rises. The sky is inky. Mamma, mamma! why won’t you come with me? I am
steering my balloon to a place where it will be so beautiful! Come, it
is stifling here.'
“That day Jean Blin followed me up the road. He slouched along with that
air of embarrassment a man has who wants to say something and is yet
afraid to say it. At last, after walking some twenty paces with me in
silence, he stopped, and laying his hand on my arm said—
“'See here, Doctor, it’s my belief that what ails the little chap is his
inside.'
“I continued my way sorrowfully, and for the first time in my life my
eagerness to see once more my pears and apricots did not avail to mend
my pace. For the first time in forty years of practice I found the
plight of one of my patients heartrending, and in my inmost self I
bewailed the child I was powerless to save.
“Distracting pangs soon came to magnify my grief. I feared that my
treatment had contributed to the development of the disease. I caught
myself forgetting in the morning what I had prescribed the night before,
uncertain in my diagnosis, nervous, and worried. I called in one of my
fellow-practitioners, a clever young fellow, who had a practice in the
next village. When he arrived, the poor little fellow, whose sight was
already gone, was plunged in a profound coma.
“The following day he died.
“A year having elapsed after this misfortune, it happened that I was
called in consultation to the county town. The fact is singular. The
causes which led up to it are extraordinary; but as they have no
connection with what I am relating, I do not record them here. After the
consultation, Dr. C——, physician to the prefecture, did me the honour to
invite me to lunch with him and two other members of the profession.
After lunch, where I found refreshment in conversation at once erudite
and diversified, coffee was served to us in the doctor’s sanctum. As I
approached the mantelpiece to put down my empty cup, I saw hanging upon
the mirror-frame a portrait which aroused in me so profound an emotion
that it was with difficulty I refrained from crying out. It was a
miniature, the portrait of a child. This child resembled in so striking
a fashion the one I had been unable to cure—the child of whom I had been
constantly thinking for a year past—that for a moment I could not avoid
the thought that it was he himself. That supposition, however, was of
course absurd. The black wooden frame, with the circlet of gold
surrounding the miniature, proclaimed the taste of the end of the
eighteenth century, and the child was depicted in a vest of pink and
white striped material such as the little Louis XVII might have worn;
but the face was out-and-out the face of my little Éloi. The same
forehead, imperious and powerful—the forehead of a man beneath the curls
of a cherub; the same fire in the eyes, the same suffering grace on the
lips! Indeed, to the very same features was joined the identical
expression!
“I had probably been examining this portrait for quite a long while when
Dr. C——, clapping me on the shoulder, said—
“‘Ah, my friend, you have before you a family relic which I am proud to
possess. My maternal grandfather was the friend of the illustrious man
whom you see painted there in the days of his early boyhood, and it was
from my grandfather that that miniature came into my possession.’
“I asked him to be good enough to tell me the name of his grandfather’s
illustrious friend. Upon this he unhooked the miniature and held it out
to me:
“‘See,’ he said, 'on the exergue ... _Lyon_, 1787. Doesn’t that recall
anything to you? No? Well, that child of twelve was the great Ampère.'
“Then, in a flash, I had an exact perception, an unequivocal estimate of
what death had swept away one year previously in the farmhouse of Les
Alies.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MEMOIRS OF A VOLUNTEER
TO PAUL ARÈNE
MEMOIRS OF A VOLUNTEER[4]
I
I was born in seventeen hundred and seventy in the rural outskirts of a
small town in the Langres district, where my father, half townsman and
half peasant, dealt in cutlery and tended his orchards. In this place
certain nuns, although they only educated girls, consented to teach me
to read since I was but a child, and they were good friends of my
mother. On leaving their hands I took lessons in Latin from a priest in
the town, a shoemaker’s son, well grounded in the humanities. In the
summer the shade of some old chestnut-trees served as a schoolroom, and
close beside his hives the Abbé Lamadou interpreted Virgil’s _Georgics_
to me. I never dreamed that any one could be happier than I, and between
my master and Mlle. Rose, the marshal’s daughter, I lived in great
contentment. But in this world no happiness is enduring. One morning, as
my mother embraced me, she slipped an écu of six livres into my coat
pocket. My luggage was packed. My father leaped on his horse and, taking
me up behind him, carried me off to the college at Langres. All the time
the journey lasted I was dreaming of my own little room, scented towards
autumn time with the perfume of the fruit stored up in the loft; or of
the close where my father took me on Sunday to gather apples from the
trees he had grafted with his own hand; of Rose, of my sisters, of my
mother; even of myself, unhappy exile! I could feel my heart thump, and
it was with difficulty that I held back the tears which filled my
eyelids. At length, after five hours' journey, we reached the town and
set foot to ground in front of a huge door, on which I read with a
shudder the word _College_. The principal, Father Féval, of the Oratory,
received us in a big saloon with whitewashed walls. He was still a young
man, of impressive appearance, and I found his smile reassuring. On all
such occasions my father had displayed a naturalness, vivacity, and
candour which never deserted him.
-----
Footnote 4:
All the incidents in these memoirs are authentic, and may be traced to
various documents of the eighteenth century. Not a single detail,
however apparently insignificant, is made use of for which indubitable
authority cannot be produced. (AUTHOR.)
-----
“Reverend Father,” he said, placing his hand on me, “I bring you here my
only son. His name is Pierre, after his godfather, and Aubier, his
father’s name, which I have handed on to him as stainless as I received
it from my late dear father. Pierre is my only boy; his mother,
Madeleine Ordalu, having presented me with one son and three daughters,
whom I am bringing up to the best of my ability. To my daughters will
fall the lot which it shall please God in the first place, and later on
their husbands, to assign to them. They are said to be pretty, and I
can’t help believing it myself. But beauty is only a gay deceiver which
it is best not to take into account. They will be handsome enough if
they are only good enough. As to my son Pierre here before you (as he
pronounced these words my father put his hand so heavily on my shoulder
that he made me flinch), provided that he fears God and knows enough
Latin, he is to be a priest. Very humbly then, reverend father, I beg
you to examine him at your leisure, so as to ascertain his genuine
capacities. If you find any merit in him, let him remain with you. I
will willingly pay whatever is needful. If, on the contrary, you
consider that you can make nothing of him, send me word, and I will come
and fetch him away at once, and teach him how to make knives like his
father. For I am a cutler, at your service, reverend sir.”
Father Féval agreed to undertake what was asked of him. And upon this
assurance, my father took leave of the principal and of me also. As he
was very moved, and had some trouble to restrain his sobs, he assumed a
stiff and harsh expression, and under the semblance of a farewell
embrace bestowed a terrific thump. When he was gone, Father Féval drew
me away from the parlour into a garden surrounded by a thick hedge.
Then, as we passed beneath the shade of the trees, he said to me—
“O Sylvaï dulces umbras frondosaï!”[5]
-----
Footnote 5:
O leafy woods diffusing grateful shade!
I was fortunate enough to recognize in these archaic inflexions and
ponderous prosody a line from old Ennius, and I replied glibly to Father
Féval that Virgil was even more worthy than his antique predecessor to
celebrate the beauty of these cool shades, _frigus opacum_. The
principal seemed quite gratified at this compliment. He questioned me
benevolently upon some rudimentary points, and when he had heard my
replies—
“That will do,” he said. “If you work hard, very hard indeed, you will
be able to keep up with the fourth class. Come with me. I should like to
introduce you myself to your master and your fellow-pupils.”
Whilst our little walk lasted, my forlornness had somewhat abated, and I
was conscious of feeling supported in my distress. But no sooner did I
find myself surrounded by my class-fellows and in the presence of
Monsieur Joursanvault, my master, than I sank back into abject despair.
Monsieur Joursanvault was neither easy of access nor the possessor of
the principal’s fine simplicity. He appeared to me very much more
impressed with his own importance, and also more harsh and reserved. He
was a little man with a big head, and his words found egress with a
whistling noise between two white lips and four yellow teeth. I decided
immediately that such a mouth as his was never intended to pronounce the
name Lavinia, a name which I loved even better than that of Rose. For I
may as well own it, the idyllic and royal fiancée of the unfortunate
Turnus had been decked by my imagination with the most august charms.
The ideal image I had formed of her sufficed to eclipse the more
everyday beauty of the marshal’s daughter. Monsieur Joursanvault then,
the master of the fourth class, pleased me little enough. My
class-fellows inspired me with fear: they had every appearance of being
unspeakably venturesome, and it was not without reason that I dreaded
that my simplicity might goad them to ridicule. I was very much inclined
to cry.
Self-respect, a more powerful emotion than my grief, alone enabled me to
restrain my tears.
When evening came, I left the college and went off into the town in
search of the quarters which my father had bespoken for me. I was to
lodge with five other scholars at the house of an artisan, whose wife
would do our cooking. Every month each of us paid him twenty-five sous.
At the outset my schoolfellows tried to tease me about my ill-cut
clothes and my rustic appearance, but they gave up their efforts when
they saw that they did not vex me. One of their number alone, the
consumptive son of a lawyer, continued insolently to imitate my lumpish,
awkward carriage, but I punished him with a fist so unexpectedly weighty
that he was not disposed to resume his performance. Monsieur
Joursanvault did not take very kindly to me, but as I fulfilled my tasks
with regularity, I provided him with no occasion for punishment. As he
displayed his authority in a violent, uncertain, and irritating fashion,
he invited rebellion, and, as a matter of fact, there were several
mutinous episodes in his class in which I, however, took no part. One
day, as I was walking in the garden with the principal, who showed
himself very kindly disposed to me, unluckily it came into my head to
boast to him of my good conduct.
“Father,” said I, “I took no part in the last escapade.”
“There’s nothing to boast about in that,” replied Father Féval, with a
touch of contempt which rent my heart.
He hated meanness above everything in the world. I made up my mind as he
spoke never again to say or do anything despicable. And if from that day
forward I have managed to keep free from lying and mean-spiritedness, I
owe it entirely to that excellent man.
Monsieur Féval was in no respect a philosopher-priest; he exercised the
virtues, but not the doctrines, of Rousseau’s Vicaire Savoyard. He
believed everything a priest ought to believe. But he had a horror of
mummery, and could not endure the idea of demanding the interposition of
God in trifling affairs. This appeared clearly enough on the Christmas
Day when Monsieur Joursanvault came to him with a complaint against the
impious jesters who, on the eve of the festival, had put ink in the holy
water stoups.
The scandalized Joursanvault mumbled anathemas, and murmured—
“There is no disputing the fact, it is a black deed!”
“By reason of the ink,” replied our good principal calmly.
That upright man regarded weakness as the direct source of all ills. He
often said: “Lucifer and the rebellious angels erred through pride. It
is on that account that even in hell they have not ceased to hold rank
as princes and kings, and to maintain an awful supremacy over the souls
of the damned. If they had fallen through pettiness, in the midst of the
flames they would now be the laughing-stock and sport of sinners, and
the empery of evil would have slipped from their dishonoured hands.”
When the holidays came round it was a great joy to me to see my home
once more. But I found it unaccountably shrunken. As I entered, my
mother, bending over the hearth, was skimming the soup-kettle. She, too,
my dear mother, seemed strangely diminutive to me, and I sobbed as I
flung my arms round her.
With the skimmer in her hand she told me how age and trouble had
rendered my father inactive, so that he was no longer able to look after
his orchard; how my eldest sister was promised in marriage to the
cooper’s son; how the sacristan of the parish had been found dead in his
chamber, with a bottle in his hand, which his stark fingers clutched so
firmly by the neck that it was thought at first that it could never be
loosened from his hold. Yet it was scarcely decent to bear the
sacristan’s body to the church still grasping his bottle of wish-wash.
As I listened to my mother a clear realization of the flight of time and
the passing of things temporal for the first time reached my brain. I
fell into a sort of reverie.
“Well, well, my boy,” said my mother, “you look flourishing. Why, with
your dimity jacket, you are already the very spit of a little _curé_.”
At this moment Mademoiselle Rose came into the room, blushing and
feigning to be completely surprised at the sight of me. I saw that she
was interested in me, and felt secretly flattered. But in her presence I
assumed the grave and reserved demeanour of the ecclesiastic. The
greater part of these holidays I spent in walks with Monsieur Lamadou.
It had been agreed between us that we should talk nothing but Latin. So
we went our ways through the midst of the lowly tasks of the tillers of
the soil, with nature riotous around us, side by side, straight before
us, grave, serious, guileless, disdainful of such utterly vain and
common pleasures as we had knowledge of.
I returned to the college with the firm determination to take Holy
Orders. Already I could see myself, like Monsieur Lamadou, wearing a
great three-cornered hat and a cassock, with black breeches, woollen
stockings, and buckled shoes, occupied now with the eloquence of Cicero,
now with the doctrine of St. Augustine, and gravely acknowledging the
salutes of the women and the poor folk who bowed to me as I threaded my
way through the crowd. Alas! a woman’s shadow began to disturb this
peaceful dream. Up to that time I had known nothing of women, except
Lavinia in the _Æneid_ and Mademoiselle Rose. Then I realized Dido, and
flames seemed to rush through my veins. The image of the unhappy Queen,
who, tortured by an irremediable wound, wandered in the forest of
myrtles, bent at night over my troubled couch.
Moreover, if I walked out in the evening, I seemed to be aware of her
dead white figure gliding between the bushes in the woods as the moon
passes through the midst of the clouds. Obsessed by this dazzling image,
I began to waver about taking Orders. Nevertheless, I assumed the dress
of the ecclesiastic, which suited me admirably. When I visited my home
for the first time thus attired, my mother curtsied to me, and Rose hid
her face in her apron and wept. Then turning on me her lovely eyes, as
pellucid as her tears, she said—
“I can’t think what I am crying about, Monsieur Pierre!”
In this mood she was touching. But she did not in the least resemble the
moon seen through the clouds. I did not love her; it was Dido I loved.
That year was signalized to me by a dreadful calamity. I lost my father,
who sank very suddenly under an attack of water on the chest.
In his last moments he adjured his children to live honestly and
piously, and blessed them. He died with a degree of resignation which
was not in the least consonant with his character. It appeared to be
without regret, with cheerfulness even, that he quitted a life to which
he was strongly attached by all the bonds of a nature essentially
vivacious. From him I learnt that it is easier to die than one would
think, if one is but a good man.
I resolved that I, in my turn, would act a father’s part to those elder
sisters already marriageable, and to that tearful mother who, year by
year, seemed to grow smaller, weaker, and more appealing.
Thus, then, in one moment, from a child I became a man. I finished my
studies at the Oratory under excellent masters—Fathers Lance, Porriquet,
and Marion, who had buried themselves in a wild and remote province to
devote their brilliant faculties and a profound erudition which would
have done honour to the Academy of Inscriptions to the education of a
few poor children. The principal surpassed them all in loftiness of
intellect and beauty of soul.
Whilst I was finishing my philosophical studies under those eminent
teachers, a widespread rumour was conveyed to our distant province, and
even penetrated the cloistral walls of the college. There was gossip
about a convocation of the States General, and reforms were clamoured
for, and great changes expected. Some of the new publications which our
masters permitted us to read proclaimed the approaching return of the
Golden Age.
When the moment came for me to leave the college, I wept as I embraced
Father Féval.
He held me clasped in his arms with profound emotion. Then he led me to
the hedge-sheltered path where six years previously I had had my first
conversation with him.
There, taking me by the hand, he bent over me, and looked into my eyes
and said—
“Remember, dear child, that without principle intellect goes for
nothing. You will perhaps live long enough to see the dawn of a new
régime in this land of ours. These great changes cannot be brought about
without disturbances. May you bear in mind in the midst of them what I
am telling you now: in difficult situations intellect is but a sorry
shield: virtue alone can suffice to safeguard him who merits safety.”
Whilst he discoursed in this vein we emerged from the arbour, and the
sun, already low on the horizon, bathed him in its warm crimson rays and
lit up his handsome, thoughtful countenance. I was fortunate enough to
retain a vivid impression of his words, which struck me forcibly,
although at the time they were a little above my head. At that date I
was only a schoolboy, and not a very brilliant one. Since then my eyes
have been opened to the profundity and truth of his maxims by the
terrible object-lesson of subsequent events.
II
I had abandoned the idea of taking Orders. It was necessary to earn a
livelihood. I had not learnt Latin with the idea of making cutlery in
the suburbs of a small town. I indulged in ambitious dreams. Our little
holding, our cows, our garden, were far from equal to the fulfilment of
my ambitions. I discovered rusticity in Mademoiselle Rose. My mother
conceived that a town such as Paris was necessary to the full
development of my abilities. Without much difficulty I myself came to a
similar conclusion. I ordered a coat from the best tailor in Langres.
With this coat went a steel-hilted sword, which threw back the skirts
and invested one with so smart an air that I doubted nothing I was on
the road to fortune. Father Féval gave me a letter of recommendation to
the Duc de Puybonne, and on the 12th of July, in the year of grace 1789,
I climbed into the coach, not without tears, laden with Latin books,
cakes, bacon, and kisses. I entered Paris by the Faubourg St. Antoine,
which appeared to me more hideous than the most squalid hamlets in my
own province. With all my heart I bewailed both the unhappy folk who had
their dwelling there and myself who had forsaken my father’s house and
orchard land to seek advancement amidst such a tatterdemalion crew. A
wine merchant who had been my fellow-traveller explained, however, that
these people were all in ecstasies over the destruction of an old prison
known as the Bastille-St.-Antoine. He assured me that Monsieur Necker
would soon bring back the Golden Age. But a wigmaker, who overheard our
conversation, declared that, on the contrary, unless the King speedily
dismissed him, Monsieur Necker would ruin the country.
“The Revolution,” he added, “is a terrible misfortune. Nobody now
dresses his hair. And people who neglect that duty are below the level
of the beasts.”
These words angered the wine merchant.
“Know, master barber,” he interposed, “that a rejuvenescent race
disdains idle trappings. I would punish you for your impertinence, if I
had time to do so; but I am on my way to supply wine to Monsieur Bailly,
the Mayor of Paris, who honours me with his friendship.”
In this fashion they parted; and as for me, I betook myself on foot,
with my Latin books, my bacon, and the memory of my mother’s kisses to
the house of the Duc de Puybonne, to present my letter of
recommendation. His mansion was situated at the other end of the city in
the Rue de Grenelle. The passers-by vied with one another in supplying
me with directions, for the Duke was celebrated for his benevolence.
He received me cordially. Everything in his dress and in his manners was
of the utmost simplicity. He had that contented demeanour which one only
meets with in men who labour assiduously without being compelled.
He read Father Féval’s letter, and remarked—
“This is a satisfactory letter of recommendation, but what are your
acquirements?”
I replied that I was acquainted with Latin, a little Greek, ancient
history, rhetoric, and poetry.
“What a list of accomplishments!” he rejoined, smiling. “But it would
have been more to the point if you had had some notion of agriculture,
the mechanical arts, commerce, banking, and industry. You are acquainted
with the laws of Solon, now, I’ll wager?”
I signified that I was.
“Very good, very good. But you know nothing about the English
constitution. But no matter. You are young, and of an age to acquire
knowledge. I will give you a place about my person, with an allowance of
five hundred écus. Monsieur Mille, my secretary, will instruct you as to
the duties I shall expect you to perform. Au revoir, monsieur.”
A lackey conducted me to Monsieur Mille, who was writing at a table in
the middle of a spacious white apartment. He signalled to me to wait. He
was a little roundabout man, and his appearance was pleasant, but he
rolled his eyes about ferociously, and seemed to be scolding under his
breath as he wrote.
I heard him give utterance to the following words: “Tyrants, fetters,
hell, man, Rome, slavery, liberty.”[6] I concluded he was mad. But when
he had laid his pen aside he nodded his head to me and smiled.
-----
Footnote 6:
“_Tyrans, fers, enfers, homme, Rome, esclavage, liberté._” Monsieur
Mille is, of course, engaged in a search for rhymes. (TRANS.)
-----
“Well?” he said. “You are examining the apartment. It is as severe as
that of an ancient Roman. No gilding on the panels, no fal-lals on the
mantelpiece; nothing is left to remind us of the detestable times of the
late king, nothing remains that is derogatory to the dignity of a free
man (_un homme libre_). _Libre_, _Tibre_. I must jot that rhyme down.
It’s a good one, now, isn’t it? Are you fond of verse, Monsieur Pierre
Aubier?”
I replied that I was only too much devoted to it, and that it would have
served me better when I presented myself before the Duke if I had
preferred Mr. Burke to Virgil.
“Virgil is a great man,” replied Monsieur Mille. “But what is your
opinion of Monsieur Chénier? For my part I know nothing finer than his
_Charles IX_. I will not attempt to conceal from you that I am myself
experimenting in tragedy, and at the very moment you entered I was
finishing a scene with which I am not a little pleased. You appear to me
to be a very trustworthy person. I am quite willing to confide in you so
far as to tell you what my tragedy is about, but you mustn’t breathe a
word. You realize how far-reaching the least indiscretion might be. I am
composing a tragedy upon the subject of Lucretia.”
Then taking up a large manuscript book he read out: “_Lucretia, a
tragedy in five acts, dedicated to Louis the Well Beloved, the restorer
of liberty to France._”
He spouted some two hundred lines to me and then broke off, saying in
excuse that the remainder was as yet uncorrected.
“The Duke’s post-bag,” he said with a sigh, “robs me of the best hours
of the day. We are in correspondence with all the enlightened men in
England, Switzerland, and America. And talking of this, I may tell you,
Monsieur Aubier, that your employment will consist of copying and
classifying letters. If you would like to be informed without delay as
to the matters which are occupying our attention at this very moment, I
will tell you. At Puybonne we are superintending a farm where certain
English experts have been engaged to introduce into France such
agricultural improvements as have been attained in Great Britain. We are
importing from Spain a number of those silky-fleeced sheep the flocks of
which have enriched Segovia with their wool. This is so arduous an
undertaking that we have been compelled to enlist the co-operation of
the King himself. Lastly, we are buying cows in Switzerland to present
to our dependents.
“I can say nothing on the subject of our correspondence upon public
affairs. Entire secrecy is preserved as to that. But you are, of course,
aware that the efforts of the Duc de Puybonne are directed towards the
introduction into France of the English constitutional system. Pardon my
leaving you, Monsieur Aubier. I am due at the Comédie Française.
_Alzire_ is to be performed.”
That night I slept in fine linen sheets, and I did not sleep well. I
dreamed that my mother’s bees were flying over the ruins of the Bastille
and around the Duc de Puybonne, who smiled graciously, and was enveloped
in an unearthly radiance.
The following morning at an early hour I betook myself to Monsieur
Mille’s room, and asked him if he had enjoyed himself at the theatre. He
replied that he ventured to believe that the performance of _Alzire_ had
given him a clue to some of the methods by which Monsieur de Voltaire
stirred the emotions of his audience. Then he set me to work copying
letters referring to the purchase of the Swiss cows, which the generous
magnate was bestowing on his dependents. Whilst I occupied myself with
this task, Monsieur Mille said to me—
“The Duke is kind-hearted. I have recorded his benevolent disposition in
certain verses with which I am not ill-pleased. Are you acquainted with
the Puybonne estate? No! It is a domain of enchantment. My lines may
open your eyes to its charms. I will recite them to you—
Delightful valley, haven of repose,
Groves ever verdant, where the limpid stream
Peacefully onward flows,
Whose dulcet murmurings seem
Like note of birds, chanting their amorous woes;
How my heart thrills your rural charms to view,
And longings seize me, ’neath your sheltering boughs
Her cherished name i’ the beech’s bark to hew.
In this fair spot our Puybonne reigns,
And uprightness and charity
Silently bear him company,
His spirit our happiness sustains.
The frolic shepherds, at his call,
Under the elms together come,
Who to his bounty, one and all,
Owe flocks, and herds, and home.”[7]
-----
Footnote 7:
Vallon délicieux, asile du repos,
Bocages toujours verts, où l’onde la plus pure
Roule paisiblement ses flots,
Et vient mêler son doux murmure
Aux tendres concerts des oiseaux,
Que mon c[oe]ur est ému de vos beautés champêtres!
Que j’aime à confier, sous ces riants berceaux,
Le doux nom d’une nymphe à l'écorce des hêtres.
De ces beaux lieux Puybonne est possesseur;
Avec lui la bonté, la douce bienfaisance,
Dans ce palais habite en silence:
Le sentiment y retient le bonheur.
Puybonne enseigne aux folâtres bergères
A s’assembler sous les ormeaux,
Il se mêle parfois à leurs danses légères,
Puis il leur donne des troupeaux.
-----
I was astounded. At Langres I had never heard anything so courtly, and I
was impressed with the fact that the air of Paris contained a something
inexpressible, which it was useless to seek elsewhere.
After dinner I set out to inspect the principal edifices of the town.
The genius of art has spent two centuries in distributing his treasures
on the glorious banks of the Seine. Hitherto I had only been acquainted
with Gothic castles and churches, and their melancholy character, tinged
with uncouthness, only awakens displeasing thoughts in the mind. Paris,
it is true, still contains a certain number of these barbaric
structures. The cathedral itself, which rises in that quarter of the
town to which the term City is specially assigned, bears witness by the
irregularity and confusion of its plan to the ignorance of the age in
which it was erected. Parisians overlook its hideousness on the score of
its antiquity. Father Féval was accustomed to say that everything
antique is worthy of respect.
But what a different aspect do the buildings of the more cultured ages
present! A regularity in plan, an exact proportion between the component
parts, an uncrowded arrangement in the grouping, and then the charm of
the various orders copied from the antique—all these qualities dazzle
one in the creations of modern architects, and all unite to render the
colonnade of the Louvre a masterpiece worthy of France and its kings.
Ah, what a town is Paris! Monsieur Mille showed me the theatre where the
finest actresses in the world ally their voices and their charms to the
inspired compositions of Mozart and Gluck. And in addition, he even took
me to the gardens of the Luxembourg, where beneath the shade of
venerable trees I saw Raynal walking side by side with Dussaulx. Ah, my
honoured principal, my master, my father, my beloved Monsieur Féval!
Would that you were witness to the joy, the rapture of your pupil, your
son!
For six weeks I led the pleasantest of lives. All around me I heard talk
of the return of the Golden Age, and I began to believe in the approach
of the car bearing Saturn and Rhea within it. In the mornings, under
Monsieur Mille’s direction, I made copies of letters.
Monsieur Mille was a boon companion, always smiling, always uttering
flowery speeches, always volatile as a zephyr.
After dinner I would read a few pages of the Encyclopædia to our worthy
employer, and then I was free till the following morning. One night I
went with Monsieur Mille to supper at the Porcherons. At the entrance of
this place of amusement stood a group of women wearing the national
colours in their caps, and carrying flowers in a basket. One of them,
approaching me, took me by the arm and said, “See, little master, I make
you a present of this bunch of roses.”
I blushed, and was at a loss what to say in reply. But Monsieur Mille,
who knew the ways of the town, said to me—
“You must give a six-sous piece in exchange for those roses, and say
something gallant to the pretty maiden.”
I did both one and the other, and then inquired of Monsieur Mille if he
thought the flower-seller was a well-conducted girl. He replied that
there was very little likelihood of it, but that it was a duty to show
courtesy to all women. Day by day I became more attached to the
excellent Duc de Puybonne. He was the best and the most childlike of
men. He did not consider that he had given anything whatever to the
unfortunate unless it had cost him some self-sacrifice. He lived like a
man of the people, and regarded the luxury of the rich as a preying upon
the poor. His benefactions were well considered. One day, addressing us
both, he said—
“No pleasure is more gratifying than to labour for the happiness of
people unknown to you, whether by planting some useful tree, or by
grafting on young saplings in the woods buds from which one day may
spring fruit to assuage the thirst of some traveller astray.”
The worthy Duke found no interests except in works of philanthropy. He
laboured ardently to secure new constitutional forms to the kingdom. As
a representative peer in the National Assembly he took his seat in the
ranks of those admirers of English liberty who were styled monarchical,
by the side of Malouet and Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre. And although
his party appeared even then defeated, he awaited with all the fervour
of indomitable hope the oncoming of revolution in its most humane
aspect. We shared his aspirations.
Despite numerous causes for uneasiness, we continued during the
following year to be upheld by this enthusiasm. I accompanied Monsieur
Mille to the Champ de Mars at the beginning of July. On this spot two
hundred thousand persons of all ranks—men, women, children—were erecting
with their own hands the altar upon which all were to swear that they
would live free, or, if needs must, die free. Wig-makers in bluejackets,
water-carriers, abbés, coal-heavers, capuchins, opera-singers in
brocaded dresses with ribbons and feathers in their hair, all these side
by side delved the sacred soil of their country. What an object-lesson
in fraternity! We saw Monsieur Sieyès and Monsieur de Beauharnais
trundling the same cart; we saw Father Gérard, passing like an ancient
Roman from the Senate to the plough, wielding the spade and preparing
the ground; we saw an entire family at work in the same spot—the father
digging, the mother filling the wheelbarrow, and the children pushing it
turn and turn about, whilst the youngest, only four years of age, borne
in the arms of his grandfather aged ninety-three, lisped out: “_Ah! ça
ira! ça ira!_” We saw the Society of Journeymen Gardeners marching in
procession with lettuces and daisies attached to the ends of their
spades. Several other corporations followed them, preceded by a band:
the Printers, whose banner bore this inscription: _Printing, foremost
ensign of Liberty._ Then the Butchers: upon their standard was painted a
large knife, with these words: _Tremble, aristocrats! Behold the
Journeymen Butchers._
And even this took on the appearance for us of fraternity.
“Aubier, my friend, my brother,” exclaimed Monsieur Mille, “I am fired
with poetical enthusiasm. I am about to compose an ode which shall be
dedicated to you. Listen:—
Friend, behold the concourse grand,
From far and wide assembled there,
The mainstays of our own loved land,
Whose banners proudly take the air:
Love it is directs their path
Toward the patriot altar-fires,
Each his bounden service hath
Vowed, till Life’s last flame expires.”[8]
-----
Footnote 8:
Ami, vois tu ce peuple immense,
Comme il accourt de toutes parts:
Des artisans chers à la France
Vois-tu flotter les étendards?
C’est à l’autel de la Patrie.
Que l’amour dirige leurs pas;
Tous vont à leur mère chérie
Se dévouer jusqu’au trépas.
Monsieur Mille recited these lines heroically; he was little, but his
gestures were magnificent. He was wearing an amaranth-coloured coat.
These circumstances combined to draw attention to him, and by the time
he had finished the foregoing he was surrounded by a ring of inquisitive
people. He was applauded. In ecstasies, he went on—
“Unseal your eyes, direct your minds
Upon this solemn spectacle ...”[9]
But scarcely had he uttered these words before a lady, decked with an
immense black hat and feathers, flung herself into his arms and clasped
him close against the fichu she wore round her shoulders.
-----
Footnote 9:
Ouvre tes yeux, fixe ton âme
Sur ce spectacle solennel ...
“Ah, how splendid!” she cried. “Monsieur Mille, permit me to embrace
you.”
A Capuchin who occupied a place in the ring of onlookers, bent his chin
down on to his spade and clapped his hands at the sight of such a
capacious embrace. Then some of the young patriots who stood by pushed
him laughingly in the direction of the demonstrative lady, who
transferred her embraces to him in the midst of popular acclamations.
Monsieur Mille embraced me, and I embraced Monsieur Mille.
“Such splendid lines!” cried the lady with the outrageous hat. “Bravo,
Mille! They are worthy of Jean Baptiste.”
“Oh!” said Monsieur Mille, bashfully hanging his head, his cheeks round
and red as apples.
“Yes, absolutely worthy of Jean Baptiste,” repeated Madame. “They must
be set to the tune of '_Le serin qui te fait envie._'”[10]
-----
Footnote 10:
The canary which spurs you to rivalry.
-----
“You are too flattering,” Monsieur Mille replied. “Permit me, Madame
Berthemet, to present to you my friend Pierre Aubier, a Limousin
gentleman. He is a man of parts, and will soon be accustomed to the ways
of Paris.”
“The dear creature,” Madame Berthemet rejoined, as she pressed my hand.
“Let him come to see us. You must bring him, Monsieur Mille. We have a
little music always on Thursdays. Is he fond of music? But what a
foolish question! Only a barbarian given over to every savage passion
could fail to love music. Come this next Thursday, Monsieur Aubier; my
daughter Amélie will sing you a ballad.”
As she spoke, Madame Berthemet motioned to a young lady dressed in
white, with a Greek headdress, whose fair hair and blue eyes seemed to
me the loveliest in the world. I blushed as I bowed. But she did not
appear to notice my embarrassment.
As we returned to the Puybonne mansion I did not attempt to conceal from
Monsieur Mille the profound impression the beauty of this charming
creature had made on me.
“In that case,” replied Monsieur Mille, “I shall have to add a strophe
to my ode.”
And after reflecting for a few seconds, he added, “There now, I have
managed it.
If some maiden, fair and fond,
To your wooing yields consent,
Only wedlock’s sacred bond
Must your mutual vows cement.
But the altar where you hie
Must a patriot altar be,
Or the Heaven you dare defy
Will avenge your treachery.”[11]
Footnote 11:
Si d’une belle honnête et sage
Tu sais un jour te faire aimer,
Le n[oe]ud sacré du mariage
Est le seul que tu dois former;
Mais à l’autel de la Patrie
Courez tous deux pour vous unir,
Que jamais votre foi trahie
N’ordonne au ciel de vous punir.
Alas! Monsieur Mille did not possess that gift of foretelling future
events which was in former ages ascribed to poets. Our days of happiness
were already numbered, and all our dazzling illusions were doomed to
extinction. The day following the Federation fête the nation awakened to
a sense of harrowing dissension. Weak and narrow-minded, the king ill
fulfilled the limitless trust the people had placed in him.
The criminal emigration of princes and nobility was impoverishing the
country, antagonizing the people, and conducing to war. The political
clubs overawed the National Assembly. The acrimony of the populace
became more and more menacing. And whilst the nation was a prey to
agitators, neither did I possess my heart in peace. I had met Amélie
again. I had become the constant guest of her family, and never a week
passed that did not find me two or three times a visitor at the house
they lived in, in the Rue Neuve St. Eustache. Their fortunes, at one
time flourishing, had flagged considerably owing to the Revolution, and
I may venture to say that ill-luck ripened our friendship. As Amélie
became poorer I found myself more sympathetic, and I loved her. I loved
without hope. Who was I, poor little peasant lad, that I should be
pleasing to so charming a townswoman?
I marvelled at her gifts. By composing music, painting, or translating
some English romance, she courageously shut out the consciousness of
misfortune, both public and private. Whenever she saw any one she
displayed an aloofness which, so far as I was concerned, would relapse
freely into playful banter. It was clear that though her heart was
untouched she found my company diverting. Her father was the handsomest
grenadier in the district, but in all other respects a nonentity. As to
Madame Berthemet, she was, despite a petulant disposition, the best of
women. She was brimming with enthusiasm. She appreciated parakeets,
political economists, and Monsieur Mille’s poetry to the swooning point.
She was fond of me when she could spare time, but much of hers was taken
up by the gazettes and the opera. Next to her daughter there was no one
in the world whom it gave me greater pleasure to meet.
I had progressed greatly in the good graces of the Duc de Puybonne. I
was no longer engaged in the copying of letters: he entrusted me with
the most delicate transactions, and often confided to me matters as to
which Monsieur Mille himself was left in ignorance.
Moreover, he had lost faith, if not courage. The humiliating flight of
Louis XVI distressed him more than I can say; yet after the return from
Varennes he appeared unintermittently in the entourage of the royal
prisoner, who had despised his advice and been suspicious of his
loyalty. My dear master remained immutably faithful to moribund royalty.
On the 10th of August he was at the Château, and it was by a sort of
miracle that he eluded the mob and managed to get back to his house.
During the night I was summoned to him. I found him disguised in the
clothes of one of his stewards.
“Farewell,” he said to me. “I am leaving a country delivered over to all
sorts of abominations and crimes. The day after to-morrow I shall have
landed on the coast of England. I am taking with me three hundred louis;
it is all I have been able to get together of what I own. I am leaving
behind me property to a considerable amount. I have no one to trust my
interests to but yourself. Mille is a fool. Take my affairs into your
keeping. I know that you will incur danger in doing so; but I think
highly enough of you to burden you with a compromising load.”
I seized his hands, kissed them, and bathed them with tears; it was my
only answer.
Whilst he escaped from Paris under cover of his disguise and a forged
passport with which he was provided, I burned in the various fireplaces
in the house papers which would have sufficed to compromise whole
families, and cost the lives of hundreds of people. During the days that
followed I was lucky enough to be able to dispose—at very poor prices,
it is true—of the Duc de Puybonne’s carriages, horses, and plate, and in
this fashion I salvaged some seventy or eighty thousand livres, which
crossed the Channel. It was not without encountering the greatest
dangers that I carried these delicate negotiations through. My life hung
in the balance. The Terror prevailed in the capital the day following
the 10th of August. In those streets which only the previous evening
were enlivened by the motley variety of costumes, where the cries of
hawkers and the clatter of horses had resounded, solitude and silence
now reigned. All the shops were closed; the citizens, concealed in their
dwellings, trembled both for their friends and for themselves.
The barriers were guarded, and it was impossible for any one to leave
the appalling city. Patrols of men armed with pikes paraded the streets.
Domiciliary inspections were the only subject of conversation. In my
chamber, high up in the roof of the mansion, I could hear the tramp of
the armed citizens, the hammering of pikes and the butts of muskets
against the neighbouring doors, and the wailing and screaming of the
occupants, who were dragged off to the sections. And after the
_sans-culottes_ had terrorized the peaceable dwellers in the
neighbourhood throughout the day, they would assemble in the shop of my
neighbour the grocer; there they would drink, dance the carmagnole, and
shriek the _Ça ira_ till morning dawned, so that it was impossible for
me to close my eyes all night. My uneasiness increased the distress of
insomnia. I could not but fear that some valet might have betrayed me,
and that my arrest was already ordered.
Just then a fever of denunciation spread through the town. Never a
scullion but believed himself a Brutus for the betrayal of the masters
who had furnished him with a living.
I was continuously on the alert, and a faithful servant was ready to
warn me at the first sound of the knocker. Fully dressed I would throw
myself on my bed or into an arm-chair. I carried about with me the key
of the small gate in the garden. But as those execrable September days
dragged on, when I learned that hundreds of prisoners had been massacred
without the least public protest, and under the approving eyes of the
magistrates, horror at length got the better of fear in my mind, and I
blushed to be taking such precautions for my safety, and defending with
so much forethought an existence which the crimes of my country should
have rendered worthless.
No longer did I shrink from showing myself in the streets or
encountering the patrols. Nevertheless, I clung to life. I possessed a
powerful charm against my anguish and grief. One delightful vision
banished from my sight the whole sombre panorama which unrolled itself
before me. I loved Amélie, and her youthful countenance omnipresent to
my imagination, held me spell-bound. I loved without hope. Nevertheless,
I seemed to myself less unworthy of her now that I was acting like a man
of courage. I dared, too, to fancy that the dangers to which I was
exposed might render me more interesting to her.
In this frame of mind then I went to see her one morning. I found her
alone. She talked to me with more benignity than she had ever before
displayed. Her eyes were cast heavenwards, and tears fell from them. At
the sight I was plunged in the most indescribable distress. I threw
myself at her feet, seized her hand, and bathed it with tears.
“O, my brother!” she exclaimed, compelling me to rise. I had not
realized up to that moment the bitter sweetness the name of brother can
hold. I addressed her with my whole soul’s tenderness.
“Yes,” I cried, “the times are frightful. Mankind is steeped in
wickedness. Let us away. Happiness is to be sought in solitude. There
are still distant islands where it is possible to live in innocence and
freedom from oppression. Let us depart. We will seek for happiness
beneath the palms that cast their shade over the tomb of Virginia.”
As I talked in this fashion she seemed to be in a dream, and her eyes
had a far-away look; but I could not tell whether her dream and mine
were one and the same.
III
I spent the rest of the day in the most harrowing suspense. I was
powerless either to indulge in rest or to engage in any occupation.
Solitude was repellent, and company uncongenial. In this mood I wandered
haphazard along the streets and quays of the town, sorrowfully gazing at
the mutilated armorial achievements on the fronts of the houses, and at
the decapitated saints in the church porches. Thus preoccupied I found
myself unconsciously in the garden of the Palais Royal, where a motley
crowd of pedestrians had gathered to drink coffee and glance over the
gazettes. The wooden galleries, by the way, had not ceased to present a
festal appearance at all hours.
In consequence of the declaration of war and the progress of the allied
armies, the Parisians had fallen into the habit of seeking for news at
the Tuileries and the Palais Royal. In fine weather the crowd would be
considerable, and anxiety even brought in its train a certain degree of
distraction.
Many of the women, simply attired after the Greek fashion, wore the
national colours, either at the waist or in the head-dress. I felt more
lonely than ever in this crowd; all the noise, the movement which
surrounded me, only served, so to say, to drive back and concentrate my
thoughts upon myself.
“Alas!” I said to myself, “have I said enough? Have I shown my feelings
unmistakably? Or rather, have I said too much? Will she ever consent to
receive me again, now that she knows I love her? But does she know it?
and does she care to know it?”
In this fashion I groaned over the uncertainty of my fate, when my
attention was violently diverted by the tones of a familiar voice. I
raised my eyes and saw Monsieur Mille standing up in a café and singing
in the midst of a group of women “patriots” and “citizens.” He was
dressed as a national guard, and with his left arm he encircled a young
woman, in whom I recognized one of the flower-sellers from Ramponneau.
To the tune of _Lisette_ he was singing these words:—
“Though patriots hundreds strong
To break our bonds are fain,
Women, in thousands, long
To readjust the chain;
Tradition holds them fast,
With pitying scorn they view
Whoso abhors the past
And welcomes in the new.”[12]
-----
Footnote 12:
S’il est douze cents députés
Qui brisent nos entraves,
Le v[oe]u de cent mille beautés
Est de nous rendre esclaves:
Toutes nos dames ont regret
A l’ancien régime,
Et louer un nouveau décret
C’est perdre leur estime.
-----
This verse was received with a murmur of approval. Monsieur Mille
smiled, bowed gracefully, and then, turning to his companion,
recommenced his song—
“Ah! not with such join hands,
Sophie, beloved maid!
Philosophy’s commands
Yield kindlier, holier aid:
Her guidance she outpours
On those—O happy chance!—
Who to Her rights restores
Our own, our much wronged France.”[13]
Applause followed, and Monsieur Mille, drawing from his pocket a bunch
of ribbons, handed it to Sophie as he resumed his song—
“Hasten then, far and wide,
This gay cockade to show,
Which fills my breast with pride,
When to my guard I go.
What’s gold, with tawdry glint,
To the bud which half uncloses?
This badge of triple tint
Outvies the fairest roses.”[14]
-----
Footnote 13:
Ah! ne les imitez jamais,
Adorable Sophie,
Et connaissez mieux les bienfaits
De la philosophie;
C’est elle qui dicte les lois
Aux Solons de la France,
Et qui fera dans tous ses droits
Rentrer un peuple immense.
Footnote 14:
Hâtez-vouz donc de l’arborer
Cette belle cocarde,
Dont j’aime tant à me parer
Quand je monte ma garde:
Vous devez préférer à l’or
Les fleurs à peine écloses;
Ce joli ruban tricolor
A tout l’éclat des roses.
-----
Sophie fastened the ribbon in her cap, and swept the audience with a
glance comprehending both triumph and vacancy. Again there was applause.
Monsieur Mille bowed. He gazed at the crowd without recognizing me or
anybody else; or, rather, in that crowd he was conscious only of
himself.
“Ah! monsieur,” exclaimed my neighbour, who in his enthusiasm was
bestowing on me a tender embrace; “ah! if the Prussians or the Austrians
could see that! They would shudder, monsieur! We were betrayed into
their hands at Longwy and Verdun. But if they reached Paris it would be
their tomb. The spirit of the populace is altogether martial. I have
just come from the Tuileries gardens, monsieur. There I heard some
singers stationed in front of the statue of Liberty giving voice to the
war song of the _Marseillais_. A frenzied crowd was shouting in chorus
the refrain ‘_Aux armes; citoyens!_’ If the Prussians had only been
there! They would have disappeared underground!”
The man who thus discoursed to me was a very ordinary person, neither
handsome nor ugly, neither short nor tall. He was as like his neighbour
as two peas, and there was nothing about him individual or distinctive.
As he spoke rather loudly he was soon surrounded. After coughing
impressively, he continued—
“The enemy is approaching from Chalons. We must encircle them with a
ring of steel. Citizens, it is we who must have an eye to the public
welfare. Put not your trust in generals, nor in staff officers and
troops of the line, nor in ministers of State, even though you have
elected them yourselves; no, not even in your representatives at the
Convention. We must be our own salvation.”
“Bravo!” cried some one in the audience; “let us fly to Chalons!”
A little man here made a spirited interruption.
“Patriots have no business to leave Paris until the traitors have been
exterminated.”
These words were uttered in a voice which I instantly recognized. On
that point I could not be deceived. That tremendous head waggling about
on a narrow pair of shoulders, that dull livid face, that shape at once
mean and monstrous, could belong to none other than my old
schoolmaster—Father Joursanvault. His cassock had given place to a
wretched jacket. His countenance sweated hate and apostasy. I looked in
another direction, but I could not avoid hearing the old Oratorian
continue his discourse in this manner:
“Enough blood was not shed during the glorious days of September. The
populace is ever too inclined to magnanimity, and has been too tender
towards conspirators and traitors.”
At these terrible words I took to my heels horror-struck. In my
childhood I had suspected Monsieur Joursanvault of being neither just
nor benevolent. I disliked him, indeed. But I was far from fathoming the
blackness of his soul. At the discovery that my old master was nothing
but an unprincipled rascal, I was overwhelmed with mingled bitterness
and grief.
“Oh, that I were still but a child!” I exclaimed. “What is the use of
life if it cannot bring us to anything better than dilemmas such as
this? Dear principal, dear Father Féval, my recollections of you must
temper the sorrows that overwhelm me! Into what dangers has the tempest
cast you, my dear and only master? This I know, at any rate, that
wherever you may be, humanity, pity, and heroism prevail all around you.
You taught me, reverend master, the worth of rectitude and courage. You
foresaw the days of trial and strengthened my heart. May your pupil,
your son, never show himself too unworthy of your care!”
I had hardly concluded this mental invocation when I felt inspired with
fresh courage. And my thoughts harking back by a natural inclination to
my dear Amélie, I realized all in a moment what my duty was, and
resolved to fulfil it. I had disclosed my feelings to Amélie; was I not
bound to make the same declaration to Madame Berthemet?
I was only a few paces from the door, for in my self-communing I had
naturally drifted towards the house which contained my Amélie. I entered
and made my avowal.
Madame Berthemet smilingly replied that my conduct was very
praiseworthy. Then, adopting a graver tone, she said—
“I am going to make you my confidant since I cannot otherwise satisfy
you. Do not delude yourself; you must abandon all hope. My daughter is
beloved by the Chevalier de St. Ange, and I believe that she is not
insensible to his devotion. I should be glad enough, however, if she
were to dismiss him from her thoughts. For our fortunes are on the wane
from day to day, and the Chevalier’s love is consequently put to a test
which the most ardent sentiments are not always proof against.”
The Chevalier de St. Ange! I shuddered at the name. I had a rival, and
that rival the most fascinating of poets, the most attractive of
novelists. Birth, connections, good looks, talents, he possessed
everything calculated to smooth his path. Only the previous evening I
had observed in a lady’s hands a tortoiseshell box, with a portrait in
miniature, mounted on the lid, of the Chevalier de St. Ange, in the
uniform of a dragoon.
As I caught sight of it I envied him, as did every other man of his
acquaintance, his manly elegance and inimitable grace. Every morning I
could hear my neighbour, the mercer’s wife, singing at her doorstep the
immortal ballad known as _The Pledge_—
Thou who shouldst never have seen the light,
Pledge, beloved, that my fault endears;
Never, ah never, thou luckless wight,
Frailty of mine to thine eyes bring tears.[15]
Footnote 15:
O toi qui n’eus jamais dû naître,
Gage trop cher d’un fol amour;
Puisses-tu ne jamais connaître,
L’erreur qui le donna te jour! (_Le Gage._)
-----
But a little while since I had been reading with delight the
philosophical romance which opened the doors of the French Academy to
the Chevalier de St. Ange; that admirable _Cynégyre_ which leaves far
behind it the _Numa Pompilius_ of Monsieur Florian. “Your _Cynégyre_,”
said the venerable Monsieur Sedaine to the Chevalier de St. Ange, as he
received him into the illustrious company, “your _Cynégyre_ was
dedicated to the manes of Fénelon, and the offering was not unworthy of
the altar.” Such was my rival—the impassioned author of _The Pledge_—a
man of whom people spoke in one breath with Fénelon and Voltaire! I
could not overcome my embarrassment; astonishment numbed my distress.
“What, Madame!” I exclaimed, “the Chevalier de St. Ange!”
“Yes,” rejoined Madame Berthemet, shaking her head, “a brilliant writer.
But do not imagine for a moment that he is personally the man you would
conjecture from his heroical poems. Alas! as our fortunes diminish his
love ebbs with them.”
She added kindly that she regretted that her daughter’s choice had not
fallen upon me.
“Talents,” she said, “do not make for happiness. On the contrary, men
endowed with extraordinary powers, poets and orators, ought to live
single. What need of companions have they who cannot mate with their
equals. Their genius alone is sufficient to foster egoism. One cannot be
an eminent man without incurring the penalties.”
But I was no longer heedful of her remarks. I could not shake off my
astonishment. Her disclosure had killed my love. I had never hoped for
its return, and, without hope, love is not endued with any considerable
vitality. Mine died at the utterance of a single word.
The Chevalier de St. Ange! Shall I admit it? Although my heart bled, my
self-esteem experienced a sort of satisfaction at the thought that,
forestalled by such a rival, anybody else, no matter who, would have met
the same fate as myself. I pressed a hundred kisses on Madame
Berthemet’s hands, and left her house calmly, silently, slowly, a mere
shadow of the ardent lover who had entered but an hour before,
determined to make a clean breast of his scruples and his passion to the
mother of Amélie. I was disconsolate. Not that I suffered. I was simply
filled with surprise, shame, and fear at the discovery that I could
outlive what had seemed the best part of me, my love.
As I crossed the Pont Neuf to regain my deserted faubourg, I saw in the
open space, at the foot of the pedestal upon which the statue of Henri
IV had recently been erected, a singer from the Academy of Music, who
was declaiming in a moving voice the hymn of the _Marseillais_. The
crowd which had collected round him, with bare heads, took up the
refrain in chorus, “_Aux armes, citoyens!_” But when the singer struck
up the last verse, “_Amour sacré de la Patrie_,” in slow and solemn
tones, a shiver of unearthly exaltation passed through the crowd. At the
line—
_Liberté, liberté chérie_ ...
I fell on my knees upon the pavement, and beheld all the people around
me likewise fallen prostrate. O, my country, my country! what spells do
you weave that your children worship you so? Even from out the mire and
the blood your image rises radiant. My country! happy are they who die
for you. The sun, which was now dipping towards the horizon, surrounded
by blood-hued clouds, lit into liquid flame the waters of the most
famous of rivers. Hail to you, ultimate illumination of my days of
happiness!
Alack! into what a winter of discontent I passed that night! When I
closed the door of my little chamber in the roof of the Duc de
Puybonne’s mansion, I felt as though I were cementing the stone over my
own tomb.
“All is over!” I said through my sobs. “I love Amélie no longer. But how
is it that I am forced to remind myself of the fact so untiringly? How
is it that, loving her no longer, I cannot turn my thoughts away from
her? Why do I lament so bitterly the uprooting of my wretched love?”
Cruel anxieties were added to my personal sorrows. The state of public
affairs was driving me to desperation. My destitution was extreme, and,
far from cherishing the hope of obtaining work, I was reduced to
concealing myself for fear of being arrested as a suspicious character.
Monsieur Mille had not put in an appearance at the house since the 10th
of August. I have no idea where he lodged; but he never missed a single
sitting of the Commune, and every day before the municipality, amid
enthusiastic applause from the _tricoteuses_[16] and _sans-culottes_, he
would recite a new patriotic hymn. Indeed he was the most patriotic of
poets, and citizen Dorat-Cubières himself, beside him, was a timid
_Feuillant_,[17] under the grave suspicion of the demagogues. I had been
engaged in incriminating transactions; moreover, Monsieur Mille made no
attempt to visit me, and my own scruples made it an easy duty for me not
to go in search of him. Nevertheless, being a good-hearted man, he sent
me his collection of songs when the printing was completed. Ah, how
slight the resemblance between his second muse and his first! The latter
had been powdered, painted, perfumed. The new one resembled a fury, with
serpents for locks of hair. I can still recall the song of the
_sans-culottes_, which aimed at being very malicious. It began thus—
Long, long enough, yea far too long
Dread tyranny has claimed our song,
And despots swayed our lot.
Now breaks the dawn of Liberty,
Of Law, and fair Equality:
All hail! the Sans-Culottes![18]
-----
Footnote 16:
The women who formed part of the revolutionary mobs were known as
_tricoteuses_ from their habit of knitting at all seasons, even at the
foot of the guillotine; the _sans-culottes_ were the men of the same
class. Their nether garments, of course, were rather in rags and
tatters than wanting altogether. (TRANS.)
Footnote 17:
A member of an anti-Jacobin Society, known as _Feuillants_. (TRANS.)
Footnote 18:
Amis, assez et trop longtemps,
Sous le règne affreux des tyrans,
On chanta les despotes.
Sous celui de l’Egalité,
Des Lois et de la Liberté,
Chantons les Sans-Culottes.
-----
The trial of the king aroused me to indescribable distress. My days
rolled by in horror. One morning there was a knock at the door. I
divined somehow that it proceeded from a gentle and friendly hand. I
opened, and Madame Berthemet flung herself into my arms.
“Save me, save us!” she said. “My brother, Monsieur Eustance, my only
brother, was scheduled as an _émigré_,[19] and came to seek shelter in
my house. He was denounced and arrested. He has been in prison now for
five days. Luckily the accusation which hangs over him is vague and
ill-founded. My brother was never an _émigré_. To effect his release,
all that is necessary is that some one who can vouch for his unbroken
residence in France will give evidence in his favour. I begged the
Chevalier de St. Ange to do me this service. He prudently begged to be
excused. Well! my friend, my son, that service which it would be
perilous to him to render me, to you will be still more perilous; yet I
come to ask it of you.”
-----
Footnote 19:
A person who had left France without a licence from the Government.
(TRANS.)
-----
I thanked her for her request as if it had been a favour. And, indeed,
it was so to be regarded, and of a quality so inestimable that an
upright man could scarcely be honoured by a greater.
“Well enough I knew that you would not refuse!” exclaimed Madame
Berthemet, embracing me. “But this is not all,” she added. “You will
need to procure a second witness; they demand that two shall come
forward if my brother is to be released. Oh, my friend, what times we
are living in! Monsieur de St. Ange keeps aloof from us; our misfortunes
embarrass him; and Monsieur Mille would be afraid to visit folks under
suspicion. Who would have thought it, my friend—who would have thought
it? Do you remember Federation Day? We were all brimful of enthusiasm
about fraternity, and I had on a very becoming dress.”
She was in tears when she left me. I descended the stairs almost
immediately after her to go in search of a guarantor, and to tell the
truth I was considerably puzzled to put my hands on one. As I bowed my
head in my hands I realized that I had a beard of eight days' growth,
which might render me an object of suspicion; so I betook myself at once
to my barber’s at the corner of the Rue St. Guillaume. This barber was a
very worthy fellow named Larisse, as tall as a poplar and as restless as
an aspen. When I entered his shop he was attending to a wine merchant of
the neighbourhood, who with his face smothered in lather was pouring out
all sorts of playful threats.
“Ah, my fine fellow, you dandifier of fine ladies,” he was saying, “your
head will be cut off and stuck on the end of a pike to gratify your
aristocratic inclinations. Every enemy of the people must add his quota
to the basket,[20] from the fat Capet to the slim Larisse. And, _ça
ira_, so it will be!”
-----
Footnote 20:
The basket into which the heads of the guillotined fell. (TRANS.)
-----
Monsieur Larisse, paler than moonshine and fluttering like a leaf,
observed the utmost precautions as he shaved the chin of the abusive
patriot. I can affirm that never did barber experience greater terror.
And from this circumstance I drew a happy augury for the success of the
design I had suddenly conceived. It was my intention, to be plain, to
ask Monsieur Larisse to accompany me before the committee as the second
guarantor.
“He is such a coward,” I reflected, “that he will never dare to
protest.”
The wine merchant withdrew muttering fresh threats, and left me alone
with the barber, who, still trembling, fastened a napkin round my neck.
“Ah, monsieur!” he whispered in my ear, in a voice feebler than a sigh,
“hell is let loose upon us! Was it for the accommodation of demons like
this that I studied the art of hairdressing? The heads which did honour
to my skill are now in London or in Coblentz. How is Monseigneur le Duc
de Puybonne? He was a good master.”
I informed him that the Duke was living in London, and giving writing
lessons. Indeed, the Duke had managed recently to convey to me a paper
in which he told me that he was living, perfectly contented, in London,
on four shillings and sixpence a day.
“It may be so,” replied Monsieur Larisse, “but in London hairdressing is
not performed as it is in Paris. The English can make constitutions, but
they don’t know how to make wigs, and their powder is not nearly white
enough.”
Monsieur Larisse soon had me shaven. I had not a very harsh beard at
that time. Scarcely had he closed his razor than, seizing him by the
wrist, I said to him firmly—
“My dear Monsieur Larisse, you are a valiant man; you are coming with me
before the General Assembly of the Section des Postes in the one-time
church of St. Eustache. There you will bear witness jointly with me that
Monsieur Eustance has never been an _émigré_.”
At these words Monsieur Larisse grew pale, and murmured in inanimate
tones—
“But I am not acquainted with Monsieur Eustance.”
“For that matter, neither am I,” I replied.
Which was indeed strictly true. I had correctly diagnosed the character
of Monsieur Larisse. He was dumbfounded. His very fear thrust him into
the perilous emprise. I took him by the arm and he followed me
unresistingly.
“But you are leading me to my death,” he said softly.
“To glory rather,” I replied.
I don’t know whether he was familiar with the tragedians, but he was
sensible of the honour and appeared flattered. He had some knowledge of
literature, for loosing my arm to go into his back shop, he said—
“A moment, dear sir; let me at least put on my best coat. In the olden
times the victims were decked with flowers. I find it recorded in the
_Almanack for Honest Men_.”
From his chest of drawers he took a blue coat which he flung round his
long, mobile body. Thus attired he accompanied me to the General
Assembly of the Section des Postes, which was sitting continuously.
On the threshold of the desecrated church, on the door of which was
inscribed the motto, “_Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death_,”
Monsieur Larisse felt the sweat break out on his forehead; nevertheless
he went in. One of the citizens who was sleeping there on a heap of
empty bottles, half aroused himself to inquire our business, and then
sent us on to the revolutionary committee of the Section.
I knew this committee through having accompanied Monsieur Berthemet
there on two occasions. The president of it was a small lodging-house
keeper in the Rue de la Truanderie, whose most regular customers were
ladies of easy virtue. Amongst the members there were an itinerant
knife-grinder, a porter, and a dyer and cleaner named Bistac. It was
with the knife-grinder that we had to do. He was seated informally with
his sleeves turned up; we found him a good-natured fellow.
“Citizens,” he said, “from the moment you place before me an attestation
in due form, I have no objections to raise, because I am a magistrate
and consequently the proper formalities are all I demand. I would only
add one word. A man who has intelligence and character ought not to be
authorized to leave Paris at a moment like this. Because, you see,
citizens——”
He hesitated, and then, making use of gesture to express his meaning, he
stretched out his bare and muscular arm and then moved it to his
forehead, which he tapped with a finger, and continued—“It is not of
this alone” (here he indicated his arm, the working tool) “that we have
need, but of this also” (here he motioned to his forehead, the seat of
intellect).
He then boasted of his natural gifts, and lamented that his parents had
not contrived to give him any instruction. Then he set himself to the
task of signing our declaration. Despite his good will this was a long
process. Whilst, with hands accustomed to the grindstone, he painfully
manipulated the pen, Bistac the cleaner came into the room. Bistac had
not the genial nature of the grinder. His soul was all Jacobin. At sight
of us his forehead puckered and his nostrils swelled: he scented the
aristocrat.
“Who are you?” he demanded of me.
“Pierre Aubier.”
“Oh, oh! Pierre Aubier, and I suppose you flatter yourself that you will
sleep in your own bed to-night?”
I put a cool face on the situation, but my companion began to shudder in
every limb. His bones rattled so loudly that Bistac’s attention was
attracted, and, forgetting me, he turned his scrutiny on to poor
Larisse.
“You have all the marks of a conspirator, in my opinion,” said Bistac in
a terrible voice. “What is your profession?”
“A barber, at your service, citizen.”
“All barbers are Feuillants!”
Terror commonly inspired Monsieur Larisse to the most courageous
actions. He has since confessed to me that at this moment he had all the
difficulty in the world to prevent himself from shouting “Long live the
King!” As a matter of fact, he did no such thing, but replied proudly
that he owed small thanks to the Revolution, which had suppressed wigs
and powder, and that he was tired of living in a continual state of
apprehension.
“Take off my head,” he added. “I should prefer to get my dying over,
rather than to live in constant fear.”
Bistac became perplexed at talk like this.
Meanwhile, the knife-grinder, who was revolving many confused but kindly
thoughts in his brain, recommended us to withdraw.
“Off with you, citizens,” he said; “but bear in mind that the Republic
has need of this.”
And he pointed to his forehead.
Madame Berthemet’s brother was released next day. The mother of Amélie
expressed abundance of gratitude and embraced me—it was a way she had.
She did better.
“You have,” said she, “acquired a right to the gratitude of Amélie. I am
desirous that my daughter should herself come and express her
indebtedness to you. She owes you an uncle. It is less than a mother, it
is true; but what commendations does not your courage deserve....”
She went in search of Amélie.
Left alone in the drawing-room, I waited. I asked myself whether I had
the strength to see her once more. I feared, I hoped. I died a thousand
deaths.
In about five minutes Madame Berthemet reappeared, alone.
“You must excuse an ungrateful girl,” she said. “My daughter refuses to
come. ‘I could not endure his presence,’ she declared. 'The sight of him
would be torture to me; henceforth I hate him. By showing greater
courage than the man I love, he has gained a cruel advantage. I will
never see him again while I live. He is generous: he will forgive me.'”
After she had repeated this speech to me Madame Berthemet concluded with
these words:
“Forget the ungrateful child!”
I promised to endeavour to do so, and I kept my word. Events contributed
to my success. The Terror reigned. That appalling day, the 31st of May,
snatched their last hopes from those of the moderate party.
Several times I was denounced as a conspirator on the score of the
correspondence I maintained with the Duc de Puybonne, and I was
continually risking both liberty and life.
I had no longer a certificate of citizenship, and, not daring to apply
for one for fear of being instantly put under arrest, my existence had
become unendurable.
There was a demand just then for twelve hundred thousand men between the
ages of eighteen and twenty-five. I entered my name. On the 7th of
Brumaire in the year II, at six o’clock in the morning, I set out on the
way to Nancy to join my regiment. With a policeman’s cap on my head, a
knapsack on my back, and wearing the jacket called a carmagnole, I felt
myself fairly martial in appearance.
From time to time I turned my gaze back on the great city where I had
suffered so much and loved so profoundly. Then, wiping away a tear, I
resumed my journey. I decided to sing in order to cheer myself up, and I
began the hymn of the _Marseillais_—
_Allons, enfants de la Patrie!_
At the first halting-place I presented my credentials to some peasants,
who sent me to pass the night in the stable on the straw. There I
enjoyed a delicious sleep, and as I awakened I thought—
“Well, this is better. I am no longer in danger of the guillotine. So
far as I can judge, I am no longer in love with Amélie—or rather I never
have been in love with her. I am going to carry a sword and a gun. I
shall have nothing else to fear but the Austrian bullets. Brindamour and
Trompelamort are right: there is no finer calling than that of a
soldier. But who would have dreamed when I was studying Latin under the
flowering apple trees at Monsieur Lamadou’s that one day I should take
arms in defence of the Republic? Ah! Monsieur Féval, who could have
foreseen that your little pupil Pierre would march away to the wars?”
At the next halt a worthy woman put me to sleep in white sheets because
I reminded her of her son.
The following day I lodged with a canoness who put me in a loft open to
the wind and rain, and even this she did with a very perturbed mind, for
a defender of the Republic seemed to her so very near to a dangerous
species of brigand.
Finally, I came up with my corps on the banks of the Meuse. I received a
sword. At this I reddened with gratification, and felt myself at least a
foot taller. Do not laugh at me on that account; it was a case of
vanity, I admit it; but vanity goes to the making of a hero. We were
scarcely fitted out before we received orders to start for Maubeuge.
We arrived on the Sambre on a dark night. Silence was all around. We
could see fires flickering on the hills on the opposite side of the
river. I was told that they were the bivouacs of the enemy. Then my
heart thumped as if it would burst.
It was from Titus Livy that I had got my ideas of war. But I call you to
witness, woods, meadows, hills, banks of the Sambre and the Meuse, that
those ideas were delusive. War, such as I took part in, consists of
passing through burnt-up villages, sleeping in the mire, listening to
the whistle of bullets through the long and melancholy sentry duty of
nights; but of single combats and ordered battlefields I saw never a
sign. We slept but little, and did not eat at all. Floridor, my
sergeant, an old soldier of the French Guard, swore that the life we
were leading was festive; he exaggerated, but we were not unhappy, for
we had the consciousness of doing our duty and being useful to our
country.
We were justly proud of our regiment, which had covered itself with
glory at Wattignies. For the greater part it was made up of soldiers of
the old _régime_, stout and well instructed. As a large number of men
had perished in various engagements, the gaps had been filled up anyhow
with youthful recruits. Without the veterans who encircled us we should
have been worth nothing. It takes a good deal of time to make a soldier,
and in war enthusiasm is no substitute for experience.
My colonel was a one-time nobleman from my native province. He treated
me kindly. A lifelong Royalist, a countryman not a townsman, a soldier
not a courtier, he had long delayed exchanging the white coat of His
Majesty’s troops for the blue coat of the soldiers of the year II. He
detested the Republic, and dedicated the remainder of his life to it.
I bless Providence for having guided me to the frontier, since there
virtue still survives.
[Written in bivouac, on the Sambre, between septidi the 27th of
Frimaire, and sextidi the 6th of Nivôse, in the year II of the French
Republic, by Pierre Aubier, volunteer.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DAWN
TO MADEMOISELLE LÉONIE BERNARDINI
DAWN
The Cours-La-Reine was deserted. The green banks of the Seine, the
ancient pollarded beeches whose shadows began to stretch out towards the
east, the calm azure of the sky, cloudless, breezeless, unthreatening
but unsmiling, all were wrapped in the deep silence that marks the
summer day. A pedestrian coming from the Tuileries made his way slowly
towards the hills of Chaillot. His figure was of the agreeable
slightness characteristic of early youth, and he wore the coat,
breeches, and black stockings indicative of the bourgeois, whose
supremacy had at length come round. Yet his countenance was rather that
of the dreamer than of the enthusiast. He had a book in his hand; and
his finger between the leaves marked the place he had reached, but he
had ceased to read. Now and then he stopped and strained his ears to
catch the faint yet terrible murmur which rose up from Paris, and in
this muffled noise, feebler than a sigh, he fancied he could distinguish
cries of death and hate, joy and love, drum-beats, the sound of
firearms—all the din, in fact, of insensate fury and sublime enthusiasm
which ascends heavenward from crowded streets at the outbreak of
revolution. At times he turned his head and shuddered. Everything
reported to him, everything he had seen and heard for some hours past
filled his brain with confused and terrible pictures: the Bastille
captured by the people and already denuded of its battlements; the
provost of the merchants' guild slain by a pistol-shot in the midst of a
furious crowd; the governor, the venerable de Launay, hewn down on the
steps of the Hotel de Ville; the dreadful populace, pale as famine or as
deathly fear, drunken, beside itself, dazed by the vision of blood and
glory, reeling from the Bastille to the Grève, and above the heads of a
hundred thousand deluded people the bodies of the victims swinging from
a lamp-post, and the oak-crowned brow of one of the exultant clad in a
uniform of blue and white; the conquerors with the registers, the keys
and the silver plate belonging to the ancient fortress, mounting amid
acclamation the blood-stained steps; and at their head the popular
magistrates La Fayette and Bailly, overwrought, uplifted, amazed, their
feet dabbled in blood, their heads touching the clouds with pride! Then,
fear still paramount with the unleashed rabble, at the scattered noises
customarily attendant on the return of the Royal troops to the town at
night, the tearing down of the palace railings for conversion into
pikes, the pillage of the arsenals, the construction by the citizens of
street barricades, and the transportation by the women to the roofs of
houses of stones to hurl down on the foreign regiments!
These scenes of violence were reconstructed in his dreamy youthful
imagination in subdued tones. He had taken his favourite book, an
English work entitled _Meditations Among the Tombs_, and made his way
along the Seine, under the trees of the Cours-la-Reine, towards the
white house which, night and day, filled his thoughts. All was calm
around him. On the river bank he noticed the anglers sitting with their
feet in the water, and he followed the course of the stream in an
abstracted mood. When he reached the slopes of the hills of Chaillot he
met a patrol party, keeping an eye on the communications between Paris
and Versailles. This troop, armed with guns, muskets, and halberds,
included artisans wearing their aprons of leather or serge, lawyers
dressed in black, one priest, and a bearded, bare-legged giant in a
shirt. They challenged every would-be passer-by: communications between
the Court and the governor of the Bastille had been detected and a
surprise was feared.
But this pedestrian was young and of ingenuous appearance. He had
scarcely uttered a word or two before the troop smilingly permitted him
to continue his journey.
He ascended the slope of a lane odorous of flowering elder, and stopped
half-way up in front of a garden gate. This garden was but little, but
by means of winding alleys and abrupt turns the space for exercise was
considerably extended. Into a pool where ducks were disporting
themselves, willows dipped the tips of their branches. At the corner by
the street a light alcove had been constructed, and a grass plot spread
its freshness in front of the house. Here, on a rustic bench, with her
head bent, a young woman was seated; her face was hidden by a large
straw hat wreathed with natural flowers. Over her dress, which was of
white and rose colour, in stripes, she wore a fichu, fastened at the
waistline, this latter a trifle high, giving the skirt an added length
that was not unbecoming. Her arms, encased in tight sleeves, were at
rest. A basket of an antique pattern, which lay at her feet, held balls
of wool. Close by her a child was piling up heaps of sand with his
shovel. His blue eyes shone through a tangle of golden hair.
The young woman remained motionless and, as it were, spell-bound, and
the young man standing at the gate could not bring himself to break so
sweet a spell. At length she raised her head and disclosed a youthful,
almost infantile face, with pure rounded lines which imparted a natural
expression of gentleness and friendliness. He bowed before her, and she
held out her hand.
“How do you do, Monsieur Germain? What is the news? ‘What news do you
bring with you?’ as the song says. I don’t know very much, except
songs.”
“Pardon me, Madame, for having disturbed your dreams. I was gazing at
you. Alone, motionless, your head resting on your hand, it seemed as
though you must be the angel of meditation.”
“Alone! alone!” she replied, as if this were the only word she had
heard. “Alone! Is she ever alone?”
And seeing that he was looking at her uncomprehendingly, she added—
“Enough of that! It is nothing but a fancy of mine that—— What is your
news?”
Thereupon he went over the events of the famous day, the taking of the
Bastille, the foundation of liberty.
Sophie listened to him gravely; then she said—
“It is our duty to rejoice, but our joy should be the austere joy which
comes of sacrifice. Henceforth the French are their own men no longer;
they are the servants of the Revolution which is about to reform the
world.”
As she was speaking the child approached and threw himself joyously
across her knees.
“Look, mamma! Look at my pretty garden!”
Embracing him, she said—
“You are right, little Emile, it is the wisest thing in the world to lay
out a pretty garden.”
“Yes, he is right,” added Germain; “what gallery glowing with porphyry
and gold can be compared with a green alley?”
And reflecting how sweet it would be to give this fair woman the support
of his arm and lead her to the shade of the trees—
“Ah!” he exclaimed, flashing a meaning glance at her, “what are men and
revolutions to me!”
“No, no!” she rejoined, “I cannot so abruptly turn my thoughts from a
great people, intent on inaugurating the reign of justice. My attachment
to the new ideas surprises you, Monsieur Germain. We have only known one
another for quite a brief time. You are not aware, of course, that my
father taught me to read in the _Social Contract_ and the Gospels. One
day, as we were walking, he pointed out Jean Jacques Rousseau to me. I
was only a child, but I dissolved in tears at sight of the gloomy
countenance of the wisest of men. I grew up a hater of prejudice. Later
on my husband, like myself a disciple of the philosophy of nature,
decided that our son should be called Emile, and that he should be
taught to labour with his hands. In his last letter, written three years
ago on board the ship upon which he perished some days afterwards, he
continues to urge on my attention Rousseau’s precepts upon education. I
am saturated with the new spirit of the age. It is my conviction that we
must struggle for justice and truth.”
“Like yourself, Madame,” sighed Germain, “I have a horror of fanaticism
and tyranny; like yourself, I am in love with liberty, but my soul is
drained of its strength. At every moment my thoughts escape my control.
I am no longer master of myself, and I suffer accordingly.”
The young woman did not reply. An elderly man pushed open the gate and
came forward with his arms raised, waving his hat. He wore neither
powder nor wig. A few long grey hairs fell down on each side of his bald
head. He wore a complete suit of grey ratteen; his stockings were blue
and his shoes buckleless.
“Victory! victory!” he cried. “The monster is delivered into our hands,
Sophie, and I am the bearer of the news to you.”
“Neighbour, I have just heard of it from Monsieur Marcel Germain, whom I
want to introduce to you. His mother and mine were friends at Angers.
During the six months he has spent in Paris he has been kind enough to
come to see me from time to time in the seclusion of my hermitage.
Monsieur Germain, this gentleman is my neighbour and friend, Monsieur
Franchot de La Cavanne, a man of letters.”
“Say rather, 'Nicolas Franchot, labourer.'”
“I know, dear friend, that you thus signed your treatise on the Corn
Trade. I will say then, to gratify you, although I expect your hands are
much more adroit with the pen than with the plough, Monsieur Nicolas
Franchot, labourer.”
The older man grasped Marcel’s hand and exclaimed—
“It has fallen, then, that fortress which has so many times engulfed the
wronged and the guiltless! Those bolts behind which I passed eight
months, deprived both of air and light, have been torn from their
places. It was one-and-thirty years ago, on the 17th of February, 1758,
that I was cast into the Bastille for having written an epistle on
tolerance. Now, to-day, at length the people have avenged me. Right and
I are triumphant together. The memory of this day will remain so long as
the universe endures. I call as witness to it the sun which saw
Harmodius perish, and the brood of Tarquin put to flight!”
The piercing voice of Monsieur Franchot frightened little Emile, who
clutched his mother’s dress. Franchot, suddenly becoming aware of the
child’s presence, lifted him from the ground and said enthusiastically—
“Happier than we have been, dear child, you will grow up free!”
But Emile, terrified, turned his face away and uttered loud cries.
“Gentlemen,” said Sophie, as she wiped away her little son’s tears,
“will you be so kind as to stay to supper with me? I am expecting
Monsieur Duvernay, provided he is not detained by the bedside of one of
his patients.”
Then turning towards Marcel—
“You must know that Monsieur Duvernay, the king’s physician, is an
elector of Paris without the walls. He would be a deputy of the National
Assembly if, like Monsieur de Condorcet, he had not out of modesty
declined the honour. He is a man of great attainments, and it will be
both pleasant and profitable to you to hear him converse.”
“Young man,” added Franchot, “I am acquainted with Monsieur Jean
Duvernay, and I know one circumstance about him which does him honour.
Two years ago the queen summoned him to attend on the Dauphin, who was
threatened with decline. At that time Duvernay was residing at Sèvres,
whither one of the Court carriages was sent every morning to convey him
to Saint Cloud, where the royal child lay ill. One day the carriage
returned to the palace empty. Duvernay had not come. The following day
the queen reproached him for absenting himself.
“Doctor,” she said, “you forgot your patient the Dauphin, then?”
“Madame,” replied the worthy man, “I am caring for your son assiduously,
but yesterday I was detained by the bedside of a peasant woman in
labour.”
“Well now!” remarked Sophie, “wasn’t that noble of him, and oughtn’t we
to be proud of our friend!”
“Yes; it was fine,” replied Germain.
A grave, sweet voice close beside them here interposed—
“I do not know,” said the voice, “what it is that is exciting you to
admiration; but it is pleasant to hear your transports. In these days
there are so many admirable deeds to be witnessed.”
The man who spoke wore a powdered wig and a delicate lace frill. It was
Jean Duvernay. Marcel recognized his face from the engravings he had
seen in the shops in the Palais Royal.
“I have just come from Versailles,” said Duvernay. “I owe to the Duke of
Orleans the pleasure of seeing you this memorable day, Sophie. He
brought me in his coach as far as Saint Cloud. The rest of the way I
travelled in the most convenient fashion—I mean on my own feet.”
And as a matter of fact, his silver-buckled shoes and black stockings
were covered all over with dust.
Emile clung with his little hands to the steel buttons which glittered
on the doctor’s coat, and Duvernay, coaxing him on to his knee, found
material for smiles in glimpses at the little creature’s budding soul.
Sophie summoned Nanon. A sturdy girl appeared, who picked up and carried
the child off in her arms, stifling beneath resounding kisses his
despairing cries.
The table was laid in the garden alcove. Sophie hung her straw hat on a
willow branch; her fair hair fell in curls about her cheeks.
“You will sup in the simplest possible way,” she said, “in the English
fashion.”
From the spot where they were seated they could see the Seine, the roofs
of the city, the domes and the steeples. The spectacle rendered them as
silent as though they were looking out on Paris for the first time.
After a while they spoke of the occurrences of the day, of the Assembly,
of universal suffrage, of the breaking down of class barriers, and
Monsieur Necker’s banishment. All four were agreed that a lasting
liberty was at length achieved. Monsieur Duvernay foretold the rise of a
new order, and applauded the wisdom of the legislators popularly
elected. But his mind was not uplifted, and at times it seemed as though
his hopes were alloyed with a certain uneasiness. Nicolas Franchot did
not observe the same moderation. He proclaimed the peaceful triumph of
the people and the era of fraternity.
Vainly did the physician, vainly the young woman assure him—
“It is only now that the struggle begins. We are only as yet at our
first victory.”
“Philosophy is our ruler,” he would reply. “What benefits will not
Reason shower on men who accept her all potent sway! The Golden Age
which the poets fabled will become a reality. All ills will disappear
with the fanaticism and tyranny which gave them birth. The virtuous and
enlightened man will enjoy all possible felicity. What do I say? By the
aid of physicians and chemists he will even succeed in attaining
immortality upon earth.”
Sophie listened to him, but shook her head.
“If you wish to deprive us of death,” she said, “find us first a
fountain of youth. Without that your immortality awakens my
apprehension.”
The old philosopher laughingly asked her if she found the Christian
doctrine of resurrection more comforting.
“For my part,” he said, after emptying his glass, “I am inclined to fear
lest the angels and saints should feel impelled to favour the choir of
virgins at the expense of the company of dowagers.”
“I do not know,” replied the young woman, in a meditative tone and
lifting her eyes to his, “I do not know what value these poor charms,
framed out of the dust of the earth, may have in the eyes of angels; but
I am sure that divine omnipotence will be better able to repair the
ravages of time, if in so blissful an abode such redress should be
needful, than all your physics and your chemistry will ever succeed in
doing in this world. You, who are an atheist, Monsieur Franchot, and do
not believe that God reigns in the heavens, you cannot understand
anything about the Revolution, which is the advent of God upon earth.”
She rose. Night had fallen, and in the distance under their eyes the
great town starred itself with lights.
Marcel offered his arm to Sophie, and whilst the older men argued with
one another, the two sauntered together along the sombre alleys. Marcel
found them charming, and Sophie supplied him in turn with their names
and associations.
“Here,” she said, “we are in the Allée de Jean Jacques, which leads to
the Salon d’Emile. This alley was straight. I had it deflected so that
it should pass under the old oak. All day long it gives shade to this
rustic bench, which I have called 'Friendship’s Rest.'
“We will sit down for a moment on this bench,” said Sophie.
They sat down. In the silence Marcel could hear the fluttering of his
own heart.
“Sophie, I love you,” he murmured, and captured her hand.
She drew it away gently, and pointing out to the young man that a light
breeze had set the leaves rustling—
“Do you hear that?” she said.
“I hear the wind among the leaves.”
She shook her head, and said in tones as sweet as a chant—
“Marcel, Marcel! Who tells you that is the wind among the leaves? Who
tells you that we are alone? Are you, then, after all, one of those
commonplace souls which have failed to discern any of the mysterious
portents of the world unseen?”
And as he questioned her with a glance that was all bewilderment—
“Monsieur Germain,” she said, “be so kind as to go upstairs to my room.
You will find a little book on the table, and bring it to me....”
He obeyed. All the while he was absent the young widow gazed at the
dusky foliage shivering in the night wind. He returned with a little
gilt-edged volume.
“_The Idylls of Gesner_; yes, that is it,” said Sophie. “Open the book
at the place where the marker lies, and, if your eyes are good enough to
read by moonlight, read.”
He read these words:
“Ah! Often will my soul come to hover around you; often when, inflamed
by a noble and sublime thought, you are meditating in solitude, a light
breath will brush your cheek: at such a moment may your soul be
conscious of a gladdening thrill!...”
She stopped him.
“Now do you understand, Marcel, that we are never alone, and that there
are words to which I can never listen so long as a breath blown landward
from the sea shall set in motion the leaves of the oaks.”
The voices of the two older men drew near.
“God is Goodness,” said Duvernay.
“God is evil,” said Franchot, “and we shall extinguish it.”
Both of them, and Marcel also, took leave of Sophie.
“Adieu, gentlemen,” she said. “Let us all cry, ‘Hurrah for Liberty, and
long live the King!’ And you, dear neighbour, do not hinder us from
dying when we shall need to die.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MADAME DE LUZY
TO MARCEL PROUST
MADAME DE LUZY
(_From a manuscript dated September 15th, 1792._)
I
As I entered, Pauline de Luzy held out her hand to me. Then for a moment
we remained silent. Her scarf and straw hat were thrown carelessly on an
arm-chair.
The prayer from _Orpheus_ was open on the spinet. Going towards the
window, she watched the sun sinking to the blood-red horizon.
“Madame,” I said at length, “do you remember the words you said two
years ago this very day, at the foot of that hill on the bank of the
river towards which at this moment your eyes are turned?
“Do you remember how, with your hand waving in a prophetic gesture, you
called up before me, as in a vision, the coming days of trial, of crime
and terror? On my very lips you arrested my confession of love, and bade
me live and labour for justice and liberty. Madame, since your hand,
which I could not anoint with kisses and tears enough, pointed out the
way to me, I have pursued it unfaltering. I have obeyed you; I have
written and spoken for the cause. For two years I have withstood the
blunder-headed starvelings who are the source of dissension and hate,
the demagogues who seduce the people by violent demonstrations of
pretended sympathy, and the poltroons who do homage to the coming
powers.”
She stopped me with a motion of her hand, and made a sign to me to
listen. Then we heard borne across the scented spaces of the garden,
where birds were warbling, distant cries of “Death!” “To the gallows
with the aristocrat!” “Set his head on a pike!”
Pale and motionless she held a finger to her lips.
“It is,” I said, “some unhappy wretch being pursued. They are making
domiciliary visits and effecting arrests in Paris night and day. It is
possible they may force an entrance here. I ought to withdraw for fear
of compromising you. Although I am but little known in this
neighbourhood, I am, as times go, a dangerous guest.”
“Stay!” she adjured me.
For the second time cries rent the calm evening air. They were mingled
now with the tramp of feet and the noise of fire-arms. They came nearer;
then we heard a voice shout: “Close the approaches, so that he cannot
escape, the scoundrel!”
Madame de Luzy seemed to grow calmer in proportion to the increasing
nearness of the danger.
“Let us go up to the second floor,” she said; “we shall be able to see
through the sunblinds what is going on outside.”
But scarcely had we opened the door when, on the landing, we beheld a
half-dressed fugitive, his face blanched with terror, his teeth
chattering and his knees knocking together. This apparition murmured in
a strangled voice—
“Save me! Hide me! They are there.... They burst open my gate—overran my
garden. They are coming....”
II