able to acquit himself of his mission and to transmit to the King the
warnings of the archangel.
He himself reported this interview to Doctor Royer-Collard; then, after
returning to Gallardon, he made a more detailed statement to his curate,
M. Laperruque; the latter wrote down the relation under the dictation of
Martin, who certified to its exactness, and the manuscript was sent to
the prefecture of Chartres. We are obliged to confine ourselves to the
statements of the laborer of La Beauce, for the scene had no witness.
To the Duchess of Berry, who questioned him about this personage, Louis
XVIII merely replied that _Martin was a very worthy man who had given
him good advice from which he hoped to be able to profit._
Martin finds the King seated at a table "upon which," he says, "there
were many papers and pens." He bows, hat in hand.
"Sire, I salute you."
"Good morning, Martin."
"You surely know, Sire, why I come."
"Yes, I know that you have something to tell me and I have been told
that it was something which you could say only to me. Be seated." Martin
takes an armchair, sits down on the other side of the table, facing the
King, and begins the conversation.
[Illustration: 0231]
"How is your health, Sire?"
"I feel a little better than I have for some time; and how are you
getting along?"
"I am very well, thank you."
"What is the reason for your coming here?" And the seer commences to
relate the admonitions and the prophecies of the archangel, all that had
happened to him since January 15, the date of the first apparition. He
adds:
"It has also been said to me: One has betrayed the King and will betray
him again; a man has escaped from prison; the King has been made to
believe that this occurred through subtleness, skill and chance; but the
thing is not so, it was premeditated; those who should have attempted
to recapture him have neglected the matter; they have used in their task
much slowness and negligence; they have caused him to be pursued when
it was no longer possible to recapture him. I do not know who, they have
not told me this."
"I know him well, it is Lavalette."
"It has been said to me that the King examines all his employees, and
especially his ministers."
"Have they not named the persons to you?"
"No, it has been said to me that it was easy for the King to know them;
as for myself I do not know them."
Martin pretends that, at this moment, Louis XVIII lifted his eyes to
heaven, saying: "Ah! it is necessary!"... and began to weep. Seeing
which, he himself wept with the King to the end of the interview. But
his emotion does not prevent him from continuing.
"It has also been said to me that the King should send into his
provinces confidential officials to examine the administrations, without
their being warned, without their even knowing that any one has been
sent; and you will be feared and respected by your subjects. It has been
said to me that I should say to you that the King should remember his
distress and his adversity in the time of his exile. The King has wept
for France; there has been a time when the King no longer had any hope
of returning hither, seeing France allied with all its neighbors."
"Yes, there was a time when I no longer had any hope, seeing all the
States which no longer had any support."
"God has not wished to destroy the King; he has recalled him into his
States at the moment when he least expected it. At last the King has
returned to his legitimate possessions. What are the acts of grace which
have been returned for such a benefit? To punish France once more, the
usurper has been drawn from his exile: it was not by the will of men,
nor by the effect of chance that things were permitted thus. He returned
without forces, without arms, without any defense being made against
him. The legitimate King was obliged to abandon his capital, and
although he believed that he could still hold one city in his States, he
was obliged to abandon it."
"It is very true, I intended to remain at Lille."
"When the usurper returned... [let us omit these historic matters]. The
King again reëntered his States. Where are the acts of grace which have
been rendered to God for so glorious a miracle?" And Louis XVIII still
weeps.... Then Martin recalls to him private facts regarding his exile.
"Keep the secret of them," returns the King; "there will only be God,
you and myself who will ever know that.... Has it not been said to you
how it is necessary that I should conduct myself in governing France?"
"No, he has made no mention to me of all that which is in the writings;
the minister has the writings, as the things have been announced."
"Has he not said to you that I have already sent forth decrees for all
that you have spoken of to me?"
"No, no one has mentioned it to me...."
"... If, however, he returns, you will ask him how it is necessary that
I should conduct myself in governing."
"It has been said to me that as soon as my commission to the King had
been accomplished, I would never see anything more and that I would be
undisturbed."
Louis XVIII, perhaps less troubled than the worthy Martin believes,
continues to question the seer and to make him detail the circumstances
under which certain of his previsions have been realized. (The medical
report informs of these curious coincidences.) Then, having listened to
this story--"It is the same angel," he says, "who led the young Tobias
to Ragès and who made him marry her." He takes the right hand of Martin,
that which the angel has pressed, and adds: "Pray for me."
"Surely, Sire, I and my family, as well as the curate of Gallardon, have
always prayed that the affair should succeed."
"How old is the curate of Gallardon? Has he been with you long?"
"He is almost sixty; he is a worthy man; he has been with us about five
or six years."
"I commend myself to you, to him and to all your family."
"Surely, Sire, it is much to be desired that you should remain; because
if you should happen to depart or if some misfortune should come to you,
we others would risk nothing also by going away, because there are also
evil people in our country; they are not lacking."
After having renewed all the recommendations which the archangel had
charged him to transmit to the King, Martin wishes Louis XVIII good
health and asks his permission to return "to the center of his family."
"I have given orders to send you back there."
"It has always been announced to me that no harm and no evil would
happen to me."
"Nor will anything happen to you; you will return there tomorrow; the
minister is going to give you supper and a bedroom and papers to take
you back."
"But I would like it if I could return to Charenton to bid them good-by
and to get a shirt which I left there."
"Did it not trouble you to remain at Charenton? Did you get along well
there?"
"No trouble at all; and surely if I did not get along well there, I
would not ask to go back."
"Well, since you desire to go back there, the minister will see that you
are sent there at my expense."
On the next day, having said farewell to the physicians at Charenton,
Martin was taken back to Chartres, where the prefect of Eure-et-Loir
recommended him to observe the greatest discretion in regard to his
adventure, then he returned to Gallardon. The curiosity seekers who had
been worried by his absence questioned him: "When you have business,"
he replied to them, "do you not go and do it? Well, I have been to do
mine." And he went back to working in the fields.
M. Decazes and the King himself would doubtless have preferred that the
affair should remain secret; but it was soon bruited about. Troubled by
the extraordinary events which had occurred in France in the last two
years, imaginations were eager for the supernatural. On the other
hand, the most violent members of the Royalist party did not find it
inopportune that a miraculous voice had come to recall to the sovereign
his duties as "very Christian king."
Copies of the medical report and manuscript relations circulated among
the public. In the month of August, 1816, an English journal told the
story of Martin. It was published in the _Journal général de France_ in
January, 1817. Finally pamphlets were printed. A "former magistrate" of
Dijon told the stories of the visions which he considered miraculous;
he accused the physicians of having "spread clouds over the truth of the
revelations made to Martin," and compared the "divine" mission of the
peasant to that of Joan of Arc. A priest, Abbé Wurtz, answered: for him,
all the visions of the man of Gallardon were only fables and illusions;
they touched upon "the dignity of the most august family of the
universe"; this pretended archangel was an enemy of the legitimate
monarchy; upon the high hat of the unknown, there was perhaps a
tricolored cockade under the white one!
Finally, there appeared a work which subsequently ran into twenty
editions and spread the name of Martin of Gallardon throughout the whole
of France: _Relation Concerning the Events Which Happened to a Laborer
of La Beauce in the Early Days of 1816_. Its author was M. Silvy,
"former magistrate," a man of great knowledge and of great piety; it was
he who acquired the site of the ruins of Port-Royal and who perpetuated
in the nineteenth century the spirit and the traditions of Jansenism.
Written from the accounts of Martin himself and the reports of the
director and the doctors of Charenton, this relation was accompanied by
religious considerations. M. Silvy did not doubt that Thomas had been
inspired by God through the mediation of an archangel. He interpreted
in his own fashion the quite scientific prudence which the doctors had
evidenced in refusing to give a definite opinion upon the case of the
illuminate. A whole life of disinterestedness and charity proved the
good faith of M. Silvy. But it is sufficient, to eliminate the idea of a
fraud, to know the mortifications and the disillusions which eventually
overwhelmed this honest man, without affecting his belief.
The police commenced to be stirred up. The peasant had been sent back
to his plow with a recommendation to be silent; he was silent, but many
others talked in his stead. It was impossible to act vigorously against
him without becoming ridiculous, for the authorities had been forced to
recognize his sincerity, and the report signed by the alienists would
not allow a personage as inoffensive as he to be returned to Charenton.
Measures were therefore taken against his historian, and the police
prosecuted M. Silvy. The latter, who was a good Royalist, did not
hesitate to declare that when the first edition of his pamphlet was sold
out he would bind himself not to publish a second. This, for the moment,
was all that M. Decazes could wish. The prosecution was abandoned: the
publicity of a trial was useless.
The archangel Raphael had announced to Martin that "when his commission
had been carried out he would see nothing more." But, one day, the
visions recommenced, to the great astonishment of all those who had
believed in the first revelations. They admitted their embarrassment,
and made the conjecture that, after having received his inspirations
from a messenger of light, Martin might now be visited by a messenger
of darkness. Besides, the archangel did not appear again. Martin merely
heard voices which announced to him the fall of the Bourbons and the
dismemberment of France; he saw hands tracing mysterious letters upon
the walls; he predicted frightful catastrophes. The peasant had become
prophet. His mental condition changed, in accordance with the prediction
of Doctor Royer-Collard. People came to consult him from twenty leagues
around. His poor cracked head put him at the mercy of all the plotters.
He got mixed up in his revelations. We have seen that when he had been
admitted to the presence of Louis XVIII, he had told the latter certain
secrets of his exile and that the King had begged him to preserve this
confidence. He was silent until the death of the King; but in 1825 he
believed that he was able to speak and made this strange confidence to
Duc Mathieu de Montmorency; one day Louis XVIII, then Count of Provence,
had, while hunting, formed the design of killing Louis XVI, had even
taken aim at his brother, and only chance had prevented the murder. It
was this criminal thought that he, Martin, had recalled to the King.
Certain Royalists observed, not without foundation, that the historical
knowledge of Martin was not very sound, and that it was not a question
here of secrets of the period of exile.
Martin did not trouble himself about these inconsistencies, and
continued to prophesy. In 1830 he announced the Revolution. On the
Saturday which preceded the ordinances, he heard a voice pronounce these
words: "The ax is raised, blood is going to flow." When Charles X in
flight sent the Marquis de la Rochejacquelin to him from Rambouillet to
question him as to the decision he must make, Martin replied that all
was over and that it was necessary to leave France. On the next day,
while listening to the mass, he saw three red tears, three black tears,
and three white tears, fall upon the chalice. The puzzle was solved by
three words: Death, Mourning, Joy. The Joy seemed superfluous to the
adherents of the legitimate monarchy.
As to the famous "secret of the King," it was not long before he gave a
new version of it. What he had revealed to Louis XVIII was the survival
of Louis XVII. He had fallen into the hands of the partisans of
Naundorff; he remained there until his death.
Shortly after the Revolution of 1830, there appeared an anonymous
pamphlet entitled: The Past and the Future Explained by Extraordinary
Events. The author, who did not give his name, was Abbé Perrault,
secretary of the Grand Almonry of France during the Restoration and
member of a "Committee of Researches Respecting Louis XVII." He made use
of the revelations of Martin to demonstrate the illegitimacy of Louis
XVIII and of Charles X, and Martin certified to all of this with his
name and his signature. [15]
His former friends, whom he seemed to deny and whom he allowed to be
defamed by the anonymous author of the pamphlet, were greatly grieved by
this. I have before me a touching letter which was written him at that
time by M. Silvy: "May the Lord deign to give you eyes enlightened
by the heart, to lead you back into the way of truth and sincerity. I
cannot nor should I conceal from you that in separating yourself from
it, as you seem to have done for several years, you do an infinite wrong
to the special work with which you were charged by the angel of the Lord
in the early months of 1816. You were then only a simple instrument in
his hands, chosen by him as a good villager whom no one could suspect
of belonging to any party, and unhappily there are many of these which
divide the Church and the State. What a change has happened in you! And
what a difference between Thomas Martin as he showed himself in 1816,
and the same Thomas Martin in 1832!... Such is the evil fruit (the fruit
of death) of this book (a lie) Du passé et de Vavenir, which confirms
and must confirm more than ever different persons in unbelief and in
avoidance of the salutary advice which was given to all France by the
mission which was confided to you (and which you have just dishonored).
I have learned by myself and I am still certain from different
testimonies that many of those who at first had believed in your first
announcements no longer give to you the shadow of faith. I could even
name to you, if you desire it, curates and honorable priests, vicars and
even seminarists whom your new visions and their manifest falsity have
totally disgusted with your previous revelations of 1816..." This letter
was not answered. The unfortunate Martin belonged henceforward to those
who exploited his hallucinations.
When, in the month of May, 1833, the clock-maker of Crossen, Duc de
Normandie, arrived at Paris to make himself known to his faithful, and
when the sect commenced to be organized, the King and the Prophet met.
The circumstances of this interview are not known precisely. According
to certain authors, Martin was taken to Saint Arnoult, a village near
Dourdan, to the home of the curate Appert, one of the most zealous and
most devoted partisans of Naundorff; there, in the presbytery, they
presented him to a mysterious personage whom he immediately hailed as
the true King of France, while the friends of Naundorff wept at the
spectacle of the miracle. But the Viscount of Maricourt received from
the mouth of Doctor Antoine Martin, son of Thomas Martin, a version
according to which the scene may have been less solemn and less
touching. In September, 1833, on waking one morning, Martin said to his
son: "At this moment there resides at Paris, with Madame de Rambaud,
an unknown who calls himself King Louis XVII. My angel requires me to
assure myself of his identity. Let us depart, my son." They departed.
"Are you King Louis XVII?" Martin brusquely said to the stranger who was
called Naundorff, when he was in his presence. "In that case, you have
upon the shoulder, a half-ring, an indelible sign of your identity,
marked there by the Queen your mother, a sleeping lion upon your breast
and a dove on your thigh." Then Naundorff took the Martins, father and
son, into "a discreet place prescribed by decency," and allowed them to
see that these signs were marked upon his body. [16]
From the day when Martin enrolled himself in Naundorffs party he leads
a wandering life, full of tribulations. He stays but rarely in his own
village. He retires sometimes to Chartres, sometimes to Versailles; for
the voices order him incessantly to flee from his enemies and to hide
himself.
On April 12, 1834, he leaves Gallardon to make a retreat at Chartres.
When leaving, he tells his wife that he well knows that something is
going to happen to him, but that he confides all to the will of God. He
goes to see some honorable persons who are accustomed to receive him.
But, when his novena is finished and he is about to return home, he is
taken with frightful pains and dies before a doctor can be called. The
honorable persons send for the widow, require her to send the body of
the deceased to the home of a curate, her relation, and the latter is
requested to declare that the death took place in his house. He refuses,
and the body is transported to Gallardon. The strangeness of all
these circumstances and the appearance of the body cause suspicion of
poisoning. Martin's family demand that the body shall be exhumed and an
autopsy made. The doctors examine the body, but nothing more is heard of
the affair.
Thus ends very mysteriously the seer Thomas Martin of Gallardon.
X. FROM MANTES TO LA ROCHE-GUYON
[Illustration: 0249]
|WHEN we leave Mantes and follow the valley of the Seine, we leave
behind us the charming town so well named Mantes-la-Jolie. At each turn
of the road the sleeping waters reflect a heaven of blue, and trembling
verdure beneath: we dream of Corot. Through the gaps in the curtain
formed by the poplars of the isles and the river banks, appears the
white and smiling town, rising above its river, sweetly ordered below
the towers of its fine and proud cathedral; we dream of the delicate,
precise and finished grace of those landscapes which form the background
of fifteenth-century miniatures.
Farther on, the aspect and the color of things change completely. Chalky
escarpments close the horizon. Here commences the bluff, the abrupt
bluff, which henceforth will overlook the bank of the Seine all the way
to the channel, and which uninterruptedly will form the bastion of the
Norman coast from Havre to Dieppe. The locality has already a sort of
maritime flavor. On days of tempest, the clouds which flee from the
northwest and rush across the great valley seem to be swept by the wind
of the open sea, the river is covered with little short, foamy waves,
the air has a salty tang; and when Vetheuil, at the entrance of a tiny
ravine, presents its low houses, its lanes tumbling toward the river
bank, the high terrace and the Norman tower of its church, we might
swear it was a fishing village....
This church of Vetheuil, which is said to have been commenced in the
twelfth century, boasts of a fine belfry pierced with high lancet
windows, which was built by Charles le Bel. It was recommenced and
completed in the sixteenth century by the Grappins, architects of
Gisors. This family enriched the Vexin with precious buildings. The
church of Yetheuil is the masterpiece of the most celebrated artist of
the dynasty, Jean Grappin the elder. The Renaissance gave France few
religious edifices more seducing and more harmonious than this. Nowhere
were the new decoration and the classic styles more ingeniously applied
to the transformation of an old church. The façade of Gisors, which
is also by Jean Grappin, seems to be less perfect in its art. Here the
architectural effect is light and finely balanced. Niches, consoles,
dais, balustrades, medallions, are charmingly invented. We still see the
elegance and sobriety of the earliest Renaissance; and yet there already
appear, under the little porch, the H and the crescent. The Grappins had
remained faithful to the traditions of taste and restraint, which were
beginning to be lost by their contemporaries.
Within, there are some pretty statues of earlier days, a fine Flemish
altar screen with scenes from the Passion, and abominable colored
statues of the most modern hideousness.
We stop before a singular chapel, shut off by a vilely daubed wooden
grating: to look at the rags and strange accessories which hang on the
walls, we might at first take it for the property room of a theater. The
paintings with which it is afflicted represent sepulchral things,
thigh bones, tears and death's heads. The wall which faces the altar
is covered with the portraits of a large number of persons dressed in
black, and covered with a sort of bonnet with tumed-up edges. This is
the chapel of the Charity of Vetheuil, a lay brotherhood, whose function
is to assist the dying and bury the dead. It doubtless dates from the
Middle Ages, like other brotherhoods of the same type, which were
formed in the Vexin, the remembrance of which is not yet totally lost at
Mantes, at La Roche-Guyon, at Vetheuil, at Rosny. Like them also, it was
restored by a bull of Gregory XIII at the end of the sixteenth century,
as a result the frightful ravages of the plague at Milan. The Charities
of Rosny, of La Roche and of Mantes have been dissolved. That of
Yetheuil has survived. The costumes of the brothers, great robes of
black serge with a blue collar, are what we see hung on the chapel wall;
and here are also the lanterns and the crosses which are carried before
the bier, the bell of the bell-ringer, and his dalmatica sprinkled with
skulls and bones, as well as the insignia of the chief banner bearer.
[17] Each time that I have returned hither I have feared to see this
little chapel abandoned and to learn that this touching trumpery
had been banished to an attic. Till now the people of Yetheuil have
preserved their Charity. But how much longer will these vestiges of the
rites and the customs of the past endure?
Below Yetheuil a torn and ravined promontory presses close to the
sudden bend of the river. No trees; a handful of vines; tufts of stunted
vegetation dotting the chalky slope. Nature has not been alone in
tormenting and tearing this strange wall. Men have carved their
habitations in this soft stone; and a subterranean village has been
built in the hillside, like those villages which we find in the tufa
of the river banks of the Loire. The men have deserted these troglodyte
homes, which are now no longer used save as cellars and stables. But
the spot has retained a singular picturesqueness. A little church tower
springs from the rock and sometimes we may still see the chimney of a
cavern sending its smoke through the vines or the thickets.