"I know not--I care not--I ask not," said he, starting from his chair,
and traversing the room with huge strides. "The topic feels to me as if
a sword was now griding its way through my frame. But France will never
keep Austria, nor Prussia, nor the Rhenish Provinces, nor Holland, nor
any spot on earth beyond the land inhabited by Frenchmen. It is true,"
said he, with a stern smile, "that she may keep her West India islands,
if your ships will let her. The negroes are her natural subjects. They
have backs accustomed to the lash, and black cheeks that will not redden
at her insolence."
"Are the German sovereigns of your opinion?"
"To a man. It is but this morning that I was honoured with a reception
by our good emperor. His conviction was complete. But you will not see
Austria stir a single step, until war is the outcry, not of her court,
but of her people. The trumpet that leads the march will be blown not
from the parade of Vienna or Berlin, but from the village, the pasture,
the forest, and the mountain. The army will be the peasant, the weaver,
the trader, the student, the whole of the pacific multitude of life
turned into the materials of war; the ten thousand rills that silently
water the plain of society suddenly united into one inundation; the eyes
of every man looking only for the enemy; the feet of every man pursuing
him; the hands of every man slaying him. The insolence of the Frenchman
has contrived to convey a sting of the bitterness of conquest into every
heart of our millions, and our millions will return it with resistless
retribution."
"You have cheered and convinced me," said I, as I rose to take my leave.
"It certainly is rather strange, that France, always mad with the love
of seizure, has been able to acquire nothing during the last hundred
years."
"You will find my theory true," said Gentz. "The individual insolence of
her people has been the real impediment to the increase of her
dominions. She is not the only ambitious power on the face of the earth.
Russia has doubled her empire within those hundred years, yet she has
kept possession of every league. Prussia has doubled her territory
within the same time, yet she has added the new solidly to the old. I am
not an advocate for the principle or the means by which those conquests
have been accomplished; but they have been retained. Austria has been
for the same time nearly mistress of Italy, and though the French arms
have partially shaken her authority, it was never shaken by popular
revolt. And why is all this contradistinction to the flighty conquest
and ephemeral possession of France? The obvious reason is, that however
the governments might be disliked, neither the Austrian soldier, nor the
Prussian, nor even the Russian, made himself abhorred, employed his
study in vexing the feelings of the people, had a perpetual sneer on his
visage, or exhibited in his habits a perpetual affectation of that
coxcomb superiority to all other human beings, that pert supremacy, that
grotesque and yet irritating caricature, which makes the _Moi, je suis
Français_, a demand for universal adoration, the concentrated essence of
absurdity, the poison-drop of scorn.
"When will this great consummation arrive?"
"When the tyranny can be endured no longer; when the people find that
they must depend upon themselves for its redress; when a just Providence
finds the vindication of its laws required by the necessities of man."
"From what quarter will the grand effort first come?"
"From the nation most aggrieved."
"What will be its result?"
To this moment I remember the sudden light which flashed into his cold
grey eye, the gasping lip, and the elevation which even his stooped form
assumed; as he answered with a tone and gesture which might have been
imagined for one of the prophets of the Sistine Chapel--
"The result," said he, "will be the fall of the French empire, for it is
a house built on the sand;--the extinction of Napoleon, for it is his
creation, and the one cannot survive the other;--the liberation of
Europe, for its united strength can be chained no longer;--perhaps the
liberty of man, for the next step for nations which have crushed foreign
dominion is to extinguish domestic despotism. Europe once free, what is
to come? A new era, a new shape of society, a new discovery of the
mighty faculties of nations, of the wonders of mind, of matter, and of
man; a vast shaking of the earth and its institutions; and out of this
chaos, a new moral creation, _fiat lux et fugient tenebræ_."
The prediction has been partly realized. Much is yet to be fulfilled.
But, like Gentz, I live in hope, and think that I see an approach to the
consummation.
But the party to whom I was now introduced were of a different order
from the generality of their country. Originally of the first education
and first society of France, the strictness of the military service had
produced on the the most valuable effect of years. The natural vividness
of their temperament was smoothed down, their experience of English
kindness had diminished their prejudices; and adversity--and no men bear
the frowns of fortune better than their nation--gave them almost the
manly calmness of the English gentleman. I found the old general all
courtesy, and his friends all good-humour. My conduct in the affair of
the morning was after their own hearts; I had, by common consent, earned
their good graces; and they gave me on the spot half a dozen invitations
to the regiments and chateaus of themselves and their friends, with as
much hospitable sincerity as if they had only to recross the Channel to
take possession of them again. Lafontaine was still moody, but he was in
love; and, by this fact, unlike every body else, and unlike himself,
from one half hour to another.
The conversation soon turned on a topic, on which the emigrants every
where were peculiarly anxious to be set right with English feeling,
namely, their acquittance from the charge of having fled unnecessarily.
"Men of honour," observed the general, "understand each other in all
countries. I therefore always think it due, to both Englishmen and
Frenchmen, to explain, that we are not here in the light of fugitives;
that we have not given up the cause of our country; and that we are on
English ground in express obedience to the commands of our sovereign. I
am at this moment, in this spot, on the king's duty, waiting, like my
gallant friends here, merely the order to join the first expedition
which can be formed for the release of our monarch, and the rescue of
France from the horde of villains who have filled it with rebellion."
All fully accorded with the sentiment. "The captivity of the king," said
he, "is the result of errors which none could have anticipated ten days
since. The plan decided on by the council of officers, of which I was
one, was the formation of a camp on the frontier, to which his majesty
and the princes should repair, summon the chief authorities of the
kingdom, and there provide for the general safety with a deliberation
which was impossible in Paris. I was sent off at midnight to take the
command of the District of the Loire. I found myself there at the head
of ten regiments, in the highest order, and, as I thought, of the
highest loyalty. I addressed them and was received with shouts of _Vive
le Roi_! I gave an addition of pay to the troops, and a banquet to the
officers. A note was handed to me, as I took my seats at the head of the
table. It simply contained the words, 'You are betrayed.' I read it
aloud in contempt, and was again answered by shouts of _Vive le Roi_!
While we were in the midst of our conviviality, a volley was fired in at
the windows, and the streets of Nantz were in uproar--the whole garrison
had mutinied. The officers were still loyal: but what was to be done? We
rushed out with drawn swords. On our first appearance in the porch of
the hotel, a platoon posted in front, evidently for our massacre,
levelled by word of command, and fired deliberately into the midst of
us. Several were killed on the spot, and many wounded. Some rushed
forward, and some retreated into the house. I was among those who forced
their way through the crowd, and before I had struggled to the end of
the long street, the cry of 'fire' made me look round--the hotel was in
a blaze. The rabble had set it on flame. It was this, probably that
saved me, by distracting their attention. I made my way to the chateau
of the Count de Travancour, whose son had been on my staff at the
Invalides. But the family were in Paris, and the only inhabitants were
servants. I had received a musket-ball in my arm, and was faint with
loss of blood. Still, I was determined to remain at my post, and not
quit my district as long as any thing could be done. But I had scarcely
thrown myself, in weariness and vexation, on a sofa, when a servant
rushed into the room with the intelligence, that a band of men with
torches were approaching the chateau. To defend it with a garrison of
screaming women was hopeless; and while I stood considering what to do
next, we heard the crash of the gates. The whole circle instantly fell
on their knees before me, and implored that I should save their lives
and my own, by making my escape. A courageous Breton girl undertook to
be my guide to the stables, and we set out under a shower of prayers for
our safety. But, as we wound our way along the last corridor, I saw the
crowd of soldiers and populace rushing up the staircase at the opposite
side of the court, and calling out my name joined to a hundred atrocious
epithets. My situation now obviously became difficult; for our advance
would be met at the next minute by the assassins. The girl's presence of
mind saved me; she flew back to the end of the gallery, threw open a
small door which led to the roof; and I was in the open air, with the
stars bright above me, and a prodigious extent of the country, including
Nantz, beneath.
"Yet you may believe that the landscape was not among my principal
contemplations at the moment, though my eyes involuntarily turned on the
town; where, from the blazes springing up in various quarters, I
concluded that a general pillage had begun. That pillage was the order
of the day much nearer to me, I could fully conceive, from the opening
and shutting of doors, and the general tumult immediately under the
leads where I stood. "Situation, gentlemen," said the old general,
smiling, "is something, but circumstances are necessary to make it
valuable. There never was a finer night for an investigation of the
stars, if I had been an astronomer; and I dare say that the spot which
formed my position would have been capital for an observatory; but the
torches which danced up and down through the old and very dingy
casements of the mansion, were a matter of much more curious remark to
me than if I had discovered a new constellation.
"At length I was chased even out of this spot--my door had been found
out. I have too much gallantry left to suppose that my Breton had
betrayed me; though a dagger at her heart and a purse in her hand might
be powerful arguments against saving the life of an old soldier who had
reached his grand climacteric. At all events, as I saw torch after torch
rising along the roofs, I moved into the darkness.
"I had here a new adventure. I saw a feeble light gleaming through the
roof. An incautious step brought me upon a skylight, and I went through;
my fall, however, being deadened by bursting my way through the canopy
of a bed. I had fallen into the hospital of the chateau. A old Beguine
was reading her breviary in an adjoining room. She rushed in with a
scream. But those women are so much accustomed to casualties that I had
no sooner acquainted her with the reasons of my flight, than she offered
to assist my escape. She had been for some days in attendance on a sick
servant. She led me down to the entrance of a subterranean communication
between the mansion and the river, one of the old works which had
probably been of serious service in the days when every chateau in the
West was a fortress. The boat which had brought her from the convent was
at the mouth of the subterranean; there, the Loire was open. If you ask,
why I did not prefer throwing myself before the pursuers, and dying like
a soldier, my reason was, that I should have been numbered merely among
those who had fallen obscurely in the various skirmishes of the country;
and besides, that if I escaped, I should have one chance more of
preserving the province.
"But, at the moment when I thought myself most secure, I was in reality
in the greatest peril. The Loire had long since broken into the work,
which had probably never seen a mason since the wars of the League. I
had made no calculation for this, and I had descended but a few steps,
when I found my feet in water. I went on, however, till it reached my
sword-belt. I then thought it time to pause; but just then, I heard a
shout at the top of the passage--on the other hand I felt that the tide
was rushing in, and to stay where I was would be impossible. The
perplexity of that quarter of an hour would satisfy me for my whole
life. I pretend to no philosophy, and have never desired to die before
my time. But it was absolutely not so much the dread of finishing my
career, as of the manner in which it must be finished there, which made
the desperate anxiety of a struggle which I would not undergo again for
the throne of the Mogul. Still, even with the roar of the water on one
side, and of the rabble on the other, I had some presentiment that I
should yet live to hang some of my pursuers. At all events I determined
not to give my body to be torn to pieces by savages, and my name to be
branded as a runaway and a poltron."
A strong suffusion overspread the veteran's face as he pronounced the
words; he was evidently overcome by the possibility of the stigma.
"I have never spoken of this night before," said he, "and I allude to it
even now, merely to tell this English gentleman and his friends how
groundless would be the conception that the soldiers and nobles of an
unfortunate country made their escape, before they had both suffered and
done a good deal. My condition was probably not more trying than that of
thousands less accustomed to meet difficulties than the officers of
France: and I can assure him, that no country is more capable of a bold
endurance of evils, or a chivalric attachment to a cause."
I gave my full belief to a proposition in which I had already full
faith, and of which the brave and intelligent old man before me was so
stately an example.
"But I must not detain you," said he, "any longer with an adventure
which had not the common merit of a Boulevard spectacle; for it ended in
neither the blowing up of a castle, nor, as you may perceive, the fall
of the principal performer. As the tide rushed up through the works, I,
of course receded, until at length I was caught sight of by the rabble.
They poured down, and were now within a hundred yards of me, while I
could not move. At that moment a strong light flashed along the cavern
from the river, and I discovered for the first time that it too was not
above a hundred yards from me. I had been a good swimmer in early life:
I plunged in, soon reached the stream, and found that the light came
from one of the boats that fish the Loire at night, and which had
accidentally moored in front of my den. I got on board; the fisherman
carried me to the other side; I made my way across the country, reached
one of my garrisons, found the troops, fortunately, indignant at the
treatment which the king's colours had received; marched at the head of
two thousand men by daybreak, and by noon was in the Grande Place of
Nantz; proceeded to try a dozen of the ringleaders of the riot, who had
not been merely rebels, but robbers and murderers; and amid the
acclamations of the honest citizens, gave them over to the fate which
villains in every country deserve, and which is the only remedy for
rebellion in any. But my example was not followed; its style did not
please the ministers whom our king had been compelled to choose by the
voice of the Palais Royal; and as his majesty would not consent to bring
me to the scaffold for doing my duty, he compromised the matter, by an
order to travel for a year, and a passport for England."
* * * * *
"Toutes les belles dames sont, plus ou moins, coquettes," says that
gayest of all old gentlemen, the Prince de Ligne, who loved every body,
amused every body, and laughed at every body. It is not for me to
dispute the authority of one who contrived to charm, at once, the
imperial severity of Maria Theresa and the imperial pride of Catharine;
to baffle the keen investigation of the keenest of mankind, the
eccentric Kaunitz; and rival the profusion of the most magnifique and
oriental of all prime ministers, Potemkin.
Mariamne was a "belle dame," and a remarkably pretty one. She was
therefore intitled to all the privileges of prettiness; and, it must be
acknowledged, that she enjoyed them to a very animated extent. In the
curious memoirs of French private life, from _Plessis Les Tours_ down to
St Evremond and Marmontel--and certainly--more amusing and dexterous
dissections of human nature, at least as it is in France, never
existed--our cooler countrymen often wonder at the strange attachments,
subsisting for half a century between the old, who were nothing but
simple fireside friends after all; and even between the old and the
young. The story of Ninon and her Abbé--the unfortunate relationship,
and the unfortunate catastrophe excepted--was the story of hundreds or
thousands in every city of France fifty years ago. It arises from the
vividness of the national mind, the quick susceptibility to being
pleased, and the natural return which the heart makes in gratitude. If
it sometimes led to error--it was the more to be regretted. But I do not
touch on such views.
As the Jew's daughter had been rendered by her late adventure all but
the affianced bride of Lafontaine, she immediately assumed all the
rights of a bride, treated her slave as slaves are treated every where,
received his friends at her villa with animation, and opened her heart
to them all, from the old general downwards, even to me. I never had
seen a creature so joyous, with all her soul so speaking on her lips,
and all her happiness so sparkling in her eyes. She was the most
restless, too, of human beings; but it was the restlessness of a glow of
enjoyment, of a bird in the first sunshine, of a butterfly in the first
glitter of its wings. She was now continually forming some party, some
ingenious surprise of pleasure, some little sportive excursion, some
half theatric scene, to keep all our hearts and eyes as much alive as
her own. Lafontaine obviously did not like all this; and some keen
encounters of their wits took place, on the pleasure which, as he
averred, "she took in all society but his own."
"If the charge be true," said she one day, "why am I in fault? It is so
natural to try to be happy."
"But, to be happy without me, Mariamne."
"Ah, what an impossibility!" laughed the little foreigner.
"But, to receive the attentions even of the general, old enough to have
married your grandmother."
"Well, does it not show his taste, even in your own opinion, to follow
your example, and admire what you tell me _you_ worship?"
"You are changed; you are a _girouette_, Mariamne."
"Well, nothing in the world is so melancholy as one who lets all the
world pass by it, without a thought, a feeling, or a wish. One might as
well be one of the pictures in the Louvre, pretty and charming, and
gazed at by all the passers-by, without a glance for any of them, in
return. I have no kind of envy for being a mummy, covered with cloth of
gold, and standing in a niche of cedar, yet with all its sensations
vanished some thousand years ago."
"Was this the language you held to me when first we met, Mariamne?"
"Was this the language _you_ held to me, when first we met, Charles? But
I shall lose my spirits if I talk to you. What a sweet evening! What a
delicious breeze! _Bon soir_!" And forth she went, tripping it among the
beds of flowers like a sylph, followed by Lafontaine, moody and
miserable, yet unable to resist the spell. Of those scenes I saw a
hundred, regularly ending in the same conclusion; the lady always, as
ladies ought, gaining the day, and the gentleman vexed, yet vanquished.
But evil days were at hand; many a trial more severe than the pretty
arguments of lovers awaited them; and Lafontaine was to prove himself a
hero in more senses than one, before they met again.
It happened, that I was somewhat a favourite with Mariamne. Yet I was
the only one of whom Lafontaine never exhibited a suspicion. His nature
was chivalrous, the rencounter between us he regarded as in the
strongest degree a pledge of brotherhood; and he allowed me to bask in
the full sunshine of his fair one's smiles, without a thought of my
intercepting one of their beams. In fact, he almost formally gave his
wild bird into my charge. Accordingly, whenever he was called to London,
which was not unfrequently the case, as the business of the emigrants
with Government grew more serious, I was her chosen companion; and as
she delighted in galloping over the hills and vales of Sussex, I was
honoured by being her chief equerry; she repaying the service by acting
as my cicerone.
"Come," said she one day, at the end of an excursion, or rather a race
of some miles along the shore, which put our blood-horses in a foam,
"have you ever seen Les Interieurs?"
"No."
"I saw you," she remarked, "admiring the Duchesse de Saint Alainville at
our little ball the other night."
"It was impossible to refuse admiration. She is the noblest looking
woman I ever saw."
"_One_ of the noblest, sir, if you please. But, as I disdain the superb
in every thing"----She fixed her bright eyes on me.
"The fascinating is certainly much superior." A slight blush touched her
cheek, she bowed, and all was good-humour again.
"Well, then," said she, "since you _have_ shown yourself rational at
last, I shall present you to this superb beauty in her own palace. You
shall see your idol in her morning costume, her French reality."
She touched the pane of a window with her whip, and a bowing domestic
appeared. "Is her Grace at home?" was the question. "Her Grace receives
to-day," was the answer. My companion looked surprised, but there was no
retreating. We alighted from our horses to attend the "reception."
The cottage was simply a cottage, roofed with thatch; and furnished in
the homeliest style of the peasants to whom it had belonged. We went up
stairs. A few objects of higher taste were to be seen in the apartment
to which we were now ushered--a pendule, a piano, and one or two
portraits superbly framed, and with ducal coronets above them. But, to
my great embarrassment, the room was full, and full of the first names
of France. Yet the whole assemblage were female, and the glance which
the Duchess cast from her fauteuil, as I followed my rather startled
guide into the room, showed me that I had committed some terrible
solecism, in intruding on the party. On what mysteries had I ventured,
and what was to be the punishment of my temerity in the very shrine of
the Bona Dea? My pretty guide, on finding herself with all those dark
eyes fixed on her, and all those stately features looking something
between sorrow and surprise, faltered, and grew alternately red and
pale. We were both on the point of retiring; when the Duchess, after a
brief consultation with some of the surrounding matronage, made a sign
to Mariamne to approach. Her hospitality to all the emigrant families
had undoubtedly given her a claim on their attentions. The result was a
most gracious smile from Madame la Presidente, and I took my seat in
silence and submission.
"Is France a country of female beauty?" is a question which I have often
heard, and which I have always answered by a recollection of this scene.
I never saw so many handsome women together, before or since. All were
not Venuses, it is true; but there was an expression, almost a mould of
feature, universal, which struck the eye more than beauty. It was
impossible to doubt that I was among a high _caste_; there was a general
look of nobleness, a lofty yet feminine grace of countenance, a stately
sweetness, which are involuntarily connected with high birth, high
manners, and high history.
There were some whose fine regularity of feature might have served as
the model for a Greek sculptor. Yet those were not the faces on which
the eye rested with the long and deep delight that "drinks in beauty." I
saw some worthy or the sublime spell of Vandyke, more with the
magnificence of style which Reynolds loved, and still more with the
subdued dignity and touching elegance of which Lawrence was so charming
a master.
On my return to French society in after years, I was absolutely
astonished at the change which seemed to me to have taken place in the
beauty of high life. I shall not hazard my reputation for gallantry, by
tracing the contrast more closely. But evil times had singularly acted
upon the physiognomy even of the nobles. The age of the _roturier_ had
been the climacteric of France. Generals from the ranks, countesses from
the canaille, legislators from the dregs of the populace, and
proprietors from the mingled stock of the parasite and the plunderer,
naturally gave the countenance, formed by their habits, to the nation
formed by their example.
Still there were, and are, examples of this original beauty to be found
among the _élite_ of the noble families; but they are rare, and to be
looked on as one looks on a statue of Praxiteles found in the darkness
and wrecks of Herculaneum. In the words of the old song, slightly
changed--
"I roam'd through France's sanguine sand,
At beauty's altar to adore,
But there the sword had spoil'd the land,
And Beauty's daughters were no more."
* * * * *