WE ENTER PARIS AND FIND A SANCTUARY THERE
Of the town of Paris that is so lamentably notable in these days I have
but the recollection that one takes away from a new scene witnessed
under stress of mind due to matters more immediately affecting him than
the colour, shape, and properties of things seen, and the thought I had
in certain parts of it is more clear to me to-day than the vision of the
place itself. It is, in my mind, like a fog that the bridges thundered
as our coach drove over them with our wretched fortunes on that early
morning of our escape from Bicêtre, but as clear as when it sprung to
me from the uproar of the wheels comes back the dread that the whole of
this community would be at their windows looking out to see what folks
untimeously disturbed their rest. We were delayed briefly at a gate upon
the walls; I can scarcely mind what manner of men they were that stopped
us and thrust a lantern in our faces, and what they asked eludes me
altogether, but I mind distinctly how I gasped relief when we were
permitted to roll on. Blurred, too--no better than the surplusage of
dreams, is my first picture of the river and its isles in the dawn, but,
like a favourite song, I mind the gluck of waters on the quays and that
they made me think of Earn and Cart and Clyde.
We stopped in the place of the Notre Dame at the corner of a street;
the coach drove off to a _remise_ whence it had come, and we went to an
hospital called the Hôtel Dieu, in the neighbourhood, where Hamilton had
a Jesuit friend in one of the heads, and where we were accommodated in
a room that was generally set aside for clergymen. It was a place of the
most wonderful surroundings, this Hôtel Dieu, choked, as it were, among
towers, the greatest of them those of Our Lady itself that were in
the Gothic taste, regarding which Father Hamilton used to say, “_Dire
gothique, c'est dire mauvais gout_,” though, to tell the truth, I
thought the building pretty braw myself. Alleys and wynds were round
about us, and so narrow that the sky one saw between them was but a
ribbon by day, while at night they seemed no better than ravines.
'Twas at night I saw most of the city, for only in the darkness did
I dare to venture out of the Hôtel Dieu. Daundering my lone along the
cobbles, I took a pleasure in the exercise of tenanting these towering
lands with people having histories little different from the histories
of the folks far off in my Scottish home--their daughters marrying,
their sons going throughither (as we say), their bairns wakening and
crying in their naked beds, and grannies sitting by the ingle-neuk
cheerfully cracking upon ancient days. Many a time in the by-going I
looked up their pend closes seeking the eternal lovers of our own burgh
towns and never finding them, for I take it that in love the foreign
character is coyer than our own. But no matter how eagerly I went forth
upon my nightly airing in a _roquelaure_ borrowed from Father Hamilton's
friend, the adventure always ended, for me, in a sort of eerie terror
of those close-hemming walls, those tangled lanes where slouched the
outcast and the ne'er-do-weel, and not even the glitter of the moon upon
the river between its laden isles would comfort me.
“La! la! la!” would Father Hamilton cry at me when I got home with a face
like a fiddle. “Art the most ridiculous rustic ever ate a cabbage or
set foot in Arcady. Why, man! the woman must be wooed--this Mademoiselle
Lutetia. Must take her front and rear, walk round her, ogling bravely.
Call her dull! call her dreadful! _Ciel!_ Has the child never an eye in
his mutton head? I avow she is the queen of the earth this Paris. If I
were young and wealthy I'd buy the glittering stars in constellations
and turn them into necklets for her. With thy plaguey gift of the sonnet
I'd deave her with ecstasies and spill oceans of ink upon leagues
of paper to tell her about her eyes. Go to! Scotland, go to! Ghosts!
ghosts! devil the thing else but ghosts in thy rustic skull, for to take
a fear of Lutetia when her black hair is down of an evening and thou
canst not get a glimpse of that beautiful neck that is rounded like the
same in the Psyche of Praxiteles. Could I pare off a portion of this
rotundity and go out in a masque as Apollo I'd show thee things.”
And all he saw of Paris himself was from the windows of the hospital,
where he and I would stand by the hour looking out into the square.
For the air itself he had to take it in a little garden at the back,
surrounded by a high wall, and affording a seclusion that even the
priest could avail himself of without the hazard of discovery. He used
to sit in an arbour there in the warmth of the day, and it was there
I saw another trait of his character that helped me much to forget his
shortcomings.
Over his head, within the doorway of the bower, he hung a box and placed
therein the beginnings of a bird's nest. The thing was not many hours
done when a pair of birds came boldly into his presence as he sat
silent and motionless in the bower, and began to avail themselves of so
excellent a start in householding. In a few days there were eggs in the
nest, and 'twas the most marvellous of spectacles to witness the hen sit
content upon them over the head of the fat man underneath, and the cock,
without concern, fly in and out attentive on his mate.
But, indeed, the man was the friend of all helpless things, and few of
the same came his way without an instinct that told them it was so. Not
the birds in the nest alone were at ease in his society; he had but
to walk along the garden paths whistling and chirping, and there came
flights of birds about his head and shoulders, and some would even perch
upon his hand. I have never seen him more like his office than when he
talked with the creatures of the air, unless it was on another occasion
when two bairns, the offspring of an inmate in the hospital, ventured
into the garden, finding there another child, though monstrous, who had
not lost the key to the fields where blossom the flowers of infancy, and
frolic is a prayer.
But he dare not set a foot outside the walls of our retreat, for it was
as useless to hide Ballageich under a Kilmarnock bonnet as to seek a
disguise for his reverence in any suit of clothes. Bernard would come to
us rarely under cover of night, but alas! there were no letters for me
now, and mine that were sent through him were fewer than before.
And there was once an odd thing happened that put an end to these
intromissions; a thing that baffled me to understand at the time, and
indeed for many a day thereafter, but was made plain to me later on in
a manner that proved how contrary in his character was this mad priest,
that was at once assassin and the noblest friend.
Father Hamilton was not without money, though all had been taken from
him at Bicêtre. It was an evidence of the width and power of the Jesuit
movement that even in the Hôtel Dieu he could command what sums he
needed, and Bernard was habituated to come to him for moneys that might
pay for himself and the coachman and the horses at the _remise_. On
the last of these occasions I took the chance to slip a letter for Miss
Walkinshaw into his hand. Instead of putting it in his pocket he laid it
down a moment on a table, and he and I were busy packing linen for the
wash when a curious cry from Father Hamilton made us turn to see him
with the letter in his hand.
He was gazing with astonishment on the direction.
“Ah!” said he, “and so my Achilles is not consoling himself exclusively
with the Haemonian lyre, but has taken to that far more dangerous
instrument the pen. The pen, my child, is the curse of youth. When we
are young we use it for our undoing, and for the facture of regrets
for after years--even if it be no more than the reading of our wives'
letters that I'm told are a bitter revelation to the married man. And
so--and so, Monsieur Croque-mort keeps up a correspondence with the
lady. H'm!” He looked so curiously and inquiringly at me that I felt
compelled to make an explanation.
“It is quite true, Father Hamilton,” said I. “After all, you gave me so
little clerkly work that I was bound to employ my pen somehow, and how
better than with my countrywoman?”
“'Tis none of my affair--perhaps,” he said, laying down the letter.
“And yet I have a curiosity. Have we here the essential Mercury?” and he
indicated Bernard who seemed to me to have a greater confusion than the
discovery gave a cause for.
“Bernard has been good enough,” said I. “You discover two Scots, Father
Hamilton, in a somewhat sentimental situation. The lady did me the
honour to be interested in my little travels, and I did my best to keep
her informed.”
He turned away as he had been shot, hiding his face, but I saw from his
neck that he had grown as white as parchment.
“What in the world have I done?” thinks I, and concluded that he
was angry for my taking the liberty to use the dismissed servant as a
go-between. In a moment or two he turned about again, eying me closely,
and at last he put his hand upon my shoulder as a schoolmaster might do
upon a boy's.
“My good Paul,” said he, “how old are you?”
“Twenty-one come Martinmas,” I said.
“Expiscate! elucidate! 'Come Martinmas,'” says he, “and what does that
mean? But no matter--twenty-one says my barbarian; sure 'tis a right
young age, a very baby of an age, an age in frocks if one that has it
has lived the best of his life with sheep and bullocks.”
“Sir,” I said, indignant, “I was in very honest company among the same
sheep and bullocks.”
“Hush!” said he, and put up his hand, eying me with compassion and
kindness. “If thou only knew it, lad, thou art due me a civil attention
at the very least. Sure there is no harm in my mentioning that thou art
mighty ingenuous for thy years. 'Tis the quality I would be the last
to find fault with, but sometimes it has its inconveniences.
And Bernard”--he turned to the Swiss who was still greatly
disturbed--“Bernard is a somewhat older gentleman. Perhaps he will
say--our good Bernard--if he was the person I have to thank for taking
the sting out of the wasp, for extracting the bullet from my pistol? Ah!
I see he is the veritable person. Adorable Bernard, let that stand to
his credit!”
Then Bernard fell trembling like a saugh tree, and protested he did but
what he was told.
“And a good thing, too,” said the priest, still very pale but with no
displeasure. “And a good thing too, else poor Buhot, that I have seen an
infinity of headachy dawns with, had been beyond any interest in cards
or prisoners. For that I shall forgive you the rest that I can guess at.
Take Monsieur Grog's letter where you have taken the rest, and be gone.”
The Swiss went out much crestfallen from an interview that was beyond my
comprehension.
When he was gone Father Hamilton fell into a profound meditation,
walking up and down his room muttering to himself.
“Faith, I never had such a problem presented to me before,” said he,
stopping his walk; “I know not whether to laugh or swear. I feel that
I have been made a fool of, and yet nothing better could have happened.
And so my Croque-mort, my good Monsieur Propriety, has been writing the
lady? I should not wonder if he thought she loved him.”
“Nothing so bold,” I cried. “You might without impropriety have seen
every one of my letters, and seen in them no more than a seaman's log.”
“A seaman's log!” said he, smiling faintly and rubbing his massive chin;
“nothing would give the lady more delight, I am sure. A seaman's log!
And I might have seen them without impropriety, might I? That I'll swear
was what her ladyship took very good care to obviate. Come now, did she
not caution thee against telling me of this correspondence?”
I confessed it was so; that the lady naturally feared she might be made
the subject of light talk, and I had promised that in that respect she
should suffer nothing for her kindly interest in a countryman.
The priest laughed consumedly at this.
“Interest in her countryman!” said he. “Oh, lad, wilt be the death of me
for thy unexpected spots of innocence.”
“And as to that,” I said, “you must have had a sort of correspondence
with her yourself.”
“I!” said he. “_Comment!_”
“To be quite frank with you,” said I, “it has been the cause of some
vexatious thoughts to me that the letter I carried to the Prince was
directed in Miss Walkinshaw's hand of write, and as Buhot informed me,
it was the same letter that was to wile his Royal Highness to his fate
in the Rue des Reservoirs.” Father Hamilton groaned, as he did at any
time the terrible affair was mentioned.
“It is true, Paul, quite true,” said he, “but the letter was a forgery.
I'll give the lady the credit to say she never had a hand in it.”
“I am glad to hear that, for it removes some perplexities that have
troubled me for a while back.”
“Ah,” said he, “and your perplexities and mine are not over even now,
poor Paul. This Bernard is like to be the ruin of me yet. For you,
however, I have no fear, but it is another matter with the poor old fool
from Dixmunde.”
His voice broke, he displayed thus and otherwise so troubled a mind and
so great a reluctance to let me know the cause of it that I thought it
well to leave him for a while and let him recover his old manner.
To that end I put on my coat and hat and went out rather earlier than
usual for my evening walk.