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.