I was one time traveling in France. I was a young man without
object—without occupation. Literature was the last thing in my
thoughts—indeed I believe it never would have entered into them, but
for a word or two of encouragement from an American gentleman, most dear
to me after a lapse of five-and-twenty years, most high in my esteem as
a man, and in my admiration as an author. He gave the first impulse to
my mind in a certain direction. His opinion was confirmed by another,
equally dear, and equally admired by us both, and I became in
consequence of an accidental meeting in a remote city of France, what I
am, and what I am proud to be—a literary man.
It was some time after this accidental meeting that I was traveling in
another Department, as they call it now-a-days, or Province as they
called it long ago, when I stopped at an inn or hotel, God bless the
mark!—in the famous city of Rennes, the capital of Brittany. The town
is a fine old quiet town, which looks as if a good deal of sleep had
been the portion of the inhabitants since the revolution; but
nevertheless, it has a great number of pleasant people in it, a great
number of agreeable social parties, much elegance and grace in its
higher circles, and a numerous collection of beautiful faces and
forms—for all of which I am devoutly thankful, as in duty bound.
One’s first advent to such a town, however, can never be particularly
gay. The circumstances which brought me there, and detained me there for
a long time, could not be matters of interest for the general public,
but I will own that the first day-light view of the city, though
striking and in some degree beautiful—and there are few towns for which
I have such a lingering love; perhaps on the same motives which made De
Coucy love Fontenoy—was in some degree dull and monotonous; and before
I delivered the few letters of introduction which I brought with me, I
took a stroll through the streets, with no very pleasant feeling or
anticipation.
I had previously passed through that deeply interesting part of France,
the Bocage, where deeds of heroism enough were enacted to have made
ancient Rome really great—where heroes fought and died, with a
constancy and a quiet fortitude which would have shamed warriors of old,
and have put the stoic to the blush.
It is a bright and beautiful land, notwithstanding the desolation which
the fierce wrath of the multi-form tyranny of republicanism inflicted
upon it—notwithstanding the decimation of its inhabitants, and the
spilling of the noblest blood that France had ever produced. The dim
embowering lanes, deep cut between the fields; the arching boughs over
head, the vineyards, and the orchards, the quiet little villages, nooked
in bosky shade; the frequent farm-houses, and the châteaux great and
small, which thickly dot the whole of that peculiar region, had produced
an effect—strange to say—gay—cheerful—and pleasant, rather than sad,
notwithstanding all the gloomy memories of glorious deeds unfruitful,
and heroic courage rewarded by death, with which the whole air is
loaded. France may boast of her conquests—of the successes which were
obtained by the fierce irruption of the barbarous hordes into dismayed
and unconnected lands—of the talent of her generals—of the courage of
her plundering troops—of triumph, bitterly atoned by forgotten
humiliation; but her real glory lies in La Vendee.
I had gone through this beautiful country—this country dear to the
heart of every one who loves honor more than success, and I had come to
the extreme point of the frontier, where a great city had possessed the
means, and never used them, of rendering gallant devotion triumphant.
The feeling with which I viewed it was, perhaps, not that of
disappointment; but a sort of gloom pervaded my mind, a sensation of
solitariness—of isolation, not common in French cities, where every one
usually seems ready to take upon himself the character of acquaintance,
if not of friend.
On entering my inn, which was one where dinner was served _à la carte_.
I chose from the bill of fare, such viands as I thought proper, and sat
down to read the newspaper in the public room till the meal was served.
While thus occupied, two or three people came in and went out again; but
one person remained, spoke a few words to the waiter, seated himself in
a chair on one side of the long wooden board which served as a very
unornamental dinner-table, and taking up one of the public papers, began
to read.
After a time I gave a glance at him, and I thought I recognized the
features. A second look showed me that I had seen him more than once
before in various towns of France. I had even a faint recollection of
having met him in good society in England. So it proved; for a short
time after, the stranger’s eye turned upon me, and he immediately
remembered me. Our acquaintance, previously, had been confined to a few
words, and an occasional bow when we met; but here we were seated
together in a dull inn, in a dull town in Brittany—cast as it were upon
each other for society; and it may be easily supposed that we soon
became more intimate, although I did not altogether like or understand
my acquaintance. He was certainly a good-looking man, but his appearance
was somewhat singular. He was tall, very powerful in frame, though
rather meagre than otherwise, full-chested, broad-shouldered, thin in
the flank, long and sinewy in limb. His nose was strongly aquiline, his
eye over-arched by a very prominent eye-brow, was dark, bright and
quick. He wore neither whisker nor mustache, and I remarked that his
teeth were beautifully white and perfect, although at this time he must
have been considerably above fifty. His dress never varied at any time I
saw him, consisting of a black coat, waistcoat and handkerchief, drab
breeches, and English top-boots. His hat always shone like a
looking-glass, and his gloves always fitted beautifully, and seemed to
be fresh that day. I found that he spoke English and French with equal
facility, and I never could get any one to tell me what was his country.
Frenchmen, who heard him speak, declared at once that he was French, and
that no foreigner could ever acquire the accent so perfectly.
Englishmen, and myself amongst the number felt sure that he was English,
judging by the same test; and I am rather inclined to believe now, that
he was in reality a Russian spy. He never, by any chance, alluded to his
country, to his profession, or to his habits—except indeed, one day,
when he called himself a wandering spirit, rarely remaining more than
three days in the same place. He must have been well acquainted with
Rennes, however; for he knew every nook and corner in the city, and had
evidently some knowledge of a great many people in it, for he bowed to
many, spoke to several; but although I afterward asked several persons
whom I had seen him thus recognize, who he was, none of them could tell
me, and most of them seemed not much to like the subject.
The first night, we dined together, and shared a bottle of very good
wine, which he, either by prescience or memory, recommended as the best
which the house could afford. We talked of the town, and of that part of
France, and of La Vendee, and in the end, finding I was curious about
relics of the ancient times, he offered to take me to some curious
places in the vicinity of the town. On the following morning we set out
in a carriage from the inn—and here let me notice his scrupulous
exactness in paying his precise share of every expense incurred. He
never sought to pay more, but would never consent to pay less. On our
return, our conversation naturally fell upon all we had seen. We talked
of the Chouans, and the Vendean war, and all the gallant deeds that were
done in those days, and from that we turned to the Revolutionary history
in general, and especially to the campaigns of Massena, and the
Arch-Duke Charles, and Suwarow in Lombardy and Switzerland. He gave me a
number of curious anecdotes of those personages, and especially of
Suwarow, whom he told me he had himself seen leading on a charge, with a
jockey-cap upon his head, a switch in his hand, a boot upon one leg, and
a silk stocking on the other.
“Those were strange times,” he said, “and many of the greatest, and most
striking events in history which occurred about that time, are already
hardly remembered, from the fact that so many marvelous actions were
crowded into so short a space of time, as hardly to leave room to see or
to collect them. I was about thirty at the time of that terrible
struggle in Switzerland,” he added, “and my memory is quite perfect upon
the subject; but when I talk with other people upon those things, and
especially with historians, they know little or nothing about them.”
“You must have gone through some strange adventures, I should think,” I
answered.
“Oh dear no,” he replied, “my life has been an exceedingly quiet and
tranquil one; but if you are curious about that period of history, I
have got a manuscript which fell into my hands accidentally, giving some
interesting particulars of a young man’s life in those days. There is a
good deal of nonsensical sentimentality in it, but it may amuse you, and
if you like to take the trouble to read it, I will lend it to you.”
I accepted his offer right willingly, but the conversation turned soon
to other things, and he and I both forgot the manuscript that night.
On the following day, at breakfast, he announced to me that he was going
to start by the Diligence at noon, for Nantes, Bordeaux, and Madrid. I
laughingly asked what would become of my reading the manuscript then.
“Oh, you shall have it! You shall have it,” he answered. “We shall meet
again I dare say, and then you can give it back to me.”
Before he went, he brought it down—a large roll of somewhat yellow
paper. Conceiving it might be valuable, and without the slightest idea
of prying into his affairs, I asked where I could send it to him, if we
did not meet soon.
He replied, with a very peculiar smile, “it does not matter. It does not
matter. If I do not see you before thirteen years are over, I shall then
be seventy years of age or dead, and you may do with it what you
please.”
More than twenty years have now passed, and we have not met, and I give
the manuscript to the world with very little alteration, trusting that
if the writer of the autobiography which follows should ever see these
pages, he will claim his own and forgive their publication. I will only
add, that when I received the manuscript, I certainly thought that my
good friend of the inn was the writer of it himself. In reading it over,
however, and especially in correcting it for the press, I perceived that
could not be, as the age of the parties must have differed by fifteen or
sixteen years.