THE HONEYMOON TRIP.
It is a mistake to begin married life by gormandizing, by an outlay
which one cannot afford, by affectation of a social position to which
luxuries are common, or by servility to the despotism of fashion. Our
friends in the Rue la de Vieille Estrapade knew and dreaded all this.
They owned that the ostentatious enjoyment which brings remorse at its
heels is not worth the cost. Therefore, though they 'did the thing,' as
the bridegroom put it, properly--that is, not shabbily--they did not put
on airs and ape the grand. They did not gormandize, for gluttony leads
to a fit of indigestion, and that leads to bad temper. They did not
waste economies that might be needed after; but they had a jovial party
conducted on the principles of prescient generosity. To be paradoxical,
the wedding-breakfast and surroundings were a sample of thrifty
extravagance. No more was spent on dresses and favours, bouquets and
gloves, than could well be avoided without the semblance of meanness. No
big man of the quarter was invited to the feast simply because he was a
big man--wore massive gold trinkets, had a balance at his banker's, a
prominent pew in church, a seat at the council of Paris magnates, or a
villa in the suburbs with a large garden. These people condescend; curse
people who condescend, but compassionate not the people who stand
condescension! They are treated as they deserve.
The custom in Paris is that those who cannot go for the honeymoon to
Baden, or to a friend's country-house, pass it apart in some secluded
suburb. O'H. and Madame O'H. were not such fools; they resolved to pass
it under the captain's roof--their future home; they had no particular
wish or necessity to confine themselves to each other's society till
they lost novelty and palled on each other, seeing that they were linked
while they breathed, and would have ample leisure to improve
acquaintance, and spy out small imperfections. For, look you, this is no
romance; our heroes and heroines are real, which is saying they are
human and weak. The way to celebrate the marriage-day is just as one
celebrates any ordinary holiday; the way to enjoy the honeymoon is in
activity in the midst of bustling life, not in mooning indolence. The
place for both is at home, amongst those whom we know and who are
attached to us.
This is what our friends did. They drove to the Mairie and the church
as we have described; they had a hearty breakfast, at which none were
present but the five of the wedding party. Caroline did not fling a
shower of rice at the retreating figure of the O'Hoolohan as he left for
his château in Spain, but sensibly put the rice in a pot to boil for a
supper pudding. Nor did the captain throw an old slipper at the poll of
his departing Berthe, for old slippers are useful when one is gouty,
and, besides, they sometimes disarrange a head-dress and hurt a little
head.
Rice and old slippers! What superstitious folly! And yet some very
eminent men, wise and no way credulous, have been burdened with the log
of superstition. Tyco Brahé was afraid to lay the first stone of his
observatory till the stars were in a 'happy conjunction.' The astronomer
who discovered the spots on the sun wiped his spectrum fifty times
before he could persuade himself to believe his own sight. Sainte-Beuve,
sceptic though he was, grew pale if the salt were spilt.
O'Hoolohan and O'Hara were not superstitious. They were of the school
which believes that it is unlucky to walk under a ladder--only when an
awkward workman is handling bricks overhead; unlucky to sit down
thirteen at table--only when there is not food enough for more than
twelve.
But Captain Chauvin was superstitious, after a kind. Like his idol, he
held by destiny, and had faith in his planet. On all high days and holy
days it was his wont to make pilgrimage to the shrine of his patron
saint. Call this whim if you like, superstition if you will. On this
happy day his secretly-cherished idea was to carry out his habit, and
the moment he spoke of it his friends agreed to humour him. And in this
wise it came to pass that there was a honeymoon trip, but a brief one in
limit of time and travelling.
Now, where should the honeymoon trip be taken? In London, that is a
question easier to answer than in Paris.
'Anywhere, anywhere _out_ of London,' would be the answer.
But in Paris the air you breathe is pure and brisk; the flowers in the
city grass-plots are fresh and fragrant; the waters of the Seine course
swiftly on with sparkling movement; the tall trees on the boulevards
make friendly rustle; there are wide shady shrubs, clad in thick mantle
of emerald, varied with citron and flecked with brown, in the public
gardens; silvery fountains seem to dance to inaudible music; the shafts
of sunshine play through clustering branches in the Elysian Fields and
the Luxembourg, and make fretwork of black and gold on the smooth sward.
This happens when Nature is in gracious mood and scatters broadcast her
charms from her bounteous lap. In Paris her mood is usually gracious,
for Paris is the favoured city, the queen-city, the one haunt of the
multitude where you can meet the Rus in Urbe, where you can salute the
pets of art in the bosom of the Benign Mother.
In two open victorias the party started on the trip. Captain Chauvin and
Caroline were on the seat of the first, and O'Hara on the strapontin in
front of them, dangerously near to the tempting hands of the tall girl
and in full range of her witching eyes. The bridegroom and bride were in
the second victoria. The captain went foremost, for he was _cicerone_.
To the Champ de Mars they drove first and entered the Military School,
the Chelsea Hospital of France.
'Go up, my children,' said Captain Chauvin; 'I am too feeble to
accompany you. Mount one hundred and seventy-three steps and you will
find the cell my saint occupied when he was a boy. There he lay in his
camp-bed; there he dreamed dreams, and there he made his first sketch.
Till your return, I shall fight an old fight with--a comrade.'
When they descended, the captain escorted them to the adjoining church.
'Here,' he said, 'he rests, the mortal part of him; here he was carried
to his tomb by the heirs of the dynasty he helped to overthrow. You see,
my children, he sleeps in the midst of the ancient braves at whose head
he once marched to victory; there, on the bronze tripod, is the sword
he wore at Austerlitz; look above, where those dusty trophies droop, ah!
sixty of them--this poor arm helped to win some few--they are flags
taken from the enemy in fair fight. They are--torn, bullet-pierced, and
time-mouldered as they are--the emblems of a glory that will live while
lives the world!'
The O'Hoolohan was getting excited. His brow flushed and his eyes
flashed. He tapped one foot on the marble floor like a restive charger
awaiting the trumpet-call to advance. He scanned the aisles and niches
of the sacred building as if he were searching for some lurking foe; he
clenched his right hand on an imaginary sword-hilt as if on the point of
rushing into some shock of battle. With all his calmness in actual
combat, such as we saw him at Clamart, this man was capable of being
roused to a flood-tide of passion, when his heart and imagination were
touched.
'Glory, grandfather,' urged Berthe; 'is it not very dearly bought,
sometimes? Suppose we kneel and pray that France may have a crop of
glory that is not so dreadful in the offering or so sad in the fruit for
the future.'
'You are right, my child,' acceded the captain, for this time it was not
the old soldier, but the old man who spoke, and they all knelt and
prayed, though it would be unsafe to pretend that they prayed with
equal fervour, or that the object of their petitions was the same.
The next stage in the pilgrimage was the Quai Conti, opposite the statue
of Henry IV., on the Pont Neuf. Here, on the fifth story of the house,
No. 5, a young officer of artillery, lately commissioned from the school
of Brienne, lived in 1785. A struggling painter poked the fire in the
garret, haunted by the shadow of the ambitious Bonaparte, the awkwardly
built, dwarfish stripling, with high cheek-bones, sallow complexion and
deep-sunken orbs, who came to the window at nights and gazed
palace-wards and sky-wards so long and earnestly, his hands clasped
behind his back, and then broke into a hurried, jerking, sentry-walk to
and fro in his circumscribed chamber.
To the Hôtel de Metz in the Rue du Mail next, where Bonaparte lodged, at
No. 14 on the third story, in 1792. At that period he dined at a
restaurant in the Rue des Petits-Pères. The dishes there were cheap.
They cost but six sous each. Cheap as they were, he had once to make a
forced march with his watch upon the nearest pawn-office before he could
raise means to stay the calls of appetite.
At the corner of the Rue du Mail and the Rue Montmartre is, or was, the
Hotel of the Rights of Man. By the time Bonaparte had got thus far, he
had made comparatively good progress on the ladder of fortune. He had
four windows in a row now in his apartment, and three chambers, two of
which were shared with his brothers Louis and Junot.
Three years later, Bonaparte, now a general of artillery, resided in No.
19, Rue de la Michodière, in a small furnished room. He was going up,
but he was no wastrel. Not till later on did he choose to change his
dwelling to the Hôtel Mirabeau, in the Alley of the Dauphin, near the
Tuileries. An episode of his career is laid in this hotel, which the
dramatists should seize and turn to their purposes. It might have
influenced the fate of nations. Had it come to its natural issue, the
maps might be drawn otherwise to-day. Fanchette, the daughter of Père
Thouset, the landlord, took a liking to the young general of the
Republic. She was not ill-favoured; and he might make a steady husband.
The general tried his arms in a field other than his, and, with his
usual luck, he made a conquest. Father-in-law, who was rich, consented
to a marriage, on two conditions: the first, that Bonaparte should quit
the army; the second, that he should become an hotel-keeper! But an
accident befell Fanchette which put Cupid's nose out of joint, much to
the benefit of his brother Mars.
The time came when Napoleon mounted to the topmost rung, lived in
castles and palaces, was guest and host of kings; but our friends were
satisfied--indeed, were more pleased with visiting his humble
habitations--the cell of the student, the airy garrets of the
adventurous soldier. The struggles of greatness to the light awaken
emotions more touching than all the magnificence of assured success.
They trended by the Rue St. Honoré to the church of St. Roch. There it
was the tide turned--there the hero had his first chance. It was the
twelfth Vendémiaire of the year IV., that is to say, the 22nd October,
1795. Thirty-three sections of the population rose in discontent at a
decree reserving to the Convention two-thirds of the places in the
Council of the Five Hundred. They were thirty thousand strong, and
marched on the Tuileries. The Convention had but twelve thousand men to
oppose them, and gave the command to Barras, who called in Bonaparte.
The captain, obscure till then, notwithstanding his services at Toulon,
put forty-two pieces of cannon round the palace, and mowed down the
insurgents. Their headquarters was the church of St. Roch. Bonaparte,
with correct, remorseless aim, pointed two guns with his own hand on the
crowd collected on the steps of the edifice and fired. The sections were
defeated; the corner-stone was laid of the reputation that was to mount
so high.
'I vote we wind up by paying a visit to the column in the Place
Vendôme,' said the O'Hoolohan, who was an admirer of Napoleon, but who
was getting hungry and who began to think he had enough of hero-worship
for his marriage-day.
'No, my son,' said Captain Chauvin, 'I always make it a point of hanging
a wreath of immortelles on the rails at the base of the column on the
5th of May, the anniversary of his death; but I never like to go there
but that one day of the twelve months. No, we shall first try a visit to
the Louvre--it is not yet closed--and I love to show, to those who can
value relics of the kind, the statue of the one man I reverenced, when
he was in the beauty of his manhood.'
They went and saw the statue. It represents Napoleon as he might have
been at the epoch of Lodi, before he had trained his features to the
impassiveness of stone, before he had waxed dumpish, and wore a stiff
curl on his broad, bald forehead. An idealized Napoleon this, impetuous
energy in his gaze, expression, attitude; mastery in the eagle eyes;
vigour in the gaunt limbs; resolution in the big lean jaws; dogged
obstinacy in the close-shut lips and close-cut chin. What an
irresistible forcefulness in the balance of the eager pose! what a
cloudy-and-lightning poetry in the long wild hair sweeping like a mane
over his shoulders!
Thus should heroes be eternized in brass, or granite, or marble, while
they are instinct with the glory of action, not when they are aged and
fatten and grow bilious and use ear-trumpets. They should be given to
posterity in their prime, when they did the great things for which
posterity will remember them. Great is the anointed of Notre Dame; but
greater is the victor of Lodi!
This O'Hara said, first warming with the associations of the Napoleon
room of the Louvre, and then kindled into enthusiasm by the applause of
Captain Chauvin, whose heart was so young for all his white beard and
deep wrinkles; and Caroline looked at the speaker approvingly, and he
looked back, and suddenly it was revealed to him that she was strikingly
handsome.
That night when he retired to rest in his hotel in the Latin Quarter,
the tress of hair he had long kept warm at his breast was missing.
Was this an omen?