CITOYENNE CARINNE.
It was my unhappiness in the black spring-time of the “Terror” to
see my old light acquaintance, the Abbé Michau, jogging on his way to
the Place de la Bastille. I pitied him greatly. He had pursued
Pleasure so fruitlessly all his days; and into this fatal quagmire had
the elusive flame at length conducted him. He sat on the rail of the
tumbril--a depressed, puzzled look on his face--between innocence and
depravity. Both were going the same road as himself--the harmless
white girl and the besotted priest, who shrunk in terror from giving
her the absolution she asked;--and poor Charles divided them.
He was not ever of Fortune’s favourites. He would make too fine an art
of Epicurism, and he sinned so by rule as to be almost virtuous. I
remember him with a half-dozen little axioms of his own concocting,
that were after all only morality misapplied: “To know how to forget
oneself is to be graduate in the school of pleasure.”
“Self-consciousness is always a wasp in the peach.” “The art of
enjoyment is the art of selection.” On such as these he founded his
creed of conduct; and that procured him nothing but a barren series of
disappointments. He was never successful but in extricating himself
from mishaps. The _ravissantes_ he sighed after played with and
insulted him--though they could never debase his spirit. The dishes he
designed lacked the last little secret of perfection. He abhorred
untidiness, yet it was a condition of his existence; and he could not
carry off any situation without looking like a thief. One further turn
of the wheel, and he would have been a saint in a monastery.
I can recall him with some tenderness, and his confident maxims with
amusement. That “art of selection” of his I found never so applicable
as to the choice of one’s Revolutionary landlord. It was Michau’s
_logeur_, I understand, who caused the poor Abbé to be arrested and
brought before the tribunal miscalled of Liberty, where the advocacy
of the chivalrous Chauveau de la Garde was sufficient only to procure
him the last grace of an unproductive appeal. It was the atrocity with
whom latterly I lodged who brought me to _my_ final pass.
In truth, as the letters of apartments were largely recruited from the
_valetaille_ of _émigrés_, the need of caution in choosing amongst
them was very real. M. le Marquis could not take flight in a panic
without scattering some of his fine feathers--fortunately, indeed, for
him sometimes, for they were as sops thrown to the pursuing wolves
while he sped on. Then, down would grovel public accusers, police, and
committee-men to snap at the fragments; and amongst them Bon-Jean,
Monsieur’s _valet de pied_, would secure his share, perhaps, and set
up house with it in one of the meaner faubourgs, and trade profitably
therein upon the fears of his lodgers.
Simon Mignard was the last who had the honour to entertain me; and to
that horrible little grotesque did I owe my subsequent lodgment in La
Petite Force. It was a bad choice, and, with my experience, an
unpardonable; but I was taken with a certain humour in the creature
that put me off my judgment.
For generally, indeed, this faculty of humour I found to be
antipathetic to revolution. It was to be looked upon as a mark of
social degeneration. The brute “thrown back” to his primordial state
is an animal that takes himself with the most laughterless gravity. He
resumes himself corrupt, so to speak, as one resumes the endurance of
office full of the rebellious grievance of a holiday. He returns to
the primary indulgence of instinct with a debased appetite, and that
sense of humour does not accompany him. This is why his prejudices
have the force of convictions.
“Citizen Simon,” I said one day, “I would put it to you--if
revolutionists would reconstitute society by purging the world of the
abnormal, should they not offer themselves the first holocausts to
their theories?”
“Hey?” he cried, peering over his glasses. His eye-slits were like
half-healed wounds; his face was all covered with a grey down, as if
he were some old vessel of wrath the Revolution had produced from its
mustiest blood-bin in the cellars where its passions were formerly
wont to ferment.
“Hey?” he cried. “But explain, Citizen Thibaut.”
“Why, obviously a primal simplicity cannot be taught by those who, by
their own showing, are an essential condition of degeneration.”
“You think so, my friend? But is it not he who has hunted with the
wolves can best advise the lamb whither not to stray? Set a thief to
catch a thief, but not innocence to lead innocence.”
“We are all so disinterested, eh? We must kill to purify--so long as
_we_ remain the executioners.”
“The physicians! the physicians! Some day we shall provide the tonic.”
“At this rate the physicians will have to drink it themselves.”
“Meaning the patients will fail us? Rest content. They will last our
time. The ills in the constitution of France are many. For the
resurrection--_sang Dieu_!” he cried, with a wry face, “but that is no
part of _our_ programme!”
Indeed, it was not of his. He was actuated by no passion but the
blood-sucker’s. One day he showed me a clumsy model guillotine, a foot
high, of his own contriving. The axe was a fragment of table-knife
sunk in a finger of lead, and with it he would operate upon a gruesome
little doll he had with an adjustable neck. Snip! the blade fell and
the head, and a spout of crimson gushed forth and stained the floor.
“That is a waste of good wine,” said I.
His face puckered like a toad’s eyelids.
“Is it not?” he chuckled, “of the brand drunk by the patriot Citoyenne
Sombreuil.”
“Blood!”
“_Voyez!_” he cried, with a little shriek of laughter. “It is hollow.
Often I fill it from the tap in the Place de la Bastille. My faith,
what a fountain! I love it like Dantzic brandy.”
Then it was I found his humour a little excessive to my taste; and I
severed my connection with him. He might lie; obviously he did, in
fact, about the blood; but one’s sympathies could not embrace so
stupid a falsehood. Promptly he denounced me to his section. I had
given him the courteous “you,” said he, and amongst my effects was a
box of the interdicted hair-powder.
But it is of my earlier landlord, Jacques Crépin, who for a time
influenced my fortunes quite admirably, that I desire here to speak.
Upon this rascal I happened on the evening of Lepelletier St Fargeau’s
murder in Février’s Coffee-house. It was the interminable week of the
votings on the king’s sentence. During the course of it I had many
times visited the Hall of Convention, had stayed a while to watch the
slow chain of Deputies hitching over the Tribune, with their dreary
chant, “La Mort,” that was like the response to an endless litany of
fatality intoned by the ushers; had heard the future Dictator,
spectacled, marmoset-faced, irrepressible in oratory, drone his sour
dithyrambics where a word would have sufficed; had fallen half asleep
over the phantom scene, and had imagined myself at the Comédie
Française during a performance of “Les Victimes Cloîtrées”--a
dreamy fancy to which the incessant sound of feet on boards, high up
in the “Mountain” quarter, the reverberating clap of doors, the wide
patter of voices and tinkle of laughter from bedizened _chères
amies_, pricking down the _ayes_ and _noes_ upon scented cards, the
shriller brabble of Mère Duchesse aloft with her priestesses of the
Salpêtrière, and the intermittent melodramatic drawl of the actors
moving across the stage, gave colour and coherence.
By then, I think, I was come to be graduate in Michau’s school of
Pleasure. It was impressed upon me that to think of myself was a
little to foretaste my probable martyrdom. It was philosophy more
congenial to read in the serene patriot Thibaut a disinterested sheep
fattening on the grass about the _abattoir_. My title was a
plague-spot to cover; little but the dust of my patrimony remained; I
had long disabused my mind of the dogma that manliness is necessarily
a triumphant force in the world.
Yet, a month before, I had been conscious of a little run of pity,
that was like a sloughing of the old wound of nobility. It was to see
the figure of him I had called Sire heavily seated in that same _Salle
de Manège_, his attire, appropriately, a drab surtout--the colour of
new-turned mould--his powdered hair blotted with a tonsure where he
had leaned his weary head back for rest, that lost look on his
ineffectual face--“Messieurs! this strange indignity! But doubtless
the saints will explain to me of what I am accused.”
Bah! have I not learned the “Rights of Man,” and seen them
illustrated, too, on those days of the “severe justice of the people.”
The worse the decomposition below, the thicker will be the scum that
rises to the top. But there the wholesome air shall deodorise it
by-and-by, and the waters of life be sweet to the taste again--for a
time. And in the meanwhile I browse by the _abattoir_.
On that Saturday evening, the last of the voting, I dined with
distinction at Février’s in the Palais Royal. I could still afford,
morally and materially, this little practice of self-indulgence; for
they had not yet begun to make bread of dried pease, and many of the
ardent Deputies themselves were admirable connoisseurs in meat and
wine.
While I was sitting--the whole place being in a ferment of scurry and
babble--a couple, who awakened my curious interest, entered and took a
vacant table next to mine. A withered old man it was and a young girl,
who sauntered with ample grace in his wake.
The first came down the room, prying hither and thither, bowelless and
bent like a note of interrogation. He was buttoned up to the throat in
a lank dark-green surtout, and his plain hat was tilted back from his
forehead, so as to show his eyebrows, each lifted and lost in the
creases of a dozen arched wrinkles, and the papery lids beneath them
bulging and half closed. His face was all run into grey sharpness, but
a conciliatory smile was a habit of his lips. He carried his hands
behind his back as if they were manacled there.
The girl who followed was in features and complexion cold and
beautiful. Her eyes were stone-grey under well-marked brows; her
forehead rounded from her nose like a kitten’s; the curls that escaped
from beneath her furred hood were of a rich walnut brown. She had that
colourless serenity in her face that is like snow over perfumed
flowers. Gazing on such, one longs to set one’s heart to the chill and
melt it and see the blossoms break.
Now I had at once recognised in this couple the sustainers of the
principal _rôles_ in a certain September tragedy _entr’acte_. In
these times of feverish movement the manner in which Casimir had
secured their escape was indeed an old story with me; yet, seeing them
again under these vastly improved circumstances, and remembering in
what way I had sought to assist them, my heart was moved beyond its
present custom to a feeling of sympathetic comradeship with one, at
least, of the two.
The old man chose his table.
“Sit down, wench,” said he. “My faith! we must dine, though crowns
fall.”
She took her seat with a little peevish sigh.
“Though the stars fell in the street like hail, you would dine,” she
said.
He cocked his head sideways.
“They have fallen, my Carinne. The ruin of them litters the Temple.”
She said doggedly, “_Vive le roi!_” under her breath.
“My God!” he whispered, and called the waiter.
He eyed her askance and nervously as the man came. Some distraught
admiration seemed to mingle with his apprehension of her. She sat
languid and indifferent, and even closed her eyes, with a little
disdainful smile, as he leaned down to her and ran his finger eagerly
over the various items of the bill of fare.
“Ostend oysters, carp fried in milk, sweetbread patty--that is good.
Ragout of the kidneys and combs of cocks--that is very good--Carinne,
see! the ragout! Holy saints, but my pocket! Slice of calf’s head,
turtle fashion--girl, are you listening? Be reckless. Take of all if
you will. I bid thee--thy little uncle, _ma mie_. Slice of--Carinne,
this is better than the cabbages and fried eggs of _Pierrettes_. I
will not care--I will not. Though I have to cut down trees to meet it,
the palate shall have its holiday. Slice of--_mon Dieu_, Carinne! I
ate of it once before in this very house. It melts like the manna of
the Israelites. It does not surfeit, but it forms an easy bed for the
repose of ecstasies more acute.”
The girl broke in with a little high-flung laugh.
“Not trees, but a forest,” she said. “There--choose for me. I am
indifferent.”
“Indifferent! indifferent?--Oh, undeserving of the fine gifts of the
gods!”
He turned to the waiter, his eyes still devouring the _carte_, his
lips silently busy with its contents. Presently he gave his order, sat
down, and remained fixedly gnawing a finger, his face set half in
enjoying contemplation, half in a baffled aggravation of selection.
In only one other direction did the couple appear to arouse curiosity.
The great nerve of the town was all charged with a leaping
electricity, and citizens, staid enough ordinarily, ate now and drank
under an excitement they could barely control.
But, over against me, at a little distance, were two men seated at a
table; and of these one seemed to take a like interest with mine in my
neighbours.
This individual, unmoved, apparently, by the general ferment, had
finished his dinner and sat sipping his Médoc luxuriously. He was a
pimple-faced man, well-nourished and sensual-looking, but with an air
of tolerant geniality about him. Ugly as Danton, he had yet a single
redeeming ornament in the shape of a quantity of rich auburn hair that
fell from his head in natural curls. Though his condition was plain to
me, and I saw that the restaurateur treated him with obsequious
deference, he appeared more self-complacent than self-sufficient, and
as if he were rather accustomed to indulge than abuse his position.
For I recognised in him the president of some sectional committee, and
that by the little plaque, printed small with the Rights of Man, that
hung as a pendant from his tricolour neck-ribbon.
Of the other at the table I took but little notice, save to remark
that he devoured his meal with the air of a man to whom good digestion
is no essential condition of politics.
Now, of a sudden, Jacques Crépin of the pendant lowered his legs,
took up his bottle and glass, and, to my extreme surprise, crossed the
room to my table and sat down by me.
He did not speak at first, being engaged in watching our neighbours,
before whom were placed at the moment the dishes of the uncle’s
selection.
Mademoiselle Carinne gave a little _Ouf!_ over hers.
“But what is this?” she said.
“It is a pig’s foot _à la_ St Menehould. Such a dish, _babouine_!”
The old rascal had taken advantage of her insensibility to procure her
one of the cheapest entries on the list.
She pushed it from her with an exclamation of disgust.
“Fie, then!” she cried. “The very hoof of a filthy swine! Wouldst thou
have me make my hunger a footstool to a pig? Take it away. I will not
touch it!”
He protested, voluble and shamefaced. She would not listen. Out of
mere wilfulness she now selected the most expensive item of the
_menu_--a partridge stewed in wine. He seemed like to cry; but she
persisted and gained her point.
“We shall be ruined!” he cried, inconsistently enough. “For a month
after our return we shall have to live on bread and boiled nettles.”
“In December, _mon oncle_? Then I am imperious for white wine of Mont
Raché.”
The old fellow almost shrieked.
“Carinne! Eight francs the bottle! Consider, my niece. I shall die in
Sainte Pélagie!”
The new-comer turned to me with a grin.
“Didst ever hear the like?” said he.
I nodded gravely. I was not then all inured to impertinence.
“He lacks the art of selection,” I said coldly, thinking of Michau.
He showed himself good-humouredly conscious of my manner. He leaned
towards me and murmured carelessly--
“There, of a truth, speaks Monseigneur le Comte de la Muette.”
I reached for my glass and sipped from it; but I have no doubt my hand
shook.
“The citizen does not recognise me?”
“No, by my faith.”
“I am Jacques Crépin; and formerly I served where I now dine.”
I glanced at him. Some faint remembrance of the fellow woke in me.
“M. le Comte,” he went on, in the same low voice, “once rewarded me
with a handsome vail for some trifling service. It was the lucky
louis-d’or of my fortunes. Here was a little of the means; the
Revolution was my opportunity. Now the masters serve the waiters. I
devour with my teeth what I once devoured with my eyes. You see me
president of a section; but, _pardieu_! I have no quarrel with
aristocrats of a fastidious palate. It was the contemplation of such
educated me to a right humour in gastronomy. I am indebted to monsieur
for many a delicate hint in selection.”
Again I thought of the poor Michau.
“I am honoured,” I said. “And so, M. Crépin, this is the goal of your
high republicanism?”
“My faith!” he said, with a generous chuckle, “I acknowledge it. I
have existed forty years that I may live one--perhaps no more. To
drink and to eat and to love _en prince_--I have the capacity for it
and the will. I have nursed my constitution on broken scraps. This
_fesse-Mathieu_ here offends me. Had I a fortune, I would fling it
away on a single desired dish if necessary. We have waived the right
to think of the morrow. But, how is monsieur known?”
“They call me Citizen Thibaut.”
“Citizen Thibaut, I drink to our better acquaintance. This Médoc--I
have not grudged it you in former years. Your refined appreciation of
it has many a time glorified to me my supper of stale fragments. But
for you, maybe, I had not learned the secret of its fragrance. To my
past master in epicurism I gulp a grateful toast.”
He was as good as his word.
“Citizen Crépin,” I said, “where do you live?”
“Rue de Jouy, St Antoine,” he answered.
“I seek a convenient landlord. Will you accommodate me?”
“With all my heart.”
I heard the _vieillard_ at the next table gobble and choke. I turned
my head to look, sprang to my feet, and my glass crashed on the
boards.
In that instant the room had leaped into uproar--for something
immediate, swift, and terrible had happened. It was this:
The fast-eating man at the table opposite, having finished his dinner,
was risen to pay his bill. He stood with impatient hand outstretched
as Février fumbled in his pocket for the change; and at the moment a
fellow, thick-set, stubble-bearded, dressed in a blouse and faded
cloak, strode up the room and paused by him.
“Are you Deputy Lepelletier?” said he.
The diner turned and nodded.
“You have voted in this affair of the king?”
“_Mais oui_,” said the other--“for death.”
“_Scélérat--prends ca!_” and with the word he whipped a long blade
from under his cloak and passed it into the body of the deputy. I saw
the flash and heard the piteous bleat, as also, I swear, the sound of
the flesh sucking to the steel.
Février snatched at the murderer, and was spun to the floor like a
skittle. I saw startled figures rise, chairs and tables totter, and
the one bounding amongst them. He got clear away.
Then, as the mob closed about the fallen, moaning shape, I turned with
an instinct of horror to view of my neighbours.
The old gourmet had flung himself back in his chair, his face twisted
from the sight; but mademoiselle still picked daintily at her
partridge.