Unprescient of the perils that awaited him, absorbed in the sense of
existing discomfort, cold, and hunger, Fox lifted his mournful visage
from his master's dressing-gown, in which he had encoiled his shivering
frame, on the entrance of De Breze and the concierge of the house in
which Lemercier had his apartment. Recognising the Vicomte as one of his
master's acquaintances, he checked the first impulse that prompted him to
essay a feeble bark, and permitted himself, with a petulant whine, to be
extracted from his covering, and held in the arms of the murderous
visitor.
"_Dieu des dieux_!" ejaculated De Breze, "how light the poor beast has
become!" Here he pinched the sides and thighs of the victim. "Still,"
he said, "there is some flesh yet on these bones. You may grill the
paws, _fricassee_ the shoulders, and roast the rest. The _rognons_ and
the head accept for yourself as a perquisite." Here he transferred Fox
to the arms of the concierge, adding, "_Vite au besogne, mon ami_."
"Yes, Monsieur. I must be quick about it while my wife is absent. She
has a _faiblesse_ for the brute. He must be on the spit before she
returns."
"Be it so; and on the table in an hour--five o'clock precisely--I am
famished."
The concierge disappeared with Fox. De Breze then amused himself by
searching into Frederic's cupboards and buffets, from which he produced a
cloth and utensils necessary for the repast. These he arranged with
great neatness, and awaited in patience the moment of participation in
the feast.
The hour of five had struck before Savarin and Frederio entered the
salon; and at their sight De Breze dashed to the staircase and called out
to the concierge to serve the dinner.
Frederic, though unconscious of the Thyestean nature of the banquet,
still looked round for the dog; and, not perceiving him, began to call
out, "Fox! Fox! where hast thou hidden thyself?"
"Tranquillise yourself," said De Breze. "Do not suppose that I have not
. . . ."
NOTE BY THE AUTHOR'S SON.--[See also Prefatory Note]--The hand that wrote
thus far has left unwritten the last scene of the tragedy of poor Fox.
In the deep where Prospero has dropped his wand are now irrevocably
buried the humour and the pathos of this cynophagous banquet. One detail
of it, however, which the author imparted to his son, may here be faintly
indicated. Let the sympathising reader recognise all that is dramatic in
the conflict between hunger and affection; let him recall to mind the
lachrymose loving-kindness of his own post-prandial emotions after
blissfully breaking some fast, less mercilessly prolonged, we will hope,
than that of these besieged banqueters, and then, though unaided by the
fancy which conceived so quaint a situation, he may perhaps imagine what
tearful tenderness would fill the eyes of the kind-hearted Frederic, as
they contemplate the well-picked bones of his sacrificed favourite on the
plate before him; which he pushes away, sighing, "Ah, poor Fox! how he
would have enjoyed those bones!"
The chapter immediately following this one also remains unfinished. It
was not intended to close the narrative thus left uncompleted; but of
those many and so various works which have not unworthily associated with
almost every department of literature the name of a single English
writer, it is CHAPTER THE LAST. Had the author lived to finish it, he
would doubtless have added to his Iliad of the Siege of Paris its most
epic episode, by here describing the mighty combat between those two
princes of the Parisian Bourse, the magnanimous Duplessis and the
redoubtable Louvier. Amongst the few other pages of the book which have
been left unwritten, we must also reckon with regret some pages
descriptive of the reconciliation between Graham Vane and Isaura Cicogna;
but, fortunately for the satisfaction of every reader who may have
followed thus far the fortunes of Die Parisians, all that our curiosity
is chiefly interested to learn has been recorded in the Envoi, which was
written before the completion of the novel.
We know not, indeed, what has become of these two Parisian types of a
Beauty not of Holiness, the poor vain Poet of the Pave, and the good-
hearted Ondine of the Gutter. It is obvious, from the absence of all
allusion to them in Lemercier's letter to Vane, that they had passed out
of the narrative before that letter was written. We must suppose the
catastrophe of their fates to have been described, in some preceding
chapter, by the author himself; who would assuredly not have left 141.
Gustave Rameau in permanent pos session of his ill-merited and ill-
ministered fortune. That French representative of the appropriately
popular poetry of modern ideas, which prefers "the roses and raptures of
vice" to "the lilies and languors of virtue," cannot have been
irredeemably reconciled by the sweet savours of the domestic pot-au jeu,
even when spiced with pungent whiffs of repudiated disreputability, to
any selfish betrayal of the cause of universal social emancipation from
the personal proprieties. If poor Julie Caumartin has perished in the
siege of Paris, with all the grace of a self-wrought redemption still
upon her, we shall doubtless deem her fate a happier one than any she
could have found in prolonged existence as Madame Rameau; and a certain
modicum of this world's good things will, in that case, have been rescued
for worthier employment by Graham Vane. To that assurance nothing but
Lemercier's description of the fate of Victor de Mauleon (which will be
found in the Envoi) need be added for the satisfaction of our sense of
poetic justice and if on the mimic stage, from which they now
disappear, all these puppets have rightly played their parts in the drama
of an empire's fall, each will have helped to "point a moral" as well as
to "adorn a tale." _Valete et plaudite_!
CHAPTER THE LAST.
Among the refugees which the _convoi_ from Versailles disgorged on the
Paris station were two men, who, in pushing through the crowd, came
suddenly face to face with each other.
"Aha! Bon jour, M. Duplessis," said a burly voice. "Bon jour, M.
Louvier," replied Duplessis.
"How long have you left Bretagne?"
"On the day that the news of the armistice reached it, in order to be
able to enter Paris the first day its gates were open. And you--where
have you been?"
"In London."
"Ah! in London!" said Duplessis, paling. "I knew I had an enemy
there."
"Enemy! I? Bah! my dear Monsieur. What makes you think me your enemy?"
"I remember your threats."
"_A propos_ of Rochebriant. By the way, when would it be convenient to
you and the dear Marquis to let me into prompt possession of that
property? You can no longer pretend to buy it as a _dot_ for
Mademoiselle Valerie."
"I know not that yet. It is true that all the financial operations
attempted by my agent in London have failed. But I may recover myself
yet, now that I re-enter Paris. In the mean time, we have still six
months before us; for, as you will find--if you know it not already--the
interest due to you has been lodged with Messrs. ---- of ------, and you
cannot foreclose, even if the, law did not take into consideration the
national calamities as between debtor and creditor."
"Quite true. But if you cannot buy the property it must pass into my
hands in a very short time. And you and the Marquis had better come to
an amicable arrangement with me. Apropos, I read in the Times newspaper
that Alain was among the wounded in the sortie of December."
"Yes; we learnt that through a pigeon-post. We were afraid . . . ."
L'ENVOI.
The intelligent reader will perceive that the story I relate is virtually
closed with the preceding chapter; though I rejoice to think that what
may be called its plot does not find its _dinoument_ amidst the crimes
and the frenzy of the _Guerre des Communeaux_. Fit subjects these,
indeed, for the social annalist in times to come. When crimes that
outrage humanity have their motive or their excuse in principles that
demand the demolition of all upon which the civilisation of Europe has
its basis-worship, property, and marriage--in order to reconstruct a new
civilisation adapted to a new humanity, it is scarcely possible for the
serenest contemporary to keep his mind in that state of abstract
reasoning with which Philosophy deduces from some past evil some existent
good. For my part, I believe that throughout the whole known history of
mankind, even in epochs when reason is most misled and conscience most
perverted, there runs visible, though fine and threadlike, the chain of
destiny, which has its roots in the throne of an All-wise and an All-
good; that in the wildest illusions by which muititudes are frenzied,
there may be detected gleams of prophetic truths; that in the fiercest
crimes which, like the disease of an epidemic, characterise a peculiar
epoch under abnormal circumstances, there might be found instincts or
aspirations towards some social virtues to be realised ages afterwards by
happier generations, all tending to save man from despair of the future,
were the whole society to unite for the joyless hour of his race in the
abjuration of soul and the denial of God, because all irresistibly
establishing that yearning towards an unseen future which is the leading
attribute of soul, evincing the government of a divine Thought which
evolves out of the discords of one age the harmonies of another, and, in
the world within us as in the world without, enforces upon every
unclouded reason the distinction between Providence and chance.
The account subjoined may suffice to say all that rests to be said of
those individuals in whose fate, apart from the events or personages that
belong to graver history, the reader of this work may have conceived an
interest. It is translated from the letter of Frederic Lemercier to
Graham Vane, dated June ----, a month after the defeat of the Communists.
"Dear and distinguished Englishman, whose name I honour but fail to
pronounce, accept my cordial thanks for your interests in such remains
of Frederic Lemercier as yet survive the ravages of Famine, Equality,
Brotherhood, Petroleum, and the Rights of Labour. I did not desert my
Paris when M. Thiers, '_parmula non bene relicta_,' led his sagacious
friends and his valiant troops to the groves of Versailles, and confided
to us unarmed citizens the preservation of order and property from the
insurgents whom he left in possession of our forts and cannon. I felt
spellbound by the interest of the _sinistoe melodrame_, with its quick
succession of scenic effects and the metropolis of the world for its
stage. Taught by experience, I did not aspire to be an actor; and even
as a spectator, I took care neither to hiss nor applaud. Imitating your
happy England, I observed a strict neutrality; and, safe myself from
danger, left my best friends to the care of the gods.
"As to political questions, I dare not commit myself to a conjecture. At
this _rouge et noir_ table, all I can say is, that whichever card turns
up, it is either a red or a black one. One gamester gains for the moment
by the loss of the other; the table eventually ruins both.
"No one believes that the present form of government can last; every one
differs as to that which can. Raoul de Vandemar is immovably convinced
of the restoration of the Bourbons. Savarin is meditating a new journal
devoted to the cause of the Count of Paris. De Brew and the old Count de
Passy, having in turn espoused and opposed every previous form of
government, naturally go in for a perfectly novel experiment, and are for
constitutional dictatorship under the Duc d'Aumale, which he is to hold
at his own pleasure, and ultimately resign to his nephew the Count, under
the mild title of a constitutional king;--that is, if it ever suits the
pleasure of a dictator to depose himself. To me this seems the wildest
of notions. If the Duc's administration were successful, the French
would insist on keeping it; and if the uncle were unsuccessful, the
nephew would not have a chance. Duplessis retains his faith in the
Imperial dynasty; and that Imperialist party is much stronger than it
appears on the surface. So many of the bourgeoisie recall with a sigh
eighteen years of prosperous trade; so many of the military officers, so
many of the civil officials, identify their career with the Napoleonic
favour; and so many of the Priesthood, abhorring the Republic, always
liable to pass into the hands of those who assail religion,--unwilling to
admit the claim of the Orleanists, are at heart for the Empire.
"But I will tell you one secret. I and all the quiet folks like me (we
are more numerous than any one violent faction) are willing to accept any
form of government by which we have the best chance of keeping our coats
on our backs. _Liberte, Egalite, Fraternity_, are gone quite out of
fashion; and Mademoiselle--has abandoned her great chant of the
Marseillaise, and is drawing tears from enlightened audiences by her
pathetic delivery of '_O Richard! O mon roi_!'"
"Now about the other friends of whom you ask for news.
"Wonders will never cease. Louvier and Duplessis are no longer deadly
rivals. They have become sworn friends, and are meditating a great
speculation in common, to commence as soon as the Prussian debt is paid
off. Victor de Mauleon brought about this reconciliation in a single
interview during the brief interregnum between the Peace and the _Guerre
des Communeaux_. You know how sternly Louvier was bent upon seizing
Alain de Rochebriant's estates. Can you conceive the true cause? Can
you imagine it possible that a hardened money-maker like Louvier should
ever allow himself to be actuated, one way or the other, by the romance
of a sentimental wrong? Yet so it was. It seems that many years ago he
was desperately in love with a girl who disappeared from his life, and
whom he believed to have been seduced by the late Marquis de Rochebriant.
It was in revenge for this supposed crime that he had made himself the
principal mortgagee of the late Marquis; and, visiting the sins of the
father on the son, had, under the infernal disguise of friendly interest,
made himself sole mortgagee to Alain, upon terms apparently the most
generous. The demon soon showed his _griffe_, and was about to
foreclose, when Duplessis came to Alain's relief; and Rochebriant was to
be Valerie's dot on her marriage with Alain. The Prussian war, of
course, suspended all such plans, pecuniary and matrimonial. Duplessis,
whose resources were terribly crippled by the war, attempted operations
in London with a view of raising the sum necessary to pay off the
mortgage;--found himself strangely frustrated and baffled. Louvier was
in London, and defeated his rival's agent in every speculation. It
became impossible for Duplessis to redeem the mortgage. The two men came
to Paris with the peace. Louvier determined both to seize the Breton
lands and to complete the ruin of Duplessis, when he learned from De
Mauleon that he had spent half his life in a baseless illusion; that
Alain's father was innocent of the crime for which his son was to
suffer;--and Victor, with that strange power over men's minds which was
so peculiar to him, talked Louvier into mercy if not into repentance. In
short, the mortgage is to be paid off by instalments at the convenience
of Duplessis. Alain's marriage with Valerie is to take place in a few
weeks. The _fournisseurs_ are already gone to fit up the old chateau for
the bride, and Louvier is invited to the wedding.
"I have all this story from Alain, and from Duplessis himself. I tell
the tale as 'twas told to me, with all the gloss of sentiment upon its
woof. But between ourselves, I am too Parisian not to be sceptical as to
the unalloyed amiability of sudden conversions. And I suspect that
Louvier was no longer in a condition to indulge in the unprofitable whim
of turning rural seigneur. He had sunk large sums and incurred great
liabilities in the new street to be called after his name; and that
street has been twice ravaged, first by the Prussian siege, and next by
the _Guerre des Communeaux_; and I can detect many reasons why Louvier
should deem it prudent not only to withdraw from the Rochebriant seizure,
and make sure of peacefully recovering the capital lent on it, but
establishing joint interest and quasi partnership with a financier so
brilliant and successful as Armand Duplessis has hitherto been.
"Alain himself is not quite recovered from his wound, and is now at
Rochebriant, nursed by his aunt and Valerie. I have promised to visit
him next week. Raoul de Vandemar is still at Paris with his mother,
saying, there is no place where one Christian man can be of such service.
The old Count declines to come back, saying there is no place where a
philosopher can be in such danger.
"I reserve as my last communication, in reply to your questions, that
which is the gravest. You say that you saw in the public journals brief
notice of the assassination of Victor de Mauleon; and you ask for such
authentic particulars as I can give of that event, and of the motives of
the assassin.
"I need not, of course, tell you how bravely the poor Vicomte behaved
throughout the siege; but he made many enemies among the worst members of
the National Guard by the severity of his discipline; and had he been
caught by the mob the same day as Clement Thomas, who committed the same
offence, would have certainly shared the fate of that general. Though
elected a _depute_, he remained at Paris a few days after Thiers & Co.
left it, in the hope of persuading the party of Order, including then no
small portion of the National Guards, to take prompt and vigorous
measures to defend the city against the Communists. Indignant at their
pusillanimity, he then escaped to Versailles. There he more than
confirmed the high reputation he had acquired during the siege, and
impressed the ablest public men with the belief that he was destined to
take a very leading part in the strife of party. When the Versailles
troops entered Paris, he was, of course, among them in command of a
battalion.
"He escaped safe through that horrible war of barricades, though no man
more courted danger. He inspired his men with his own courage. It was
not till the revolt was quenched on the evening of the 28th May that he
met his death. The Versailles soldiers, naturally exasperated, were very
prompt in seizing and shooting at once every passenger who looked like a
foe. Some men under De Mauleon had seized upon one of these victims, and
were hurrying him into the next street for execution, when, catching
sight of the Vicomte, he screamed out, 'Lebeau, save me!'
"At that cry De Mauleon rushed forward, arrested his soldiers, cried,
'This man is innocent--a harmless physician. I answer for him.' As he
thus spoke, a wounded Communist, lying in the gutter amidst a heap of the
slain, dragged himself up, reeled towards De Mauleon, plunged a knife
between his shoulders, and dropped down dead.
"The Vicomte was carried into a neighbouring house, from all the windows
of which the tricolour was suspended; and the Medecin whom he had just
saved from summary execution examined and dressed his wound. The Vicomte
lingered for more than an hour, but expired in the effort to utter some
words, the sense of which those about him endeavoured in vain to seize.
"It was from the Medecin that the name of the assassin and the motive for
the crime were ascertained. The _miscreant_ was a Red Republican and
Socialist named Armand Monnier. He had been a very skilful workman, and
earning, as such, high wages. But he thought fit to become an active
revolutionary politician, first led into schemes for upsetting the world
by the existing laws of marriage, which had inflicted on him one woman
who ran away from him, but being still legally his wife, forbade him to
marry another woman with whom he lived, and to whom he seems to have been
passionately attached.
"These schemes, however, he did not put into any positive practice till
he fell in with a certain Jean Lebeau, who exercised great influence over
him, and by whom he was admitted into one of the secret revolutionary
societies which had for their object the overthrow of the Empire. After
that time his head became turned. The fall of the Empire put an end to
the society he had joined: Lebeau dissolved it. During the siege Monnier
was a sort of leader among the _ouvriers_; but as it advanced and famine
commenced, he contracted the habit of intoxication. His children died of
cold and hunger. The woman he lived with followed them to the grave.
Then he seems to have become a ferocious madman, and to have been
implicated in the worst crimes of the Communists. He cherished a wild
desire of revenge against this Jean Lebeau, to whom he attributed all his
calamities, and by whom, he said, his brother had been shot in the sortie
of December.
"Here comes the strange part of the story. This Jean Lebeau is alleged
to have been one and the same person with Victor de Mauleon. The Medecin
I have named, and who is well known in Belleville and Montmartre as the
Medecin des Pauvres, confesses that he belonged to the secret society
organised by Lebeau; that the disguise the Vicomte assumed was so
complete, that he should not have recognised his identity with the
conspirator but for an accident. During the latter time of the
bombardment, he, the __Medecin des Pauvres_, was on the eastern ramparts,
and his attention was suddenly called to a man mortally wounded by the
splinter of a shell. While examining the nature of the wound; De
Mauleon, who was also on the ramparts, came to the spot. The dying man
said, 'M. le Vicomte, you owe me a service. My name is Marc le Roux.
I was on the police before the war. When M. de. Mauleon reassumed his
station, and was making himself obnoxious to the Emperor, I might have
denounced him as Jean Lebeau the conspirator. I did not. The siege has
reduced me to want. I have a child at home--a pet. Don't let her
starve.' 'I will see to her,' said the Vicomte. Before we could get the
man into the ambulance cart he expired.
"The Medecin who told this story I had the curiosity to see myself, and
cross-question. I own I believe his statement. Whether De Mauleon did
or did not conspire against a fallen dynasty, to which he owed no
allegiance, can little, if at all, injure the reputation he has left
behind of a very remarkable man--of great courage and great ability--who
might have had a splendid career if he had survived. But, as Savarin
says truly, the first bodies which the car of revolution crushes down are
those which first harness themselves to it.
"Among De Mauleon's papers is the programme of a constitution fitted for
France. How it got into Savarin's hands I know not. De Mauleon left no
will, and no relations came forward to claim his papers. I asked Savarin
to give me the heads of the plan, which he did. They are as follows:
"The American republic is the sole one worth studying, for it has lasted.
The causes of its duration are in the checks to democratic fickleness and
disorder. 1st. No law affecting the Constitution can be altered without
the consent of two-thirds of Congress. 2nd. To counteract the impulses
natural to a popular Assembly chosen by universal suffrage, the greater
legislative powers, especially in foreign affairs, are vested in the
Senate, which has even executive as well as legislative functions. 3rd.
The Chief of the State, having elected his government, can maintain it
independent of hostile majorities in either Assembly.
"'These three principles of safety to form the basis of any new
constitution for France.
"'For France it is essential that the chief magistrate, under whatever
title he assume, should be as irresponsible as an English sovereign.
Therefore he should not preside at his councils; he should not lead his
armies. The day for personal government is gone, even in Prussia. The
safety for order in a State is that, when things go wrong, the Ministry
changes, the State remains the same. In Europe, Republican institutions
are safer where the chief magistrate is hereditary than where elective.'
"Savarin says these axioms are carried out at length, and argued with
great ability.
"I am very grateful for your proffered hospitalities in England. Some
day I shall accept them-viz., whenever I decide on domestic life, and the
calm of the conjugal foyer. I have a penchant for an English Mees, and
am not exacting as to the dot. Thirty thousand livres sterling would
satisfy me--a trifle, I believe, to you rich islanders.
"Meanwhile I am naturally compelled to make up for the miseries of that
horrible siege. Certain moralising journals tell us that, sobered by
misfortunes, the Parisians are going to turn over a new leaf, become
studious and reflective, despise pleasure and luxury, and live like
German professors. Don't believe a word of it. My conviction is that,
whatever may be said as to our frivolity, extravagance, &c., under the
Empire, we shall be just the same under any form of government--the
bravest, the most timid, the most ferocious, the kindest-hearted, the
most irrational, the most intelligent, the most contradictory, the most
consistent people whom Jove, taking counsel of Venus and the Graces, Mars
and the Furies, ever created for the delight and terror of the world;--in
a word, the Parisians.--Votre tout divoue, 'FREDERIC LEMERCIER.'"
It is a lovely noon on the bay of Sorrento, towards the close of the
autumn of 1871. Upon the part of the craggy shore, to the left of the
town, on which her first perusal of the loveliest poem in which the
romance of Christian heroism has ever combined elevation of thought with
silvery delicacies of speech, had charmed her childhood, reclined the
young bride of Graham Vane. They were in the first month of their
marriage. Isaura had not yet recovered from the effects of all that had
preyed upon her life, from the hour in which she had deemed that in her
pursuit of fame she had lost the love that had coloured her genius and
inspired her dreams, to that in which . . . .
The physicians consulted agreed in insisting on her passing the winter in
a southern climate; and after their wedding, which took place in
Florence, they thus came to Sorrento.
As Isaura is seated on the small smoothed rock, Graham reclines at her
feet, his face upturned to hers with an inexpressible wistful anxiety in
his impassioned tenderness. "You are sure you feel better and stronger
since we have been here?"
THE END.