'NUMBER 32.'
Perceiving that I was becoming very dull and miserable, Martin
Omelette brought me an old book, which he said had been left by my
predecessor. It was a manuscript, and was entitled _La Vie de
Monseigneur St. Fiacre_.
'St. Fiacre again!' said I.
'Yes, monsieur,' said he, 'and I hope it may serve to amuse you as
much as it amused and consoled the poor chevalier, who for
six-and-forty years----'
'Leave me, in the devil's name!' I groaned.
'Yes, monsieur,' said Martin, bowing, for he never forgot his
politeness, and withdrew.
Mechanically I turned over the leaves and read. The first line
interested me, and I read on. It was the quaint monkish story of an
ancient saint, and as this exalted personage, whose name is now
'familiar as a household word' to the Parisians, was a countryman of
my own, I found some amusement, if I did not discover consolation, in
the volume with which honest Martin had favoured me. The history was
copiously interspersed by prayers, pious invocations, and occasional
bursts of wild enthusiasm, for the admiration of the writer--an old
canon of Notre Dame--were at times uncontrollable when writing of the
'_Glorieux ami de Dieu, Monseigneur St. Fiacre._'
'The 30th of August is the anniversary of St. Fiacre,' began the
volume, 'son of Ewen IV., king of Scotland, who began his reign in
the year of our Redemption 605--a king who was educated, as the Black
Book of Paisley saith, piously and carefully, under St. Culme, the
abbot of Iona, by whom he was reared in all manner of human learning,
and in the love of God in works of piety; yet he swerved from the
precepts of his peaceful master, by being grievously addicted to war,
as the king of Strathclyde and the half-savage Saxons then inhabiting
the land now called England found to their cost, in many a battle
fought and lost between the Tyne and Humber.'
Then the old legendary proceeded to tell us how Fiacre, the son of
Ewen and his queen Frivola of Ross, was born in Dunstaffnage, and
educated by Conan, Bishop of the Western Isles; and how he proved a
brave, valiant, and virtuous prince: till once, when hunting on the
wild shores of the Bay of Nigg, a strange adventure befel him.
Near a fountain, at which his horse was drinking, he saw a maiden of
more than mortal beauty, with snow-white skin and golden hair--the
spirit of the water. This was on the 30th of August, the festival of
St. Rose of Lima. Of this spirit-woman he became deeply enamoured,
and was wont to meet her again and again in the mirk hour, between
midnight and morning, until he who sought to give her a human soul
was in danger of losing his own, for the spirit was a fiend, who
sought the youth's destruction; but Saint Fergus, the Bishop and
Confessor, whose cell was hewn in the old craig of Inverugie, and
whose right arm is now preserved in the cathedral of Aberdeen,
besought the Prince to abandon the fountain, which he blessed and
purified, by saying a solemn mass on the spot, after which the spirit
appeared no more; but that fountain is still named St. Fiacre's Well,
and is famous among the northern peasantry for the miraculous cures
accomplished by its waters.
After this, full of gratitude to Heaven for his narrow escape from
perdition, Fiacre became a preacher, and renouncing his sword and
buckle, his high estate and place, he quitted secretly, in the night,
his royal home, among the dark mountains of Lorn, and became a
teacher and preacher of the gospels. Visiting France when Clotaire
II., son of the infamous and lewd queen Bredegonda, was king, he
proceeded throughout all the land, leading the wild Franks to God,
and working marvellous miracles by the way. At Toppaia, in Florence,
he delivered a certain rich man of a devil which possessed him, but
which immediately possessed his wife, who thereupon became frantic,
and hanged herself upon an orange-tree. In memory of this
riddance--whether of the wife, or the devil, or both, the chronicler
doth not say--the rich man founded a chapel in honour of St. Fiacre,
and the Dukes of Florence have since endowed and adorned it nobly.
The legendary then proceeded to state how St. Fiacre was assailed
from time to time by the beautiful spirit of the fountain, which
appeared to him, ever and anon, from the waters and wayside wells
near which he passed, for he lived in forests and lonely places,
subsisting on roots and herbs; and thus he resisted more temptations
than ever did honest St. Anthony of old: and now, when his father,
king Ewen, died in Lorn, in 622, as Camerarius and Bishop Leslie tell
us, St. Fiacre was visited by a train of chiefs and priests from
Scotland, summoning him to the throne; but he answered, that 'for the
inheritance of an eternal crown, he had renounced all earthly
claims,' and, turning away, continued the task at which they found
him--covering the roof of his hut with turf. So his brother
Ferquhard was chosen, in his place, King of Scotland, a prince who
fell into the Pelagian heresy, and fought with his nobles, who threw
him into a prison, where he perished miserably by casting himself
upon his own sword.
Meanwhile, St. Fiacre lived in peace at his solitary cell, in a deep
forest at Brieul, in Brie, where a place had been assigned him by St.
Fars, Bishop of Meaux. There, with his own hands, the pious prince
cleared the ground of its old primeval oaks and sharp briars, and
there he built a chapel to the Virgin, where he gave to prayer the
hours that were not spent in the cultivation of his little garden,
the proceeds of which he gave to the poor. There he died on the 30th
of August, the feast of St. Rose, in the year 670, and there he was
buried.
Thereafter, for ages, his shrine was visited by crowds of pilgrims
from all parts of France; till the 30th of August, eight centuries
after, when a spring of pure water suddenly burst up from the chapel
floor, and the monks of Meaux, recalling the legend of the spirit of
the fountain which had tormented the saint of old, translated his
relics to their cathedral in 1562; and the name of _Fiacre_ was first
given to hackney-coaches in Paris, because these vehicles were
greatly used by sick and infirm pilgrims who visited the shrine of
the Scottish saint, for which they usually set out from the hotel of
Maître Nicholas Sauvage, which bore the sign of St. Fiacre, and stood
in the Rue St. Martin, opposite to the Rue de Montmorenci, where it
swung in the wind until 1645.
My hapless predecessor had probably, nay I have no doubt must have
been one of those who adhered to the ancient faith, otherwise he
could not have drawn much comfort from this old monkish story. I
yawned over it wearily, and in all the prayers to, and pious
invocations of, St. Fiacre, trusted less than to the virtues of a
rope ladder, a sharp dagger, and a brace of loaded pistols.
An occasional leaf of the _Mercure Française_, which I received
wrapped round bread, butter, or fruit, acquainted me with the
progress of events in the great world without, and thus I Learned
that war was still waged against Charles IV. of Lorraine, that his
daughter Marie Louise was still lurking undiscovered in Paris, in
spite of rewards offered for her capture; and I learned, too, that my
noble comrades of the Guard--how I longed to be with them!--were
still under Hepburn, who, on the 19th of December, with a train of
cannon, and six regiments of infantry, three of which were
Scots--viz., his own, Ramsay's, and Lesly's--and with seven squadrons
of horse, had boldly crossed the Rhine, repulsed the Imperialists,
and captured Mannheim, thus securing the passage of the whole French
army, under the Duke de la Force; that after this he had relieved the
Swedish garrison in Heidelburg, and again destroyed the proud
Imperialists before that magnificent electoral fortress. Then from
another stray leaf I learned how, by one brilliant charge, the
cuirassiers of the Garde du Corps Ecossais, led by the Marquis de
Gordon and Sir John Hepburn, had completely swept the Germans from
the valley of the Neckar.
My brave comrades! who among them were now alive, and who were slain?
In fancy they all came before me, that brilliant line of
horsemen--old Patrick Gordon with gray locks, and eagle eye; the
fiery Sir Quentin Home; Viscount Dundrennan, so handsome and gay;
Tushielaw, and Raynold Cheyne of Dundargle; the brilliant Chevalier
Livingstone d'Angoulême, and other Scottish hearts, all charging
holster to holster, and bridle to bridle!
These achievements made my breast swell with agony, and pant with
impatience.
The Marquis d'Aytona was so repeatedly baffled by Hepburn's flying
column, that the Emperor of Germany, reflecting on his lack of skill,
put his finger on a part of the map, saying,
'You ought to have anticipated him, by crossing the Rhine there.'
'True,' replied the Marquis; 'but your imperial finger is not a
pontoon bridge, and Hepburn, with all his devilish Scots, are not
here to cut it off.'
When the last tidings left the army of Lorraine, (as I learned from
the envelope of my butter for breakfast,) Hepburn with his regiment
of Scots, eight thousand strong, the Cardinal Duke de Lavalette, and
Bernard Duke of Saxe Weimar, were besieging the strong town of
Elsace-Zaberne, which was expected daily to capitulate; and in the
assault of which Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Hanna of Kirkdale, and
other gallant Scots, had left their bodies in the breach. I learned,
too, how the government of Louis XIII. watched with growing interest
the expected war between England and Scotland, for France yet
held--or pretended to hold--to her ancient alliance with the latter.
As a proof of this, in 1626, during the quarrel which brought Marshal
Bassompierre to England, when the British merchant ships were
suddenly seized in all the ports of France, those of Scotland, on
hoisting St. Andrew's Cross above the Union flag, were at once
released by the French admirals, and stood out to sea.
These scraps of the French Mercury, which told of politics, war, and
battle, and of all the busy life that was still revolving round my
silent and solitary prison, were to me a far greater source of
interest than the musty miracles of Monseigneur St. Fiacre.
Poor Martin Omelette had now become rather friendly to me, and this
served to lighten the tedium of my confinement, but when I hinted at
a bribe, and strove to tempt him about winking at an escape, he was
wont to smile, shrug his shoulders, and say,
'You are brave, M. Blane; but wealth and bravery, like a long sword
and a long purse, seldom go together. You cannot offer me aught that
would compensate for the loss of my head, by the executioner's sword,
in the Place de la Grève--no--no!'
So months wore slowly, heavily, and miserably away. They seemed a
long, long unmarked lapse of time, for nothing broke the monotony to
me. I had ceased to reckon days and weeks; but I knew that the
spring of 1635 was passing into summer, and I began to fear my poor
heart would burst in its throbbings after freedom and my home!
All I thought, and all I endured, in those long days and dreary
nights, are known only to God and to myself. I had ceased to have a
name, or existence.
I was simply NUMBER THIRTY-TWO in the accursed Bastille!