“Saying that I would wait for Dambergeac in his own study, I was
introduced into that apartment, and saw around me the usual furniture
of a man in his station. There was, in the middle of the room, a large
bureau, surrounded by orthodox arm-chairs; and there were many shelves
with boxes duly ticketed; there were a number of maps, and among them a
great one of the department over which Dambergeac ruled; and facing the
windows, on a wooden pedestal, stood a plaster-cast of the ‘Roi des
Français.’ Recollecting my friend’s former republicanism, I smiled at
this piece of furniture; but before I had time to carry my observations
any farther, a heavy rolling sound of carriage-wheels, that caused the
windows to rattle and seemed to shake the whole edifice of the
sub-prefecture, called my attention to the court without. Its iron
gates were flung open, and in rolled, with a great deal of din, a
chariot escorted by a brace of gendarmes, sword in hand. A tall
gentleman, with a cocked-hat and feathers, wearing a blue and silver
uniform coat, descended from the vehicle; and having, with much grave
condescension, saluted his escort, mounted the stair. A moment
afterwards the door of the study was opened, and I embraced my friend.
“After the first warmth and salutations, we began to examine each other
with an equal curiosity, for eight years had elapsed since we had last
met.
“‘You are grown very thin and pale,’ said Harmodius, after a moment.
“‘In revenge I find you fat and rosy: if I am a walking satire on
celibacy,—you, at least, are a living panegyric on marriage.’
“In fact a great change, and such an one as many people would call a
change for the better, had taken place in my friend: he had grown fat,
and announced a decided disposition to become what French people call a
bel homme: that is, a very fat one. His complexion, bronzed before, was
now clear white and red: there were no more political allusions in his
hair, which was, on the contrary, neatly frizzed, and brushed over the
forehead, shell-shape. This head-dress, joined to a thin pair of
whiskers, cut crescent-wise from the ear to the nose, gave my friend a
regular bourgeois physiognomy, wax-doll-like: he looked a great deal
too well; and, added to this, the solemnity of his prefectural costume,
gave his whole appearance a pompous well-fed look that by no means
pleased.
“‘I surprise you,’ said I, ‘in the midst of your splendor: do you know
that this costume and yonder attendants have a look excessively awful
and splendid? You entered your palace just now with the air of a
pasha.’
“‘You see me in uniform in honor of Monseigneur the Bishop, who has
just made his diocesan visit, and whom I have just conducted to the
limit of the arrondissement.’
“‘What!’ said I, ‘you have gendarmes for guards, and dance attendance
on bishops? There are no more janissaries and Jesuits, I suppose?’ The
sub-prefect smiled.
“‘I assure you that my gendarmes are very worthy fellows; and that
among the gentlemen who compose our clergy there are some of the very
best rank and talent: besides, my wife is niece to one of the
vicars-general.’
“‘What have you done with that great Tasso beard that poor Armandine
used to love so?’
“‘My wife does not like a beard; and you know that what is permitted to
a student is not very becoming to a magistrate.’
“I began to laugh. ‘Harmodius and a magistrate!—how shall I ever couple
the two words together? But tell me, in your correspondences, your
audiences, your sittings with village mayors and petty councils, how do
you manage to remain awake?’
“‘In the commencement,’ said Harmodius, gravely, ‘it WAS very
difficult; and, in order to keep my eyes open, I used to stick pins
into my legs: now, however, I am used to it; and I’m sure I don’t take
more than fifty pinches of snuff at a sitting.’
“‘Ah! apropos of snuff: you are near Spain here, and were always a
famous smoker. Give me a cigar,—it will take away the musty odor of
these piles of papers.’
“‘Impossible, my dear; I don’t smoke; my wife cannot bear a cigar.’
“His wife! thought I; always his wife: and I remember Juliette, who
really grew sick at the smell of a pipe, and Harmodius would smoke,
until, at last, the poor thing grew to smoke herself, like a trooper.
To compensate, however, as much as possible for the loss of my cigar,
Dambergeac drew from his pocket an enormous gold snuff-box, on which
figured the self-same head that I had before remarked in plaster, but
this time surrounded with a ring of pretty princes and princesses, all
nicely painted in miniature. As for the statue of Louis Philippe, that,
in the cabinet of an official, is a thing of course; but the snuff-box
seemed to indicate a degree of sentimental and personal devotion, such
as the old Royalists were only supposed to be guilty of.
“‘What! you are turned decided juste milieu?’ said I.
“‘I am a sous-préfet,’ answered Harmodius.
“I had nothing to say, but held my tongue, wondering, not at the change
which had taken place in the habits, manners, and opinions of my
friend, but at my own folly, which led me to fancy that I should find
the student of ’26 in the functionary of ’34. At this moment a domestic
appeared.
“‘Madame is waiting for Monsieur,’ said he: ‘the last bell has gone,
and mass beginning.’
“‘Mass!’ said I, bounding up from my chair. ‘You at mass like a decent
serious Christian, without crackers in your pocket, and bored keys to
whistle through?’—The sous-préfet rose, his countenance was calm, and
an indulgent smile played upon his lips, as he said, ‘My arrondissement
is very devout; and not to interfere with the belief of the population
is the maxim of every wise politician: I have precise orders from
Government on the point, too, and go to eleven o’clock mass every
Sunday.’”
There is a great deal of curious matter for speculation in the accounts
here so wittily given by M. de Bernard: but, perhaps, it is still more
curious to think of what he has NOT written, and to judge of his
characters, not so much by the words in which he describes them, as by
the unconscious testimony that the words all together convey. In the
first place, our author describes a swindler imitating the manners of a
dandy; and many swindlers and dandies be there, doubtless, in London as
well as in Paris. But there is about the present swindler, and about
Monsieur Dambergeac the student, and Monsieur Dambergeac the
sous-préfet, and his friend, a rich store of calm internal debauch,
which does not, let us hope and pray, exist in England. Hearken to M.
de Gustan, and his smirking whispers, about the Duchess of San
Severino, who pour son bonheur particulier, &c. &c. Listen to Monsieur
Dambergeac’s friend’s remonstrances concerning pauvre Juliette who grew
sick at the smell of a pipe; to his naïve admiration at the fact that
the sous-préfet goes to church: and we may set down, as axioms, that
religion is so uncommon among the Parisians, as to awaken the surprise
of all candid observers; that gallantry is so common as to create no
remark, and to be considered as a matter of course. With us, at least,
the converse of the proposition prevails: it is the man professing
irreligion who would be remarked and reprehended in England; and, if
the second-named vice exists, at any rate, it adopts the decency of
secrecy and is not made patent and notorious to all the world. A French
gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming that he has a mistress than
that he has a tailor; and one lives the time of Boccaccio over again,
in the thousand and one French novels which depict society in that
country.
For instance, here are before us a few specimens (do not, madam, be
alarmed, you can skip the sentence if you like,) to be found in as many
admirable witty tales, by the before-lauded Monsieur de Bernard. He is
more remarkable than any other French author, to our notion, for
writing like a gentleman: there is ease, grace and ton, in his style,
which, if we judge aright, cannot be discovered in Balzac, or Soulié,
or Dumas. We have then—“Gerfaut,” a novel: a lovely creature is married
to a brave, haughty, Alsacian nobleman, who allows her to spend her
winters at Paris, he remaining on his terres, cultivating, carousing,
and hunting the boar. The lovely-creature meets the fascinating Gerfaut
at Paris; instantly the latter makes love to her; a duel takes place:
baron killed; wife throws herself out of window; Gerfaut plunges into
dissipation; and so the tale ends.
Next: “La Femme de Quarante Ans,” a capital tale, full of exquisite fun
and sparkling satire: La femme de quarante ans has a husband and THREE
lovers; all of whom find out their mutual connection one starry night;
for the lady of forty is of a romantic poetical turn, and has given her
three admirers A STAR APIECE; saying to one and the other, “Alphonse,
when yon pale orb rises in heaven, think of me;” “Isadore, when that
bright planet sparkles in the sky, remember your Caroline,” &c.
“Un Acte de Vertu,” from which we have taken Dambergeac’s history,
contains him, the husband—a wife—and a brace of lovers; and a great
deal of fun takes place in the manner in which one lover supplants the
other.—Pretty morals truly!
If we examine an author who rejoices in the aristocratic name of le
Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, we find, though with infinitely less wit,
exactly the same intrigues going on. A noble Count lives in the
Faubourg St. Honoré, and has a noble Duchess for a mistress: he
introduces her Grace to the Countess his wife. The Countess his wife,
in order to ramener her lord to his conjugal duties, is counselled, by
a friend, TO PRETEND TO TAKE A LOVER: one is found, who, poor fellow!
takes the affair in earnest: climax—duel, death, despair, and what not?
In the “Faubourg St. Germain,” another novel by the same writer, which
professes to describe the very pink of that society which Napoleon
dreaded more than Russia, Prussia, and Austria, there is an old
husband, of course; a sentimental young German nobleman, who falls in
love with his wife; and the moral of the piece lies in the showing up
of the conduct of the lady, who is reprehended—not for deceiving her
husband (poor devil!)—but for being a flirt, AND TAKING A SECOND LOVER,
to the utter despair, confusion, and annihilation of the first.
Why, ye gods, do Frenchmen marry at all? Had Père Enfantin (who, it is
said, has shaved his ambrosial beard, and is now a clerk in a
banking-house) been allowed to carry out his chaste, just, dignified
social scheme, what a deal of marital discomfort might have been
avoided:—would it not be advisable that a great reformer and lawgiver
of our own, Mr. Robert Owen, should be presented at the Tuileries, and
there propound his scheme for the regeneration of France?
He might, perhaps, be spared, for our country is not yet sufficiently
advanced to give such a philosopher fair play. In London, as yet, there
are no blessed Bureaux de Mariage, where an old bachelor may have a
charming young maiden—for his money; or a widow of seventy may buy a
gay young fellow of twenty, for a certain number of bank-billets. If
mariages de convenance take place here (as they will wherever avarice,
and poverty, and desire, and yearning after riches are to be found), at
least, thank God, such unions are not arranged upon a regular organized
SYSTEM: there is a fiction of attachment with us, and there is a
consolation in the deceit (“the homage,” according to the old mot of
Rochefoucauld) “which vice pays to virtue”; for the very falsehood
shows that the virtue exists somewhere. We once heard a furious old
French colonel inveighing against the chastity of English demoiselles:
“Figurez-vous, sir,” said he (he had been a prisoner in England), “that
these women come down to dinner in low dresses, and walk out alone with
the men!”—and, pray heaven, so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts
of maiden meditations, and suffer no more molestation than that young
lady of whom Moore sings, and who (there must have been a famous
lord-lieutenant in those days) walked through all Ireland, with rich
and rare gems, beauty, and a gold ring on her stick, without meeting or
thinking of harm.
Now, whether Monsieur de Viel-Castel has given a true picture of the
Faubourg St. Germain, it is impossible for most foreigners to say; but
some of his descriptions will not fail to astonish the English reader;
and all are filled with that remarkable naïf contempt of the
institution called marriage, which we have seen in M. de Bernard. The
romantic young nobleman of Westphalia arrives at Paris, and is admitted
into what a celebrated female author calls la crême de la crême de la
haute volée of Parisian society. He is a youth of about twenty years of
age. “No passion had as yet come to move his heart, and give life to
his faculties; he was awaiting and fearing the moment of love; calling
for it, and yet trembling at its approach; feeling in the depths of his
soul, that that moment would create a mighty change in his being, and
decide, perhaps, by its influence, the whole of his future life.”
Is it not remarkable, that a young nobleman, with these ideas, should
not pitch upon a demoiselle, or a widow, at least? but no, the rogue
must have a married woman, bad luck to him; and what his fate is to be,
is thus recounted by our author, in the shape of