of Saint-Paterne, Vilatte, Rome, and Alouette, which
are really small towns. The bourgeoisie, like that of Versailles, are
spread over the length and breadth of the streets. Issoudun still
holds the market for the fleeces of Berry; a commerce now threatened
by improvements in the stock which are being introduced everywhere
except in Berry.
The vineyards of Issoudun produce a wine which is drunk throughout the
two departments, and which, if manufactured as Burgundy and Gascony
manufacture theirs, would be one of the best wines in France. Alas,
"to do as our fathers did," with no innovations, is the law of the
land. Accordingly, the vine-growers continue to leave the refuse of
the grape in the juice during its fermentation, which makes the wine
detestable, when it might be a source of ever-springing wealth, and an
industry for the community. Thanks to the bitterness which the refuse
infuses into the wine, and which, they say, lessens with age, a
vintage will keep a century. This reason, given by the vine-grower in
excuse for his obstinacy, is of sufficient importance to oenology to
be made public here; Guillaume le Breton has also proclaimed it in
some lines of his "Phillippide."
The decline of Issoudun is explained by this spirit of sluggishness,
sunken to actual torpor, which a single fact will illustrate. When the
authorities were talking of a highroad between Paris and Toulouse, it
was natural to think of taking it from Vierzon to Chateauroux by way
of Issoudun. The distance was shorter than to make it, as the road now
is, through Vatan, but the leading people of the neighborhood and the
city council of Issoudun (whose discussion of the matter is said to be
recorded), demanded that it should go by Vatan, on the ground that if
the highroad went through their town, provisions would rise in price
and they might be forced to pay thirty sous for a chicken. The only
analogy to be found for this proceeding is in the wilder parts of
Sardinia, a land once so rich and populous, now so deserted. When
Charles Albert, with a praiseworthy intention of civilization, wished
to unite Sassari, the second capital of the island, with Cagliari by a
magnificent highway (the only one ever made in that wild waste by name
Sardinia), the direct line lay through Bornova, a district inhabited
by lawless people, all the more like our Arab tribes because they are
descended from the Moors. Seeing that they were about to fall into the
clutches of civilization, the savages of Bornova, without taking the
trouble to discuss the matter, declared their opposition to the road.
The government took no notice of it. The first engineer who came to
survey it, got a ball through his head, and died on his level. No
action was taken on this murder, but the road made a circuit which
lengthened it by eight miles!
The continual lowering of the price of wines drunk in the
neighborhood, though it may satisfy the desire of the bourgeoisie of
Issoudun for cheap provisions, is leading the way to the ruin of the
vine-growers, who are more and more burdened with the costs of
cultivation and the taxes; just as the ruin of the woollen trade is
the result of the non-improvement in the breeding of sheep.
Country-folk have the deepest horror of change; even that which is
most conducive to their interests. In the country, a Parisian meets
a laborer who eats an enormous quantity of bread, cheese, and
vegetables; he proves to him that if he would substitute for that diet
a certain portion of meat, he would be better fed, at less cost; that
he could work more, and would not use up his capital of health and
strength so quickly. The Berrichon sees the correctness of the
calculation, but he answers, "Think of the gossip, monsieur." "Gossip,
what do you mean?" "Well, yes, what would people say of me?" "He would
be the talk of the neighborhood," said the owner of the property on
which this scene took place; "they would think him as rich as a
tradesman. He is afraid of public opinion, afraid of being pointed at,
afraid of seeming ill or feeble. That's how we all are in this
region." Many of the bourgeoisie utter this phrase with feelings of
inward pride.
While ignorance and custom are invincible in the country regions,
where the peasants are left very much to themselves, the town of
Issoudun itself has reached a state of complete social stagnation.
Obliged to meet the decadence of fortunes by the practice of sordid
economy, each family lives to itself. Moreover, society is permanently
deprived of that distinction of classes which gives character to
manners and customs. There is no opposition of social forces, such as
that to which the cities of the Italian States in the Middle Ages owed
their vitality. There are no longer any nobles in Issoudun. The
Cottereaux, the Routiers, the Jacquerie, the religious wars and the
Revolution did away with the nobility. The town is proud of that
triumph. Issoudun has repeatedly refused to receive a garrison, always
on the plea of cheap provisions. She has thus lost a means of
intercourse with the age, and she has also lost the profits arising
from the presence of troops. Before 1756, Issoudun was one of the most
delightful of all the garrison towns. A judicial drama, which occupied
for a time the attention of France, the feud of a lieutenant-general
of the department with the Marquis de Chapt, whose son, an officer of
dragoons, was put to death,--justly perhaps, yet traitorously, for
some affair of gallantry,--deprived the town from that time forth of a
garrison. The sojourn of the forty-fourth demi-brigade, imposed upon
it during the civil war, was not of a nature to reconcile the
inhabitants to the race of warriors.
Bourges, whose population is yearly decreasing, is a victim of the
same social malady. Vitality is leaving these communities.
Undoubtedly, the government is to blame. The duty of an administration
is to discover the wounds upon the body-politic, and remedy them by
sending men of energy to the diseased regions, with power to change
the state of things. Alas, so far from that, it approves and
encourages this ominous and fatal tranquillity. Besides, it may be
asked, how could the government send new administrators and able
magistrates? Who, of such men, is willing to bury himself in the
arrondissements, where the good to be done is without glory? If, by
chance, some ambitious stranger settles there, he soon falls into the
inertia of the region, and tunes himself to the dreadful key of
provincial life. Issoudun would have benumbed Napoleon.
As a result of this particular characteristic, the arrondissement of
Issoudun was governed, in 1822, by men who all belonged to Berry. The
administration of power became either a nullity or a farce,--except in
certain cases, naturally very rare, which by their manifest importance
compelled the authorities to act. The procureur du roi, Monsieur
Mouilleron, was cousin to the entire community, and his substitute
belonged to one of the families of the town. The judge of the court,
before attaining that dignity, was made famous by one of those
provincial sayings which put a cap and bells on a man's head for the
rest of his life. As he ended his summing-up of all the facts of an
indictment, he looked at the accused and said: "My poor Pierre! the
thing is as plain as day; your head will be cut off. Let this be a
lesson to you." The commissary of police, holding office since the
Restoration, had relations throughout the arrondissement. Moreover,
not only was the influence of religion null, but the curate himself
was held in no esteem.
It was this bourgeoisie, radical, ignorant, and loving to annoy
others, which now related tales, more or less comic, about the
relations of Jean-Jacques Rouget with his servant-woman. The children
of these people went none the less to Sunday-school, and were as
scrupulously prepared for their communion: the schools were kept up
all the same; mass was said; the taxes were paid (the sole thing that
Paris extracts of the provinces), and the mayor passed resolutions.
But all these acts of social existence were done as mere routine, and
thus the laxity of the local government suited admirably with the
moral and intellectual condition of the governed. The events of the
following history will show the effects of this state of things, which
is not as unusual in the provinces as might be supposed. Many towns in
France, more particularly in the South, are like Issoudun. The
condition to which the ascendency of the bourgeoisie has reduced that
local capital is one which will spread over all France, and even to
Paris, if the bourgeois continues to rule the exterior and interior
policy of our country.
Now, one word of topography. Issoudun stretches north and south, along
a hillside which rounds towards the highroad to Chateauroux. At the
foot of the hill, a canal, now called the "Riviere forcee" whose
waters are taken from the Theols, was constructed in former times,
when the town was flourishing, for the use of manufactories or to
flood the moats of the rampart. The "Riviere forcee" forms an
artificial arm of a natural river, the Tournemine, which unites with
several other streams beyond the suburb of Rome. These little threads
of running water and the two rivers irrigate a tract of wide-spreading
meadow-land, enclosed on all sides by little yellowish or white
terraces dotted with black speckles; for such is the aspect of the
vineyards of Issoudun during seven months of the year. The
vine-growers cut the plants down yearly, leaving only an ugly stump,
without support, sheltered by a barrel. The traveller arriving from
Vierzon, Vatan, or Chateauroux, his eyes weary with monotonous plains,
is agreeably surprised by the meadows of Issoudun,--the oasis of this
part of Berry, which supplies the inhabitants with vegetables
throughout a region of thirty miles in circumference. Below the suburb
of Rome, lies a vast tract entirely covered with kitchen-gardens, and
divided into two sections, which bear the name of upper and lower
Baltan. A long avenue of poplars leads from the town across the
meadows to an ancient convent named Frapesle, whose English gardens,
quite unique in that arrondissement, have received the ambitious name
of Tivoli. Loving couples whisper their vows in its alleys of a
Sunday.
Traces of the ancient grandeur of Issoudun of course reveal themselves
to the eyes of a careful observer; and the most suggestive are the
divisions of the town. The chateau, formerly almost a town itself with
its walls and moats, is a distinct quarter which can only be entered,
even at the present day, through its ancient gateways,--by means of
three bridges thrown across the arms of the two rivers,--and has all
the appearance of an ancient city. The ramparts show, in places, the
formidable strata of their foundations, on which houses have now
sprung up. Above the chateau, is the famous tower of Issoudun, once
the citadel. The conqueror of the city, which lay around these two
fortified points, had still to gain possession of the tower and the
castle; and possession of the castle did not insure that of the tower,
or citadel.
The suburb of Saint-Paterne, which lies in the shape of a palette
beyond the tower, encroaching on the meadow-lands, is so considerable
that in the very earliest ages it must have been part of the city
itself. This opinion derived, in 1822, a sort of certainty from the
then existence of the charming church of Saint-Paterne, recently
pulled down by the heir of the individual who bought it of the nation.
This church, one of the finest specimens of the Romanesque that France
possessed, actually perished without a single drawing being made of
the portal, which was in perfect preservation. The only voice raised
to save this monument of a past art found no echo, either in the town
itself or in the department. Though the castle of Issoudun has the
appearance of an old town, with its narrow streets and its ancient
mansions, the city itself, properly so called, which was captured and
burned at different epochs, notably during the Fronde, when it was
laid in ashes, has a modern air. Streets that are spacious in
comparison with those of other towns, and well-built houses form a
striking contrast to the aspect of the citadel,--a contrast that has
won for Issoudun, in certain geographies, the epithet of "pretty."
In a town thus constituted, without the least activity, even business
activity, without a taste for art, or for learned occupations, and
where everybody stayed in the little round of his or her own home, it
was likely to happen, and did happen under the Restoration in 1816
when the war was over, that many of the young men of the place had no
career before them, and knew not where to turn for occupation until
they could marry or inherit the property of their fathers. Bored in
their own homes, these young fellows found little or no distraction
elsewhere in the city; and as, in the language of that region, "youth
must shed its cuticle" they sowed their wild oats at the expense of
the town itself. It was difficult to carry on such operations in open
day, lest the perpetrators should be recognized; for the cup of their
misdemeanors once filled, they were liable to be arraigned at their
next peccadillo before the police courts; and they therefore
judiciously selected the night time for the performance of their
mischievous pranks. Thus it was that among the traces of divers lost
civilizations, a vestige of the spirit of drollery that characterized
the manners of antiquity burst into a final flame.
The young men amused themselves very much as Charles IX. amused
himself with his courtiers, or Henry V. of England and his companions,
or as in former times young men were wont to amuse themselves in the
provinces. Having once banded together for purposes of mutual help, to
defend each other and invent amusing tricks, there presently developed
among them, through the clash of ideas, that spirit of malicious
mischief which belongs to the period of youth and may even be observed
among animals. The confederation, in itself, gave them the mimic
delights of the mystery of an organized conspiracy. They called
themselves the "Knights of Idleness." During the day these young
scamps were youthful saints; they all pretended to extreme quietness;
and, in fact, they habitually slept late after the nights on which
they had been playing their malicious pranks. The "Knights" began with
mere commonplace tricks, such as unhooking and changing signs, ringing
bells, flinging casks left before one house into the cellar of the
next with a crash, rousing the occupants of the house by a noise that
seemed to their frightened ears like the explosion of a mine. In
Issoudun, as in many country towns, the cellar is entered by an
opening near the door of the house, covered with a wooden scuttle,
secured by strong iron hinges and a padlock.
In 1816, these modern Bad Boys had not altogether given up such tricks
as these, perpetrated in the provinces by all young lads and gamins.
But in 1817 the Order of Idleness acquired a Grand Master, and
distinguished itself by mischief which, up to 1823, spread something
like terror in Issoudun, or at least kept the artisans and the
bourgeoisie perpetually uneasy.
This leader was a certain Maxence Gilet, commonly called Max, whose
antecedents, no less than his youth and his vigor, predestined him for
such a part. Maxence Gilet was supposed by all Issoudun to be the
natural son of the sub-delegate Lousteau, that brother of Madame
Hochon whose gallantries had left memories behind them, and who, as we
have seen, drew down upon himself the hatred of old Doctor Rouget
about the time of Agathe's birth. But the friendship which bound the
two men together before their quarrel was so close that, to use an
expression of that region and that period, "they willingly walked the
same road." Some people said that Maxence was as likely to be the son
of the doctor as of the sub-delegate; but in fact he belonged to
neither the one nor the other,--his father being a charming dragoon
officer in garrison at Bourges. Nevertheless, as a result of their
enmity, and very fortunately for the child, Rouget and Lousteau never
ceased to claim his paternity.
Max's mother, the wife of a poor sabot-maker in the Rome suburb, was
possessed, for the perdition of her soul, of a surprising beauty, a
Trasteverine beauty, the only property which she transmitted to her
son. Madame Gilet, pregnant with Maxence in 1788, had long desired
that blessing, which the town attributed to the gallantries of the two
friends,--probably in the hope of setting them against each other.
Gilet, an old drunkard with a triple throat, treated his wife's
misconduct with a collusion that is not uncommon among the lower
classes. To make sure of protectors for her son, Madame Gilet was
careful not to enlighten his reputed fathers as to his parentage. In
Paris, she would have turned out a millionaire; at Issoudun she lived
sometimes at her ease, more often miserably, and, in the long run,
despised. Madame Hochon, Lousteau's sister, paid sixty francs a year
for the lad's schooling. This liberality, which Madame Hochon was
quite unable to practise on her own account because of her husband's
stinginess, was naturally attributed to her brother, then living at
Sancerre.
When Doctor Rouget, who certainly was not lucky in sons, observed
Max's beauty, he paid the board of the "young rogue," as he called
him, at the seminary, up to the year 1805. As Lousteau died in 1800,
and the doctor apparently obeyed a feeling of vanity in paying the
lad's board until 1805, the question of the paternity was left forever
undecided. Maxence Gilet, the butt of many jests, was soon forgotten,
--and for this reason: In 1806, a year after Doctor Rouget's death,
the lad, who seemed to have been created for a venturesome life, and
was moreover gifted with remarkable vigor and agility, got into a
series of scrapes which more or less threatened his safety. He plotted
with the grandsons of Monsieur Hochon to worry the grocers of the
city; he gathered fruit before the owners could pick it, and made
nothing of scaling walls. He had no equal at bodily exercises, he
played base to perfection, and could have outrun a hare. With a keen
eye worthy of Leather-stocking, he loved hunting passionately. His
time was passed in firing at a mark, instead of studying; and he spent
the money extracted from the old doctor in buying powder and ball for
a wretched pistol that old Gilet, the sabot-maker, had given him.
During the autumn of 1806, Maxence, then seventeen, committed an
involuntary murder, by frightening in the dusk a young woman who was
pregnant, and who came upon him suddenly while stealing fruit in her
garden. Threatened with the guillotine by Gilet, who doubtless wanted
to get rid of him, Max fled to Bourges, met a regiment then on its way
to Egypt, and enlisted. Nothing came of the death of the young woman.
A young fellow of Max's character was sure to distinguish himself, and
in the course of three campaigns he did distinguish himself so highly
that he rose to be a captain, his lack of education helping him
strenuously. In Portugal, in 1809, he was left for dead in an English
battery, into which his company had penetrated without being able to
hold it. Max, taken prisoner by the English, was sent to the Spanish
hulks at the island of Cabrera, the most horrible of all stations for
prisoners of war. His friends begged that he might receive the cross
of the Legion of honor and the rank of major; but the Emperor was then
in Austria, and he reserved his favors for those who did brilliant
deeds under his own eye: he did not like officers or men who allowed
themselves to be taken prisoner, and he was, moreover, much
dissatisfied with events in Portugal. Max was held at Cabrera from
1810 to 1814.[1] During those years he became utterly demoralized, for
the hulks were like galleys, minus crime and infamy. At the outset, to
maintain his personal free will, and protect himself against the
corruption which made that horrible prison unworthy of a civilized
people, the handsome young captain killed in a duel (for duels were
fought on those hulks in a space scarcely six feet square) seven
bullies among his fellow-prisoners, thus ridding the island of their
tyranny to the great joy of the other victims. After this, Max reigned
supreme in his hulk, thanks to the wonderful ease and address with
which he handled weapons, to his bodily strength, and also to his
extreme cleverness.
[1] The cruelty of the Spaniards to the French prisoners at Cabrera
was very great. In the spring of 1811, H.M. brig "Minorca,"
Captain Wormeley, was sent by Admiral Sir Charles Cotton, then
commanding the Mediterranean fleet, to make a report of their
condition. As she neared the island, the wretched prisoners swam
out to meet her. They were reduced to skin and bone; many of them
were naked; and their miserable condition so moved the seamen of
the "Minorca" that they came aft to the quarter-deck, and asked
permission to subscribe three days' rations for the relief of the
sufferers. Captain Wormeley carried away some of the prisoners,
and his report to Sir Charles Cotton, being sent to the Admiralty,
was made the basis of a remonstrance on the part of the British
government with Spain on the subject of its cruelties. Sir Charles
Cotton despatched Captain Wormeley a second time to Cabrera with a
good many head of live cattle and a large supply of other
provisions.--Tr.
But he, in turn, committed arbitrary acts; there were those who
curried favor with him, and worked his will, and became his minions.
In that school of misery, where bitter minds dreamed only of
vengeance, where the sophistries hatched in such brains were laying
up, inevitably, a store of evil thoughts, Max became utterly
demoralized. He listened to the opinions of those who longed for
fortune at any price, and did not shrink from the results of criminal
actions, provided they were done without discovery. When peace was
proclaimed, in April, 1814, he left the island, depraved though still
innocent. On his return to Issoudun he found his father and mother
dead. Like others who give way to their passions and make life, as
they call it, short and sweet, the Gilets had died in the almshouse in
the utmost poverty. Immediately after his return, the news of
Napoleon's landing at Cannes spread through France; Max could do no
better than go to Paris and ask for his rank as major and for his
cross. The marshal who was at that time minister of war remembered the
brave conduct of Captain Gilet in Portugal. He put him in the Guard as
captain, which gave him the grade of major in the infantry; but he
could not get him the cross. "The Emperor says that you will know how
to win it at the first chance," said the marshal. In fact, the Emperor
did put the brave captain on his list for decoration the evening after
the fight at Fleurus, where Gilet distinguished himself.
After the battle of Waterloo Max retreated to the Loire. At the time
of the disbandment, Marshal Feltre refused to recognize Max's grade as
major, or his claim to the cross. The soldier of Napoleon returned to
Issoudun in a state of exasperation that may well be conceived; he
declared that he would not serve without either rank or cross. The
war-office considered these conditions presumptuous in a young man of
twenty-five without a name, who might, if they were granted, become a
colonel at thirty. Max accordingly sent in his resignation. The major
--for among themselves Bonapartists recognized the grades obtained in
1815--thus lost the pittance called half-pay which was allowed to the
officers of the army of the Loire. But all Issoudun was roused at the
sight of the brave young fellow left with only twenty napoleons in his
possession; and the mayor gave him a place in his office with a salary
of six hundred francs. Max kept it a few months, then gave it up of
his own accord, and was replaced by a captain named Carpentier, who,
like himself, had remained faithful to Napoleon.
By this time Gilet had become grand master of the Knights of Idleness,
and was leading a life which lost him the good-will of the chief
people of the town; who, however, did not openly make the fact known
to him, for he was violent and much feared by all, even by the
officers of the old army who, like himself, had refused to serve under
the Bourbons, and had come home to plant their cabbages in Berry. The
little affection felt for the Bourbons among the natives of Issoudun
is not surprising when we recall the history which we have just given.
In fact, considering its size and lack of importance, the little place
contained more Bonapartists than any other town in France. These men
became, as is well known, nearly all Liberals.
In Issoudun and its neighborhood there were a dozen officers in Max's
position. These men admired him and made him their leader,--with the
exception, however, of Carpentier, his successor, and a certain
Monsieur Mignonnet, ex-captain in the artillery of the Guard.
Carpentier, a cavalry officer risen from the ranks, had married into
one of the best families in the town,--the Borniche-Herau. Mignonnet,
brought up at the Ecole Polytechnique, had served in a corps which
held itself superior to all others. In the Imperial armies there were
two shades of distinction among the soldiers themselves. A majority of
them felt a contempt for the bourgeois, the "civilian," fully equal to
the contempt of nobles for their serfs, or conquerors for the
conquered. Such men did not always observe the laws of honor in their
dealings with civilians; nor did they much blame those who rode
rough-shod over the bourgeoisie. The others, and particularly the
artillery, perhaps because of its republicanism, never adopted the
doctrine of a military France and a civil France, the tendency of which
was nothing less than to make two nations. So, although Major Potel and
Captain Renard, two officers living in the Rome suburb, were friends to
Maxence Gilet "through thick and thin," Major Mignonnet and Captain
Carpentier took sides with the bourgeoisie, and thought his conduct
unworthy of a man of honor.
Major Mignonnet, a lean little man, full of dignity, busied himself
with the problems which the steam-engine requires us to solve, and
lived in a modest way, taking his social intercourse with Monsieur and
Madame Carpentier. His gentle manners and ways, and his scientific
occupations won him the respect of the whole town; and it was
frequently said of him and of Captain Carpentier that they were "quite
another thing" from Major Potel and Captain Renard, Maxence, and other
frequenters of the cafe Militaire, who retained the soldierly manners
and the defective morals of the Empire.
At the time when Madame Bridau returned to Issoudun, Max was excluded
from the society of the place. He showed, moreover, proper
self-respect in never presenting himself at the club, and in never
complaining of the severe reprobation that was shown him; although he
was the handsomest, the most elegant, and the best dressed man in the
place, spent a great deal of money, and kept a horse,--a thing as
amazing at Issoudun as the horse of Lord Byron at Venice. We are now
to see how it was that Maxence, poor and without apparent means, was
able to become the dandy of the town. The shameful conduct which
earned him the contempt of all scrupulous or religious persons was
connected with the interests which brought Agathe and Joseph to
Issoudun.
Judging by the audacity of his bearing, and the expression of his
face, Max cared little for public opinion; he expected, no doubt, to
take his revenge some day, and to lord it over those who now condemned
him. Moreover, if the bourgeoisie of Issoudun thought ill of him, the
admiration he excited among the common people counterbalanced their
opinion; his courage, his dashing appearance, his decision of
character, could not fail to please the masses, to whom his
degradations were, for the most part, unknown, and indeed the
bourgeoisie themselves scarcely suspected its extent. Max played a
role at Issoudun which was something like that of the blacksmith in
the "Fair Maid of Perth"; he was the champion of Bonapartism and the
Opposition; they counted upon him as the burghers of Perth counted
upon Smith on great occasions. A single incident will put this hero
and victim of the Hundred-Days into clear relief.
In 1819, a battalion commanded by royalist officers, young men just
out of the Maison Rouge, passed through Issoudun on its way to go into
garrison at Bourges. Not knowing what to do with themselves in so
constitutional a place as Issoudun, these young gentlemen went to
while away the time at the cafe Militaire. In every provincial town
there is a military cafe. That of Issoudun, built on the place d'Armes
at an angle of the rampart, and kept by the widow of an officer, was
naturally the rendezvous of the Bonapartists, chiefly officers on
half-pay, and others who shared Max's opinions, to whom the politics
of the town allowed free expression of their idolatry for the Emperor.
Every year, dating from 1816, a banquet was given in Issoudun to
commemorate the anniversary of his coronation. The three royalists who
first entered asked for the newspapers, among others, for the
"Quotidienne" and the "Drapeau Blanc." The politics of Issoudun,
especially those of the cafe Militaire, did not allow of such royalist
journals. The establishment had none but the "Commerce,"--a name which
the "Constitutionel" was compelled to adopt for several years after it
was suppressed by the government. But as, in its first issue under the
new name, the leading article began with these words, "Commerce is
essentially constitutional," people continued to call it the
"Constitutionel," the subscribers all understanding the sly play of
words which begged them to pay no attention to the label, as the wine
would be the same.
The fat landlady replied from her seat at the desk that she did not
take those papers. "What papers do you take then?" asked one of the
officers, a captain. The waiter, a little fellow in a blue cloth
jacket, with an apron of coarse linen tied over it, brought the
"Commerce."
"Is that your paper? Have you no other?"
"No," said the waiter, "that's the only one."
The captain tore it up, flung the pieces on the floor, and spat upon
them, calling out,--
"Bring dominos!"
In ten minutes the news of the insult offered to the Constitution
Opposition and the Liberal party, in the supersacred person of its
revered journal, which attacked priests with courage and the wit we
all remember, spread throughout the town and into the houses like
light itself; it was told and repeated from place to place. One phrase
was on everybody's lips,--
"Let us tell Max!"
Max soon heard of it. The royalist officers were still at their game
of dominos when that hero entered the cafe, accompanied by Major Potel
and Captain Renard, and followed by at least thirty young men, curious
to see the end of the affair, most of whom remained outside in the
street. The room was soon full.
"Waiter, _my_ newspaper," said Max, in a quiet voice.
Then a little comedy was played. The fat hostess, with a timid and
conciliatory air, said, "Captain, I have lent it!"
"Send for it," cried one of Max's friends.
"Can't you do without it?" said the waiter; "we have not got it."
The young royalists were laughing and casting sidelong glances at the
new-comers.
"They have torn it up!" cried a youth of the town, looking at the feet
of the young royalist captain.
"Who has dared to destroy that paper?" demanded Max, in a thundering
voice, his eyes flashing as he rose with his arms crossed.
"And we spat upon it," replied the three young officers, also rising,
and looking at Max.
"You have insulted the whole town!" said Max, turning livid.
"Well, what of that?" asked the youngest officer.
With a dexterity, quickness, and audacity which the young men did not
foresee, Max slapped the face of the officer nearest to him, saying,--
"Do you understand French?"
They fought near by, in the allee de Frapesle, three against three;
for Potel and Renard would not allow Max to deal with the officers
alone. Max killed his man. Major Potel wounded his so severely, that
the unfortunate young man, the son of a good family, died in the
hospital the next day. As for the third, he got off with a sword cut,
after wounding his adversary, Captain Renard. The battalion left for
Bourges that night. This affair, which was noised throughout Berry,
set Max up definitely as a hero.
The Knights of Idleness, who were all young, the eldest not more than
twenty-five years old, admired Maxence. Some among them, far from
sharing the prudery and strict notions of their families concerning
his conduct, envied his present position and thought him fortunate.
Under such a leader, the Order did great things. After the month of
May, 1817, never a week passed that the town was not thrown into an
uproar by some new piece of mischief. Max, as a matter of honor,
imposed certain conditions upon the Knights. Statutes were drawn up.
These young demons grew as vigilant as the pupils of Amoros,--bold as
hawks, agile at all exercises, clever and strong as criminals. They
trained themselves in climbing roofs, scaling houses, jumping and
walking noiselessly, mixing mortar, and walling up doors. They
collected an arsenal of ropes, ladders, tools, and disguises. After a
time the Knights of Idleness attained to the beau-ideal of malicious
mischief, not only as to the accomplishment but, still more, in the
invention of their pranks. They came at last to possess the genius for
evil that Panurge so much delighted in; which provokes laughter, and
covers its victims with such ridicule that they dare not complain.
Naturally, these sons of good families of Issoudun possessed and
obtained information in their households, which gave them the ways and
means for the perpetration of their outrages.
Sometimes the young devils incarnate lay in ambush along the Grand'rue
or the Basse rue, two streets which are, as it were, the arteries of
the town, into which many little side streets open. Crouching, with
their heads to the wind, in the angles of the wall and at the corners
of the streets, at the hour when all the households were hushed in
their first sleep, they called to each other in tones of terror from
ambush to ambush along the whole length of the town: "What's the
matter?" "What is it?" till the repeated cries woke up the citizens,
who appeared in their shirts and cotton night-caps, with lights in
their hands, asking questions of one another, holding the strangest
colloquies, and exhibiting the queerest faces.
A certain poor bookbinder, who was very old, believed in hobgoblins.
Like most provincial artisans, he worked in a small basement shop. The
Knights, disguised as devils, invaded the place in the middle of the
night, put him into his own cutting-press, and left him shrieking to
himself like the souls in hell. The poor man roused the neighbors, to
whom he related the apparitions of Lucifer; and as they had no means
of undeceiving him, he was driven nearly insane.
In the middle of a severe winter, the Knights took down the chimney of
the collector of taxes, and built it up again in one night apparently
as it was before, without making the slightest noise, or leaving the
least trace of their work. But they so arranged the inside of the
chimney as to send all the smoke into the house. The collector
suffered for two months before he found out why his chimney, which had
always drawn so well, and of which he had often boasted, played him
such tricks; he was then obliged to build a new one.
At another time, they put three trusses of hay dusted with brimstone,
and a quantity of oiled paper down the chimney of a pious old woman
who was a friend of Madame Hochon. In the morning, when she came to
light her fire, the poor creature, who was very gentle and kindly,
imagined she had started a volcano. The fire-engines came, the whole
population rushed to her assistance. Several Knights were among the
firemen, and they deluged the old woman's house, till they had
frightened her with a flood, as much as they had terrified her with
the fire. She was made ill with fear.
When they wished to make some one spend the night under arms and in
mortal terror, they wrote an anonymous letter telling him that he was
about to be robbed; then they stole softly, one by one, round the
walls of his house, or under his windows, whistling as if to call each
other.
One of their famous performances, which long amused the town, where in
fact it is still related, was to write a letter to all the heirs of a
miserly old lady who was likely to leave a large property, announcing
her death, and requesting them to be promptly on hand when the seals
were affixed. Eighty persons arrived from Vatan, Saint-Florent,
Vierzon and the neighboring country, all in deep mourning,--widows
with sons, children with their fathers, some in carrioles, some in
wicker gigs, others in dilapidated carts. Imagine the scene between
the old woman's servants and the first arrivals! and the consultations
among the notaries! It created a sort of riot in Issoudun.
At last, one day the sub-prefect woke up to a sense that this state of
things was all the more intolerable because it seemed impossible to
find out who was at the bottom of it. Suspicion fell on several young
men; but as the National Guard was a mere name in Issoudun, and there
was no garrison, and the lieutenant of police had only eight gendarmes
under him, so that there were no patrols, it was impossible to get any
proof against them. The sub-prefect was immediately posted in the
"order of the night," and considered thenceforth fair game. This
functionary made a practice of breakfasting on two fresh eggs. He kept
chickens in his yard, and added to his mania for eating fresh eggs
that of boiling them himself. Neither his wife nor his servant, in
fact no one, according to him, knew how to boil an egg properly; he
did it watch in hand, and boasted that he carried off the palm of
egg-boiling from all the world. For two years he had boiled his eggs
with a success which earned him many witticisms. But now, every night for
a whole month, the eggs were taken from his hen-house, and hard-boiled
eggs substituted. The sub-prefect was at his wits' end, and lost his
reputation as the "sous-prefet a l'oeuf." Finally he was forced to
breakfast on other things. Yet he never suspected the Knights of
Idleness, whose trick had been cautiously played. After this, Max
managed to grease the sub-prefect's stoves every night with an oil
which sent forth so fetid a smell that it was impossible for any one
to stay in the house. Even that was not enough; his wife, going to
mass one morning, found her shawl glued together on the inside with
some tenacious substance, so that she was obliged to go without it.
The sub-prefect finally asked for another appointment. The cowardly
submissiveness of this officer had much to do with firmly establishing
the weird and comic authority of the Knights of Idleness.
Beyond the rue des Minimes and the place Misere, a section of a
quarter was at that time enclosed between an arm of the "Riviere
forcee" on the lower side and the ramparts on the other, beginning at
the place d'Armes and going as far as the pottery market. This
irregular square is filled with poor-looking houses crowded one
against the other, and divided here and there by streets so narrow
that two persons cannot walk abreast. This section of the town, a sort
of cour des Miracles, was occupied by poor people or persons working
at trades that were little remunerative,--a population living in
hovels, and buildings called picturesquely by the familiar term of
"blind houses." From the earliest ages this has no doubt been an
accursed quarter, the haunt of evil-doers; in fact one thoroughfare is
named "the street of the Executioner." For more than five centuries it
has been customary for the executioner to have a red door at the
entrance of his house. The assistant of the executioner of Chateauroux
still lives there,--if we are to believe public rumor, for the
townspeople never see him: the vine-dressers alone maintain an
intercourse with this mysterious being, who inherits from his
predecessors the gift of curing wounds and fractures. In the days when
Issoudun assumed the airs of a capital city the women of the town made
this section of it the scene of their wanderings. Here came the
second-hand sellers of things that look as if they never could find a
purchaser, old-clothes dealers whose wares infected the air; in short,
it was the rendezvous of that apocryphal population which is to be
found in nearly all such portions of a city, where two or three Jews
have gained an ascendency.
At the corner of one of these gloomy streets in the livelier half of
the quarter, there existed from 1815 to 1823, and perhaps later, a
public-house kept by a woman commonly called Mere Cognette. The house
itself was tolerably well built, in courses of white stone, with the
intermediary spaces filled in with ashlar and cement, one storey high
with an attic above. Over the door was an enormous branch of pine,
looking as though it were cast in Florentine bronze. As if this symbol
were not explanatory enough, the eye was arrested by the blue of a
poster which was pasted over the doorway, and on which appeared, above
the words "Good Beer of Mars," the picture of a soldier pouring out,
in the direction of a very decolletee woman, a jet of foam which
spurted in an arched line from the pitcher to the glass which she was
holding towards him; the whole of a color to make Delacroix swoon.
The ground-floor was occupied by an immense hall serving both as
kitchen and dining-room, from the beams of which hung, suspended by
huge nails, the provisions needed for the custom of such a house.
Behind this hall a winding staircase led to the upper storey; at the
foot of the staircase a door led into a low, long room lighted from
one of those little provincial courts, so narrow, dark, and sunken
between tall houses, as to seem like the flue of a chimney. Hidden by
a shed, and concealed from all eyes by walls, this low room was the
place where the Bad Boys of Issoudun held their plenary court.
Ostensibly, Pere Cognet boarded and lodged the country-people on
market-days; secretly, he was landlord to the Knights of Idleness.
This man, who was formerly a groom in a rich household, had ended by
marrying La Cognette, a cook in a good family. The suburb of Rome
still continues, like Italy and Poland, to follow the Latin custom of
putting a feminine termination to the husband's name and giving it to
the wife.
By uniting their savings Pere Cognet and his spouse had managed to buy
their present house. La Cognette, a woman of forty, tall and plump,
with the nose of a Roxelane, a swarthy skin, jet-black hair, brown
eyes that were round and lively, and a general air of mirth and
intelligence, was selected by Maxence Gilet, on account of her
character and her talent for cookery, as the Leonarde of the Order.
Pere Cognet might be about fifty-six years old; he was thick-set, very
much under his wife's rule, and, according to a witticism which she
was fond of repeating, he only saw things with a good eye--for he was
blind of the other. In the course of seven years, that is, from 1816
to 1823, neither wife nor husband had betrayed what went on nightly at
their house, or who they were that shared in the plot; they felt the
liveliest regard for the Knights; their devotion was absolute. But
this may seem less creditable if we remember that self-interest was
the security of their affection and their silence. No matter at what
hour of the night the Knights dropped in upon the tavern, the moment
they knocked in a certain way Pere Cognet, recognizing the signal, got
up, lit the fire and the candles, opened the door, and went to the
cellar for a particular wine that was laid in expressly for the Order;
while La Cognette cooked an excellent supper, eaten either before or
after the expeditions, which were usually planned the previous evening
or in the course of the preceding day.