“La vertu, dans le monde, est toujours poursuivie.”—MOLIERE.
The people swayed and hummed in the road, with strange burnished
chequers cast over their very visages as they pressed against the
gorgeous gates, thrown open towards each other, so as to form a double
impromptu palisade across the highway, and locked as well as steadied by
inward props; through the bars of each side-wicket could be seen a
scarlet-clothed Swiss sentinel, his musket shouldered, as he paced to
and fro, grimly though carelessly contemplating all. But scarce was
there time to take in the scene ere a louder trumpet-note sounded from
among the trees, and two mounted trumpeters in orange liveries were seen
to rise at speed on the brow of the avenue; till, amidst sudden silence,
the whole array of a brilliant _cortège_ rose up beyond them from a
slope, glittering, indeed, yet pale and almost tarnished amidst the rich
evening light, as it emerged through the cool forest chase. It was
indeed the royal stag-hunt returning to Marly from the woods. Swiftly
they came onward—the troop of chivalrous-looking gardes-du-corps, in
sky-blue and gold, scarlet velvet breeches and white-plumed black hats,
with ringing scabbards and glossy foam-necked horses,—the carriages and
riders, the sledge with the slain stag, and the chasseurs and
stag-hounds. But the procession appeared to go across in visionary
swiftness between the reversed gates: there was but one glimpse of that
single face, with its unfixed and solitary glance, its inscrutable air
of calm, ere it had gone past, to a doubtful murmur of _Vive le Roi_,
that was succeeded by a hubbub of sounds, with all the disagreeable
pressure of a miscellaneous crowd, sometimes standing on the wheels, or
leaning against the carriage-hood. Young Willoughby had torn off his hat
with a ‘hurrah!’ which stultified all his previous British
protestations.
A face was turned up from the confusion beneath, which, owing to the now
neater attire of the possessor, Charles had not before observed: the
village teacher had assumed coat and hat, bearing an umbrella of
somewhat faded texture beneath his arm, and some workmen evidently
assisted him to gain a more convenient position.
“Yes, I say, Father Pierre,” gloomily observed one of the workmen,
addressing the teacher, as if in reference to some previous remark,
“there are plots!”
“Ah, it is no doubt undeniable,” agreed that person, with reluctance,
while he still turned an eye to the carriage, as if to apologise for
being thrust up against it: “there are possibly plots. In that case it
is only necessary to disconcert them, Monsieur Jacques.”
“But it is exactly to do so, Monsieur Morin,” said a quieter mechanic,
“that, after earlier than usual dismissing the school, you were on the
point to set off for Paris.”
“Yes, half an hour ago, on foot, to the Club Breton, at the Palais
Royal,” continued a peasant beyond.
“Père Pierre had a plot also, you know,” added some one else.
“Pardon me, Monsieur Robert—a _plan_,” replied the teacher with his
peculiar blandness, though his eye continued wandering sideways to the
carriage: “to plot, my friend—it does not belong to the virtuous.”
“But from a philosopher,” rejoined the villager, “Monsieur Père Morin is
about to become a man of action—he has a plan.”
“Delayed by this beast of a barricade, which deranges everything,” said
his rougher neighbour, angrily.
“Monsieur Morin will, then, however, relate to us this plot which he
counteracts,” added the keen-eyed mechanic, with emphasis—“and the plan
also. We shall perhaps be able to assist him! It seems to me that M.
Morin should have avoided being thrust on this side the barrier.”
“Good!” responded Jacques, “we shall assist him! It is no doubt
fortunate after all.” The last riders had passed through, and the
porters were coming with their keys to unlock the gates. The
neighbouring chateau clock struck six with a cracked tone; and the great
gates were slowly yielding, to allow time for the Swiss sentries to
cross through. They came together to their usual place with a clash; the
crowd poured each way between again, among the various country vehicles
and market-carts, the passengers and riders, from or to the city, or the
town of Versailles—for a few minutes in such sudden disorder as almost
to hurl the bystanders from the carriage when it drove forward; save the
young man, the teacher, who had held by it for security, and in the
attempt to balance himself was urged so close as to seize the hood of
the barouche, already in motion. An unaccountable repugnance shot from
the young lady’s look and attitude as she started back, extricating her
shawl from the accidental clutch—till her heart reproached her next
moment at his thorough expression of apology mixed with alarm, for
Jackson drove furiously down-hill. She was in vain calling him to stop,
when she saw her brother spring up quick as thought, look round, and
hurl their unintentional fellow-passenger backward on the road.
“Drive on, Jackson,” shouted Charles, triumphantly. “Serves him
right—the very fellow’s face that I detested!”
Panniered market-asses, hastening pedestrians and boys, alone mingled
with their speed across the bridge, past the _chemin des affronteux_,
into Charlemont; the sudden howl of indignation from the groups behind
them had died away.
“What on earth is the matter with you, Jackson?” called out the lad,
starting up again, as they reached about the middle of the village
street; “why don’t you drive on? Never mind watering your horses!”
“They’ve got a couple of farm-waggons and some hampers right across the
way, sir,” replied Jackson, turning about from his box, with an
undertone as much from misgiving as respect.
A shadowy mass blocked up the passage before them, looking vague in the
dusk. It was opposite the door of a shabby _auberge_ or village inn,
with the sign of the Fleur-de-lis. Charles stood up to call out in
French, and a gendarme in coarse blue uniform advanced to the side of
the carriage, civilly enough, as if to answer his inquiries.
“You have injured a respectable person, it is said, monsieur,” was the
reply of the functionary, in a lowered voice—“a man of influence in the
place here.”
“Wilfully, too, it seems!” added a villager, sharply, and turning to the
crowd, which in a few seconds gathered about the speakers.
“Yes, yes—our schoolmaster—a philosopher—an estimable man—M. Morin!” was
the general response, rising to a climax: “see him there, assisted by
every one to reach the spot!”
The figure of Morin by that time became obvious, in fact, near the door
of the tavern, supported by workmen and peasants, while the blood
trickled down his cheek, and he limped on one foot, seeming more
confused than hurt. The concern of the ladies was extreme; young
Willoughby alone remained obstinately cool as the excitement increased;
he assumed the chief part with great self-possession, and distinctly
imputed the fault to the aggrieved individual, expressing quite as
plainly, though in rather indifferent French, his doubts as to the
seriousness of the injury.
The landlord of the auberge, a beetle-browed man in a striped cowl and
white apron, with an air between a cook and a butcher, had hovered
behind, looking on with apparent attempts at moderation among the
bystanders. “Yet monsieur will scarcely refuse to apologise to M.
Morin?” inquired he, thrusting his sinister visage nearer.
“If you only hand me your purse, mother,” was Charles’s answer, to Lady
Willoughby’s anxiety, “you’ll soon see what’s wanted!”
“Monsieur!” exclaimed he, drawing back from the boy’s offer with an
offended look, “you insult me!”
In the indignant noise which ensued, apologies would have been
unavailing; but at the appearance of another gendarme pushing up,
Charles Willoughby seated himself, turned his shoulder on the rabble,
and contented himself with explaining matters to the official beside
him, into whose palm he had easily enough slipped the rejected coin. It
produced no apparent increase of deference in the man’s stiff civility;
but he exchanged a few prompt words with his comrade, who took out a
stump of pencil and a scrap of paper, put the end of the first into his
mouth, and rested the latter on the carriage-wheel, looking up
imperturbably for further particulars. An authoritative word or two from
the other, as he raised his voice, and glanced from the throng to the
obstacles in the street, on the other side of which market-drivers from
Paris were grumbling, served to restore a degree of order. “Yes, Martin,
it will be sufficient,” he loudly observed to his companion, “to take
notice of the passports. Attention, then, Martin!”
“Monsieur will exhibit the passports,” said the sergeant in the same
tone, as he turned again to the carriage. Charles Willoughby looked
blank, though he mechanically felt for them in his pocket, and inquired
at Jackson, at Mrs Mason, at all the party, looking below the cushions
and beneath the seats. It was to no purpose; he had to admit that they
were not forthcoming; a gentleman of the party, who would no doubt
directly appear, had happened to have them in his pocket. The gendarmes
stood up, and looked to each other significantly; the one put up his
paper and pencil, with a shrug of his shoulders; the other addressed
himself with a rigid air of regret to the carriage.
“It will be necessary to descend, mesdames et monsieur,” he said firmly,
“until the affair can be adjusted. No, monsieur,” he rejoined in a lower
voice to Charles, who was hinting at a further douceur, “impossible—a
bribe!—and in the circumstances. But the thing is doubtless a mere
bagatelle, which M. le Maire will very soon arrange at his chateau.”
“Yes! yes! Live justice!” screamed the gathered village, male and
female, boys, girls, and children, down to the very crowing of the
infant in arms, the excitement of poodles on the thresholds, the rousing
up of fowls going early to roost above the doorways inside the dingy
cottages.
“But, M. le Gendarme,” interposed the injured Morin himself, calmly, “I
entertain no resentment against monsieur.”
“Only a complaint, M. Morin,” said the sergeant, with dignity. “It must
be attended to. Besides that, the passports, which concern the State,
are wanting. It is far more important.” The mob shrieked applause; even
showing symptoms of disapprobation against their outraged teacher, who
was silenced.
“Well, then, gendarme,” said young Willoughby, still contemptuous except
to the lawful authorities beside him, “what do you mean by our getting
down? Can you not take us at once to your mayor? This is not his
chateau, I suppose?”
“Impossible, monsieur,” was the unruffled answer, “as M. le Comte has
this afternoon gone to his hotel in Paris, and the commissary of the
commune resides at some distance. It is by favour, I assure you,
monsieur, that you are not conducted there, or to the guard-house of the
district—which, of course, was impossible in the case of mesdames your
companions.” The affable sergeant of police bowed towards the ladies.
“At the auberge here, however, of the Fleur-de-lis, they will enjoy very
superior accommodation with M. Grostète, who is the landlord. He is even
an artist; the _ménage_, too, of madame the hostess is admirable.”
With regard to the prolongation of the dilemma, the village mob found an
evident luxury in it, appearing to balance oddly enough between the
wildest rage and looks of murmured interest; as if, the more struck they
were with the youth’s blunt, spirited manner, the mother’s obvious
distress, and the young lady’s pale, startled air, through her veil and
out of her simple straw-hat, with her governess’s ill-maintained
fastidiousness, the more unwilling the whole audience grew to lose hold
of these, but would fain have been wrought up to extract something more
tragic by way of sequel. The young man who had been the occasion of all,
first relieved the party from their difficulty: Morin had fixed his
light-blue eyes on the ground, and raised them thoughtfully as he moved
forward to the chief gendarme.
“But fortunately, M. le Sergent,” said he, in a thin, distinct voice,
“it seems to me that I am capable of readjusting this affair here.”
“And how?” inquired the police-officer, over his shoulder, as he drew
himself up with an air of additional authority.
“M. le Maire has this evening gone to Paris?” continued the teacher,
with composure.
“Yes, I witnessed his departure, since I had the honour to receive M. le
Comte’s instructions,” answered the functionary, in more immovable
certainty than before.
“I was aware of it,” said Morin, mildly, “because this morning, through
the intendant of his estate, M. le Comte condescended to inform me of
it.”
“Ah, you were informed of it, M. Morin!” said the gendarme, with a
slight air of surprise, putting his thumb to his chin, and looking
somewhat cautious. “Well?”
“And M. le Comte will not only be in Paris to-night,” said the
schoolmaster, “but to-morrow also, since he has affairs of more
importance to transact. Therefore it would be necessary to convey
Monsieur the young Englishman to the commissary at Marly.”
“Peste! I did not know that though!” ejaculated the gendarme, letting
fall his hand. “But you are right. It is only to the commissary at
Marly, then, that we can resort.” And grim indifference returned to the
faces of the gendarmes, as they shrugged their shoulders.
“But it was exactly to see M. le Comte that I was about to proceed, when
disabled,” continued Pierre Morin, modestly, while he indicated his
misfortune by a slight movement of the leg. The gendarmes stared at each
other half incredulously.
“Eh? Père Pierre?” interrupted two or three voices; and the rough
workman shouldered in, turning a dully suspicious glance from his
begrimed visage to Morin’s, and adding, “It was to the Cloobbe
Breton—the Palais Royal, I thought?”
“To disconcert a plot?” exclaimed several others.
“By a plan?” was the vivacious chorus of many together.
The young schoolmaster bowed. “Certainly, M. Jacques,” he said, with an
unruffled smile, to the workmen, “since, thanks to the designs of some
relatives, it is to the club that M. le Comte would have gone to-night
as an auditor. He is still young—his ideas, though philosophical, are
timid—it happens that he would have heard our boldest and least elegant
orators, who watch with such a noble jealousy the division which is
prolonged in the States-General by the privileged orders. I have studied
the character of M. le Comte—he would have been deterred—his eloquence
as our deputy to the Third Estate would not only have disgraced us at
Charlemont here, but have given force to the opinions of others who
would ruin all. There was, in short, a diabolical snare spread for him.”
An indignant murmur ran through the crowd, as they glanced to each other
in alarm. The gendarmes rather appeared puzzled.
“_Ah dâme!_” broke out the superior of the two; “but how is it that
_you_ are acquainted with all this, M. le Maitre-d’école?”
“It is simple, M. le Sergent,” replied Morin, calmly. “The message I
received to-day, through M. le Comte’s intendant, informed me, that as a
correspondent of the Club, as an advocate for the right-to-absorb of the
Third Estate, I was about to be dismissed from my school—unless, indeed,
on the assurance, before M. le Comte’s departure, of confining my views
to the elementary instruction for which I was placed there.” It was with
difficulty he could proceed, for the violent uproar of surprise and
resentment. “I was silent,” he at length continued: “at your usual wish
I read aloud the journal of yesterday. I received the fresh message left
for me, that till nine, M. le Comte would be at his hotel in Paris, for
the convenience of his intendant’s communications from the chateau here,
before visiting, for the first time, this club. It was the proof of a
determination still postponed by M. le Comte. I remained unmoved, while
mingling with the concourse to the gates yonder—without taking advantage
of the last messenger to Paris—but resolved the more, as I perceived the
nature, the causes of this proceeding. Had I publicly explained my
intention, M. le Comte might have been unjustly accused by you—my
motives in personally reaching Paris might have been misinterpreted. I
was even aware that to intelligence—to integrity—to virtue—the whole
world is about to become a school!”
At the modest attitude, the unconscious air, touched only by a slight
twinge of suffering from his foot, with which their teacher announced
his private sacrifice to principles, the whole audience were struck
mute; their admiration seemed to struggle silently with dismay. “For me,
on the contrary,” he pursued, recovering himself by the help of his
faded pocket-handkerchief, “had I gained Paris by eight, resorting
straight to the Palais Royal before the admission of strangers to the
club, I should have obtained the right of the tribune,—permitted after
nine to speak, I would have publicly expressed the sentiments most
congenial to me, which resemble his own,—without seeming to address
myself to him, without his expecting it, I astonish him by my boldness,
my disregard of private considerations. I expose, next, the motives of
those who entangle him,—I paint the future which dawns on us so
slowly,—I should at once have convinced him, my friends—and have
retained my school, my position—the relation to my fellow-villagers,
which I value—the power to consult their wishes, their necessities!”
“It is the _plan_! Excellent! Yes, _the_ plan of Père Morin!” ejaculated
a dozen hearers in delight.
Monsieur Morin’s countenance had worked with animation, his gestures had
grown quicker in accompaniment; and the hushed crowd burst into a scream
of approbation, broken only into separate yells as the nearest
bystanders looked from his face to his disabled foot, from his foot to
the deepened blue of the sky, and thence to the offending carriage.
“Yes, it is too late, my friends,” admitted he, composing himself. “As
it is, however, by myself accompanying Monsieur the young Englishman,
before nine, to the hotel of M. le Maire, I should equally gain the
object, without having presumed to request an interview, which would
have been denied me. I relieve Monsieur and his friends from a
_contretemps_, while observing the law. I detain M. le Comte, at a
critical moment, from a danger to his views—in the act of myself
confirming them! It is not yet eight—we have still an hour, useless on
foot, when lame—that is, if perhaps Monsieur would not object to one’s
occupying a seat beside his coachman?”
“It is reasonable!” exclaimed fifty voices. “M. Morin is right—yes! yes!
Sa-cr-r-ré! do they object?”
The young Frenchman looked quietly and calmly, though with an air of
dignity, to Charles Willoughby, who for a moment scarcely comprehended
his meaning, or the drift of the whole discussion. Brightening up next
instant, however, his eye gave a quick response. “Ah, of course!” he
said, springing to assist the teacher up; “certainly, Monsieur
Morin—with all my heart; here, let me give you a hand!” The perplexed
gendarmes looked to each other inactively, the innkeeper and his wife
alone gloomed on their door-steps; while, as the injured schoolmaster
was helped by the very offender himself to mount the dickey beside
Jackson, the villagers grew absolutely ecstatic in their applause; the
foremost agitators in the crowd were the first to begin dragging the
obstacles aside. “Monsieur Jacksong, my friend,” called out young
Willoughby, in his most scrupulous French, somewhat to the surprise,
doubtless, of that grim worthy, while a sudden gleam of enjoyment
twinkled once more in the youth’s eye, “you will favour me by using the
utmost exertions to arrive in time for Monsieur Morin!” He deliberately
opened the carriage-door again, took down the steps, and leisurely
stepped in, two or three officious pairs of hands contending which
should set all to rights behind him. He took off his cap as he stood,
and bowed with profound gravity to the crowd. “That’s to say, Jackson,”
added he in English, “all right—drive on like mad!”
And as Jackson whipped his tedious beasts like a man devoid of all
mercy, the creaking barouche rattled off; accompanied by half the crowd,
by noisy curs, frightened poultry, and confused shadows from the trees
and houses, till they jolted across the other bridge, and rolled out
clear into the broad light of evening. All at once, after some silent
meditation, Charles tapped the shoulder near him, and the Frenchman
turned his face with a slight start.
“I say, Mossure Moreng,” observed Charles, with more than his customary
force of pronunciation, “I am sorry you got hurt, though.”
“The apology of Monsieur is accepted,” was the cold answer, as the young
man quietly turned away again towards the smoke of Paris before them.
“Oh, it is not an apology,” said Charles, leaning over, “but I own we
are much obliged to you. Such a set of rascally canaille, to be sure!
’Twas ingenious enough, that story of yours—so far as I understood it!
But where are we to take you to keep it up? Into town? Or perhaps you
would prefer being dropped at the first comfortable inn!”
“I do not comprehend you, Monsieur,” replied the teacher of Charlemont,
in evident surprise; “it is to the hotel of M. le Count de Charlemont
that we shall go—in Paris.”
“And where is that?” asked the youth, drumming with his small cane on
his toe.
“In the Faubourg St Germain, Monsieur—near the Quai Voltaire,” said
Morin.
“Why, I should say it was two or three miles out of our way, then,”
rejoined Charles, discontentedly. “Well—what after that? Do we finish
there—eh?”
“I am unaware of the result, naturally, Monsieur,” answered the
schoolmaster. “In the case of Monsieur, it will probably be an
inconsiderable fine, which the clerk of M. le Maire will no doubt
regulate according to law. But for the coincidence, it would have been
impossible to extricate Monsieur from that affair there—it was important
that I should reach Paris: there is no favour to one or the other—only a
compromise.”
“By George!” uttered the boy, staring, “you do not mean to say that long
rigmarole account of yours was _true_?”
The Frenchman betrayed equal amazement. “Is it, then, possible,
Monsieur,” said he, “that you doubt it—that you imagine these things not
to exist precisely—not to bear themselves as I have stated!” Charles
surveyed him coolly. “Think you, Monsieur,” continued the other, with
some vehemence, “that one could at all events deceive one’s neighbours,
who are aware of every circumstance—who will to-morrow demand of me the
result! The police—who confide in my position, my character! No,
Monsieur—it is _truth_ that has happened to involve, as to extricate
you—truth, by which France is at this moment so animated—by which we
here are at the instant surrounded, controlled!”
Young Willoughby whistled slightly as he eyed him. “Oh?” was the
careless rejoinder. “But for my part, I feel no inclination to trouble
your worthy mayor. The whole thing is a humbug. What if I merely refuse
to go, Mister Morran—indeed, if I have you set down beside the first
fiacre, with your fare paid to the driver?”
“You do not comprehend this France here, Monsieur,” said the village
teacher, blandly, as he let a voluntary gaze of his colourless eye rest
on Charles. “She burns to support the law—to assist it. At a moment they
are summoned to its aid—they are roused to complete it the more
perfectly—they exaggerate. Besides, even in your house, by to-morrow,
you would be traced. The offence would have become enhanced. It is owing
to the sublime passion for the philosophical—the consistent, Monsieur!”
The boy eyed Morin with a useless frown; he had turned away. Looking
about, and thinking, with a singular sense of antipathy, for which he
could scarce find sufficient grounds, Charles sat mute; he began to feel
as if, much though he despised this Morin, he would never be got rid of
till some serious issue came of it in the end. But they reached the
barrier, not yet closed—passed through, recognised and unquestioned; for
to enter Paris seemed always easier than to get out of it; and rattled
along the chaussée through close streets of a dingy faubourg. Much as it
was out of their way, yet, to be finally rid of Monsieur Morin and his
case, no course seemed secure but to drive straight to the authority he
indicated. At the Rue de St Roche, accordingly, in the aristocratic
suburb they at length drew up before a high old house in the row of
stately mansions, where lacqueys lounged about the balustraded
door-steps and huge _portes-cochère_, and the upper casements began to
glow with light. “It is the Hotel St Mirel,” said the village teacher,
as he began with difficulty to get down. He waited quietly for the young
gentleman to follow him, and they went up the steps together.
The carriage had not stood waiting many minutes before Charles
Willoughby reappeared alone. His face was bright with satisfaction.
“What an absurd affair, after all,” said he, contemptuously: “it cost
about ten minutes and as many shillings. An old clerk at a table in an
antechamber took down the statements on each side. Of course I allowed
the facts; and it seems there’s an exact understood price tacked to
every sort of assault in France, from a push to a kick, according to the
quality of the parties; and if the fellow had pushed me, it would have
cost _him_ about double. There were two or three gentlemen talking in an
inner room, who all came out together in riding-boots and coats—though
which was which, one could hardly see against the large windows this
time of night. I only fancy it was the Count that bowed to me, rather a
young man, I should say—and looked at Morin rather sharply, giving a
slight sort of nod; then he said something to the clerk, who told me I
was fined half a louis-d’or, besides the five francs for his own fee,
which he pocketed very graciously, getting up and putting off his
spectacles. I only waited another minute to see if I could catch out
that Morin somewhere, as soon as the Count called him aside in a hurry
to the inner room; but I must say everything seemed to agree well enough
with the fellow’s harangue at the village—his schoolmastership was
evidently in danger—till all at once the Count came out again to tell
the other gentlemen he could not go somewhere with them that evening. I
believe the one was some celebrated actor at the theatre—which was he
the footman couldn’t tell—and the other a _dook_, as John of course
expressed it!”
“Why, that footman was _English_, then!” said Rose, gravely.
“Of course. As lazy a selfish dog, with his plump looks and his languid
impertinence, as you’d see in all May Fair—old Jackson there’s a Roman
by comparison—but somehow it refreshed one. I couldn’t help giving him
my last half-crown, he fawned so about my hat and cane, as if to do
something—and as for the coin, he examined it like a portrait. After
that Morin, you know, anything’s pleasant that one’s accustomed to!
We’re well quit of him. Happily, by the by, they forgot about the
passports, and don’t even know my name. Being lame—if it’s not a
sham—why, I fancy the fellow could scarce do otherwise than stay at the
Count’s, down stairs with John!”
Charles’s mother gently reproved him for the violence he had used, and
his sister said he was very hardhearted. But the carriage turned the
corner near the Rue Debilly; and as they drew up at their own gate, Mr
Thorpe, bareheaded, followed by Sir Godfrey, came eagerly out. They had
been getting very anxious indeed. The tutor had missed the Baronet, whom
business had detained a little later than his expectation, so that he
had left the city by a different barrier, then had turned, fancying the
carriage already past; while Mr Thorpe had ridden nearly all the way
home alone, then back, till he met Sir Godfrey.
CHAP. VII.—THE DILIGENCE OF SIR GODFREY.
“_Norfolk._ ‘——We may outrun,
By violent swiftness, that which we run at,
And lose by over-running——’
_Buckingham._ ‘——by intelligence,
And proofs as clear as founts in July, when
We see each grain of gravel, I do know——’”
SHAKESPEARE.
The Baronet had no sooner written his necessary correspondence that
forenoon, and conveyed it, almost as necessarily, with his own hands to
the post-office at the British Embassy, than he had turned bridle again
toward the Quais, to ride in the direction of the Cité, where it seemed
that, after all, the intended legatee of his brother had only exchanged
one obscure place of abode for another—48 Rue Chrétienne, au cinquième,
in fact, for au septième, num^o. 80, Rue de la Vierge. He found himself
ere long plunged into the centre of that strange heart of a no less
strange quarter. He had no sooner found the number he was in search of,
than a couple of little sharp-eyed, old-faced _gamins_, engaged in some
game of chance in a doorway, were ready to hold his horse, with a
jealousy of each other which was a guarantee for their joint fidelity.
It was an insecure-looking old pile, which might yet have seemed a sort
of city in itself; compressed back, as it appeared, and almost held up
between others less elevated, though of greater prominence and somewhat
more respectable appearance, to the vast height of at least seven
storeys: the general outer door stood fixedly open, and the cord which
held it so, conducting by staple and pulley along the low
entrance-passage, as through the arch of a cellar, turned in on one side
to a dark little den, half lighted by a cooking-lamp and partly from a
back-yard covered with rank grass and all sorts of rubbish, with an old
wooden pump in the midst, to which the passage itself led through. Here
an old woman, the portress, sat in a crazy leathern arm-chair that had
been gilded once; she was busy trying to boil something by the lamp, and
talking in a cross voice to herself, her cat, or some one else not
visible to Sir Godfrey; her old features were sour enough, probably from
the rheumatism which controlled her motions; but at his appearance and
inquiries she became sufficiently alert and communicative, curtseying at
every sentence, and trying to nod her head obsequiously, with the utmost
eagerness to do anything in the matter of Suzanne Deroux, whom she knew
so well, and who was so deserving—who, indeed, was never from home,
except to go to mass on saints’ days at Notre Dame. There was the low
fawning cunning and curiosity of old age, joined to the practised manner
of some quondam servant, in the portress’s desire that he should be
saved the flight of stairs, down which, where it wound up from opposite
her lodge, came but the dull glimmer of daylight in some high window:
her little girl, however, whom she had screamed for over and over again,
between fits of coughing and fresh suggestions to the visitor, at last
appeared with her pitcher from the pump, to be angrily despatched
up-stairs as a guide to Madame Peltier. _That_ was the appellation
expected by the daughter and the son-in-law—the portress informed
him—for they were proud, and respected their mother to an
extreme—though, properly, it seemed Madame had no right to that title,
not having been married—and, doubtless, the marriage even of her
daughter must at best have been _à la Jacques_, since nowadays it was so
with all workmen—who had nothing, of course, to inherit or to leave. As
for this worthy Suzanne, though she seemed to affect to be religious,
her frugality, so unavoidable—her simplicity, which was almost hopeless,
did not entitle her—nothing but her misfortunes could entitle her—to
such respect.
The portress’s little niece had already preceded him to the floor in
view, ere Sir Godfrey reached it, almost breathless, counting the
storeys. The whole structure, from base to summit, appeared not merely
to teem with apartments, but, as it ascended, to rise and open skyward
into visible life: one pleasant buzz of French vivacity, indeed, had
seemed to circulate above till the girl appeared; and her voice could
now be heard in eager dialogue behind an adjoining door with the young
woman who a minute before had been speaking over the balusters. He
knocked, half open although it stood, and was at once answered by the
latter. Suzanne Deroux was the name of her mother, she said—who was
within. There was something hard and cold, almost sullen, about the
young woman’s face, though it was well-formed: her cheek seemed worn,
her eyes dry and lustreless; nor did she make any inviting or inquiring
remark, merely making way for and following the stranger as he slowly
entered.
It was a bare garret, with the red-tiled floor of such ordinary Parisian
abodes, a low yellow-washed ceiling, much narrower than the floor, as on
one side the wall slanted with the roof; yet everything was neat, clean,
and decently arranged. But the glance took it in at once, without
leaving so much as a shadow; neither hearth nor semblance of a closet
broke its completeness, to the recess of the upright dormer-window,
which seemed a redeeming feature in so bald an apartment, where it rose
large and shining out of the slope, beyond the older woman’s seat. That
was an arm-chair, indeed, high-backed and easy: her feet were on a patch
of carpet; a pot of mignonette was in flower on the window-sill; a small
coarsely-coloured print of some portrait was stuck with a pin to the
opposite wall of the recess; as if the household bloomed a little only
in that direction, toward the sunlight, which came flooding with the air
through the wide-open window-place. Seated on the floor, beside a deal
box in a corner, under the slant of the wall, was a stout young workman
with a boot-last, engaged on the second of an elegant pair of
riding-boots; while a half-naked infant had been laid on the floor,
among the parings of the vegetables which seemed meant for some
afternoon meal—and was taken up by the portress’s little niece, to be
hushed and shaken, with an air of matronly attention.
At sight of the English baronet’s conspicuous figure, stooping to enter,
and scarce venturing to stand erect within, the bootmaker had looked up
with an absolute scowl of astonishment; showing a strongly-marked
haggard visage, rendered the more singularly unprepossessing, despite
something of the vivid southern tint and classic decisiveness, by a head
close-cropped, in all its native soot-blackness, and a chin left roughly
tufted below, although the lean tanned cheek had not yet lost altogether
its air of youth. Sir Godfrey’s first feeling had been one of pity,
mingled with sudden pleasure in the commission he had to perform; their
perfect want of manners, their very poverty, the absence of any other
apartment to withdraw into, joined to the motionless silence of the
elderly woman in her arm-chair, who neither seemed to hear nor see him,
all increased it to a kind of embarrassment. In the highest
drawing-rooms in Europe, nay, in any peasant’s cottage of his own
country, Sir Godfrey would have felt immeasurably more at ease than he
then stood, hat in hand, in the attic of these Parisian work-people. He
had hardly begun to address the person before him, too, as Madame, ere
the child’s fretfulness in the arms of its little nurse became a
vociferous squall, to which the elder woman turned her head slowly, with
an air of distress, her features working, her body moving and rocking in
her chair, as she made a humming, hushing sound to the infant. Its
mother snatched it next moment from the girl’s arms, with an angry
exclamation. “Why do you remain here under such pretences?” said she,
sharply; and the look of early cunning had betrayed itself on the girl’s
face by her attempt to seem absorbed in the child, with the hanging of
the head that succeeded. “Favour me, little Pochon, by leaving us
alone,” continued the young woman, following her as she slunk out:
“Widow Pochon is too good, inform her!” And she slammed to the fragile
door, then returned near the visitor, with her infant quietly held to
the breast: she was not much more than twenty, and had well-shaped
features, that, with a happier expression, might have been attractive;
but in this slatternly attire and attitude, her careless presence was
doubly disagreeable to Sir Godfrey.
He stepped nearer the sitting woman, who, like a recent invalid, seemed
still not so much to attend as to be enjoying the open air, the scent
from the flower-pot, and the streak of warm sunshine that gleamed on the
window-frame and glowed across her clean dress, on the old bright
kerchief that was pinned across her breast, and the high white coif of
some country fashion which she wore close to her face; yet in her face
there was a healthy tint, a little shrivelled, as on a well-kept apple:
so that it appeared to be more from ignorance, or the awkwardness of
surprise, perhaps as much from his own foreign accent, or some _patois_
to which she might have been accustomed, that, when Sir Godfrey went on
distinctly to explain his errand, the woman Deroux looked sometimes
vacantly at him, sometimes away out altogether to the open sky, again
irresolutely towards her daughter and son-in-law, spreading her hands in
the feeble way of still more aged persons, and smoothing her knees with
them by turns, more and more restlessly as his voice grew distincter in
its emphasis. To the statement of her former patron’s recent death, of
the omission or oversight which had interrupted her allowance from him,
and of the nature and amount of the present bequest, increased as it
would justly be by the addition of some recompense for the intervening
years—Suzanne Deroux returned vague murmurs, which might be taken for
assent, till her large mild face was at length fixed towards Sir
Godfrey’s, with a light of greater comprehension than before in her dim
eyes; and he noticed, for the first time, that one side of her cheek and
forehead was marked by the white smooth seam of an old scar—how large it
was impossible to see, for her cap; but frightful it must have been
once—taking, as it did, the eyebrow away, and seeming to have blanched
the eye itself, where its shining mark still crept out and curled round,
amidst the furrows and wrinkles of otherwise healthy old age. She said
something in reply, but confusedly, and with evident agitation, while
her shaking face seemed fascinated to his—and with such a mixture of
_patois_, as it seemed, whether of idiom, pronunciation, or
language—that Sir Godfrey could merely infer it to denote recollection
of his brother, with sorrow for his death, and gratitude at the
remembrance he had shown. The young man had at length put by his work,
risen up, and approached to listen, as he leant his elbows on the broken
deal-table.
“She is weak in mind, the poor woman—my mother,” said the daughter,
abruptly, though still engaged in administering nourishment to her
infant; “it is useless to transact anything with her, Monsieur.”
“No, it is merely her memory that is bad, Jeannette,” interposed the
son-in-law, who seemed scarcely his wife’s age; and there was something
deferential in his look towards the elder woman, with a comparative
kindliness of tone, as he turned to address herself, putting his hand on
her arm-chair and his head near hers, and using the respectful
_vous_—“and she does not hear strangers very well—do you, _belle-mère_?”
The elder woman smiled faintly in return, her head still slightly
trembling, though the familiar voice seemed to call up a degree of
intelligence and composure on her face, somewhat like a child’s when it
is commended: “no—no—not very well, my son!” she said; then drawing
herself up and spreading her gown with her hands, sat full of silent
importance.
“She has always been weak in mind,” coldly repeated her daughter, paying
no attention to them, “since the accident by which she was so injured. I
am acquainted with the circumstances, Monsieur, although at that time
but a child, and fortunately not present with my mother in the house
where it occurred.”
“You allude to the fire, above nineteen years ago, in the house where
the family of her employer, my late brother, had their apartments?” Sir
Godfrey asked, turning to her. She made a simple assent. “Then your
mother, Suzanne Deroux, was a servant living within the establishment?”
he continued.
“Yes, she was the nurse—the wetnurse (_nourrice-à-lait_)” was the
unembarrassed answer—“for the infant which perished along with its
mother and the other persons. She had remained a considerable time,
since it was sickly. My mother had been a peasant, you see, Monsieur.”
She proceeded further of her own accord, with an evident view to the
point of business.
“My mother was certainly entitled to this pension, notwithstanding her
indifference to it—her refusal, I believe,” said the young woman,
looking for a moment at the elder, who had listlessly turned again to
the sunlight. “Her wound, which was shocking, confined her for weeks to
the hospital—her lover, my father, who up to that time had still admired
her, and who was in the family of a nobleman, returned, indifferent to
her fate, with his master to the provinces, where his friendship for her
had arisen. As for her own infant, my brother, whom at the risk of her
own life she had remained to save—its arm was indelibly scorched, almost
destroyed by the flames which pursued her. She ultimately relinquished
it with apparent unconcern, to the man who had rescued them by a ladder
at the window—an Englishman, a servant who had arrived with Monsieur
Vilby, and whose eccentricity made him desire to adopt it. She has
neither heard of, nor seen her son, my brother, since. She has never
seemed even to wish it, Monsieur. Certainly my mother is weak in mind.”
In most of this account the thread was easily traceable; the baronet
recalled to mind some vague connection of his brother’s late huntsman,
Griffiths, or “Welsh Will,” as he was called, with the fatal
incidents—he had heard his son Francis talk years before of a boy about
Stoke, whom the huntsman’s vixen wife persecuted and kept out of doors.
He had been sent to some business, so far as Sir Godfrey remembered,
through Mr Hesketh. The baronet stated as much to the people before him.
“Thou’rt wrong, though, Jeannette,” said the son-in-law again, with the
same side-tone, irrespective of their visitor’s presence, rather through
a dull incapability to acknowledge it than from intention; “she grieves
for him. When thou’dst say, remember, during the sharp winter, thou wert
glad thy brother’s mouth was not here, did she not groan—and when the
fine time came again, while thou wert so apt to taunt us about her son
being grown English, she swung herself and wept! You feel it, you wish
your son back here, _Marraine_ (godmother), do you not?”
The elder woman turned from the light to him with a start and a stare;
perhaps it was the bright sunshine that made her face seem faded beside
it, especially where the scar-mark ran; she looked, to the stranger’s
eye, almost ghastly, as she replied, in a less cracked and tremulous
voice than before—“Holy Virgin, yes! You will send—you will take care
of—ah!” And as she stopped, perplexed and troubled, the moisture sprang
from her dull-blue eyes into tears; she passed one hand about the
disfigured place; she seemed nearer clearness of speech on the subject
than hitherto, as if that had been a master-spring to her scattered
memories.
“My good woman,” said the baronet soothingly, as he stepped nearer, into
the recess where her easy-chair stood—“My good Madame Deroux—if you wish
your son to return to you, it shall be managed, of course! You will see
him, I hope, grown up and prosperous, as well as able to assist you! It
would, no doubt, have been a burden before!—She or you could scarcely
recognise him now, however,” he added aside to the daughter, in an
undertone.
“It is easy enough, Monsieur,” was the careless answer, without any
responsive depression of voice, “since the arm would not lose such a
mark, more than my mother’s visage—added to the loss of the little
finger. I was too young to remember it, you see—but the washerwoman who
kept us both, and who used privately to bring the child at intervals to
my mother, leaving it for the night—she had again seen it after its
recovery, and lodged along with us afterwards till her death.”
Suzanne Deroux had felt hastily for something beneath the bosom of her
dress, and at length drew it forth; a thin gold cross with black beads,
which she kissed with fervour, then began eagerly to whisper and mutter
some scraps of prayer, that might have been Latin or _patois_, or both;
at each bead that fell from her fingers her face seemed growing calmer.
“She is quite well in other respects, Monsieur,” continued the daughter,
turning impatiently from her; “she still eats like a peasant, she sleeps
soundly, she prefers bright colours for her dress to go to mass and
confession. As for that, she is so superstitious, that when we were
about to starve, she would not permit her little cross there to be
pledged, nor the dress in which she must frequent Notre Dame—it was not
she who suffered, you see, but we—who endeavoured to conceal it from her
that we endured so much!”
A look of mild reproach was cast by Suzanne towards her daughter, while
her lips still moved.
“Well, well, Jeannette, going to these affairs pleases her,” said the
young boot-closer, with the cub-like leaning to his mother-in-law which
appeared through his uncouth exterior.
“It is the priests who frighten her,” went on his partner, her back
towards him, in perfect indifference to his remarks; “her confessor, who
makes her tremble at the supposition of crimes”—
“Of which she is innocent!” observed the son-in-law behind, in the same
disregarded way—“_sacré nom!_ Jeannette is wrong about my
mother-in-law,” he added, looking awkwardly for a moment at Sir Godfrey.
“If you would not call her Madame Deroux—it confuses her ideas—it is
Madame Peltier she likes strangers to call her—do you not, Marraine?”
An air of childish pleasure spread over the old woman’s features, and
she nodded graciously, and smiled.
“See how she loves the child, too, Jeannette!” said he, as the infant
stretched its shapeless arms and legs from the maternal bosom, where it
had at length ceased to feed, towards the grandmother’s bright kerchief
and white coif, that basked in outer sunshine. She put out her hands to
receive it, and, with an aspect of complete satisfaction, began dandling
the child towards the window, chirping to it like a bird, or buzzing
like a bee; while the slatternly Jeannette applied a careless touch to
the disorder of her dress.
“Peltier is the name of Jeannette’s father, it seems,” resumed the
bootmaker more confidentially than before, coming nearer the visitor;
“though for that—I and Jeannette do not mind such ceremony—do we,
Jeannette? We are fond of each other, you see.” The disdainful glance
which he received from his female companion was sufficiently
sharp-tempered to make the fondness on her side doubtful.
“Do you not see that you infest Monsieur with your absurd remarks!” said
she, angrily, when the pin had been taken from her mouth, on which her
attire greatly depended; “and he must naturally wish to escape from a
habitation so unworthy of him—favour me by being silent, or going out.”
The bootmaker retreated towards his original place again, while his
abler partner, with an intelligence and quickness of apprehension, as
well as a collectedness, which might have done credit to a higher
station, proceeded to take up the thread of their visitor’s business
with them.
There was one precaution which she requested him to afford them—a signed
paper in his handwriting, to account for their possession of the money,
and state the ground of its being given, in case of any accident
meanwhile from the police. And while the bootmaker was absent in search
of ink-bottle and pen from some neighbour, Sir Godfrey turned, for the
first time, from beside the elder woman’s chair in its recess, toward
the attic casement which appeared as fascinating to her as to her
charge.
“My mother is still a peasant, Monsieur,” remarked the younger woman,
apologetically; “she is never weary of admiring Paris!—Paris, with which
she has so little to do—of which she knows nothing—which has kept us so
long miserable!”
A strange thrill of very novel feeling ran through Sir Godfrey as he
pressed nearer, and looked. He almost shrank back with an emotion of
awe, the sight was so unexpected, in such extreme contrast to that mean
abode, from beside the unmeaning vacancy of the elder woman’s pleasure,
the infant’s crowing sounds and motions, the repugnance he felt for the
others, and his own engrossing thoughts: otherwise, on Willoughby’s
single-minded, straightforward, unimpassioned character, with a very
dormant fancy and but tardy movement of association, it might have
struck with slight impress. Immense and startling from that height,
indeed, was the prospect; nor the less so, that here and there some huge
pile of neighbouring chimneys, some tower-top, or a wreath of lazy
smoke, broke it up close at hand with a vividness of light and shade, or
a distinctness of detail, that was thrust on the eye. Here a sunny
perspective of roof, garretwindow, and chimney, ruddy at the top against
blue air, with basking cats, and blooming pots, and garments hung to
dry, that fluttered cheerfully, where the population of the upper world
of Paris, the boulevards of its canaille and its unknown, showed their
faces in the sun,—there a vast surging sea of slates, tossed hither and
thither into tower, steeple, and shadowy dome, pierced by dusky gulfs
and glooms—while midway ran out a dull thread of the Seine into a
bridge, and broke forth beyond in dazzling splendour, where the
reflection of the houses blended with the substance, so that all there
seemed shattered and dripping in silver and gem-like radiance—with
visionary structures lifted farther off among unsubstantial bowers, up
to the sun’s viewless glory where he stood high in a blaze of light, as
if clothed with a great mantle of indistinctness, and contemplated the
vast city. Far beneath him floated the Hospital’s golden dome: the
softened roar and clamour of Paris rose clear to the open attic
casement, with sharper noises from close below it; one saw straight
through an uninterrupted space, down upon streets and openings, quays,
square, and garden-terrace, in a distinct bird’s-eye view, alive with
the motion of minute citizens; scarce could it have been thought that
the regal whiteness of the rich Louvre was so near, and the tilted
pavilion-roofs of the great, gaunt, high-chimneyed Tuileries. The
various stages and storeys of inhabitants descended beyond sight, as to
abysses that were bottomless. The air felt clearer than elsewhere, and
the sky seemed nearer in its blue purity. It was all such a spectacle as
might have absorbed the faculties of a prophet; indeed the thought could
not but have struck a mind used to interpret its own consciousness, of
how slightly human distinctions might weigh, and in what trivial account
they would result, could magnificence so beyond the furniture of palaces
be familiar, or often accessible. With the English baronet, it was
rather the sudden perception of what vast concerns were going on the
while, under necessity to be sustained, round about the particular
affairs of his own business or experience: added to which came
emphatically enough that strange sense, sometimes resembling the
superstitious, of time gigantically pressing on to destiny—when with a
hurtling, heaving sound before it, and a crash that made all the
chimneys vibrate, the hard walls clang, the roofs rattle, and the
windows tingle and ring, the clock of Notre Dame, hard by, sent out its
first stroke of the hour. The elder woman let the child sink in her lap,
gravely crossing herself at every stroke; here and there, outside, a
face could be seen turned to it involuntarily. The bootmaker, setting
down the writing-materials he had procured after a somewhat long
absence, appeared to hear with a savage grin and gleam of satisfaction,
whether still caused by the money or by later news; he nodded his head
to each long, artillery-like stroke, rolling and reverberating away
among the piles of the Cité and St Louis, and made a whistling noise of
pleasure as he looked, till it was done.
“And now, my good woman,” said Sir Godfrey, when he had written the
required paper, with an order for the money, “let me bid you farewell.”
He took Suzanne’s shrivelled hand, and she made a motion to rise up,
with decorous gravity. There was a confused murmur of gratitude, as if
appealing to her daughter for fuller explanation; but he saw her eyes
moisten again, silently, when he said he would cause the means to be
taken for at least enabling her son to communicate with and assist her.
Suzanne Deroux shook her head, she seemed almost to groan; while the
same wavering feebleness of mind again turned her to the window and the
child. It appeared doubtful whether she really had a distinct notion who
Sir Godfrey was, or what relation he bore to her former master.
“Are you aware,” he added apart, to the daughter, ere turning to the
staircase, “whether your mother ever expressed any idea as to the cause
of the fire in the house—if it was accidental or otherwise?” The answer
was in the negative.
“Or on what floor—her master’s apartments, or some other?” No. Her
mother was talkative enough, sometimes, and she believed she knew little
of it, and remembered yet less.
“There was no other circumstance, then, of any importance, in the
matter, which they were acquainted with?” None, she reluctantly said,
after a minute’s reflection; and it was evident that, if it had been
otherwise, she would have been eager enough to make the most of it: even
the touch of English gold might have no power to make such a woman as
Jeannette Deroux feel any sort of genial emotion, but it had at all
events given the light of unsatisfied cupidity to her hard grey Normandy
eye. Sir Godfrey descended alone, to find the urchins beginning rather
to dread the impatience of their charge.
The recent interview, making known little of any additional importance,
at least convinced Sir Godfrey of the judiciousness of a step he had
hitherto disliked, so long as it seemed possible that unexpected facts
might appear from it—an examination for himself, namely, of the original
record by the police, whose reputation for exactitude and acuteness was
so proverbial. It now, indeed, assumed the air of a somewhat superfluous
measure, when through all he had heard from these people, with no motive
or means for deception, there did not show the slightest trace of
anything unlike other disasters of the kind—of anything equivocal,
anything suspicious. It was chiefly, therefore, with the wish for
complete reassurance, and final dismissal of the unwelcome subject, that
he turned again, on his way homeward, to the chief bureau of police
which he had previously passed. He found prompt attendance there, on
producing his passport, and the required volume, from under the head of
“Conflagrations Domestiques,” soon lay open on a high desk before him at
the point he was in search of, while the inspector turned the leaves
slowly, reading aloud the passages he indicated, and which the peculiar
style of French calligraphy did not tend to render lucid.
The record of nineteen years ago had been made under a different
monarch, according to the laboriously prolix system of M. de Sartines,
especially when any foreign subject was concerned; and it extended over
many of the large pages, betraying by its faint-brown ink how
considerable an interval had elapsed. It set out with the alarm being
brought past midnight to the residence of the commissary in the Quartier
faubourg St Germain, that a house on the Quai d’Orcay was in flames, and
the endeavours made to arrest them, as well as to succour the
inhabitants, who had been driven to the garret windows, and were
attempting to pass to the contiguous roofs; it stated the narrow escape
of a maidservant from a front window of the first floor, where the whole
of the apartments were full of smoke, by the aid of a gendarme with a
ladder too short to allow him to enter—and of a woman in her
night-dress, whose shrieks had first given the alarm, but who had
disappeared; till she returned to a corner window with a child in her
arms, actually pursued by a bursting flame, but rescued by a man on the
top of a wall which abutted there on a manufactory canal flowing at a
right angle into the Seine—also of the English gentleman, the tenant of
the first floor, who had at first made his way from the street into the
basement, out of a fiacre which had brought him from the theatre, but
who reappeared half drenched, and panting for breath, amidst the play of
the fire-engines. The state of the February night was described as being
very dark before the occurrence, with a high wind blowing up the river,
where, from the tide, and a period of unusual rain, the water of the
Seine made the canal overflow, rising almost to a level with its
bridges, yet affording the greater facilities for the jets from the
fire-engines, which succeeded ultimately in saving the adjoining
structures, and the sheds of the tobacco-manufactory adjacent, with the
lower part of the house itself. The situation of the house was also
minutely given, to the very contiguity of the two poplar trees growing
outside the wall, up from the canal, but by which the _pompeurs_ had
found it impossible to climb in their heavy accoutrements—the height of
the wall on that side, and the manner in which the end of the house rose
like a continuation of it towards the quay, rendering it apparently
impossible, even when one had gained the top of the wall, to reach at
all near the solitary first-floor window, in the middle, and higher up.
Then followed a detail of the various occupants of the three floors and
garrets—on the basement, the proprietor, a widower, elderly and of
avaricious habits, whose warehouse of furniture filled three apartments,
his sleeping chamber being a closet attached—his clerk, an old man who
lived in a fourth apartment with his wife, both acting as porters:
above, the family of Monsieur Vilby, the Englishman, consisting at that
time of himself, his wife, and infant son, a young female attendant, a
child’s nurse, and the man-servant or butler of M. Vilby: on the third
storey and in the attics, a banker’s head-clerk, with his wife, her
maid, and three young children—a journalist, a painter, and an actor,
living together—a single young man, of no profession, (though calling
himself a poet), supposed subject to harmless fits of lunacy, inhabiting
an attic where he was known frequently to lock himself in. Of these
there had perished—the old proprietor himself, M. Canrobert, in whose
apartment the fire was supposed to have originated, since he warmed
himself only in bed, while supping alone, by candle-light—and the
portress, whose husband, luckily for him, had chanced to be absent on
business of his master’s,—the remains of both being still
distinguishable if only from the place of their discovery: the English
lady, Madame Vilby—her infant, at first supposed to have been the one
saved by the nurse, but found afterwards to have perished in her
embrace, although the charred and mingled debris of the whole upper
storeys fallen from above rendered it difficult to distinguish one mass
of human substance from another: the man-servant of the English
gentleman, at one time imagined identical with the person so active on
the wall;—also others, above, who were enumerated. Then succeeded the
depositions of the various individuals in evidence.
“‘_Victorine Tronchet_, fille-de-chambre to the late Madame Vilby,
declared, that before ten o’clock her mistress signified an intention to
sit up for monsieur, who had gone to a theatre at some distance, and
that she might retire. Retired to bed, accordingly, in a closet
adjoining the nurse’s room—saw the nurse, as she thought, carry out the
child as usual to her mistress—imagined, while half asleep, or dreamt,
that her mistress herself afterwards passed through the room, stooped
over the bed with the child in her arms, and disappeared. But knew
nothing further until awoke by the suffocating vapours. Could read—but
did not sit up in bed with a candle, perusing romances. There was a lamp
always burning on the floor of the nurse’s room. Was not aware, that
night, of the nurse having her own child in the house. Believed her
mistress to be ignorant of it. Could not tell why her mistress did not
herself suckle the child—knew nothing of such affairs. Did not know that
Madame’s voice had been brilliant—had heard her mistress sing to a
musical instrument, when M. Vilby was at home. M. Vilby had returned
home that day, unexpectedly, from England. He went to the theatre,
accompanied only by M. Adolphe, his servant—perhaps because Madame had a
headache. They used frequently to go to the theatre. Had heard that a
new actress of celebrity would perform. The man-servant, M. Adolphe,
returned early with some message to Madame, and retired up the outside
stairs to his attic at the top of the house.’”
“‘The examination of the stranger who had been so active was made
through an interpreter. Stated his name to be Guillaume Greefeeze. Was
not a native of England, but of Wales. Knew nothing of the fire, except
that having followed M. Vilby’s hackney-coach from the theatre, he smelt
smoke, and saw immediately the fire lick out (_se lécher_) through the
front-windows, when the doors below were burst open—heard shrieks at the
further end—leapt down by the canal, to climb the wall,—saw suddenly, by
the light of the fire, a woman in white at the window a little
above—thought she had fallen down inside, till she came back, holding
out a child and calling to him. Succeeded in getting to the window by
help of the barred outside shutter on that side, which swung with him,
however—found it impossible to get either of them down to the wall,
which did not come near enough towards being under the window—without
firmly fastening the outer edge of the shutter to a staple already
there. Refused to leave the woman as she seemed to wish—signed to her to
hold the child fast—tore down one end of the window-curtain, which held
firm—made her slip herself down after him in the fold of the curtain,
while he held the end firm with one hand, catching the shutter by the
other. On the top of the wall, which was luckily broad enough to hold
them, the woman seemed to faint away, so as nearly to drag them off,
when they would have fallen into the canal—shouted for assistance
then—before that, all the firemen and the crowd were in front, making a
noise—with the pumping, the sound of the fire and wind, and the falling
of the roof, it was useless. They were seen by chance, when the woman
and child were carried to the hospital. Afterwards assisted at the pumps
till the end.’
“The evidence of this witness was extracted with difficulty, by
fragments, in spite of a somewhat sullen and cynical air, almost
cunning. He frequently used the eccentric phrase ‘for reasons of his
own.’ It was thought proper, from these and other suspicious
circumstances, to detain him in the meanwhile.
“The statement of the nurse, Suzanne Deroux, was taken formally by her
bed-side, in a ward of the Hotel Dieu, where the fever from her injuries
continued, while it was doubtful whether her sight would again become
perfect. As for her child, whose arm had suffered, hopes had only begun
to be entertained of its recovery. ‘Was a native of Normandy, unmarried.
Had two children—a girl of four, and the young child which she had left
with a neighbour, to obtain support by nursing that of Madame Vilby. Had
obtained the assistance of the portress in having her own child brought
to her privately, at intervals, that she might still contribute to its
health. Had thought it pining, as her neighbour was a Parisian—was very
healthy herself, being originally a peasant—but was not allowed to go
out, except with the child of Madame Vilby in the daytime, accompanied
by her or a servant. On the night of the fire, had had both the children
with her—and as usual, conveyed that of Madame Vilby to her bed-chamber,
to be seen by her while awake. Did not see Madame Vilby after that, but
fell asleep holding her own child in her arms to lull an uneasiness it
showed—while that of Madame Vilby, which was younger, slept soundly at
the other side of the large bed. The suffocating smoke, and the shrieks
of Victorine, the fille-de-chambre, made her rise bewildered, seizing
the child which she felt clasping her and again uttering complaints. She
rushed to the nearest window, which would not open—that of the opposite
room, however, yielded, admitting a gust of wind by which the smoke
appeared to explode beyond into flame, and showing a man attracted by
her cries to the adjoining wall. Confessed that her recollection of the
other infant had not till then returned—that her instinct urged her to
return only for her own, which she had let fall when attempting to open
the first window—that she ran to search the bed, however, in
vain—concluded that Victorine or some one else had snatched the child
immediately from the side of the bed. Caught up her own infant from the
floor where she had dropped it, and after both had been for a moment on
fire from the partition of the room, was rescued by the window. Did not
yet know whether any one had perished. Was certain the fire had not
begun in the nursery, from the lamp on the floor—having distinctly
recollected awaking in complete darkness—the lamp must have been
overturned, extinguished, or taken away. Acknowledged, of her own
accord, that in secretly obtaining her own infant she had committed a
crime. Always slept soundly at night, having been a peasant. Did not
know anything more, and had no expectation of her child living, it was
so sickly from the manner of nourishment.’
“In reference to some of the remains discovered, surgical testimonies
were opposed. Amongst several unclaimed bodies deposited at La Morgue,
during the progress of this examination, was that, evidently, of an
Englishman, whose blue coat and top-boots betrayed his origin. Although
swollen and disfigured, while found naturally at a distance down the
Seine, yet no other Englishman than the man-servant of M. Vilby had
disappeared. The inference became certainty from the subsequent
declarations of many pompeurs, gendarmes, and bystanders, that after the
rescue of the nurse with her child, a figure had been seen to leap from
the pursuit of the flames out of this window into the canal.
“The declaration of M. Vilby, after several days, was taken. ‘Believed
the fire to be accidental. Had left Madame slightly indisposed, to see
an after-piece at the theatre, which he particularly wished to see with
her. Had been somewhat annoyed at her inability to accompany him. Had
met friends, and instead of remaining, had sent home a message by his
servant, to say he might return late. Had left them, however, earlier
than he at first intended—and’——the emotion of the witness was at that
point more expressive than words. The commissary-in-chief intimated that
no further evidence on the part of M. Vilby would be necessary, unless
on inferior points. ‘He was aware of the employment of Suzanne Deroux.
Did not know of her introduction of her own infant on any occasion into
the house. During his absence on business, his wife had gone out of
Paris for some days to visit a married friend, leaving their child, with
his full approval. He had approved her not nursing the child
herself—nay, had suggested it. He had considered Suzanne a faithful
servant, if not very intelligent. Certainly, had she been so, she might
have saved his child, without risking her own. He was now about to visit
the married friend of his wife in the neighbourhood of Paris.’
“Additional statement of M. Vilby, ‘Knew the young man _Greefeeze_. Had
seen him several times in England—was unaware of any reason why
Greefeeze should follow him from the theatre, or from the hotel of his
friends. There was no enmity between himself and this man—on the
contrary, he had always found Greefeeze apparently desirous to serve
him—had at one time intended to employ him, and once recommended him as
gamekeeper to his brother in England. With regard to the body found, had
gone to see it at La Morgue, and could trace no resemblance to his
servant, John Adolphe. Adolphe never had worn top-boots, that he was
aware of. Adolphe was not an Englishman; but, he believed, a Swiss.
Having been a trooper in the regiment of his own brother, a British
officer, and been for a time his brother’s servant, particularly
recommended by him when leaving the regiment for private service, this
young man had had his perfect confidence. Was convinced that Adolphe
must have lost his life in endeavouring to save what was most precious
to his master. Had had him some time before his own marriage, and knew
him well. Had _himself_ leapt out of the open window at the end of the
house, hardly knowing the canal was below—after the utmost hazard of his
life. Had found the whole interior a mass of smoke, bursting into flame
from near the staircase—the wind from the open casement alone saved him
from suffocation. Had heard no one—felt no one—all whirling, crackling,
burning—a hell out of which he still wished he could have thrown himself
into annihilation. It was, therefore, probably himself the other
witnesses had taken for his servant—or for the dead body at the Morgue.
Had been carried into the river, no doubt—but swam to the quay—there was
light enough, God knew—came up the stairs without even being noticed—was
only sorry that men were so mad as to cling to life, when it was misery.
Thought it proper to comply with the forms of law in a country, but
considered them often a mockery.’”
Here ended the main portion of the police record. A subsequent note in
red ink, however, directed farther on to a later entry in the volume,
with the date of nearly six months after. “The Englishman Greefeeze
reappeared at the bureau, with passports to be viséd for England.
‘Stated that he was in the service of M. Vilby, who had suddenly become,
by the death of an elder brother, the possessor of a title and estates.
Desired, in the indifferent manner of the English, to know the state of
the woman Suzanne Deroux. Inquired for her residence, on the ground that
his master would confer a pension on her for her injuries.’ An inspector
was sent with him to the woman’s house, where she had at length returned
from the hospital with her child. The emotion of her gratitude on
perceiving Greefeeze was the more conspicuous from his impassibility.
Yet on the following day, accompanied by the woman and her child, now
recovered, Greefeeze presented himself at the bureau, to declare his
adoption of the latter, under his own name. He was required to procure a
notarial and ecclesiastical testification, as well as to engage against
the future return of the child for subsistence from the police—also the
approval of his master, Sir Vilby.—Sir Vilby indeed appeared at the
bureau, when about to leave Paris in haste. His voice and features were
scarcely recognisable from the effects of suffering. He disavowed
consent to the act of Greefeeze, who followed him, and whom he
contemptuously called a fool. Sir Vilby, however, intimated the right of
Greefeeze to pursue his eccentric idea, if persevered in. The stubborn
Greefeeze alluded to a wife whom he had left in his own country of
Wales, and who was unhappy from the absence of children. His sentiments
had apparently been touched in the act of rescuing this infant, which he
was about to intrust, on the journey, to the female fellow-travellers
who might accompany them. The act of adoption is consequently recorded
as follows—— * * * Sir Vilby requested to correct his statement on the
previous occasion, six months before, with regard to the body at La
Morgue, since, on reflection, he was decidedly of opinion that it was
that of the Swiss, John Adolphe, his servant. This had already, indeed,
been perceived by the commissary—but the retractation appeared more
eccentric than the denial. The pension, too, which Sir Vilby now
conferred on the nurse, ought to have been given before, as the very
material injuries were received at all events in his employment.”
It was with no ordinary feelings that Sir Godfrey Willoughby perused or
listened to this formal memorial of an event that had been so long
obscure to him: it seemed, however, to leave little now indefinite or
concealed; numerous though the details were, which it presented for the
first time, they implied nothing really evil, or extraordinary, save as
most human calamities might; and the result was rather satisfactory than
otherwise. But the afternoon was now far advanced, and he rode homeward,
to dine alone, to finish an uncompleted packet to his Exeter lawyer,
with information and inquiries about the so-called young Griffiths, as
well as in regard to his adoptive father—then to set off, a little later
than he had expected, to meet his returning party on the Versailles
road.
The circumstances of their late dilemma were soon related—rather tending
to Charles’s disadvantage in the eyes of his father, who, amidst all his
general mildness, was inclined to look upon the youth’s disposition with
occasional severity; seeming, as it did to him, at that half-formed
stage, when lads are least agreeable in the paternal view, to indicate
some traits, both erratic and froward, though at times brilliant, of his
second uncle, John. He scarce listened to the boy’s explanation, and
checked his self-justifying arguments somewhat abruptly; to the silent
chafing of his son’s spirit, and the mother’s still more silent concern.
But at their late coffee-table, all being apparently forgotten with Sir
Godfrey’s expressed resolution never to trust the carriage in future
apart from his own guidance, they sat pleasantly talking by
candle-light. “So soon as Frank arrives, my dear Kate,” said Sir
Godfrey, from his arm-chair to the sofa where his wife leant near,
recovering from her fatigues, “we shall leave forthwith for the country.
I have scarcely any further business in Paris. And you have seen here, I
daresay, all that is to see?” She assented perfectly. Mr Thorpe had
launched out almost in a dissertation to the governess and Miss
Willoughby, the fruit of his late rural notices, on agriculture and
ecclesiastical arrangements; led on by Mrs Mason’s attentive air, and
the apparently intelligent interest of Rose. It was with a mild
confusion that he heard the young lady’s abrupt doubt as to the
sufficiency of sugar in his cup, followed straight by the addition of
another lump from the silver tongs in her hand; and while Mr Thorpe
stirred, and tasted, she had quietly escaped from the room, perhaps to
re-read her dearest friend’s epistle. So Sir Godfrey, who not merely
treated the tutor with the utmost deference as a graduate and a deacon
of the Church of England, but entertained great respect for him as a
learned and good man—at once joined himself to the topic—differing
slightly from the view that English plans, even English Protestantism,
would improve Frenchmen.
“I, of course, have happened to come a good deal in contact with them
abroad, my dear sir,” added he, “particularly in North America, during
the late war, and I assure you they have many generous, noble, and
honourable qualities, peculiarly their own, which would perhaps be lost
in any forced imitation of us. When I was taken prisoner by our own
rebels there, I really believe, Thorpe, that but for the clear and
gentlemanly conviction of some French naval officers, who came up at the
time, I should have been summarily hanged on the spot as a spy. I had
sought to escape in the uniform of a dead Frenchman, from a band of
savages, and colonials more brutal by far—though, among my captors,
there were some who ought to have known better. Nothing saved me, in
fact, but the ready quickness of these officers, whom I had never in my
life seen before. They immediately claimed me as a prisoner who had
broken parole from their frigate, by swimming to the river bank—a charge
which I, of course, indignantly disowned. I was, however, taken on board
in their boat, when the assertion was persisted in by the captain, a
French nobleman, on the suggestion of his officers, so that the ship set
sail with me beyond colonial reach. In the fleet of Count de Grasse I
was indebted for the utmost kindness to the captain of the frigate; and
when, not long after, at the defeat by Lord Rodney, he himself, with his
ship, was captured, I was enabled, in some degree, to repay the
obligation. We contracted the warmest friendship. Indeed, I regret not
having heard from the Count for many years, and his estates, I believe,
are not near Paris.”
“Observe, however,” persisted Mr Thorpe, stubbornly, “the extreme want
of principle which, in the bulk of the population, must be a thousand
times more egregious. A Protestant, Sir Godfrey, would rather have”—