Charles Louis Mauperin was born in 1787. He was the son of a barrister
who was well known and highly respected throughout Lorraine and Barrois,
and at the age of sixteen he entered the military school at
Fontainebleau. He became sublieutenant in the Thirty-fifth Regiment of
infantry, and afterward, as lieutenant in the same corps, he signalized
himself in Italy by a courage which was proof against everything. At
Pordenone, although wounded, surrounded by a troop of the enemy's
cavalry and challenged to lay down arms, he replied to the challenge by
giving the command to charge the enemy, by killing with his own hand one
of the horsemen who was threatening him and opening a passage with his
men, until, overcome by numbers and wounded on the head by two more
sword-thrusts, he fell down covered with blood and was left on the field
for dead.
After being captain in the Second Regiment of the Mediterranean, he
became captain aide-de-camp to General Roussel d'Hurbal, went through
the Russian campaign with him, and was shot through the right shoulder
the day after the battle of Moscow.
In 1813, at the age of twenty-six, he was an officer of the Legion of
Honour and major in the army. He was looked upon as one of the
commanding officers with the most brilliant prospects, when the battle
of Waterloo broke his sword for him and dashed his hopes to the ground.
He was put on half-pay, and, with Colonel Sauset and Colonel Maziau, he
entered into the Bonapartist conspiracy of the _Bazar français_.
Condemned to death by default, as a member of the managing committee, by
the Chamber of Peers, constituted into a court of justice, he was
concealed by his friends and shipped off to America.
On the voyage, not knowing how to occupy his active mind, he studied
medicine with one of his fellow-passengers who intended taking his
degree in America, and on arriving, Mauperin passed the necessary
examinations with him. After spending two years in the United States,
thanks to the friendship and influence of some of his former comrades,
who had been taken again into active service, he obtained pardon and was
allowed to return to France.
He went back to the little town of Bourmont, to the old home where his
mother was still living. This mother was one of those excellent old
ladies so frequently met with in the provincial France of the eighteenth
century. She was gay, witty, and fond of her glass of wine. Her son
adored her, and on finding her ill and under doctor's orders to avoid
all stimulants, he at once gave up wine, liqueurs, and coffee for her
sake, thinking that it would be easier for her to abstain if he shared
her privations. It was in compliance with her request, and by way of
humouring her sick fancies, that he married a cousin for whom he had no
especial liking. His mother had selected this wife for her son on
account of a joint claim to certain land, fields which touched each
other, and all the various considerations which tend to unite families
and blend together fortunes in the provinces.
After the death of his mother, the narrow life in the little town, which
had no further attraction for him, seemed irksome, and, as he was not
allowed to dwell in Paris, M. Mauperin sold his house and land in Bourmont,
with the exception of a farm at Villacourt, and went to live with his young
wife on a large estate which he bought in the heart of Bassigny, at
Morimond. There were the remains of a large abbey, a piece of land
worthy of the name which the monks had given it--"_Mort-au-monde_"--a
wild, magnificent bit of Nature with a pool of some hundred acres or
more and a forest of venerable oak trees; meadows with canals of
freestone where the spring-tide flowed along under bowers of trees, a
veritable wilderness where the vegetation had been left to itself since
the Revolution; springs babbling along in the shade; wild flowers,
cattle-tracks, the remains of a garden and the ruins of buildings. Here
and there a few stones had survived. The door was still to be seen, and
the benches were there on which the beggars used to sit while taking
their soup; here the apse of a roofless chapel and there the seven
foundations of walls _à la Montreuil_. The pavilion at the entrance,
built at the beginning of the last century, was all that was still
standing; it was complete and almost intact.
M. Mauperin took up his abode in this and lived there until 1830,
solitary and entirely absorbed in his studies. He gave himself up to
reading, educating himself on all subjects, and reaping knowledge in
every direction. He was familiar with all the great historians,
philosophers, and politicians, and was thoroughly master of the
industrial sciences. He only left his books when he felt the need of
fresh air, and then he would rest his brain and tire his body with long
walks of some fifteen miles across the fields and through the woods.
Every one was accustomed to see him walk like this, and the country
people recognised him in the distance by his step, his long frock-coat,
all buttoned up, his officer's gait, his head always slightly bent, and
the stick, made from a vine-stalk, which he used as a cane. The only
break in his secluded and laborious life was at election time. M.
Mauperin then put in an appearance everywhere from one end of the
department to the other. He drove about the country in a trap, and his
soldierly voice could be heard rousing the electors to enthusiasm at all
their meetings; he gave the word of command for the charge on the
Government candidates, and to him all this was like war once more.
When the election was over he left Chaumont and returned to his regular
routine and to the obscure tranquility of his studies.
Two children had come to him--a boy in 1826 and a girl in 1827. After
the Revolution of 1830 he was elected deputy. When he took his seat in
the chamber, his American ideas and theories were very much like those
of Armand Carrel. His animated speeches--brusque, martial, and full of
feeling--made quite a sensation. He became one of the inspirers of the
_National_ after being one of its first shareholders, and he suggested
articles attacking the budget and the finances.
The Tuileries made advances to him; some of his former comrades, who
were now aides-de-camp under the new king, sounded him with the promise
of a high military position, a generalship in the army, or some honour
for which he was still young enough. He refused everything point-blank.
In 1832 he signed the protestation of the deputies of the Opposition
against the words "Subjects of the King," which had been pronounced by
M. de Montalivet, and he fought against this system until 1835.
That year his wife presented him with a child, a little girl whose
arrival stirred him to the depths of his being. His other two children
had merely given him a calm joy, a happiness without any gaiety.
Something had always seemed wanting--just that something which brightens
a father's life and makes the home ring with laughter.
M. Mauperin loved his two children, but he did not adore them. The fond
father had hoped to delight in them, and he had been disappointed.
Instead of the son he had dreamed of--a regular boy, a mischievous
little urchin, one of those handsome little dare-devils with whom an old
soldier could live over again his own youth and hear once more, as it
were, the sound of gunpowder--M. Mauperin had to do with a most rational
sort of a child, a little boy who was always good, "quite a young lady,"
as he said himself. This had been a great trouble to him, as he felt
almost ashamed to have, as his son and heir, this miniature man who did
not even break his toys.
With his daughter, M. Mauperin had had the same disappointment. She was
one of those little girls who are women when they are born, and who play
with their parents merely to amuse them. She scarcely had any childhood,
and at the age of five, if a gentleman called to see her father, she
always ran away to wash her hands. She would be kissed on certain
spots, and she seemed to dread being ruffled or inconvenienced by a
father's caresses and love.
Thus repelled, M. Mauperin's affection, so long hoarded up, went out to
the cradle of the little newcomer whom he had named Renée after his
mother. He spent whole days with his little baby-girl in divine
nonsense. He would keep taking off her little cap to look at her silky
hair, and he taught her to make grimaces which charmed him. He would lie
down beside her on the floor when she was rolling about half naked with
all a child's delightful unconsciousness. In the night he would get up
to look at her asleep, and would pass hours listening to this first
breath of life, so like the respiration of a flower. When she woke up he
would be there to have her first smile--that smile of little girl-babies
which comes from out of the night as though from Paradise. His happiness
kept changing into perfect bliss; it seemed to him that the child he
loved so much was a little angel from heaven.
What joy he had with her at Morimond! He would wheel her all round the
house in a little carriage, and at every few steps turn round to look at
her screaming with laughter, with the sunshine playing on her cheeks,
and her little supple, pink foot curled up in her hand. Or he would take
her with him when he went for a walk, and would go as far as a village
and let the child throw kisses to the people who bowed to him, or he
would enter one of the farm-houses and show his daughter's teeth with
great pride. On the way, the child would often go to sleep in his arms,
as she did with her nurse. At other times he would take her into the
forest, and there, under the trees full of robin-redbreasts and
nightingales, towards the end of the day when there are voices overhead
in the woods, he would experience the most unutterable joy on hearing
the child, impressed by the noises around, try to imitate the sounds,
and to murmur and prattle as though she were answering the birds and
speaking to the singing heavens.
Mme. Mauperin had not given this last daughter so hearty a welcome. She
was a good wife and mother, but Mme. Mauperin was eaten up with that
pride peculiar to the provinces--namely, the pride of money. She had
made all her arrangements for two children, but the third one was not
welcome, as it would interfere with the pecuniary affairs of the other
two, and, above all, would infringe on her son's share. The division of
land which was now one estate, the partition of wealth which had
accumulated, and in consequence the lowering of social position in the
future and of the importance of the family--all this was what the second
little daughter represented to her mother.
M. Mauperin very soon had no more peace. The mother was constantly
attacking the politician, and reminding the father that it was his duty
to sacrifice himself to the interests of his children. She endeavoured
to separate him from his friends and to make him forsake his party and
his fidelity to his ideas. She made fun of what she called his
tomfoolery, which prevented him from turning his position to account.
Every day there were fresh attacks and reproaches until he was fairly
haunted by them; it was the terrible battle of all that is most prosaic
against the conscience of a Deputy of the Opposition. Finally, M.
Mauperin asked his wife for two months' truce for reflection, as he,
too, would have liked his beloved Renée to be rich. At the end of the
two months he sent his resignation in to the Chamber and opened a
sugar-refinery at Briche.
That had been twenty years ago. The children had grown up and the
business was thriving. M. Mauperin had done very well with his refinery.
His son was a barrister, his elder daughter married, and Renée's dowry
was waiting for her.