Produced by David Widger
WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC, Complete
The Story of a Lost Napoleon
By Gilbert Parker
INTRODUCTION
In one sense this book stands by itself. It is like nothing else I have
written, and if one should seek to give it the name of a class, it might
be called an historical fantasy.
It followed The Trail of the Sword and preceded The Seats of the Mighty,
and appeared in the summer of 1895. The critics gave it a reception
which was extremely gratifying, because, as it seemed to me, they
realised what I was trying to do; and that is a great deal. One great
journal said it read as though it had been written at a sitting; another
called it a tour de force, and the grave Athenaeum lauded it in a key
which was likely to make me nervous, since it seemed to set a standard
which I should find it hard to preserve in the future. But in truth
the newspaper was right which said that the book read as though it was
written at a sitting, and that it was a tour de force. The facts are
that the book was written, printed, revised, and ready for press in five
weeks.
The manuscript of the book was complete within four weeks. It possessed
me. I wrote night and day. There were times when I went to bed and,
unable to sleep, I would get up at two o’clock or three o’clock in the
morning and write till breakfast time. A couple of hours’ walk after
breakfast, and I would write again until nearly two o’clock. Then
luncheon; afterwards a couple of hours in the open air, and I would
again write till eight o’clock in the evening. The world was shut out. I
moved in a dream. The book was begun at Hot Springs, in Virginia, in
the annex to the old Hot Springs Hotel. I could not write in the hotel
itself, so I went to the annex, and in the big building--in the early
spring-time--I worked night and day. There was no one else in the place
except the old negro caretaker and his wife. Four-fifths of the book was
written in three weeks there. Then I went to New York, and at the Lotus
Club, where I had a room, I finished it--but not quite. There were a
few pages of the book to do when I went for my walk in Fifth Avenue one
afternoon. I could not shake the thing off, the last pages demanded to
be written. The sermon which the old Cure was preaching on Valmond’s
death was running in my head. I could not continue my walk. Then and
there I stepped into the Windsor Hotel, which I was passing, and asked
if there was a stenographer at liberty. There was. In the stenographer’s
office of the Windsor Hotel, with the life of a caravanserai buzzing
around me, I dictated the last few pages of When Valmond Came to
Pontiac. It was practically my only experience of dictation of fiction.
I had never been able to do it, and have not been able to do it since,
and I am glad that it is so, for I should have a fear of being led into
mere rhetoric. It did not, however, seem to matter with this book. It
wrote itself anywhere. The proofs of the first quarter of the book were
in my hands before I had finished writing the last quarter.
It took me a long time to recover from the great effort of that five
weeks, but I never regretted those consuming fires which burned up sleep
and energy and ravaged the vitality of my imagination. The story was
founded on the incident described in the first pages of the book, which
was practically as I experienced it when I was a little child. The
picture there drawn of Valmond was the memory of just such a man as
stood at the four corners in front of the little hotel and scattered his
hot pennies to the children of the village. Also, my father used to tell
me as a child a story of Napoleon, whose history he knew as well as
any man living, and something of that story may be found in the fifth
chapter of the book where Valmond promotes Sergeant Lagroin from
non-commissioned rank, first to be captain, then to be colonel, and then
to be general, all in a moment, as it were.
I cannot tell the original story as my father told it to me here, but
it was the tale of how a sergeant in the Old Guard, having shared
his bivouac supper of roasted potatoes with the Emperor, was told by
Napoleon that he should sup with his Emperor when they returned to
Versailles. The old sergeant appeared at Versailles in course of time
and demanded admittance to the Emperor, saying that he had been asked
to supper. When Napoleon was informed, he had the veteran shown in and,
recognising his comrade of the baked potatoes, said at once that the
sergeant should sup with him. The sergeant’s reply was: “Sire, how can
a non-commissioned officer dine with a general?” It was then, Napoleon,
delighted with the humour and the boldness of his grenadier, summoned
the Old Guard, and had the sergeant promoted to the rank of captain on
the spot.
It was these apparently incongruous things, together with legends that
I had heard and read of Napoleon, which gave me the idea of Valmond.
First, a sketch of about five thousand words was written, and it looked
as though I were going to publish it as a short story; but one day,
sitting in a drawing-room in front of a grand piano, on the back of
which were a series of miniatures of the noted women who had played
their part in Napoleon’s life, the incident of the Countess of Carnstadt
(I do not use the real name) at St. Helena associated itself with
the picture in my memory of the philanthropist of the street corner.
Thereupon the whole story of a son of Napoleon, ignorant of his own
birth, but knowing that a son had been born to Napoleon at St. Helena,
flitted through my imagination; and the story spread out before me all
in an hour, like an army with banners.
The next night--for this happened in New York--I went down to Hot
Springs, Virginia, and began a piece of work which enthralled me as I
had never before been enthralled, and as I have never been enthralled in
the same way since; for it was perilous to health and mental peace.
Fantasy as it is, the book has pictures of French-Canadian life which
are as true as though the story itself was all true. Characters are
in it like Medallion, the little chemist, the avocat, Lajeunesse the
blacksmith, and Madeleinette, his daughter, which were in some of the
first sketches I ever wrote of French Canada, and subsequently appearing
in the novelette entitled The Lane That Had No Turning. Indeed, ‘When
Valmond Came to Pontiac’, historical fantasy as it is, has elements both
of romance and realism.
Of all the books which I have written, perhaps because it cost me so
much, because it demanded so much of me at the time of its writing, I
care for it the most. It was as good work as I could do. This much may
at least be said: that no one has done anything quite in the same way
or used the same subject, or given it the same treatment. Also it may be
said, as the Saturday Review remarked, that it contained one whole, new
idea, and that was the pathetic--unutterably pathetic--incident of a man
driven by the truth in his blood to impersonate himself.
“Oh, withered is the garland of the war,
The Soldier’s pole is fallen.”
WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC
CHAPTER I
On one corner stood the house of Monsieur Garon the avocat; on another,
the shop of the Little Chemist; on another, the office of Medallion
the auctioneer; and on the last, the Hotel Louis Quinze. The chief
characteristics of Monsieur Garon’s house were its brass door-knobs, and
the verdant vines that climbed its sides; of the Little Chemist’s shop,
the perfect whiteness of the building, the rolls of sober wall-paper,
and the bottles of coloured water in the shop windows; of Medallion’s,
the stoop that surrounded three sides of the building, and the notices
of sales tacked up, pasted up, on the front; of the Hotel Louis Quinze,
the deep dormer windows, the solid timbers, and the veranda that gave
its front distinction--for this veranda had been the pride of several
generations of landlords, and its heavy carving and bulky grace were
worth even more admiration than Pontiac gave to it.
The square which the two roads and the four corners made was, on
week-days, the rendezvous of Pontiac, and the whole parish; on Sunday
mornings the rendezvous was shifted to the large church on the hill,
beside which was the house of the Cure, Monsieur Fabre. Travelling
towards the south, out of the silken haze of a mid-summer day, you would
come in time to the hills of Maine; north, to the city of Quebec and the
river St. Lawrence; east, to the ocean; and west, to the Great Lakes and
the land of the English. Over this bright province Britain raised her
flag, but only Medallion and a few others loved it for its own sake, or
saluted it in the English tongue.
In the drab velvety dust of these four corners, were gathered, one night
of July a generation ago, the children of the village and many of their
elders. All the events of that epoch were dated from the evening of this
particular day. Another day of note the parish cherished, but it was
merely a grave fulfilment of the first.
Upon the veranda-stoop of the Louis Quinze stood a man of apparently
about twenty-eight years of age. When you came to study him closely,
some sense of time and experience in his look told you that he might
be thirty-eight, though his few grey hairs seemed but to emphasise a
certain youthfulness in him. His eye was full, singularly clear, almost
benign, and yet at one moment it gave the impression of resolution,
at another it suggested the wayward abstraction of the dreamer. He
was well-figured, with a hand of peculiar whiteness, suggesting in
its breadth more the man of action than of meditation. But it was a
contradiction; for, as you saw it rise and fall, you were struck by its
dramatic delicacy; as it rested on the railing of the veranda, by its
latent power. You faced incongruity everywhere. His dress was bizarre,
his face almost classical, the brow clear and strong, the profile good
to the mouth, where there showed a combination of sensuousness and
adventure. Yet in the face there was an illusive sadness, strangely out
of keeping with the long linen coat, frilled shirt, flowered waistcoat,
lavender trousers, boots of enamelled leather, and straw hat with white
linen streamers. It was a whimsical picture.
At the moment that the Cure and Medallion the auctioneer came down the
street together towards the Louis Quinze, talking amiably, this singular
gentleman was throwing out hot pennies, with a large spoon, from a tray
in his hand, calling on the children to gather them, in French which was
not the French of Pontiac--or Quebec; and this refined accent the Cure
was quick to detect, as Monsieur Garon the avocat, standing on the
outskirts of the crowd, had done, some moments before. The stranger
seemed only conscious of his act of liberality and the children before
him. There was a naturalness in his enjoyment which was almost boylike;
a naive sort of exultation possessed him.
He laughed softly to see the children toss the pennies from hand to
hand, blowing to cool them; the riotous yet half-timorous scramble for
them, and burnt fingers thrust into hot, blithe mouths. And when he
saw a fat little lad of five crowded out of the way by his elders, he
stepped down with a quick word of sympathy, put a half-dozen pennies in
the child’s pocket, snatched him up and kissed him, and then returned to
the stoop, where were gathered the landlord, the miller, and Monsieur
De la Riviere, the young Seigneur. But the most intent spectator of the
scene was Parpon the dwarf, who was grotesquely crouched upon the wide
ledge of a window.
Tray after tray of pennies was brought out and emptied, till at last the
stranger paused, handed the spoon to the landlord, drew out a fine white
handkerchief and dusted his fingers, standing silent for a moment and
smiling upon the crowd.
It was at this point that some young villager called, in profuse
compliment: “Three cheers for the Prince!” The stranger threw an accent
of pose into his manner, his eye lighted, his chin came up, he dropped
one hand negligently on his hip, and waved the other in acknowledgment.
Presently he beckoned, and from the hotel were brought out four great
pitchers of wine and a dozen tin cups, and, sending the garcon around
with one, the landlord with another, he motioned Parpon the dwarf to
bear a hand. Parpon shot out a quick, half-resentful look at him, but
meeting a warm, friendly eye, he took the pitcher and went round among
the elders, while the stranger himself courteously drank with the young
men of the village, who, like many wiser folk, thus yielded to the charm
of mystery. To every one he said a hearty thing, and sometimes touched
his greeting off with a bit of poetry or a rhetorical phrase. These
dramatic extravagances served him well, for he was among a race of
story-tellers and crude poets.
Parpon, uncouth and furtive, moved through the crowd, dispensing as much
irony as wine:
“Three bucks we come to a pretty inn,
‘Hostess,’ say we, ‘have you red wine?’
Brave! Brave!
‘Hostess,’ say we, ‘have you red wine?’
Bravement!
Our feet are sore and our crops are dry,
Bravement!”
This he hummed to the avocat in a tone all silver, for he had that one
gift of Heaven as recompense for his deformity, his long arms, big head,
and short stature, a voice which gave you a shiver of delight and
pain all at once. It had in it mystery and the incomprehensible. This
drinking-song, hummed just above his breath, touched some antique memory
in Monsieur Garen the avocat, and he nodded kindly at the dwarf, though
he refused the wine.
“Ah, M’sieu’ le Cure,” said Parpon, ducking his head to avoid the hand
that Medallion would have laid on it, “we’re going to be somebody now in
Pontiac, bless the Lord! We’re simple folk, but we’re not neglected. He
wears a ribbon on his breast, M’sieu’ le Cure!”
This was true. Fastened by a gold bar to the stranger’s breast was the
ribbon of an order.
The Cure smiled at Parpon’s words, and looked curiously and gravely at
the stranger. Tall Medallion the auctioneer took a glass of the wine,
and, lifting it, said: “Who shall I drink to, Parpon, my dear? What is
he?”
“Ten to one, a dauphin or a fool,” answered Parpon, with a laugh like
the note of an organ. “Drink to both, Long-legs.” Then he trotted away
to the Little Chemist.
“Hush, my friend!” said he, and he drew the other’s ear down to his
mouth. “Now there’ll be plenty of work for you. We’re going to be gay
in Pontiac. We’ll come to you with our spoiled stomachs.” He edged
round the circle, and back to where the miller his master and the young
Seigneur stood.
“Make more fine flour, old man,” said he to the miller; “pates are the
thing now.” Then, to Monsieur De la Riviere: “There’s nothing like hot
pennies and wine to make the world love you. But it’s too late, too late
for my young Seigneur!” he added in mockery, and again he began to hum
in a sort of amiable derision:
“My little tender heart,
O gai, vive le roi!
My little tender heart,
O gai, vive le roi!
‘Tis for a grand baron,
Vive le roi, la reine!
‘Tis for a grand baron,
Vive Napoleon!”
The words of the last two lines swelled out far louder than the dwarf
meant, for few save Medallion and Monsieur De la Riviere had ever heard
him sing. His concert-house was the Rock of Red Pigeons, his favourite
haunt, his other home, where, it was said, he met the Little Good Folk
of the Scarlet Hills, and had gay hours with them. And this was a matter
of awe to the timid habitants.
At the words, “Vive Napoleon!” a hand touched him on the shoulder. He
turned and saw the stranger looking at him intently, his eyes alight.
“Sing it,” he said softly, yet with an air of command. Parpon hesitated,
shrank back.
“Sing it,” he insisted, and the request was taken up by others, till
Parpon’s face flushed with a sort of pleasurable defiance. The stranger
stooped and whispered something in his ear. There was a moment’s
pause, in which the dwarf looked into the other’s eyes with an intense
curiosity--or incredulity--and then Medallion lifted the little man on
to the railing of the veranda, and over the heads and into the hearts
of the people there passed, in a divine voice, a song known to many, yet
coming as a new revelation to them all:
“My mother promised it,
O gai, rive le roi!
My mother promised it,
O gai, vive le roi!
To a gentleman of the king,
Vive le roi, la reine!
To a gentleman of the king,
Vive Napoleon!”
This was chanted lightly, airily, with a sweetness almost absurd, coming
as it did from so uncouth a musician. The last verses had a touch of
pathos, droll yet searching:
“Oh, say, where goes your love?
O gai, rive le roi!
Oh, say, where goes your love?
O gai, vive le roi!
He rides on a white horse,
Vive le roi, la reine!
He wears a silver sword,
Vive Napoleon!
“Oh, grand to the war he goes,
O gai, vive le roi!
Oh, grand to the war he goes,
O gai, vive le roi!
Gold and silver he will bring,
Vive le roi, la reine;
And eke the daughter of a king
Vive Napoleon!”
The crowd--women and men, youths and maidens--enthusiastically repeated
again and again the last lines and the refrain, “Vive le roi, la reine!
Vive Napoleon!”
Meanwhile the stranger stood, now looking at the singer with eager eyes,
now searching the faces of the people, keen to see the effect upon them.
His glance found the faces of the Cure, the avocat, and the auctioneer;
and his eyes steadied to Medallion’s humorous look, to the Cure’s
puzzled questioning, to the avocat’s bird-like curiosity. It was plain
they were not antagonistic (why should they be?); and he--was there any
reason why he should care whether or no they were for him or against
him?
True, he had entered the village in the dead of night, with many
packages and much luggage, had roused the people at the Louis Quinze,
the driver who had brought him departing before daybreak gaily, because
of the gifts of gold given him above his wage. True, this singular
gentleman had taken three rooms in the Louis Quinze, had paid the
landlord in advance, and had then gone to bed, leaving word that he
was not to be waked till three o’clock the next afternoon. True, the
landlord could not by any hint or indirection discover from whence his
midnight visitor came. But if a gentleman paid his way, and was generous
and polite, and minded his own business, wherefore should people busy
themselves about him? When he appeared on the veranda of the inn with
the hot pennies, not a half-dozen people in the village had known aught
of his presence in Pontiac. The children came first, to scorch their
fingers and fill their pockets, and after them the idle young men, and
the habitants in general.
The stranger having warmly shaken Parpon by the hand and again whispered
in his ear, stepped forward. The last light of the setting sun was
reflected from the red roof of the Little Chemist’s shop upon the quaint
figure and eloquent face, which had in it something of the gentleman,
something of the comedian. The alert Medallion himself did not realise
the touch of the comedian in him, till the white hand was waved
grandiloquently over the heads of the crowd. Then something in the
gesture corresponded with something in the face, and the auctioneer
had a nut which he could not crack for many a day. The voice was
musical,--as fine in speaking almost as the dwarf’s in singing,--and the
attention of the children was caught by the rich, vibrating tones. He
addressed himself to them.
“My children,” he said, “my name is--Valmond! We have begun well; let
us be better friends. I have come from far off to be one of you, to stay
with you for awhile--who knows how long--how long?” He placed a finger
meditatively on his lips, sending a sort of mystery into his look and
bearing. “You are French, and so am I. You are playing on the shores of
life, and so am I. You are beginning to think and dream, and so am I. We
are only children till we begin to make our dreams our life. So I am one
with you, for only now do I step from dream to action. My children, you
shall be my brothers, and together we will sow the seed of action and
reap the grain; we will make a happy garden of flowers, and violets
shall bloom everywhere out of our dream--everywhere. Violets, my
children, pluck the wild violets, and bring them to me, and I will give
you silver for them, and I will love you. Never forget,” he added, with
a swelling voice, “that you owe your first duty to your mothers, and
afterwards to your country, and to the spirit of France. I see afar”--he
looked towards the setting sun, and stretched out his arm dramatically,
yet such was the eloquence of his voice and person that not even the
young Seigneur or Medallion smiled--“I see afar,” he repeated, “the
glory of our dreams fulfilled; after toil and struggle and loss: and I
call upon you now to unfurl the white banner of justice and liberty and
the restoration.”
The women who listened guessed little of what he meant by the fantastic
sermon; but they wiped their eyes in sympathy, and gathered their
children to them, and said, “Poor gentleman, poor gentleman!” and took
him instantly to their hearts. The men were mystified, but wine and
rhetoric had fired them, and they cheered him--no one knew why. The
Cure, as he turned to leave, with Monsieur Garon, shook his head in
bewilderment; but even he did not smile, for the man’s eloquence had
impressed him; and more than once he looked back at the dispersing crowd
and the quaint figure posing on the veranda. The avocat was thinking
deeply, and as, in the dusk, he left the Cure at his own door, all that
he ventured was: “Singular--a most singular person!”
“We shall see, we shall see,” said the Cure abstractedly, and they said
good-night.
Medallion joined the Little Chemist in his shop door and watched the
habitants scatter, till only Parpon and the stranger were left, and
these two faced each other, and, without a word, passed into the hotel
together.
“H’m, h’m!” said Medallion into space, drumming the door-jamb with his
fingers; “which is it, my Parpon--a dauphin, or a fool?”
He and the Little Chemist talked long, their eyes upon the window
opposite, inside which Monsieur Valmond and Parpon were in conference.
Up the dusty street wandered fitfully the refrain:
“To a gentleman of the king,
Vive Napoleon!”
And once they dimly saw Monsieur Valmond come to the open window and
stretch out his hand, as if in greeting to the song and the singer.