MONTEIL.[4]

To struggle for literary fame—to devote forty years to the composition

of an imperishable work—to toil amid pain and sickness, and the growing

infirmities of age—never to be appreciated during all the period of that

laborious existence except by the chosen few—and finally to die in

poverty, perhaps in want—and then, when you have long been buried, and

your name is nearly forgotten, your work to get slowly but surely into

circulation, and to be pronounced a master-piece—this is the fate of

few; but it was the fate of Amans Alexis Monteil, author of the _History

of the French of Various Conditions_—a book of amazing research, great

skill in composition, picturesque, humorous, and characteristic, and now

received as the sovereign authority upon all the subjects on which it

treats. The author was worthy of the work. Its object is to give a clear

description of the French people, as they presented themselves to their

contemporaries during the five last centuries. Old cartularies are

ransacked, baptismal registers consulted, manners and habits inquired

into; the private life of the tradesman, of the merchant, of the

labourer, earnestly investigated, and brought before us with the

distinctness of a picture. And Alexis himself—he was more undecipherable

than a charter of the time of Clovis, more dusty, begrimed, and

antiquated than the records of a Benedictine monastery: nobody knew him;

he breakfasted, dined (when he dined at all), and supped alone. Yet that

man of parchment had a heart, loved passionately, mourned deeply, hoped

ardently, and had such wit, such observation, such combination! Half of

his qualities remind us of Dominie Sampson, and the other half of Sydney

Smith. Let us dip into the contents of his volumes and the history of

his life; and first of the man.

Poor old Alexis, amid the desolation of his later years, fled for

consolation to the past. He revived the scenes of his youth, flew back

to his native town, and gave daguerreotypes, in an autobiography which

he never finished, of his father, his mother, his brothers, the people

he had known, and the very stones he remembered in the walls. These

reminiscences are very minute. Of course they are, for it was the habit

of the man’s mind to record the smallest particulars. He preferred them

indeed to great ones. He would rather know the number of buttons on a

general’s coat than the battles he had won. So his father is brought

before us in his habit as he lived. This worthy man had had losses, like

Dogberry, and, like that great functionary, had also held authority in

his native town. The town was a very small town, and the authority not

great; but it was enough: it gave rank; it gave dignity; and the son

records it as evidence that he came of gentle kin.

It was in the small city of Rhodez, partly situated in Auvergne and

partly in Rouergue, that Monsieur Jean Monteil, before the French

Revolution, held the office of receiver of fines and forfeits. This does

not seem a lofty post, but the worthy holder managed, by a little

ingenuity, and a lawsuit which lasted six years, to get it recognised as

one of the offices of the crown, inasmuch as the fines were those levied

by a royal court; and he was therefore as much a king’s servant as the

procureur himself. On the strength of this connection with the

administration, of justice, Monsieur Monteil wore a hat with a gold

band, a gown also with a similar ornament; and on Sundays and fête days

he had a right to march to the church, looking the embodiment of a

beadle, and of sitting on a raised place near the altar, and being

“incensed” by the officiating priests. His son dwells with filial pride

on the noble figure his progenitor presented to the eyes of his

fellow-townsmen, as he walked along the street with his gold-headed

cane, and lifted his three-cornered hat in answer to the salutations of

all who saw him. How long this went on we are not told; but one day the

alarm-bell frightened the town of Rhodez from its propriety. The

Revolution had found its way to the deepest recesses of Auvergne, and

the Reign of Terror began. The guillotine showed its hideous shape in

the main street; war was declared against aristocrats; and who could be

more clearly proved to belong to that doomed body than the portly

gentleman with the gold-laced hat and the gold-handled ivory staff? John

Monteil and the Dukes of Montmorency were equally worthy of death. There

was no place left for De Grammonts or Monteils, and the servant of the

king was no more saluted with respectful bows as he paraded his official

costume on the first sound of the bell which called the faithful to

church, and was no longer received with humble obeisances by the priests

before the service began. In a short time there were no bells to ring;

they were melted down to make sou-pieces by order of the Convention.

Then there were no priests; they were all executed or banished, or had

enlisted in the armies of the Republic: and finally there was no church;

it was turned into a prison for the refractory; and John Monteil laid

aside his gilded toga, and his cocked-hat, and his cane, and hid himself

as well as he was able in the dark parlour of his house. There he gave

himself up to despair. And no wonder; the blow had fallen so

unexpectedly, and death was on every side. He only waited till his turn

should come; and at last it came. In the days of his grandeur he had

taken into his service two of the boys of Rhodez—one Jerome Delpech, who

seems to have had no family tree at all, and Jules Bauleze, the son of a

poor sempstress. They had acted as his clerks, and were grateful to

their old employer. They were now engaged in the public offices, and saw

the whole tragedy as it went on. From time to time they slipt into the

darkened parlour, and said, “Be on your guard”—“Fly”—“Save yourself.”

But John Monteil did not know whither to fly. All France was nothing but

a scaffold, so he staid at home.

The two clerks came near him no more. They were suspected. Jerome

Delpech died of the jail fever, waited on in his illness by his old

master; and Jules Bauleze, the son of the sempstress, he was accused of

being an aristocrat: the fact could not be denied, and he was executed

in front of the town-hall. Then the Committee of Public Safety began to

tremble for the liberty and equality of the nation if such a very

exalted personage as Monsieur Monteil were suffered to live. So the

ci-devant beadle is dragged to prison—to the very church, the scene of

his weekly glories—where he sat on the front bench, and white-robed

choristers swung censers under his nose till he was nearly suffocated

with perfume (and smoke); and here, at the eastern end of the melancholy

ruin (for the windows were taken out, and the ornamental work all

carried away) he saw the sempstress Bauleze kneeling in an agony of

silent grief at the remains of the broken altar. She had been thrown

into confinement as the mother of an aristocrat, and would probably on

the following day be his companion on the scaffold. But before the

following day, Robespierre’s reign was over, and the two representatives

of the aristocracy of Rhodez were saved. What now is Monsieur Jean

Monteil to do? He is nothing if not magisterial. Rob him of his robes,

and what is he? A poor man indeed, more sinned against than sinning,

reduced to leave the splendours of his native city, and, like

Diocletian, plant cabbages in retirement. He occupied a cottage, and

cultivated a few fields. But there was still left to him, companion and

soother of his griefs, the gentle Marie Mazet, whom he had married when

they were both in the sunshine of prosperity—both distinguished for

birth and station; for she was the daughter of a mercer who sold the

finest cloths in the town, and claimed some sort of unknown kindred with

the Bandinellis of Italy and the Maffettes of France. But this lofty

genealogy was due to the antiquarian zeal of her husband. She herself

only knew that Italy was a long way off, and that the Bandinellis and

the Maffettes were probably no better than they should be. So she did

not keep her head an inch higher on account of her noble origin, but was

the most sedate, quiet, economical, pains-taking manager of a household

that Rhodez had ever seen. She sang, but only at church, or over the

cradles of her children; she walked, but only to mass or vespers; she

lived, as was the custom of good housewives then, in the kitchen,

presided at table, helping the young ones, cleaning up the dishes,

ironing the clothes, arranging, settling, ordering all—a charming

picture of a good mother of a family; and no wonder her son dwells with

affecting tenderness over the details of his early home. And the

vintage! The labours of the whole house were suspended on that blessed

occasion. The dry and dusty streets were left behind; old and young took

their way rejoicing to the vineyard which Monsieur Monteil possessed a

few miles from the town; and even Madame Monteil forgot her cares—forgot

her economics, and renewed her youth in the midst of the universal joy.

A harvest-home is a delightful sound in English or Scottish ears; it

recalls the merry dance, the rustic feast, the games in the barn, the

ballad, the smoking bowl,—but what are all these to the vintage? The

harvest itself consists in wine. The children of the south kindle with

enthusiasm at the very sound of the word; and Bacchus and the ancient

gods seem once more to revisit the earth in a visible shape. All

Rouergue was in a ferment of enjoyment the moment the grapes were ripe;

but even then the mother of the future historian had hours of serious

reflection. With her hand clasped in the hand of her silent thoughtful

little boy, she looked often, long, and in silence, out of the window of

the summer-house, her eyes lifted to the sky, her mouth mantling with a

smile, sunk in an ecstasy of holy contemplation, such as we see in Ary

Scheffer’s noble picture of St Augustin and his Mother. “What are you

thinking of, dear wife?” said Monsieur Jean Monteil. “On eternity,” she

replied in a soft voice, and gave her little boy’s hand a warmer clasp.

It must be from the maternal side Alexis derived his quiet strength, and

the exquisite feeling of romance which enables him to realise the states

of society, the sentiments and family connections so long past away. A

mother like this would have been a fatal loss at any time; but happening

when it did, the blow was irrecoverable. So good a manager might have

restored the family fortunes; so loved a parent might have kept the sons

united and respectable; “but she fell into the dust,” says Alexis,

seventy years after her death, “and our household was ruined for ever.”

These are strange revelations of the interior economy of an obscure

family, in one of the most obscure of the provinces of France, before

and during the Revolution: and the curtain rises and falls upon all the

sons; for Alexis survived his brothers, and traces them with a light and

graceful hand from the cradle to the grave. The eldest was old enough to

know the distinction of his position as heir of the family name, when

the Revolution broke out, and buried Jean Baptiste Jacques under the

ruins of the feudal system. He had studied for the law—he had, in fact,

had the honour of being called to the bar, and, by his great eloquence

and knowledge, of getting his client—the only one he had—condemned to

the galleys for life. But he, like his father, was forced to put off the

gown, and, unlike his father, who stayed to brave the tempest at home,

he fled. Meanly, ignominiously he fled, and hid himself amid the retired

valleys of the Gevaudan, where he thought nobody would find him out, and

where he might boast of his loyalty and sufferings without danger. But

his boastings brought dangers from which greatness could not be exempt.

A certain loyalist of the name of Charrie—a peasant who thought that a

few of his fellow-labourers could restore the _fleur-de-lis_ on the

points of their pitchforks and other agricultural implements with which

they armed themselves—heard of the exiled magnate who made the echoes of

the Gevaudan vocal with his lamentations and cries for vengeance, and

came to the gownless advocate and made him colonel of the ragged

regiment on the spot! Here was a choice of evils. If he refused the

colonelcy, he would in a few minutes be cut into many hundred pieces by

the scythes of the furious Legitimists; if he accepted, he was certain

in a few weeks to be guillotined for rebellion against the Republic. But

as weeks are better than minutes, he accepted the honourable rank, and

Colonel Jean Baptiste showed himself at the head of his troops, and

armed himself with a reaping-hook, which looked like a Turkish scimitar

with the bend the wrong way. He armed himself also with a white cockade,

which had the remarkable property of presenting the tricolor when turned

inside out; and, prepared for either fortune, retained, as it were, on

both sides, the colonel-advocate considered himself secure whatever

might happen. But Charrie was not so blind as was thought. The trick was

found out, and the colonel fled: he ran, he climbed, he struggled over

walls, he staggered across gardens,—the scythemen, the pitchforkmen, the

reaping-hookmen, the flailmen after him; and by dint of quick running,

and artful turnings, and scientific doubles he might have been safe; but

a dreadful outcry in an outhouse, the infuriate babblings of

turkey-cocks, the hissing of geese, the quacking of ducks, betrayed him.

He had concealed himself in a hen-roost, and the denizens of the

poultry-yard had regarded neither the tricolor nor the white cockade. In

spite of his duplicity and cowardice, he got off. Happier than Charrie,

who paid for his brief authority with his head, the eldest hope of the

Monteils lived in peaceful obscurity, cultivating potatoes, both red and

white, and brewing the best wine of the district, till having planted

and brewed all through the first wars of the Empire, he died at sixty,

forgetful alike of his legal studies and military adventures, and only

doubtful as to the superiority of the long kidney or the pink-eyed

rounds.

The next was a wit—a _roué_ to the extent of a few rows on the street,

and a poet to the extent of a few lampoons on the respectable

dignitaries of Rhodez. He tore off the knockers of the street-doors,

changed the sign-boards of different tradesmen, and went through the

usual stages of a fast young gent’s career. He proceeded to Paris,

determining to be chancellor; he moderated his desires in a few years,

and would have been satisfied to be a peer of France; he sank lower

still, and would have accepted anything he could get, but he could get

nothing, so he became a land-measurer of the humblest kind, retained his

gaiety to the last, sang his own little songs and repeated his own

little epigrams, and died of corpulence and laziness at the age of

eighty-two, as happy, perhaps, as if his dreams of ambition had been

fulfilled. The third and last brother was the black sheep of the flock.

He enlisted in the hopeful time for any one who had courage and a sword,

in 1793, and might have been a Soult, or a Ney, or a Murat. Instead of

that, he was an idle, dissipated dog, who sank from vice to vice, till,

having some musical talent and great strength of wrist, which obtained

him the situation of drummer in the regiment, he behaved so ill that

some brother of the trade was employed to drum him out of the army, and

he returned to his home, living at his impoverished father’s

expense—getting a dinner where he could—drinking when he could obtain

wine—gambling when he could borrow a button to toss with—useless,

shameless, heartless; and when the old man died, and the cottage passed

to strangers, and his contemporaries had perished, and the new

generation knew him no more, he found his way to Paris, wandered through

the streets in search of an hospital, was so thin and worn and broken

down that he was admitted without certificate, and lay down on a crib in

the charitable ward and died: and this the result of the education and

the example given by Monsieur Jean Monteil of Rhodez, and the gentle

Marie Mazet! Was it for this they were so strict in honour, so pure in

heart, so tender in affection, only to produce a coward, an idler, and a

beggar? The fate of families well and carefully brought up, circled

round “by father’s blessing, mother’s prayer,” during all their youth,

and giving way at once to the excesses of vice, and sinking into the

abysses of shame, is one of the most curious of our everyday

experiences. Are we to blame the parents? They have done the best they

could; but Tom gets a commission, and is cashiered; Billy gets into a

bank, and forges a draft; Harry goes to the bar, and drinks himself to

death at the cider-cellar; and the proud and chivalrous old father, the

soft and affectionate mother, after mourning for a few years in the

small lodging to which the extravagance of their family has reduced

them, die of broken hearts. But in the case of the Monteils there was

one redeeming point: one son was all they could wish in the way of

affection, of uprightness, of quietness, and devotion to his books.

There was Amans Alexis studying from morn to night—very shy—very

awkward—very queer—caring nothing for society—knowing little of anything

that had occurred since the battle of Pavia—insatiate in his hunger

after old scraps of manuscript—starting off, stick in hand, bread in

pocket, if he heard that in some miserable valley among the hills there

had been a demolition going on of a monastery, or rotten old chest

discovered among the rat-holes of some tatterdemalion town-hall. The

odd-looking youth, tired and travel-stained, saw at a glance if the

muniment-chest was old and useless enough to be of any value; he opened

the moth-eaten lid, and saw a file of moth-eaten papers. In a moment he

ran over the hieroglyphics they contained. The language they were

written in, though Latin in name, would have puzzled Cicero and the

College of Augurs to interpret a syllable. Alexis read them off like

round-hand, and bought them—sixpence—ninepence—a franc—and the treasure

was his. He turned his heels on the monastery or the town-hall, and

pursued his way to Paris. He goes to the Depository of the Archives of

France. “Do you want an original charter granted by Louis le Hutin to

the Abbey of St Bernard de Romans in Dauphiny?” “Certainly. It is worth

its weight in gold;” and it is now a valued article in the Bibliothèque

Impériale.

But old charters are not to be found every day, even if

monasteries—which is greatly to be wished—were every day demolished; and

yet the daily bread is to be procured. Buonaparte is in the first dash

of youthful power. Nothing escapes him; no amount of bushels can hide

any candles which can light his way to empire. The laborious student,

the groper among old documents, the retiring antiquary is discovered,

and is installed Professor of History at the Military School. No man in

France knew more of history than Amans Alexis Monteil; but it was the

history of the citizen, not of the soldier. He knew what was the

position of the grocer, of the shoe-black, of the petty tradesman, since

grocers and shoe-blacks and petty tradesmen were created. He dwelt on

the family circle gathered round the cottage-fire in the year 1450. He

could tell of every article of furniture in the castle of the noble, and

also all the circumstances of the carpenters who made them. He knew the

habits of the scholars of Amboise or of Paris in the days of Joan of

Arc; but the wars of Frederick of Prussia, the wars of Charles the

Twelfth of Sweden! he hated wars; he was the biographer of the people,

and did not concern himself much about the great ones of the earth. So

his pupils were rather inattentive; they did not care much for the

simple annals of workmen and labourers who had been dead four hundred

years; and, besides, they were listening for the guns which were

thundering all over the world. How could they hear a dissertation on the

quarrels of the Benedictines and the Cordeliers, when they were in

momentary expectation of a bulletin from the Army of Italy? How could

they listen to a description of the agricultural labourers of Provence

on the day after the news of Marengo? They went off and were killed, or

rose to be generals, governors, marshals. And Alexis plodded on. He

gathered materials in all directions for the great work that was never

absent from his thoughts—pondered—inquired—compared, and finally

completed the most marvellous reproduction of the past which any country

possesses. It is, in fact, a minute detail of the humble ranks in

France, the inhabitants of obscure towns and farms and hamlets. What

Monfaucon is to the nobility, with his fourteen folio volumes of

emblazoned arms, and vivid representation of the life in hall and

palace, the glitter of the tilt-yard, the mustering of knights and

squires for battle, the gentle Alexis is for the peasant, for the

roturier, the bourgeois, and the serf. He erects his tent in the market,

in front of the monastery, at the great gate of the chateau, or in the

fair, where he is surrounded by mountebanks and ballad-singers and

jugglers, and writes down exactly what he sees. He sees a leper sitting

at the gate, veiled and guarded. He meets a funeral—he meets a wedding;

he accompanies the corpse to the church, and the bride to her chamber.

He omits nothing; and he supports every statement by the most amazing

array of documents. There are writings and inscriptions, and medals of

brass, and carved pieces of stone, and fragments of chests of drawers,

all giving confirmation strong to whatever fact he states. And this

minute supervision he extends over four centuries. The tradesman is

followed from the time of the domination of the English to the time of

the domination of Louis the Fourteenth. The noble is seen, over all that

lapse of time, governing, quarrelling, trampling, oppressing; and you

soon see that the Revolution of 1789 was a great revenge for centuries

of wrong; that the guillotine of 1793 was built out of timber planted by

feudal barons, when Francis the First was king; and you wonder no longer

at the inhuman ferocity of a peasantry and a middle class, equally

despised and equally hated by the spurred and feathered oligarchy who

ground them to the dust, and insulted them in their dearest relations.

Happily for us, feudalism died a natural death, or was put an end to

like a gentleman in fair fight at Naseby and elsewhere, or

scientifically bled into its grave by acts of Parliament, or John Bull

would have torn it in pieces like a tiger; for the _History of the

French of Various Conditions_ would apply equally well during the first

century of the record (the fourteenth) to our English trades. But in the

sixteenth the divergence is complete. Nobles in England are tyrants no

more, nor the lower classes slaves. When Leicester was entertaining

Elizabeth at Kenilworth, an Englishman’s house was his castle. When

Sully was raising adherents for Henry the Fourth, the French peasant had

no property and no rights. Leicester would have been tried for robbery

if he had taken forcible possession of John Smith’s ox or cow. Sully

would have passed scot-free if he had burned Jacques Bonhomme’s cottage

about his ears, and tossed that starveling individual into the flames on

the point of his lance. There is such an impression of truth and reality

about these revelations of Monteil, that we never have a doubt on the

smallest incident of his details. If for a moment we pause in our

perusal, and say, “Can this possibly be correct? Can such things be?”

What is the use of farther hesitation? You turn to the note at the end

of the volume. You find voucher after voucher, from all manner of

people—priests, lawyers, and judges. You might as well doubt your own

marriage, with the certificate of that stupendous fact before your eyes,

signed by parson and clerk, two bridesmaids, and the Best Man. It is

better to read on with unhesitating belief. You will only get into a

cloud of witnesses which will throw you positively into the dark ages,

as if you had been a spectator of the scene. And the author all this

time—is he a mere machine—a mill for the grinding of old facts into new

and contemporary pieces of knowledge, as an old bronze statue may be

coined into current money? Alexis is married; Alexis has a child—such a

wife and such a child no man was ever blessed with before. His father,

our deceased acquaintance, the former aristocrat of Rhodez, Monsieur

Jean Monteil, married his student son, shortly after the tempest burst

out upon the throne and nobility of France, to a charming creature,

young, innocent, and an heiress, daughter of a gentleman who, long

before this, had retired to enjoy his fortune with dignity—a Monsieur

Rivié, a little man, but strong—strong as a blacksmith. And this was

lucky, for he was a blacksmith by trade. Not a common blacksmith, be it

understood, but so clever, so sharp, so knowing, and withal such a

dreadfully hard hitter, that he was a very uncommon blacksmith indeed.

Little Rivié was the name he was known by all over the part of the

country where his anvil rung. But little Rivié rose to be great Rivié

before long. He shod horses for great men; he shod a war-horse for the

Prince of Conti; he shod a charger for Marshal Saxe; he shod a lame

horse so skilfully for a certain colonel that the colonel got him the

contract for supplying the regiment with its remounts. He bought lame

horses, of course, cured them, and sent them capering and caracolling to

the barracks. It was the best-horsed regiment at Dettingen, and ran away

at the first fire. So the smith grew rich, and married, and retired, as

was said above, to show his well-earned wealth and his delightful family

to his admiring townsfolk. As he rattled through the street, he became

so inflated with pride and happiness that the axle of his carriage

broke, and he was forced to alight. Luckily the accident happened just

opposite a smithy. The mulciber was an old fellow-apprentice, but could

not recognise his ancient comrade in the person of the great seignor who

had crushed his axle-tree by the mere weight of his importance. He also

could not mend the fracture. In a moment the noble stranger pulled off

his embroidered coat, tucked up his fine-linen sleeves, seized the

sledge, and, O heavens! wasn’t there a din?—a hail of blows?—a storm of

sparkles?—a rat-a-tat on the end, on the side, on the middle, and still

the twelve-pound hammer went on. “By St Eloi!” said the owner of the

instrument, “you are either the d—l himself or little Rivié.” And little

Rivié it was. And little Rivié he continued to the end, for all his

grandeur disappeared. That dreadful Revolution meets us at every turn.

It broke the axle-tree of Monsieur Rivié’s carriage, beyond the power of

Vulcan himself to mend—it took off his embroidered coat, which nobody

could ever restore—it tucked up his fine-linen shirt-sleeves, and

nothing could ever bring them down again. In the days of his prosperity

he had given his eldest daughter (and a dowry) to the Marquis de

Lusignan—a nobleman who advanced claims to the island of Cyprus and the

kingdom of Jerusalem, but was delighted to accept a few thousand francs

as “tocher” with the daughter of a contractor. He borrowed a few

thousands more on the income of the baronial estates of the Lusignans,

besides a collateral security on the revenues of the Holy City when it

was restored to its legitimate king. This mortgage was settled as the

marriage fortune of the younger daughter, the sweet and excellent

Annette. But the barony of Lusignan followed the example of Cyprus and

Jerusalem, and vanished into thin air at a twist of the necromantic wand

of Danton and Robespierre. Little Rivié was too old to resume the

hammer. He retired, with his sons and daughters, to a small farm in the

neighbourhood of Rhodez; and the ex-beadle and the ex-blacksmith

arranged a marriage between the historian of the trades and the sister

of the Queen of Cyprus. Her majesty had died, and her royal lord was

flourishing a pair of scissors, and occasionally a razor, in the

Burlington Arcade. Did the gentle Annette repine at her change of

fortune? Did she mourn over the days of her father’s grandeur, and

despise the queer, learned, modest, loving being she had enriched with

her first affection? Ah! never for an hour. They sometimes had a dinner,

sometimes not; but always mutual trust, always perfect love.

Occasionally, when fortune smiled more than usual, Alexis would address

a letter to her as “Her Royal Highness the Princess of Lusignan, in her

patrimonial Realm of Cyprus;” but this was only when a manuscript had

put them in funds. At other times they were sad enough. With the amount

of their united fortunes they had bought a small cottage and garden near

Fontainebleau. Here he resided, walking every day six miles to his class

and six miles back. Annette regularly met him, on his return, a mile or

two from home, and arm-inarm they re-entered their own domain. But the

class disappeared, the chair of history was suppressed, and the house

was offered for sale. A purchaser appeared, and Alexis, in the interest

of some future antiquarian of two thousand three hundred and nine,

preserved the “Agreement to buy.” It was between “Dame Monteil and his

majesty Napoleon the Great, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, and

Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine.” It is a pity that the sum

agreed on was not so magnificent as the titles of the buyer. It was only

two hundred pounds—“a small price,” says Alexis, with a sigh, “out of

the contributions of all Europe.” They now removed into a garret in a

suburb of Paris, and day by day the husband put on his hat and traversed

the great dark streets in search of something to do, but got no comfort

from the interminable lines of narrow-windowed houses; for not a door

was opened, not an offer was made, and, weary and disheartened, he found

his way back to his attic, to the suffering smile of Annette, and the

playful caresses of his boy. His Alexis was now two years old, and with

these two the heart of the simple student was completely filled. There

never had been such a child before, except among the cherubs of Murillo.

He would make him such a scholar! such a Christian! such a man!—but in

the mean time their two hundred pounds (diminished by the expenses of

the sale) were rapidly disappearing. The time of the green leaves was

coming on. They heard birds whistling in the dusty trees on the road

before their windows—they thought of the chestnuts, and limes, and

hedgerows of Rouergue. “Come,” said Alexis, “Paris has no need of such a

useless fellow as I am. Let us go home.” Annette packed up her small

possessions, took the young Alexis in her arms, and away they go in the

first sunny days of the month of May. Away they go on foot, Alexis

generally bestriding his father’s shoulders as if he felt Bucephalus

beneath him, and through the smiling plains: through Nemours, Montargis,

Cosne, Pouilly, lies their course, and Paris gradually is forgotten.

They walked at a good pace, for they liked to have an hour or two to

spare when they came to a shady place and a spring. Then they undid the

knapsack, and bread soaked in the fountain became ambrosia, and they did

not envy the gods. Through Moulins, Clermont, Issoire, on they go,

talking, arranging, hoping. And at last they see the chestnut trees, the

limes, the hedgerows—they are in the paradise of their youth: they know

the names of every field—they are beloved by all that see them—and they

live on sixty francs (two pounds eight and fourpence) a-month. The

vegetables are delightful, the milk plentiful, the loaf abundant, and

they never think of meat. Amans Alexis writes—writes—writes. Annette

sits beside him, and listens with entranced ears as he reads to her,

chapter by chapter, the history of her countrymen who lived, and worked,

and hungered so long ago. His great book is now begun, and his life is

happy. Scraps of paper with perfectly illegible lines furnish him with a

hint, which he works up into a statement. The statement grows a story,

the story grows a picture, and we become as familiarly acquainted with

Friar John, Cordelier of Tours, and Friar Andrew, Cordelier of

Thoulouse, as with any of our friends. And such a correspondent as Friar

John of Tours has seldom been met with since he started on his memorable

journey to Paris in the year 1340. Then all the personages introduced

are as real as a lord mayor. Where Alexis got his knowledge of

character, his sly observation, his exquisite touches of humour, is a

puzzle to those who know his story. But it was not in Stratford that

Shakespeare got his knowledge of the tortures of a successful usurper

like Macbeth; nor in London that he repeated at second hand the wit of

Benedict or Mercutio. Alexis found the grave dignity of the Sire de

Montbason, the ill-repressed ardour of the soldier-monk Friar William,

and the noble lessons in chivalry given by the Commander of Rhodes, in

the same wonderful reservoir of unacted experience in which Shakespeare

found the jealousy of the Moor and the philosophic wanderings of Hamlet.

The family group in the Castle of Montbason is worthy of Sterne, and the

warrior-colouring of Scott.

The book grows—it takes shape—visions of wealth and honour look out in

every page; and again to Paris must they go. They go—and the same

wretched life comes upon them again. They are again in a garret. Again

Alexis walks through desolate streets; again his misery is cheered by

his wife and the prattle of his son: but he does not see a hectic colour

on Annette’s cheek, or hear a cough which shakes her frame. She never

mentions how weak she is growing—till at last concealment is impossible.

She languishes in the town air, and pants once more for the fields and

gardens. She sees, when lying on her sleepless bed, the whole district

rise before her as if she were there. She sees the church—the farm—the

cottage where they were so happy. Nothing will keep her in Paris; she

must die in her native village. Alexis is broken-hearted. It is

impossible for them all to travel so far; the journey by coach is too

expensive, on foot too far; but Annette must be gratified in all. It

seems a small favour to give to so good a wife—the choice of a place to

die in.

“There are three spots,” says Alexis, “which I never pass without

thinking of Annette—the Rue de Seine, at the corner of the Rue de

Tournon. It was there that she all of a sudden began to limp, attacked

by rheumatism. ‘Ah!’ she cried, ‘’tis the last of my happy walks.’

Another time, on the Pont Royal, a band of music passed, followed by the

Imperial Guards. Annette said to me, ‘I scarcely see them; there is a

cloud before my eyes.’ Alas, alas! my last recollection of her is at the

coach-office, where I saw her take her departure. ‘Adieu, adieu!’ she

said to me over and over with her sweet voice—and I was never to see her

again!” Alexis took no warning from the limping in the Rue de Seine, or

the blindness on the Pont Royal. She stayed with him, cheering him,

soothing him, sustaining him to the last; and then, when she could only

be a burden and a care to him, she unfolded her wings like a dove, and

flew away and was at rest.

Alexis was very desolate now, but he laboured on; he lavished on his son

all the affection that formerly was spread over two. He educated him

himself—made him the sharer of his studies, the partner of his pursuits.

Brought up in such poverty, and accustomed only to his parents, he never

was a child. At thirteen he was grave, thoughtful, laborious, and had

the feelings of a man of middle age. The government did not altogether

pass over the claims to compensation for the suppression of the Historic

Chair which Alexis now advanced. He was made a sub-librarian at the

school of St Cyr, and ate his bread in faith; and he published his

volume, but got nothing for all his toil. It was in a style so new, and

on a subject so generally neglected, that it had a small circulation,

though highly esteemed by all who had the power to appreciate the skill

of the workman and the value of the work. Still he toiled on, for he had

his son to provide for; and the boy was now grown up—a fine stately

young man, reminding Alexis of his mother by the sweetness of his temper

and the beauty of his features. There were other points of resemblance

which he did not perceive. The youth was his father’s only companion,

the father was the youth’s only friend; and great was the pride of

Alexis when he was told that his comrade was in love, was loved, and was

soon about to marry. A bright prospect for poor old Monteil! who saw a

renewal of his own youth, and the tenderness of Annette, in the

happiness of his son and the attentions of his daughter-in-law. The son

was admitted as clerk of the historical archives of France, and his

salary was enough for his wants. The audience, fit, though few, which

approved of the father’s volumes, encouraged him to proceed. There was

at last a prospect of a brilliant fame and a comfortable income. They

could buy a small house at Fontainebleau; they would all live together:

when children came, there would be new editions of the Fourteenth

Century, to be a portion for the girl; the Fifteenth Century should

educate the boy; the Sixteenth should go into a fund for saving; and the

other centuries could surely be a provision for the author’s old age.

Could anything be more delightful or more true? But young Monteil grew

weak, no one knew why. He walked home in the rain one evening, and dried

himself at the stove: he shivered as he stood before it, and then went

to bed—and then was in a fever—and in three days he died!

“I lost him,” says Alexis, “on the 21st September 1833, at eleven

o’clock at night. I closed his eyes. Oh, misery! Oh, my child!—my second

self! Hearest thou the cries and sobs of the wretched being who was once

thy father? Dost thou recognise the voice of the poor old man whom thou

so lovedst—who loved thee so? Thou leavest him alone upon the earth, and

his hair is now white, and his arms empty!”

And his house was empty, and his purse, but not his cup of suffering.

Away went all his dreams of buying the little villa at Fontainebleau,

with its garden and paddock, its cow-shed and hen-roost. A vault was now

to be purchased, and Monteil had not the necessary sum. But was his son,

the hope of his old age, the tenderest and most affectionate of

children, to be committed to the common grave, tossed in without a name,

without a headstone, without a flower above his head? No! he would beg,

he would pray—he would implore as a favour that a little spot of earth

should be given him to be the resting-place of his boy till he joined

him in the tomb—together the loving two, in death as in life. He wrote

to the prefecture of the Seine with his simple request; but not a clerk

in all that establishment had heard of his book. He got no answer. Still

he did not despair. He left the corpse for an hour—he walked to the

prefect—he saw him, he said to him, bare-headed, broken-voiced,

“Monsieur, I am Monteil;” but a look at the dignitary’s face showed him

that there was no response to the announcement. “Perhaps,” he said, “you

never heard my name?” And it was too true. He turned away, staggered

blindly down the stair, with his hand before his eyes. And he saw his

son cast carelessly, disdainfully, into the vast ditch—into which the

penniless are thrown.

Amans Alexis Monteil wrote at his great work no more. Fortune so far

smiled on him that he succeeded to a sum of £300. With this he bought a

cottage at Cely, a pretty village near Fontainebleau, and lived on

hermit’s fare. He wandered and mused in the Bois de Boulogne; he sat on

the stone seats of the gardens of the Luxembourg; but he saw no one at

home, visited no one abroad. He had ventured all the happiness of his

life on two frail barks, and both had foundered. Annette and Alexis,

both had gone, and why should he labour more? The villagers saluted him

as he passed, out of respect to age and sorrow, and he repaid them after

his kind. He traced up their genealogies—discovered for them where their

ancestors had come from, and finished by composing a veritable History

of the hamlet where he lived. The historian of the commons of France

became also historian of Cely, and more—he became its benefactor and

friend. Just before his death, he founded recompenses for good conduct.

He consented to the sale of a certain portion of his domain, and with

the interest of the money so raised he ordered medals of honour—silver,

with an inscription—to be given annually to the man who should drain a

marshy piece of ground—to him who should plant the finest vine round his

cottage—to the best labourer—to the village crone or washerwoman who

should amuse her circle of listeners with the most entertaining (and

innocent) stories—and to the shepherd who should show the kindest

treatment of his flock, _remembering that all have the same Creator_.

And thus mindful of his poorer neighbours, and just and benevolent to

the end, Amans Alexis Monteil closed his honourable life. His work has

been twice crowned by the Institute of France; it is in its fourth

edition; it has been eulogised by Guizot—it will be the delight of many

generations. But what cares Amans Alexis for favour that comes so late?

Sufficient for him is the neglected turf grave in the churchyard of

Cely, with the short inscription of his name and the record of his

seventy-five years of pain. “Requiescat in pace.”

The _History of the French of Various Conditions_ extends over the five

last centuries, and the plan of each century differs. The Fourteenth is

painted in a series of letters, as we have said, from a certain Friar

John, a Cordelier of Tours, to a brother of his rule residing at

Toulouse. The character of the worthy letter-writer is charmingly

sustained. Keen, cautious, observant, and yet with the simplicity

natural to the inmate of a cloister, he gives a clear description to his

friend of everything he sees, every conversation he hears, every place

he visits. He enters the huts where poor men lie, and we learn the state

of the labourer; he enters the dungeon, and reveals the secrets of the

prison-house; he goes to the Fair of Montrichard, and we walk about

among the booths. He gives the minutest details of the royal court—and,

in short, manages to lift the reader completely back into the days of

rich monasteries and private wars, and tournaments and duels. He has no

antiquarian disquisitions or tiresome catalogues of furniture or dress;

we rely on the faithfulness of the loquacious and gentlemanly Friar, and

feel certain they are real letters written at the dates assigned. The

fifteenth century is presented with the same marvellous freshness of

detail, but without the individuality of the inimitable Friar John. It

is a pity that excellent special correspondent did not turn out to be

the Wandering Jew, and traverse all the centuries from first to last. We

must suppose he died full of years and honours—let us hope, as head of

some noble abbey—before the fifteenth century began. His place, however,

is admirably supplied. We perceive a change taking place in the

relations of the different classes of society, and the change is

traceable in still stronger colours when, in the sixteenth century, we

come to the impression produced by his visit to France on a clear-headed

unprejudiced Spaniard. His glance is as penetrating, and his inquiries

as minute, as those of Friar John and the other; but the same may be

said of all the supposed observers. They are all mere secretaries of

Monteil, and write the same pure idiomatic and characteristic style. The

laughing eyes and scornful lips of the Cordelier of Tours, the Hermit of

Cely, come out through all disguise; and the Spaniard of the sixteenth

century, and “Memoirist” of the seventeenth, are only admirable

continuers of the correspondence commenced between the priests. It will,

therefore, be like mounting to the fountain-head if we go back to the

fourteenth century, and read the account of Friar John’s visit to the

great Castle of Montbason—a perfect representative of a feudal residence

just before feudalism began to fall into decay. A dreadful event has

happened in the chateau. While the Sire de Montbason is absent at the

head of his vassals assisting the king, he left everything in charge of

the grand huntsman. The grand huntsman, in pursuing a peasant who had

offended him, knocks out his brains on the arch of a gateway, and is

found dead on the road. The peasant, as if he had been guilty of murder,

is immediately tied up to a gallows and hanged. During the preparations

the wife and children of the wretched man stood at the foot of the wall

crying “Mercy, mercy!” but the representatives of the grand huntsman are

inexorable. The peasant swings off, and the cries of the widow and

orphan ascend to Heaven for vengeance. The Curé of the parish hears of

the transaction, and excommunicates the revengeful sons of the grand

huntsman. The Sire de Montbason returns and compensates the peasant’s

family, and founds a perpetual mass for the poor man’s soul. But nothing

will do; noises are heard in the castle, furniture moves about, chains

rattle; the house is haunted, and the spirits resist the exorcisms of

the Curé, and kick up wilder confusion than ever. The Sire sends to the

monastery of the Cordeliers at Tours, and Friar John is fixed upon by

the prior. There could not have been a better choice. He goes and prays,

and burns incense, and lights candles, and the supernatural noises are

heard no more. He remains at the chateau an honoured guest, and the

almoner even resigns to him the privilege of saying grace before and

after meat. John is overwhelmed with the honour, but accepts the duty;

and, we doubt not, was the pleasantest ghost-layer the Sire de Montbason

had ever seen. His nineteenth letter to Friar Andrew is all about the

house he is in:—

“Montbason is one of the finest chateaus in France. Fancy to yourself a

superb position—a steep hill rugged with rocks, and indented with deep

ravines and precipices. On the ascent is the castle. The little houses

at its feet increase its apparent size. The Indre seems to retire

respectfully from the walls, and forms a semicircle round its front. You

should see it at sunrise, when its outside galleries glitter with the

arms and accoutrements of the guard, and its towers are shining in the

light. The gate, flanked with little towers, and surmounted by a lofty

guard-house, is covered all over with heads of wolves and wild boars.

Enter, and you have three enclosures, three ditches, three drawbridges

to cross. You find yourself in the great quadrangle where the cisterns

are placed, and on right and left the stables, the hen-roosts, the

dovecots, the coach-houses. Underground are the cellars, the vaults, the

prisons. Above are the living-rooms, and above them the magazines, the

larders, the armoury. The roofs are surrounded with parapets and

watch-towers. In the middle of the yard is the donjon, which contains

the archives and the treasure. It has a deep ditch all round it, and

cannot be approached except by a bridge, which is almost always raised.

Though the walls, like those of the castle, are six feet thick, it has

an external covering of solid hewn stone up to the half of its height.

“The castle has been lately repaired. There is something light and

elegant about it which was wanting in the chateaus of old. You may well

believe it is finished in the most modern style: great vaulted rooms

with arched windows filled with painted glass; large halls paved in

squares of different colours; handsome furniture of all kinds; solid

stands with bas-reliefs, representing hell or purgatory; presses carved

like church-windows; great caskets; immense leather trunks, mounted in

iron; great red boxes; mirrors of glass, at least a foot in width, and

some of metal of the same size; great sofas with arms, covered with

tapestry and ornamented with fringes; benches with trellis-work backs;

others, twenty feet long, with hanging covers, or stuffed cushions,

embroidered with coats-of-arms. I must tell you, however, that the beds

do not seem at all proportioned to the rank of the owner. They are not

above ten or eleven feet wide; I have seen much larger in houses of less

pretence. But as to the decoration of the apartments, nothing can be

more sumptuous. There are show-rooms and chambers of state, which are

named from the colour or subjects of the hangings with which they are

covered. There are some where the great pillars that support the beams

of the ceiling are ornamented with ribbons and flowers in tin. There are

some where figures of life-size, painted on the walls, carry in their

hands, or projecting from their mouths, scrolls on which texts are

written, pleasant to read, and most excellent for the morals of the

beholders.

“As to the mode of life, it is pleasant enough, except that we do not

dine till nearly twelve o’clock, and never sup till after sunset—which

appears to me a little too late. The day, in other respects, is

agreeably varied. In the morning the courtyard is filled with squires,

huntsmen, and pages, who make their horses go through their evolutions.

Then they divide into parties, and defend and attack some staked-off

piece of ground with amazing strength and activity, amid the applause of

all the spectators. After dinner there is leaping at the bar,

quoit-throwing, ninepins, and other games. In addition to all this we

have the parrots and monkeys. We have also the old female jester of the

late Sire de Montbason and the young fool of the present lord. He is so

gay, and so full of tricks and nonsense, that in rainy days he is the

life of the whole house.

“The almoner has charge of the evening’s entertainments. He has seen the

world, and recounts agreeably; but, as he has never gone on pilgrimage,

and has not lived either in convents or monasteries, he cannot give us

above three stories in a night, for fear of repeating himself. But,

fortunately, we have an ancient Commander of Rhodes, who has visited the

Holy Land, and has travelled in the three parts of the world. He is an

uncle of the Sire de Montbason. He relates his adventures delightfully.

It is only a pity his bad health makes him go to bed so soon.

Frequently, also, we have jugglers and vaulters; wandering musicians

sometimes come, and we have concerts on the trumpet and flute and

tambourine; harps and lutes, cymbals and rebecs. This very day we had a

visit from a man who played on the viol, and never could get the strings

in harmony. And no wonder; for it was found out that some of the chords

were of the gut of a sheep, and others of the gut of a wolf. How could

they agree? But he was paid as liberally as the rest.

“Life in these castles would be almost too happy if it were not mixed,

like every other, with anxieties and alarms. Sometimes when we least

expect it—in the middle of dinner or when we are sound asleep—the

alarm-bell is rung. In a moment everything is astir—the bridges are

raised—the portcullis falls, the gates are closed—everybody starts up

from table or bed, and runs to the turrets, to the machicoulis, to the

loopholes, to the barbicans. A few days ago I was witness to one of

these “alertes,” and during the space of forty-eight hours nobody was

allowed to close an eye but the almoner and me. Every one was kept to

his post—but nothing came of it. It was a Vidame of the neighbourhood,

who had thought that the Sire de Montbason was levying his retainers,

and preparing to attack his chateau; and so, without sending letters of

defiance, he had taken the field against us with three hundred men.

There were parleyings and explanations on both sides, and everything was

arranged. On this subject the Dowager-Lady of Montbason tells us that

these private wars are not so frequent as they used to be. She remembers

that, in the week of her marriage, there was such a fierce and

long-continued attack upon the castle, that not a soul went to bed for

eight days.”

This letter is dated the fifteenth day of February; and other

experiences are recorded during almost every week of his five months’

residence in the chateau of Montbason. He describes the kitchens, the

grates, the cooking apparatus, and all the feeding appliances required

for the army which garrisons the castle. In a day or two he is summoned

to visit a prisoner in the _souterrain_ or cave, to which he descends,

like a pitcher into a well, suspended by a rope; and, by the light of

the lantern he carries, he recognises the wretched captive on his

handful of straw, with the pan of water near him in which the untasted

crust is soaked. He has been condemned to this wretched dungeon for

neglect of certain duties; and what they are we learn from the eloquent

pleading of Friar John, who intercedes for the unhappy man with the Sire

de Montbason. “My lord,” he says, “I come to implore your pardon and

compassion for one of your men. It is not true that he has refused to

have his wheat ground at your mill, or his meat baked at your ovens;

that he cut his hay or his crops, or gathered his grapes, before the

publication of your ‘ban;’ that he had his ploughshare sharpened without

obtaining your permission and paying you the fee. He can prove all this

by a hundred witnesses. He can prove, also, that he has regularly

laboured and reaped your lands, and always paid the rates and rent of

his holding; that he has carried the wood and water and provisions up to

the chateau; that he has never chased upon your grounds, and has always

fed your dogs.” These, and many other denials urged by the good-hearted

Friar, are nearly losing their effect by the opposition offered to his

entreaties by the Commander of Rhodes. That sturdy old knight

pertinaciously stands up for the rights of his order, and on all

occasions is for the exercise of power. “To the gallows! to the

gallows!” he cries; and points to that instrument of paternal

government, which consists of two tall uprights before the window. But

eloquence has its reward. “The Sire de Montbason,” says Friar John, “has

pardoned his unfortunate retainer, and he is now in the midst of his

children. That old Commander,” he adds, “his long exercise of authority

sometimes makes him harsh, and turns his heart as hard as the steel that

covers it.”

But a field-day is at hand, in the description of which there is

condensed a whole history of a feudal baron’s relations with his

tenants. It is the day when the Sire de Montbason holds his court baron,

and a tremendous time it must have been for the holders of his fiefs.

“To-day the Sire de Montbason left the chateau, attended by all his

suite. He was mounted on a white horse, with a hawk on his wrist, in

robe of state, with armorial bearings on his coat, which was one-half

red and the other blue. On arriving at the place called the ‘Stone

Table,’ he took his seat. All his household, dressed in cloth liveries,

ranged themselves behind his chair. A gentleman whose lands are held

under Montbason presented himself bare-headed, without spur or sword,

and knelt at the Sire de Montbason’s feet, who, having taken his hands

in his, said to him, ‘You avow yourself my liegeman in right of your

castle, and swear to me, on the faith of your body, that you will serve

me as such against all who may live or die, except our lord the king.’

The gentleman having replied, ‘I swear,’ the Sire de Montbason kissed

him on the mouth, and ordered the act of homage to be registered.

“There next came forward a gentleman of the neighbourhood and his son,

who demanded the right of lower justice over the western half of their

great hall, because on the eastern side their manorial rights extended a

full league. The Sire de Montbason consented with a good grace to this

abridgment of his fief. Scarcely had this gentleman and his son

concluded their thanks for this favour, when another gentleman advanced,

and said a few words in the Sire de Montbason’s ear, touching the ground

with his knee several times while he spoke. ‘I consent,’ said the Sire

de Montbason. ‘Since you find your residence too small, I permit you to

build a stronghold, with curtains, turrets, and ditch; but no

weathercock, no towers, and, above all, no donjon.’

“Meanwhile the Sire de Montbason beckoned a crowd of villagers to

approach, who had stood respectfully at a distance, all loaded with

provisions and goods of different kinds. Immediately the ground at his

feet was covered with wheat, with birds, hams, butter, eggs, wax, honey,

vegetables, fruits, cakes, bouquets of flowers, and chaplets of roses.

They were instantly carried away by the people of the chateau, and

several tenants came forward into the empty space, some making grimaces,

and some going through strange contortions of body. Others came, some to

kiss the bolt of the principal gate of the dominant fief, some to sing a

ludicrous song, and some to have their ears and noses slightly pulled by

the _maître d’hôtel_, who also bestowed a few smacks on the right and

left cheeks. The Sire de Montbason ordered legal quittance to be given

to all. The assembly then formed a circle round him, and the Sire de

Montbason spoke. ‘My friends,’ he said, ‘I have received too much money

of you this year, to my great regret; the forfeitures for thefts,

quarrels, wounds, blows, and bad language, have never come to so much

before. I have hitherto remitted the fines for improper conduct and

indecency, but I will remit them no more. Ask Friar John if I can

conscientiously do so.’ Everybody’s eyes were turned upon me at once; I

made a sign of strong negation with a shake of my head. The Sire de

Montbason went on. ‘I am very well satisfied with the way in which the

statute-labour has been done, but there are still some suits of page’s

livery not delivered; a good many boots are required for my people, and

a still greater quantity, I hear, need to be mended.’ ‘My lord,’ replied

a poor man named Simon, ‘the artisans of your lands, the tailors,

shoemakers, and cobblers, have all worked the full week they owe you,

and you cannot call upon us for more.’ ‘Ah! very well,’ said the Sire,

and cried to a labourer he recognised far off in the crowd, ‘Come on,

Jacques, I see you there; advance! I found the south door of my castle

of Veigné in a very bad state. You know very well that, according to

your tenure, your family is bound to keep it in repair; and besides it

is as much your affair as mine, for if the enemy takes the field, as may

very likely happen, what will be the use of your right to refuge in a

stronghold, if its gates are bad?’ He next addressed a woman who stood

near him. ‘Widow Martin, you keep poor guard in my castle of Sorigni. I

am told you often sleep instead of watching. You don’t sleep when you

have to come for the corn you receive, according to old agreements, for

this very duty.’ He then spoke to the whole assembly again. ‘I have

further to complain of you, that you are not active in taking arms when

my trumpets make proclamation of war; and, moreover, that your weapons

are not good. When I make an attack with fire and sword, you enter into

arrangements with your friends and relations who occupy the lands of the

lords I am at feud with. They are not so complaisant on my grounds, and

that is the reason I have so often to build you new houses, or pay you

compensation. I have to complain, also, that those who have heritages in

other manors go and live on them. Methinks you are well enough treated

here, to be content to keep the fire alive. You also let your lands lie

fallow for more than three years. I have the right to cultivate them for

my own use, and I will exercise it. I blame you further for refusing my

purveyors credit for fifty days, as you are bound to do. My good

friends, I am bound, indeed, to give you my favour and protection, but

you are bound no less to show your affection for me.’

“The tenants now made way for the serfs, and I remarked more familiarity

and kindness between them and the Sire de Montbason than I had seen with

the others. To all their requests, he answered, ‘With pleasure—with

great pleasure: what you lack in the house, you shall find in the

castle.’ The Sire de Montbason retired. Scarcely had he gone, when there

rushed in a man—fat, breathless, red-faced, with perspiration oozing at

every pore. This was the courier of the manor, an office he inherited

from his great-grandfather, who had been an active, strong-limbed man,

and one of the swiftest runners of his time.” The plethoric Mercury came

to render homage for his fief, and would not have had breath to utter

his oath even if he had not been too late. The day concludes with the

extraordinary performances of the villagers in clearing the moat of

Montbason of frogs—a service they are bound to render when the voice of

the animals hindered the inhabitants of the castle from repose.

How superior this method of giving a view of some of the peculiarities

of feudalism is to the common dissertations we meet with, will be

acknowledged by any one who prefers a chapter of _Ivanhoe_ to an

explanation by Ducange. We are tempted to make quotation from the

conversations between the worthy Friar John and the Commander of Rhodes,

in one of which the veteran soldier fights nobly in defence of the right

of private war; and there are other incidents in which the two men are

brought out with a freshness and individuality not at all to be expected

in the lucubrations of the chief of the French Dryasdusts; but we must

content ourselves with the last glimpse of knight-errantry. Ill fares it

with a period when it can be truly said its days of chivalry are past.

But chivalry was a thing and a principle, and knight-errantry a

pretence. There is the same difference between them as between the quiet

benevolent practice of a physician, and the noisy operations of a quack

doctor at a fair. How, in the midst of all that ignorance, and that

rough handling of sword and spear, arose the poetic idealisation of

personal honour and respect for woman, it is impossible to say. The fact

is all we can answer for, and the result. At first the ennobling

pictures of unselfishness and courtesy and generosity were viewed by the

portly baron, the rough, gruff old head-breaker on the dais, as they

were meant to be viewed; namely, as altogether fictitious and imaginary

representations of a state of manners which never had real existence.

But the young squire his son, the long-haired maiden his daughter, who

sat on the tabouret at his feet; the pages who stood open-mouthed behind

his chair—were of a very different opinion. They believed in King

Arthur, and in Amadis, and in Gualior, and in the peerless damosel who

cheered him with such loving caress and such purity of heart; and, in

the next generation, they resolved to form themselves on the model set

before them in the achievements of these heroes and princesses. And if

the state of their quarrels did not allow them to carry out all the

refinements practised in those romances—if they were still forced to

carry battle into their neighbour’s manor, and carry off their

neighbour’s daughter, they did so “with a difference;” they doffed their

plumed helmet when they received their vanquished enemy’s sword; they

bent knee to ground when they locked the captive maiden into her bower.

Chivalry was a recognised fact, and was at all events a standard by

which to measure their actions, if not always a barrier against the

actions themselves. But its truest merit is the effect it undoubtedly

produced on the civilisation of Europe. It supplied the place of

religion itself, when religion was either locked up entirely in an

unknown tongue, or enveloped in manifold additions which concealed it

like the cerements of an Egyptian mummy. The code of honour gradually

exerted its sway where civil laws were ineffectual. There were virtues

inculcated, and vices condemned by it, which criminal courts could

neither reward nor punish. Truth, generosity, temperance, purity,

defence of innocent weakness, resistance to strong injustice—these

formed the true knights’ system of laws. The opposite evils were

forbidden on pain of general censure. And the final effect has been

this—that no nation which has not gone through the period of chivalry

can give its true and full meaning to the great word “Gentleman.” India,

China, Russia, never felt its force; they have, therefore, no civil

freedom, no personal self-respect. A system which has given rise to all

the gentlemen of Europe should never lightly be talked of; and Amans

Alexis in his garret had as high an appreciation of gallant knight and

fair ladie as if he had been present, when

“High in the breathless hall the minstrel sate,”

and charmed young and old with the music of harp and song. But

knight-errantry—a running to and fro in search of adventures!—a

travelling attorney in pursuit of practice in the courts of Honour!—it

scarcely needed the genius of Cervantes to bring this extravagance into

ridicule; for even the commander of the fourteenth century, himself

vowed to the protection of injured innocence, laughs at the pre-Quixotic

absurdity as if he had had the knight of La Mancha before his eyes. A

specimen of the genus even then was looked on as our naturalists would

now look upon a dodo. “I must tell you a curious thing that lately

occurred here. A knight-errant is not often seen nowadays, though the

genus is not extinct. One came here and wound the horn which hangs

before the great gate of the chateau. No trumpet having sounded in

reply, as is the rule on these occasions, he turned his horse and rode

away. The pages ran after him, and after many excuses for their want of

skill on the trumpet, they persuaded him to come back. Meanwhile the

ladies had dressed to receive him, and taken their places in state,

holding embroidery-frames in their hands. The Lady of Montbason was

attired in a robe stiffened with gold, which had been in the house for

more than a century. The dowager covered her head with a fur cap

according to the fashion of her youth, and loaded herself with ermine.

The knight comes in along with his squire, both covered all over with

dangling plates of brass, making as much noise as a mule when loaded

with copper pots and pans ill packed. The knight having ordered his

squire to take off his helmet, revealed a head nearly bald, and fringed

with long white hair. His left eye was tied up with a piece of green

cloth, of the same colour as his coat. He had made a vow, he said, not

to see with his left eye, nor eat with the right side of his mouth, till

he had accomplished his enterprise. The ladies offered him refreshment.

He replied by throwing himself at their feet, and swearing eternal love

to old and young, saying, that though his armour was of truest steel, it

could not defend him against their arrows; that he should die of the

wounds they inflicted—that he felt himself expiring—and a hundred other

follies of the same kind. As he persisted in this style, particularly in

his address to the lady of Montbason, whose hand he frequently kissed, I

became impatient; the Commander perceived my annoyance. ‘Good!’ he said:

‘these old fools have their set words and phrases like a village lawyer.

But keep your temper; perhaps he won’t stay the day.’ And in fact in a

few hours he departed. Such are the ridiculous remains of that ancient

chivalry which at one time ennobled humanity with so many virtues and so

much glory.”

Poor old frivolous knight-errant! away he goes for ever out of human

ken, with both eyes bandaged now, and all his enterprises accomplished;

and, at the same time with him, dies off also another form of resistance

to oppression, where the performer was of far humbler rank, and came in

aid of justice in a much more legitimate way. There seems to have been

no town in France of sufficient importance to have a court of civil or

criminal process, which did not maintain a champion as one of the chief

officers of its administration. The duty of this distinguished

functionary was to supply any lack of evidence which might occur in the

course of a trial; and as it was generally necessary to obtain the

assistance of two witnesses in the conviction of a culprit, the champion

watched over the cause, and when only one witness was producible, threw

his sword into the scale which he believed to be just, and did battle

with any one who would take up arms on behalf of the other side. All

through the early centuries, the office of town or precinct champion was

as well recognised, and considered as indispensable, as that of notary

or judge. But some terrible things happened in the fifteenth century,

which put the arbitrement of the sword into disrepute. Printing and

gunpowder, when they came to maturity, were fatal to many a stout-armed

gentleman, who had been installed in his honourable post of champion of

the town, and had brought up his children with the honourable ambition

of handling his sword and stepping into his shoes. How many Oxford

coachmen and Cheltenham “whips,” in the same way, had to descend from

the box, and turn their energies into other channels, on the first

whistle of the railway engine!

It happened one day, says Alexis, in the first page of the second volume

(which is equivalent to the middle or latter end of the fifteenth

century), that a good many people were collected in the great chamber of

the town-hall of Troyes, along with the mayor and bailiffs, when a

curious question arose, as to which of all the trades and conditions

were the worst. Everybody, as might be expected, laid claim to that bad

eminence on behalf of his own. But at last it was arranged, that on that

evening, and at their succeeding meetings, the question should be

thoroughly gone into, and every man give some account of the evils he

complained of, so that the company might decide after a full hearing of

the evidence. On this hint the different personages speak. There is a

beggar who paints a wretched picture of the state of his fraternity,

even in those days of meritorious alms and food at the monastery gates.

“Who denies,” he cries, “that the beggar’s state is the most miserable

of all?—who? Why, the bad Christians, the hard-hearted rich; and they

are so plentiful now! How often have I heard it said in the days of my

prosperity, that the poor were in the happiest state; that their

revenues were secured on the charity of the public; and that they lived

without care, with nothing to do but say their paternosters, and hold

out their hands! Alas, alas! nobody thought of adding how often their

hands remained empty—how often they had to submit in patience to the

hunger of many days, to the cold of many months.”

Then come the farmer, the messenger, the comedian, and many more; but

after the noble (for even he has discomforts to complain of), the tale

is taken up by a person who is minutely described and introduced by the

name of Vieuxbois.

Vieuxbois, who remembers the time when he was champion of the city, and

believes that he is so still, though there is now neither champion nor

lists, generally sits near the chimney. He is always dressed in an old

suit of clothes, very tidy and clean, and always carries a long iron

sword suspended by a sash of red silk. His face is so haggard and thin

that it is nothing but bone. People call him more than a hundred years

old, but he has the vanity of being thought young, and only confesses to

ninety. This evening he rose from his chair, and having saluted the

company several times with his sword, he resumed his chair, and thus

began:—

“Gentlemen, you are all complaining of your callings, which proves, at

least, that callings are still left you; but for us miserable

champions—for us, the most miserable of you all—there is no calling left

except in name. Oh! the long past, happy, blessed days of France! days,

above all, of the fourteenth, thirteenth, twelfth centuries!—why can’t I

prolong them into the present time! Then the sword of the champion was

honoured—it decided where the judge was puzzled. Then the champion, the

lists, the trumpet, the charge in every doubtful case: but now there is

so much knowledge! there is so much learning! no more doubts—no more

puzzled judges—and the champion’s occupation’s gone! But oh! little did

my grandfather, the Champion of Chalons—he was hanged in that

office—foresee this wretched time. Just before he was turned off, he

summoned my father, who had fled from the scene in tears, and said,

‘Champion, my son, weep not: it does not become a champion to weep: the

cause I supported was just. I die because I did not parry in carte.

Study the carte, my son; it is the best of the thrusts: you must deliver

it free—you must have your wrist well placed. My adversary made a

movement—it was against all the rules—but it deceived me. Champion, my

son, attend to your trade—it is a good one; and above all, I beseech

you, do not neglect the carte.’ But the people became impatient, and

cried out for his execution; they were enraged because he had undertaken

the defence of a wretch whom they considered guilty; and disdaining to

reason with his inferiors, my grandfather shrugged his shoulders two or

three times in sign of contempt, and died like a true and noble

champion.

“My father also was hanged. You are astonished, gentlemen; that is

because you did not know the good old times, when, the moment a champion

was vanquished, he was dragged from the lists, and hoisted on the

gallows. After having been victorious a great number of times, he died

at last, not from want of courage or address, but because he slipt. He

died, recommending me always to wear sharp-headed nails in my shoes. I

can declare that his fate was much regretted by the people, while the

person for whom he fought, and who was going to be hanged along with

him, had the bad taste to find fault with him in coarse insulting

language. He was an advocate, and always an uncivil sort of man. My

father was a man of fine manners and excellent temper. ‘Master Martean,’

he said, ‘neither you nor any of your craft are able to give me lessons

in the management of my sword. I shall speak to you no more.’ He kept

his word; the next moment they were run up. My mother brought me my

father’s sword: and though it was at that time a little taller than

myself, I managed to draw it from the sheath and swing it at

arm’s-length. This was thought a good augury, and great expectations

were entertained of me when I should be old enough to be champion. When

I was twenty, my active life began. Two men of distinction, each above

sixty years of age, had accused each other without sufficient proofs.

The judicial duel was ordered, of course. A beautiful closed ring raised

on the banks of the Marne was crowded on the following day with all the

rank and fashion of Champagne—for such sights were already become rare.

The combat was on the point of beginning. I was at the summit of

felicity. My eyes flashed brighter than my arms. The party for whom the

opposite champion was engaged, perhaps perceived this, for offers of

accommodation were made, and the duel was at an end. The disappointment

of the spectators was immense. The authorities feared an uproar, and to

quiet the populace, it was proposed by the mayor and magistrates that I

should marry the daughter of my adversary, and that a fête should be

given in honour of the event. Her name was Championnette: she was

beautiful as the day—she was just sixteen; and you may imagine I offered

no opposition to the match. The wedding rejoicings commenced at once,

and the enclosure where the combat was to have taken place, could

scarcely contain the dancers. Next day there were joustings with sword

and lance. The trumpets of the town-hall had never ceased their music,

and at night there were bonfires and illuminations.”

After his marriage with Championnette, it was impossible for him to be

the hostile champion to his father-in-law; and his travels in search of

occupation take him through several districts in France. In all he finds

the dignity of the office decaying, its privileges denied, and its

income annihilated. He goes from place to place, but the scales of

justice were now getting so evenly balanced that he seldom required the

sword to adjust the weight. He comes, among other places, to Lyons.

“What do you take us for?” says the bailiff. “Perhaps you think Lyons a

Gothic town of the fourteenth century. Lyons is a polished city,

enlightened and civilised, where everybody knows how to write. Nobody,

therefore, can now deny his signature. Go rather to some out-of-the-way

valley in the Jura or the Vosges. It is possible a champion may still be

useful among the savages there.” It is impossible to describe the

indignation of the gallant Vieuxbois on this insulting speech. However,

he restrains his wrath, and passes on, but no better reception awaits

him wherever he goes. At last there is a glimpse of prosperity and a

chance of work when he gets to the valley of the Aspe, among the

Pyrenees. The magistracy of that small republic receive him courteously,

but even here he finds he comes too late. “‘We might have sent you,’

said the rulers of the republic, ‘into the valley of Lavedan, but it has

no intention now of seeking a champion to resist our claims.’ ‘And why

did the valley wish to fight you?’ I inquired. ‘It was because their

little abbé, St Sevin, irritated against the valley of the Aspe, uttered

his curse upon it. Whereupon every year we were visited with great

storms and tempests, and sometimes for months the hail fell upon our

republic, but we were miraculously avenged. The earth, and all the

inhabitants, and all the cattle, great and small, were struck with

sterility throughout the Lavedan. To get remission of this dreadful

plague, they came and begged for mercy on the valley of the Aspe. Peace

was made between the two valleys, and Lavedan was absolved from the sin

of its old abbé. During the eighty years of this treaty, the conditions

have several times been broken. Our republic demanded satisfaction. The

valley of Lavedan wished to defend itself by a champion, but has not

been able to find one. We therefore have no occasion for your services,

but if a few acres of ground, a few sheep and oxen, a cottage such as

you see——’

“Thanks, gentlemen of the republic of the Aspe,” says Vieuxbois, “my

fathers were gentlemen, and lived by the sword. I am not yet so fallen

as to maintain myself by flocks and herds.” But years pass on, and no

doubt he looked back on the offers he had rejected with useless regret.

Meanwhile his family becomes numerous, but they are victims of the

advancing arts and sciences. One is a transcriber of manuscripts, and

the press throws his pen out of work. Another illuminates old books, and

engraving upsets his colours. Another is a maker of bows and arrows, and

arbalists and other engines of war, but gunpowder and cannon unstring

all his bows, and knock his ballistas in pieces. A grandson is

sedulously educated for the profession of a fool; but as a profession it

falls into disrepute, and the jester unlearns his quiddities, keeps his

features at rest like other people, and starves as becomes a reasonable

man. The only happy one of the family is another grandson, who is

blessed with such a tremendous eruption on his face that he has got

admission to a leprosy-house, where he is wonderfully fed and kindly

treated. The eruption is not leprosy; but, in the alarming scarcity of

real sufferers by that malady, the office-bearers of the houses of

retreat, who derive great salaries for their posts (which they execute

by deputy), are glad to accept a pensioner with so near a resemblance to

the true disease; for what would they do if leprosy disappeared

altogether? The story of the old champion comes to an end, and it is

difficult to imagine that any of the other complainants can give a more

wretched account of their position. But misery is, in fact, in that

century, the characteristic of all conditions of life. As the ages move

on, men get better; their places become more defined.—The remaining

volumes of the work are occupied with the progress of the people, and

their gradual elevation into civil consideration and political power. We

may return to the same portrait-gallery for pictures of the innkeepers,

the fishermen, the town-criers, the merchants, the nurses, the lawyers,

and the artists of the different periods. They are all drawn from the

life, and are warranted likenesses. But at present we have said enough.