If the worthy reader would wish to fancy the happiest of all youthful
beings, let him imagine what I must have been, as, mounted upon Aleppo,
a present from my godfather, with a purse of six shining louis in
my pocket, and a letter to my colonel, I set forth for Metz. I had
breakfasted with Colonel Mahon, who, amid much good advice for my future
guidance, gave me, half slyly, to understand that the days of Jacobinism
had almost run their course, and that a reactionary movement had already
set in. The Republic, he added, was as strong, perhaps stronger, than
ever, but that men had grown weary of mob tyranny, and were, day by
day, reverting to the old loyalty, in respect for whatever pretended to
culture, good-breeding, and superior intelligence. ‘As, in a shipwreck,
the crew instinctively turn for counsel and direction to the officers,
you will see that France will, notwithstanding all the libertinism of
our age, place her confidence in the men who have been the tried and
worthy servants of former governments. So far, then, from suffering on
account of your gentle blood, Maurice, the time is not distant when it
will do you good service, and when every association that links you with
family and fortune will be deemed an additional guarantee of your good
conduct. I mention these things,’ continued he, ‘because your colonel
is what they call a “Grosbleu “--that is, a coarse-minded, inveterate
republican, detesting aristocracy and all that belongs to it. Take care,
therefore, to give him no just cause for discontent, but be just as
steady in maintaining your position as the descendant of a noble house,
who has not forgotten what were once the privileges of his rank. Write
to me frequently and freely, and I’ll take care that you want for
nothing, so far as my small means go, to sustain whatever grade you
occupy. Your own conduct shall decide whether I ever desire to have any
other inheritor than the son of my oldest friend in the world.’
Such were his last words to me as I set forth, in company with a large
party, consisting for the most part of under-officers and employés
attached to the medical staff of the army. It was a very joyous and
merry fraternity, and, consisting of ingredients drawn from different
pursuits and arms of the service, infinitely amusing from contrast
of character and habits. My chief associate amongst them was a young
sous-lieutenant of dragoons, whose age, scarcely much above my own,
joined to a joyous, reckless temperament, soon pointed him out as the
character to suit me; his name was Eugène Santron. In appearance he was
slightly formed, and somewhat undersized, but with handsome features,
their animation rendered sparkling by two of the wickedest black eyes
that ever glistened and glittered in a human head. I soon saw that,
under the mask of affected fraternity and equality, he nourished the
most profound contempt for the greater number of associates, who, in
truth, were, however _braves gens_, the very roughest and least-polished
specimens of the polite nation. In all his intercourse with them, Eugène
affected the easiest tone of camaraderie and equality, never assuming
in the slightest, nor making any pretensions to the least superiority
on the score of position or acquirements, but on the whole consoling
himself, as it were, by ‘playing them off’ in their several
eccentricities, and rendering every trait of their vulgarity and
ignorance tributary to his own amusement. Partly from seeing that he
made me an exception to this practice, and partly from his perceiving
the amusement it afforded me, we drew closer towards each other, and
before many days elapsed, had become sworn friends.
There is probably no feature of character so very attractive to a
young man as frankness. The most artful of all flatteries is that which
addresses itself by candour, and seems at once to select, as it were by
intuition, the object most suited for a confidence. Santron carried me
by a _coup de main_ of this kind, as, taking my arm one evening as I was
strolling along the banks of the Moselle, he said--
‘My dear Maurice, it’s very easy to see that the society of our
excellent friends yonder is just as distasteful to you as to me. One
cannot always be satisfied laughing at their solecisms in breeding
and propriety. One grows weary at last of ridiculing their thousand
absurdities; and then there comes the terrible retribution in the
reflection of what the devil brought me into such company? a question
that, however easily answered, grows more and more intolerable the
oftener it is asked. To be sure, in my case there was little choice in
the matter, for I was not in any way the arbiter of my own fortune. I
saw myself converted from a royal page to a printer’s devil by a kind
old fellow, who saved my life by smearing my face with ink, and covering
my scarlet uniform with a filthy blouse; and since that day I have taken
the hint, and often found the lesson a good one--the dirtier the safer!
‘We were of the old nobility of France, but as the name of our family
was the cause of its extinction, I took care to change it. I see you
don’t clearly comprehend me, and so I’ll explain myself better. My
father lived unmolested during the earlier days of the Revolution,
and might so have continued to the end, if a detachment of the Garde
Républicaine had not been despatched to our neighbourhood of Saarlouis,
where it was supposed some lurking regard for royalty yet lingered.
These fellows neither knew nor cared for the ancient noblesse of the
country, and one evening a patrol of them stopped my father as he was
taking his evening walk along the ramparts. He would scarcely deign to
notice the insolent ‘_Qui va là?_ of the sentry, a summons he at least
thought superfluous in a town which had known his ancestry for eight or
nine generations. At the repetition of the cry, accompanied by something
that sounded ominous, in the sharp click of a gun-lock, he replied
haughtily, “Je suis le Marquis de Saint-Trône.”
‘“There are no more marquises in France!” was the savage answer.
‘My father smiled contemptuously, and briefly said “Saint-Trône.”
‘“We have no saints either,” cried another.
‘“Be it so, my friend,” said he, with mingled pity and disgust. “I
suppose some designation may at least be left to me, and that I may call
myself Trône.”
‘“We are done with thrones long ago,” shouted they in chorus, “and we
‘ll finish you also.”
‘Ay, and they kept their word, too. They shot him that same evening, on
very little other charge than his own name! If I have retained the old
sound of my name, I have given it a more plebeian spelling, which is,
perhaps, just as much of an alteration as any man need submit to for a
period that will pass away so soon.’
‘How so, Eugène? you fancy the Republic will not endure in France. What,
then, can replace it?’
‘Anything, everything; for the future all is possible. We have
annihilated legitimacy, it is true, just as the Indians destroy a
forest, by burning the trees; but the roots remain; and if the soil is
incapable of sending up the giant stems as before, it is equally unable
to furnish a new and different culture. Monarchy is just as firmly
rooted in a Frenchman’s heart, but he will have neither patience for its
tedious growth, nor can he submit to restore what has cost him so dearly
to destroy. The consequences will, therefore, be a long and continued
struggle between parties, each imposing upon the nation the form, of
government that pleases it in turn. Meanwhile you and I, and others like
us, must serve whatever is uppermost--the cleverest fellow he who sees
the coming change, and prepares to take advantage of it.’
‘Then you are a Royalist?’ asked I.
‘A Royalist! What! stand by a monarch who deserted his aristocracy,
and forgot his own order; defend a throne that he had reduced to the
condition of a _fauteuil de Bourgeois?_’
‘You are then for the Republic?’
‘For what robbed me of my inheritance--what degraded me from my rank,
and reduced me to a state below that of my own vassals! Is this a cause
to uphold?’
‘You are satisfied with military glory, perhaps,’ said I, scarcely
knowing what form of faith to attribute to him.
‘In an army where my superiors are the very dregs of the people; where
the canaille have the command, and the chivalry of France is represented
by a sans-culotte!’
‘The cause of the Church----’
A hurst of ribald laughter cut me short, and laying his hand on my
shoulder he looked me full in the face; while with a struggle to recover
his gravity, he said--
‘I hope, my dear Maurice, you are not serious, and that you do not mean
this for earnest. Why, my dear boy, don’t you talk of the Eleusinian
Mysteries, the Delphic Oracle of Alchemy, Astrology--of anything, in
short, of which the world, having amused itself, has at length grown
weary? Can’t you see that the Church has passed away, and these good
priests have gone the same road as their predecessors? Is any acuteness
wanting to show that there is an end of this superstition that has
enthralled men’s minds for a couple of thousand years? No, no, their
game is up, and for ever. These pious men, who despised this world, and
yet had no other hold upon the minds of others than by the very craft
and subtlety that world taught them--these heavenly souls, whose whole
machinations revolved about earthy objects and the successes of this
grovelling planet! Fight for them! No, _parbleu!_ we owe them but little
love or affection. Their whole aim in life has been to disgust one
with whatever is enjoyable, and the best boon they have conferred upon
humanity, that bright thought of locking up the softest eyes and fairest
cheeks of France in cloisters and nunneries! I can forgive our glorious
Revolution much of its wrong when I think of the Prêtre; not but that
they could have knocked down the church without suffering the ruins to
crush the château!’
Such, in brief, were the opinions my companion held, and of which I was
accustomed to hear specimens every day; at first, with displeasure and
repugnance; later on, with more of toleration; and at last, with a sense
of amusement at the singularity of the notions, or the dexterity
with which he defended them. The poison of his doctrines was the more
insidious, because it was mingled with a certain dash of good-nature,
and a reckless, careless easiness of disposition always attractive to
very young men. His reputation for courage, of which he had given signal
proofs, elevated him in my esteem; and, ere long, all my misgivings
about him, in regard of certain blemishes, gave way before my admiration
of his heroic bearing and a readiness to confront peril, wherever to be
found.
I had made him the confidant of my own history, of which I told him
everything, save the passages which related to the Père Michel. These
I either entirely glossed over, or touched so lightly as to render
unimportant--a dread of ridicule restraining me from any mention of
those earlier scenes of my life, which were alone of all those I should
have avowed with pride. Perhaps it was from mere accident--perhaps some
secret shame to conceal my forlorn and destitute condition may have had
its share in the motive; but, for some cause or other, I gave him to
understand that my acquaintance with Colonel Mahon had dated back to
a much earlier period than a few days before, and, the impression once
made, a sense of false shame led me to support it.
‘Mahon can be a good friend to you,’ said Eugène; ‘he stands well with
all parties. The Convention trust him, the sans-culottes are afraid of
him, and the few men of family whom the guillotine has left look up to
him as one of their stanchest adherents. Depend upon it, therefore, your
promotion is safe enough, even if there were not a field open for every
man who seeks the path to eminence. The great point, however, is to get
service with the army of Italy. These campaigns here are as barren and
profitless as the soil they are fought over; but, in the south, Maurice,
in the land of dark eyes and tresses, under the blue skies, or beneath
the trellised vines, there are rewards of victory more glorious than a
grateful country, as they call it, ever bestowed. Never forget, my boy,
that you or I have no cause! It is to us a matter of indifference
what party triumphs, or who is uppermost. The Government may change
to-morrow, and the day after, and so on for a month long, and yet we
remain just as we were. Monarchy, Commonwealth, Democracy--what you
will--may rule the hour, but the sous-lieutenant is but the servant
who changes his master. Now, in revenge for all this, we have one
compensation, which is, to “live for the day”--to make the most of that
brief hour of sunshine granted us, and to taste of every pleasure, to
mingle in every dissipation, and enjoy every excitement that we can.
This is my philosophy, Maurice, and just try it.’
Such was the companion with whom chance threw me in contact, and I
grieve to think how rapidly his influence gained the mastery over me.