The position of French novels and novelists in the appreciation of the
English public, has undergone, within the last few years, a notable
change. We need revert to no distant period to recall the day when the
word "Paris" on the title-page of a book of fiction, was, to the work so
inscribed, virtual sentence of exclusion from respectable library and
decent drawing-room this side the Channel. It was the foul-bill of
health, the signal of a moral quarantine, interminable and hopeless of
pratique. French novels came to England and were read; but the arrivals
were comparatively rare, the readers scarce more numerous; whilst by the
masses they were condemned as contraband and dangerous merchandise, and
eschewed as religiously as Lyons silks by the humane, when Spitalfields
are starving. The wilful and wicked minority who took pleasure in their
pungent pages, did so clandestinely, and with precaution. In
carefully-locked desk, or on topmost shelf of bookcase, lurking behind
an honourable front-rank of history and essay, the disreputable
literature was bestowed. Nor was its reception more openly hospitable
when arrayed in English garb. Translators there were, who strove to
render into the manly, wholesome Anglo-Saxon tongue, the produce--witty,
frivolous, prurient, and amusing--of Gallic imagination. But either the
translations shared the interdict incurred by the objectionable
originals, or the plan adopted to obtain their partial acceptance,
destroyed pith and point. Letters from plague-ridden shores are fitted
for the perusal of the uninfected by fumigation and other mysterious
processes. They reach us reeking with aromatics and defaced by
perforations, intended doubtless to favour the escape of the demon of
pestilence bodily imprisoned within their folds. But their written
contents are uninjured by the salutary operation; the words of
affection, the combinations of commerce, the politician's plans, are
still to be read upon their stained and punctured surface. Not so with
the French novels that underwent fumigation and curtailment at the hands
of decorous translators. The knife that extirpated the gangrene,
unavoidably trenched upon the healthy flesh: in rooting up the abundant
tares, the scanty grain was shaken out, and chaff and straw alone
remained.
We speak of times past, although still recent; glance we at the present,
and, Heaven help us! what a change is here! Tempora mutantur et
_libri_--or it were perhaps more proper to say, _et lectores_. With
headlong velocity, one extreme has been abandoned for its opposite. The
denounced of yesterday is the favoured of to-day; the scouted is now the
cherished; the rejected stone has a lofty place in the literary edifice.
French novels, translated, if not original, are as commonly seen in the
"best regulated families" as comfits at the confectioner's or poison on
potter-carriers' shelves. The ban is removed, the anathema revoked;
either the Upas has been discovered to be less baneful than was
imagined, or the disease lurking at the core has been forgotten in the
bright colours and pleasant flavour of the appetible fruit. We take up
the newspaper. What heads the column? Half a score advertisements of the
"Mysteries of Paris"--a new edition of the "Wandering Jew," "illustrated
by the first artists"--"Memoirs of a Physician," in twopenny numbers and
shilling volumes; French novels, in short, at all prices and in every
form. We step into the club; the produce of Paris and Brussels presses
strews the table, and an elderly gentleman, with a solemn face and
quakerish coat, searches amongst them for the nine-and-twentieth volume
of "Monte Christo," or of some other French romance of longitude equally
sea-serpentine. We call upon our friend Tom Sterling, a worthy fellow,
much respected on 'Change. Miss Sterling is deep in a natty duodecimo,
whose Flemish aspect speaks volumes in favour of international
copyright. Our natural clearsightedness enables us to read, even from
the door, "Societe Belge de Librairie" upon its buff paper cover. Is the
book hastily smuggled under sofa-cushions, or stealthily dropped into
the neglected work-basket? By no means. The fair student deliberately
marks her place, and engages us in a controversy as to the merits,
faults, and beauties of a score of French romancists, in whose
lucubrations she assuredly is far better read than ourselves. In short,
English aversion for French modern literature has disappeared, and been
replaced by partiality--not to say affection. Dumas is a staple
commodity; Sue is voted delightful; English authors of talent and
standing translate or "edite"--to use the genteel word now adopted--the
works of French ones; even George Sand finds lady-translators, and, we
fear, lady readers; French books are reprinted in London, and the Palais
Royal is transported to the arcade of Burlington. We shall not take upon
ourselves to blame or applaud this change in public taste, to decide how
far such large importation and extensive patronage of foreign wares are
advantageous or deplorable--to tax with laxity those who write, or with
levity those who read, the lively and palatable productions of the
present French school. Without encouraging, we will venture to direct,
the prevailing appetite, by pointing the attention of Maga's
readers--whose name is Legion--to the writings of an author not the best
known, but certainly one of the most accomplished, of his class. In
France, his reputation stands very high; and if in England it is not yet
equally well-established, it must be attributed to his having written
little, and to the absence of that charlatanry and egotism which has
brought other cultivators of the Belles Lettres into such universal
notice here and on the Continent. M. Dumas, for instance, even had his
writings, and those of the numerous staff of literary aid-de-camps to
whose bairns he stands godfather, been less diverting, would still have
commanded readers in every country where French is understood, and which
the post from Paris reaches. The man is his own advertisement; his
eccentricities are worth, at a moderate estimate, a dozen advertising
vans, a daily paragraph in a score of newspapers, and a cartload of
posters. He is a practical puff, an incarnate stimulant to popular
curiosity. Let the public appetite for his weekly volumes flag ever so
little, and forthwith he puts in practice, for the renewal of his vogue,
devices so ingenious, that proceeding from any but the privileged
monarch of romance-writers, they would be looked upon as the tricks of a
lunatic. One day in a court of assizes, the next at that of a king, on
the morrow before a civil tribunal, the illustrious inheritor of the
marquisate of La Pailleterie parades his graces, jogs the world's memory
as to the fact of his existence, and bids it read his books and bow
before his footstool. To-day he is on the Corso, to-morrow on the sunny
banks of Rhine; the next day he peeps into Etna's crater, or gasps
beneath the brazen sky of shadeless Syria. Now we hear of him in Spanish
palaces, figuring at royal weddings, and adding one more to the
countless ribbon-ends that already grace his button-hole; and scarcely
has our admiration subsided, when a Mediterranean breeze murmurs sweet
tidings of his presence on African shores, taking his coffee with Beys,
commanding war-steamers, riving the captive's fetters, and rivetting his
claims on his country's gratitude. Wherever he goes, he stands, a modern
Gulliver, pre-eminent in moral giantship, amidst surrounding pigmies,
who
"Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find themselves
dishonourable graves."
And the seeming ubiquity of the famous quadroon[8] is not more
marvellous than the multiplicity of characters he assumes. "Dumas at
Home and Abroad" offers an inexhaustible theme and a boundless field for
pen and pencil caricaturists. Alternately dramatist, novelist, tourist,
ambassador, the companion of princes, the manager of theatres, an
authority in courts of justice, a challenger of deputies, and shining
with equal lustre in these and fifty other capacities equally diverse,
what wonder that the slightest work flowing from the pen of so
remarkable a genius, though it be but a forgotten "trifle of twelve
thousand lines," is received with intense gratitude, and caught at like
manna by a famished multitude? Eugene Sue is another writer who has
taken the world by storm, but in quite a different fashion. The
ex-lieutenant of marine does not obtrude his personality upon public
notice, and relies more upon the powerful calibre of his guns than upon
their number. Two books, lengthy ones certainly, established his
reputation. He had been many years a cultivator of literature, and had
produced sundry romances of little more than average merit, when he
suddenly burst upon the public, in the widely spread _feuilleton_ of the
_Debats_, with a work which, however objectionable in some respects, is
unquestionably of extraordinary power and interest. Like the Pickwick
Papers, the "Mysteres de Paris" at once established their author in
popular estimation, not only in the land in whose language they were
written, but in all the reading countries of Europe. It was the opening
of a new vein in the literary mine, and though the metal might have been
purer, it had all the glitter that captivates the multitude. The "Juif
Errant," inferior to its predecessor, was scarcely less successful. Its
bitter attacks on the Jesuits, and the consequent anathemas fulminated
against it, with more zeal than wisdom, by certain of the French clergy,
doubtless contributed to its vogue. After Sue and Dumas, Balzac is (with
the exception, perhaps, of Madame Dudevant,) the best known, and most
read, out of France, of all the living French novelists. We hold him
much over-rated, but his great fertility, and the real excellence of a
few of his books, have made him a widely-spread reputation. His early
efforts were less successful than those of Sue; and his first thirty
volumes scarcely attained mediocrity. At last he made a start, and took
his place on the first line of his class, in virtue of a few
masterpieces, scanty diamonds glittering in a cinder-heap.
Over-production, the crying vice of the literature of the day, and an
over-weening conceit, prevented Honore de Balzac from maintaining the
position he might and ought to have occupied. Such gems as the "Pere
Goriot" and "Eugenie Grandet" were buried and lost sight of under
mountains of rubbish. True that he now denied a number of books
published under supposititious names, and which had been universally
attributed to him; but enough remained, which he could not deny, to
tarnish, if not to cancel his fame. To these he has since, with the
reckless and inconsiderate greed that cares not for the public, so long
as it finds a publisher, considerably added. His self-sufficiency is
unparalleled; and in the preface to an edition of his works published
under the comprehensive and presumptuous title of "La Comedie Humaine,"
he puts himself on a level with the first of poets and philosophers,
proposing himself the modest aim of portraying human nature in every
variety of its moral physiognomy.
Less prolific, more unassuming, and far less universally known than the
three authors at whose character and writings we have thus briefly
glanced, Charles de Bernard need fear comparison with none of them. That
he is faultless we do not assert; that he in great measure eschews the
errors of his contemporaries, will be patent to all who peruse his
pages. The objections that English readers will make to his books are to
be traced to no aberrations of his, but to those of the society whose
follies he so ably and wittily depicts. He faithfully sketches, and more
often amusingly caricatures, the vices, foibles, and failings of French
men and women. If those are to be delineated at all--and, with a view to
their amendment, surely they may--the task could hardly be executed with
a chaster and less offensive pencil. De Bernard paints immorality--it
would be unjust to say that he encourages it. He neither deals in
highly-coloured and meretricious scenes _a la_ Sue and Dumas; nor
supports, with the diabolical talent and ingenuity of a Sand, the most
subversive and anti-social doctrines. His works are not befouled with
filth and obscenity, such as that impure old reprobate Paul de Kock
delights and wallows in--or disgraced by the irreligion, and contempt of
things holy, found in the writings of scores of French authors whom we
could name, were they worth the naming. It is undeniable that the
ingenious plots of his very entertaining books turn, for the most part,
on matters difficult to touch upon with propriety, and which English
writers usually avoid; frequently, for instance, on illicit passion and
conjugal infidelity. And therefore many Englishmen, with whatever
interest and amusement they themselves might read his volumes, would
hesitate to recommend them to their sisters and daughters. Some few of
his tales, especially of the shorter ones, are in all respects
unexceptionable. We instance "La Peau du Lion," translated as "The
Cossack's Grave;" and "L'Anneau d'Argent," which has also appeared in
English. Gerfaut, one of this author's earliest works, and
unquestionably his masterpiece, has little that can justly offend,
although its translation met, we believe, a cold reception. The plot
turns on an attachment between a married woman and the hero of the
story. But if M. de Bernard falls readily enough into the easy,
matter-of-course tone in which his countrymen habitually discuss amatory
peccadilloes--and he could hardly have attained his present popularity
in France had he assumed the prude--he does not disdain or neglect to
point a moral after his own fashion. In administering a remedy, a wise
physician has regard to the idiosyncrasy of the patient as well as to
the nature of the disease. A nation whose morality is unhealthy, must
not be treated like a sick horse, whose groom crams a ball down his
throat, and holds his jaws together, and his head back, to prevent its
rejection. The dose must be artfully disguised, wrapped in a sweetmeat,
and the invalid will take it kindly, and sooner or later feel the
benefit. We would fain discern, in some of M. de Bernard's books, under
a perfumed envelope of palatable trifle, a tendency worthy of applause;
a design to combat, by quiet and implied ridicule, the moral maladies of
his country. It is not his wont, as with many of his competitors, to
make the vicious interesting and the virtuous fools. His husbands are
not invariably good-natured, helpless noodles, with whom, even in their
direst calamities, the most right-thinking have difficulty to
sympathise: the Lovelaces who pursue married women with their insidious
and dangerous attentions, are not by him for ever exalted into heroes,
redeeming their pleasant vices by a host of high and chivalrous
qualities. On the contrary, the apparently easy-going husband often
proves a smart fellow, and thorough Tartar--the brilliant lover an
emancipated bagman, or contemptible _chevalier d'industrie_. Of this we
have an example in "Le Gendre," in some respects one of the most
objectionable of De Bernard's novels, certainly not well suited for a
birth-day present to misses in their teens. A seemingly tame, insipid
clown of a husband counteracts the base manoeuvres of a dashing Paris
_roue_; and finally, after refusing to fight the would-be seducer, whom
he has ascertained to be an arrant swindler, takes truncheon in hand,
and belabours him in presence of his intended victim and of a roomful of
company. But setting aside any moral tendency which goodwill towards
such a vastly pleasant author as De Bernard may induce us, by the aid of
our most complaisant spectacles, to discover in his writings, his
gentlemanly tone is undeniable, his pictures of French life, especially
in Paris, are beyond praise. In the most natural and graphic style
imaginable, he dashes off a portrait typifying a class, and in a page
gives the value of a volume of the much-vaunted "Physiologies." And this
he does, like all he does, in a sparkling, well-bred, impertinent style,
peculiar to himself, and peculiarly attractive.
We have already remarked, that M. de Bernard has written little. The
assertion was comparative; we meant that he has produced, since the
commencement of his literary career--not yet very remote--an average of
only three or four volumes per year. This rate, in days when French
scribes carry on five romances at a time, in the daily feuilletons of
five newspapers, and when certain English authors, emulous of Gallic
fecundity, annually conceive and elaborate their dozen or two of
octavos--says little for his industry, or much for his judicious
forbearance. Latterly, however, we regret to observe in him a
disposition to increase the length of his books, and abandon the
pleasant one, two, and three volume tales with which he began. In this
he is wrong; books of so very light a description as his will not bear
great prolongation. Things agreeable enough in small quantities, pall
and cloy if the ration be overmuch augmented. However fragrant and
well-spiced, syllabub is not to be drunk by the bucketful; neither would
it be satisfactory to dine off a _souffle au marasquin_, though
compounded by the philanthropical Regenerator himself. In England,
custom has decided that three volumes are the proper length for a novel,
and they have become, as a maximum, a rule rarely departed from. We are
content that it should be so, and, indeed, heartily rejoice at it, when
we see works of fiction spun out by indefatigable French manufacturers
into interminable series, through which, at twelve hours a-day, the most
insatiable devourer of the romantic needs a month to toil. Following the
fashion of the times, and encouraged by the example of his successfully
diffuse brethren, M. de Bernard, weary of launching trim corvettes and
dashing frigates, has taken to build line-of-battle ships. He had better
have kept to the small craft, which he found to float so well. Two of
his recent works, "Le Beaupere," and "Le Gentilhomme Campagnard," have
lost in merit what they have gained in length. The subject of the former
is most unpleasant: its catastrophe unnecessarily painful. And the
"Gentilhomme Campagnard," just now concluded, although containing, as do
all his books, much spirited dialogue, many well-drawn characters, and
well-contrived incidents, is weakened by being spun out, and at times,
by its tediousness of detail, reminds us of De Balzac. And here we will
remark, that there is a certain general resemblance between the styles
of De Bernard and De Balzac; so much so, that when the former first
wrote, some persons conjectured his name to be a pseudonyme adopted by
the latter, to the detriment of publishers, to whom, it was said, he had
contracted to deliver all he should produce. And the malignant hinted,
that the author of "Eugenie Grandet" was sufficiently unscrupulous and
hungry of gain to render such a stratagem on his part any thing but
improbable. Whether Charles de Bernard be an assumed name or not, it has
long since been evident, that the books published under it proceed from
a more guarded and uniformly sprightly pen, than that of M. de Balzac.
The plot of the "Gentilhomme Campagnard," is based on the dissensions of
two villages, or more properly speaking, of a hamlet and a very small
town, situated within a mile of each other, and which had once
constituted two separate parishes, but had been amalgamated at the
revolution of '89, greatly to the detriment and indignation of the
weaker party. It is in 1836 that M. de Bernard takes up the
imaginary history of their jealousy and squabbles, as a canvass
on which to embroider the flowers of his invention. The hamlet,
Chateaugiron-le-Vieil, is inhabited, and virtually governed, by the
Gentilhomme Campagnard, the Baron de Vaudrey--a retired colonel of
cuirassiers, whose services under the empire do not prevent his stanch
adherence, under the citizen monarchy of July, to the legitimate and
exiled sovereigns of France. His nephew, the Marquis of Chateaugiron,
less addicted to the fallen Bourbons, arrives, at the opening of the
tale, at his family mansion in Chateaugiron-le-Bourg, with certain
electioneering projects, highly displeasing to the baron, who resolves
vigorously to oppose them, and accordingly gives the whole weight of his
influence to a neighbouring iron-master, M. Grandperrin, also a
candidate. The iron-master has married a second wife, a heartless
vindictive woman, and former mistress of the marquis. She plays an
important part in the clever plot, which, although complicated, is
perfectly clear. To sketch at any length even the principal of the
numerous characters in the amusing comedy, would lead us much too far;
we can barely afford to glance at a few of them. On the foremost
line--after the Gentilhomme Campagnard himself, a fine, generous-hearted
veteran, an excellent compound of the soldier and the nobleman,
possessed of great good sense and shrewdness, and altogether one of
those personages of whom, whether real or imaginary, one reads with
pleasure--stands Madame Bonvalot, or _de_ Bonvalot, as she best loves to
be styled, the _parvenue_ widow of a Bordeaux wine merchant. Her
beautiful and amiable daughter, an excellent model of a virtuous French
lady, gracefully and delicately drawn, is married to the Marquis of
Chateaugiron. The mother, an affected, frivolous, rouged, bejewelled
dowager of fifty, who, through ambition to figure at the Tuileries, has
extorted from her noble son-in-law a promise that he will adhere to the
new order of things, is followed from Paris by one Pichot, ex-clerk to a
notary, also a former lover of Madame Grandperrin, and self-styled
Viscount de Langerac. This fortune-hunter has managed to worm himself
into the intimacy of the marquis, and to kindle, in the too-susceptible
breast of Madame Bouvalot, a tender flame, which he diligently fans.
Then we have a young country-lawyer, Froidevaux, an honest, independent
fellow, and desperate sportsman, who gives advice gratis, thinks more of
partridges than parchments, prefers a day's shooting to a profitable
lawsuit, and is consequently as poor as he is popular, and, to all
appearance, has very little chance of obtaining the hand of Mademoiselle
Victorine, the iron-master's only daughter and heiress, a plump little
beauty, who views Froidevaux with special favour and affection, and with
whom he is deeply in love. Amongst the personages of a lower class, the
most prominent is Toussaint Gilles, landlord of the Cheval Patriote, and
son of one of the revolutionary butchers of the Reign of Terror; a
furious republican, who wears a _carmagnole_ and a red cap, inherits his
father's hatred of the vile aristocrats, and prides himself on his
principles, and on a truculent and immeasurable mustache. Amoudru, a
pusillanimous mayor; Bobilier, a fiery old justice of the peace, and
devoted vassal of the house of Chateaugiron; and Rabusson, once a
sergeant in M. de Vaudrey's regiment, now his game-keeper, must not be
forgotten. A festival got up by Bobilier to celebrate the marquis's
arrival at the castle of his ancestors, stirs the bile of Toussaint
Gilles, who sees in it a base adulation of the _ci-devants_. As
president of the republican club of Chateaugiron-le-Bourg, he, on the
following day, incites a few discontented spirits to a popular
demonstration, to consist in burning down the triumphal arch erected by
the servile justice of peace, and in hoisting a brand-new tricolored
flag on the tree of liberty--a poplar planted, during the glorious days
of July, close to the gate of the marquis's chateau, but which had long
since withered into a dry and unsightly maypole. A number of bad
characters mingle in the crowd, and the demonstration assumes a more
turbulent and criminal aspect than its original promoters had
contemplated. The outer gate of the chateau is forced, and stones are
thrown, one of which grazes the cheek of the Viscount de Langerac, who
receives the wound, so he affirms, whilst heroically interposing his
person between Madame de Bonvalot and the shower of missiles. At last
the marquis arms his servants, and repels the rioters, already
frightened at their own deeds; the justice of peace menaces them with
the assizes, Froidevaux exerts his influence, and the disturbance is
nearly at an end, when the flames communicate from the triumphal arch to
the tree of liberty. Toussaint Gilles, as captain of the firemen,
hurries to extinguish the conflagration that menaces the flag-staff, on
whose summit Picardet the blacksmith, another zealous member of the
democratic club, is busy fastening the tricolored symbol of freedom. The
following scene, one of the most detachable in the book, will give a
notion of M. de Bernard's lively and pointed style.
"The by-standers, whether firemen or not, hurried after the captain to a
shed adjoining the Town-hall. Some of them harnessed themselves to the
engine, and dragged it at full speed to the scene of the fire; others
seized the buckets, and hastened to fill them; soon a line was formed
from the well to the burning tree. Quickly as this was done, the
progress of the flames was still more rapid, and Picardet soon found his
post untenable. On first perceiving the fire, the smith had climbed,
like a frightened cat, to the very top of the poplar, at risk of
breaking the tapering stem by the weight of his body; but the refuge was
a very precarious one, for the fire followed him, and he required wings
to rise higher than the place he had attained. Three expedients offered
themselves to him; all equally unpleasant. To leap from the poplar--he
would inevitably break his neck; to slide down the blazing trunk--he
would reach the ground roasted; to wait till assistance reached
him--would it arrive in time? If not immediate, the tree would be on
fire from bottom to top.
"Under such circumstances, the most intrepid might well hesitate, and
Picardet, although naturally brave, remained for a moment undecided; but
when he saw the flag catch fire close to his feet, he understood that
delay was mortal, and heroically made up his mind. Relaxing his hold, he
glided with lightning velocity from top to bottom of the tree.
"At the very moment that the smith, blinded and suffocated by the smoke,
his hair blazing like the tail of a comet, his hands bleeding, and his
clothes torn, rolled upon the ground, roaring with pain, a stream of
water, issuing from the engine, and directed by Toussaint Gilles,
inundated him from head to foot, time enough to save a part of his
singed locks.
"'Now that Picardet is put out,' cried the captain of the firemen, 'save
the tree of liberty! Come, men! Steady, and with a will!'
"As he spoke, Toussaint Gilles levelled the flexible hose at the poplar,
and his assistants pumped vigorously; but before a single drop of water
had reached its destination, the firemen saw, with surprise and alarm,
the engine rise under their hands, and fall heavily on one side,
deluging their legs with the whole of its contents. All eyes fixed
themselves in astonishment on M. de Vaudrey, who had fallen amongst them
like a bomb, and whose herculean strength had just performed this feat.
The country gentleman was perfectly calm, but his complexion was high,
and his brow moist with perspiration, as if he had walked very fast. A
few paces in his rear stood the faithful Rabusson, motionless and in a
martial attitude; in one hand he grasped a knotted stick, more like a
mace than a walking-cane; with the other he led Sultan, the baron's
enormous watch-dog.
"The stupified silence that ensued was at last broken by Toussaint
Gilles.
"'What means this?' he demanded, his voice trembling with rage.
"'It is easy to understand,' coolly replied M. de Vaudrey.
"'Why have you upset our pump?'
"'To prevent your pumping.'
"'And why do you prevent our pumping?'
"'Because those who lighted the fire shall not put it out. It pleased
you to see yonder wooden columns burn, it pleases me to see the poplar
blaze.'
"'Raise the pump,' said the captain to his men, with an imperious air.
'We will see who dares upset it again.'
"'And we will see who dares raise it, when I forbid!' retorted the
baron, calmly folding his muscular arms across his vast chest.
"A murmur was heard; but nobody stirred.
"'Cowards!' cried Toussaint Gilles, with a furious glance at his
friends; 'are you all afraid of one man?'
"'In the first place, there are two of them,' said the prudent Laverdun
to his neighbour, 'and two who are worth ten; to say nothing of their
monster of a dog, who demolishes a wolf with a single bite.'
"'M. Toussaint Gilles,' said the baron, smiling ironically, 'when an
officer gives an order, and is not obeyed, do you know what he should
do?'
"'I want none of your advice,' cried the captain of firemen, in a brutal
tone.
"'He should execute his order himself,' said M. de Vaudrey with
immovable calmness.
"'So I will,' said Toussaint Gilles, advancing roughly. But at the very
moment that he stooped to raise the engine, the baron grasped his
collar, and compelled him to stand upright.
"'M. Toussaint Gilles,' he said, 'listen to me. You are a bad fellow,
needing correction, and I undertake to correct you.'
"'To correct me!' cried the captain, struggling, as ineffectually as a
hare in the clutches of an eagle, in the powerful grasp that restrained
him.
"'He is strangling the captain! Help the captain!' exclaimed several of
the spectators.
"But words were all the help they offered to their chief, so greatly
were the boldest awed by the colossal figure and well-known strength and
courage of the old officer. Gautherot the butcher, constitutionally
brave and pugnacious, was the only one who went to his friend's
assistance. He rushed upon M. de Vaudrey, when Rabusson barred his
passage.
"'One to one,' said the sergeant; 'if you want a thrashing, here am I.'
"'You've a dog, and a cudgel,' replied the butcher; 'I have only my
fists.'
"'True.'
"With a generosity bordering on imprudence, Rabusson placed his heavy
stick in the dog's mouth.
"'Keep that, Sultan,' said he imperatively, 'and don't stir.' Then
turning to the butcher with an air of defiance--
"'Now,' he said, 'are you ready?'
"'Ready,' replied Gautherot, putting himself on guard, with the
steadiness of an experienced boxer.
"The circle which had formed round the baron and the captain, enlarged
itself to leave space for the new antagonists. After a few preliminary
evolutions, Gautherot assumed the offensive.
"'Guard that,' he cried, dealing his adversary a blow that would have
floored an ox. Rabusson guarded it with his left arm, and repaid it with
such a smashing hit in the face, that the bold butcher rolled upon the
ground, blood gushing from his nose and mouth.
"Although Gautherot had numerous friends amongst the rioters, and
although he was then in some sort their champion, a roar of laughter
accompanied his overthrow, and all eyes were fixed admiringly upon the
conqueror. Popular favour, ever ready to abandon a falling hero, is
rarely withheld from him who triumphs.
"At this moment an unexpected incident increased the confusion of the
stormy scene. Excited by the shouts of the mob, and by the fight he had
witnessed, Sultan forgot his orders, dropped the club confided to his
care, and without a bark or other notification of his intentions, sprang
furiously upon the person nearest him. This unlucky individual chanced
to be Laverdun the grocer.
"Under any circumstances, the honourable vice-president of the
Chateaugiron club would have been utterly unable to contend against a
dog as big as a lion, and almost as formidable; but on this occasion,
attacked without warning, and petrified by fear, he did not even attempt
resistance. The consequence was, that in less than a second he lay upon
the ground, pale as death, and half strangled, by the side of his friend
Gautherot, who, stunned by his fall, made no attempt to rise.
"Whilst this occurred, M. de Vaudrey addressed the following admonition
to Captain Toussaint Gilles, who strove in vain to escape from his
hands.
"'I well know, Mr Innkeeper, that you have long been in the habit of
speaking against me and my nephew, and hitherto I have treated your
insolence with the contempt it merited. But though I care nothing for
your bark, I shall not allow you to bite. Bear this in mind: to-day I
pardon you, but if you value your mustaches and your ears, don't begin
again.'
"So saying, M. de Vaudrey destroyed, by an irresistible shock, the
equilibrium of Toussaint Gilles, and hurled him to the ground to keep
company with Gautherot and Laverdun.
"Of the five principal members of the club, three were thus humbled to
the dust; the fourth, singed like a fowl in preparation for the spit,
was in no condition to show fight; Vermot, the turbulent clerk of the
justice of peace, who completed this political quintet, had long since
abandoned the field of battle. On beholding the discomfiture of their
leaders, the rioters stared at each other with a disconcerted air.
"'_Messieurs les bourgeois de Chateaugiron_,' said Monsieur de Vaudrey,
looking round at the crowd with a mixture of calm assurance and ironical
contempt--'I thank you, in my nephew's name, for having burned the
absurd tree which obstructed the entrance to his chateau; you planted
it, and it was for you to destroy it.'
"'It was not done on purpose,' said a bystander, with great _naivete_.
"'We will plant another,' cried a voice from the crowd.
"'In the same place?' asked the baron.
"'Yes, in the same place,' replied the voice.
"'Then I beg to be invited to the ceremony,' said M. de Vaudrey, with
imperturbable phlegm; 'some of you seem to have very confused notions
with regard to other people's property, and I undertake to complete your
education.'
"At that moment the poplar, into whose heart the flames had eaten, gave
a loud crack, quivered above the heads of the startled crowd, and broke
in the middle. The lower half remained erect, whilst the upper portion
fell blazing upon the ruins of the triumphal arch, as, in a duel, a
desperately wounded combatant falls expiring upon the body of his slain
foe.
"Toussaint Gilles, Gautherot, and Laverdun had all risen from their
recumbent attitude, but none of them showed a disposition to recommence
the engagement. The butcher wiped his bleeding muzzle with a cotton
handkerchief, and seemed to count, with the end of his tongue, how many
teeth he had left; the grocer, pale as his own tallow candles, examined
his throat with a trembling hand, to make sure that the fangs of the
terrible Sultan had not penetrated beyond the cravat; finally, the
Captain gnawed his mustache, but dared not manifest his fury otherwise."
This energetic interference of the baron and his two aid-de-camps, biped
and quadruped, and the fall of the tree of liberty, which the rioters,
superstitious in spite of their republicanism, look upon as a bad omen,
put an end to the disturbance. The disaffected disperse, and M. de
Vaudrey enters his nephew's house, where an amusing scene occurs between
him and Madame de Bonvalot. Then come a robbery and a fire, and
abundance of incidents--some tolerably new in conception, all very
pleasant in narration. The good sense, perspicacity and straightforward
dealing of the baron, subjugate every one. He unmasks the fictitious
viscount, cures his nephew of his electioneering ambition, and the
painted dowager of her longing for an invite to the Tuileries; and
adopts Froidevaux--whose father had saved his life at Leipsic, and who
has himself picked the baron out of a burning house--as his son and
heir, thus rendering him a suitable husband for the pretty Victorine.
The story ends, as all proper-behaved novels should end, with the
discomfiture of the wicked, and a prospect of many years of happiness
for the virtuous. In this agreeable perspective, Madame de Bonvalot is a
sharer. Having, by the adoption of Froidevaux, alienated the greater
part of his fortune from his nephew's children, the baron is resolved to
secure them the reversion of their grandmother's ample jointure. But
Madame de Bonvalot, whose wrinkles are hidden by her rouge, forgets the
half century that has passed over her head, and hankers after matrimony.
To preserve her from it, M. de Vaudrey commences a course of delicate
attentions, sufficiently marked to prevent her favouring other admirers,
but duly regulated by thermometer, and warranted never to rise to
marrying point. And the fall of the curtain leaves the humorous old
soldier of fifty-five and the vain coquette of fifty, fairly embarked
upon the tepid and rose-coloured stream of flirtation; he quizzing her,
she admiring him--she thinking of her wedding, he only of her will. A
new and ingenious idea, worthy of a French novelist, and which, we
apprehend, could by no possibility have occurred to any other.
We shall close this paper with a tale, appended, as make-weight, to the
final volume of the "Gentilhomme Campagnard", and whose brevity
recommends it for extraction. It is too short and slight to be a fair
specimen of M. de Bernard's powers, but, as far as it goes, it is as
witty and amusing as any thing he has written. It is entitled--