clusters in the great sweep of vineyards under that mound which
watched the drama from the west, the two captains, Avila and Cavabro,
refused to treat. The citizens had been made their slaves. The
citadel was their vantage ground, and from it a ceaseless pillage
ruined the town. If ever the moral force of civilians counts in war,
it was here accumulated against the fierce and terrible captains of
Castille, as strong as iron in pride, but now doomed.
Every animal in the place was eaten. The citizens were thrown back
upon the rooks and the rats; the wounded in the hospital ate the
straw of their beds, and men were seen in the streets of the city
gathering the weeds of the wayside.
The captains of Philip IV. still held.
He made a desperate effort at relief. He drove the French from
Barcelona; but he could not find more men, harassed as he was all
over Europe, for that one essential point of Perpignan. A little body
came up under Torrecusa; La Mothe-Houdancourt held it off beyond the
hills.
It was the height of summer, and under the burning sun the ill
fortune of the Spanish star saw to it that, as a last resort, a fleet
attempting a diversion by the coast should have a tempest raised
against it and should fly to the Balearics.
Then it was at last that Avila despaired. But even then he could not
sign a capitulation. He signed only a document by which he pledged
himself to surrender if no help should come before a date which was
discussed by the starving men and fixed at last upon the 9th of
September. The 9th of September came; no succour had arrived. The
gates were opened, the keys delivered, and the play was done.
The Castillians had demanded and obtained the honours of war. The
French in two ranks saw passing between them the haggard remnant of
all this heroism, still attempting some severity of demeanour. A
generous instinct had moved the French command to see that none of
the Catalans, none of the town folk in their hatred of the Spanish
garrison, should be seen. It was the northern soldiers of Louis XIII.
who held them back as the tiny garrison marched out, concealing its
weakness under a mask of order and of discipline.
Their officers saluted the French flag, and at their head Avila rode
one of the last horses. The ceremony was over; the Castillians, not
prisoners, were outside the lines.
Avila dismounted, knelt upon the ground, looked south towards Spain
and to the arms of Spain upon the gate. His eyes were full of tears.
As he knelt he raised his right hand towards the town, and made a
great sign of the Cross against the sky, so bidding it farewell for
ever.
It was by the Canet Gate that these few heroes went forth after the
last effort for their king. It was by the Gate of Elne that there
marched in at the same moment the fresh, the well-fed, strong-bodied
northern Frenchmen, six thousand strong, and behind them an immense
train of wagons, filled with wheat, barley, oats, bread ready-baked,
bacon and fresh meat--food for a year.
In the Cathedral of St. John the Archbishop of Narbonne and the
Bishops of Nîmes and Albi, crowded around by the enthusiastic men
of the Catalans, sang the Te Deum. But far off in the Escorial,
Olivares, having heard the news, leant for the moment against the
stone wall, and the palm of his left hand pressed upon it, and then
moved towards the little room where the king was still reading and
signing his papers.
He fell upon his knees and wept, and said that it was time that he,
Olivares, should, by his own wish, die; and even so, he dared not say
the words that would give the reason of his despair. He waited until
his master spoke and asked him what so moved him.
“Sire,” said that strong man, sobbing, and still upon his knees, “you
have lost Perpignan!”
Then Philip answered in a low voice, but gravely: “We must submit to
the will of God.”
THE EXILE
(_December 30, 1688_)
There are many squares of soil where the histories of nations touch
and the fate of the one is intermixed with the fate of the other upon
a few roods of land.
There are the battlefields, of course--but that is obvious. There
are the conference rooms: the rooms in which treaties were signed;
though most treaties do not mean very much to history, some are of
prodigious effect--witness the Treaty of the Pyrenees. There are the
universally sacred sites--like the pavement of St. Peter’s, old and
new. There are the sites of Decisions, like the quays of Calais; like
the palaces of Vienna--where the agents of Governments have met and
have doubtfully decided, for a little time, the inferior interests of
men--the mechanical interests of men.
But there are also less known places where the fates of nations met
oddly, sharply, sometimes fruitfully, sometimes unfruitfully.
For instance, just outside Montreuil, two coaches passed each other
in the night--the one going north, the other going south. The one
going south was that of the British envoy prepared for war with the
French Republic in 1793; the one going north was that bearing the
French envoy with orders to prevent war if possibly that could be
done.
Of those squares of land, one is not as famous as it should be. It
is the land upon which stands the seventeenth-century palace of St.
Germains, with the terrace just outside overlooking the plain of the
Seine and the low grey line of Paris far beyond, and the distant,
diminished towers of St. Denis.
Had the Stuarts returned to the throne of England, that place
would be famous enough. It would be counted as the point of their
departure, as the rallying place of their cause, as the seed of a
new time. It would be a place of national pilgrimage and sacred in
English eyes; for there it was that James II., the rightful English
king, came as an exile to meet his cousin of France. But the Stuarts
did not return; and, therefore, the incident has been pushed away
into the lumber-room. There is thought to be something futile about
St. Germains. Even Culloden is more famous.
Yet St. Germains has good material for a shrine. It remains just
what it was. The past lives there. It is what it is, although success
did not follow on the meeting it saw. It is precisely what it would
have been had success followed that meeting. It is still itself. I
could wish that the tragedy of that palace were better known.
Mary of Modena had come over hurriedly with the child, the heir
to the English throne. She had been housed in this palace by the
gratitude, the courtesy, and the high policy of Louis XIV., King
of France. She was the Queen of England, and the usurpers were
(officially) of no account to Versailles. The fatigue of the journey,
of the alarms, of the perils, had oppressed the young woman; she had
taken to her bed. In a fine cradle, worthy of royalty, swinging in
the same room, lay that little baby who was later to be James III.,
and never to reign.
Louis XIV. had returned to visit this lady; he had come to her
bedside again, making obeisance and reverence, as king to queen. They
awaited James himself, for they knew that if he could escape the
plots of his enemies he would reach them. The news had come of his
landing. He had reached port in the dead of the Christmas dark, at
three in the morning. He had travelled down from the sea-coast with
haste. He came in no very great state to the doors of that palace,
late upon this December (for the French this January) day. The
weather was stormy; he had had no relief from travel; his great boots
were splashed with mud, and the tails of his long coat also; and his
odd, energetic, somewhat pinched face showed his fatigue. Yet he was
the King of England, and kingship was the high political note of the
time. He was the son of Henrietta Maria, consort of Charles I. No one
had a moment’s right against himself--least of all his disappointed,
soured, usurping daughter; his alien, vicious, usurping son-in-law.
The man who had had, in varying proportions, ill-fortune to oppress
him, ill-judgment to urge him on (but much more ill-fortune than
ill-judgment), this courageous, intelligent, tenacious, but now
defeated man, stepped down unaided, but awkwardly, from the coach. He
was cramped by his journey.
Notice had been given to Louis XIV., sitting there by the bedside
in the room above; and that great king, holding the highest throne
in Europe, came down at once, almost eagerly, almost forgetting the
ritual of his position, to honour such an occasion and such an exile.
The rain still fell slantwise in the open courtyard of that palace of
brick and cornered stone. Louis XIV., in plumed hat, and cloak, and
sword, and buckled shoes, walked through the weather, indifferent,
his gentlemen about him--walked, I say, even eagerly, with some
forgetfulness of what he owed to his own royalty, so sharply did he
feel the strength of the occasion.
They met under the arch of the portcullis where the guard were
mounted, on the house side of the drawbridge, and in that meeting
there was something consonant to the ideas of their time, grotesque
to those of ours. For you must know that the men of that time bowed
low to their superiors--lower and lower in proportion, not to their
own inferiority, but to the greatness of him whom they saluted.
Now, here were two equals--the King of England and the King of
France--meeting to salute the one the other; so each bowed lower and
lower as they approached, each sweeping his hat in his hand before
him, and modulating his steps exactly as the ritual of that time
demanded: the left foot advanced, then the right at right angles to
it, in something more like a dance than a walk.
With all this they must give each other the accolade: they were
equals; they must embrace as equals. So the arms of the one man,
bowed down and obeisant with his head (a large wig upon it), were
spread out, inviting, upon either side of his body, the right hand
holding the large plumed hat, the left hand making gestures with its
fingers in the air.
At last, in such a progress, the two bodies must meet; and so they
did. The reception of the one to the other was what we, to-day,
mocking such things, might compare to the beginning of a wrestling
match. But the onlookers had no such profanity in their minds. For
them (and they were right) this strange ceremony was a high symbol.
The Great King was treating the ruined Exile as an equal, and some
future might be built upon such a foundation. The Stuarts might yet
return. For that meeting--to us, as we call up its physical details,
grotesque; to them, sublime--might well have been the beginning of a
true Restoration, and of an England happier and better than she has
been--perhaps less wealthy.
It was not so to be. The ceremony was sterile. It bred no issue.
There was to come the Boyne, the ’Fifteen, the ’Forty-five--and
nothingness; at last a grave in Rome, and that small, noble memorial
in St. Peter’s, which I, for my part, never pass without a movement
of the heart. The Stuarts were not to return.
* * * * *
Next day the great king came back to his exiles at St. Germains, and
later in the week he came once more. Each time he visited them with
an increasing sincerity and fervour of support. He leaned long over
the cradle and gazed down at the little Heir of England, with more
feeling than he had been known to show in looking at any of his own
children.
But, high above men, the fates had decided and the stars were set.
For business of this sort works out very slowly; and not within the
lives of two or three men that meet, but in many generations, are
the ultimate purposes accomplished; and though the Stuarts did not
return, perhaps they are to watch their revenge.
THE MONEY-LENDER
(_May 6, 1708_)
A fine day in May, and the spring had been early that year. The
trees were well out. A soft wind under a benignant sun came up from
the valley of the Seine, through the woods, and blessed the formal
new greatness of Marly; the splendour and melancholy of the great
water-basins, the majesty of the walls, were still new. The trees had
not yet that height which adds nobility to the noble lines of the
place. But already there was upon it the stamp of so great a reign.
Largeness and order and perfection of proportion were everywhere.
The palace stood alone, its dependencies grouped about it with a
space between. The front court and approach were deserted; but in the
grounds behind groups had formed: knots of courtiers were discussing
some coming thing, and all the life of the monarchy was disturbed in
that fine spring leisure, both in the great rooms of the palace and
in the gardens.
Twelve pavilions or lodges stood in formal order round behind the
main building, the lawns between. They were habitations for men
and women favoured of the king. Before one of these stood a man
whose long acquaintance with affairs on the one hand, with the
Court upon the other, had not quite rid him of awkwardness; for he
remembered his humble birth. It was Desmarets, the Controller of
Finance, a man of fifty. By his side, of equal age, stood, simply
dressed, demure, but a little sullen, a stout figure, odd in such
surroundings--Bernard the Jew. One or two others talked to him,
some commonplaces or other, as they thus stood before the pavilion.
It looked like a chance group; yet it was designed. And why it was
designed one must go back some weeks, some months, to understand.
* * * * *
Desmarets, coming back to the control of Louis XIV.’s finance in the
winter before that spring, in the February, knew not which way to
turn for monies in the conduct of the war. He bethought him of one
who had become the richest man in Europe--Bernard the Banker.
He knew his task to be difficult: the credit of the king was bad,
the war was a bottomless pit, swallowing million after million, the
security of the taxes was exhausted; he also knew Bernard by repute:
that repute was not in favour of the task.
Bernard was a man notoriously cold in judgment--and notoriously
right. So it was that he had built up his immense wealth. He had been
born the son of an artist, an etcher and engraver, indifferent to
anything but his art. He had been born the son of one of those Jewish
men of talent, whose every mark it is to concentrate wholly upon the
business of their lives, without concern for wealth, or even (very
much) for fame. From such a beginning, young in such surroundings,
Samuel Bernard the younger had re-acted toward a patient accumulation
of gold. His art, his task, had been that. Amply had he succeeded;
but when Desmarets approached him in the desperate crisis of that
year, not a gold piece was forthcoming.
In those days men were free, and the rulers of a state could not ruin
them for a whim--even a whim of war. How, then, was Bernard to be
persuaded?
Desmarets had seen the king, and what followed here at Marly was the
fruit of what the king had heard.
Desmarets had told the king that not a gold piece was forthcoming.
Bernard was hard as a rock. He had wasted no time in courtesy. He had
not even wasted time on insult; he had not sneered with the sneer
that is common to such occasions. He had said, simply and briefly
enough, that there was no security. Where might not such a beginning
lead? The money would be poured out like water upon sand. The war was
interminable, and the people could bear no more taxes. In our time a
man like Desmarets could have threatened. In that time he could not
threaten, but he bethought himself of something else, and it was upon
this something else that he had spoken to the king.
Hence it was, these few months after, in the opening of the spring,
in the May following that February, that he, Desmarets, and Bernard,
happened to be standing near the pavilion at the back of the palace
of Marly. Bernard sullen, as I have said, and wondering why he had
been asked here to no purpose; Desmarets affecting indifference and
leisure, but inwardly on thorns.
Just as this waiting of theirs was getting too awkward (Desmarets
wondering how much longer it would last, Bernard wondering what it
was all about, and almost proposing to go) there appeared, sauntering
towards them with dignity and at leisure, speaking in low tones
to the couple that were with him (and who showed an exaggerated
deference in their demeanour), a man of singular appearance.
It was the king.
He was seventy years of age. His years showed, not in his gait (for
that had always been leisurely and dignified), nor in his carriage,
for his pride kept him upright to the end; nor even in his body,
dressed as it was for his part. He had a double chin, but not
exaggerated; the strong, continuous line of his arched nose and high
forehead showed now in profile even more than they had done in his
youth; his mouth was firm; his eyes, though veiled with age, were
still vigorous. Where you saw the approach of his end was in the
fatigue of the face at its sides--the many wrinkles at the corners of
the eyes, the weakening flesh of the cheeks, and the slight droop at
the corners of the lips. But a man accustomed throughout a lifetime
to full command, and commanding with vigour and with judgment,
he remained to the end inspired by such a spiritual posture. He
was about to demean himself spiritually very much indeed, but the
garments, the exteriors of dignity, he never lost.
When he had come within a few yards of Desmarets and of Bernard, he
looked up as though surprised to see them, while they uncovered and
bowed.
“Why, Desmarets,” said he, “whom have you here?”
“It is Mr. Samuel Bernard.”
“I thought as much.... Mr. Bernard,” Louis added, as though it were a
sudden thought and a pleasant one, “I wonder if you have ever looked
round my gardens here at Marly?”
The king’s companions stepped back somewhat, and left him alone with
those other two. Bernard replied with an awed mumble.... His whole
being was filled with the greatness of the occasion.
It was one thing to be proud of his money and to found himself upon
it solidly in his office with some fellow or other who had risen to
the control of the finance, and who might be called Desmarets. It was
another to be in the presence of Louis XIV. He felt himself a little
weak at the knees, and yet happy to be in a new heavenly world. He
bowed awkwardly again at the wrong time, and once again he mumbled.
“Why,” said the old king, with a false sprightliness and affected
gaiety, “you _must_ see my gardens.... Come with me.... Desmarets,”
he added, turning to that courtier with an assumed ease, “I will
not deprive you long of Mr. Bernard’s company; I am sure you will be
eager to have him back. I only want to show him the gardens.”
Desmarets bowed again in a trained manner, Bernard awkwardly; and the
king took Bernard off to see the gardens: a nice little way-mark in
the social history of Europe!
One companion the king kept with him as a sort of foil, for with
Bernard alone he would have felt like a man alone with a monster.
Louis dared not trust himself with Bernard alone, therefore did he
keep that one companion as a foil. But the companion was to remain
silent while Louis did the honours.
“Are not they well chosen, these chestnuts? Not one has failed!...
They are young yet, Mr. Bernard. _You_ will see them grow tall....
But I am an old man.... Their alignment is perfect.”
Bernard said in a husky voice, forcing himself to speak, “All these
hills are market-garden country. The soil is good. The best trees are
nourished here....” Then he added, “Sire,” and gulped.
The king approved his judgment.
“You are right, Mr. Bernard,” he said, trying to be as little pompous
as he could. “You are curiously right.... It is a most interesting
view.” He then added (lying), “Few have remarked this. It is most
interesting that you should have remarked it. We have here at Marly
an excellent soil for the rapid growth of great trees. Now I see
there a poplar: we have also poplars ... but their arrangement
seems to me a little spoilt by the cross paths. There is something
irregular about the genius of these trees. I should have had them set
farther back, as with a hint of forestry.”
Saying this, the king halted, leaned back, gazed at the unoffending
poplars with severity, then turned, looked at Bernard, and smiled
painfully.
“Your Majesty is right,” said Bernard. “You are right ...”
(correcting himself), “Sire.”
The banker had not meant the phrase to be blunt, yet Louis restrained
himself like a man who feels a sudden pain; then he continued
rapidly, and as though to forget what had just passed,--
“You have studied gardens, Mr. Bernard?” (Without waiting for an
answer) “They are the most charming of studies. They never grow
stale. There is a book I must show you” (he shuddered inwardly as
he said it), “the plans of which perpetually please me, though they
are only plans. I conjure up gardens as I look at them. One is at
Tarbles.... I shall never see it” (a little sadly), “but I almost
seem to know it from the plans.”
Bernard answered, “One must always see the plan first,” and there
was silence for a full sixty seconds as they continued that mortal
progress. But Bernard already trod on air for all his bulk and for
all his furious shyness in such company.
The king, without glancing sideways (which would have been an
unkingly thing to do), gauged in his mind the distance between the
place which they had reached and the point to which they must return.
He decided to suggest the return.
Now when the king would suggest a change of direction from one path
to another, those of the Court needed no direction. Their eyes were
upon the master, who was also the nation, and, for that matter, the
summit of Europe; and while they said this or that, in the careful
wit of their time, they saw exactly which way the royal hands waved,
and which way the royal feet were turning.
Not so Bernard; he had not the habit. Therefore, when the steps of
Louis turned to the right, to go back towards the pavilion by the
farther path, the banker almost stumbled into the king.
Louis, with perfect restraint, half halted for a moment. Bernard
recovered himself and murmured an apology of the middle classes. The
king was too well-bred even to hear it, and the retreat upon Marly
began.
There was no awkwardness. The same fatuous phrases--or if not
fatuous, only not fatuous because there was tradition behind the
whole affair--proceeded one after the other from the lips of France;
the same rare, uncertain agreement, increasingly filled with awe,
came, murmured rather than spoken, from the lips of Bernard.
He was returned to Desmarets. The goods were delivered.
It had been a wonderful quarter of an hour for Bernard! The king
had shewn him Marly! He could say all his life, and his children
could say to their children, “The king himself took me all round his
gardens at Marly!” To tell the full truth, he hardly knew what he had
seen. He remembered six young chestnuts and a mist of poplars, and
he had been conscious of a Presence always there upon his left, and
that he was making history.
Already Bernard was a different man. The king, lingering just enough
to make the parting easy, moved off, erect, and, as it would have
seemed to a very acute observer, a little less restrained. A very
acute observer would have noted in the gesture of his arms and in
the carriage of his body, as Louis moved off, something of relief.
But only a very acute observer could have noticed this. It was the
slightest of slight changes.
Meanwhile Bernard, left behind, had become voluble. He began to
talk at large upon Marly, upon the glories of the gardens. He bored
Desmarets most damnably, but Desmarets affected an equal eagerness,
pretended surprise, put on a familiar astonishment at each new
detail, and with slow, familiar steps took Bernard back to his
sumptuous carriage at the gates. He held his smile well back as the
banker was helped into the cushions by absurdly obsequious servants.
He saw the splendid four horses stamp off down the big cobblestones
of the yard.
The man gone, Desmarets sat himself down frankly, without ceremony,
upon a bench, as though to rest from a great strain. A courtier came
up to him. He did not rise. The courtier said,--
“That’s all over!”
But Desmarets answered,--
“There is much more in Bernard than one might think.... I like him.”
Which was a lie.
And a very few days later the Crown began its drain of nine millions
upon Bernard.
THE CHÂTEAU
(_October 1759_)
There is a great house which stood once in the woods of a small
village some three miles from Versailles. It still stands, and woods
about it. I know it well.