Alas! the more prodigal the children, the warmer their reception! When

the original prodigal son returned home to his father after three

years' absence, they killed a calf; if he had not returned until after

an absence of six years, they would have killed an ox.

My mother hugged me to her and called me a bad boy. She promised

me that there should be no more talk between us of my going to the

Seminary, delighted to think that I should not leave her. She reserved

all her wrath for Boudoux, and, the first time she saw him, poor as we

were, she gave him five francs.

Just think what a trivial circumstance decided the course of my life.

If the grocer had had the inkstand I wanted that morning, I should not

have returned to his shop in the evening; I should not have met Cécile

there; she would not have made that joke which exasperated me; I should

not have placed myself under Boudoux's care; and the next day I should

have gone to Soissons and entered the Seminary. When at the Seminary my

latent inclinations for a religious life would have developed, and I

might have become a great preacher instead of what I am--namely, a poor

poet. I wonder whether that would have been better or worse?

What God does is well done. This was not the only danger I escaped;

we shall see later how I nearly became something much worse than a

Seminarist or a priest.

We shall see that I just missed being a tax-gatherer!

CHAPTER VI

The Abbé Grégoire's College--The reception I got there--The fountains

play to celebrate my arrival--The conspiracy against me--Bligny

challenges me to single combat--I win.

It was arranged that I should go to the Abbé Grégoire's college in

Villers-Cotterets instead of to the Seminary. They styled the Abbé

Grégoire's school a _College_, just as in England the illegitimate sons

of noblemen are called "lords."

It is a matter of courtesy.

However that may be, it was decided that I should go to the Abbé

Grégoire's college.

Oh! if I begin to talk of the Abbé Grégoire, I shall go on

indefinitely,--for he was an upright, worthy, and saintly man.

He was not a genius, he was something better than that--he was a

thoroughly good man; during the years he governed the school two

hundred scholars passed through his hands, and I do not know of a

single one who has turned out badly.

During the forty years he served the church at Villers-Cotterets, not a

single petty scandal which could make the irreligious or the libertine

smile had ever been brought against him. Mothers who had confessed to

him in their girlhood and during his youth took their daughters to him

in full confidence, for they knew that then, as in their own time,

only good and fatherly advice would be given through the confessional

grating.

He never had a servant or a housekeeper; he lived with his sister, a

little wizened old lady, rather hunch-backed, rather inclined to be

shrewish, who adored--nay, who worshipped her brother.

Poor dear abbé, what a life we led him! How we enraged him, how he

scolded us, and how much he loved us!

It was the same with him as with Hiraux; I loved him so warmly before

there was any thought of being his pupil, that I submitted to the

great change in my life without the least dread. Besides, what was it,

compared with the Seminary?

His classes began at half-past eight in the morning, directly after

mass, and closed at noon. We all went home to our dinner for an hour,

then returned at one o'clock; at five minutes past one, school began

again, and went on until four.

Add to this Sundays, saints'-days, greater feasts and lesser feasts,

and you can see my life was not a very hard one.

As a whole, I was not very much liked by the other children of the

town at that age; I was vain and impudent and overbearing, and

filled with self-confidence and admiration for my small person; yet,

notwithstanding all this, I was capable of good feeling, when heart,

rather than intellect or self-love, was called into play.

As far as physical qualities went, I was quite a pretty child: I had

long, fair, curly hair, which fell on my shoulders, and which did not

turn crisp until my fifteenth year; large blue eyes, which even until

now have retained somewhat of their early freshness; a straight nose,

small and well shaped; thick red sensitive lips; white but uneven

teeth. In addition to this, my complexion was dazzlingly white, due, so

my mother believed, to the brandy my father had made her drink during

her pregnancy; it turned darker when my hair became crisp.

I was in figure as long and thin as a lath.

The school accommodation was not large: twenty-five or thirty pupils

were enough to fill it, and it was quite an event when a fresh pupil

arrived in the midst of the small circle.

It was a great event on my side too. I was dressed in a suit the whole

of which was made out of a coat that had been my grandfather's. It was

the colour of _café au lait_, deepened in tone, spotted all over with

black points. I felt very proud of it, and I thought it would create

quite a sensation among my comrades.

At eight o'clock one Monday morning, in the autumn, I took my way

to the source whence I was to drink deep of the water of knowledge.

I walked solemnly along, with my nose held proudly up, carrying my

library of grammars, the _Epitome historiæ sacræ_, dictionaries and

other aids under my arm, all of them as new as my clothes, and I

enjoyed in anticipation the effect my appearance would produce upon the

communion of martyrs.

The entrance to the courtyard at the Abbé Grégoire's was through a

great door, which seemed like the entrance to a deep vault, and opened

on the rue de Soissons. This door was wide open, and I looked through

into the courtyard: it was empty.

I guessed at first that I was late and everyone was already in school.

I quickly stepped across the threshold; as soon as the door closed

behind me I heard loud shouts of glee, and a dewiness, which strongly

resembled a shower, descended upon me from the top of a double

amphitheatre of barrels.

I raised my eyes, and beheld each pupil perched on a barrel, in the

same attitude and performing the same action, as the _Manneken-Pis_

fountain of Brussels. The fountains were playing in honour of my

arrival.

Such a manner of reception displeased me greatly. I took to my heels,

in order to protect myself from this novel kind of shower-bath; but I

had stood for a moment in hesitation and astonishment; then, when my

mind was made up, I had had five or six paces to go before I was free;

so, when I came out of the vault-like passage, I was streaming all over.

I was by nature very tearful. Often, as a child, I would sit down in a

corner and cry without any reason. Then, as I always spoke of myself,

like Cæsar, in the third person, and as they had adopted this manner of

addressing me, for the fun of it, my mother would come to me and ask:

"Why is Dumas crying?"

"Dumas cries," I would reply, "because Dumas has tears."

This answer relieved her of all uneasiness, and nearly always satisfied

my mother, who would go away laughing, leaving me to cry on at my

leisure.

If I cried without any motive, the reader will readily understand

that, when there was a strong incentive, there was all the more reason

why I should give way to torrents of tears.

What more justifiable excuse could I have had than the humiliation to

which I had just been subjected and the injury it had just done my new

suit?

Therefore, when the Abbé Grégoire came by to say mass, he found me on

the steps, in floods of water, like the Biblis of M. Dupaty.

The abbé had scarcely come in view when my schoolfellows came up to me,

surrounded me in rings on the staircase, and, with every appearance of

deep interest, asked each other why I was crying. The Abbé Grégoire

broke through the hypocritical circle, ascended two or three steps,

and, putting up his eyeglass, for he was as blind as a mole, looked at

me and asked me what was the matter.

I was about to reply when I saw twenty shut fists behind the abbé, and

twenty threatening faces making significant gestures at me. I uttered a

howl, at which the abbé turned round: immediately all the faces smiled,

all the hands were returned to their pockets.

"But what is the matter with him?" asked the abbé.

"We don't know," replied the hypocrites; "he has been going on like

that ever since he came."

"What! he has cried ever since he came?"

"Yes, indeed he has. Hasn't he? hasn't he? hasn't he?"

"Yes! yes! yes!" all the voices responded. "Dumas is crying."

"Come, what are you crying for, Dumas?"

"Oh!" replied one of them who knew the tradition, "Dumas is probably

crying because 'Dumas has tears'--"

This mocking remark infuriated me.

"No!" I cried, "no, I am not crying because I have tears; I am crying

because--because--because they have made water on my head, there!"

The crime was so unusual, the idea so whimsical, that the abbé made me

repeat the accusation twice over; then, turning to his pupils, he said:

"Go upstairs, gentlemen; we will go into this matter there."

"Ah! you brat! ah! you tell-tale! ah! you traitor!" a dozen lads

whispered to me; "you wait a bit,--we'll see when school is over--!"

The abbé turned round.

All were silent, and they entered the classroom.

Each boy took his place, but I, who had not one, remained standing.

"Come here, my young friend," said the abbé.

"Here I am, M. l'abbé," I said, whimpering.

He felt me.

"The child is soaked through--!"

My lamentations broke forth afresh.

"Of course he is wet," said a big boy; "think of the time he has been

crying."

"What!" cried the abbé, "you dare to suggest that his own tears have

soaked him like this?"

"Certainly!"

"But, M. l'abbé," I exclaimed, "I could not cry down my back, and I am

as wet behind as in front."

The abbé verified my statement.

"You are right," he said. "No recreation at midday; bring me the cane

at once; and you boys must do three hundred lines by to-morrow morning."

Then arose a chorus of complaints and groans equal to those Dante heard

in the first circle of the Inferno.

With these groans and complaints fierce threats were mingled which made

my flesh creep.

Nevertheless, they had to submit: the abbé kept up the ancient

scholastic traditions; he had a deaf ear and a vigorous hand; and a

thrashing all round with the cane increased the groans, the complaints,

and the threats.

I realised that I was collecting a storm over my head which would

result later in a hail of fisticuffs.

The caning had this much good, that it did away with work during all

that class; not a line was written from nine o'clock to midday, under

pretext that the abbé had hit so hard that their hands were numbed.

The abbé accepted the excuse.

At noon, each boy tried to find some excuse to escape retention. It was

incredible the things they had to do and what importance their going

out was that day.

I remember three of the excuses given: Saunier had to take his

clarionet lesson; Ronet had to take a dose of oil; Leloir ought to be

drawing for conscription!

These three pretexts were handed in by the three scholars named

Saunier, Ronet and Leloir.

Needless to relate, the clarionet lesson, castor oil, and drawing for

conscription had to wait till the next day, and at midday I went out of

college absolutely alone.

Oh! what profound reflections I made as I returned home! How well I

realised that it would have been far better to laugh at the joke, no

matter how grim it was, than to cry as I had done! I placed Heraclitus

a thousand times higher than Democritus!

My mother was much struck by my sadness, and she questioned me closely

upon the causes of my melancholy, but I had been too ready to tell

tales, and I preserved profound silence.

At one o'clock I returned to the college: all the lads had had their

dinner sent in to them from their homes; the greater number of these

dinners, let it be said, to the parents' honour, consisted of a simple

slice of dry bread.

The complaints and groans had stopped, but the threatenings had

increased, the clouds were lowering and full of lightnings. I could not

raise my nose from the paper upon which I was declining _rosa_ but I

caught sight of a fist which had nothing in common with the declension

I was writing out.

I realised that, when I went out, I was going to be beaten to pulp. The

bigger boys were too conscious of their superior strength to threaten

the most, for they felt they could not take revenge on a child: the

worst were those of about my own age, specially a lad called Bligny,

the son of a draper, living in the place de la Fontaine, who was so

angry with me that by common consent the task of taking a general

vengeance on me was consigned to him. Bligny was two years older than

I, so that I had been used to look upon him as a big lad, although I

was really as tall as he.

I was therefore not too well at ease at the prospect of a duel with him.

Still, I had so often heard the story of the three duels my father had

fought when he first entered the army, on behalf of the honour of the

king and the queen, that I knew I must not shirk my first fight.

I was so preoccupied that I made quite a dozen mistakes in the three or

four declensions I had to do during school hours.

I do not know how long the time may have seemed to my companions, but I

know that never before had it seemed to me to fly so fast. Four o'clock

struck, and the Abbé Grégoire said his prayer before I thought half the

class was over.

There was nothing to be done but to leave, and I decided upon my line

of action. I tied up my books in as leisurely a fashion as possible,

hoping that, if I went down the staircase last, the torrent would have

flown by and I should find a free passage; yet I knew in my inmost

heart that I had brought too great a punishment down on my head by my

denunciation to get off so cheaply.

I could have spoken to the Abbé Grégoire, and he would himself have

taken me home or sent his sister Alexandrine with me; but I felt that

that would be cowardly, and would only defer matters. M. Grégoire or

his sister could not always conduct me home; there would come a day

when I should be obliged to go by myself, and then I should be certain

to have a brush with one or other of my schoolfellows.

I resolved, therefore, to face the danger and to take the bull by the

horns.

Remember, all these thoughts were whirling in the head of a lad only

ten years old.

I took my stand, I said good-bye to the Abbé Grégoire, I heaved a big

sigh, and then I went downstairs.

I was not mistaken: the whole school was seated in a semi circle, like

Roman spectators, on the raised seats of their amphitheatre; and,

standing at the bottom of the stairs, with his coat off and his shirt

sleeves tucked up, Bligny awaited me.

Ah! I confess that when I reached the turn of the stair case and saw

all these preparations taken for the inevitable battle, my heart failed

me, and I nearly ran up again; but although I had tried to repress

my momentary hesitation it had not escaped my comrades; there was a

general outcry and the most scurrilous epithets were yelled at me from

the courtyard below. I felt myself turn pale and tremble all over,

and a cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I took measure of the two

extremities to which I was reduced,--either to receive a few blows in

the eye or on the teeth and all would be settled, or ever afterwards to

be the sport of my schoolfellows and to have to go through it afresh

each day. I gripped hold of my courage, which was fast ebbing away;

I pulled myself together by an act of the will, till I felt myself

completely master of the situation. There was a brief struggle, at the

end of which I felt my moral courage getting the better of my physical;

reason conquered instinct.

All the same, I felt that I wanted an incentive to goad me forward,

that that goad was within my own control, and that, if I would use it,

I must stimulate my courage with lashing words.

"Ah!" I said, looking at Bligny--"Ah! is this the game?"

"Yes, this is the game," he replied.

"You want to fight, then, do you?"

"Yes, rather."

"Ah! you are longing for it?"

"Yes."

"Ah! really?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, come on!"

I had now goaded myself to action; I put my books on the ground, I

threw off my jacket, and I hurled myself upon my antagonist, shouting:

"Ah! you want to fight!... ah! you want to fight!... take that! and

that! and that!"

Marshal de Saxe, that great military philosopher, said very truly that

the whole art of war consists in pretending not to be afraid and in

inspiring fear in the enemy.

I appeared quite fearless, and Bligny was beaten.

I do not wish to imply he was beaten without a contest, not so; but it

would have been better for him if he had not fought: he received a blow

in the eye, another blow on his mouth, and made a hasty retreat after

this double attack, which he only opposed by a feeble hit at my nose.

The whole affair was over in less than a minute, and the victory was

mine.

I ought to do my comrades the justice of saying that this victory was

followed by unanimous applause.

I then put my jacket on again, and collected my books, murmuring:

"You see! you see! you see!" which seemed to mean, "Look at me, see

what I am! a coward at bottom, but when driven to desperation, an

Alexander, a Hannibal, or a Cæsar; you see!"

This seemed also to be the opinion of the spectators, for they opened

their ranks to let me pass through, and I went out through the great

porch, recently the scene of my humiliation and now my triumphal

arch. I found a book which had dropped out of Bligny's waistcoat when

he staggered from my blow; and, as I considered that the spoils of

the conquered belonged by right to the conqueror, I picked it up and

carried it off.

I opened it as I took it away, and saw it was M. Tissot's well-known

work.

I did not know what the title meant, and I allowed my mother to take

the book away from me and to hide it.

Two years afterwards I discovered it and read it.

Had I read it the day of my victory it would have been fruitless,

because I should not have understood it.

Two years later it was providential.

CHAPTER VII

The Abbé Fortier--The jealous husband and the viaticum--A pleasant

visit--Victor Letellier--The pocket-pistol--I terrify the

population--Tournemolle is requisitioned--He disarms me.

School life is not remarkable for variety of incident; a country

school certainly is not, and ours was no exception to the rule! I

have recounted my entry because of this trait in my character that

was developed thereby, but if it were to describe that life in all

its details I should have nothing to relate beyond a few childish

naughtinesses, followed by penitence and impositions, not even worth

putting into M. Bouilly's _Jeunes Écoliers._

A terrible accident happened to the Seminary at Soissons My mother was

already reconciled to my conduct in refusing to go there, and this

accident made her thank God afresh that I had not entered.

The powder-store of the town, which was situated about fifty mètres

from the Seminary, blew up; the college was completely ruined, and

eight or ten seminarists were, killed or wounded.

Meanwhile, another of our relatives died: the one who tool me in the

night I lost my father. Her daughter Marianne my sister's cousin and

mine then left Villers-Cotterets to go and live near her uncle, the

Abbé Fortier, who was priest at the little village of Béthisy, five

leagues from us and three leagues from Compiègne.

This abbé was supposed to be very rich, and it looked a good thing for

my cousin to become his housekeeper; but he was rather a troublesome

character.

Had the word been in use at that time, we should have said he was

eccentric.

I cannot say what deviation from the path every man ought to follow in

deciding upon his vocation had driven the Abbé Fortier into the Church.

He was born to make a first-rate captain of dragoons, whilst as it was

he made a somewhat odd priest. God forbid I should say he made a bad

one!

He was a man of five feet eight inches, built like a Hercules, with an

erect carriage, his head held high, and he stepped right foot foremost

at each stride like a fencing-master in a fencing school; he was, too,

one of the finest billiard players, one of the best huntsmen, and one

of the greatest eaters I ever saw.

I do not, of course, even dream of comparing the Abbé Fortier with

Boudoux in this last respect. The abbé could eat for a long time and a

considerable quantity at once: Boudoux's desire to be always eating was

a disease.

One day the Abbé Fortier bet a curé of the neighbourhood that he

would eat a hundred eggs at his dinner. The hundred eggs were served

up according to recipes in the _Cuisinière bourgeoise_, in twenty

different ways.

When they were eaten, he said:

"Good, one ought to play fair and give four extra to the hundred: boil

four more eggs--hard."

And he ate the four hard-boiled eggs, after having eaten a hundred

cooked in all kinds of ways.

A very curious story is told of his early days. He would be thirty at

the time I am referring to, and, as he was sixty-two at the time I am

writing about, it must have happened thirty-two years before. He was

then only a curate, and one evening he was taking the viaticum to a

dying person in the next village.

A certain husband had conceived violent jealousy against him, doubtless

without cause, and waited for him in a deep lane down which he was

obliged to go from Béthisy in order to reach the village where he was

wanted.

When the Abbé Fortier saw this man standing in the middle of the road,

with his face drawn with anger and his first clenched, he quickly

guessed what was going to happen; but, being a minister of the God of

peace and averse to all scandal, he begged him as politely as possible

to allow him to pass.

"Oh yes, let you pass, M. le vicaire," said the man in the jeering

tones peculiar to our peasants; "you'll not get by so easily!"

"Why should I not pass?" asked the curate.

"Because you have a little account to settle with this poor Bastien."

"I owe you nothing," said the abbé; "allow me to pass; you know well I

am being waited for and by one who has not time to wait long."

"He will just have to wait, then," said Bastien, throwing off his

jacket and spitting on his hands; "he will just have to wait: if he is

in too great a hurry, he must go before."

"Why must he wait?" the abbé demanded, now getting vexed.

"Because I have to give you a drubbing, M. le vicaire."

"Ah! that is it! Is that why you came here, Bastien?"

"Rather."

"It would not take much trouble to remove you, my friend."

"Do you think so?"

"I am certain of it."

The abbé put the viaticum down on the edge of a ditch and said in very

reverent accents, "O Lord, O Lord, take neither side, and Thou shalt

see a rogue well thrashed."

The abbé kept his word, and the good Lord saw what had been promised.

Then he picked up the viaticum, continued his walk, administered to the

sick man and returned quietly home again.

Both Bastien and the abbé were interested in keeping the matter to

themselves, and they did so, but a choir-boy had seen the fight, and it

became known.

Let it be said to the honour of the abbé that nobody was surprised at

the affair.

One day he intended to shoot at Lamotte, but, before beginning his

sporting expedition, he had to say mass in the château chapel; he had

taken with him his dog Finaud and his choir-boy _quiot_ Pierre (which

means _little_ Pierre), to assist him in his operations.

The church was on the borders of the warren on which they were going to

begin.

Now Finaud was a splendid retriever, and the Abbé Fortier, who never

cared to shoot without him, had told the servants to shut him up

carefully.

After the Gospel the abbé stopped and listened as he heard a well-known

bark in the warren.

He listened for a minute; then he turned, and saw that the choir-boy

was also listening, with a smile on his lips.

"Tell me, quiot Pierre," said the abbé, "isn't that Finaud's bark I

hear over there?"

"Yes, M. l'abbé; they have let him loose, and he is after a rabbit."

"Ah! well!" replied the abbé, "the rabbit can be quite easy; we shall

get him in any case."

And he went on saying mass.

Mass over, Finaud led the way.

The abbé took his gun, followed the trail and killed the rabbit.

This was the same choir-boy who told the story about Bastien. He told

the second, as he had told the first, and there were many more, but

some of them would not even bear relating by a choir-boy.

So Marianne went to live with her uncle Fortier, who, at the age of

sixty-two, was reputed to be simply a great sportsman and a great

eater; maybe this opinion of him was not quite right.

He gave her a wonderfully good reception, installed her at the

parsonage, and, as my cousin Marianne was very fond of me, he

allowed her to bring me back with her the next visit she paid to

Villers-Cotterets, which was during my holidays in 1812.

When the holidays began, my cousin and I both perched on the back of

one donkey. Picard, the fellow who used to tell me such fine stories at

the forge, took a stick to beat the ass with, and we set off.

This journey, like all childish journeyings, was full of surprises for

me. I remember seeing for a long time on our left a mountain with a

ruin on the top of it, which seemed to me like an Alp or one of the

Cordilleras; I have seen it since, and it did not look any higher than

Montmartre.

I remember also seeing a tower on my right, which seemed so high to me

that I asked if it were not the tower of Babel.

The mountain was the knoll of Montigny.

The tower was the tower of Vez.

We reached our destination after a journey that had seemed to me

inordinately long, but had only lasted seven or eight hours; we went at

the pace of Joseph and the Virgin Mary on their flight into Egypt.

However, we arrived at last. It was the right season to stop with

Uncle Fortier, for it was early in September, and there was a splendid

arbour of vines, from which hung bunches of grapes rivalling those of

the Promised Land. There was also a wild plum tree laden with plums in

a small courtyard; and, finally, an immense garden full of peaches,

apricots and pears.

Moreover, shooting was just about to begin.

The Abbé Fortier gave me a very kind welcome, although he uttered

several grunts which showed I was not in every respect satisfactory to

him.

The abbé was a very learned man; he had Greek and Latin at his finger

ends; he greeted me in the tongue of Cicero; I attempted to reply, and

made three errors in five words.

He was transfixed.

That was my first intellectual humiliation. I will give the second in

its right place.

I tried to recover my ground in natural history and mythology, but the

abbé was proficient in both, and I sighed, crestfallen.

I was vanquished.

Directly I was beaten and avowed my error like Porus, the victor became

as clement as Alexander.

The abbé began his fascination over me by the excellence of his dinner.

If he ate well, he drank still better.

I was lost in admiration before this man--I had never imagined such

curés: the Abbé Fortier came near to reconciling me to the Seminary.

Next day after mass the Abbé Fortier began his first day's shooting.

Mass was not over before half-past eight; but not a soul was allowed to

shoot a partridge upon the preserves until the Abbé Fortier had been

seen to go by, his cassock tucked up, the game-bag on his back, a gun

on shoulder, preceded by Finaud and followed by Diane.

He had a third acolyte this time, for I was with him. My recollections

of hunting were lost in the obscurity of my early infancy; they went

back to the days of my father and Mocquet. As in Racine's tragedies,

all that happened to me at that period of my existence consisted of the

hunting stories that were told me.

This time, I took some part in the action.

The abbé was an excellent shot, and there was abundance of game: he

killed a dozen partridges and two or three hares.

I covered as much ground as Diane, and as each head of game fell, I

rushed to pick it up, in emulation of the dogs.

No one shoots without swearing a bit at his dogs; the Abbé Fortier

swore a good deal; and all these characteristics made up an entirely

different picture of an abbé in my mind: he had nothing in common with

the Abbé Grégoire.

From that day I was convinced there were two kinds of priests.

Since I have lived in Italy, and, above all, in Rome, I have discovered

a third.

Oh! what a happy day that opening day of the shooting season was! How

well I remember it! It made me the indefatigable sportsman I have since

been, the despair of gamekeepers!

The abbé, on his side, was well pleased with my power of walking,

which he found greatly superior to my brains; he made me some jeering

compliments upon it, and I felt the full value of them; but he had

given me so much pleasure that I had not the courage to be angry with

him.

I remained a fortnight with the Abbé Fortier, and I would fain have

stayed with him all my life; but my mother wanted me home: it was my

first long absence. And she, poor woman, had wanted to send me to a

Seminary! She wrote that she should die of ennui if they did not send

me back soon.

The abbé shrugged his shoulders and said:

"Very well, let him be sent back!"

Sensitiveness was not a weakness the abbé suffered from.

They put me on a donkey and took me to Crépy, where, twice a week,

there was a connection with Villers-Cotterets by means of an old woman,

called mother Sabot, and her ass.

I passed from my ass to mother Sabot's, and the same evening I was back

at Villers-Cotterets.

I found a fresh person installed at home--my future brother-in-law.

He was a young man of about twenty-six or twenty-seven, who, although

not good-looking, had such a refined and intellectual type of face, it

might easily have been taken for beauty. He was, besides, remarkably

skilful at all physical exercises, clever at fencing, able to hit a

cork out of a bottle with a bullet from his pistol at twenty-five paces

off, without touching the bottle, a perfect horseman and, although not

in the front rank as a sportsman, was considered a good shot.

He had been to our house already several times before I went away, and

I was great chums with his dog, Figaro, whose reputation for cleverness

was as great among dogs as his master's was among men.

I had the warmest of welcomes from everybody, and specially from this

young man, whose name was Victor Letellier. He was very much in love

with my sister, and wanted to make allies of all who surrounded her,

even of me.

"My dear Alexandre," he said, when he caught sight of me, "something

has been lying on my chimney-piece for you for a fortnight. I do not

want to tell you what it is--go and fetch it for yourself."

I rushed off at full speed, Victor lived with M. Picot at l'Épée, the

house wherein my father had died.

"Open M. Letellier's door for me," I cried, as I ran into the kitchen;

"he has sent me to fetch something he has left on the mantelshelf."

They opened the door. I ran to the chimney-piece, and there, in the

middle of two or three piles of money, spurs, riding-whips, bootjacks,

and other objects, I saw a small pocket-pistol, quite a tiny one, upon

which I pounced unhesitatingly, for I knew it was the thing intended

for me.

That present was one of the first I ever received, and it gave me great

joy.

But it was not enough to have the pistol, I must also have the means

wherewith to enjoy it. I looked all round me: it was not difficult to

find what I wanted in a sportsman's room: I was hunting for powder.

I found a powder-horn, and poured half its contents into another

horn; then I bolted off to a part of the park which was called the

"parterre," that is to say, a stretch before the forest began.

Then began a fusillade which only ended with my last grain of powder,

and which collected all the street urchins of the town. At the end of

half an hour my mother was warned that I was devoting myself to a most

terrific fire practice.

My mother always feared some accident would happen to me, for she loved

me much. Once, one of our friends, whose name, M. Danré de Vouty, I

have already mentioned, came to our house pale and bleeding. He had

been shooting near Villers-Cotterets; it was winter, and in jumping

over a ditch some snow got down his gun-barrel; the gun had burst, and

the explosion had carried off part of his left hand.

Doctor Lécosse was called in, and at once amputated the thumb. M. Danré

recovered, after a fearful attack of fever, but he was maimed for life.

Thus, every time the question of guns or pistols or any sort of

firearms was brought up, my mother pictured me being brought home pale

and bleeding like M. Danré de Vouty; she was so frightened that I took

pity on her, and nearly gave up the idea of ever becoming a Hippolytus

or a Nimrod.

Then I would return to my bow and arrows, but here was a fresh subject

of alarm for my mother. One of our neighbours, a man called Bruyant

(please remember this name, for we shall come across it again in an

important event), had had, like Philip of Macedon, his right eye

destroyed by an arrow.

My mother's terror, therefore, was great when she learnt that I had

been supplied with a pistol and that I had munitions wherewith to

practise; but it was very hard work to run after me, for my legs had

grown since the adventure of Lebègue; moreover, the forest was my

friend; as Bas-de-Cuir knew every nook and corner of his woods, so did

I know all the turns and by-ways in ours. I could have hidden there

three days without returning. Therefore, they decided to make use of

the law.

There lived at the town hall a sort of deputy police agent, who almost

fulfilled the office of a commissary: he cried the news of the day

to the beating of a drum, as is still done in some country places;

in summer, he killed stray dogs, not by shooting, but with a great

hunting-knife; in winter, he broke the ice off the streams, and swept

the snow from our doors.

His name was Tournemolle.

They told him, and he lay in wait for my return to my mother; then he

appeared behind me.

When I saw Tournemolle, I foresaw something dreadful was going to

happen.

He had come, in the name of all the inhabitants, who were disturbed by

the noise of the pistol-shots, to ask, nay, if needs be to insist on,

the disarmament of the culprit.

There was a struggle; but strength was on the side of authority, and

the culprit was disarmed.

My joy was, therefore, short-lived; it had not even lasted as long as

do the roses. Within the space of one hour, I had become the happy

owner of a pistol, I had used up my powder, I had returned home and I

had been disarmed by Tournemolle.

That disarmament was a terrible disgrace for me, such an ignominy that

not even the grave news which reached us next day was able to cause me

to forget it.

The next day was the 23rd of September 1812, when Paris saw the

conspiracy of Mallet, whilst Napoleon from Moscow was dating his decree

upon the Constitution of the Théâtre-Français, and upon the good men of

Cambrai.

God had begun to withdraw His hand from this man. He had forced the

battle of Moskova in the teeth of a weakened army and increasing

distrust in his ability; he had left eleven of his generals dead on the

field; he wrote to the bishops to sing _Te Deums_, for it was necessary

to reassure Paris and to reassure himself; then he entered Moscow,

believing that it was like any other capital, and that evening Moscow

revealed itself by its first conflagrations.

Then, instead of taking a decisive course of action, such as to march

on St. Petersburg or to return to Paris; instead of establishing his

winter quarters in the heart of Russia, as Cæsar did in the heart of

Gaul, he hesitated, he became worried, he felt he had adventured too

far, and was, maybe, lost.

By a strange coincidence it was at this moment that, at Paris, before

even present embarrassment and reverses to come had made themselves

felt, Mallet's conspiracy burst out, seized hold of the Colossus in the

full tide of his power, bound him, shook him to his foundations, and if

it did not overthrow him, at any rate proved he could be overthrown.

On the 29th, Mallet, Lahorie, and Guidai were shot on the plain of

Grenelle.

At length Napoleon made up his mind. For the first time he had taken

a capital to no purpose; for the first time he beat a retreat after

victories. The snow which fell on the 13th October settled the

conqueror's vacillations, and the Almighty saved his pride by allowing

him one last consolation--he could say he had been beaten by climate

and not by man.

On the 19th of October Napoleon left Moscow, deputing the duc de

Treviso to seize the Kremlin and to carry off the cross of the great

Ivan, which he intended for the dome of the Invalides, and which he had

to leave behind on his journey, lacking arms to carry it farther.

At last, on November the 18th, Napoleon reached the Tuileries at eleven

o'clock at night, went close to a large fire, warmed himself, rubbed

his hands, and said: "Decidedly it is better here than at Moscow."

That was the funeral oration over the finest army ever raised!

O Varus!... Varus!...

CHAPTER VIII

A political chronology--Trouble follows trouble--The fire at the farm

at Noue--Death of Stanislas Picot--The hiding-place for the louis

d'or--The Cossacks--The haricot mutton.

It would be indeed too preposterous of me to take up public attention

with the feats and performances of an urchin of twelve, when, for two

years, we were to pass through such grave events.

The decline of the Man of Destiny was rapid: he was sustained for a

brief while by the victories of Lutzen, Bautzen, and Wurschen, but he

left behind him two of his most faithful lieutenants--the dukes of

Istria and Duroc. There was no danger of bullets striking down those

who intended to betray him.

He was doomed--England had bought his ruin.

Will you learn at what price? On 14th June, 1813, she paid Prussia

660,660 livres sterling; on the 15th, 1,333,334 livres sterling to

Russia; and finally, on 12th August, 500,000 livres sterling to Austria.

We see how scrupulous in this matter was his father-in-law, François;

he refrained from selling his son-in-law until two months after the

others, and for 160,000 livres sterling less than Prussia.

But what did that matter? Bonaparte could note down in his red-letter

book that he became the son-in-law of a Cæsar and the nephew of King

Louis XVI.

That was the height of his ambition. What was there to be sorry for

when that ambition was once satisfied?

On the 16th and 18th of October, 117,000 rounds of cannon were fired

off at Leipzig, 111,000 more at Malplaquet.

Each round cost two louis.

They celebrated the death service of the Empire in right regal style!

It was in this way that Napoleon lost another of his faithful

followers, Poniatowski, who had been made a marshal on the 16th and who

was drowned on the 19th, in the river Elster.

On the 1st of November the emperor sent twenty standards to Paris.

On the 8th the battle of Mochest took place, the last of the campaign.

On the 9th the emperor returned to Saint-Cloud.

On the 12th the allied armies entered Dusseldorf.

On the 13th the kings of Prussia and of Bavaria reached Frankfort.

On the 15th, 300,000 conscripts were mobilised.

On the 16th the emperor went hunting on foot on the plains of Satory.

On the 22nd he was present at a representation at the Opera, while the

Russians were entering Amsterdam.

On the 2nd December the emperor witnessed a performance at the Odéon,

while the allied armies were crossing the Rhine at Dusseldorf.

On the 6th the Prince of Orange, who had landed in Holland on the 30th

November, issued a proclamation to the Dutch.

On the 17th the Allies crossed the Rhine at different points in Alsace.

On the 23rd they occupied Neuchâtel.

On the 31st they entered Geneva.

And with this news closed the year 1813.

The year 1814 was to see a continuation of these reverses and the

beginning of defections.

On the 3rd January the Allies took Colmar.

On the 6th they invested Besançon; and Murat, who had re-conquered

Naples, signed an armistice with England.

On the 7 h the Allies entered Dôle.

On the 8th Murat concluded a treaty of alliance with Austria.

On the 10th the Allies invested Landau and took Forbach.

On the 12th Murat signed a treaty of alliance with England.

On the 16th the Allies seized Langres.

On the 17th Murat declared war against France.

On the 21st the Allies took Châlons-sur-Saône.

On the 22nd Murat entered Rome.

Finally, on the 24th, the emperor left Paris to return to his army,

on the 27th he took up the offensive again, and began that wonderful

campaign of 1814, which lasted sixty-seven days, and during which, the

end being the abdication at Fontainebleau, he showed his marvellous

genius to greater effect than in taking Milan or Cairo, Berlin, Vienna,

or Moscow.

None the less his hour had come; in vain had the Titan heaped Pelion

upon Ossa, Champaubert on Montmirail--his hour had come, and he was to

fall overwhelmed....

The sound of cannon boomed in my hearing for the first time.

I heard it in the foldyard of a farm belonging to M. Picot of Noue--a

quarter of a league off Villers-Cotterets.

"Misfortunes come in flocks," says a Russian proverb; and a host of

misfortunes had flown over and beaten against the head of that good

man. The farm at Noue had been one of the finest in Villers-Cotterets,

and M. Picot one of the most prosperous farmers.

But in 1812, I think it was, they stacked a damp crop in his barns, and

one night the straw kindled, and we were awakened by the tocsin and by

cries of "Fire!"

Everybody realises the dreadfulness of that cry in the middle of the

night and in a little town: all Villers-Cotterets got up instantly and

rushed to the burning farm.

I do not know a more splendid sight than a tremendous fire, such as

that one. The farm blazed the whole length of its barns and stables,

presenting a curtain three or four hundred paces in extent, from behind

which came the lowing of cattle, the whinnying of horses, the bleating

of sheep.

Everything was burnt, buildings and live-stock; for animals will not

stir when they smell fire.

That fire was the first serious catastrophe I was ever present at, and

it left a deep impression on my memory.

They did not get the mastery over the fire till next day, and the loss

was enormous. Fortunately, as we have said, M. Picot was very rich.

The following year came another misfortune. M. Picot had two sons and

a daughter. The eldest of his sons was eight or ten years, the younger

only two or three, my senior.

Consequently I had scarcely anything to do with the eldest, who treated

me like a little boy, but I was extremely friendly with the younger,

whose name was Stanislas.

One day, my mother came into my room, in a great state of mind.

"There, now," she said, "never ask me to let you play with firearms

again."

"Why not, mother?"

"Stanislas has just wounded himself, perhaps mortally."

"Oh! my goodness, where is he?"

"At his father's. Go and see him."

I set off running, and covered the quarter of a league in six or seven

minutes. When I reached the farm, I saw a long trail of blood.

Everybody was in such a state of consternation that no one asked me

where I was going. I crossed the yards, I went through the kitchen and

I slipped into the room where Stanislas was. They were just putting the

first bandage on the wound; the surgeon was there, with his surgical

case open, his hands covered with blood. The poor sufferer was leaning

back, clasping his mother's neck with both his arms as she bent over

him.

They saw me, and told me to approach the bed. Stanislas kissed me, and

thanked me for coming to see him. He was horribly pale.

He was ordered quiet before everything, so everybody, myself among the

number, was told to go away.

This is how the accident happened: Stanislas was out shooting with his

father, and had nearly done; he was nearing the farm, which he was

just going to enter, when he heard a gun-shot.

The better to see who had fired it, and whether the shooter had killed

anything, Stanislas climbed a post at the corner of a wall; but he

forgot to unload his gun first, and unconsciously he leant his thigh

against the barrel. His dog seeing him on the post, tried to reach

him, standing on his hind legs, and with his fore paws leant on the

gun-lock. The gun went off, and Stanislas received the full charge of

partridge-shot in the neck of the femur.

It was this ghastly wound which the surgeon had just dressed when I

arrived. For two days they were hopeful, but lockjaw set in on the

third day, and Stanislas died.

The manner in which he met his death was an unending source of

exhortation on my mother's part: she declared she should never be easy

until I gave up hunting altogether. But, in spite of the impression

which this death made upon me, I would not give up anything.

Whenever I met Madame Picot, after the death of Stanislas, she showed

great kindness to me, no doubt on account of my boyish friendship with

her son.

Her daughter, too, who was very friendly with my sister, was most

cordial to me, and was the only one among grown-up people who never made

fun of my absurdities.

This excellent and good-looking lady was called Éléonore Picot, or,

more often, _Picote._

Now to return to account for my being in the farmyard at Noue when I

heard the firing of cannon for the first time. I have been sent far

afield in what I have just related, and I must return.

Since the battle of Leipzig, one idea had been in everybody's mind,

namely, that what had not happened in 1792 or in 1793 was now about to

take place--there would be an invasion of France.

Those who did not live through that period can have no idea to what a

pitch of execration the name of Napoleon had reached in the hearts of

the mothers of France.

During 1813 and 1814 the old enthusiasm died down; for it was not for

the sake of France, our common mother, nor for Liberty, the goddess of

us all, that the mothers were sacrificing their children: it was to the

ambition, the selfishness, the pride of one man.

Thanks to the successive levies, made in 1811 to 1814, thanks to the

million of men squandered in the valleys and on the mountains of Spain,

in the snows and in the rivers of Russia, in the swamps of Saxony

and on the sands of Poland, the generation of men between twenty and

twenty-two years of age had disappeared.

The very wealthiest people had fruitlessly purchased one, two, or even

three substitutes, for which they had paid as much as 10,000, 12,000,

or 15,000 francs. But Napoleon had invented his Guard of Honour, a

relentless and fatal organisation for recruiting his army, which

allowed of no substitutes, so that the wealthiest and therefore the

most privileged classes were compelled to go to war with the rest.

Conscription began at sixteen, and men remained liable to service to

the age of forty.

Mothers counted up the ages of their boys with alarm, and most gladly

would they have wrestled with time to stop the days which were flying

by all too quickly for them.

More than once my mother pressed me to her breast suddenly, with a

suppressed sigh, and tears came into her eyes.

"What is the matter, mother?" I would ask.

"Oh! when I think," she exclaimed, "that in four years you will have to

be a soldier, that that man will snatch you from me, he who has always

taken away and never given anything in return, and that he will send

you to be killed on a field of battle like Moskova or Leipzig!... Oh,

my child! my poor child!"

My mother only expressed a general feeling, but the hatred of her

fellows was expressed in different ways, according to their different

temperaments and characters; with my mother, as we have seen, it was

in sighs and tears; with other mothers, it would be in fierce threats;

with others, insulting epithets.

I remember, there lived on the place de la Fontaine the wife of a

gunsmith, whose son was at the Abbé Grégoire's school with me; her name

was Madame Montagnon. During the heat of summer afternoons, when the

greatest heat of the day had declined, she sat at her threshold with

her spinning-wheel, and all the time she was spinning she sang a song

against Bonaparte.

I only remember the first four lines of it, which begun thus:--

"Le Corse de Madame Ango

N'est pas le Corse de la Corse,

Car le Corse de Marengo

Est d'une bien plus dure écorce."

And--as Mademoiselle Pivert re-read the famous volume of _The Thousand

and One Nights_, which contained the story of _The Wonderful Lamp_,

every day in the week--so Madame Montagnon had scarcely finished the

last couplet against the Corsican of Marengo when she began the first

over again.

Now it will be readily understood that this hatred, which began to

show itself after the Russian disasters, was aggravated by terror

in proportion as the enemy drew nearer, step by step, town by town,

narrowing the circle being drawn round France.

Finally, at the beginning of 1814, it suddenly became known that the

enemy had set foot on French soil.

By that time all confidence in Napoleon's genius had disappeared. That

stupendous adventurer's genius was his good fortune.

Now, God, in His inscrutable purposes, had designed his fall and had

deserted him.

People not merely ceased to believe in him, but they ceased to hope.

Those who had anything to fear or to expect from a political movement,

all those skin-changing serpents that live on different Governments

as they come and go, already began to lay their plans--some to lessen

their fears, others to augment their expectations. They began to

feel, moreover, that Napoleon was not France; but that they had, so

to speak, taken the heroic tenant on a lease, and the lease was

up--France was prepared to bear the damages, but not to renew the lease.

You could still hear people saying: "Napoleon has beaten the enemy at

Brienne; the Prussians are retreating to Bar"--but at the same time

they said: "The Russians are marching on Troyes." We certainly read in

the _Moniteur_ that we had beaten them at Rosnay and on the road to

Vitry; but at the same time that this bulletin was published appeared

the first Royalist manifesto. We were routing the Allies at Champaubert

and at Montmirail, but the duc d'Angoulême was issuing a proclamation

dated from Saint Jean-de-Luz.

At each victory, Napoleon was using up his men, and losing ten leagues

of ground. Wherever he fought personally, the enemy was beaten, but he

could not be in every place at once.

Every moment was bringing the roar of cannons nearer to us, though we

had not actually heard them yet.

There had been fighting at Château-Thierry; and at Nogent; and Laon was

occupied.

Everyone began hiding his valuables, burying what he considered most

precious.

We had a cellar which was reached through a trap-door; my mother filled

it with linen, furniture, mattresses, she had the trap-door taken away

and the whole room re-floored; so no treasure-seekers could see the

exact spot to fasten upon.

Then she put thirty old louis in a box, she put this box in a small

leather bag, she drove a stake in the garden and in the hole made by

the stake she slipped the box.

Who on earth would find a box planted vertically in the very middle of

a garden? It would have required a wizard to find it there.

We could not have found it again ourselves if I had not made a guiding

mark on the wall.

One fine day we saw some soldiers come past, flying at full speed.

Soissons had just been taken; they had leapt their horses over the

ramparts, and six or eight had been killed or badly injured; three or

four had escaped.

My poor mother began now to be frightened in real earnest, and her fear

took the form of cooking an enormous haricot of mutton. The reader may

well ask why her fear took that peculiar form.

Fearful pictures had been spread over the country of Cossacks from the

Don, the Volga and the Borysthenes: making them look as hideous as

possible. They were depicted mounted on hideous scarecrows, wearing

caps made of wild beasts' skins, armed with lances, bows and arrows. A

combination of utter impossibilities, one would have said.

Yet there were optimists who, in spite of these awful pictures, said

that the Cossacks were brave men at heart, much less wicked than they

looked to be, and that, provided we fed them well enough and gave them

plenty to drink, they would do us no manner of harm.

Hence my mother's huge stew of mutton--it was for them to eat.

In the matter of drink, we did not give them our cellar (for we have

seen to what use my mother had put it), but we set them aside our

wine-bin, and they could then draw what Soissons' wine they liked.

Then, finally, if, in spite of the haricot mutton and the Soissons'

wine, they still proved too objectionable, we were to escape by way of

the quarry.

We will now describe what this was.

CHAPTER IX

The quarry--Frenchmen eat the haricot cooked for the Cossacks--The

Duc de Treviso--He allows himself to be surprised--Ducoudray the

hosier--Terrors.

Five or six hundred steps from the farmhouse at home, in the middle

of open country, scattered over with dwarf juniper trees, where the

rocks jutted out of the earth all round, as the bones of a consumptive

patient stick out through his skin, an excavation suddenly opens

similar to those one meets at every turn in the Campagna of Rome. This

excavation looks like a cave of Cumæ or an air-hole of Avernus. When

you bend over its opening you can hear the roar which astonishes one

on holding a shell to the ear--only this roar is on a greater and more

frightful and more gigantic scale; then, if you try for a moment to

pierce through the darkness, which increases as the cavern deepens, you

can make out a rock, sticking up perpendicularly, about twenty-five or

thirty feet below you, and burying its base in the bowels of the earth

at a steep angle.

This is the entrance to the quarry.

You ask to what quarry?

To _the_ quarry, doubtless, since it was always called "The

Quarry"--just as Rome was called _The City_--_Urbs._

When, by the help of a ladder, you descend the twenty-five or thirty

feet, you reach a platform from which you slide down the steep slope

for five or six feet, and then you find yourself at the entrance of an

immense labyrinth--compared with which that of the Cretan Dædalus was

but a child's garden in a toy box.

Who had hewn out these great catacombs? What town had being in these

unknown depths? It would indeed be difficult to tell.

Its subterranean passages had certainly communicated with some larger

opening pointing to further undermining. The opening by which one

entered was, as we have said, merely a crack, too narrow to have ever

disgorged the quantity of stones missing from the bare sides of the

mountain.

It was in this quarry, then, that half the people of Villers-Cotterets

had taken refuge under stress of terror.

A large encampment had been set up; a regular village, inhabited by

five or six hundred people, in the midst of the square hall of granite,

under a granite vault upheld by granite pillars; nearly a quarter of a

league from the opening, at a depth of a hundred or a hundred and fifty

feet.

My mother was one of the first who had chosen and secured and marked

out her allotment in it; and there we carried mattresses, blankets, a

table and some books.

So, when the first alarm came, we had but to leave Villers-Cotterets

and to hide in the quarry.

Before resorting to this extremity, my mother meant to try every means

of conciliation, and one of her means of conciliation, the one she set

most store by, was her haricot mutton and her Soissons wines.

But man proposes and God disposes. After three days of hanging over the

fire, after three days of lying in the cellar, the haricot mutton was

eaten and the wine was drunk by Frenchmen.

Marshal Mortier's Corps, with the remnant of the Young Guard, and a

dozen of cannon, came; they were commissioned to defend the entrance to

the forest.

Great was our joy! It was glorious to see these fine young fellows,

full of hope and courage, instead of the hideous-looking Cossacks we

had been expecting.

Youth never despairs, for it is still in harmony with the divine. It

was not so with the old generals, above all with the duc de Treviso.

There was a strange lassitude in all the men who had followed the

fortunes of the emperor. Their worldly position was secured; they

had reached the zenith of their fortunes by becoming marshals; while

Napoleon--that hankerer after the unattainable--still went on coveting

something more!

Therefore, those who were not left sleeping dead and bleeding on the

battle-fields, stopped, harassed, upon the road of his retreat; shaking

their heads at his never-resting, feverish course; and saying: "It is

right enough for that man of iron, but we--we are not able to follow

him any further."

Villers-Cotterets was one of these halting-places where the duc

de Treviso stopped, overpowered by fatigue. We saw him pass by on

horseback in the morning and reconnoitre the forest, guided by the

inspector, M. Deviolaine.

My mother took the old tricoloured cockade out of my father's hat,

which had remained there since the Egyptian Campaign, and carried it to

M. Deviolaine, with a blunderbuss.

M. Deviolaine put the cockade in his hat, and the blunderbuss at his

saddle-bow.

I can still remember the marshal, that veteran of our earliest battles,

who escaped, throughout all our wars, the grapeshot of Prussia,

of England, of Russia and of Austria, only to fall at last on the

boulevard du Temple by Fieschi's infernal machine.

The giant passed by, doubled up on his horse; one would have said then

that a child would have been strong enough to defeat that invincible

warrior.

So long as Hercules crowned carried the world on his own shoulders, all

went well; but, when he shifted the least portion upon the shoulders of

his lieutenants, they gave way beneath the weight.

When evening came there was a grand dinner-party at M. Deviolaine's, to

which I was taken; and the marshal took me up on his knees and fondled

me: for he had known my father.

I asked him for news of my godfather Brune; he was in disgrace, or on

the verge of it.

The dinner was a sad affair, the evening depressing. The marshal

retired early, went to bed and slept. We were awakened at midnight by

the sound of firing. Fighting was going on in the parterre. The marshal

had been careless about his sentries; the enemy had seized his park,

and he only saved himself by escaping, half-dressed, by a back-door,

from M. Deviolaine's house.

In the morning the enemy had disappeared, taking away our dozen pieces

of artillery.

The same day the marshal retired, I think, to Compiègne, and the town

was deserted.

The enemy would surely not be long in appearing after this; so my

mother set to work on a second haricot mutton.

Our days passed in constant alarms. When a couple of horsemen were seen

on the highroad, the cry would go forth, "The Cossacks! the Cossacks!"

Then a great crowd of people would run along the streets, children

crying, shutters and doors banging as they fled, and the town would

assume the funereal aspect of a city of the dead.

In spite of my mother's haricot mutton, which boiled unceasingly in

the copper, and her Soissonais wine, ready for the corkscrew, she

grew frightened with the rest, shut our door, and, pressing me to her

breast, agitated and trembling, she would retire into a far corner.

Of course there were no more classes amid all these alarms; no more

college; no more Abbé Grégoire.

I am wrong: the Abbé Grégoire was, on the contrary, more than ever

present.

The Abbé Grégoire was calmness itself, and accordingly a great comfort

all round. He went from house to house reassuring everybody, pointing

out that evil comes from evil, and that if no ill was done to these

much dreaded Cossacks, they, on their side, would do none to us.

Moreover, it would be to their interest not to behave too outrageously.

When at Villers-Cotterets, they would find themselves in the midst of

a vast forest, occupied by thirty or forty foresters, who knew every

turning and winding better than Osman knew those of the Seraglio, and

who were all of them more or less capable of putting a bullet into a

crown-piece at a hundred paces distance. These were considerations which

even Cossacks could appreciate highly.

Meanwhile, time was passing by; there was fighting at Mormant, at

Montmirail, at Montereau. We were assured that at this latter battle

Bonaparte (to use his own expression), by turning back into an

artillery-man, had saved Napoleon.

We had retaken Soissons on the 19th February, and the haricot had been

on the fire for five days. No one expected any more Cossacks to come,

at least for some time, so we ate the haricot mutton. We received

more reassuring news; and there was even talk of an armistice to be

concluded with the Emperor of Austria, through the intervention of the

Prince of Lichtenstein. Napoleon had re-entered Troyes on the 24th,

and had dismissed the prefect; finally, conferences had taken place at

Largny for suspension of hostilities.

But soon the fire burst out again, rekindled by some spark or other,

and we learnt, in quick succession, of fighting at Bar-sur-Aube, at

Meaux, and of the surrender of la Fère.

The enemy was coming nearer and nearer to us.

My mother set to work on a third haricot mutton.

Suddenly, in the middle of a foggy February morning, again the cry of

"The Cossacks!" sounded, we heard the galloping of several horses,

and we saw about fifteen long-bearded cavaliers, with tall lances,

ride through the rue de Soissons; they seemed, indeed, to be more like

desperate runaways than threatening conquerors.

As they advanced, doors and windows were shut. Their horses, urged at

full gallop, traversed the whole length of the rue de Largny; then

they retraced their steps, galloping still, and plunged again into the

rue de Soissons, whence they departed, disappearing like a misty and

hideous dream.

They were scarcely out of sight before firing was heard.

The sound made my mother tremble; but powder had its usual effect on

me; I slipped out of her hands, I escaped from her and ran off to the

beginning of the rue de Soissons in spite of her cries. The Cossacks

had entirely disappeared.

A woman stood on the threshold of an open door wringing her hands.

She was the wife of a retail hosier named Ducoudray.

The neighbours gradually undid their doors at the sound of her cries,

and at her gestures of despair ran up and collected round the door.

I was one of the first to arrive, and I learnt the reason for her cries

and her despair.

At the approach of the Cossacks, the hosier had closed his door in fear

and trembling, having opened it out of curiosity after their first

passage. As they passed, one of the riders discharged his pistol at the

shut door, just as though it had been a target. The bullet pierced the

door and hit M. Ducoudray in the throat, breaking his spine.

He was lying on the ground, with his head resting on his daughter's

knees, torrents of blood flowing from his wound, which had severed an

artery.

Death had been instantaneous; he had already ceased to breathe.

Hence the cries, hence the despair of his wife.

As for the Cossacks, they had disappeared as they had come, and, if

they had not left this bloody testimony in their wake, the town would

have imagined their visit had been a bad dream.

Half from fear, and half in order to bear this important news, I ran

back home full speed, and at the corner of the street I met my mother;

she had already heard the news.

This time neither the haricot mutton nor the Soissonais wine appeared

to her a safe shield against our impending dangers. She pictured the

Cossacks passing in front of our door, instead of passing before that

of M. Ducoudray; she saw the bullet flying through the door, and myself

stretched, bleeding and dying from the pistol-shot before her eyes.

We had a sort of housekeeper whom we called "the Queen." My mother

left her third haricot mutton and her wine of Soissons to the Queen,

bade her watch over the house, took me by the hand and dragged me at a

frantic pace towards the quarry.

We turned as we left the town, and we saw the troop of Cossacks

climbing a long hill at a gallop, the hill of Dampleux. They were

a little detachment that had lost its way, and kept straying even

further afield. I afterwards heard it said that not one of those twelve

or fifteen men ever left the forest.

My mother and I fled on; running as only people can run under the

influence of terror, hot and breathless. We told whom we met not only

of the presence of the Cossacks, but also of the assassination they had

perpetrated ten minutes previously.

Everyone who was not already in the quarry at once retreated to it; the

last man who descended removed the ladder, and, for twenty-four hours,

not one of the colony had the courage to go near the opening.

By degrees this first terror subsided, and people ventured to put their

noses outside. The bravest ascended to the earth's surface, went to

learn what was happening, and found that the Cossacks had completely

disappeared, and that, except for the misfortune that had occurred the

day before, the town was quiet.

My mother then decided to accept the offer made her by Madame Picot; to

take me to spend the day at the farm, and only to return to the quarry

to sleep there at night.

If anything fresh happened we were to be warned of it instantly by one

of the many labourers employed on M. Picot's estate, who were to unyoke

a horse from plough or harrow and to ride off in hot haste to give the

alarm at the farm.

Five or six days passed in this fashion, during which we learnt in

succession of the battles of Lizy, of St Julien, and of Bar-sur-Seine.

At length one day, as I have said, we heard from the farmyard the

roaring of cannon.

There was fighting going on at Neuilly-Saint-Front.

The night after the battle, I went to sleep with my head filled with

the noise of battle, and I dreamt that the Cossacks came down into the

quarry.

When morning came, I repeated this dream to my mother, and it terrified

her to such an extent that she made up her mind we should set off next

day.

Where were we to go? She had absolutely no idea; but she fancied by

changing places she might perhaps exorcise the danger.

CHAPTER X

The return to Villers-Cotterets, and what we met on the way--The

box with the thirty louis in it--The leather-bag--The mole--Our

departure--The journey--The arrival at Mesnil and our sojourn

there--King Joseph--The King of Rome--We leave Mesnil--Our visit to

Crespy in Valois--The dead and wounded--The surrender of Paris--The

isle of Elba.

When the resolution was made, it was carried into execution that very

day. My mother and I climbed to the highest elevation about the farm,

we explored all round, and, when we could not discover any appearance

of Cossacks, we ventured to return to the town.

We had hardly gone a hundred steps before we met a clerk called

Crétet on horseback. He was a good sort of lad, who had been in my

brother-in-law's employment.

He was going from house to house.

"What are you looking for?" my mother asked.

"I am hunting for a carriage, a cab, a wagon, a berlin, or any sort

of conveyance to harness my horse to and set off in," he said;

"Mademoiselle Adélaïde does not want to stay in Villers-Cotterets any

longer."

Mademoiselle Adélaïde was an old, humpbacked spinster, possessing

several thousand francs of income, towards which I suspect Crétet had

leanings.

"Ah! now that is lucky!" exclaimed my mother; "it is exactly what we

are looking out for too. May we leave with you? You are two in number,

and we two; we shall travel at half the cost."

It is always cheaper to travel four, rather than two; so the offer was

accepted.

A spring cart was found possessing a minimum of springs, and it was

settled that we should leave the same evening.

My mother returned to Villers-Cotterets to collect some clothing

necessary for our journey, and, first and foremost, to extract the

famous treasure of thirty louis from its hole.

We entered the house, still guarded by "the Queen"; then we went into

the garden; we recognised the spot where we had buried our treasure,

and I took a spade and set to work to dig.

At the third or fourth shovelful of earth I began to be uneasy. I

looked at my mother, and I saw that she shared my anxiety.

There was no more sign of the box than if it had never existed. I

returned to the guiding mark, I measured the steps; no--I had not made

any mistake.

Then I set to work to dig all round my first hole,--all in vain; it was

lost labour.

I returned to the middle hole, and continued digging deeper and deeper.

Suddenly I uttered a cry of delight. I had caught sight of the strings

of the leather bag.

I pulled the strings, and the leather bag came up--but ... it was empty!

A hole had been made in the bottom of it.

Affairs were growing mysterious. Why in the world, if they had stolen

the box, had they troubled to make a hole in the leather bag to take

the money out? It would have been much easier to have carried off the

whole lot; receptacle and its contents together.

A brilliant idea occurred to me. I zealously continued my digging, and

a foot and a half deeper down my spade hit at last against an obstacle.

"Here is the box!" I cried.

And the box it was indeed.

A mole, attracted by the smell of the leather enclosed, had burrowed to

get at it. It had disturbed the soil, and the box, dragged down by its

own weight, had fallen into the pit made by the blind miner.

My mother quickly opened the box, and found that not one louis was

missing.

The cart was loaded that evening, the horse put into the shafts, and we

set off along the road to Paris.

I was enchanted: we were about to pay a second visit to the capital of

the civilised world, and, although it was in a deplorable condition, I

was no less anxious to see it.

Unfortunately we were not rich enough, with our few louis, to stay in

Paris. This was a matter that had not occurred to me.

It was decided to stop in a village where living would be cheap.

The first night we got as far as Nanteuil, and put up at an inn which

my father used to frequent when we went to Paris. Then, next morning,

very early, we resumed our journey.

About one o'clock we reached the steep ascent of Dammartin, and got

down from our conveyance to ease the horse a little.

Fighting was going on somewhere; we could hear the firing distinctly,

like the thunder of a distant storm.

We even seemed to be travelling in the direction of the roar of the

cannon; but, so blind is fear, that if the enemy had been in front of

us my mother would rather have continued her course than turn back.

We passed through Dammartin without stopping, except to ask the news.

No one knew anything very definite. The Count d'Artois was at Nancy;

the allied sovereigns at Nogent-sur-Seine. The enemy was advancing upon

Paris from all sides--that was all they could tell us.

We baited our horse at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges; then, when we had

dined, we continued on our way, and reached Mesnil about eight in the

evening.

We stopped at a hotel whose name I have forgotten--but it was situated

on the left, at the corner of a street opposite the posting-house.

Next day, to my great regret, nothing was said about continuing our

journey; it seemed to be almost settled that we should not go any

further.

How were we better off at Mesnil than at Villers-Cotterets, a dozen

leagues from our starting-point and upon the same road? Neither my

mother nor Mademoiselle Adélaïde could say with certainty.

However, it was settled that, unless some serious event occurred, we

had reached our journey's end.

We arrived at Mesnil on the 22nd of March.

On the 25th everybody was talking of a grand review of the National

Guard, which was to be held by King Joseph in the court of the

Tuileries.

This function roused Mademoiselle Adélaïde's curiosity, for she had

never seen Paris, and it was decided to put the horse to our cart,

to start on the afternoon of the 26th, to sleep in Paris, to see the

review on the 27th, and to return on the 28th.

My mother did not care to take this little trip; for Paris recalled

memories that my thoughtless childhood had forgotten. She entrusted me

to Crétet and to Mademoiselle Adélaïde, who took me with them.

I have but two clear recollections of this journey--although it was

eight years later than the last one.

One, radiant and poetic: and the other impure and stained.

The first was when, at the flourish of brazen trumpets and the waving

of welcoming flags, they lifted up above the heads of 50,000 of the

National Guard, the rosy, fair, curly head of a child of three, amid

cries of _Vive le roi de Rome? Vive la régence!_

He was that poor child who was born a king, but who was destined by

fate not only to be disinherited of both his kingdoms, but soon to lose

both his parents.

A painting of this child was sent to the emperor at Moscow, and another

followed Napoleon to Saint-Helena.

The father of this little martyr-innocent had scarcely time to realise

his existence, except as a heavenly vision appearing for a brief space

in this world. He saw him after the Russian campaign, after the Dresden

campaign, and never again save in the dreams and hallucinations of his

solitude and his despair.

His mother,--as disastrous an influence on the fortunes of France as

all other daughters of the Cæsars: Anne of Austria, Marie Antoinette,

and now Marie Louise--stood behind him, but her face left an indistinct

and insipid impression on my mind, and her features are lost in the

mists of time; I can only remember her fair hair fastened up on the top

of her head by a diamond comb.

They swore fealty to this poor child, and, if the flourish of trumpets

and the shouting had ceased for a moment, if the murmur of Paris with

her million peoples had been stilled, the booming of the enemy's guns

could have been heard thundering only two leagues away from the place

where they were making all that futile cheering, and swearing those

hollow vows!

In his name it was promised that he should never quit Paris; that he,

Marie Louise his mother, and King Joseph his uncle, should die among

the French people. And the carriages that were to bear them away next

day were standing ready with the horses harnessed, in the courtyards of

the Tuileries!

So it fell out that the King of Rome left the château of Catherine of

Médicis the following morning--that castle which survived days like

the 20th June, the 10th August, the 29th July, and the 24th February.

On the morrow he left to his successors, the Duke of Bordeaux and the

Count of Paris, the royal cradle presented by the Hôtel-de-Ville; they

too--both great-nephews of Louis XVI.--were destined not to rest in it

any longer than he had done.

This, then, was the flash of light and poetry still present to my

memory.

The second recollection was of the number of girls of the town who,

at that period, called out from the windows of their apartments to

passers-by their licentious invitations with gestures obscene.

Every few moments I would turn round and say to Crétet and Mademoiselle

Adélaïde, "They are calling to us." Both laughed, and I wondered why

they laughed.

We left Paris quite early next day, but not too early, however, to

learn the ill-starred news.

During the night the King of Rome, the Empress, and King Joseph had

left Paris and were speeding towards the Loire.

On learning this news, which meant the abandonment of the capital, my

mother felt that the place where we were--a little village on the great

highway, six leagues from the barriers--was the place of all places

where we should be least safe, even though we might not be in any

danger at all.

Paris, we heard, was preparing to defend herself, so if we remained at

Mesnil we should be right in the line of attack.

Moreover, the enemy was at Meaux--their advance-guard had been seen as

far as Bondy.

My mother determined to turn back, and we started on our return journey

to Villers-Cotterets the next day.

I have completely forgotten what we did with Crétet and Mademoiselle

Adélaïde, I only know they were not with us during the subsequent

events.

When we reached Nanteuil, we learnt that the enemy had turned the

position at Soissons, and were at Villers-Cotterets, marching upon

Nanteuil. The Cossacks had discovered the quarry, had gone down into it

and, according to rumour, had committed abominations in its dark depths

such as the sun itself would have blushed to see had they been done in

the light of day.

We heard behind us, from the direction of Paris, the sound of firing,

and we were informed that the Prussian advance-guard was at Levignan,

two leagues from where we then were. Therefore, if we wished to escape

entirely from the enemy, there was only the road to Crespy available.

Crespy, being situated two leagues north of the road from Laon to

Paris, leads nowhere, and might be overlooked.

So we made for Crespy.

My mother knew an old lady there, named Madame de Longpré--the widow of

an old valet de chambre of Louis XV.

Concerning her I only remember that she was addicted to the terrible

habit of brandy-drinking, and that in order to procure her brandy she

sold every single article of a collection of magnificent china such as

I have never seen since.

And at what price do you think she sold them? Thirty or forty _sous_

the piece!

True, at that time Chinese porcelain was not so highly valued as is the

fashion to-day.

We drew up at her house, but she had not enough room to take us in; and

the sight of her perpetual drinking would have been repulsive.

She took us to a lady--Madame Millet--who had, she said, a spare room

quite ready that she could let us have.

It was soon settled;--Crespy is so near Villers-Cotterets that my

mother was perfectly well known there, and we installed ourselves that

same day.

Madame Millet had two sons and two daughters:--one of these two

daughters, Amélie, would have been very pretty had she not lost one

eye, through an accident--it was always closed, and she hid it by a

great mass of beautiful black hair.

I remember nothing at all about the youngest girl, not even her name.

The two sons were army surgeons like their father.

The eldest had already left the service some two or three years before,

and practised medicine in Crespy.

The other was with his regiment, no one knew where. In the midst of

this general _débâcle_ nothing had been heard of him for six or eight

weeks past, and the poor mother and his two sisters were very uneasy

about him.

As we crossed the main square of Crespy, we came upon a kind of

bivouac; we inquired about this garrison--a source of danger rather

than a means of help, in a town which was as open as a market-place,

and we learnt that it was composed of 100 infantry and 200 cavalry.

This little corps was completely cut off from all communication with

the main army, and was stationed there, under inferior officers,

without any orders: there they awaited the tide of events.

The enemy lay all round Crespy: at Compiègne, at Villers-Cotterets, at

Levignan. But by some curious chance, for which we were most grateful,

Crespy had remained, like Péronne, if not quite inviolable, at least

inviolate.

Our two or three hundred men kept splendid guard; they had pickets all

round, their muskets were kept ever ready piled, and their horses were

only unbridled when they had to be fed.

The activity of this handful of men was a remarkable contrast to

the negligence of the duc de Treviso and of his army corps, who, as

we have related, allowed themselves to be surprised one night at

Villers-Cotterets.

One day, in spite of this vigilance, or rather because of it, an alarm

was spread; the enemy had been seen filing out of the wood of Tillet,

at the foot of the rise of Montigny.

This was the same hillock I thought so high, when I travelled to

Béthisy with Picard and my cousin Marianne.

However that might be, the enemy was approaching, and the little troop

resolved to defend vigorously.

Madame Millet's house was the second or third on the right as you came

into the town from Villers-Cotterets--the same road that the enemy was

taking.

The windows looked up that road.

We went up into the attics, which we turned into a general camping

ground,--for Madame Millet, my mother, and the two daughters had

settled not to stir out. From the windows of these attics we could see

the approach of a little corps of about a hundred men.

Was it, we questioned, an isolated corps like ours at Crespy? or the

advance-guard of a more considerable force? We were unable to tell, or

rather to see, from our attic windows, as the road turned a few paces

outside the town, was lost behind the houses that stood on our right,

and completely cut off from sight a quarter of a league further by the

wood of Tillet, which was large enough to conceal a much larger force

than the one that had just passed through it.

It was Prussian cavalry. The men were clothed in short blue coats,

tight-fitting round the chest, loose below and fastened at the waist by

belts.

They wore grey trousers, with a blue stripe like their coats, and had

small vizored helmets on their heads, fastened by a leather chin-strap.

Each man carried a sabre and two pistols.

I can still see the first rank, preceded by two trumpeters, holding

their trumpets in their hands but not blowing them.

An officer marched behind the trumpeters.

They were fine-looking young fellows, fair, and of a more distinguished

bearing than the ordinary soldier; no doubt they were of the voluntary

levies of 1813, who came to Leipzig to try their prentice hands on

us; officers of the _Tugendbund_, which had produced Staps and was to

produce Sand.

They passed under our windows, and disappeared out of our sight; a

moment later we heard a perfect hurricane of sound, and the house shook

to the gallop of horses. At the end of the street the Prussians had

been charged by our cavalry, and, as they were unaware of the size of

our forces, they retreated at full gallop, hotly pursued by our hussars.

They all rushed past together pell-mell--a hurricane of smoke and

noise. Our soldiers were slashing and firing, sabre in one hand and

pistol in the other.

The Prussians fired back as they fled. Two or three bullets struck our

house; and one of them broke the bar of the shutter through which I was

watching.

Great was the terror of the women, who rushed downstairs at a

break-neck pace to hide themselves in the cellar. My mother tried to

drag me with her, but I held fast to the window-sash, and rather than

leave me she stopped by me.

It was a terrible and yet a magnificent sight to witness.

When pressed hard the Prussians faced about, and there, only twenty

paces from us, under our very eyes, as near as the first row of boxes

at the circus is to the stage, a battle was taking place in deadly

earnest--a hand-to-hand fight.

I saw five or six of the Prussians fall, and two or three of the French.

The first man who fell was a Prussian, who was flying with his head and

body bent low over his horse's neck; one slashing stroke cut open his

back, from his right shoulder to his left flank, and left a ribbon-like

band of red across him.

The wound must have been twelve or fifteen inches long.

Of the others whom I saw fall, one fell from a slash which cut his head

open; the rest were stabbed or shot.

Then, after ten minutes' struggle, the Prussians were beaten; they

trusted afresh to the speed of their horses to save them, and set off

at full gallop.

The pursuit began again.

The hurricane resumed its course, strewing three or four men on the

pavement before it disappeared out of sight.

One of these men was certainly killed, for he never moved; the others

got up, or dragged themselves away to the other side of the road. One

of them sat up and leant with his back against the wall; the other two,

who were probably more seriously wounded, remained lying.

Suddenly a drum was heard summoning to the charge--it was our hundred

infantry coming up to take their share of the fight: they marched with

fixed bayonets, and disappeared round the bend of the road.

Five minutes later we heard sharp firing, then our hussars reappeared,

driven back by five or six hundred cavalry.

The pursuers were now the pursued: but it was quite impossible to see

or to distinguish any details in this second flurry of fighting--we

only saw three or four more corpses stretched on the road when all was

over.

A deep silence succeeded this turmoil. French and Prussians had plunged

forward into the town: and, though we waited, we neither saw nor heard

anything more.

What had become of our hundred infantry men? Probably they had rushed

out into the open country, and had been either killed or taken.

And as for our cavalry men, who knew the district round about the town,

they had escaped, it would seem, by way of the mountain of Sery, in the

valley of Gillocourt.

We saw no more of their pursuers; no doubt they left the town by some

other route than the one by which they had entered, and had gone to

rejoin their comrades, who were drawn up in the plain of Tillet to the

number of about two or three thousand.

We were emboldened by the solitude and silence; moreover, our host, the

military surgeon, came forward to attend to the wounded men.

I hung to his coat-tails, in spite of my mother's entreaties, and we

opened the street door. A Prussian sergeant, who was leaning against

this door, fell backwards when his means of support suddenly failed him.

He was wounded through the right breast by a sword thrust. Directly

the women saw they could be useful to a poor wounded man their fears

vanished. They rushed to the rescue, raised the young man (who would be

somewhere between twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age) and carried

him into the sitting-room, which they speedily turned into a hospital.

Millet continued his rounds, and, with the assistance of the

neighbours, who began to appear at their doors, he brought back four or

five of the wounded, one of whom was a Frenchman. The remainder were

either dead or at their last gasp.

And now the bandaging began.

Here the women played the divine part heaven intended should fall to

their portion. My mother, Madame Millet and her two daughters turned

into true Sisters of Mercy, comforting and tending at the same time.

I held the basin full of water, while Millet washed the wounds and the

servants prepared lint.

We then learnt from one of the Prussians who was least seriously

wounded (he had received a sabre cut on his head), that he and his

comrades belonged to a detachment of three thousand men, which had

refrained from entering the town for fear of being surprised; they

were following their instructions, which were to camp out as much as

possible, their commanders always fearing a nocturnal massacre if they

ventured to stay in the towns.

"However, it will all be over soon," added the wounded man, "since

Paris surrendered the day before yesterday."

This was the first intimation we had received of that important event.

We were just on the point of crying out at the news, when a voice in

the doorway said suddenly--

"That is not true, Paris will not surrender like that."

We turned round, and there we saw, leaning against the door, pale, one

of the officers of our small detachment of infantry. He had one of

the finest and most soldierly heads imaginable, gashed, now, with a

deep wound over the left eye-brow--hence his pallor and the blood that

covered him.

He had received a pistol-shot in his face, which had felled him; but,

the fresh air soon reviving him, he had managed to get up, and, seeing

the town a hundred steps in front of him, he had reached it, leaning

against its walls for support.

The kind neighbours who had assisted our host had directed this officer

to our house, and, mortally wounded, he had arrived just in time to

give that truly patriotic denial to the news announced by his enemy.

The bullet was still in the wound; it was extracted very skilfully by

Millet, but, as we have said, the wound was mortal, and the officer

died during the night, about two o'clock in the morning, just when a

dog began to bark.

Millet went into the yard and listened. Someone was knocking at the

garden gate which led into the open country, and knocking so cautiously

that it was plain whoever it was had to be wary.

Our host opened the gate himself, and he who knocked thus at a private

door in the dead of the night was the second son of the house, about

whom they had been so terribly anxious.

Our host came back into the house alone, went into one of the rooms,

and bent over the bed where his mother and his two sisters were

sleeping for a little while, after their good offices as sisters of

charity. It was indeed good news God had sent them as a reward for

their devotion.

They smuggled in the new-comer by a landing window, so that he could

reach our attics without being seen.

For ten minutes the three women sobbed for joy, then he told them that

Paris had indeed practically surrendered on March 30th.

Georges Millet--so far as I can recollect I believe Georges was his

name--Georges Millet realised then that all was over. He left his

regiment, and, at the risk of being taken a score of times, he managed

to return to Crespy, walking by night and across country.

It had only taken him a night and a half, for Crespy was but fifteen

leagues from Paris.

His brother gave him a razor to shave off his moustache, and for

clothing they sent to Madame de Longpré, whose eldest son was the same

size, and borrowed a coat, a waistcoat, and a pair of trousers, as the

clothes of his elder brother (who was twice as stout as he was) would

not have fitted him.

Next day the news came.

The Allies entered Paris on the 31st March.

On the 1st April the Senate appointed a Provisional Government.

On the 2nd, a decree of the Senate declared Napoleon to have forfeited

his throne.

A fortnight later we returned to Villers-Cotterets, and settled down

again in our home.

What a host of events had happened during that fortnight! The face of

Europe had been changed.

On the 4th, Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son.

On the 6th he made his plans for retiring south of the Loire.

On the 10th a _Te Deum_ was chanted in the place Louis XV. by the

Allies.

On the 11th Napoleon signed the decree of abdication.

On the 12th he attempted to poison himself.

The same day, whilst he was struggling with the poison, which had been

adulterated by Cabanis, the Count d'Artois entered Paris.

On the 13th the Senate nominated that prince Lieutenant-General of the

kingdom.

On the 14th the Emperor of Austria entered Paris.

On the 19th the Emperor Napoleon, deserted by everyone, was left alone

with only a single valet de chambre.

Finally, on the 20th, he said adieu to the Eagles of the Imperial

Guard, and set out for the isle of Elba; on the same day, and almost at

the same hour, Louis XVIII. reached Compiègne.

All this had passed during that fortnight; thus had history been

made, and the noise of these exploits had been bruited abroad for all

the world to hear, whilst I, in my careless and happy ignorance, was

untouched by the sound thereof.

Who would have said then that one day I should visit the isle of

Elba, whose very existence was unknown to me till I heard its name

pronounced, and whose geographical position I forgot as soon as it was

told me? Who would have said that one day I should visit this isle of

Elba with the Emperor's nephew?

CHAPTER XI

Am I to be called Davy de la Pailleterie or Alexandre Dumas?--_Deus

dedit, Deus dabit_--The tobacco-shop--The cause of the Emperor

Napoleon's fall, as it appeared to my writing-master--My first

communion--How I prepared for it.

Two or three days after our return to Villers-Cotterets, M. Collard

came to see us, and my mother had a long talk with him; after which he

left us, inviting her to join him that evening at M. Deviolaine's house.

My mother went to M. Deviolaine's and took me with her. There was a

large company of officers with their sabres and epaulettes at table, as

on the last occasion I had been in the house: only, this time they were

Russian sabres and epaulettes: the same language and manners, perhaps

rather more polished manners--that was the only difference.

I could not understand that these were they whom the people spoke

of as "the enemy"--the enemy represents a principle, not actual men

themselves.

My mother and M. Collard continued their conversation. Next day M.

Collard was to leave for Paris, but he promised to look in at our house

again before going.

That night, when we returned home, my mother took me aside, and,

looking at me more seriously than usual, but with as loving a face, she

said:--

"My dear one, the Count d'Artois, who has been appointed

Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and Louis XVII., who is just about

to be made King of France, are both brothers of King Louis XVI. Your

grandfather, the Marquis de la Pailleterie, served under Louis XVI. as

your father served under the Republic. Listen now, and attend carefully

to what I say, for probably your whole future will depend on the

resolution we are about to take. Would you rather be called Davy de

la Pailleterie, like your grandfather, for you are the grandson of

the Marquis Davy de la Pailleteril, who was Groom of the Bed-chamber

to the Prince of Conti, and Commissary-General of Artillery; in which

case we could obtain a commission for you, or you could become one of

the pages; and in either case you would have a position made for you

in the new reigning family? Or would you like to be called simply and

briefly Alexandre Dumas, like your father? If you bear the name of the

republican General Alexandre Dumas, no career will be open to you, for,

instead of serving those who now reign, as your grandfather did, your

father served against them!... M. Collard is going to Paris to-day; he

knows M. de Talleyrand, who was in the _Corps Législatif_ when he was;

he knows the duc d'Orléans; in fact, he knows many people belonging to

the new Court, and he will do his best for you according to your own

decision. Think carefully before you reply."

"Oh! I don't need to think, mother!" I cried--"I will be called

Alexandre Dumas, and nothing else. I remember my father; I never knew

my grandfather. What would my father think, who came to bid me farewell

at the moment of his death, if I should disown him in order to call

myself by my grandfather's name?"

My mother's face brightened.

"Is that your opinion?" she said.

"Yes; and yours too, is it not, mother?"

"Alas! yes; but what is to become of us?"

"Nonsense!" I replied; "you forget that I can construe the _De viris_,

and therefore I understand my father's motto: _'Deus dedit, Deus

dabit_--God has given, God will give.'"

"Well then, my child, go off to bed after that: you aggravate me very

much sometimes, but I am sure your heart is in the right place."

I went to bed without realising quite the importance of the decision my

filial instinct had just prompted me to make, and that, as my mother

had warned me, it might very probably mean the shaping of my whole

future life.

Next day M. Collard came again, and it was settled he should ask

nothing whatever on my behalf, but only apply for a tobacco-shop for my

mother.

A strange anomaly this--the widow of the Horatius Codes of the Tyrol

selling tobacco!

And my education was to be continued at the Abbé Grégoire's.

I say _at_ the Abbé Grégoire's, but I should have said under the Abbé

Grégoire. For, whilst all these things had been happening, the abbé had

lost his certificate as master of the school.

Some decision of the University had forbade him to keep a school at his

own house--although he was allowed to teach pupils in the town.

For the consideration of six francs a month, which my mother agreed to

pay him, I became one of his town pupils.

I was, besides, to take lessons in arithmetic with Oblet--the town

schoolmaster, and to continue my fencing lessons with old Mounier.

And as for riding, I had taught myself, as the Roman soldiers did, by

mounting bare-backed any horses I could get hold of. My sole education

then was limited to as much Latin as the Abbé Grégoire could teach

me; to studying the four rules of arithmetic with M. Oblet; and to

executing counter-stroke, feint and parry with old Mounier.

Oblet, I must say, had the least enviable task, for I have always had

such a profound aversion towards arithmetic that I never have been able

to get beyond multiplication.

And even to-day I am incapable of doing the slightest sum in division.

But if I did not learn how to calculate under Oblet--God, who watched

over me, providentially saw that I learnt something else.

Besides a perfect knowledge of his _Barême_, Oblet wrote a splendid

hand; he could make all the letters of the alphabet, like M. Prudhomme,

with one flourish of his pen; and, furthermore, he could draw the most

marvellous designs, ornaments, hearts, rosettes, _lacs d'amour_, Adam

and Eve, the portrait of Louis XVIII., and I know not what else.

Now, handwriting was quite a different matter,--here I was gifted!

When Oblet had given me my arithmetic lessons, and, to acquit his

conscience, had dunned the three rules into me--(for, as I have said,

I never got beyond multiplication)--we got out fine pieces of white

paper, pared three or four quill pens in advance, to coarse or fine

or medium points, and then began writing round-hand, flourishes and

up-strokes galore.

In three months I had attained to Oblet's standard, and if I were not

afraid of offending his pride, I should say that, in some points, I had

even surpassed him.

My progress in writing gave my mother some pleasure, though she would

much rather it had been in arithmetic.

"Writing, writing!" she would say; "it is something to be proud of, I

must say, to write well. Why, any duffer can write well. But look at

Bonaparte, you have a score of his letters addressed to your father;

can you make out a single one of them?"

"But, madame, M. Bonaparté is now at the island of Elba," Oblet would

reply gravely.

Oblet was a hot Royalist, so he always pronounced the name Bonaparté,

and gave the ex-Emperor the title of _monsieur._

The same honour or the same insult that Oblet offered to Bonaparte was

offered me in the Chamber of 1847.

"Do you mean to say," my mother replied, "that he is at Elba because he

didn't know how to write?"

"Why should I not say so? It is an argument that may be maintained,

madame. They say that M. Bonaparté was betrayed by his marshals; but I

say 'Providence willed this usurper should not be able to write clearly

so that his orders should be illegible, and therefore they were not

able to be carried out.' 'His marshals betrayed him! 'Nothing of the

kind, madame; they read his orders wrongly, so they acted contrary

to what he had ordered them. Hence have arisen our reverses and our

defeats, and the taking of Paris and the exile to the isle of Elba."

"Well, we will drop Bonaparte now, M. Oblet."

"Madame, you yourself introduced the man into the conversation and not

I; I never speak of the man."

"But suppose if Alexandre..."

"If your son, madame, one day becomes emperor of the French, since he

will have, or rather as he already has, a splendid hand, his orders

will be literally carried out, unless his marshals do not know how to

read."

But my mother was not comforted for my lack of mathematical ability by

this contingency, she sighed a deep sigh, and gave expression to the

final word let fall by weary consciences, and exhausted intellects, and

faith that has reached the doubting point--

"If only!..."

So I continued my five sorts of writing, my down-strokes and my

up-strokes, my flourishes, my hearts, my rosettes and _lacs d'amour_,

with Oblet.

Oblet, be it understood, was not the worst of those who treated the

dethroned emperor badly: it was bad enough to call him M. Bonaparté,

but many even contested his very name, saying that it never was

Napoleon, but Nicolas, thus depriving him of his title of _The Lion of

the Desert_,--fools that they were,--in order to call him _Conqueror of

the Nations._

While all these things were happening I attained my thirteenth year,

and it became time to think of making my First Communion--a serious

event in the life of every child, but specially so in mine.

For, young as I was, I had always felt deeply religious, apart from

external observances. That sentiment is always ready to vibrate in my

heart like a mysterious, hidden chord, but it never really thrills

save under the influence of a vivid emotion of joy or sorrow. In both

circumstances, my first impulse, whether of gratitude or of affliction,

is always towards the Saviour. Churches I hardly ever enter, for

directly I cross the threshold I feel, like Habakkuk, as though an

angel were pulling me back by the hair. Yet churches are such sacred

places to me that I feel it sacrilege to go there as others do, merely

out of curiosity or from a religious freak.