Two hours after, I was enjoying the pleasant fire of the Hôtel de
Flandre, where I arrived in time for table d’hôte, not a little to the
surprise of the host and six waiters, who were totally lost in
conjectures to account for my route, and sorely puzzled to ascertain the
name of my last hotel in the mountains.
A watering-place at the close of a season is always a sad-looking thing.
The barricades of the coming winter already begin to show; the little
statues in public gardens are assuming their greatcoats of straw against
the rigours of frost; the _jets d’ eau_ cease to play, or perform with
the unwilling air of actors to empty benches; the tables d’hôte present
their long dinner-rooms unoccupied, save by a little table at one end,
where some half-dozen shivering inmates still remain, the débris of the
mighty army who flourished their knives there but six weeks before--
these half-dozen usually consisting of a stray invalid or two,
completing his course of the waters, having a fortnight of sulphuretted
hydrogen before him yet, and not daring to budge till he has finished
his ‘heeltap’ of abomination. Then there’s the old half-pay major, that
has lived in Spa, for aught I know, since the siege of Namur, and who
passes his nine months of winter in shooting quails and playing
dominoes; and there’s an elderly lady, with spectacles, always working
at a little embroidery frame, who speaks no French, and seems not to be
aware of anything going on around her--no one being able to guess why
she is there, she probably not knowing why herself. Lastly, there is a
very distracted-looking young gentleman, with a shooting-jacket and
young moustaches, who having been ‘cleaned out’ at _rouge et noir_, is
waiting in the hope of a remittance from some commiserating relative in
England.
The theatre is closed; its little stars, dispersed among the small
capitals, have shrunk back to their former proportions of third and
fourth-rate parts--for though butterflies in July, they are mere grubs
in December. The clink of the croupier’s mace is no longer heard,
revelling amid the five-franc pieces; all is still and silent in that
room which so late the conflict of human passion, hope, envy, fear, and
despair, had made a very hell on earth.
The donkeys, too, who but the other day were decked in scarlet
trappings, are now despoiled of their gay panoply, and condemned to the
mean drudgery of the cart. Poor beasts! their drooping ears and fallen
heads seem to show some sense of their changed fortunes; no longer
bearing the burden of some fair-cheeked girl or laughing boy along the
mountain-side, they are brought down to the daily labour of the cottage,
and a cutlet is no more like a mutton-chop than a donkey is like an ass.
So does everything suffer a ‘sea-change.’ The modiste, whose pretty cap
with its gay ribbons was itself an advertisement of her wares, has taken
to a close bonnet and a woollen shawl--a metamorphosis as complete as is
the misshapen mass of cloaks and mud-boots of the agile danseuse, who
flitted between earth and air a few moments before. Even the doctor--and
what a study is the doctor of a watering-place!--even he has laid by his
smiles and his soft speeches, folded up in the same drawer with his
black coat for the winter. He has not thrown physic to the dogs, because
he is fond of sporting, and would not injure the poor beasts, but he has
given it an _au revoir_; and as grouse come in with autumn, and black-
cock in November, so does he feel chalybeates are in season on the first
of May. Exchanging his cane for a Manton, and his mild whisper for a
dog-whistle, he takes to the pursuit of the lower animals, leaving men
for the warmer months.
All this disconcerts one. You hate to be present at those
_déménagements_, where the curtains are coming down, and the carpet is
being taken up; where they are nailing canvas across pictures, and
storing books into pantries. These smaller revolutions are all very
detestable, and you gladly escape into some quiet and retired spot, and
wait till the fussing be over. So felt I. Had I come a month later, this
place would have suited me perfectly, but this process of human moulting
is horrible to witness; and so, say I once more, _En route_.
Like a Dutchman who took a run of three miles to jump over a hill, and
then sat down tired at the foot of it, I flurried myself so completely
in canvassing all the possible places I might, could, would, should, or
ought to pass the winter in, that I actually took a fortnight to recover
my energies before I could set out.
Meanwhile I had made a close friendship with a dyspeptic countryman of
mine, who went about the Continent with a small portmanteau and a very
large medicine-chest, chasing health from Naples to Paris, and from Aix-
la-Chapelle to Wildbad, firmly persuaded that every country had only one
month in the year at most wherein it were safe to live there--Spa being
the appropriate place to pass the October. He cared nothing for the
ordinary topics that engross the attention of mankind; kings might be
dethroned and dynasties demolished; states might revolt and subjects be
rebellious--all he wanted to know was, not what changes were made in the
code but in the pharmacopoeia. The liberty of the Press was a matter of
indifference to him; he cared little for what men might say, but a great
deal for what it was safe to swallow, and looked upon the inventor of
blue-pill as the greatest benefactor of mankind. He had the analysis of
every well and spring in Germany at his fingers’ end, and could tell you
the temperature and atomic proportions like his alphabet. But his great
system was a kind of reciprocity treaty between health and sickness, by
which a man could commit any species of gluttony he pleased when he knew
the peculiar antagonist principle. And thus he ate--I was going to say
like a shark, but let me not in my ignorance calumniate the fish; for I
know not if anything that ever swam could eat a soup with a custard
pudding, followed by beef and beetroot, stewed mackerel and treacle,
pickled oysters and preserved cherries, roast hare and cucumber,
venison, salad, prunes, hashed mutton, omelettes, pastry, and finally,
to wind up with effect, a sturgeon baked with brandy-peaches in his
abdomen--a thing to make a cook weep and a German blessed. Such was my
poor friend, Mr. Bartholomew Cater, the most thin, spare, emaciated, and
miserable-looking man that ever sipped at Schwalbach or shivered at
Kissingen.
To permit these extravagances in diet, however, he had concocted a code
of reprisals, consisting of the various mineral waters of Germany and
the poisonous metals of modern pharmacy; and having established the fact
that ‘bitter wasser’ and ‘Carlsbad,’ the ‘Powon’ and ‘Pilnitz,’ combined
with blue-pill, were the natural enemies of all things eatable, he
swallowed these freely, and then left the matter to the rebellious
ingredients--pretty much as the English used to govern Ireland in times
gone by: set both parties by the ears, and wait the result in peace,
well aware that a slight derangement of the balance, from time to time,
would keep the contest in motion. Such was the state policy of Mr.
Cater, and I can only say that _his_ constitution survived it, though
that of Ireland seems to suffer grievously from the experiment.
This lively gentleman was then my companion; indeed, with that cohesive
property of your true bore, he was ever beside me, relating some little
interesting anecdote of a jaundice or a dropsy, a tertian or a typhus,
by which agreeable souvenirs he preserved the memory of Athens or
Naples, Rome or Dresden, fresh and unclouded in his mind. Not satisfied,
however, with narration, like all enthusiasts he would be proselytising;
and whether from the force of his arguments or the weakness of my
nature, he found a ready victim in me, insomuch that under his admirable
instruction I was already beginning to feel a dislike and disgust to all
things edible, with an appetite only grown more ravenous, while my
reverence for all springs of unsavoury taste and smell--once, I must
confess, at a deplorably low ebb--was gradually becoming more developed.
It was only by the accidental discovery that my waistcoat could be made
to fit by putting it twice round me, and that my coat was a dependency
of which I was scarcely the nucleus, that I really became frightened.
‘What!’ thought I, ‘can this be that Arthur O’Leary whom men jested on
his rotundity? Is this me, around whom children ran, as they would about
a pillar or a monument, and thought it exercise to circumambulate?
Arthur, this will be the death of thee; thou wert a happy man and a fat
before thou knewest Kochbrunnens and thermometers; run while it is yet
time, and be thankful at least that thou art in racing condition.’
With noiseless step and cautious gesture, I crept downstairs one morning
at daybreak. My enemy was still asleep. I heard him muttering as I
passed his door; doubtless he was dreaming of some new combination of
horrors, some infernal alliance of cucumbers and quinine. I passed on in
silence; my very teeth chattered with fear. Happy was I to have them to
chatter! another fortnight of his intimacy, and they would have trembled
from blue-pill as well as panic! With a heavy sigh I paid my bill, and
crossed the street towards the diligence office. One place only remained
vacant--it was in the _banquette_. No matter, thought I, anywhere will
do at present.
‘Where is monsieur going?--for there will be a place vacant in the
_coupé_ at--’
‘I have not thought of that yet,’ said I; ‘but when we reach Verviers we
‘ll see.’
‘_Allons_, then,’ said the _conducteur_, while he whispered to the clerk
of the office a few words I could not catch.
‘You are mistaken, friend,’ said I; ‘it’s not creditors, they are only
chalybeates I ‘m running from’; and so we started.
Before I follow out any further my own ramblings, I should like to
acquit a debt I owe my reader--if I dare flatter myself that he cares
for its discharge--by returning to the story of the poor shepherd of the
mountains, and which I cannot more seasonably do than at this place;
although the details I am about to relate were furnished to me a great
many years after this, and during a visit I paid to Lyons in 1828.
In the Café de la Coupe d’Or, so conspicuous in the Place des Terreaux,
where I usually resorted to pass my evenings, and indulge in the cheap
luxuries of my coffee and cheroot, I happened to make a bowing
acquaintance with a venerable elderly gentleman, who each night resorted
there to read the papers, and amuse himself by looking over the chess-
players, with which the room was crowded. Some accidental interchange of
newspapers led to a recognition, and that again advanced to a few words
each time we met--till one evening, chance placed us at the same table,
and we chatted away several hours, and parted in the hope, mutually
expressed, of renewing our acquaintance at an early period.
I had no difficulty in interrogating the _dame du café_ about my new
acquaintance. He was a striking and remarkable-looking personage, tall
and military-looking, with an air of _grand seigneur_, which in a
Frenchman is never deceptive; certainly I never saw it successfully
assumed by any who had no right to it. He wore his hair _en queue_, and
in his dress evinced, in several trifling matters, an adherence to the
habitudes of the old régime--so, at least, I interpreted his lace
ruffles and silk stockings, with his broad buckles of brilliants in his
shoes. The ribbon of St. Louis, which he wore unostentatiously on his
waistcoat, was his only decoration.
‘This is the Vicomte de Berlemont, _ancien colonel-en-chef_,’ said she,
with an accent of pride at the mention of so distinguished a frequenter
of the café; ‘he has not missed an evening here for years past.’
A few more words of inquiry elicited from her the information that the
vicomte had served in all the wars of the Empire up to the time of the
abdication; that on the restoration of the Bourbons he had received his
rank in the service from them, and, faithful to their fortunes, had
followed Louis XVIII. in exile to Ghent.
‘He has seen a deal of the world, then, madame, it would appear?’
‘That he has, and loves to speak about it too; time was when they
reckoned the vicomte among the pleasantest persons in Lyons; but they
say he has grown old now, and contracted a habit of repeating his
stories. I can’t tell how that may be, but I think him always amiable.’
A delightful word that same ‘amiable’ is! and so thinking, I wished
madame good-night, and departed.
The next evening I lay in wait for the old colonel, and was flattered to
see that he was taking equal pains to discover me. We retired to a
little table, ordered our coffee, and chatted away till midnight. Such
was the commencement, such the course, of one of the pleasantest
intimacies I ever formed.
The vicomte was unquestionably the most agreeable specimen of his nation
I had ever met--easy and unaffected in his manner, having seen much, and
observed shrewdly; not much skilled in book-learning, but deeply read in
mankind. His views of politics were of that unexaggerated character
which are so often found correct; while of his foresight I can give no
higher token than that he then predicted to me the events of the year
1830, only erring as to the time, which he deemed might not be so far
distant. The Empire, however, and Napoleon were his favourite topics.
Bourbonist as he was, the splendour of France in 1810 and 1811, the
greatness of the mighty man whose genius then ruled its destinies, had
captivated his imagination, and he would talk for hours over the events
of Parisian life at that period, and the more brilliant incidents of the
campaigns.
It was in one of our conversations, prolonged beyond the usual time, in
discussing the characters of those immediately about the person of the
Emperor, that I felt somewhat struck by the remark he made, that, while
‘Napoleon did meet unquestionably many instances of deep ingratitude
from those whom he had covered with honours and heaped with favours,
nothing ever equalled the attachment the officers of the army generally
bore to his person, and the devotion they felt for his glory and his
honour. It was not a sentiment,’ he said, ‘it was a religious belief
among the young men of my day that the Emperor could do no wrong. What
you assume in your country by courtesy, we believed _de facto_. So many
times had events, seeming most disastrous, turned out pregnant with
advantage and success, that a dilemma was rather a subject of amusing
speculation amongst us than a matter of doubt and despondency. There
came a terrible reverse to all this, however,’ continued he, as his
voice fell to a lower and sadder key; ‘a fearful lesson was in store for
us. Poor Aubuisson----’
‘Aubuisson!’ said I, starting; ‘was that the name you mentioned?’
‘Yes,’ said he, in amazement; ‘have you heard the story, then?’
‘No,’ said I, ‘I know of no story; it was the name alone struck me. Was
it not one of that name who was mentioned in one of Bonaparte’s
despatches from Egypt?’
‘To be sure it was, and the same man too; he was the first in the
trenches at Alexandria; he carried off a Mameluke chief his prisoner at
the battle of the Pyramids.’
‘What manner of man was he?’
‘A powerful fellow, one of the largest of his regiment, and they were a
Grenadier battalion; he had black hair and black moustache, which he
wore long and drooping, in Egyptian fashion.’
‘The same, the very same!’ cried I, carried away by my excitement.
‘What do you mean?’ said the colonel; ‘you’ve never seen him, surely; he
died at Charenton the same year Waterloo was fought.’
‘No such thing,’ said I, feeling convinced that Lazare was the person.
‘I saw him alive much later’; and with that I related the story I have
told my reader, detailing minutely every little particular which might
serve to confirm my impression of the identity.
‘No, no,’ said the vicomte, shaking his head, ‘you must be mistaken;
Aubuisson was a patient at Charenton for ten years, when he died. The
circumstances you mention are certainly both curious and strange, but I
cannot think they have any connection with the fortunes of poor Lazare;
at all events, if you like to hear the story, come home with me, and I
‘ll tell it; the café is about to close now, and we must leave.’
I gladly accepted the offer, for whatever doubts he had concerning
Lazare’s identity with Aubuisson, my convictions were complete, and I
longed to hear the solution of a mystery over which I had pondered many
a day of march and many a sleepless night.
I could scarcely contain my impatience during supper. The thought of
Lazare absorbed everything in my mind, and I fancied the old colonel’s
appetite knew no bounds when the meal had lasted about a quarter of an
hour. At last having finished, and devised his modest glass of weak wine
and water, he began the story, of which I present the leading features
to my readers, omitting, of course, those little occasional digressions
and reflections by which the narrator himself accompanied his tale.