"_Air doux et tendre
Jadis aimé_!"
Oh, that I could hum or whistle an old French smell! I could evoke all
Paris, sweet, prae-imperial Paris, in a single whiff!
* * * * *
In such fashion did we three small boys, like the three musketeers (the
fame of whose exploits was then filling all France), gather and pile up
sweet memories, to chew the cud thereof in after years, when far away
and apart.
Of all that _bande joyeuse_--old and young and middle-aged, from M. le
Major to Mimsey Seraskier--all are now dead but me--all except dear
Madge, who was so pretty and light-hearted; and I have never seen
her since.
* * * * *
Thus have I tried, with as much haste as I could command (being one of
the plodding sort) to sketch that happy time, which came to an end
suddenly and most tragically when I was twelve years old.
My dear and jovial happy-go-lucky father was killed in a minute by the
explosion of a safety lamp of his own invention, which was to have
superseded Sir Humphry Davy's, and made our fortune! What a brutal
irony of fate.
So sanguine was he of success, so confident that his ship had come home
at last, that he had been in treaty for a nice little old manor in Anjou
(with a nice little old castle to match), called la Marière, which had
belonged to his ancestors, and from which we took our name (for we were
Pasquier de la Marière, of quite a good old family); and there we were
to live on our own land, as _gentilshommes campagnards_, and be French
for evermore, under a paternal, pear-faced bourgeois king as a temporary
_pis-aller_ until Henri Cinq, Comte de Chambord, should come to his own
again, and make us counts and barons and peers of France--Heaven
knows what for!
My mother, who was beside herself with grief, went over to London, where
this miserable accident had occurred, and had barely arrived there when
she was delivered of a still-born child, and died almost immediately;
and I became an orphan in less than a week, and a penniless one. For it
turned out that my father had by this time spent every penny of his own
and my mother's capital, and had, moreover, died deeply in debt. I was
too young and too grief-stricken to feel anything but the terrible
bereavement, but it soon became patent to me that an immense alteration
was to be made in my mode of life.
A relative of my mother's, Colonel Ibbetson (who was well off) came to
Passy to do his best for me, and pay what debts had been incurred in the
neighborhood, and settle my miserable affairs.
After a while it was decided by him and the rest of the family that I
should go back with him to London, there to be disposed of for the
best, according to his lights.
And on a beautiful June Morning, redolent of lilac and syringa, gay with
dragon-flies and butterflies and bumblebees, my happy childhood ended as
it had begun. My farewells were heartrending (to me), but showed that I
could inspire affection as well as feel it, and that was some
compensation for my woe.
"Adieu, cher Monsieur Gogo. Bonne chance, et le Bon Dieu vous bénisse,"
said le Père et la Mère François. Tears trickled down the Major's hooked
nose on to his mustache, now nearly white.
Madame Seraskier strained me to her kind heart, and blessed and kissed
me again and again, and rained her warm tears on my face; and hers was
the last figure I saw as our fly turned into the Rue de la Tour on our
way to London, Colonel Ibbetson exclaiming--
"Gad! who's the lovely young giantess that seems so fond of you, you
little rascal, hey? By George! you young Don Giovanni, I'd have given
something to be in your place! And who's that nice old man with the long
green coat and the red ribbon? A _vieille moustache_, I suppose: almost
like a gentleman. Precious few Frenchmen can do that!"
Such was Colonel Ibbetson.
And then and there, even as he spoke, a little drop of sullen, chill
dislike to my guardian and benefactor, distilled from his voice, his
aspect, the expression of his face, and his way of saying things,
suddenly trickled into my consciousness--never to be whiped away!
As for so poor Mimsey, her grief was so overwhelming that she could not
come out and wish me goodbye like the others; and it led, as I
afterwards heard, to a long illness, the worst she ever had; and when
she recovered it was to find that her beautiful mother was no more.
[Illustration:]
Madame Seraskier died of the cholera, and so did le Père et la Mère
François, and Madame Pelé, and one of the Napoleonic prisoners (not M.
le Major), and several other people we had known, including a servant of
our own, Thérèse, the devoted Thérèse, to whom we were all devoted in
return. That malodorous tocsin, which I have compared to the big bell of
Notre Dame, had warned, and warned, and warned in vain.
The _maison de santé_ was broken up. M. le Major and his friends went
and roosted on parole elsewhere, until a good time arrived for them,
when their lost leader came back and remained--first as President of the
French Republic, then as Emperor of the French themselves. No more
parole was needed after that.
My grandmother and Aunt Plunket and her children fled in terror to
Tours, and Mimsey went to Russia with her father.
Thus miserably ended that too happy septennate, and so no more at
present of
"_Le joli lieu de ma naissance_!"