Who was Berlick?--The fête of Villers-Cotterets--Faust and
Polichinelle--The sabots--Journey to Paris--Dollé--Manette--Madame de
Mauclerc's pension--Madame de Montesson--_Paul and Virginia_--Madame de
Saint-Aubin.
I was Berlick: and this is how I obtained the charming nickname.
While my mother was _enceinte_ the usual Whitsuntide fête took place
at Villers-Cotterets; a delightful fête it was, to which I shall again
refer. It took place at the time of the first spring foliage and amid
the opening flowers, when butterflies are dancing and linnets singing.
In olden days this fête was famed far and wide, and people attended it
from twenty leagues round; like all other fêtes, it began as a Corpus
Christi festival, but now only exists in the calendar.
Well, to this well-attended fête came a man carrying a booth on his
back, as a snail carries its shell.
This booth contained the essentially national spectacle of
Polichinelle, from which Goethe borrowed the idea of his _Faust._
Polichinelle is simply a worn-out, callous, crafty libertine, who
abducts women, and flouts brothers and husbands, who thrashes the
officers of the law, and ends up by being carried off by the devil.
And what else was Faust? A worn-out, callous libertine, not very
cunning, it is true, who seduces Marguerite, kills her brother, beats
burgomasters and is carried off by Mephistopheles in the end.
I will not venture to say that Polichinelle is more picturesque
than Faust, but I will go so far as to maintain that he is quite as
philosophical and more amusing.
Our friend with the booth had set up his show on the green, and gave
daily thirty or forty representations of that sublime comedy, which has
made us all laugh as children, and ponder over when grown men.
My mother was seven months gone in pregnancy when she went to see
Polichinelle. The showman was a man of some imagination, and instead of
simply calling his devil the devil, he gave him a name.
He called him Berlick.
The sight of Berlick impressed my mother terribly. Berlick was as
black as a devil. Berlick had a scarlet tongue and tail. Berlick spoke
with a sort of growl, like the noise made by a syphon of Seltzer water
when the bottle is just running empty; an unknown sound in those days,
before the invention of syphons, and therefore all the more awful.
My mother's mind was so taken up with this queer figure, that, on
leaving the booth, she leant on a neighbour and exclaimed:
"Oh! my dear, it is all up with me. I shall give birth to a Berlick!"
Her neighbour, who was also in the same condition, was called Madame
Duez. She replied:
"Then, my dear, if you give birth to a Berlick, I, who have been with
you, shall give birth to a Berlock."
The two friends returned home laughing. But my mother's laugh was
half-hearted, and she remained convinced that she would bring forth a
black-faced child with a red tail and a tongue of flame.
The day of her confinement drew near, and, the nearer it came, the
firmer grew my mother's belief. She imagined I leapt inside her womb
as only a demon could, and when I kicked she could feel the claws with
which my feet were furnished.
At length the 24th of July arrived. It struck half-past four in the
morning, and I was born.
But in coming into the world it seems I turned and twisted in such a
manner that the umbilical cord got round my neck, and I looked purple
and half-strangled.
The woman who was with my mother uttered a cry, and my mother took it
up.
"Oh, my God!" she murmured,--"it is black, is it not?"
The woman dared not answer her: there is so very little difference of
colour between dark purple and black that it was not worth while to
contradict.
The next moment I cried, as that creature destined to sorrow, whom we
call man, generally does as he comes into the world.
The cord pressed round my neck so that I could only utter a kind of
growl, similar in its nature to the noise that was always ringing in my
mother's ears.
"Berlick! Berlick!" my mother cried out in despair.
Happily the doctor hastened to reassure her: he set my neck free, my
face took its natural colour, and my cries were the wailings of an
infant, and not the growls of a demon.
But I was none the less baptized with the name of Berlick, and it stuck
to me ever after.
With regard to the second paragraph of the postscript, "He runs
always on the tips of his toes,--his shoes make no difference," this
second paragraph referred to a peculiarity of my construction. Until
I was four years old I walked, or rather ran--for I never walked, and
I always ran--I ran, I say, on the very tips of my toes. Ellsler,
compared with me, would have appeared to be dancing on his heels. From
the peculiar gait I indulged in, and in spite of the fact that I did
not fall more often than other children, my mother was always possessed
with a fear other mothers did not share, the fear of seeing me tumble
down, and she was always asking people what she could do to make me
walk in a more Christian fashion.
I think it was M. Collard who advised my mother to put me into sabots.
These were a kind of shoe which made it almost impossible to walk, if I
did not change my nature. I ran harder than ever, it would seem, by my
father's letter, only I fell more often. That caused the sabots to be
abandoned.
One fine day I gave up walking on tiptoe, and began to walk like
everybody else. Of course I never explained why I gave up doing this,
I never admitted whether it was from whim or a more justifiable cause.
But there was great rejoicing throughout the household, and the happy
news was spread abroad among friends and acquaintances. M. Collard was
one of the first to be informed.
In the meantime my father's health had been growing worse. He was told
of a doctor called Duval, who lived at Senlis, and who had a certain
repute in these parts. So we went to Senlis.
That journey left no recollection on my mind, and the only trace of it
I can find is in a letter of my mother, entrusting a deed to her lawyer
during her absence.
It would seem that M. Duval recommended my father to go to Paris to
consult Corvisart. My father had been meaning to go there for a long
while. He longed to see Brune and Murat; he hoped to obtain through
their advocacy the indemnity due to him as one of the prisoners of
Brindisi, and still further he hoped to obtain payment of his arrears
of salary left over from the years VII and VIII.
So we set out for Paris.
That journey was quite another thing, and I remember it perfectly;
not exactly the time spent in the train, but the actual arrival in
Paris. It was about August or September 1805. We alighted in the rue
Thiroux, at the house of a friend of my father, called Dollé. He was a
little old man, who wore a grey coat, velvet breeches, striped cotton
stockings and buckled shoes; his hair was dressed _en ailes de pigeon_,
the tail tied up with black ribbon and ending like a white paintbrush.
His coat collar made this tail stick up towards the heavens in a most
threatening manner.
His wife must once have been very pretty, and I suspect my father had
been a friend of the wife before he became acquainted with the husband.
Her name was Manette.
I give all these details to show how accurate my memory is, and how
thoroughly I can depend upon it.
Our first visit was to my sister, who was in an excellent
boarding-school kept by a Madame de Mauclerc and a Miss Ryan, an
English lady, who has since deprived us of the whole of a small fortune
which we ought to have inherited. This boarding-school was situated in
the rue de Harlay, au Marais.
The Abbé Conseil, a cousin of ours and an old tutor to Louis XVI.'s
pages, had placed her at this school.
I shall have a word to say presently about our cousin the abbé, who
left his whole fortune later to the Ryan girl.
I arrived in the play-hour, and all the young girls were out walking,
chatting, playing in a large court. They had scarcely caught sight of
me, with my long fair hair, which at that time curled instead of being
wavy, before the whole school descended upon me like a flock of doves,
learning that I was their friend's brother. Unluckily, the society of
Pierre and Mocquet had taught me bad manners, and I had seen few people
at Fossés and at Antilly. All these friendly but clamorous attentions
did but double my habitual wildness, and, in exchange for the caresses
with which all these charming sylphs embarrassed me, I dealt out kicks
and cuffs to all who ventured to approach near me. The two who suffered
most were Mademoiselle Pauline Masseron, who has since married Count
d'Houdetot, a peer of France; and Mademoiselle Destillères, whose
mansion, l'hôtel _d'Osmond_, is to-day the envy of everyone who passes
along the boulevard des Capucines.
Perhaps my want of natural gallantry was still further increased by my
knowledge that an operation, to my thinking most objectionable, awaited
me when we left the school.
There was a great rage on just then for earrings, and they were going
to take advantage of being in the boulevard to have each of my ears
adorned with a little gold ring. When the operation was about to take
place, I resisted with might and main; but an immense apricot, which my
father went to buy for me, overcame all difficulties, and I set out for
the rue Thiroux enriched with one more decoration.
About a third of the way down the rue du Mont-Blanc, my father
separated from my mother, and took me with him to a grand house with
men-servants in red livery. My father gave his name. We were kept
waiting a moment; then they showed us through what seemed to me to be
most sumptuously fitted rooms, till we reached a bedroom. Here we found
an old lady lying on a couch, who held out her hand to my father with
a most dignified gesture. My father kissed her hand respectfully, and
seated himself near this lady.
Now how did it come about that I, who had just been so free with rude
words and vulgar actions among all those charming young girls who
wanted to kiss me, now, when this old lady called me to her, eagerly
offered her both my cheeks to kiss? Because this old lady had something
about her which both attracted and commanded at the same time.
My father remained nearly half an hour with this lady, during which
time I kept quite still at her feet. Then we left her, and she would
always remain convinced that I was the best behaved child imaginable.
My father stopped at the door and took me in his arms to bring me up to
the level of his face; he always did so when he had something serious
to tell me.
"My child," he said, "while I was in Florence I read the story of a
sculptor, who relates that when he was just about your age, he showed
his father a salamander which was sporting in the fire; his father
slapped his face and said, 'My son, that slap was not meant to punish
you, but to make you remember that you have seen not only what few men
of our generation have seen, but also what few men of your generation
will see, namely, a salamander.' Very well, then! I will do the same as
the father of the Florentine sculptor; only instead of a slap I will
give you this piece of gold, to make you remember that you have been
kissed by one of the best and one of the greatest ladies who have ever
lived, Madame la marquise de Montesson, the widow of Louis-Philippe
d'Orléans, who died just twenty years ago."
I do not know what effect on my memory a slap on the face from my
father's hand might have had, but I know that that gentle reminder
coupled with the gold coin engraved this scene so deeply on my memory
that I can still at this date see myself seated by the gracious old
lady, who played gently with my hair all the while she was talking to
my father.
Madame la marquise de Montesson died on February the 6th, and my father
on February the 26th, 1806.
So it was that I, who pen these lines in 1850 (for nearly three years
have flown by since I began these Memoirs, abandoned the idea, then
resumed the work again) saw Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de le Haie de Riou,
marquise of Montesson, widow of the regent's grandson.
And my father knew M. de Richelieu, who was placed in the Bastille
by Louis XIV. for being found concealed under the bed of madame la
duchesse de Bourgogne.
If you thus unite the recollections of two generations, the events of a
century will seem to have only happened but yesterday.
My father and mother went to the play at night, and took me with them.
It was at the Opéra Comique, and _Paul and Virginia_ was being played,
the two leading parts being taken by Méhu and Madame de Saint-Aubin.
In later years I hunted up good little Madame de Saint-Aubin, who would
be about thirty-eight when I first saw her, and therefore now would be
between eighty-two and eighty-three years of age, and I retailed to her
every detail of that evening in the August of 1805: one of them was a
matter personal to herself: Virginia was far advanced in pregnancy.
Poor Saint-Aubin could not remember anything about it.
So vivid an impression did that night make on my memory that its events
are perfectly present to me to-day: the changes of scene representing
Madame Latour's house buried among orange-trees with their golden
fruit, the angry sea and the lightning which struck and destroyed the
_Saint-Géran._