HISTORY OF COLONEL FOUGAS, RELATED BY HIMSELF.
"Do not expect that I will ornament my story with those flowers, more
agreeable than substantial, which Imagination often uses to gloss over
truth. A Frenchman and a soldier, I doubly ignore deception. Friendship
interrogates me, Frankness shall answer.
"I was born of poor but honest parents at the beginning of the year
which the _Jeu de Paume_[5] brightened with an aurora of liberty. The
south was my native clime; the language dear to the troubadours was that
which I lisped in my cradle. My birth cost my mother's life. The author
of mine was the humble owner of a little farm, and moistened his bread
in the sweat of labor. My first sports were not those of wealth. The
many-colored pebbles which are found by the brooks, and that well-known
insect which childhood holds fluttering, free and captive at the same
time, at the end of a thread, stood me in stead of other playthings.
"An old minister at Devotion's altar, enfranchised from the shadowy
bondage of fanaticism, and reconciled to the new institutions of France,
was my Chiron and Mentor. He nourished me with the strong lion's marrow
of Rome and Athens; his lips distilled into my ears the embalmed honey
of wisdom. Honor to thee, learned and venerable man, who gavest me the
first precepts of wisdom and the first examples of virtue!
"But already that atmosphere of glory which the genius of one man and
the valor of a nation had set floating over the country, filled all my
senses, and made my young heart throb. France, on the edge of the
volcano of civil war, had collected all her forces into a thunderbolt to
launch upon Europe, and the world, astounded if not overwhelmed, was
shrinking from the surge of the unchained torrent. What man, what
Frenchman, could have heard with indifference that echo of victory
reverberating through millions of hearts?
"While scarcely leaving childhood, I felt that honor is more precious
than life. The warlike music of the drums brought to my eyes brave and
manly tears. 'And I, too,' said I, following the music of the regiments
through the streets of Toulouse, 'will pluck laurels though I sprinkle
them with my blood.' The pale olive of peace had from me nothing but
scorn. The peaceful triumphs of the law, the calm pleasures of commerce
and finance, were extolled in vain. To the toga of our Ciceros, to the
robe of our magistrates, to the curule chair of our legislators, to the
opulence of our Mondors, I preferred the sword. One would have said that
I had sucked the milk of Bellona. 'Victory or Death!' was already my
motto, and I was not sixteen years old.
"With what noble scorn I heard recounted the history of our Proteuses of
politics! With what disdainful glances I regarded the Turcarets of
finance, lolling on the cushions of some magnificent carriage, and
conducted by a laced automaton to the boudoir of some Aspasia. But if I
heard told the mighty deeds of the Knights of the Round Table, or the
valor of the crusaders celebrated in flowing verse; if chance placed in
my hand the great actions of our modern Rolands, recounted in an army
bulletin by the successor of Charlemagne, a flame presaging the fire of
battles rose in my young eyes.
"Ah, the inaction was too much, and my leading-strings, already worn by
impatience, would have broken, perhaps, had not a father's wisdom untied
them.
"'Most surely,' said he to me, trying, but in vain, to restrain his
tears, 'it was no tyrant who begot you, and I will not poison the life
which I myself gave you. I had hoped that your hand would remain in our
cottage to close my eyes; but when Patriotism has spoken, Egotism must
be still. My prayers will always follow you to the field where Mars
harvests heroes. May you merit the guerdon of valor, and show yourself a
good citizen, as you have been a good son!'
"Speaking thus, he opened his arms to me. I threw myself into them; we
mingled our tears, and I promised to return to our hearthstone as soon
as I could bring the star of honor suspended from my breast. But alas!
my unhappy father was destined to see me no more. The fate which was
already gilding the thread of my days, pitilessly severed that of his. A
stranger's hand closed his eyes, while I was gaining my first epaulette
at the battle of Jena.
"Lieutenant at Eylau, captain at Wagram, and there decorated by the
Emperor's own hand on the field of battle, major before Almieda,
lieutenant-colonel at Badajoz, colonel at Moscow, I have drunk the cup
of victory to the full. But I have also tasted the chalice of adversity.
The frozen plains of Russia saw me alone with a platoon of braves, the
last remnant of my regiment, forced to devour the mortal remains of that
faithful friend who had so often carried me into the very heart of the
enemy's battalions. Trusty and affectionate companion of my dangers,
when rendered useless by an accident at Smolensk, he devoted his very
_manes_ to the safety of his master, and made of his skin a protection
for my frozen and lacerated feet.
"My tongue refuses to repeat the story of our perils in that terrible
campaign. Perhaps some day I will write it with a pen dipped in
tears--tears, the tribute of feeble humanity. Surprised by the season of
frosts in a zone of ice, without fire, without bread, without shoes,
without means of transportation, denied the succor of Esculapius' art,
harassed by the Cossacks, robbed by the peasants--positive vampires, we
saw our mute thunderers, which had fallen into the enemy's hands, belch
forth death upon ourselves. What more can I tell you? The passage of the
Beresina, the opposition at Wilna--Oh, ye gods of Thunder!--- But I feel
that grief overcomes me, and that my language is becoming tinged with
the bitterness of these recollections.
"Nature and Love were holding in reserve for me brief but precious
consolations. Released from my fatigues, I passed a few happy days in my
native land among the peaceful vales of Nancy. While our phalanxes were
preparing themselves for fresh combats, while I was gathering around my
flag three thousand young but valorous warriors, all resolved to open to
posterity the path of honor, a new emotion, to which I had before been a
stranger, furtively glided into my soul.
"Beautified by all Nature's gifts, enriched by the fruits of an
excellent education, the young and interesting Clementine had scarcely
passed from the uncertain shadows of childhood into the sweet illusions
of youth. Eighteen springs composed her life. Her parents extended to
some of the army officers a hospitality which, though it was not
gratuitous, was far from lacking in cordiality. To see their child and
love her, was for me the affair of a day. Her virgin heart smiled upon
my love. At the first avowals dictated to me by my passion, I saw her
forehead color with a lovely modesty. We exchanged our vows one lovely
evening in June, under an arbor where her happy father sometimes
dispensed to the thirsty officers the brown liquor of the North. I swore
that she should be my wife, and she promised to be mine; she yielded
still more. Our happiness, regardless of all outside, had the calmness
of a brook whose pure wave is never troubled by the storm, and which
rolls sweetly between flowery banks, spreading its own freshness through
the grove that protects its modest course.
"A lightning stroke separated us from each other at the moment when Law
and Religion were about adding their sanction to our sweet communion. I
departed before I was able to give my name to her who had given me her
heart. I promised to return; she promised to wait for me; and, all
bathed in her tears, I tore myself from her arms, to rush to the laurels
of Dresden and the cypresses of Leipzic. A few lines from her hand
reached me during the interval between the two battles. 'You are to be a
father,' she told me. Am I one? God knows! Has she waited for me? I
believe she has. The waiting must have appeared to be a long one since
the birth of this child, who is forty-six years old to-day, and who
could be, in his turn, my father.
"Pardon me for having troubled you so long with misfortunes. I wished to
pass rapidly over this sad history, but the unhappiness of virtue has in
it something sweet to temper the bitterness of grief.
"Some days after the disaster of Leipzic, the giant of our age had me
called into his tent, and said to me:
"'Colonel, are you a man to make your way through four armies?'
"'Yes, sire.'
"'Alone, and without escort?'
"'Yes, sire.'
"'There must be a letter carried to Dantzic.'
"'Yes, sire.'
"'You will deliver it into General Rapp's own hands?'
"'Yes, sire.'
"'It is probable you will be taken, or killed.'
"'Yes, sire.'
"'For that reason I send two other officers with copies of the same
despatch. There are three of you; the enemy will kill two, the third
will get there, and France will be saved.'
"'Yes, sire.'
"'The one who returns shall be a brigadier-general.'
"'Yes, sire.'
"Every detail of this interview, every word of the Emperor, every
response which I had the honor to address to him, is still engraved upon
my memory. All three of us set out separately. Alas! not one of us
reached the goal aimed at by his valor, and I have learned to-day that
France was not saved. But when I see these blockheads of historians
asserting that the Emperor forgot to send orders to General Rapp, I
feel a terrible itching to cut their ---- story short, at least.
"'When a prisoner in the hands of the Russians in a German village, I
had the consolation of finding an old philosopher, who gave me the
rarest proofs of friendship. Who would have told me, when I succumbed to
the numbness of the cold in the tower of Liebenfeld, that that sleep
would not be the last? God is my witness, that in then addressing, from
the bottom of my heart, a last farewell to Clementine, I did not even
hope to see her again. I will see you again, then, O sweet and confiding
Clementine--best of spouses, and, probably, of mothers! What do I say? I
see her now! My eyes do not deceive me! This is surely she! There she
is, just as I left her! Clementine! In my arms! On my heart! Look here!
What's this you've been whining to me, the rest of you? Napoleon is not
dead, and the world has not grown forty-six years older, for Clementine
is still the same!"
The betrothed of Leon Renault was about entering the room, and stopped
petrified at finding herself so overwhelmingly received by the Colonel.