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The Seamvyv SideTHE WORKS

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INTRODUCTION BY

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NEW YOR

fThis Edition limited to 1,000 copiesCONTENTS

INTRODUCTION - - -

THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY:

FIRST EPISODE: MADAME DE LA
CHANTERIE = = -

SECOND EPISODE: INITIATED -

A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

A MAN OF BUSINESS - -

CAOUDISSART 1 = - e

SARRASINE - - - =

FACINO CANE - = = -

Z. MARCAS - a 2 =

 

AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR

PAGE

1x

II4

213

251

273

285

325

341

369INTRODUCTION *

[L’Envers del’ Histoire Contemporaine consists of two parts—
I. “Madame de la Chanterie”; II. “L/Initié.” The first part
appeared by fragments, not consecutive, in the Musée des Fa-
milles in 1842, 1843, and 1844, For details, see Lovenjoul.
In 1846 the three fragments, knit together by short passages,
and bearing the title now given to the whole book, entered the
“Scénes de la Vie Politique” of the “Comedy.” Another edi-
tion in three volumes and fifty-five chapters, under the title
of “La Femme de Soixante Ans,” accompanied by “L’ Enfant
Maudit” and three sketches, appeared in 1847. Still another
edition under the title of “Madame de la Chanterie” was issued
in 1854. The second part (long announced as “Les Fréres de
la Consolation’) appeared under its present title in Le Spec-
tateur fépublicain, August 1-September 3, 1838. In 1854
it was published in two volumes, accompanied by “El Ver-
dugo” and divided into eighteen chapters, since suppressed.
In 1855 it took its place in the novel as we have it to-day in the
second of the volumes supplementary to the “Comedy.” Be-
ing dated from Wierzchovnia, Ukraine, December, 1847, it is
evidently the last important composition that we have from
Balzac’s pen. A few words with regard to the leading char-
acters of the entire work will be sufficient for our purposes.
Mme. de la Chanterie has been mentioned in “La Cousine
Bette,” as has also the younger Montauran, “M. Nicolas.”
(See “Les Chouans.”) Bryond des Tours-Miniéres, as we
are informed in the novel, is the Contenson of “Splendeurs et
Miséres.” Barbet and Métivier have figured in “Les Petits
Bourgeois,” and the former in “Tllusions Perdues” (see also

* Copyright, 1900, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Company.
(ix) (Vol. XXXII)x INTRODUCTION

later “Un Homme d’Affaires”). For Bordin and “Ime. de
Cing-Cygne sce “Une Ténébreuse Affaire.” A glimpse of
Baron de Bourlac has been given in “Les Paysans” ; his daugh-
ter and grandson do not reappear. Vissard, Cibot (“Pille-
Miche”), Leroi (“Marche-a-Terre’) recall “Les Chouans.”
The Mongenods are known from “Modeste Mignon” (see also
“T’Interdiction”). Judge Popinot recalls “L’Interdiction”
and “César Birotteau.” For Frédéric Marest, see “Un
Début dans la Vie” and “Le Député d’Arcis.” The poet
Vernisset probably attracted little attention in “La Cousine
Bette” and “Béatrix.” Alain, Godefroid, Lecamus, and Dr.
Halpersohn do not reappear.

Un Prince de la Bohéme appeared first under the title of
“Les Fantaisies de Claudine” in the Revue Parisienne (Bal-
zac’s own enterprise) August 25, 1840. In 1844 it was pub-
lished, with “‘Honorine,” under its present title. Two years
later it entered the “Scénes de la Vie Parisienne’ of the
“Comedy.” The Revue version was republished in 1853. Cer-
tain changes were made in the story in 1845, as is indicated
by the double date, 1839-1845. In the version that followed
“Honorine” there were two parts and twenty-seven chapters,
since suppressed. It is to be noted that at one time Balzac
substituted Mme. de Rastignaec for Mme. de Rochefide, al-
though readers of “Béatrix” will perceive that it was to the
latter that Nathan really described La Palférine, It is in-
teresting to note also that the story was inscribed to Heinrich
Heine, a pleasant fact which partly atones for the very un-
pleasant and unnecessary attack on Balzac’s chief literary
enemy, Ste. Beuve. With regard to the characters little need
be said. Nathan and Mme. de Rochefide and La Palférine
himself are thoroughly familiar. Mme. de la Baudraye re-
calls “La Muse du Département.” Du Bruel and his wife
(Tullia) have been encountered in “Les Employés,” “Un
Menage de Garcon,” “Les Petits Bourgeois,” and elsewhere.
(Vol. XXXII)INTRODUCTION xi

The mention of Mlle. Laguerre recalls “Tes Paysans.” Z.
Marcas appears below. Mlle. Chocardelle (Antonia) is the
heroine of “Un Homme d’ Affaires” (see below) and has played
a part in “Le Député d’Arcis.” (See also “Béatrix” and “La
Cousine Bette.”) Mme. Anselme Popinot, César Birotteau’s
daughter, seems out of place in this company.

Un Homme d’Affaires was first printed in Le Siécle, Sep-
tember 10, 1845, under the title of “Les Roueries d@’un Cré-
ancier.” It formed Chapter III. of a series of “Etudes de
Meurs,” being preceded by “Une Rue de Paris et son Habi-
tant” (“Ciuvres Diverses”) and “Le Luther des Chapeaux”
(included in “Les Comédiens sans le Savoir”). It was at
first divided into two parts, suppressed when it entered, in
1846, the “Scénes de la Vie Parisienne” of the “Comedy,”
under the title of “Esquisse d’Homme d’Affaires @aprés
Nature.” In 1847 it was published with “Ou Ménent les
Mauvaux Chemins” (“Splendeurs et Miséres,” Part III.). It
took its present title in the definitive edition. Of most of
the characters mentioned—for example, Malaga (“La Fausse
Maitresse”), Cardot, the notary, Nathan, Lousteau, Desroches,
La Palférine, Bixiou, Maxime de Trailles, Claparon, Nu-
cingen, Cérizet, and Lord Dudley—no special notice need be
taken here. Antonia has been mentioned above. Croizeau
and Denisart do not reappear.

Gaudissart IT. appeared first in La Presse, October 12, 1844,
under the title of “Un Gaudissart de la Rue Richelieu; les
Comédies qu’ on peut voir gratis.” It was published also in
“Le Diable de Paris” (two volumes, 1845-46). It took its
present title when, in 1846, it entered the “Scénes de la Vie
Parisienne” of the “Comedy.” Fabien du Ronceret, who ac-
companies the inevitable Bixiou, has been seen in “Béatrix,”
where he wins Mme. Schontz for a wife. M. Fritot and his
clerks do not reappear. For Talleyrand, see “Une Ténébreuse
Affaire.”

(Vol. XXXII)xil INTRODUCTION

Sarrasine was first printed in the Revue de Paris, November
21 and 28, 1830, in two chapters, since suppressed. It appeared
the next year in the “Romans et Contes Philosophiques.” It
entered the first edition of the “Scénes de la Vie Parisienne,”
1834-35, and in 1844 was included among the same “Scenes”
in the “Comedy.” The Lantys have been met in “Le Députe
d’Arcis,” where the present tale is given in outline. It is
difficult to determine who tells the story here to Mme. de
Rochefide. Perhaps it is Conti, but the dates given in Cert-
berr and Christophe, if correct, forbid any solution of what is
after all a trifling problem.

Facino Cane was first printed in La Chronique de Paris,
March 17, 1836. It entered the “tudes Philosophiques” the
next year. In 184+ it was transferred to the “Scénes de la
Vie Parisienne” of the “Comedy.” It also appeared as “Le
Pére Canet” in 1843, along with “La Muse du Département”
and “Rosalie” (“Albert Savarus”’). The name of the hero
reappears in “Massimilla Doni,” where we also encounter the
names of Vendramini and Varése.

Z. Marcas appeared in No. I. of the Revue Parisienne, July
25, 1840. In 1841 it was included in a collection, “Le
Fruit Défendu,” under the title of “La Mort dun Ambi-
tieux.” In 1846 it entered the “Scénes de la Vie Politique” of
the “Comedy.” The Charles Rabourdin who tells the story is
a son of the Rabourdins of “Les Employés.”

Un Episode sous la Terreur appeared in 1830, forming the
introduction to the “Mémoires de Sanson sur la Révolution
Frangaise’—two volumes. The work was anonymous, but
was due in part to the collaboration of Balzac, his portion
being found to-day in the “CHuvres Diverses” under the title of
“Souvenirs d’un Paria.” In 1845 the story was republished
with “Modeste Mignon”; it had previously (1843) appeared
in the “Royal Keepsake” as “Une Messe en 1793.” It entered
the “Scénes de la Vie Politique” of the “Comedy” in 1846.
(Vol. XXXII)INTRODUCTION xHi

In the later versions the conclusion was considerably shortened
and the tale thereby improved. The Abbé Marolles does not
reappear. ‘lhe names of Beauséant and Langeais are famil-
iar; that of Ragon recalls “César Birotteau.” A Sanson, son
of the hero of this story, has been seen in “La Derniére In-
carnation de Vautrin” (“Splendeurs et Miséres, Part IV.) ]

“L’Envers de l’Histoire Contemporaine” is one of those
works that naturally appeal to one class of critics and readers,
and as naturally repel another class. Idealists are more or less
likely to find in it what Balzac wished them to find ; realists
are just as likely to dwell on the improbable and exceptional
features of the story and to consider it, not as a failure, per-
haps, but as far from being a masterpiece. Hence it is not
surprising to have one critic tell us that among the “Etudes
de Mceurs” it is the novel that most suggests the crucial scene
in a great drama “in which the genius of the dramatist draws
from the parterre, which is beside itself, a sudden ery of ad-
miration and provokes the wild explosion of the most madden-
ing applause,’ while another writes regretfully about the
lamp of its author’s genius burning low. The one critic has
entered too unreservedly into the spirit with which Balzac
wrote; the other has confined his attention too exclusively to
the details of the book. Let us see now if we can judge it
fairly without calling it the “Paradiso” of the “Human Com-
edy” or praising it so faintly as to induce prospective readers
to put it quietly aside.

It is quite evident that the character of the pious heroine
was immensely attractive to Balzac, and that he intended her
to make amends for certain other heroines of his—for ex-
ample, la Femme de Trente Ans. He wished also to bring
out once more, to the best of his ability, the regenerating
power of “la religion catholique, apostolique et romaine,” as
well as to transfer to fiction, some of the power and charm

(Vol. XXXII)PULSE EMA RANOURRM SETA SS PURI ARS SSN SST eeeRRateaeesad gt 34
a ne

      
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   

Xiv INTRODUCTION

of a book he admired greatly, Thomas 4 Kempis’s “Imitation.”
Furthermore he probably wished to show what a finer woman
than Mme. Graslin (“Le Curé de Village”), in fact a female
Benassis (“Le Médecin de Campagne’’), could accomplish for
the amelioration of human life, not in the country, but in the
great capital itself. He would show, too, what a secret or-
ganization could do in the interests of charity, and thus fur-
nish the needed foil to “The Thirteen” and to the band of
thieves headed by Vautrin.

Such probably were the ideal purposes with which he under-
took his novel, and it seems only fair to maintain that he in
part accomplished them. Mme. de la Chanterie is to some
of us at least a nobly attractive figure. If her sufferings are
somewhat exaggerated, her genuine Christian piety is not, and
in her character Balzac has made virtue far more interesting
and alluring than he did in that of Mme. Mortsauf. Tach of
her fellow-workers is interesting also, particularly M. Alain,
and there is nothing inherently improbable in the idea that
such an association could have done a great deal of good.
Perhaps if he were living and writing to-day, Balzac would
lay less stress on the medizeval and monastic features of his
study of the problems of public charity and would treat the
latter from a scientific and political point of view. His point
of view was consistent, however, with what he had thought
and written from the days of “Jésus-Christ en Flandre,”
and although it is hard to see why “L’Envers de |’ Histoire
Contemporaine” should be included among the “Scenes of
Political Life,” it is still harder to see how anyone interested
in modern philanthropy can fail to be attracted by a novel
which is at once loftily ideal and full of practical suggestive-
ness.

It has concrete merits also. The opening description of the
remains of old Paris is excellent; so too is the sketch of Gode-
froid’s antecedents. The portrait of Mme. Vauthier, although
(Vol. XXXII)INTRODUCTION KV

not equal to that of the immortal Mme. Vauquer, is neverthe-
less a notable one. The description of the Bourlac family, of
the old father’s devotion to his afflicted daughter, of the
Polish physician, of Auguste’s theft, could have been given
us only by the author of the Comédie Humaine. In fact, the
second part of the story is almost altogether good and inter-
esting, and does not show that the lamp of Balzac’s genius was
flickering. The first part, merely as a narrative, has faults
soon to be mentioned, but it has the merit of making Mme.
de la Chanterie known to us and is not lacking in good descrip-
tions and analytical passages. Some of the ideas it expresses
on the subject of the poor and of the criminal class are strik-
ingly modern ; for example, the remark of M. Nicolas: “There
are no atrocious scoundrels, there are diseased natures that
ought to be treated at Charenton.” There are also pregnant
observations worthy of Balzac in his prime—for example:
“Concentration of moral forces, by whatever system, decupies
their range and power.”

But the novel, especially in its first portion, has grave de-
fects that partly justify its harsh critics. There is too much
interruption of the thread of the narrative—a fault not un-
common with Balzac. The story of M. Alain is spun out and
a trifle unreal. The legal documents that throw light on the
career of Mme. de la Chanterie are too full of details for pages
that are episodic. Even the introduction of Marche-a-Terre
and Pille-Miche does not make them interesting. One has a
feeling too that in describing Mme. de la Chanterie’s suffer-
ings, Balzac is somewhat guilty of “piling on the agony,” and
that in being suspicious of her preternatural innocence in the
matter of her daughter’s intrigues Bourlac was not altogether
to blame. One feels also that a little too much is made of
Mme. de la Chanterie’s charity in pardoning Bourlac, and that
the scene in which she does it verges on sentimental melo-
drama. Bourlac is not clearly shown to have been anything

| @oly Sx)xvi INTRODUCTION

of a Jeffreys, many years of mortification of the spirit had
chastened both judge and victim, and the latter had had full
information about the sufferings of the former and about his
paternal love which was at least equal to that she had for her
own daughter. Exaggeration is also to be detected, probably,
in the description of Bryond’s vicious character, although it
must be admitted that there is seemingly. no limit to the
eredulity of good people in the matter of matrimony.

We conclude as we began, that the idealistic element of this
novel makes a great and strong appeal, but that it lacks in
part the realistic inevitableness that characterizes Balzac’s
masterpieces. Yet it contains many characteristic touches.
Vanda’s strange disease reminds us of “Pierrette,” of “La
Cousine Bette,” of “Le Lys dans la Vallée” and other stories
—Balzac having always had a certain hankering for the ab-
normal in this genre, especially when the malady was produced
by a secret poison. (Cf. “Ferragus” and the case of Crevel and
his wife referred to above.) In other words, our great
realist never entirely weaned himself from romanticism. An-
other characteristic touch is seen in the account of the monu-
mental work to which Bourlac was devoting himself—the
“Esprit des Lois Nouvelles.” One at once thinks of Ra-
bourdin’s magnum opus (“Les Employés”) and the Marquis
d’Espard’s share in the treatise on China. (“L’Interdiction”.)
The plots of Barbet and Métivier suggest those of the Cointets
in “Illusions Perdues.” Bourlac’s parental affection almost
equals that of Goriot, and the loving deception he practises
_has more to justify it than that practised by Paz in “La
Iausse Maitresse.” Finally we may observe that the note of
the grandiose comes out in the description of Dr. Halper-
sohn, who as a Polish genius would naturally prove a specially
attractive character to a novelist who was making his tempo-
rary abode in Poland and to whom for years all things Polish
had worn an aureole of charm.

(Vol: XXXII)INTRODUCTION xvii

We must be quite brief with regard to the seven sketches
and tales embraced in this concluding volume. Two of them,
“Sarrasine” and “Un Episode sous la Terreur,” date from the
great year, 1830. Three, “Facino Cane,’ “Un Prince de la
Boheme,” and “Z. Marcas,” date from the middle period, 1836-
1842, when Balzac’s genius was not at its full splendor. Two,
“Gaudissart II.” and “Un Homme d’ Affaires,” date from the
years in which he was again writing masterpieces (1844-45).
The earlier pieces are fine, each in its way; only one of the in-
termediate pieces (“Z. Marcas”) is worthy of high praise; the
later pieces are slight, although both are clever.

“Un Prince de la Bohéme” is one of those anecdotal recitals

hat Balzac was so fond of putting into the mouths of his lead-
ing characters. We have already read specimens of this sort
of work—for example, “La Maison Nucingen” and “Gobseck,”
—and four of the present group belong to the genre, which is
sometimes highly satisfactory, sometimes just the reverse.
“Un Prince de la Bohéme” is generally regarded as unsatis-
factory. The attack on Ste. Beuve was unjustifiable, and,
being poorly executed, almost unpardonable. The description
of La Palférine, who is said to have been modeled on a real
habitué of a famous café, has been used by critics in defence of
the thesis that Balzac did not know how to describe real
gentlemen, because he showed a sneaking fondness for this
shady hero’s sheer insolence and blackguardism. It is almost
needless to say that these critics go too far. It is doubtful
whether Balzac admired La Palférine’s blackguardism—what
he admired was the almost sheer limitlessness of the fellow’s
lack of shame. He had the artist’s fondness for whatever is
supreme in its way, and while it may be justly claimed that
there are exaggerations to be found in this story, it is only fair
to claim also that it contains a good exposition of what we
moderns know as “cheek.” The pages on Bohemia, on the
“Jeunes gens,” the sketch of the Palférines, and the descrip-
(vol. XXXII)XVili INTRODUCTION
tion of the du Bruel ménage are furthermore entitled to a
considerable amount of praise. Yet it is surely permissible
to wish that Balzac had employed his time on something else.

“Un Homme d’Affaires” and “Gaudissart II.” are more
successful. In the former we have Maxime de Trailles and
Cérizet, though not at their best, at least fairly worthy of
themselves ; in the latter we have a sketch of the “Physiologie”
type, as well as one that might easily have fitted into “Les
Comédiens sans le Savoir.” There is obviously nothing great
about such work, but it has a distinct though minor place in
the “Comedy.”

“Sarrasine,’ as we have already had occasion to remark,
forms with “La Fille aux Yeux d’Or” and “Une Passion dans
le Désert” a small group of stories dealing with passions that
are regarded generally as lying outside the range of subjects
adapted to treatment in fiction. We found an excuse for the
existence of “a Fille aux Yeux d’Or” in the fact that the
“Comedy” was designed to cover the entire range of human
life. The date at which “Sarrasine” was composed makes this
excuse inapplicable unless we can show that Balzac had fully
developed his great scheme at that time. However this may
be, he had given evidence of his capacity and intention to
treat all forms of passion, and to such a genius much liberty
must be allowed. The story shows marked powers of descrip-
tion and keeps up well its uncanny interest. It is not so
great as either of its companions; but like them it is subtle
in its handling of a theme that is barely tolerable when
treated in classical or oriental literature. It will be noted
that, as in “La Fille aux Yeux @Or,” the victim of this sec-
ond Grecian vice is not of French birth.

“Facino Cane,” like “Sarrasine,” and like the more or less
contemporaneous “Gambara” and “Massimilla Doni,” shows
plainly the influence that Italy and things Ttalian had on
Balzac’s mind, especially after his travels in that delightful
(Vol. KXXIT) 5INTRODUCTION x1x

land. The story cannot, however, be regarded as a master-
piece, although the description of the blind musician is good,
nor can such high praise be accorded “Z. Marcas,” which is
nevertheless a strong performance. We need not discuss
Balzac’s queer ideas about names and the influence they have
upon their bearers, on which there is an elaborate essay in
Lovenjoul’s “Roman d’Amour.” We must, however, notice
the resemblance Marcas bears to the statesman Balzac would
have liked to be, and we must confess that the sketch gives an
excellent analysis of the weakness of Louis Philippe’s mon-
archy and a fairly accurate prophecy of its fall. The dis-
cussion of the bad effects of the repression of youthful genius
in favor of mediocrity, is impressive and still valuable in view
of the fact that democracies are always suspicious of statesmen
versed in political theory. In “boss-ridden” countries and
communities the fate of Marcas will be increasingly possible
and pathetic.

The concluding story ranks among the short masterpieces,
and is an admirable composition with which to take leave of
the “Comedy.” It appeals to the noblest qualities of human
nature as profoundly as does “La Messe de l’Athée”; it has
much of the religious charm of “Jésus-Christ en Flandre.”
It is, perhaps, the finest flower of Balzac’s loyal conservatism,
and it is as creditable to the race as to him, that it should have

burst into immortal bloom.
W. P. TRENT.

(Vol. XXXII)THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

FIRST EPISODE
MADAME DE LA CHANTERIE

ONE fine September evening, in the year 1836, a man of
about thirty was leaning over the parapet of the quay at a
point whence the Seine may be surveyed up stream from the
Jardin des Plantes to Notre-Dame, and down in grand per-
spective to the Louvre.

There is no such view elsewhere in the Capital of Ideas
(Paris). You are standing, as it were, on the poop of a ves-
sel that has grown to vast proportions. You may dream there
of Paris from Roman times to the days of the Franks, from
the Normans to the Burgundians, through the Middle Ages
to the Valois, Henri IV., Napoleon, and Louis Philippe.
There is some vestige or building of each period to bring it
to mind. The dome of Sainte-Geneviéve shelters the Quartier
Latin. Behind you rises the magnificent east end of the
Cathedral. The Hotel de Ville speaks of all the revolutions,
the Hotel Dieu of all the miseries of Paris. After glancing
at the splendors of the Louvre, take a few steps, and you can
see the rags that hang out from the squalid crowd of houses
that huddle between the Quai de la Tournelle and the Hétel
Dieu; the authorities are, however, about to clear them away.

In 1836 this astonishing picture inculcated yet another les-
son. Between the gentleman who leaned over the parapet and
the cathedral, the deserted plot, known of old as le Terrain,
was still strewn with the ruins of the Archbishop’s palace. As
we gaze there on so many suggestive objects, as the mind takes
in the past and the present of the city of Paris, Religion seems

(1)2 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

to have established herself there that she might lay her hands
on the sorrows on both sides of the river, from the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Marceau.

It is to be hoped that these sublime harmonies may be com-
pleted by the construction of an Episcopal palace in a Gothic
style to fill the place of the meaningless buildings that now
stand between the Island, the Rue d’Arcole, and the Quai de
la Cite.

This spot, the very heart of old Paris, is beyond anything
deserted and melancholy. The waters of the Seine break
against the wall with a loud noise, the Cathedral throws its
shadow there at sunset. It is not strange that vast thoughts
should brood there in a brain-sick man. Attracted perhaps
by an accordance between his own feelings at the moment and
those to which such a varied prospect must give rise, the loi-
terer folded his hands over the parapet, lost in the twofold con-
templation of Paris and of himself! The shadows spread,
lights twinkled into being, and still he did not stir; carried
on as he was by the flow of a mood of thought, big with the
future, and made solemn by the past.

At this instant he heard two persons approaching, whose
voices had been audible on the stone bridge where they had
crossed from the Island of the Cité to the Quai de la Tour-
nelle. The two speakers no doubt believed themselves to be
alone, and talked somewhat louder than they would have
done in a more frequented place, or if they had noticed the
propinquity of a stranger. From the bridge their tones be-
trayed an eager discussion, bearing, as it seemed, from a few
words that reached the involuntary listener, on a loan of
money. As they came closer, one of the speakers, dressed as
a working man, turned from the other with a gesture of de-
spair. His companion looked round, called the man back, and
said:

“You have not a sou to pay the bridge-toll. Here!’—and
he gave him a coin—‘‘and remember, my friend, it is God
Himself who speaks to us when a good thought occurs to us.”
The last words startled the dreamer. The man who spokeTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 3

had no suspicion that, to use a proverbial expression, he was
killing two birds with one stone; that he spoke to two un-
happy creatures—a workman at his wits’ end, and a soul with-
out a compass; a victim of what Panurge’s sheep call Prog-
ress, and a victim of what France calls equality.

These words, simple enough in themselves, acquired
grandeur from the tone of the speaker, whose voice had a
sort of magical charm. Are there not such voices, calm and
sweet, affecting us like a view of the distant ocean?

The speaker’s costume showed him to be a priest, and his
face, in the last gleam of twilight, was pale, and dignified,
though worn. The sight of a priest coming out of the grand
Cathedral of Saint Stephen at Vienna to carry extreme unc-
tion to a dying man, persuaded Werner, the famous tragic
poet, to become a Catholic. The effect was much the same
on our Parisian when he saw the man who, without intend-
ing it, had brought him consolation; he discerned on the dark
line of his horizon in the future a long streak of light where
the blue of heaven was shining, and he followed the path of
light, as the shepherds of the Gospel followed the voice that
called to them from on high, “Christ the Lord is born !”

The man of healing speech walked on under the cathedral,
and by favor of Chance—which is sometimes consistent—
made his way towards the street from which the loiterer had
come, and whither he was returning, led there by his own
mistakes in life.

This young man’s name was Godefroid. As this narrative
proceeds, the reader will understand the reasons for giving to
the actors in it only their Christian names.

And this is the reason why Godefroid, who lived near the
Chausée d’Antin, was lingering at such an hour under the
shadow of Notre-Dame.

He was the son of a retail dealer, who, by economy, had
made some little fortune, and in him centered all the ambi-
tions of his parents, who dreamed of seeing him a notary in
Paris. At the early age of seven he had been sent to a school,
kept by the Abbé Liautard, where he was thrown together4 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

with the children of certain families of distinction, who had
selected this establishment for the education of their sons,
out of attachment to religion, which, under the emperor, was
somewhat too much neglected in the Lycées, or public schools.
At that age social inequalities are not recognized between
school-fellows; but in 1821, when his studies were finished,
Godefroid, articled to a notary, was not slow to perceive the
distance that divided him from those with whom he had hith-
erto lived on terms of intimacy.

While studying the law, he found himself lost in the crowd
of young men of the citizen class, who, having neither a ready-
made fortune mor hereditary rank, had nothing to look to but
their personal worth or persistent industry. The hopes built
upon him by his father and mother, who had now retired
from business, stimulated his conceit without giving him
pride. His parents lived as simply as Dutch folks, not spend-
ing more than a quarter of their income of twelve thousand
francs; they intended to devote their savings, with half their
capital, to the purchase of a connection for their son. Gode-
froid, reduced also to live under the conditions of this do-
mestic thrift, regarded them as so much out of proportion to
his parents’ dreams and his own, that he felt disheartened.
In weak characters such discouragement leads to envy. While
many other men, in whom necessity, determination, and good
sense were more marked than talent, went straight and stead-
fastly onward in the path laid down for modest ambitions,
Godefroid waxed rebellious, longed to shine, insisted on fac-
ing the brightest light, and so dazzled his eyes. He tried to
“get on,” but all his efforts ended in demonstrating his in-
capacity. At last, clearly perceiving too great a discrepancy
between his desires and his prospects, he conceived a hatred
of social superiority ; he became a Liberal, and tried to make
himself famous by a book; but he learned, to his cost, to re-
gard talent much as he regarded rank. Having tried by
turns the profession of notary, the bar, and literature, he now
aimed at the higher branch of the law.

At this juncture his father died. His mother, content inTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 5

her old age with two thousand francs a year, gave up almost
her whole fortune to his use. Possessor now, at five-and-
twenty, of ten thousand francs a year, he thought himself
rich, and he was so as compared with the past. Hitherto his
life had been a series of acts with no will behind them, or of
impotent willing; so, to keep pace with the age, to act, to be-
come a personage, he tried to get into some circle of society by
the help of his money.

At first he fell in with journalism, which has always an
open hand for any capital that comes in its way. Now, to
own a newspaper is to be a Personage; it means employing
talent and sharing its successes without dividing its labors.
Nothing is more tempting to second-rate men than thus to
rise by the brains of others. Paris has had a few parvenus of
this type, whose success is a disgrace both to the age and to
those who have lent a lifting shoulder.

In this class of society Godefroid was soon cut out by the
vulgar cunning of some and the extravagance of others, by
the money of ambitious capitalists or the manceuvring of edi-
tors; then he was dragged into the dissipations that a literary
or political life entails, the habits of critics behind the scenes,
and the amusements needed by men who work their brains
hard. Thus he fell into bad company; but he there learned
that he was an insignificant-looking person, and that he had
one shoulder higher than the other without redeeming this
malformation by any distinguished ill-nature or wit. Bad
manners are a form of self-payment which actors snatch by
telling the truth.

Short, badly made, devoid of wit or of any strong bent, all
seemed at an end for a young man at a time when for suc-
cess In any career the highest gifts of mind are as nothing
without luck, or the tenacity which commands luck.

The revolution of 1830 poured oil on Godefroid’s wounds;
he found the courage of hope, which is as good as that of de-
spair. Like many another obscure journalist, he got an ap-
pointment where his Liberal ideas, at loggerheads with the
demands of a newly-established power, made him but a re-6 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

fractory instrument. Veneered only with Liberalism, he did
not know, as superior men did, how to hold his own. To obey
the Ministry was to him to surrender his opinions. And the
Government itself seemed to him false to the laws that had
given rise to it. Godefroid declared in favor of movement
when what was needed was tenacity; he came back to Paris
almost poor, but faithful to the doctrines of the opposition.

Alarmed by the licentiousness of the press, and yet more -
by the audacity of the republican party, he sought in retire-
ment the only life suited to a being of incomplete faculties,
devoid of such force as might defy the rough jolting of politi-
cal life, weary too of repeated failures, of suffering and strug-
gles which had won him no glory; and friendless, because
friendship needs conspicuous qualities or defects, while pos-
sessing feelings that were sentimental rather than deep.
Was it not, in fact, the only prospect open to a young man
who had already been several times cheated by pleasure, and
who had grown prematurely old from friction in a social cir-
cle that never rests nor lets others rest ?

His mother, who was quietly dying in the peaceful village
of Auteuil, sent to her son to come to her, as much for the
sake of having him with her as to start him in the road where
he might find the calm and simple happiness that befits such
souls. She had at last taken Godefroid’s measure when she
saw that at eight-and-twenty he had reduced his whole for-
tune to four thousand francs a year; his desires blunted, his
fancied talents extinct, his energy nullified, his ambition
crushed, and his hatred for every one who rose by legitimate
effort increased by his many disappointments.

She tried to arrange a marriage for Godefroid with the only
daughter of a retired merchant, thinking that a wife might
be a guardian to his distressful mind, but the old father
brought the mercenary spirit that abides in those who have
been engaged in trade to bear on the question of settlements.
At the end of a year of attentions and intimacy, Godefroid’s
suit was rejected. In the first place, in the opinion of these
case-hardened traders, the young man must necessarily haveTHE SEAMY. SIDE OF HISTORY 7

retained a deep-dyed immorality from his former pursuits;
and then, even during this past year, he had drawn upon his
capital both to dazzle the parents and to attract the daugh-
ter. This not unpardonable vanity gave the finishing touch;
the family had a horror of unthrift; and their refusal was
final when they heard that Godefroid had sacrificed in six
years a hundred and fifty thousand francs of his capital.

The blow fell all the harder on his aching heart because
the girl was not at all good-looking. Still, under his mother’s
influence, Godefroid had credited the object of his addresses
with a sterling character and the superior advantages of a
sound judgment; he was accustomed to her face, he had stud-
ied its expression, he liked the young lady’s voice, man-
ners, and look. Thus, after staking the last hope of his life
on this attachment, he felt the bitterest despair.

His mother dying, he found himself—he whose require-
ments had always followed the tide of fashion—with five
thousand francs for his whole fortune, and the certainty of
never being able to repair any future loss, since he saw him-
self incapable of the energy which is imperatively demanded

for the grim task of making a fortune.

But a man who is weak, aggrieved, and irritable cannot

submit to be extinguished at a blow.

While still in mourn-

ing, Godefroid wandered through Paris in search of some-
thing to “turn up”; he dined in public rooms, he rashly intro-
duced himself to strangers, he mingled in society, and met
with nothing but opportunities for expenditure. As he wan-
dered about the Boulevards, he was so miserable that the sight
of a mother with a young daughter to marry gave him as keen
a pang as that of a young man going on horseback to the Bois,
of a parvenu in a smart carriage, or of an official with a rib-

bon in his buttonhole.

The sense of his own inadequacy told

him that he could not pretend even to the more respectable of
second-class positions, nor to the easiest form of office-work.
And he had spirit enough to be constantly vexed, and sense
enough to bewail himself in bitter self-accusation.

Incapable of contending with life, conscious of certain su-8 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

perior gifts, but devoid of the will that brings them into play,
feeling himself incomplete, lacking force to undertake any
great work, or to resist the temptations of those tastes he
had acquired from education or recklessness in his past life,
he was a victim to three maladies, any one of them enough
to disgust a man with life when he has ceased to exercise his
religious faith. Indeed, Godefroid wore. the expression so
common now among men, that it has become the Parisian
type: it bears the stamp of disappointed or smothered ambi-
tions, of mental distress, of hatred iulled by the apathy of a
life amply filled up by the superficial and daily spectacle of
Paris, of satiety seeking stimulants, of repining without tal-
ent, of the affectation of force; the venom of past failure which
makes @ man smile at scoffing, and scorn all that is elevating,
misprize the most necessary authorities, enjoy their dilemmas,
and disdain all social forms.

This Parisian disease is to the active and persistent coali-
tion of energetic malcontents what the soft wood is to the sap
of a tree; it preserves it, covers it, and hides it.

Weary of himself, Godefroid one morning resolved to give
himself some reason for living. He had met a former school-
fellow, who had proved to be the tortoise of the fable while
he himself had been the hare. In the course of such a con-
versation as is natural to old companions while walking in
the sunshine on the Boulevard des Italiens, he was amazed
to find that suecess had attended this man, who, apparently
far less gifted than himself with talent and fortune, had sim-
ply resolved each day to do as he had resolved the day before.
The brain-sick man determined to imitate this simplicity of
purpose.

“Life in the world is like the earth,” his friend had said;
“it yields in proportion to our labors.”

Godefroid was in debt. As his first penance, his first duty,
he required himself to live in seclusion and pay his debts out
of his income. For a man who was in the habit of spending
six thousand franes when he had five, it was no light thing toTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 9

reduce his expenses to two thousand francs. He read the ad-
vertisement-sheets every morning, hoping to find a place of
refuge where he might live on a fixed sum, and where he might
enjoy the solitude necessary to a man who wanted to study
and examine himself, and discern a vocation. The manners
and customs of the boarding-houses in the Quartier Latin
were an offence to his taste; a private asylum, he thought,
would be unhealthy; and he was fast drifting back into the
fatal uncertainty of a will-less man, when the following adver-
tisement caught his eye:

“Small apartments, at seventy francs a month; might suit a clerk
in orders. Quiet habits expected. Board included ; and the rooms
will be inexpensively furnished on mutual agreement. Inquire of
M. Millet, grocer, Rue Chanoinesse, by Notre-Dame, for all further
particulars. ’’

Attracted by the artless style of this paragraph, and the
aroma of simplicity it seemed to bear, Godefroid presented
himself at the grocer’s shop at about four in the afternoon,
and was told that at that hour Madame de la Chanterie was
dining, and could see no one at meal-times. The lady would be
visible in the evening after seven, or between ten and twelve
in the morning. While he talked, Monsieur Millet took stock
of Godefroid, and proceeded to put him through his first ex-
amination—“Was monsieur single? Madame wished for a
lodger of regular habits. The house was locked up by eleven
at latest.”

“Well,” said he in conclusion, “you seem to me, monsieur,
to be of an age to suit Madame de la Chanterie’s views.”

“What age do you suppose I am?” asked Godefroid.

“Somewhere about forty,” replied the grocer.

This plain answer cast Godefroid into the depths of misan-
thropy and dejection. He went to dine on the Quai de la
Tournelle, and returned to gaze at Notre-Dame just as the
fires of the setting sun were rippling and breaking in wavelets
on the buttresses of the great nave. The quay was already
in shadow, while the towers still glittered in the glow, and10 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

the contrast struck Godefroid as he tasted all the bitterness
which the grocer’s brutal simplicity had stirred within him.

Thus the young man was oscillating between the whisper-
ings of despair and the appealing tones of religious harmony
aroused in his mind by the cathedral bells, when, in the dark-
ness, and silence, and calm moonshine, the priest’s speech
fell on his ear. Though far from devout—like most men of
the century—his feelings were touched by these words, and
he went back to the Rue Chanoinesse, where he had but just
decided not to go.

The priest and Godefroid were equally surprised on turn-
ing into the Rue Massillon, opposite the north door of the
cathedral, at the spot where it ends by the Rue de la Colombe,
and is called Rue des Marmousets. When Godefroid stopped
under the arched doorway of the house where Madame de la
Chanterie lived, the priest turned round to examine him by
the light of a hanging oil-lamp, which will, very likely, be
one of the last to disappear in the heart of old Paris.

“Do you wish to see Madame de la Chanterie, monsieur ?”
asked the priest.

“Yes,” replied Godefroid. “The words I have just heard
you utter to that workman prove to me that this house, if you
dwell in it, must be good for the soul.”

“Then you witnessed my failure,” said the priest, lifting
the knocker, “for I did not succeed.”

“Tt seems to me that it was the workman who failed. He
had begged sturdily enough for money.”

“Alas!” said the priest, “one of the greatest misfortunes
attending revolutions in France is that each, in its turn, of-
fers a fresh premium to the ambitions of the lower classes.
To rise above his status and make a fortune, which, in these
days, is considered the social guarantee, the workman throws ~
himself into monstrous plots, which, if they fail, must bring
those who dabble in them before the bar of human justice.
This is what good-nature sometimes ends in.”

The porter now opened a heavy gate, and the priest said to
Godefroid :THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“Then you have come about the rooms to let?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

The priest and Godefroid then crossed a fairly wide court-
yard, beyond which stood the black mass of a tall house,
flanked by a square tower even higher than the roof, and amaz-
ingly old. Those who know the history of Paris are aware that
the old soil has risen so much round the cathedral, that there
is not a trace to be seen of the twelve steps which originally
led up to it. Hence what was the ground floor of this house
must now form the cellars. There is a short flight of outer
steps to the door of the tower, and inside it an ancient Vise
or stairs, winding in a spiral round a newell carved to imi-
tate a vine-stock. This style, resembling that of the Louis
XII. staircases at Blois, dates as far back as the fourteenth
century.

Struck by these various signs of antiquity, Godefroid could
not help exclaiming:

“This tower was not built yesterday!”

“Tt is said to have withstood the attacks of the Normans
and to have formed part of a primeval palace of the kings
of Paris; but according to more probable traditions, it was
the residence of Fulbert, the famous Canon, and the uncle
of Héloise.”

As he spoke the priest opened the door of the apartment,
which seemed to be the ground floor, and which, in fact, is
now but just above the ground of both the outer and the inner
courtyard—for there is a small second court.

In the first room a servant sat knitting by the ght of a
small lamp; she wore a cap devoid of any ornament but its
gauffered cambric frills. She stuck one of the needles through
her hair, but did not lay down her knitting as she rose to open
the door of a drawing-room looking out on the inner court.
This room was lighted up. The woman’s dress suggested to
Godefroid that of some Gray Sister.

“Madame, I have found you a tenant,” said the priest,
showing in Godefroid, who saw in the room three men, sitting
in armchairs near Madame de la Chanterie.12 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

The three gentlemen rose; the mistress of the house also ;
and when the priest had pushed forward a chair for the
stranger, and he had sat down in obedience to a sien from
Madame de la Chanterie and an old-fashioned bidding to “Be
seated,” the Parisian felt as if he were far indeed from Paris,
in remote Brittany, or the backwoods of Canada.

There are, perhaps, degrees of silence. Godefroid, struck
already by the tranquillity of the Rue Massillon and Rue
Chanoinesse, where a vehicle passes perhaps twice in a month,
struck too by the stillness of the courtyard and the tower,
may have felt himself at the very heart of silence, in this
drawing-room, hedged round by so many old streets, old court-
yards, and old walls.

This part of the Island, called the Cloister, preserves the
character common to all cloisters; it is damp, and cold, and
monastic; silence reigns there unbroken, even during the
noisiest hours of the day. It may also be remarked that this
part of the Cité, lying between the body of the Cathedral and
the river, is to the north and under the shadow of Notre-
Dame. The east wind loses itself there, unchecked by any
obstacle, and the fogs from the Seine are to some extent en-
trapped by the blackened walls of the ancient metropolitan
church.

So no one will be surprised at the feeling that came over
Godefroid on finding himself in this ancient abode, and in
the presence of four persons as silent and as solemn as every-
thing around them. He did not look about him ; his curiosity
centered in Madame de la Chanterie, whose name even had al-
ready puzzled him.

This lady was evidently a survival from another century,
not to say another world. She had a rather sweet face, with
a soft, coldly-colored complexion, an aquiline nose, a benign
brow, hazel eyes, and a double chin, the whole framed in curls
of silver hair. Her dress could only be described by the old
name of fowrreaw (literally, a sheath, a tightly-fitting dress),
so literally was she cased in it, in the fashion of the eighteenth
century. The material—silk of carmelite gray, finely andTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 13

closely striped with green—seemed to have come down from
the same date; the body, cut low, was hidden under a man-
tilla of richer silk, flounced with black lace, and fastened at
the bosom with a brooch containing a miniature. Her feet,
shod in black velvet boots, rested on a little stool. Madame de
la Chanterie, like her maid-servant, was knitting stockings,
and had a knitting pin stuck through her waving hair under
her lace cap.

“Have you seen Monsieur Millet?” she asked Godefroid
in the head voice peculiar to dowagers of the Faubourg Saint-
Germain, as if to invite him to speak, seeing that he was al-
most thunderstruck.

“Yes, madame.”

“IT am afraid the rooms will hardly suit you,” she went on,
observing that her proposed tenant was dressed with elegance
in clothes that were new and smart.

Godefroid, in fact, was wearing patent leather boots, yel-
low gloves, handsome shirt-studs, and a neat watch chain
passed through the buttonhole of a black silk waistcoat
sprigged with blue.

Madame de la Chanterie took a small silver whistle out of
her pocket and blew it. The woman servant came in.

“Manon, child, show this gentleman the rooms. Will you,
my dear friend, accompany him?” she said to the priest.
“And if by any chance the rooms should suit you,” she added,
rising, and looking at Godefroid, “we will afterwards dis-
cuss the terms.”

Godefroid bowed and went out. He heard the iron rattle
of a bunch of keys which Manon took out of a drawer, and
saw her light a candle in a large brass candlestick.

Manon led the way without speaking a word. When he
found himself on the stairs again, climbing to the upper floors,
he doubted the reality of things; he felt dreaming though
awake, and saw the whole world of fantastic romance such as
he had read of in his hours of idleness. And any Parisian
dropped here, as he was, out of the modern city with its lux-
urious houses and furniture, its glittering restaurants and14

 

THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

theatres, and all the stirring heart of Paris, would have felt
as he did. The single candle carried by the servant lighted
the winding stair but dimly; spiders had hung it with their
dusty webs.

Manon’s dress consisted of a skirt broadly pleated and made
of coarse woolen stuff; the bodice was cut square at the neck,
behind and before, and all her clothes seemed to move in a
piece. Having reached the second floor, which had been the
third, Manon stopped, turned the springs of an antique lock,
and opened a door painted in coarse imitation of knotted ma-
hogany.

“There!” said she, leading the way.

Who had lived in these rooms? A miser, an artist who
had died of want, a cynic indifferent to the world, or a pious
man who was alien to it? Any one of the four seemed pos-
sible, as the visitor smelt the very odor of poverty, saw the
greasy stains on wall-papers covered with a layer of smoke,
the blackened ceilings, the windows with their small dusty
panes, the brown-tiled floor, the wainscot sticky with a de-
posit of fog. A damp chill came down the fireplaces, faced
with carved stonework that had been painted, and with mir-
rors framed in the seventeenth century. The rooms were at
the angle of a square, as the house stood, enclosing the inner
courtyard, but this Godefroid could not see, as it was dark.

“Who used to live here?” Godefroid asked of the priest.

“A Councillor to the Parlement, Madame’s grand-uncle, a
Monsieur de Boisfrelon. He had been quite childish ever
since the Revolution, and died in 1832 at the age of ninety-
six; Madame could not bear the idea of seeing a stranger in
the rooms so soon; still, she cannot endure the loss of
Mente 2

“Oh, and Madame will have the place cleaned and fur-
nished, to be all monsieur could wish,” added Manon.

“It will only depend on how youwish to arrange the rooms,”
said the priest. “They can be made into a nice sitting-room
and a large bedroom and dressing-room, and the two small
rooms round the corner are large enough for a spacious study.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 15

That is how my rooms are arranged below this, and those on
the next floor.”

“Yes,” said Manon; “Monsieur Alain’s rooms are just like
these, only that they look out on the tower.”

“T think I had better see the rooms again by daylight,” said
Godefroid shyly.

“Perhaps so,” said Manon.

The priest and Godefroid went downstairs again, leaving
Manon to lock up, and she then followed to ight them down.
Then, when he was in the drawing-room, Godefroid, having
recovered himself, could, while talking to Madame de la Chan-
terie, study the place, the personages, and the surroundings.

The window-curtains of this drawing-room were of old red
satin; there was a cornice-valance, and the curtains were
looped with silk cord; the red tiles of the floor showed beyond
an ancient tapestry carpet that was too small to cover it en-
tirely. The woodwork was painted stone-color. The ceiling,
divided down the middle by a joist starting from the chim-
ney, looked like an addition lately conceded to modern lux-
ury ; the easy-chairs were of wood painted white, with tapestry
seats. A shabby clock, standing between two gilt candle-
sticks, adorned the chimney-shelf. An old table with stag’s
feet stood by Madame de la Chanterie, and on it were her
balls of wool in a wicker basket. A clockwork lamp threw
light on the picture.

The three men, sitting as rigid, motionless, and speechless
as Bonzes, had, like Madame de la Chanterie, evidently ceased
speaking on hearing the stranger return. Their faces were
perfectly cold and reserved, as befitted the room, the house,
and the neighborhood.

Madame de la Chanterie agreed that Godefroid’s observa-
tions were just, and said that she had postponed doing any-
thing till she was informed of the intentions of her lodger, or
rather of her boarder; for if the lodger could conform to the
ways of the household, he was to board with them—but their
ways were so unlike those of Paris life! Here, in the Rue
Chanoinesse, they kept country hours; every one, as a rule,16 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

 

had to be in by ten at night; noise was not to be endured;
neither women nor children were admitted, so that their reg-
ular habits might not be interfered with. No one, perhaps,
but a priest could agree to such a rule. At any rate, Madame
de la Chanterie wished for some one who liked plain living
and had few requirements; she could only afford the most
necessary furniture in the rooms. Monsieur Alain was satis-
fied, however—and she bowed to one of the gentlemen—and
she would do the same for the new lodger as for the old.

“But,” said the priest, “I do not think that monsieur is
quite inclined to come and join us in our conyent.””

“Indeed; why not?” said Monsieur Alain. “We are all
quite content, and we all get on very well.”

“Madame,” said Godefroid, rising, “I will have the honor
of calling on you again to-morrow.”

Though he was but a young man, the four old gentlemen
and Madame de la Chanterie stood up, and the priest escorted
him to the outer steps. A whistle sounded, and at the signal
the porter appeared, lantern in hand, to conduct Godefroid
to the street; then he closed the yellow gate, as heavy as that
of a prison, and covered with arabesque ironwork, so old that
it would be hard to determine its date.

When Godefroid found himself sitting in a hackney cab
and being carried to the living regions of Paris, where light
and warmth reigned, all he had just seen seemed like a dream ;
and as he walked along the Boulevard des Italiens, his im-
pressions already seemed as remote as a memory. He could
not help saying to himself:

“Shall I find those people there to-morrow, I wonder 2”

On the following day, when he woke in the midst of the
elegance of modern luxury and the refinements of English
comfort, Godefroid recalled all the details of his visit to the
Cloister of Notre-Dame, and came to some conclusions in his
mind as to the things he had seen there. The three gentle-
men, whose appearance, attitude, and silence had left an im-
pression on him, were no doubt boarders, as well as the priest.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY AT.

Madame de la Chanterie’s gravity seemed to him to be the
result of the reserved dignity with which she had endured
some great sorrows. And yet, in spite of the explanations
he gave himself, Godefroid could not help feeling that there
was an air of mystery in these uncommunicative faces. He
cast a glance at his furniture to choose what he could keep,
what he thought indispensable; but, transporting them in
fancy to the horrible rooms in the Rue Chanoinesse, he could
not help laughing at the grotesque contrast they would make
there, and determined to sell everything, and pay away so
much as they might bring; leaving the furnishing of the
rooms to Madame de la Chanterie. He longed for a new life,
and the objects that could recall his old existence must be
bad for him. In his craving for transformation—for his was
one of those natures which rush forward at once with a bound,
instead of approaching a situation step by step as others do
—he was seized, as he sat at breakfast, by an idea: he would
realize his fortune, pay his debts, and place the surplus
with the banking firm his father had done business with.

This banking house was that of Mongenod and Co., estab-
lished in Paris since 1816 or 1817, a firm whose reputation
had never been blown on in the midst of the commercial de-
pravity which at this time had blighted, more or less, several
great Paris houses. Thus, in spite of their immense wealth,
the houses of Nucingen and du Tuillet, of Keller Brothers, of
Palma and Co., suffer under a secret disesteem whispered,
as it were, between lip and ear. Hideous transactions had led
to such splendid results; and political successes, nay, mon-
archical principles, had overgrown such foul beginnings, that
no one in 1834 thought for a moment of the mud in which
the roots were set of such majestic trees—the upholders of
the State. At the same time, there was not one of these
bankers that did not feel aggrieved by praises of the house
of Mongenod.

The Mongenods, following the example of English bankers,
make no display of wealth; they do everything quite quietly,
and carry on their business with such prudence, shrewdness,

2atotae

18 THH SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

and honesty as allow them to operate with certainty from one
end of the world to the other.

The present head of the house, Frédéric Mongenod, is
brother-in-law to the Vicomte de Fontaine. Thus his numer-
ous family is connected, through the Baron de Fontaine, with
Monsieur Grossetéte, the Receiver-General (brother to the
Grossetéte and Co. of Limoges), with the Vandenesses, and
with Planat de Baudry, another Receiver-General. This rela-
tionship, after being of the greatest service to the late Monge-
nod senior in his financial operations at the time of the Res-
toration, had gained him the confidence of many of the old
nobility, whose capital and vast savings were intrusted to his
bank. Far from aiming at the peerage, like Keller, Nucin-
gen, and du Tillet, the Mongenods kept out of political life,
and knew no more of it than was needed for banking busi-
ness.

Mongenod’s bank occupies a magnificent house in the Rue
de la Victoire, with a garden behind and a courtyard in front,
where Madame Mongenod resided with her two sons, with
whom she was in partnership. Madame la Vicomtesse de
Fontaine had taken out her share on the death of the elder
Mongenod in 1827. Frédéric Mongenod, a handsome fellow
of about five-and-thirty, with a cold manner, as silent and
reserved as a Genevese, and as neat as an Englishman, had
acquired under his father all the qualifications needed in his
difficult business. He was more cultivated than most bankers,
for his education had given him the general knowledge which
forms the curriculum of the Ecole Polytechnique; and, like
many bankers, he had an occupation, a taste, outside his reg-
ular business, a love of physics and chemistry. Mongenod
junior, ten years younger than Frédéric, filled the place, un-
der his elder brother, that a head-clerk holds under a lawyer
or a notary; Frédéric was training him, as he himself had
been trained by his father, in the scientific side of banking,
for a banker is to money what a writer is to ideas—they both
ought to know everything.

Godefroid, as he mentioned his family name, could see howTHE SEAMY: SIDE OF HISTORY 19

highly his father had been respected, for he was shown through
the offices at once to that next to Mongenod’s private room.
This room was shut in by glass doors, so that, in spite of his
wish not to listen, Godefroid overheard the conversation going
on within.

“Madame, your account shows sixteen hundred thousand
francs on both sides of the balance sheet,” Mongenod the
younger was saying. “I know not what my brother’s views
may be; he alone can decide whether an advance of a hun-
dred thousand francs is possible. You lacked prudence. It
is not wise to put sixteen hundred thousand francs into a
business -

“Too loud, Louis!” said a woman’s voice. ‘Your brother’s
advice is never to speak but in an undertone. There may
be some one in the little waiting-room.”

At this instant Frédéric Mongenod opened the door from
his living rooms to his private office; he saw Godefroid, and
went through to the inner room, where he bowed respectfully
to the lady who was talking to his brother.

He showed Godefroid in first, saying as he did so, “And
whom have I the honor of addressing ?”

As soon as Godefroid had announced himself, Frédéric of-
fered him a chair; and while the banker was opening his desk,
Louis Mongenod and the lady, who was none else than Ma-
dame de la Chanterie, rose and went up to Frédéric. Then
they all three went into a window recess, where they stood
talking to Madame Mongenod, who was in all the secrets of
the business. Jor thirty years past this clever woman had
given ample proofs of her capacity, to her husband first, now
to her sons, and she was, in fact, an active partner in the
house, signing for it as they did. Godefroid saw in a pigeon-
hole a number of boxes labeled “La Chanterie,’” and num-
bered 1 to 7.

When the conference was ended by a word from the Senior
to his brother, “Well, then, go to the cashier,’ Madame de la
Chanterie turned round, saw Godefroid, restrained a start of
surprise, and then asked a few whispered questions of. Monge-
nod, who replied briefly, also in a low voice.Py3.

20 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

Madame de la Chanterie wore thin prunella shoes and gray
silk stockings; she had on the same dress as before, and was
wrapped in the Venetian cloak that was just coming into
fashion again. Her drawn bonnet of green silk, a la bonne
femme, was lined with white, and her face was framed in flow-
ing lace. She stood very erect, in an attitude which bore wit-
ness, if not to high birth, at any rate to aristocratic habits.
But for her extreme affability, she would perhaps have
seemed proud. In short, she was very imposing.

“Tt is not so much good luck as a dispensation of Provi-
dence that has brought us together here, monsieur,” said she
to Godefroid. “I was on the point of declining a boarder
whose habits, as I fancied, were ill suited to those of my
household; but Monsieur Mongenod has just given me some
information as to your family which is——”

“Indeed, madame—monsieur ” said Godefroid, address-
ing the lady and the banker together, “I have no longer any
family, and I came to ask advice of my late father’s banker
to arrange my affairs in accordance with a new plan of life.”

Godefroid told his story in a few words, and expressed his
desire of leading a new life.

“Formerly,” said he, “a man in my position would have
turned monk; but there are now no religious Orders -

“Go to live with Madame, if she will accept you as a
boarder,” said Frédéric Mongenod, after exchanging glances
with Madame de la Chanterie, “and do not sell your invest-
ments; leave them in my hands. Give me the schedule of
your debts; I will fix dates of payment with your creditors,
and you can draw for your own use a hundred and fifty francs
a month. It will take about two years to pay everything off.
During those two years, in the home you are going to, you will
have ample leisure to think of a career, especially as the peo-
ple you will be living with can give you good advice.”

Louis Mongenod came back with a hundred thousand-frane
notes, which he gave to Madame de la Chanterie. Godefroid
offered his arm to his future landlady, and took her to her
hackney-coach.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 21

“Then we shall meet again presently,” said she in a kind
tone. j

“At what hour shall you be at home, madame?” said Gode-
froid.

“In two hours’ time.”

“I have time to get rid of my furniture,” said he, with a
bow.

During the few minutes while Madame de la Chanterie’s
arm had lain on his as they walked side by side, Godefroid
could not see beyond the halo cast about this woman by the
words, “Your account stands at sixteen hundred thousand
francs,” spoken by Louis Mongenod to a lady who buried her
life in the depths of the Clottre de Notre-Dame.

This idea, “She must be rich!” had entirely changed his
view of things. “How old is she, I wonder?”

And he had a vision of a romance in his residence in the
Rue Chanoinesse.

“She looks like an aristocrat; does she dabble in banking
affairs?” he asked himself.

And in our day nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of
a thousand would have thought of the possibility of marry-
ing this woman.

A furniture-dealer, who was also a decorator, but chiefly an
agent for furnished flats, gave about three thousand francs
for all that Godefroid wished to dispose of, leaving the things
in his rooms for the few days needed to clean and arrange
the dreadful rooms in the Rue Chanoinesse.

Thither the brain-sick youth at once repaired; he called
in a painter, recommended by Madame de la Chanterie, who
undertook for a moderate sum to whitewash the ceilings, clean
the windows, paint the wainscoting like gray maple, and color
the floors, within a week. Godefroid measured the rooms to
carpet them all alike with green drugget of the cheapest de-
scription. He wished everything to be uniform and as sim-
ple as possible in his cell.

Madame de la Chanterie approved of this. With Manon’s
assistance she calculated how much white dimity would be22 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

needed for the window curtains and for a simple iron bed-
stead; then she undertook to procure the stuff and to have
them made for a price so small as to amaze Godefroid. With
the new furniture he would send in, his apartments would not
cost him more than six hundred francs.

“So I can take about a thousand to Monsieur Mongenod.”

“We here lead a Christian life,” said Madame de la Chan-
terie, “which is, as you know, quite out of keeping with much
superfluity, and I fear you still preserve too many.”

As she gave her new boarder this piece of advice, she
glanced at the diamond that sparkled in a ring through which
the ends of Godefroid’s blue necktie were drawn.

“T only mention this,’ she added, “because I perceive that
you are preparing to break with the dissipated life of which
you spoke with regret to Monsieur Mongenod.”

Godefroid gazed at Madame de la Chanterie, listening with
delight to the harmony of her clear voice; he studied her face,
which was perfectly colorless, worthy to be that of one of
the grave cold Dutch women so faithfully depicted by the
painters of the Flemish school, faces on which a wrinkle
would be impossible.

“Plump and fair!” thought he, as he went away. Poul
her hair is white iG

Godefroid, like all weak natures, had readily accustomed
himself to the idea of a new life, believing it would be per-
fect happiness, and he was eager to settle in the Rue Chanoi-
nesse; nevertheless, he had a gleam of prudence—or, if you
like, of suspicion. Two days before moving in he went again
to Monsieur Mongenod to ask for further information con-
cerning the household he was going to join. During the few
minutes he had spent now and then in his future home, te see
what alterations were being made, he had observed the going
and coming of several persons whose appearance and man-
ner, without any air of mystery, suggested that they were
busied in the practice of some profession, some secret occu-
pation with the residents in the house. At this time many
plots were afoot to help the elder branch of Bourbons to re-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 23

mount the throne, and Godefroid believed there was some
conspiracy here.

But when he found himself in the banker’s private room
and under his searching eye, he was ashamed of himself as he
formulated his question and saw a sardonic smile on Frédéric
Mongenod’s lips.

“Madame la Baronne de la Chanterie,” he replied, “‘is one
of the obscurest but one of the most honorable women in Paris.
Have you any particular reason for asking for information ?”

Godefroid fell back on flat excuses—he was arranging to
live a long time with these strangers, and it was as well to
know to whom he was tying himself, and the like. But the
banker’s smile only became more and more ironical, and
Godefroid more and more ashamed, till he blushed at the step
he had taken, and got nothing by it; for he dared ask no more
questions about Madame de la Chanterie or his fellow-
boarders.

Two days later, after dining for the last time at the Café
Anglais, and seeing the first two pieces at the Variétés, at ten
o'clock on a Monday night he came to sleep in the Rue Chanoi-
nesse, where Manon lighted him to his room.

Solitude has a charm somewhat akin to that of the wild life
of savages, which no European ever gives up after having
once tasted it. This may seem strange in an age when every
one lives so completely in the sight of others that everybody
is inquisitive about everybody else, and that privacy will soon
have ceased to exist, so quickly do the eyes of the Press—
the modern Argus—increase in boldness and intrusiveness};
and yet the statement is supported by the evidence of the first
six Christian centuries, when no recluse ever came back to
social life again. There are few mental wounds that solitude
cannot cure. Thus, in the first instance, Godefroid was struck
by the calm and stillness of his new abode, exactly as a tired
traveler finds rest in a bath.

On the day after his arrival as a boarder with Madame de
Ja Chanterie, he could not help cross-examining himself onHigdouausuensen:

    
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

  

24

 

THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

finding himself thus cut off from everything, even from Paris,
though he was still under the shadow of its Cathedral. Here,
stripped of every social vanity, there would henceforth be no
witnesses to his deeds but his conscience and his fellow-
boarders. This was leaving the beaten high-road of the world
for an unknown track; and whither would the track lead him ?
To what occupation would he find himself committed ?

He had been lost in such reflections for a couple of hours,
when Manon, the only servant of the establishment, knocked
at his door and told him that the second breakfast was served ;
they were waiting for him. Twelve was striking.

The new boarder went downstairs at once, Sere by
his curiosity to see the five persons with whom he was thence-
forth to live. On entering the drawing-room, he found all
the residents in the house standing up and dressed precisely —
as they had been on the day when he had first come to make
inquiries.

“Did you sleep well?” asked Madame de la Chanterie.

“I did not wake till ten o’clock,” said Godefroid, bowing
to the four gentlemen, who returned the civility with much
gravity.

“We quite expected it,” said the old man, known as Mon-
sieur Alain, and he smiled.

“Manon spoke of the second breakfast,” Godefroid went on.
“T have, I fear, already broken one of your rules without in-
tending it.—At what hour do you rise?”

“We do not get up quite by the rule of the monks of old,”
replied Madame de la Chanterie graciously, “but, like work-
men, at six in winter and at half-past three in summer. We

also go to bed by the rule of the sun; we are always asleep by
nine in winter, by half-past eleven. in summer. We drink
some milk, which is brought from our own farm, after pray-
ers, all but Monsieur Abbé de Véze, who performs early
Mass at Notre-Dame—at six in summer, at seven in winter—
and these gentlemen as well as I, your humble servant, at-
tend that service every day.”

Madame de la Chanterie finished this speech at table, where
her five guests were now seated.THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 25

The dining-room, painted gray throughout, and decorated
with carved wood of a design showing the taste of Louis XIV.,
opened out of the sort of ante-room where Manon sat, and
ran parallel with Madame de la Chanterie’s room, adjoining
the drawing-room, no doubt. There was no ornament but
an old clock. The furniture consisted of six chairs, their
oval backs upholstered with worsted-work evidently done by
Madame de la Chanterie, of two mahogany sideboards, and a
table to match, on which Manon placed the breakfast without
spreading a cloth. The breakfast, of monastic frugality, con-
sisted of a small turbot with white sauce, potatoes, a salad,
and four dishes of fruit: peaches, grapes, strawberries, and
green almonds; then, by way of hors d’euvre, there was honey
served in the comb as in Switzerland, besides butter, radishes,
cucumber, and sardines. The meal was served in china
sprigged with small blue cornflowers and green leaves, a pat-
tern which was no doubt luxuriously fashionable in the time of
Louis XVI., but which the increasing demands of the present
day have made common.

“Tt is a fast day! observed Monsieur Alain. “Since we
go to Mass every morning, you may suppose that we yield
blindly to all the practices of the Church, even the strictest.”

“And you will begin by following our example,’ added
Madame de la Chanterie, with a side-glance at Godefroid,
whom she had placed by her side.

Of the four boarders, Godefroid already knew the names
of the Abbé de Véze and Monsieur Alain; but he yet had to
learn those of the other two gentlemen. They sat in silence,
eating with the absorbed attention that the pious seem to de-
vote to the smallest details of their meals.

“And does this fine fruit also come from your farm, ma-
dame?” Godefroid inquired.

“Yes, monsieur,” she replied. “We have our little model
farm, just as the Government has; it is our country house,
about three leagues from hence, on the road to Italy, near
Villeneuve-Saint-Georges.”

“Tt is a little estate that belongs to us all, and will be the26 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

property of the last survivor,” said the worthy Monsieur
Alain.

“Oh, it is quite inconsiderable,” added Madame de la
Chanterie, who seemed afraid lest Godefroid should regard
this speech as a bait.

“There are thirty acres of arable land,’ said one of the
men unknown to Godefroid, “six acres of meadow, and an
enclosure of about four acres of garden, in the midst of which
our house stands; in front of it is the farm.”

“But such an estate must be worth above a hundred thou-
sand francs,” observed Godefroid.

“Oh, we get nothing out of it but our produce,” replied the
same speaker.

Tle was a tall man, thin and grave. At a first glance he
seemed to have served in the army; his white hair showed
that he was past sixty, and his face revealed great sorrows
and religious resignation.

The second stranger, who appeared to be a sort of com-
pound of a master of rhetoric and a man of business, was of
middle height, stout but active, and his face bore traces of a
joviality peculiar to the notaries and attorneys of Paris.

The dress of all four men was marked by the extreme neat-
ness due to personal care; and Manon’s hand was visible in
the smallest details of their raiment. Their coats were per-
haps ten years old, and preserved, as a priest’s clothes are
preserved, by the occult powers of a housekeeper and by con-
stant use. ‘These men wore, as it were, the livery of a sys-
tem of life; they were all the slaves of the same thought, their
looks spoke the same word, their faces wore an expression
of gentle resignation, of inviting tranquillity.

““Am I indiscreet, madame,” said Godefroid, “to ask the
names of these gentlemen? Iam quite prepared to tell them
all about myself; may I not know as much about them as cir-
cumstances allow?”

“This,” said Madame de la Chanterie, introducing the tall,
thin man, “is Monsieur Nicolas; he is a retired Colonel of
the Gendarmerie, ranking as a Major-General_—And thisTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 2¢

gentleman,” she went on, turning to the little stout man, “was

formerly Councillor to the Bench of the King’s Goan in
Paris; he retired from his functions in August 1830; his name
is Mig ean Joseph. Though you joined us but yesterday,
I may tell you that in the world Monsieur Nicolas bore the
name of Marquis de Montauran, and Monsieur Joseph that
of Lecamus, Baron de Tresnes; but to us, as to the outer
world, ase names no longer exist. These gentlemen have
no heirs; they have anticipated the oblivion that must fall on
their families; they are simply Monsieur Nicolas and Mon-
sieur Joseph, as you will be simply Monsieur Godefroid.”

As he heard these two names—one so famous in the history
of Royalism from the disaster which put an end to the rising
of the Chouans at the beginning of the Consulate, the other
so long respected in the records of the old Parlement—Gode-
froid could not repress a start of surprise; but when he looked
at these survivors from the wreck of the two greatest institu-
tions of the fallen monarchy, he could not detect the slightest
movement of feature or change of countenance that betrayed
a worldly emotion. These two men did not or would not re-
member what they once had been. This was Godefroid’s
first lesson.

“Each name, gentlemen, is a chapter of history,” said he
respectfully.

“The history of our own time,” said Monsieur Joseph, “of
mere ruins.”

“You are in good company,” said Monsieur Alain, smiling.

‘He can be described in two words: he was a middle-class
Paris citizen; a worthy man with the face of a calf, dignified
by white hairs, but insipid with its eternal smile.

As to the priest, the Abbé de Véze, his position was all
sufficient. The priest who fulfils his mission is recognizable
at the first glance when his eyes meet yours.

What chiefly struck Godefroid from the first was the pro-
found respect shown by the boarders to Madame de la Chan-
terie; all of them, even the priest, notwithstanding the sacred
dignity. conferred by his functions, behaved to her as to a28 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

queen. He also noted the temperance of each guest; they ate
solely for the sake of nourishment. Madame de la Chanterie,
like the rest, took but a single peach and half a bunch of
grapes; but she begged the newcomer not to restrict himself
in the same way, offering him every dish in turn.

Godefroid’s curiosity was excited to the highest pitch by
this beginning. After the meal they returned to the drawing-
room, where he was left to himself; Madame de la Chanterie
and her four friends held a little privy council in a window
recess. This conference, in which no animation was displayed,
lasted for about half an hour. They talked in undertones,
exchanging remarks which each seemed to have thought out
beforehand. - Now and again Monsieur Alain and Monsieur
Joseph consulted their pocket-books, turning over the leaves.

“You will see to the Faubourg,” said Madame de la
Chanterie to Monsieur Nicolas, who went away.

These were the first words Godefroid could overhear.

“And you to the Quartier Saint-Marceau,” she went on,
addressing Monsieur Joseph.

“Will you take the Faubourg Saint-Germain and try to
find what we need?” she added to the Abbé de Véze, who at
once went off—‘‘And you, my dear Alain,” she added with a
smile, “look into matters.——To-day’s business is all settled,”
said she, returning to Godefroid.

She sat down in her armchair, and took from a little work-
table some under-linen ready eut out, on which she began to
sew as if working against time.

Godefroid, lost in conjectures, and seeing in all this a Roy-
alist conspiracy, took the lady’s speech as introductory, and,
seating himself by her side, watched her closely. He was
struck by her singular skill in stitching; while everything
about her proclaimed the great lady, she had the peculiar
deftness of a paid seamstress; for every one can distinguish,
by certain tricks of working, the habits of a professional from
those of an amateur.

“You sew,” said Godefroid, “as if you were used to the
business.”THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 29

“Alas!” she said, without looking up, “I have done it ere
now from necessity e

Two large tears rose to the old woman’s eyes, and rolled
down her cheeks on to the work she held.

“Pray, forgive me, madame!” cried Godefroid.

Madame de la Chanterie looked at her new inmate, and
saw on his features such an expression of regret, that she
nodded to him kindly. Then, after wiping her eyes, she recoy-
ered the composure that characterized her face, which was not
so much cold as chilled.

“You here find yourself, Monsieur Godefroid—for, as you
know already, you will be called only by your Christian name
amid the wreckage from a great storm. We have all been
stricken and wounded to the heart through family interests or
damaged fortunes, by the forty years’ hurricane that over-
threw royalty and religion, and scattered to the winds the
elements that constituted France as it was of old. Words
which seem but trivial bear a sting for us, and that is the rea-
son of the silence that reigns here. We rarely speak of our-
selves; we have forgotten what we were, and have found means
of substituting a new life for the old life. It was because I
fancied, from your revelation to the Mongenods, that there
was some resemblance between your situation and our own,
that I persuaded my four friends to receive you among us;
in fact, we were anxious to find another recluse for our con-
vent. But what do you propose to do? We do not enter on
solitude without some stock of moral purpose.”

“Madame, as I hear you speak, I shall be too happy to ac-
cept you as the arbiter of my destiny.”

“That is speaking like a man of the world,” said she. “You
are trying to flatter me—a woman of sixty!—My dear boy,”
she went on, “you are, you must know, among people who be-
heve firmly in God, who have all felt His hand, and who have
given themselves up to Him almost as completely as do the
Trappists. Have you ever observed the assurance of a true
priest when he has given himself to the Lord, when he heark-
ens to His voice and strives to be a docile instrument under the30 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

fingers of Providence? He has shed all vanity, all self-con-
sciousness, all the feelings which cause constant offences to
the worldly ; his quiescence is as complete as that of the fatal-
ist, his resignation enables him to endure all things. The
true priest—an Abbé de Veze—is like a child with his mother ;
for the Church, my dear sir, is a good mother. Well, a man
may be a priest without a tonsure; not all priests are in or-
ders. If we devote ourselves to doing good, we imitate the
good priest, we obey God!—I am not preaching to you; I do
not want to convert you; I am only explaining our life.”

“Instruct me, madame,” said Godefroid, quite conquered.
“IT would wish not to fail in any particular of your rules.”

“You would find that too much to do; you will learn by de-
grees. Above all things, never speak here of your past mis-
fortunes, which are mere child’s play as compared with the
terrible catastrophes with which God has stricken those with
whom you are now living <

All the time she spoke, Madame de la Chanterie went on
pulling her thread through with distracting regularity; but
at this full stop, she raised her head and looked at Godefroid ;
she saw that he was spellbound by the thrilling sweetness of
her voice, which had indeed a sort of apostolic unction. The
young sufferer was gazing with admiration at the really extra-
ordinary appearance of this woman, whose face was radiant.
A faint flush tinged her wax-white cheeks, her eyes sparkled,
a youthful soul gave life to the wrinkles that had acquired
sweetness, and everything about her invited affection. Gode-
froid sat measuring the depth of the gulf that parted this
woman from vulgar souls; he saw that she had attained to an
inaccessible height, whither religion had guided her; and he
was still too much of the world not to be stung to the quick,
not to long to go down into that gulf and climb to the sharp
peak where Madame de la Chanterie stood, and to stand by
her side. While he gave himself up to a thorough study of
this woman, he related to her all the mortifications of his life,
all he could not say at Mongenod’s, where his self-betrayal had
been limited to a statement of his position.THE SEAMY. SIDE OF HISTORY 31

Poor child!”

This motherly exclamation, dropping from the lips of Ma-
dame de la Chanterie, fell, from time to time, like healing
balm, on the young man’s heart.

“What. can I find to take the place of so many hopes de-
ceived, of so much disappointed affection?” said he at last,
looking at the lady, who seemed lost in reverie. “I came here,”
he went on, “to reflect and make up my mind. I have lost
my mother—will you take her place a

“But,” said she, “will you show me a son’s obedience ?”

“Yes, 1f you can show me the tenderness that exacts it.”

“Very well; we will try,” said she.

Godefroid held out his hand to take that which the lady
offered him, and raised it reverently to his lips. Madame de
la Chanterie’s hands were admirably formed—neither wrin-
kled, nor fat, nor thin; white enough to move a young woman
to envy, and of a shape that a sculptor might copy. Godefroid
had admired these hands, thinking them in harmony with the
enchantment of her voice and the heavenly blue of her eye.

“Wait here,” said Madame de la Chanterie, rising and go-
ing into her own room.

Godefroid was deeply agitated, and could not think to what
he was to attribute the lady’s departure: he was not left long
in perplexity, for she returned with a book in her hand.

“Here, my dear boy,” said she, “are the prescriptions of a
great healer of souls. When the things of everyday life have
failed to give us the happiness we looked for, we must seek in
a higher life, and here is the key to that new world. Read a
chapter of this book morning and evening; but give it your
whole attention; study every word as if it were some foreign
tongue. By the end of a month you will be another man. For
twenty years now have I read a chapter every day, and my
three friends, Nicolas, Alain, and Joseph, would no more omit
it than they would miss going to bed and getting up again;
imitate them for the love of God—for my sake ” she said,
with divine serenity and dignified confidence.

Godefroid turned the book round and read on the back32 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

Imutation of Jesus Christ. The old lady’s artlessness and
youthful candor, her certainty that she was doing him good,
confounded the ex-dandy. Madame de la Chanterie had ex-
actly the manner, the intense satisfaction, of a woman who
might offer a hundred thousand francs to a merchant on the
verge of bankruptcy.

“I have used this book,” she said, “for six-and-twenty years.
God grant that its use may prove contagious! Go and buy
me another copy, for the hour is at hand when certain persons
are coming here who must not be seen.”

Godefroid bowed and went up to his rooms, where he tossed
the book on a table, exclaiming:

“Poor, dear woman! There a

The book, like all that are constantly used, fell open at a
particular place. Godefroid sat down to arrange his ideas a
little, for he had gone through more agitation that morning
than he had in the course of the most stormy two months of
his life; his curiosity especially had never been so strongly
excited. His eyes wandered mechanically, as happens with
men when their minds are absorbed in meditation, and fell
on the two pages that lay facing him. He read as follows :—

 

POLEOAMIR ANDI: SOLE
“On tur Royvat Roap or THE Hoty Cross.”

He picked up the volume, and this paragraph of that grand
book captivated his eyes as though by words of fire:

“He has gone before you carrying His cross, and died for
you, that you too might have strength to carry your cross,
and be willing to die upon the Cross. :

“Go where you will, try what you will, you will not find
a grander way,or a safer way, than the way of the Holy Cross.
Arrange and order all your life as you like or think fit, still
you will find that, you will always have something to suffer,
by your own choice or by necessity; and so you will alwaysTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 33

find a cross. For either you will have bodily pain to bear,
or some trouble of the spirit.

“Sometimes God will leave you to yourself, sometimes you
will be vexed by your neighbor, and, what is harder than all,
you will often be weary of yourself, and there is no remedy
or solace by which you can be delivered or relieved. You will
have to bear your trouble as long as God decrees. For He
wishes you to learn to suffer trial without consolation, to
yield humbly to His will, and to become humbler by means
of tribulations.”

“What a book!” said Godefroid to himself, as he turned
over the pages.
And he came upon these words:

“When you have come to feel all trouble sweet and pleasant
for the love of Christ, then indeed you may say that all is
well with you; you have made for yourself a heaven on earth.”

Irritated by this simplicity, characteristic of strength, and
enraged at being vanquished by this book, he shut it; but
on the morocco cover he saw this motto, stamped in letters
of gold:

“Seek only that which is eternal.”

“And have they found it here?” he wondered.

He went out to purchase a handsome copy of the Imitation
of Christ, remembering that Madame de la Chanterie would
want to read a chapter that evening. He went downstairs
and into the street. For a minute or two he remained stand-
ing near the gate, undecided as to which way he would go,
and wondering in what street, and at what bookseller’s he
might find the book he needed; and he then heard the heavy
sound of the outer gate shutting.

Two men had just come out of the Hétel de la Chanterie—
for the reader, if he has understood the character of the old
house, will have recognized it as an ancient family mansion.
Manon, when she had called Godefroid to breakfast, had asked

334 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

him how he had slept the first night at the Hotel de la Chan-
terie, laughing as she spoke.

Godefroid followed the two men, with no idea of spying on
them; and they, taking him for an indifferent passer-by,
talked loud enough for him to hear them in those deserted
streets. The men turned down the Rue Massillon, along
by the side of Notre-Dame, and across the Cathedral Square.

“Well, old man, you see how easy it is to get the coppers
out of em! You must talk their lingo, that is all.”

“But we owe the money.”

“Who to?”

“To the lady a

“T should like to see myself sued for debt by that old
image! I would “

“You would what?—You would pay her, I can tell you.”

“You’re right there, for if I paid 1 could get more out of
her afterwards than I got to-day.”

“But wouldn’t it be better to take their advice and set up
on the square?”

“Get out!”

“Since she said she could find some one to stand security ?”

“But we should have to give up life ©

“T am sick of ‘life’-—it is not life to be always working in
the vineyards "

“No; but didn’t the Abbé throw over old Marin the other
day. He wouldn’t give him a thing.”

“Ay, but old Marin wanted to play such a game as no one
can win at that has not thousands at his back.”

At this moment the two men, who were dressed like work-
ing foremen, suddenly doubled, and retraced their steps to
cross the bridge by the Hétel-Dieu to the Place Maubert;
Godefroid stood aside; but seeing that he was following them
closely, the men exchanged looks of suspicion, and they were
evidently vexed at having spoken out so plainly.

Godefroid was indeed all the more interested in the con-
versation because it reminded him of the scene between the
Abbé de Véze and the workman on the evening of his first
eall.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 30

“What goes on at Madame de la Chanterie’s?” he asked
himself once more.

As he thought over this question, he made his way to a
bookshop in the Rue Saint-Jacques, and returned home with
a very handsome copy of the best edition of The Imitation
that has been published in France.

As he walked slowly homewards to be punctual to the
dinner-hour, he went over in his mind all his experience of
the morning, and found his soul singularly refreshed by it.
He was possessed indeed by intense curiosity, but that curi-
osity paled before an indefinable wish; he was attracted by
Madame de la Chanterie, he felt a vehement longing to attach
himself to her, to devote himself for her, to please her and
deserve her praise; in short, he was aware of a Platonic pas-
sion; he felt that there was unfathomed greatness in that
soul, and that he must learn to know it thoroughly. He was
eager to discover the secrets of the life of these pure-minded
Catholics. And then, in this little congregation of the Faith-
ful, practical religion was so intimately allied with all that
is most majestic in the Frenchwoman, that he resolved to do
his utmost to be admitted to the fold. Such a vein of feeling
would have been sudden indeed in a man of busy life; but
Godefroid, as we have seen, was in the position of a ship-
wrecked wretch who clings to the most fragile bough, hoping
that it may bear him, and his soul was ploughed land, ready
to receive any seed.

He found the four gentlemen in the drawing-room, and
he presented the book to Madame de la Chanterie, saying:

“T would not leave you without a copy for this evening.”

“God grant,” said she, looking at the splendid volume,
“that this may be your last fit of elegance!”

And seeing that the four men had reduced the smallest
details of their raiment to what was strictly decent and useful,
noticing too that this principle was rigorously carried out
in every detail of the house, Godefroid understood the purpose
of this reproof so delicately expressed.

“Madame,” said she, “the men you benefited this morning

si dey,36 THE SHEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

 

are monsters. Without intending it, I overheard what they
were saying as they went away, and it was full of the blackest
ingratitude.”

“The two iron-workers from the Rue Mouffctard,” said
Madame de la Chanterie to Monsieur Nicolas, “that is your
concern a

“The fish gets off the hook more than once before it is
caught,” said Monsieur Alain, laughing.

Madame de la Chanterie’s entire indifference on hearing
of the immediate ingratitude of the men to whom she had
certainly given money amazed Godefroid, who became
thoughtful.

Monsieur Alain and the old lawyer made the dinner a
cheerful meal; but the soldier was constantly grave, sad, and
cold; his countenance bore the ineradicable stamp of a bitter
sorrow, a perennial grief. Madame de la Chanterie was
equally attentive to all. Godefroid felt that he was watched
by these men, whose prudence was not less than their piety,
and vanity led him to imitate their reserve, so he measured
his words carefully.

This first day, indeed, was far more lively than those
which came after. Godefroid, finding himself shut out from
all serious matters, was obliged, during the early morning
and the evening when he was alone in his rooms, to read The
Imitation of Christ, and he finally studied it as we must study
a book when we are imprisoned with that one alone. We
then feel to the book as we should towards a woman with
whom we dwelt in solitude; we must either love or hate the
‘woman; and in the same way we must enter into the spirit
of the author or not read ten lines of his work.

Now it is impossible not to be held captive by The Imita-
tion, which is to dogma what action is to thought. The
Catholic spirit thrills through it, moves and works in it,
struggles in it hand to hand with the life of man. That
book is a trusty friend. It speaks to every passion, to every
difficulty, even to the most worldly ; it answers every objection,
it is more eloquent than any preacher, for it speaks with yourTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY oT

own voice—a voice that rises from your own heart and that
you hear with your soul. In short, it is the Gospel interpreted
and adapted to all times and seasons, controlling every situa-
tion. It is strange indeed that the Church should not have
canonized Gerson, for the Holy Spirit certainly guided his
pen.

To Godefroid the Hotel de la Chanterie contained a woman
as well as a book; every day he was more and more bewitched
by her. In her he found flowers buried under the snow of
many winters; he had glimpses of such a sacred friendship
as religion sanctions, as the angels smile on—as bound those
five, in fact—and against which no evil could prevail. There
is a sentiment superior to all others, an affection of soul for
soul which resembles those rare blossoms that grow on the
loftiest peaks of the earth. One or two examples are shown
us in a century; lovers are sometimes united by it; and it
aecounts for certain faithful attachments which would be
inexplicable by the ordinary laws of the world. In such an
attachment there are no disappointments, no differences, no
vanities, no rivalries, no contrasts even, so intimately fused
are two spiritual natures.

It was this immense and infinite feeling, the outcome of
Catholic charity, that Godefroid was beginning to dream of.
At times he could not believe in the spectacle before his eyes,
and-he sought to find reasons for the sublime friendships
between these five persons, wondering to find true Catholics,
Christians of the most primitive type, in Paris, and in 1836.

A week after entering the house, Godefroid had seen such
a number of people come and go, he had overheard fragments
of conversation in which such serious matters were discussed,
that he understood that the existence of this council of five
was full of prodigious activity. He noticed that not one of
them slept more than six hours at most. Each of them had,
as it were, lived through a first day before they met at the
second breakfast. Strangers brought in or carried away sums
of money, sometimes rather considerable. Mongenod’s cashier38 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

 

came very often, always early in the morning, so that his
work in the bank should not be interfered with by this busi-
ness, which was independent of the regular affairs of the
House.

One evening Monsieur Mongenod himself called, and Gode-
froid observed a touch of filial familiarity in his tone to Mon-
sieur Alain, mingled with the deep respect he showed to him,
as to Madame de la Chanterie’s three other boarders.

That evening the banker only asked Godefroid the most
ordinary questions: Was he comfortable? Did he mean to
stay ? and so forth, advising him to persevere in his determina-
tion.

“There is but one thing wanting to make me happy,” said
Godefroid.

“And what is that?” said the banker.

“An occupation.”

“An occupation!” cried the Abbé de Véze. “Then you
have changed your mind; you came to our retreat in search
of rest.”

“But without prayer, which gives life to the cloister; with-
out meditation, which peoples the desert, rest becomes a dis-
ease,” said Monsieur Joseph sententiously.

“Learn bookkeeping,” said Mongenod, smiling. “In the
course of a few months you may be of great use to my friends
here——”

“Oh, with the greatest pleasure,” exclaimed Godefroid.

The next day was Sunday. Madame de la Chanterie de-
sired her boarder to give her his arm and to escort her to
High Mass.

“This,” she said, “is the only thing I desire to force upon
you. Many a time during the week I have been moved to
speak to you of your salvation; but I do not think the time
has come. You would have plenty to occupy you if you shared
our beliefs, for you would also share our labors.”

At Mass, Godefroid observed the fervency of Messieurs
Nicolas, Joseph, and Alain. Having, during these few days,
convinced himself of the superior intellect of these three men,

dTHE SEHEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 39

their perspicacity, extensive learning, and lofty spirit, he
concluded that if they could thus abase themselves, the Cath-
olic religion must contain mysteries which had hitherto es-
caped his ken.

“And, after all,” said he to himself, “it is the religion of
Bossuet, of Pascal, of Racine, of Saint-Louis, of Louis XVL.,
of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Ximenes, of Bayard and
du Guesclin—and how should such a poor creature as I com-
pare myself with these great brains, statesmen, poets, war-
riors cee

Were it not that a great lesson is to be derived from these
trivial details, it would be foolish in such times as these to
dwell on them; but they are indispensable to the interest of
this narrative, which the readers of our day will, indeed, find
it hard to believe, beginning as it does by an almost ridiculous
incident—the influence exerted by a woman of sixty over a
young man who had tried everything and found it wanting.

“You did not pray,” said Madame de la Chanterie to Gode-
froid as they came out of Notre-Dame. “Not for any one, not
even for the peace of your mother’s soul!”

Godefroid reddened, but said nothing.

“Do me the pleasure,’ Madame de la Chanterie went on,
“to go to your room, and not to come down to the drawing-
room for an hour. And for the love of me, meditate on a chap-
ter of the 2mttation—the first of the Third Book, entitled ‘On
CHRIST SPEAKING WITHIN THE [FAITHFUL SOUL.’ ”

Godefroid bowed coolly, and went upstairs.

“The Devil take ’em all!” he exclaimed, now really in a
rage. “What the deuce do they want of me here? What game
are they playing? Pshaw! Every woman, even the veriest
bigot, is full of tricks, and if Madame” (the name the board-
ers gave their hostess) “does not want me downstairs, it is
because they are plotting something against me.”

With this notion in his head, he tried to look out of his
own window into that of the drawing-room, but the plan of
the building did not allow of it. Then he went down one
flight, but hastily ran up again; for it struck him that in a40 THH SHEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

house where the principal inhabitants held such strict prin-
ciples, an act of espionage would lead to his immediate dis-
missal. Now, to lose the esteem of those five persons seemed
to him as serious a matter as public dishonor.

He waited about three-quarters of an hour, resolved to
take Madame de la Chanterie by surprise, and to go down a
little before the time she had named. He intended to ex-
cuse himself by a fib, saying that his watch was in fault, and
twenty minutes too fast. He went down cautiously, without
a sound, and on reaching the drawing-room door opened it
suddenly.

He saw a man, still young but already famous, a poet whom
he had often met in society, Victor de Vernisset, kneeling on
one knee before Madame de la Chanterie and kissing the hem
of her gown. The sky falling in splinters as if it were made of
crystal, as the ancients believed, would have amazed Gode-
froid less than this sight. The most shocking ideas besieged
his brain, and the reaction was even more terrible when, just
as he was about to utter the first sarcasm that rose to his lips,
he saw Monsieur Alain standing in a corner, counting thou-
sand-franc notes.

In an instant Vernisset had started to his feet. Good Mon-
sieur Alain stared in astonishment. Madame de la Chanterie
flashed a look that petrified Godefroid, for the doubtful ex-
pression in the new boarder’s face had not' escaped her.

“Monsieur is one of us,” she said to the young author, in-
troducing Godefroid.

“You are a happy man, my dear fellow,” said Vernisset.
“You are saved!—But, madame,” he went on, turning to
Madame de la Chanterie, “if all Paris could have seen me, I
should be delighted. Nothing can ever pay my debt to you.
I am your slave for ever! I am yours, body and soul. Com-
mand in whatever you will, I will obey; my gratitude knows
no bounds. I owe you my life—it is yours.”

“Come, come,” said the worthy Alain, “do not be rash.
Only work; and, above all, never attack religion in your writ-
ings.—And remember you are in debt.”THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 4}

He handed him an envelope bulging with the banknotes
he had counted out. Victor de Vernisset’s eyes filled with
tears. He respectfully kissed Madame de la Chanterie’s
hand, and went away after shaking hands with Monsieur
Alain and with Godefroid.

“You did not obey Madame,” said the good man solemnly ;
and his face had an expression of sadness, such as Godefroid
had not yet seen on it. “That is a capital crime. If it oc-
curs again, we must part.—It would be very hard on you,
after having seemed worthy of our confidence ue

“My dear Alain,” said Madame de la Chanterie, “be so
good, for my sake, as to say nothing of this act of folly. We
must not expect too much of a newcomer who has had no
great sorrows, who has no religion—who has nothing, in
fact, but great curiosity concerning every vocation, and who
as yet does not believe in us.”

“Forgive me, madame,” replied Godefroid. “From this
moment J will be worthy of you; I submit to every test you
may think necessary before initiating me into the secret of
your labors; and if Monsieur the Abbé will undertake to en-
lighten me, I give myself up to him, soul and reason.”

These words made Madame de la Chanterie so happy that
a faint flush rose to her cheeks, she clasped Godefroid’s hand
and pressed it, saying, with strange emotion, “That is well!”

In the evening, after dinner, Godefroid saw a Vicar-Gen-
eral of the Diocese of Paris, who came to call, two canons,
two retired mayors of Paris, and a lady who devoted herself
to the poor. There was no gambling; the conversation was
general, and cheerful without being futile.

A visitor who greatly surprised Godefroid was the Com-
tesse de Saint-Cygne, one of the loftiest stars of the aristo-
cratic spheres, whose drawing-room was quite inaccessible
to the citizen class and to parvenus. ‘The mere presence of
this great lady in Madame de la Chanterie’s room was suffi-
ciently amazing; but the way in which the two women met
and treated each other was to Godefroid quite inexplicable,
for it bore witness to an intimacy and constant intercourse42

 

THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

which proved the high merit of Madame de la Chanterie.
Madame de Saint-Cygne was gracious and friendly to her
friend’s four friends, and very respectful to Monsieur Nico-
las.

As may be seen, social vanity still had a hold on Godefroid,
who, hitherto undecided, now determined to yield, with or
without conviction, to everything Madame de la Chanterie
and her friends might require of him, to succeed in being
affiliated by them to their Order, or initiated into their secrets,
promising himself that until then he would not definitely
commit himself.

On the following day, he went to the bookkeeper recom-
mended by Madame de la Chanterie, agreed with him as to
the hours when they were to work together, and so disposed
of all his time; for the Abbé de Véze was to catechize him in
the morning, he spent two hours of every day learning book-
keeping, and between breakfast and dinner he worked at the
exercises and imaginary commercial correspondence set him
by his master.

Some few days thus passed, during which Godefroid
learned the charm of a life of which every hour has its em-
ployment. The recurrence of the same duties at fixed hours,
and perfect regularity, sufficiently account for many happy
lives, and prove how deeply the founders of religious orders
had meditated on human nature. Godefroid, who had made
up his mind to learn of the Abbé de Véze, had already begun
to feel qualms as to his future life, and to discover that he
was ignorant of the importance of religious matters.

Finally, day by day, Madame de la Chanterie, with whom
he always sat for about an hour after the second breakfast,
revealed some fresh treasures of her nature; he had never
conceived of goodness so complete, so all-embracing. A wo-
man as old as Madame de la Chanterie seemed to be has none
of the triviality of a young woman; she is a friend who may
offer you every feminine dainty, who displays all the grace
and refinement with which Nature inspires woman to please
man, but who no longer asks for a return; she may be exe-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 43

crable or exquisite, for all her demands on life are buried
beneath the skin—or are dead; and Madame de la Chanterie
was exquisite. She seemed never to have been young; her
looks never spoke of the past. Far from allaying his curi-
osity, Godefroid’s increased intimacy with this beautiful char-
acter, and the discoveries he made day by day, increased his
desire to know something of the previous history of the wo-
man he now saw as a saint. Had she ever loved? Had she
been married? Had she been a mother? There was nothing
in her suggestive of the old maid; she had all the elegance of
a woman of birth; and her strong health, and the extraor-
dinary charm of her conversation, seemed to reveal a heay-
enly life, a sort of ignorance of the world. Excepting the
worthy and cheerful Alain, all these persons had known suffer-
ing; but Monsieur Nicolas himself seemed to give the palm
of martyrdom to Madame de la Chanterie; nevertheless, the
memory of her sorrows was so entirely suppressed by Catholic
resignation, and her secret occupations, that she seemed to
have been always happy.

“You are the life of your friends,” said Godefroid to her
one day. “You are the bond that unites them; you are the
housekeeper, so to speak, of a great work; and as we are all
mortal, I cannot but wonder what would beeome of your
association without you.”

“Yes, that is what they fear; but Providence—to whom
we owe our bookkeeper,” said she with a smile—“will doubt-
less provide. However, I shall think it over a

“And will your bookkeeper soon find himself at work for
your business?” asked Godefroid, laughing.

“That must depend on him,” she said with a smile. “If
he is sincerely religious, truly pious, has not the smallest con-
ceit, does not trouble his head about the wealth of the estab-
lishment, and endeavors to rise superior to petty social con-
siderations by soaring on the wings God has bestowed on
us 2?

“Which are they ?”
“Simplicity and purity,’

 

 

2.

replied Madame de la Chanterie.44 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“Your ignorance proves that you neglect reading your book,”
she added, laughing at the innocent trap she had laid to dis-
cover whether Godefroid read the Imitation of Christ. “Soak
your mind in Saint Paul’s chapter on Charity. It is not you
who will be devoted to us, but we to you,” she said with a
lofty look, “and it will be your part to keep account of the
greatest riches ever possessed by any sovereign; you will have
the same enjoyment of them as we have; and let me tell you, if
you remember the Thousand and One Nights, that the treas-
ures of Aladdin are as nothing in comparison with ours. In-
deed, for a year past, we have not known what to do; it was
too much for us. We needed a bookkeeper.”

As she spoke she studied Godefroid’s face; he knew not
what to think of this strange confidence; but the scene be-
tween Madame de la Chanterie and the elder Madame Monge-
nod had often recurred to him, and he hesitated between
doubt and belief.

“Yes, you would be very fortunate!” said she.

Godefroid was so consumed by curiosity, that from that
instant he resolved to undermine the reserve of the four
friends, and to ask them about themselves. Now, of all
Madame de la Chanterie’s boarders, the one who most at-
tracted Godefroid, and who was the most fitted in all ways
to invite the sympathy of people of every class, was the kindly,
cheerful, and unaffected Monsieur Alain. , By what means
had Providence guided this simple-minded being to this sec-
ular convent, where the votaries lived under rules as strictly
observed, in perfect freedom and in the midst of Paris, as
though they were under the sternest of Priors? What drama,
what catastrophe, had made him turn aside from his road
through the world to take a path so hard to tread across the
troubles of a great city?

One evening Godefroid determined to call on his neighbor,
with the purpose of satisfying a curiosity which was more
excited by the incredibility of any catastrophe in such a man’sTHE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 45

life than it could have been by the expectation of listening to
some terrible episode in the life of a pirate.

On hearing the reply, “Come in,” in answer to two modest
raps on the door, Godefroid turned the key, which was always
in the lock, and found Monsieur Alain seated in his chimney
corner, reading a chapter of the Imitation before going to
bed by the light of two wax candles with green shades, such as
whist-players use. The worthy man had on his trousers and
a dressing-gown of thick gray flannel; his feet were raised to
the level of the fire on a hassock worked in cross-stitch—as
his slippers were also—by Madame de la Chanterie. His
striking old head, with its circlet of white hair, almost re-
sembling that of an old monk, stood out, a lighter spot against
the brown background of an immense armchair.

Monsieur Alain quietly laid his book, with its worn cor-
ners, on the little table with twisted legs, while with the other
hand he waved the young man to the second armchair, remoy-
ing his glasses, which nipped the end of his nose.

“Are you unwell, that you have come down so late?” he
asked.

“Dear Monsieur Alain,” Godefroid frankly replied, “I am
a prey to curiosity which a single word from you will prove
to be very innocent or very indiscreet, and that is enough to
show you in what spirit I shall venture to ask a question.”

“Oh, ho! and what is it?” said he, with an almost mischiev-
ous sparkle in his eye.

“What was the circumstance that induced you to lead the
life you lead here? For to embrace such a doctrine of utter
renunciation, a man must be disgusted with the world, must
have been deeply wounded, or have wounded others.”

“Why, why, my boy?” replied the old man, and his full
lips parted in one of those smiles which made his ruddy mouth
one of the most affectionate that the genius of a painter could
conceive of. “May he not feel touched to the deepest pity by
the sight of the woes to be seen within the walls of Paris?
Did Saint Vincent de Paul,need the goad of remorse or of
wounded vanity to devote himself to foundling babes?”46 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“Such an answer shuts my mouth all the more effectually,
because if ever a soul was a match for that of the Christian
hero, it is yours,” replied Godefroid.

In spite of the thickening given by age to his yellow and
wrinkled face, the old man colored crimson, for he might
seem to have invited the culogium, though his well-known
modesty forbade the idea that he had thought of it. Gode-
froid knew full well that Madame de la Chanterie’s guests had
no taste for this kind of incense. And yet good Monsieur
Alain’s guilelessness was more distressed by this scruple than
a young maid would have been by some evil suggestion.

“Though I am far from resembling him in spirit,” replied
Monsieur Alain, “I certainly am like him in appearance a

Godefroid was about to speak, but was checked by a ges-
ture from the old man, whose nose had in fact the bulbous
appearance of the Saint’s, and whose face, much like that of
some old vinedresser, was the very duplicate of the coarse,
common countenance of the founder of the Foundling Hos-
pital. “As to that, you are right,” he went on: “my vocation
to this work was the result of an impulse of repentance in
consequence of an adventure 0

“An adventure! You!” said Godefroid softly, who at this
word forgot what he had been about to say.

“Oh, the story I have to tell will seem to you a mere trifle,
a foolish business; but before the tribunal of conscience Mt
looked different. If, after having heard me, you persist in
your wish to join in our labors, you will understand that feel-
Ings are in inverse proportion to our strength of soul, and that
a matter which would not trouble a Freethinker may greatly
weigh on a feeble Christian.”

After this prelude, the neophyte’s curiosity had risen to an
indescribable pitch. What could be the crime of this good
soul whom Madame de la Chanterie had nicknamed her
Paschal Lamb? It was as exciting as a book entitled The
Crimes of a Sheep. Sheep, perhaps, are ferocious to the grass
and flowers. If we listen to one of the mildest republicans of
our day, the best creatures living are cruel to something. ButTHE SHEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 47

good Monsieur Alain! He, who, like Sterne’s Uncle Toby,
would not crush a fly when it had stung him twenty times!
This beautiful soul—tortured by repentance!

These reflections filled up the pause made by the old man
after he had said, “Listen, then!” and during which he
pushed forward the footstool under Godefroid’s feet that they
might share it.

“T was a little over thirty,” said he; “it was in the year ’98,
so far as I recollect, a time when young men of thirty had
the experience of men of sixty. One morning, a little before
my breakfast hour at nine o’clock, my old housekeeper an-
nounced one of the few friends left to me by the storms of
the Revolution. So my first words were to ask him to break-
fast. My friend, whose name was Mongenod, a young fellow
of eight-and-twerity, accepted, but with some hesitancy. I
had not seen him since 1793 2

“Mongenod!” cried Godefroid, “the——?”

“Tf you want to know the end of the story before the be-
ginning,” the old man put in with a smile, “how am I to tell
it ee

Godefroid settled himself with an air that promised perfect
silence.

“When Mongenod had seated himself,” the good man went
on, “I observed that his shoes were dreadfully worn. His
spotted stockings had been so often washed, that it was hard
to recognize that they were of silk. His knee-breeches were
of nankeen-colored kerseymere, so faded as to tell of long
wear, emphasized by stains in many places, and their buckles,
instead of steel, seemed to me to be of common iron; his shoe-
buckles were to match. His flowered white waistcoat, yellow
with long use, his shirt with its frayed pleated frill, revealed
extreme though decent poverty. Finally, his coat—a houppe-
lande, as we called such a coat, with a single collar like a very
short cape—was enough to assure me that my friend had
fallen on bad times. This coat of nut-brown cloth, extremely
threadbare, and brushed with excessive care, had a rim of
grease or powder round the collar, and buttons off which the48

 

THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

plating had worn to the copper. In fact, the whole outfit was
so wretched, that I could not bear to look at it. His erush
hat—a semicircular structure of beaver, which it was then
customary to carry under one arm instead of weaving it on
the head—must have survived many changes of government.

“However, my friend had no doubt just spent a few sous
to have his head dressed by a barber, for he was freshly shaved,
and his hair, fastened into a club with a comb, was luxuriously
powdered, and smelled of pomatum. I could see two chains
hanging parallel out of his fobs, chains of tarnished steel,
but no sign of the watches within. It was winter, but Monge-
nod had no cloak, for some large drops of melting snow
fallen from the eaves under which he had walked for shelter
lay on the collar of his coat. When he drew off his rabbit-
fur gloves and I saw his right hand, I could perceive the
traces of some kind of hard labor.

“Now, his father, an advocate in the higher court, had left
him some little fortune—five or six thousand francs a year.
I at once understood that Mongenod had come to borrow of
me. I had in a certain hiding-place two hundred louis in
gold, an enormous sum at that time, when it represented I
know not how many hundred thousand francs in paper as-
signats.

“Mongenod and I had been schoolfellows at the Collage des
Grassins, and we had been thrown together again in the same
lawyer’s office—an honest man, the worthy Bordin. When
two men have spent their boyhood together and shared the
follies of their youth, there is an almost sacred bond of sym-
pathy between them; the man’s voice and look stir certain
chords in your heart, which never vibrate but to the particular
memories that he can rouse. Even if you have some cause to
complain of such a comrade, that does not wipe out every
claim of friendship, and between us there had not been the
slightest quarrel.

“In 1787, when his father died, Mongenod had been a
richer man than I; and though I had never borrowed from
him, I had owed to him certain pleasures which my father’sTHE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 49

strictness would have prohibited. But for my friend’s gen-
erosity, I should not have seen the first performance of the
Marriage of Figaro.

“Mongenod was at that time what was called a finished
gentleman, a man about town and attentive to ‘the ladies” I
constantly reproved him for his too great facility in making
friends and obliging them; his purse was constantly open, he
lived largely, he would have stood surety for you after meet-
ing you twice——Dear me, dear me! You have started me on
reminiscences of my youth!” cried Monsieur Alain, with a
bright smile at Godefroid as he paused.

“You are not vexed with me?” said Godefroid.

“No, no. And you may judge by the minute details I am
giving you how large a place the event filled in my life.—
Mongenod, with a good heart and plenty of courage, some-
thing of a Voltairean, was inclined to play the fine gentle-
man,” Monsieur Alain went on. “His education at the Gras-
sins, where noblemen’s sons were to be met, and his adventures
of gallantry, had given him the polish of men of rank, in
those days termed Aristocrats. So you may imagine how
great was my consternation at observing in Mongenod such
signs of poverty as degraded him in my eyes from the elegant
young Mongenod I had known in 1787, when my eyes wan-
dered from his face to examine his clothes.

“However, at that time of general public penury, some wily
folks assumed an appearance of wretchedness; and as others
no doubt had ample reasons for assuming a disguise, I hoped
for some explanation, and invited it.

“What a plight you are in, my dear Mongenod?’ said I,
accepting a pinch of snuff, which he offered me from a box of
imitation gold.

“<Sad enough! replied he. ‘I have but one friend left—
and you are that friend. I have done everything in the world
to avoid coming to this point, but I have come to ask you to
lend me a hundred louis. It is a large sum,’ said he, noticing
my surprise, ‘but if you lend me no more than fifty, I shall
mever be able to repay you; whereas, if I should fail in what

4tery
ae

    
  
 
 
 
 
  
   
  
   
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
  
  

   

50 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

I am undertaking, I shall still have fifty louis to try some
other road to fortune, and I do not yet know what inspira-
tion despair may bring me.’

““Then, have you nothing? said I.

““T have,’ said he, hiding a tear, ‘just five sous left out of
my last piece of silver. To call on you, I had my boots cleaned
and my head dressed. I have the clothes on my back.—But,’
he went on, with a desperate shrug, ‘I owe my landlady a
thousand crowns in assignats, and the man at the cookshop
yesterday refused to trust me. So I have nothing—nothing.’

“*And what do you propose to do?’ said I, insistently med-
dling with his private affairs.

““To enlist if you refuse to help me.’

“You, a soldier! You—Mongenod !”’

““T will get killed, or I will be General Mongenod.’

““Well,’ said I, really moved, ‘eat your breakfast in peace;
I have a hundred louis :

“And here,” said the good man, looking slily at Godefroid,
“I thought it necessary to tell a little lender’s fib.

““But it is all I have in the world, I said to Mongenod.
‘I was waiting till the funds had gone down to the lowest mark
to invest my money, but I will place it in your hands, and you
may regard me as your partner; I leave it to your conscience
to repay me the whole in due time and place. An honest
man’s conscience,’ I added, ‘is the best possible security.’

“Mongenod looked hard at me as I spoke, seeming to stamp
my words on his heart. He held out his right hand, I gave
him my left, and we clasped hands—I, greatly moved, and
he, without restraining two tears which now trickled down
his thin cheeks. The sight of those tears wrung my heart;
and I was still more unnerved when, forgetful of everything
in such a moment, Mongenod, to wipe them away, pulled out a
ragged bandana.

““Wait here,’ said I, running off to my hidden store, my
heart as full as though I had heard a woman confess that she
loved me. I returned with two rolls of fifty louis each.

“““Here—count them.’THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 51

“But he would not count them; he looked about him for a
writing-table in order, as he said, to give me a receipt. I
positively refused to have one.
““If I were to die,’ said I, ‘my heirs would worry you. This
is a matter between you and me.’
“Finding me so true a friend, Mongenod presently lost
the haggard and anxious expression he had worn on entering,
and became cheerful. My housekeeper gave us oysters, white
wine, an omelette, kidneys @ la brochette, and the remains
of a paté de Chartres sent me by my mother; a little dessert,
coffee, and West Indian liqueur. Mongenod, who had fasted
for two days, was the better for it. We sat till three in the
afternoon talking over our life before the Revolution, the
best friends in the world.
“Mongenod told me how he had lost his fortune. In the
first instance, the reduction of the dividends on the Hotel de
Ville had deprived him of two-thirds of his income, for his
father had invested the larger part of his fortune in munici-
pal securities; then, after selling his house in the Rue de
Savoie, he had been obliged to accept payment in assignats ;
he had then taken it into his head to run a newspaper, La
Sentinelle, and at the end of six months was forced to ty. At
the present moment all his hopes hung on the success of a
comic opera called Les Péruviens. This last confession made
me quake. Mongenod, as an author, having spent his all on
the Sentinelle, and living no doubt at the theatre, mixed up
with Feydeau’s singers, with musicians, and the motley world
behind the curtain, did not seem to me like the same, like my
Mongenod. I shuddered a little. But how could I get back
my hundred louis? I could see the two rolls, one in each
fob like the barrel of a pistol.
“Mongenod went away. When I found myself alone, no
longer face to face with his bitter and cruel poverty, I began
to reflect in spite of myself; I was sober again. ‘Mongenod,’
thought I to myself, ‘has no doubt sunk as low as possible;
he has acted a little farce for my benefit!’ His glee when he
saw me calmly hand over so vast a sum now struck me as that52 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

of a stage rascal cheating some Géronte. I ended where I
ought to have begun, resolved to make some inquiries about
my friend Mongenod, who had written his address on the
back of a playing-card.

“A feeling of delicacy kept me from going to see him the
next day; he might have ascribed my haste to distrust of him.
Two days after I found my whole time absorbed by various
business; and it was not, in fact, till a fortnight had elapsed
that, seeing no more of Mongenod, I made my way from La
Croix-Rouge, where I then lived, to the Rue des Moineaux,
where he lived.

“Mongenod was lodged in a furnished house of the mean-
est description ; but his landlady was a very decent woman, the
widow of a farmer-general who had died on the scaffold. She,
completely ruined, had started with a few louis the precarious
business of letting rooms. Since then she has rented seven
houses in the neighborhood of Saint-Roch and made a for-
tune.

“Citizen Mongenod is out, said she. ‘But there is some
one at home.’

“This excited my curiosity. I climbed to the fifth floor.
A charming young woman opened the door! Oh! A person
of exquisite beauty, who, looking at me doubtfully, stood
behind the partly opened door.

“Tam Alain,’ said I, ‘Mongenod’s friend.’

“At once the door was wide open, and I went into a hor-
rible garret, which the young woman had, however, kept seru-
pulously clean. She pushed forward a chair to the hearth
piled with ashes, but with no fire, where in one corner I saw
a common earthenware fire-pan. The cold was icy.

““I am glad indeed, monsieur, said she, taking my hands
and pressing them warmly, ‘to be able to express my grati-
tude, for you are our deliverer. But for you I might never
have seen Mongenod again. He would have—God knows—
have thrown himself into the river. He was desperate when
he set out to see you.’

“As I looked at the young lady I was greatly astonishedTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 53

to see that she had a handkerchief bound about her head ; and
below its folds at the back and on the temples there was a
sort of black shadow. Studying it attentively, I discovered
that her head was shaved.
“*Are you ill?’ I asked, noticing this strange fact.

“She glanced at herself in a wretched dirty pier-glass, and
colored, while tears rose to her eyes.

“*Yes, monsieur,’ said she hastily; ‘I had dreadful head-
aches; I was obliged to cut off my hair, which fell to my
heels :

““Have I the honor of speaking to Madame Mongenod ?”
I asked.

““Yes, monsieur,’ said she, with a really heavenly expres-
sion.

“I made my bow to the poor little lady, and went down-
stairs, intending to make the landlady give me some informa-
tion, but she was gone out. It struck me that the young wo-
man had sold her hair to buy bread. I went off at once to a
wood merchant, and sent in half a load of wood, begging
the carter and the sawyers to give the lady a receipted bill to
the name of Mongenod.

“And there ends the phase of my life which I long called
my foolish stage,” said Monsieur Alain, clasping his hands
and uplifting them a little with a repentant gesture.

Godefroid could not help smiling; but he was, as will be
seen, quite wrong to smile.

“Two days later,” the good man went on, “I met one of
those men who are neither friends nor strangers—persons
whom we see from time to time, in short, an acquaintance, as
we say—a Monsieur Barillaud, who, as we happened to speak
of Les Péruviens, proclaimed himself a friend of the author’s.

“Thou know’st Citizen Mongenod?’ said I—for at that
time we were still required by law to address each other with
the familiar tu,’ said he to Godefroid in a parenthesis.

“The citizen looked at me,” said Monsieur Alain, resum-
ing the thread of his story, “and exclaimed:

“TI only wish I had never known him, for he has borrowed54

 

THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

money of me many a time, and is so much my friend as not
to return it. He is a queer fellow! the best old boy alive, but
full of illusions?—An imagination of fire——I will do him
justice; he does not mean to be dishonest, only as he is always
deceiving himself about a thousand things, he is led into
conduct that is not altogether straight.’

“How much does he owe you?’

“Oh, a few hundred crowns. He is a regular sieve. No
one knows where his money goes, for he perhaps does not
know that himself.’

““Has he any expedients ?”

““Oh, dear, yes! said Barillaud, laughing. ‘At this mo-
ment he is talking of buying up land among the wild men in
the United States.’

“T went away with this drop of vitriol shed by slander on
my heart to turn all my best feelings sour. I went to call on
my old master in the law, who was always my counselor. As
soon as I had told him the secret of my loan to Mongenod,
and the way in which I had acted:

“*What,’ cried he, ‘is it a clerk of mine that can behave so?
You should have put him off a day and have come to me.
Then you would have known that I had shown Mongenod the
door. He has already borrowed from me in the course of a
year more than a hundred crowns in silver, an enormous sum!
And only three days before he went to breakfast with you,
he met me in the street and described his misery in such des-
perate language that I gave him two louis.’

 Welljit f am the dupe of a clever actor, so much the
worse for him rather than for me!’ said J. ‘But what is to be
done ?”

““At any rate, you must try to get some acknowledgment
out of him, for a debtor however worthless may recover him-
self, and then you may be paid.’

“Thereupon Bordin took out of one of the drawers of his
table a wrapper on which was written the name of Mongenod;
he showed me three acknowledgments, each for a hundred
livres.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 55
' “©The first time he comes,’ said he, ‘I shall make him add
on the interest and the two louis I gave him, and whatever
money he asks for; and then he must sign an acceptance
and a statement, saying that interest accrues from the first
day of the loan. That, at any rate, will be all in order; I
shall have some means of getting paid.’

“Well, then,’ said I to Bordin, ‘cannot you put me as
much in order as yourself? For you are an honest man, and
what you do will be right.’

““In this way I remain the master of the field, replied the
lawyer. ‘When a man behaves as you have done, he is at the
merey of another who may simply make game of him. Now
I don’t choose to be laughed at. A retired Public Prosecutor
of the Chatelet! Bless me, what next !—Every man to whom
you lend money as recklessly as you lent it to Mongenod,
sooner or later thinks of it as his own. It is no longer your
money ; it is his money; you are his creditor, a very inconven-
i1ent person. The debtor then tries to be quit of you by a
compromise with his conscience, and seventy-five out of every
hundred will try to avoid meeting you again to the end of his
days

““Then you look for no more than twenty-five per cent of
honest men ?”

“*Did I say so? said he, with an ironical smile. ‘That is
a large allowance!’

“A fortnight later I had a note from Bordin desiring me
to call on him to fetch my receipt. I went.

““T tried to snatch back fifty louis for you,’ said he.—I
had told him all about my conversation with Mongenod.—
‘But the birds are flown. You may say good-bye to your yel-
low-boys! Your canary-birds have fled to warmer climes.
We have a very cunning rascal to deal with. Did he not as-
sure me that his wife and his father-in-law had set out for
the United States with sixty of your louis to buy land, and
that he intended to join them there? To make a fortune, as
he said, so as to return to pay his debts, of which he handed
me the schedule drawn out in due form; for he begged me to56

 

THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

keep myself informed as to what became of his creditors.
Here is the schedule,’ added Bordin, showing me a wrapper
on which was noted the total. ‘Seventeen thousand francs
im hard cash! With such a sum as that a house might be
bought worth two thousand crowns a Weds

“After replacing the packet, he gave me a bill of exchange
for a sum equivalent to a hundred lotis in gold, stated in
assignats, with a letter in which Mongenod acknowledged the
debt with interest on a hundred louis @or.

“*So now I am all safe?’ said I to Bordin.

““He will not deny the debt, replied my old master. ‘But
where there are no effects, the King—that is to say, the Di-
rectoire—has no rights.’

“I thereupon left him. Believing myself to have been
robbed by a trick that evades the law, I withdrew my esteem
from Mongenod, and was very philosophically resigned.

“It is not without a reason that I dwell on these common-
place and apparently unimportant details,’ the good man
went on, looking at Godefroid. “I am trying to show you
how I was led to act as most men act, blindly, and in contempt
of certain rules which even savages do not disregard in the
most trifling matters. Many men would justify themselves
by the authority of Bordin; but at this day I feel that I had
no excuse. As soon as we are led to condemn one of our fel-
lows, and to refuse him our esteem for life, we ought to rely
solely on our own judgment—and even then !—Ought we to
set up our own feelings as a tribunal before which to arraign
our neighbor? Where would the law be? What should be
our standard of merit? Would not a weakness in me be
strength in my neighbor? So many men, so many different
circumstances would there be for each deed ; for there are no
two identical sets of conditions in human existence. Society
alone has the right of reproving its members; for I do not
grant it that of punishing them. A mere reprimand is suffi-
cient, and brings with it cruelty enough.

“So as I listened to the haphazard opinions of a Parisian,
admiring my former teacher’s acumen, I condemned Monge-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

my

C1

nod,” the good man went on, after drawing from his narra-
tive this noble moral.

“The performance of Les Péruviens was announced. I
expected to have a ticket for the first night; I conceived my-
self in some way his superior. As a result of his indebtedness,
my friend seemed to me a vassal who owed me many things be-
sides the interest on my money. We are all alike!

“Not only did Mongenod send me no ticket, but I saw him
at a distance coming along the dark passage under the Thé-
atre Feydeau, well dressed—nay, almost elegant; he affected
not to see me; then, when he had passed me, and I thought
I would run after him, he had vanished down some cross pas-
sage. ‘This irritated me extremely; and my annoyance, far
from being transient, increased as time went on.

“This was why. A few days after this incident I wrote
to Mongenod much in these words:

 

“ “My FrIeND,—You should not regard me as indifferent
to anything that can happen to you, whether for good or ill.
Does the Péruviens come up to your expectations? You for-
got me—you had every right to do so—at the first perform-
ance, when I should have applauded you heartily! However,
T hope, all the same, that you may find Peru in the piece, for
I can invest my capital, and I count on you when the bill falls
due.—Your friend, ALAIN.’

“After waiting for a fortnight and receiving no answer, I
called in the Rue des Moineaux. The landlady told me that
the little wife had, in fact, set out with her father, at the
date named by Mongenod to Bordin. Mongenod always left
his garret early in the morning, and did not come in till late
at night. Another fortnight passed; I wrote another letter in
these terms:

“My DEAR Moncenop,—lI see nothing of you; you do not
answer my notes; I cannot at all understand your conduct;
and if I were to behave so to you, what would you think of
me ?”58 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

 

“I did not sign myself ‘Your friend.’ I wrote ‘With best
regards.’

“A month slipped by; no news of Mongenod. The Péru-
viens had not obtained so great a success as Mongenod had
counted on. I paid for a seat at the twentieth performance,
and I found a small house. And yet Madame Scio was very
fine in it. I was told in the foyer that there would be a few
more performances of the piece. I went seven times to call
on Mongenod; he was never at home, and each time I left
my name with the landlady. So then I wrote again:

““Monsieur, if you do not wish to lose my respect after
forfeiting my friendship, you will henceforth treat me as a
stranger—that is to say, with civility—and you will tell me
whether you are prepared to pay me when your note of hand
falls due. I shall act in accordance with your reply.—Yours
faithfully. ALAIN.’

 

“No reply. It was now 1799; a year had elapsed all but
two months.

“When the bill fell due I went to see Bordin. Bordin took
the note of hand, and then took legal proceedings. The re-
verses experienced by the French armies had had such a de-
pressing effect on the funds that five francs a year could be
purchased for seven francs. Thus, for a hundred louis in gold,
I might have had nearly fifteen hundred francs a year. Hvery
morning, as I read the paper over my cup of coffee, I would
exclaim:

“Confound that Mongenod! But for him, I could have a
thousand crowns a year!’

“Mongenod had become my chronic aversion; I thundered
at him even when I was walking in the street.

“‘Bordin is after him!’ said I to myself. ‘He will catch
him—and serve him right!’

“My rage expended itself in imprecations; I cursed the
man; I believed him capable of any crime. Yes! Monsieur
Barillaud was quite right in what he said.THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 59

“Well, one morning my debtor walked in, no more discon-
certed than if he had not owed me a centime; and I, when I
saw him, I felt all the shame that should have been his. I
was like a criminal caught in the act; I was quite ill at ease.
The 18th of Brumaire was past, everything was going on well,
and Bonaparte had set out to fight the battle of Marengo.

““Tt is unlucky, monsieur,’ said I, ‘that I should owe your
visit solely to the intervention of a bailiff.’

“Mongenod took a chair and sat down.

““*T have come to tell you, said he, with the familiar tu,
‘that I cannot possibly pay you.’

*“*You have lost me the chance of investing my money be-
fore the arrival of the First Consul—at that time I could
have made a little fortune -

“““T know it, Alain, said he; ‘I know it. But what will
you get by prosecuting me for debt and plunging me deeper
by loading me with costs? I have letters from my father-in-
law and my wife; they have bought some land and sent me
the bill for the necessaries of the house; I have had to spend
all I had in those purchases. Now, and nobody can hinder me
—I mean to sail by a Dutch vessel from Flushing, whither I
have sent all my small possessions. Bonaparte has won the
battle of Marengo, peace will be signed, and I can join my
family without fear—for my dear little wife was expecting a
baby.’

“And so you have sacrificed me to your own interests?”
cried [.

“<Yes,’ said he; ‘I thought you my friend.’

“At that moment I felt small as compared to Mongenod,
so sublime did that speech seem to me, so simple and grand.

“<Tid I not tell you so, he went on; ‘was I not absolutely
frank with you—here, on this very spot? I came to you,
Alain, as being the only man who would appreciate me.—
Fifty louis would be wasted, I told you; but if you lent me a
hundred, I would repay them. I fixed no date, for how can I
tell when my long struggle with poverty will come to an end?
You were my last friend. All my friends, even our old mas-60

 

THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

ter Bordin, despised me simply because I wanted to borrow
money of them. Oh! Alain, you can never know the dreadful
feelings that grip the heart of an honest man fighting misfor-
tune when he goes into another man’s house to ask for help!
—and all that follows! I hope you may never know
them ; they are worse than the anguish of death!

““You have written me certain letters which, from me
under similar circumstances, would have struck you as odious.
You expected things of me that were out of my power. You
are the only man to whom I attempt to justify myself. In
spite of your severity, and though you ceased to be my friend
and became only my creditor from the day when Bordin asked
me for an acknowledement of your loan, thus discrediting the
handsome agreement we ourselves had come to, here, shak-
ing hands on it with tears in our eyes!—Well, I have for-
gotten everything but that morning’s work.

“It is in memory of that hour that I have come now to
say, “You know not what misfortune is 50 Mob rail at ite
I have not had an hour, not a second, to write to you in reply!
Perhaps you would have liked me to come and pay you com-
pliments?—You might as well expect a hare, harassed by
dogs and hunters, to rest in a clearing and crop the grass !—
I sent you no ticket! No; I had not enough to satisfy those
on whom my fate depended. A novice in the theatrical world,
I was the prey of musicians, actors, singers, the orchestra. To
enable me to join my family over seas, and buy what they
need, I sold the Péruviens to the manager with two other
pieces I had in my desk. I am setting out for Holland with-
out a sou. I shall eat dry bread on my journey till I reach
Flushing. I have paid my passage, and have nothing more.
But for my landlady’s compassion, and her trust in me, I
should have had to walk to Flushing with a knapsack on my
back. And s0, in spite of your doubting me, as, but for you,
I could not have sent my father-in-law and my wife to New

York, I am entirely grateful."—No, Monsieur Alain, I will
not forget that the hundred louis you lent me might at this
time be yielding you an income of fifteen hundred francs.’THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 61

**T would fain believe you, Mongenod,’ said I, almost con-
vineed by the tone in which he poured out this explanation.

“At any rate, you no longer address me as monsieur,’ said
he eagerly, and looking at me with emotion. ‘God knows I
should quit France with less regret if I could leave one man
behind me in whose eyes I was neither half a rogue, nor a
spendthrift, nor a victim to illusions. A man who can love
truly, Alain, is never wholly despicable.’

“At these words I held out my hand; he took it and pressed
i

“Heaven protect you!’ said I.

“We are still friends?’ he asked.

“ “Yes, I replied; ‘it shall never be said that my schoolfel-
low, the friend of my youth, set out for America under the
ban of my anger! 4

“Mongenod embraced me with tears in his eyes, and rushed
off to the door.

“When I met Bordin a few days afterwards, I told him the
story of our interview, and he replied with a smile:

“<T only hope it was not all part of the performance !—He
did not ask you for anything?’

=o Nio. said: 1

““<He came to me too, and I was almost as weak as you;
but he asked me for something to get food on the way. How-
ever, he who lives will see!’

“This remark of Bordin’s made me fear lest I had yielded
stupidly to an impulse of feeling.

“Still, he too, the Public Prosecutor, did the same,’ said I
to myself.

“Tt is unnecessary, I think, to explain to you how I lost all
my fortune excepting the other hundred louis, which I in-
vested in Government securities when prices had risen so high
that I had barely five hundred francs a year to live upon by
the time I was four-and-thirty. By Bordin’s interest I ob-
tained an appointment at eight hundred francs a year in a
branch of the Mont-de-Piété, Rue des Petits Augustins. I
lived in the humblest way; I lodged on the third floor of a62 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

house in the Rue des Marais in an apartment consisting of
two rooms and a closet for two hundred and fity francs! §
went out to dinner in a boarding-house where there was an
open table, and for this I paid forty francs a month. In the
evening I did some copying. Ugly as I am, and very poor,
I had to give up all ideas of marriage e

As he heard this verdict pronounced on himself by poor
Alain in a tone of angelic resignation, Godefroid gave a little
start, which proved better than any speech could have done
the similarity of their fate; and the good man, in reply to
this eloquent gesture, seemed to pause for his hearer to speak.

“And no one ever loved you?” asked Godefroid.

“No one,” he replied, “excepting Madame, who returns
to all of us alike our love for her—a love I might almost call
divine-—You must have seen it: we live in her life, as she
lives in ours; we have but one soul among us; and though
our enjoyments are not physical, they are none the less very
intense, for we live only through the heart.--How can we help
it, my dear boy? By the time women are capable of appre-
clating moral qualities they have done with externals, and
are growing old.—I have suffered much, I can tell you!”

“Ah! that is the stage I am at ” said Godefroid.

“Under the Empire,” the old man went on, bowing his head,
“dividends were not very punctually paid; we had to be pre-
pared for deferred payment. From 1802 to 1814 not a week
passed that I did not ascribe my difficulties to Mongenod:
“But for Mongenod,’ I used to think, ‘I might have been mar-
ried. But for him I should not be obliged to live in priva-
tion..—But sometimes, too, I would say to myself, ‘Perhaps
the poor man is pursued by ill-luck out there !?

“In 1806, one day when I found my life a heavy burden
to bear, I wrote him a long letter that I despatched via Hol-
Jand. I had no answer; and for three years I waited, found-
ing hopes on that reply which were constantly deceived. At
last I resigned myself to my fate. To my five hundred francs
of dividends, and twelve hundred francs of salary from the
Mont-de-Piété, for it was raised, I added five hundred forTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 63

my work as bookkeeper to a perfumer, Monsieur Birotteau.
Thus I not only made both ends meet, but I saved eight hun-
dred francs a year. By the beginning of 1814, I was able to in-
vest nine thousand francs of savings in the funds, buying at
forty; thus I had secured sixteen hundred francs a year for
my old age. So then, with fifteen hundred francs a year from
the Mont-de-Piété, six hundred as a bookkeeper, and sixteen
hundred in dividends, I had an income of three thousand
seven hundred francs. I took rooms in the Rue de Seine,
and I lived in rather more comfort.

“My position brought me into contact with many of the very
poor. For twelve years I have known, better than any one,
what the misery of the world is; once or twice I have helped
some poor creatures; and I felt the keenest pleasure when, out
of ten that I had assisted, one or two families were rescued
from their difficulties.

“Tt struck me that true beneficence did not consist in throw-
ing money to the sufferers. Being charitable, in the com-
mon phrase, often appeared to me to be a sort of premium on
crime. I set to work to study this question. I was by this
time fifty years old, and my life was drawing to a close.

“What good am I in the world? I asked myself. ‘To
whom can I leave my money? When I shall have furnished
my rooms handsomely, have secured a good cook, have made
my life suitably comfortable, what am I to do with my time?’

“For eleven years of revolutions and fifteen years of poverty
had wasted the happiest part of my life, had consumed it in
labors that were fruitless, or devoted solely to the preservation
of my person! At such an age no one can make an obscure
and penurious youth the starting-point to reach a brilliant
position; but every one may make himself useful. I under-
stood, in short, that a certain supervision and much good ad-
‘vice would increase tenfold the value of money given, for the
‘poor always need guidance; to enable them to profit by the
work they do for others, it is not the intelligence of the specu-
lator that is wanting.

“A few happy results that I achieved made me extremely64 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

proud. I discerned both an aim and an occupation, to say
nothing of the exquisite pleasure to be derived from playing
the part of Providence, even on the smallest scale.”

“And you now play it on a large scale?” said Godefroid
eagerly.

“Oh, you want to know too much!” said the old man. “Nay,
nay.—Would you believe it,” he went on after a pause, “the
smallness of the means at my command constantly brought
my thoughts back to Mongenod?

““But for Mongenod I could have done so much more,’ I
used to reflect. ‘If a dishonest man had not robbed me of
fifteen hundred francs a year,’ I often thought, ‘I could have
helped this or that family,

“Thus excusing my inability by such an accusation, those
to whom I gave nothing but words to comfort them joined
me in cursing Mongenod. These maledictions were balm to
my heart.

“One morning, in January 1816, my housekeeper an-
nounced—whom do you _ think ?—Mongenod.—Monsieur
Mongenod. And who should walk in but the pretty wife, now
six-and-thirty, accompanied by three children; then came
Mongenod, younger than when he left, for wealth and happi-
ness shed a glory on those they favor. He had gone away lean,
pale, yellow, and haggard; he had come back fat and well-lk-
ing, as flourishing as a prebendary, and well dressed. He
threw himself into my arms, and finding himself coldly wel-
comed, his first words were:

““Could I come any sooner, my friend? The seas have
only been open since 1815, and it took me eighteen months to
realize my property, close my accounts, and call in my assets.
I have succeeded, my friend! When I received your letter in
1806, I set out in a Dutch vessel to bring you home a little
fortune; but the union of Holland to the French Empire led

to our being taken by the English, who transported me to the
coast of Jamaica, whence by good luck I escaped.

“On my return to New York I was a victim to bankruptcy ;
for Charlotte, during my absence, had not known how to beTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 65

on her guard against swindlers. So I was compelled to begin
again to accumulate a fortune.

“However, here we are at last. From the way the chil-
dren look at you, you may suppose that they have often heard
of the benefactor of the family.’

““Yes, indeed, said pretty Madame Mongenod, ‘we never
passed a day without speaking of you. Your share has been
allowed for in every transaction. We have longed for the
happiness we enjoy at this moment of offering you your for-
tune, though we have never for a moment imagined that this
“rector’s tithe” can pay our debt of gratitude.’

“And as she spoke, Madame Mongenod offered me the beau-
tiful casket you see there, which contained a hundred and
fifty thousand-frane notes.

“*You have suffered much, my dear Alain, I know; but we
could imagine all your sufferings, and we craked our brains
to find means of sending you money; but without success,’
Mongenod went on. ‘You tell me you could not marry; but
here is our eldest daughter. She has been brought up in the
idea that she should be your wife, and she has five hundred
thousand francs i

““God forbid that I should wreck her happiness!’ cried J,
as I beheld a girl as lovely as her mother had been at her age;
and I drew her to me, and kissed her forehead.

““Do not be afraid, my pretty child” said I. ‘A man of
fifty and a girl of seventeen—and so ugly an old fellow as I!
—WNever !’

““Monsieur,’ said she, ‘my father’s benefactor can never
seem ugly in my eyes.’

“This speech, made with spontaneous candor, showed me
that all Mongenod had told me was true. I offered him my
hand, and we fell into each other’s arms once more.

““My friend, said I, ‘I have often abused you, cursed
you 8

“*You had every right, Alain,’ replied he, reddening. ‘You
were in poverty through my fault ;

566 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

 

“I took Mongenod’s papers out of a box and restored them
to him, after cancelling his note of hand.

“Now you will all breakfast with me,’ said I to the family
party.

“*On. condition of your dining with my wife as soon as we
are settled,’ said Mongenod, ‘for we arrived only yesterday.
We are going to buy a house, and I am about to open a bank
in Paris for North American business to leave to that young-
ster,’ he said, pointing to his eldest son, a lad of fifteen.

“We spent the afternoon together, and in the evening we
all went to the theatre, for Mongenod and his party were dying
to see a play. Next day I invested in the funds, and had then
an income of about fifteen thousand francs in all. This re-
leased me from bookkeeping in the evening, and allowed me to
give up. my appointment, to the great satisfaction of all my
subordinates.

“My friend died in 1827, after founding the banking house
of Mongenod and Co., which made immense profits on the first
loans issued at the time of the Restoration. His daughter,
to whom he subsequently gave about a million of francs, mar-
ried the Vicomte de Fontaine. The son whom you know is
not yet married; he lives with his mother and his younger
brother. We find them ready with all the money we may need.

“Frédéric—for his father, in America, had named him after
me—FHrédéric Mongenod, at seven-and-thirty, is one of the
most skilful and respected bankers in Paris.

“Not very long since Madame Mongenod confessed to me
that she had sold her hair for two crowns of six livres
to be able to buy some bread. She gives twenty-four loads of
wood every year, which I distribute among the poor, in return
for the half-load I once sent her.”

“Then this accounts for your connection: with the house of
Mongenod,” said Godefroid. “And your fortune——”

The old man still looked at Godefroid with the same expres-
sion of mild irony.

“Pray go on,” said Godefroid, seeing by Monsieur Alain’s
manner that he had more to say.THH SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 67

“This conclusion, my dear Godefroid, made the deepest im-
pression on me. Though the man who had suffered so much,
though my friend had forgiven me my injustice, I could not
forgive myself.”

“Oh!” said Godefroid.

“I determined to devote all my surplus income, about ten
thousand francs a year, to acts of rational beneficence,”
Monsieur Alain calmly went on. “At about that time I met
an Examining Judge of the department of the Seine named
Popinot, whose death we mourned three years ago,
and who for fifteen years practised the most enlightened
charity in the Saint-Marcel quarter. He, in  con-
cert with the venerable vicar of Notre-Dame and with Ma-
dame, planned the work in which we are all engaged, and
which, sinee 1823, has seeretly effected some good results.

“This work has found a soul in Madame de la Chanterie;
she is really the very spirit of the undertaking. The vicar has
succeeded in making us more religious than we were at first,
demonstrating the necessity for being virtuous ourselves if
we desire to inspire virtue—for preaching, in fact, by ex-
ample. And the further we progress in that path, the hap-
pier we are among ourselves. ‘Thus it was my repentance
for having misprized the heart of my boyhood’s friend which
led me to the idea of devoting to the poor, through myself,
the fortune he brought home to me, which I accepted without
demurring to the vast sum repaid to me for so small a loan;
the application of it made it right.”

This narrative, devoid of all emphasis, and told with touch-
ing simplicity of tone, gesture, and expression, would have
been enough to make Godefroid resolve on joining in this
noble and saintly work, if he had not already intended it.

“You know little of the world,” said Godefroid, “if you had
such scruples over a thing which would never have weighed on
any other conscience.”

“T know only the wretched,” replied the good man. “I have
no wish to know a world where men misjudge each other with
so little compunction.—Now, it is nearly midnight, and I have
to meditate on my chapter of the Imitatton.—Good-night.”

i

a

ct

     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

oe68 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

Godefroid took the kind old man’s hand and pressed it with
an impulse of genuine admiration.

“Can you tell me Madame de la Chanterie’s history ?” asked
Godefroid.

“It would be impossible without her permission, for it is
connected with one of the most terrible incidents of imperial
politics. I first knew Madame through my friend Bordin; he
knew all the secrets of that beautiful life; and it was he who
led me, so to speak, to this house.”

“At any rate, then,” said Godefroid, “I thank you for hay-
ing told me your life; it contains a lesson for me.”

“Do you discern its moral ?”

“Nay, tell it me,” said Godefroid; “for I might see it differ-
ently to you a

“Well, then,” said the good man, “pleasure is but an acci-
dent in the life of the Christian; it is not his aim and end—
and we learn this too late.”

“What then happens when we are converted 2” asked Gode-
froid.

“Look there!’ said Alain, and he pointed to an inscription
in letters of gold on a black ground, which the newcomer
had not seen before, as this was the first time he had ever been
into his companion’s rooms. He turned round and read the
words, “TRANSIRE BENEFACIENDO.”

“That, my son, is the meaning we then find in life. That
is our motto. If you become one of us, that constitutes your
brevet. We read that text and take it as our counsel at every
hour of the day, when we rise, when we go to bed, while we
dress. Oh! if you could but know what infinite happiness is to
be found in carrying out that device!”

“In what way?” said Godefroid, hoping for some explana-
tions.

“In the first place, we are as rich as Baron de Nucingen.—
But the Imitation prohibits our calling anything our own;
we are but stewards; and if we feel a single impulse of pride,
we are not worthy to be stewards. That would not be transire
benefaciendo,; it would be enjoyment in thought. If you sayTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 69

to yourself, with a certain dilation of the nostrils, ‘I am play-
ing the part of Providence’—as you might have thought this
morning, if you had been in my place, giving new life to a
whole family, you are a Sardanapalus at once—and wicked!
Not one of our members ever thinks of himself when doing
good. You must cast off all vanity, all pride, all self-con-
sciousness; and it is difficult, I can tell you.”

Godefroid bid Monsieur Alain good-night, and went to his
own rooms, much moved by this story; but his curiosity was
excited rather than satisfied, for the chief figure in the picture
of this domestic scene was Madame de la Chanterie. This
woman’s history was to him so supremely interesting that he
made the knowledge of it the first aim of his stay in the house.
He understood that the purpose for which these five persons
were associated was some great charitable endeavor; but he
thought much less of that than of his heroine.

 

The neophyte spent some days in studying these choice
spirits, amid whom he found himself, with greater attention
than he had hitherto devoted to them; and he became the sub-
ject of a moral phenomenon which modern philanthropists
have overlooked, from ignorance perhaps. The sphere in which
he lived had a direct influence on Godefroid. The law which
governs physical nature in respect to the influence of atmos-
pheric conditions on the lives of the beings subject to them,
also governs moral nature; whence it is to be inferred that
the collecting in masses of the criminal class is one of the
greatest social crimes, while absolute isolation is an experi-
ment of which the success is very doubtful. Condemned felons
ought, therefore, to be placed in religious institutions and sur-
rounded with prodigies of goodness instead of being left
among marvels of evil. The Church may be looked to for per-
fect devotion to this cause; for if She is ready to send mis-
sionaries to barbarous or savage nations, how gladly would
She charge her religious Orders with the mission of rescuing
and instructing the savages of civilized life! Every criminal
is an atheist—often without knowing it.70 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

 

Godefroid found his five companions endowed with the
qualities they demanded of him; they were all free from pride
or vanity, all truly humble and pious, devoid of the preten-
tiousness which constitutes devoutness in the invidious sense
of the word. These virtues were contagious; he was filled with
the desire to imitate these obscure heroes, and he ended by
studying with ardor the book he had at first scorned. Within
a fortnight he had reduced life to its simplest expression, to
what it really is when regarded from the lofty point of view to
which the religious spirit leads us. Finally, his curiosity, at
first purely worldly and roused by many vulgar motives, be-
came rarefied. He did not cease to be curious ; 1t would have
been difficult to lose all interest in the life of Madame de la
Chanterie; but, without intending it, he showed a reserve
which was fully appreciated by these men, in whom the Holy
Spirit had developed wonderful depths of mind, as happens,
indeed, with all who devote themselves to a religious life. The
concentration of the moral powers, by whatever means or Sys-
tem, increases their scope tenfold.

“Our young friend is not yet a convert,” said the good Abbé
de Véze; “but he wishes to be.”

An unforeseen circumstance led to the revelation of Madame
de la Chanterie’s history, so that his intense interest in it
was soon satisfied.

Paris was just then engrossed by the investigation of the
case of the Barriére Saint-Jacques, one of those hidcous trials
which mark the history of our assizes. The trial derived its
interest from the criminals themselves, whose daring and gen-
eral superiority to ordinary culprits, with their cynical con-
tempt for justice, really appalled the public. It was a note-
worthy fact that no newspaper ever entered the Hotel de la
Chanterie, and Godefroid only heard of the rejection of the
appeal to the Supreme Court from his master in bookkeep-
ing; the trial had taken place long before he came to Madame
de la Chanterie.

“Do you ever meet with such men as these atrocious scoun-
drels?” he asked his new friends. “Or, when you do, how
do you deal with them ?”THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 71

“In the first place,” said Monsieur Nicolas, “there is no such
thing as an atrocious scoundrel; there are mad creatures fit
only for the asylum at Charenton; but with the exception of
those rare pathological exceptions, what we find are simply
men without religion, or who argue falsely, and the task of
the charitable is to set souls upright and bring the erring into
the right way.”

“And to the apostle all things are possible,” said the Abbé
de Véze; “he has God on his side.”

“If you were sent to these two condemned men,” said Gode-
froid, “you could do nothing with them.”

“There would not be time,” observed Monsieur Alain.

“As a rule,” said Monsieur Nicolas, “the souls handed over
to be dealt with by the Church are in utter impenitence, and
the time is too short for miracles to be wrought. The men
of whom you are speaking, if they had fallen into our hands,
would have been men of mark; their energy is immense; but
when once they have committed murder, it is impossible to
do anything for them; human justice has taken possession of
them a

“Then you are averse to capital punishment?” said Gode-
froid.

Monsieur Nicolas hastily rose and left the room.

“Never speak of capital punishment in the presence of Mon-
sieur Nicolas. He once recognized in a criminal, whose exe-
ution it was his duty to superintend, a natural child of his
own 4

“And who was innocent !”? added Monsieur Joseph.

At this moment Madame de la Chanterie, who had not been
in the room, came in.

“Still, you must allow,” Godefroid went on. addressing
Monsieur Joseph, “that society cannot exist without capital
punishment, and that these men, whose heads a

Godefroid felt his mouth suddenly closed by a strong hand,
and the Abbé de Véze led away Madame de la Chanterie, pale
and half dead.

“What have you done?” cried Monsieur Joseph. “Take him72 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

away, Alain,” he said, removing the hand with which he had
gagged Godefroid; and he followed the Abbé de Véze into
Madame’s room.

“Come with me,” said Alain to Godefroid. “You have com-
pelled us to tell you the secrets of Madame’s life.”

In a few minutes the two friends were together in Monsieur
Alain’s room, as they had been when the old man had told
Godefroid his own history.

“Well,” said Godefroid, whose face sufficiently showed his
despair at having been the cause of what might be called a
catastrophe in this pious household.

“TI am waiting till Manon shall have come to say how she is
going on,” replied the good man, as he heard the woman’s step
on the stairs.

“Monsieur, Madame is better. Monsieur ?Abbé managed
to deceive her as to what had been said,’ and Manon shot
a wrathful glance at Godefroid.

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed the unhappy young man, his
eyes filling with tears.

“Come, sit down,” said Monsieur Alain, seating himself.
Then he paused to collect his thoughts.

“T do not know,” said the kind old man, “that I have the
talent necessary to give a worthy narrative of a life so
cruelly tried. You must forgive me if you find the words of
so poor a speaker inadequate to the magnitude of the events
and catastrophes. You must remember that it is a very long
time since I was at school, and that I date from a time when
thoughts were held of more importance than effect—from a
prosaic age, when we knew not how to speak of things except
by their names.”

Godefroid bowed with an expression of assent, in which his
worthy old friend could discern his sincere admiration, and
which plainly said, “I am listening.”

“As you have just perceived, my young friend, it would
be impossible for you to remain one of us without learning
some of the particulars of that saintly woman’s life. There
are certain ideas, allusions, words, which are absolutely pro-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 73

hibited in this house, since they inevitably reopen wounds,
of which the anguish might kill Madame if it were once or
twice revived ‘

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Godefroid, “what have I
done ?”

“But for Monsieur Joseph, who happily interrupted you
just as you were about to speak of the awful instrument of
death, you would have annihilated the poor lady.—It is time
that you should be told all; for you will be one of us, of that
we are all convinced.”

“Madame de la Chanterie,” he went on after a short pause,
“is descended from one of the first families of Lower Nor-
mandy. Her maiden name was Mademoiselle Barbe-Philiberte
de Champignelles—of a younger branch of that house; and
she was intended to take the veil unless a marriage could
be arranged for her with the usual renunciations of property
that were commonly required in poor families of high rank.
A certain Sieur de la Chanterie, whose family had sunk into
utter obscurity, though dating from the time of Philippe-
Auguste’s crusade, was anxious to recover the rank to which
so ancient a name gave him a claim in the province of Nor-
mandy. But he had fallen quite from his high estate, for he
had made money—some three hundred thousand franes—by
supplying the commissariat for the army at the time of the
war with Hanover. His son, trusting too much to this wealth,
which provincial rumor magnified, was living in Paris in a
way calculated to cause the father of a family some uneasi-
ness.

“Mademoiselle de Champignelles’ great merits became
famous throughout the district of le Bessin; and the old man,
whose little feof of la Chanterie lay between Caen and Saint-
Lé, heard some expressions of regret that so accomplished a
young lady, and one so capable of making a husband happy,
should end her days in a convent. On his uttering a wish to
seek her out, some hope was given him that he might obtain
the hand of Mademoiselle Philiberte for his son if he were
content to renounce any marriage portion. He went to74 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

Bayeux, contrived to have two or three meetings with the
Champignelles family, and was fascinated by the young lady’s
noble qualities.

“At the age of sixteen, Mademoiselle de Champignelles
gave promise of what she would become. She evinced well-
founded piety, sound good sense, inflexible rectitude—one
of those natures which will never veer in its affections even
if they are the outcome of duty. The old nobleman, en-
riched by his somewhat illicit gains, discerned in this charm-
ing girl a wife who might keep his son in order by the au-
thority of virtue and the ascendency of a character that was
firm but not rigid; for, as you have seen, no one can be gen-
tler than Madame de la Chanterie. Then, no one could be
more confiding; even in the decline of life she has the candor
of innocence; in her youth she would not believe in evil; such
distrust as you may have seen in her she owes to her mis-
fortunes. The old man pledged himself to the Champignelles
to give them a discharge in full for the portion legitimately
due to Mademoiselle Philiberte on the signing of the mar-
riage-contract; in return, the Champignelles, who were con-
nected with the greatest families, promised to have the feof
of la Chanterie created a barony, and they kept their word.
The bridegroom’s aunt, Madame de Boisfrelon, the wife of
the councillor to the Parlement who died in your rooms, prom-
ised to leave her fortune to her nephew.

“When all these arrangements were completed between
the two families, the father sent for his son. This young
man, at the time of his marriage, was five-and-twenty, and
already a Master of Appeals; he had indulged in numerous
follies with the young gentlemen of the time, living in their
style; and the old army contractor had several times paid
his debts to a considerable amount. The poor father, fore-
seeing further dissipation on the son’s part, was only too glad
to settle a part of his fortune on his daughter-in-law; but
he was so cautious as to entail the estate of la Chanterie
on the heirs male of the marriage ieTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 75

“A precaution,’ added Monsieur Alain in a parenthesis,
“which the Revolution made useless.”

“As handsome as an angel, and wonderfully skilled in all
athletic exercises, the young Master of Appeals had immense
powers of charming,” he went on. “So Mademoiselle de
Champignelles, as you may easily imagine, fell very much in
love with her husband. The old man, made very happy by this
promising beginning, and hoping that his son was a reformed
character, sent the young couple to Paris. This was early
in 1788. For nearly a year they were perfectly happy. Ma-
dame de la Chanterie was the object of all the little cares,
the most delicate attentions that a devoted lover can lavish
on the one and only woman he loves. Brief as it was, the
honeymoon beamed brightly on the heart of the noble and
unfortunate lady.

“As you know, in those days mothers all nursed their in-
fants themselves. Madame de la Chanterie had a daughter.
This time, when a wife ought to be the object of double de-
votion on her husband’s part, was, on the contrary, the be-
ginning of dreadful woes. The Master of Appeals was obliged
to sell everything he could part with to pay old debts which
he had not confessed, and more recent gambling debts. Then,
suddenly, the National Assembly dissolved the Supreme
Council and the Parlement, and abolished all the great law
appointments that had been so dearly purchased. Thus the
young couple, with the addition of their child, had no income
to rely on but the revenues from the entailed estate, and from
the portion settled on Madame de la Chanterie. Twenty
months after their marriage this charming woman, at the age
of seventeen and a half, found herself reduced to maintaining
herself and the child at her breast by the work of her hands,
in an obscure street where she hid herself. She then found
herself absolutely deserted by her husband, who fell step by
step into the society of the very lowest kind. Never did she
blame her husband, never did she put him in the least in
the wrong. She has told us that all through the worst time
she prayed to God for her dear Henri.

ee76 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“The rascal’s name was Henri,” remarked Monsieur Alain.
“Tt is a name that must never be spoken here, any more than
that of Henriette——To proceed:

“Madame de la Chanterie, who never quitted her little
room in the Rue de la Corderie-du-Temple unless to buy food
or fetch her work, kept her head above water, thanks partly
to an allowance of a hundred francs a month from her father-
in-law, who was touched by so much virtue. However, the
poor young wife, foreseeing that this support might fail her,
had taken up the laborious work of a staymaker, and worked
for a famous dressmaker. In fact, ere long the old contractor
died, and his estate was consumed by his son under favor of
the overthrow of the Monarchy.

“The erewhile Master of Appeals, now one of the most
savage of all the presidents of the revolutionary tribunal, had
become a terror in Normandy, and could indulge all his pas-
sions. Then, imprisoned in his turn on the fall of Robes-
pierre, the hatred of the department condemned him to in-
evitable death. Madame de la Chanterie received a farewell
letter announcing her husband’s fate. She immediately
placed her little girl in the care of a neighbor, and went off
to the town where the wretch was in confinement, taking with
her a few louis, which constituted her whole fortune. This
money enabled her to get into the prison. She succeeded in
helping her husband to escape, dressing him in clothes of her
own, under circumstances very similar to those which not long
after favored Madame de la Valette. She was condemned to
death, but the authorities were ashamed to carry out this act
of revenge, and she was secretly released with the connivance
of the Court over which her husband had formerly presided.
She got back to Paris on foot without any money, sleeping at
farmhouses, and often fed by charity.”

“Good Heavens!’ exclaimed Godefroid.

“Wait,” said the old man, “that was nothing.—In the
course of eight years the poor woman saw her husband three

times. The first time the gentleman spent twenty-four hours

in his wife’s humble lodgings, and went away with all herTHE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY cl

money, after heaping on her every mark of affection, and
leading her to believe in his complete reformation—‘For I
could not resist,’ said she, ‘a man for whom I prayed every
day, and who filled my thoughts exclusively.—The second
time Monsieur de la Chanterie came in a dying state, and from
some horrible disease! She nursed him, and saved his life;
then she tried to reclaim him to decent feeling and a seemly
life. After promising everything this angel begged of him,
the revolutionary relapsed into hideous debaucheries, and in
fact only escaped prosecution by the authorities by taking
refuge in his wife’s rooms, where he died unmolested.

“Still, all this was nothing!” said Alain, seeing dismay
in Godefreid’s face.

“No one in the world he had mixed with had known that
the man was married. Two years after the miserable crea-
ture’s death, she heard that there was a second Madame de
la Chanterie, widowed and ruined like herself. The bigamous
villain had found two such angels incapable of betraying
him.—Towards 1803,” the old man went on after a pause,
‘Monsieur de Boisfrelon, Madame de la Chanterie’s uncle,
having his name removed from the list of proscribed per-
sons, came back to Paris and paid over to her two hundred
thousand francs that the old Commissariat contractor had
placed in his keeping, with instructions to hold it in trust for
his niece. He persuaded the widow to return to Normandy,
where she completed her daughter’s education, and, by the
advice of the old lawyer, purchased back one of the family
estates under very favorable conditions.”

“Ah !? sighed Godefroid.

“Oh! all this was nothing!” said Monsieur Alain. “We
have not yet come to the hurricane-—To proceed. In 1807,
after four years of peace, Madame de la Chanterie saw her
only daughter married to a gentleman whose piety, whose an-
tecedents, and fortune seemed a guarantee from every point
of view; a man who was reported to be the ‘pet lamb’ of the
best society in the country-town where Madame and her
daughter spent every winter. Remark: this society consisted78 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY
of seven or eight families belonging to the highest French
nobility—the d’Esgrignons, the Troisvilles, the Casterans, the
Nouatres, and the like.

“At the end of eighteen months this man deserted his wife
and vanished in Paris, having changed his name. Madame
de la Chanterie could never discover the cause of this separa-
tion till the lightning flash showed it in the midst of the
storm. Her daughter, whom she had brought up with the
greatest care and the purest religious feelings, preserved ab-
solute silence on the subject.

“This lack of confidence was a great shock to Madame de
la Chanterie. Many times already she had detected in her
daughter certain indications of the father’s adventurous
spirit, strengthened by an almost manly determination of
character. The husband had departed without let or hin-
drance, leaving his affairs in the utmost disorder. To this
day Madame de la Chanterie is amazed at this catastrophe,
which no human power could remedy. All the persons she
privately consulted had assured her before the marriage that
the young man’s fortune was clear and unembarrassed, in
land unencumbered by mortgages, when, at that very time,
the estate had, for ten years, been loaded with debt far be-
yond its value. So everything was sold, and the poor young
wife, reduced to her own little income, came back to live with
her mother.

“Madame de la Chanterie subsequently learned that this
man had been kept going by the most respectable persons in
the district for their own benefit, for the wretched man owed
them all more or less considerable sums of money. Indeed,
ever since her arrival in the province, Madame de la Chan-
terie had been regarded as a prey.

“However, there were other reasons for this climax of dis-
aster, which you will understand from a confidential com-
munication addressed to the Emperor.

“This man had long since succeeded in winning the good
graces of the leading Royalists of the Department by his de-
votion to the cause during the stormiest days of the Revolu-THE SHEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 79

tion. As one of Louis XVIII.’s most active emissaries, he
had, since 1793, been mixed up in every conspiracy, always
withdrawing at the right moment, and with so much dexterity
as to give rise at last to suspicions of his honor. The King
dismissed him from service, and he was excluded from all
further scheming, so he retired to his estate, already deeply
involved. All these antecedents, at that time scarcely known
—for those who were initiated into the secrets of the Cabinet
did not say much about so dangerous a colleague—made him
an object almost of worship in a town devoted to the Bour-
bons, where the cruelest devices of the Chouans were regarded
as honest warfare. The Esgrignons, the Casterans, the Che-
valier de Valois, in short, the Aristocracy and the Church,
received the Royalist with open arms, and took him to their
bosom. ‘This favor was supported by his creditors’ earnest
desire to be paid.

“This wretch, a match for the deceased la Chanterie, was
able to keep up his part for three years; he affected the great-
est piety, and subjugated his vices. During the first few
months of his married life he had some little influence over
his wife; he did his utmost to corrupt her by his doctrines,
if atheism may be called a doctrine, and by the flippant tone
in which he spoke of the most sacred things.

“This backstairs diplomate had,on his return to the country,
formed an intimacy with a young man, over head and ears
in debt, like himself, but attractive, in so far that he had as
much courage and honesty as the other had shown hypocrisy
and cowardice. This guest at his house—whose charm and
character could not fail to impress a young woman, to say
nothing of his adventurous career—was a tool in the hus-
band’s hands which he used to support his infamous prin-
ciples. The daughter never confessed to her mother the gulf
into which circumstances had thrown her—for human pru-

 

dence is no word for the caution exercised by Madame de la °

Chanterie when seeking a husband for her only child. And
this last blow, in a life so devoted, so guileless, so religious
as hers, tested as she had been by every kind of misfortune,

    
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

<80 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

filled Madame de la Chanterie with a distrust of herself which
isolated her from her daughter; all the more so because her
daughter, in compensation for her ill-fortune, insisted on
perfect liberty, overruled her mother, and was sometimes very
rough with her.

“Thus wounded in every feeling, cheated alike in her devo-
tion and her love for her husband—to whom she had sacrificed
her happiness, her fortune, and her life, without a murmur ;
cheated in the exclusively religious training she had given her
daughter; cheated by the world, even in the matter of that
daughter’s marriage, and meeting with no justice from the
heart in which she had implanted none but right feelings, she
| turned more resolutely to God, clinging to Him whose hand
lay so heavy on her. She was almost a nun; she went to mass
every morning, carried out monastic discipline, and saved in
everything to be able to help the poor.

“Has any woman ever known a more saintly or more se-
verely tried life than this noble creature, so mild to the un-
| fortunate, so brave in danger, and always so perfect a Chris-
tian?” said the worthy man, appealing to Godefroid. “You
know Madame, you know whether she is deficient in sense,
Judgment, and reflection. She has all these qualities in the
highest degree. Well, and still all these misfortunes, which
surely were enough to qualify any life as surpassing all others
in adversity, were a trifle compared with what God had yet in
store for this woman.—We will speak only of Madame de la
Chanterie’s daughter,” said Monsieur Alain, going on with his
narrative.

“At the age of eighteen, when she married, Mademoiselle
de la Chanterie had an extremely delicate complexion, rather
dark, with a brilliant color, a slender form, and charming
features. An elegantly formed brow was crowned by the most
beautiful black hair, that matched well with bri ght and lively
hazel eyes. A peculiar prettiness and a childlike countenance
belied her real nature and masculine decisiveness. She had
small hands and feet; in all her person there was something
tiny and frail, which excluded any idea of strength and wil-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY Si

fulness. Never having lived away from her mother, her mind
was absolutely innocent, and her piety remarkable.

“This young lady, like Madame de la Chanterie, was
fanatically devoted to the Bourbons, and hated the Revolu-
tion; she regarded Napoleon’s empire as a plague inflicted
on France by Providence, as a punishment for the crimes of
1793. Such a conformity of opinion between the lady and her
son-in-law was, as it always must be in such cases, a con-
clusive reason in favor of the marriage, in which all the aris-
tocracy of the province took the greatest interest.

“This wretched man’s friend had at the time of the re-
bellion in 1799 been the leader of a troop of Chouans. It
would seem that the Baron—for Madame de la Chanterie’s
son-in-law was a Baron—had no object in throwing his wife
and his friend together but that of extracting money from
them. Though deeply in debt, and without any means of
living, the young adventurer lived in very good style, and was
able, no doubt, to help the promoter of royalist conspiracies.

“Here you will need a few words of explanation as to an
association which made a great noise in its day,” said Mon-
sieur Alain, interrupting his narrative. “I mean that of the
raiders known as the Chauffeurs. These brigands pervaded
all the western provinces more or less; but their object was
not so much pillage as a revival of the Royalist opposition.
Advantage was taken of the very general resistance of the peo-
ple to the law of conscription, which, as you know, was enforced
with many abuses. Between Mortagne and Rennes, and even
beyond, as far as the Loire, nocturnal raids were frequent, com-
monly to the injury of those who held national lands. These
bands of destroyers were the terrors of the country. I am not
exaggerating when I tell you that in some Departments the arm
of Justice was practically paralyzed. Those last thunders of
civil war did not echo so far as you might suppose, accus-
tomed as we now are to the startling publicity given by the
press to the most trivial acts of political and private life.
The Censor allowed nothing to appear in print that bore on
politics, unless it were accomplished fact, and even that was
6any sums that might be snatched at the sword’s point from

  

82 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

distorted. If you will take the trouble to look through old
files of the Moniteur and other newspapers, even those issued
in the western provinces, you will find not a word concerning
the four or five great trials which brought sixty or eighty of
these rebels to the scaffold. Brigands, this was the name given
under the Revolution to the Vendéans, the Chouans, and all
who took up arms for the house of Bourbon; and it was still
given in legal phraseology under the Empire to the Royalists
who were victims to sporadic conspiracies. For to some vehe-
ment souls the Emperor and his government were ‘the
Enemy,’ and everything seemed good that was adverse to him.
—I am explaining the position, not justifying the opinions,
and I will now go on with my story.

“So now,” he said, after a pause, such as must occur in a
long story, “you must understand that these Royalists were
ruined by the war of 1793, though consumed by frantic pas-
sions; and if you can conceive of some exceptional natures
consumed also by such necessities as those of Madame de la
Chanterie’s son-in-law and his friend the Chouan leader, you
will see how it was that they determined to commit, for their
private advantage, acts of robbery which their political opin-
ions would justify, against the Imperial government for the
advantage of the Cause.

“The young leader set to work to fan the ashes of the
Chouan faction, to be ready to act at an opportune moment.
There was, soon after, a terrible crisis in the Emperor’s af-
fairs when he was shut up in the island of Lobau, and it
seemed that he must inevitably succumb to a simultancous
attack by England and by Austria. The victory of Wagram
made the internal rebellion all but abortive. This attempt
to revive the fires of civil war in Brittany, la Vendée, and part
of Normandy, was unfortunately coincident with the Baron’s
money difficulties; he had flattered himself that he could
contrive a separate expedition, of which the profits could be
applied solely to redeem his property. But his wife and
friend, with nobler feeling, refused to divert to ptivate usesTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 83

the State coffers; these were to be distributed to the rebel con-
scripts and Chouans, and to purchase weapons and ammuni-
tion to arm a general rising.

“At last, when after heated discussions the young Chouan,
supported by the Baroness, positively refused to retain a hun-
dred thousand francs in silver crowns which was to be seized
from one of the Government Receivers’ offices in the west to
provide for the Royalist forces, the husband disappeared, to
escape the execution on his person of several writs that were
out against him. The creditors tried to extract payment from
his wife, but the wretched man had dried up the spring of af-
fection which prompts a woman to sacrifice herself for her
husband.

“All this was kept from poor Madame de la Chanterie, but
it was a trifle in comparison with the plot that lay behind this
merely preliminary explanation.

“It is too late this evening,” said the good man, looking at
the clock, “and there is too much still to tell, to allow of my
going on with the rest of the story. My old friend Bordin,
who was made famous as a Royalist by his share in the great
Simeuse trial, and who pleaded in the case of the Chauffeurs
of Mortagne, gave me when I came to live here two docu-
ments which, as he died not long after, I still have in my pos-
session. You will there find the facts set forth much more
concisely than I could give them. The details are so com-
plicated that I should lose myself in trying to state them,
and it would take me more than two hours, while in these
papers you will find them summarized. To-morrow morning
I will tell you what remains to be told concerning Madame
de la Chanterie, for when you have read these documents you
will be sufficiently informed for me to conclude my tale in a
few words.”

He placed some papers, yellow with years, in Godefroid’s
hands; after bidding his neighbor good-night, the young man
retired to his room, and before he went to sleep read the two
documents here reproduced:THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“BILL OF INDICTMENT.

“Court of Criminal and Special Justice for the Department
of the Orne.

“The Public Prosecutor to the Imperial Court of Justice
at Caen, appointed to carry out his functions to the Special
Criminal Court sitting by the Imperial decree of September
1809, in the town of Alencon, sets forth to the Court the fol-
lowing facts, as proved by the preliminary proceedings, to-
wit:

“That a conspiracy of brigands, hatched for a long time
with extraordinary secrecy, and connected with a scheme for
a general rising in the western departments, has vented
itself in several attempts on the lives and property of citizens,
and more especially in the attack with robbery, under arms,
on a vehicle conveying, on the — of May, 18—, the Govern-
ment moneys collected at Caen. This attack, recalling in its
details the memories of the civil war now so happily at an end,
showed deep-laid designs of a degree of villainy which cannot
be excused by the vehemence of passion.

“From its inception to the end, the plot is extremely com-
plicated, and the details numerous. The preliminary ex-
aminations lasted for more than a year, but the evidence
forthcoming at every stage of the crime throws full light on
the preparations made, on its execution, and results.

“The first idea of the plot was conceived by one Charles-
Amédée-Louis-Joseph Rifoél, calling himself the Chevalier
du Vissard, born at le Vissard, a hamlet of Saint-Mexme by
Ernée, and formerly a leader of the rebels.

“This man, who was pardoned by His Majesty the Em-
peror at the time of the general peace and amnesty, and whose
ingratitude to his sovereign has shown itself in fresh crimes,
has already suffered the extreme penalty of the law as the
punishment for his misdeeds; but it is necessary here to
refer to some of his actions, as he had great influence over
some of the accused now awaiting the verdict of justice, and
he is concerned in every circumstance of the case.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 85

“This dangercus agitator, who bore an alias, as is common
with these rebels, and was known as Prerrot, used to wander

about the western provinces enlisting partisans for a fresh

rebellion; but his safest lurking-place was the chateau of
Saint-Savin, the home of a woman named Lechantre and her
daughter named Bryond, a house in the hamlet of Saint-Savin
and in the district of Mortagne. This spot is famous in the
most horrible annals of the rebellion of 1799. It was there
that a courier was murdered, and his ¢
band of brigands under the command of a woman, helped by
the notorious Marche-a-Terre. Hence brigandage may be said
to be endemic in this neighborhood.

“An intimacy for which we seek no name had existed for
more than a year between the woman Bryond and the above-

named Rifoél.

haise plundered by a

“It was close to this spot that, in the month of April 1808,
an interview took place between Rifoél and one Boislauricr,
a superior leader, known in the more serious risings in the west
by the name of Auguste, and he it was who was the moving
spirit of the rising now under the consideration of the Court.

“This obscure point, namely, the connection of these two
leaders, is plainly proved by the evidence of numerous wit-
nesses, and also stands as a demonstrated fact by the sentence
from the time of that meet-
ing, Boislaurier and Rifoél agreed to act in concert.

“They communicated to each other, and at first to no one
else, their atrocious purpose, founded on his Royal and Im-
perial Majesty’s absence, in command, at the time, of his
forces in Spain; and then, or soon after, they must have
plotted to capture the State moneys in transit, as the base for

of death carried out on Rifoél.

further operations.

“Some time later, one Dubut of Caen despatched a mes-
senger to the chateau of Saint-Savin, namely, one Hiley,
known as le Laboureur, long known as a robber of the dili-
gences; he was charged with information as to trustworthy
accomplices. And it was thus, by Hiley’s intervention, that

the plot secured the .o-operation from the first of one Her-86

 

THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

bomez, called Général-Hardi, a pardoned rebel of the same
stamp as Rifoél, and, like him, a traitor to the amnesty.

“Herbomez and Hiley recruited in the neighboring villages
seven banditti, whose names must at once be set forth as fol-
lows:

“1. Jean Cibot, called Pille-Miche, one of the boldest
brigands of a troop got together by Montauran in the year
VII., and one of the actors in the robbery and murder of the
Mortagne courier.

“2. Francois Lisieux, known as Grand-Fils, a rebel-con-
script of the department of the Mayenne.

3. Charles Grenier, or Fleur-de-Genet, a deserter from the

69th half-brigade.

“4. Gabriel Bruce, known as Gros-Jean, one of the fiercest
Chouans of Fontaine’s division.

“5. Jacques Horeau, called Stuart, ex-lieutenant of that
brigade, one of Tinténiac’s adherents, and well known by the
share he took in the Quiberon expedition.

“6, Maric-Anne Cabot, called Lajeunesse, formerly hunts-
man to the Sieur Carol of Alencon.

“7. Louis Minard, a rebel conscript.

“These, when enrolled, were quartered in three different
hamlets in the houses of Binet, Mélin, and Laraviniére, inn
or tavern-keepers, all devoted to Rifoél.

“The necessary weapons were at once provided by one Jean-
Francois Léveillé, a notary, and the incorrigible abettor of
the brigands, serving as a go-between for them with several
leaders in hiding; and, in this town, by one Felix Courceuil,
called the Confesseur, formerly surgeon to the rebel army of
la Vendée; both these men are natives of Alencon. Eleven
muskets were concealed in a house belonging to Bryond in a
suburb of Alencon; but this was done without his knowledge,
for he was at that time living in the country on his estate
between Alencon and Mortagne.

“When Bryond left his wife to go her own way in the fatal
road she had set out on, these muskets, cautiously removed
from the house, were carried by the woman Bryond in her own
earriage to the chateau of Saint-Savin.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 87

“Tt was then that the Department of the Orne and adjacent
districts were dismayed by acts of highway robbery that
startled the authorities as much as the inhabitants of those
districts which had so long enjoyed quiet; and these raids
prove that the atrocious foes of the Government and the Em-
pire had been kept informed of the secret coalition of 1809
by means of communications from abroad.

“Léviellé the notary, the woman Bryond, Dubut of Caen,
Herbomez of Mayenne, Boislaurier of le Mans, and Rifoél
were the ringleaders of the association, which was also joined
by those criminals who have been already executed under the
sentence passed on them with Rifoél, by those accused under
this trial, and by several others who have escaped public
vengeance by flight, or by the silence of their accomplices.

“It was Dubut who, as a resident near Caen, gave notice to
Léveillé of the despatch of the money. Dubut made several
journeys between Caen and Mortagne, and Léveillé also was
often on the roads. It may here be noted that, at the time
when the arms were moved, Léveillé, who came to visit Bruce,
Grenier, and Cibot at Mélin’s house, found them arranging
the muskets in an inside shed, and helped them himself in
doing so.

“A general meeting was arranged to take place at Mortagne
at the Feu de France inn. All the accused were present in
various disguises. It was on this occasion that Léviellé, the
woman Bryond, Dubut, Herbomez, Boislaurier, and Hiley,
the cleverest of the subordinate conspirators, of whom Cibot
is the most daring, secured the co-operation of one Vauthier,
called Vieux-Chéne, formerly a servant to the notorious
Longuy, and now a stableman at the inn. Vauthier agreed to
give the woman Bryond due notice of the passing of the
chaise conveying the Government moneys, as it commonly
stopped to bait at the inn.

“The opportunity ere long offered for assembling the
brigand recruits who had been scattered about in various lodg-
ings with great precaution, sometimes in one village, and
sometimes in another, under the care of Courceuil and of88 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

Léveillé. The assembly was managed by the woman Bryond,
who afforded the brigands a new hiding-place in the unin-
habited parts of the chAteau of Saint-Savin, at a few miles
from Mortagne, where she had lived with her mother since her
husband’s departure. The brigands established themselves
there with Hiley at their head, and spent several days there.
The woman Bryond, with her waiting-maid Godard, took care
to prepare with her own hands everything needed for lodging
and feeding these guests. To this end she had trusses of hay
brought in, and went to see the brigands in the shelter she
had arranged for them, going to and fro with Léveillé. Pro-
visions and victuals were procured under the orders and care
of Courceuil, who took his orders from Rifoél and Boislaurier.

“The principal feat was decided on and the men fully
armed; the brigands stole out of Saint-Savin every night;
pending the transit of the Government chest, they carried out
raids in the neighborhood, and the whole country was in terror
under their repeated incursions. There can be no doubt that
the robberies committed at La Sartiniére, at Vonay, and at the
chateau of Saint-Seny were the work of this band; their dar-
ing equaled their villainy, and they contrived to terrify their
victims so effectually that no tales were told, so that justice
could obtain no evidence.

“While levying contributions on all who held possession
of the nationalized land, the brigands carefully reconnoitred
the woods of Le Chesnay, which they had chosen to be the
scene of their crime.

“Not far away is the village of Louvigny, where there is an
inn kept by the brothers Chaussard, formerly gamekeepers
on the property of Troisville, and this was to be the brigands’
final rendezvous. ‘The two brothers knew beforehand the part
they were to play; Courceuil and Boislaurier had long before
sounded them, and revived their hatred of the government
of our august Emperor; and had told them that among the
visitors who would drop in on them would be some men of
their acquaintance—the formidable Hiley and the not less
formidable Cibot.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 89

“In faet, on the 6th the seven highwaymen, under the
leadership of Hiley, arrived at the brother Chaussards’ inn
and spent two days there. On the 8th the chief led out his men,
saying they were going three leagues away, and he desired the
innkeepers to provide food, which was taken to a place where
the roads met, a little way from the village. Hiley came home
alone at night.

“T'wo riders—who were probably the woman Bryond and
Rifoél, for it is said that she accompanied him in his expedi-
tions, on horseback, and dressed as a man—arrived that
evening and conversed with Hiley. On the following day
Hiley wrote to Léveillé the notary, and one of the Chaussard
brothers carried the letter and brought back the answer. Two
hours later Bryond and Rifoél came on horseback to speak
with Hiley.

“The upshot of all these interviews and coming and going
was that a hatchet was indispensable to break open the cases.
The notary went back with the woman Bryond to Saint-Savin,
where they sought in vain for a hatchet.

“Thereupon he returned to the inn and met Hiley half-way,
to whom he was to explain that no hatchet was to be found.
Tiley made his way back and ordered supper at the inn for
ten persons; he then brought in the seven brigands all armed.
Hiley made them pile arms like soldiers. They all sat down
and supped in haste, Hiley ordering a quantity of food to be
packed for them to take away with them. Then he led the
elder Chaussard aside and asked for a hatchet. The innkeeper,
much astonished, by his own account, refused to give him one.
Courceuil and Boislaurier presently came in, and the three
men spent the whole night pacing up and down the room
and discussing their plan. Courceuil, nicknamed the Con-
fessor, the most cunning of the band, took possession of a
hatchet, and at about two in the morning they all went out
by different doors.

“Every minute was now precious; the execution of the
crime was fixed for that day. Hiley, Courceuil, and Bois-
Jaurier placed their men. Hiley, with Minard, Cabot, and~ espe ep:

90 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

Bruce, formed an ambush to the right of the wood of Le
Chesnay. Boislaurier, Grenier, and Horeau occupied the
centre. Courceuil, Herbomez, and Lisieux stood by the ra-
vine under the fringe of the wood. All thege positions are
indicated on the subjoined plan to scale, drawn by the sur-
veyor to the Government.

“The chaise, meanwhile, had started from Mortagne at
about one in the morning, driven by one Rousseau, who was
so far inculpated by circumstantial evidence as to make it
seem desirable to arrest him. The vehicle, driving slowly,
would reach the wood of Le Chesnay by about three. It was
guarded by a single gendarme; the men were to breakfast at
Donnery. There were three travelers, as it happened, besides
the gendarme.

“The driver, who had been walking with them very slowly,
on reaching the bridge of Le Chesnay, whipped the horses
to a speed and energy that the others remarked upon, and
turned into a cross-road known as the Senzey road. The
chaise was soon lost to sight; the way it had gone was known
to the gendarme and his companions only by the sound of the
horses’ bells; the men had to run to come up with it. Then
they heard a shout: ‘Stand, you rascals!’ and four shots were
fired.

“The gendarme, who was not hit, drew his sword and ran
on in the direction he supposed the driver to have taken. He
was stopped by four men, who all fired; his eagerness saved
him, for he rushed past to desire one of the young travelers
to run on and have the alarm bell tolled at Le Chesnay, but
two of the brigands took steady aim, advancing towards him ;
he was forced to draw back a few steps; and just as he was
about to turn the wood, he received a ball in the left armpit,
which broke his arm; he fell, and found himself completely
disabled.

“The shouting and shots had been heard at Donnery. The
officer in command at this station hurried up with one of his
gendarmes; a running fire led them away to the side of
the wood furthest from the scene of the robbery. The singleTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 91

gendarme tried to intimidate the brigands by a hue and ery,
and to delude them into the belief that a force was at hand.

““Forward!’ he cried. ‘First platoon to the right! now we
have them! Second platoon to the left!’

“The brigands on their side shouted, ‘Draw! This way,
comrades! Send up the men as fast as you can!’

“The noise of firing hindered the officer from hearing the
cries of the wounded gendarme, and helping in the manceuvre
by which the other was keeping the robbers in check; but
he could hear a clatter close at hand, arising from splitting
the cases open. He advanced towards that side ; four armed
men took aim at him, and he ealled out, “Surrender, villains!’

“They only replied, ‘Stand, or you are a dead man!’

“He rushed forward; two muskets were fired, and he was
hit, one ball going through his left leg into his horse’s flank.
The brave man, bleeding profusely, was forced to retire from
the unequal struggle, shouting, but in vain, “Help—come on
—the brigands are at Le Chesnay.’

“The robbers, left masters ef the field by superiority of
numbers, pillaged the chaise which had been intentionally
driven into a ravine. They blindfolded the driver, but this
was only a feint. The chests were forced open, and bags of
money strewed the ground. The horses were unharnessed
and loaded with the coin. Three thousand francs’ worth of
copper money was scornfully left behind; three hundred thou-
sand francs were carried off on four horses. They made for
the village of Menneville adjacent to the town of Saint-
Savin.

“The horde and their booty stopped at a solitary house be-
longing to the Chaussard brothers, inhabited by their uncle,
one Bourget, who had been in their confidence from the first.
This old man, helped by his wife, received the brigands,
warned them to be silent, unloaded the beasts, and then
fetched up some wine. The wife remained on sentry by the
chateau. The old man led the horses back to the wood and
returned them to the driver; then he released the two young
men who had been gagged as well as the accommodating92 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

driver. After refreshing themselves in great haste, the
brigands went on their way. Courceuil, Hiley, and Bois-
laurier reviewed their party, and after bestowing on each a
trifling recompense, sent off the men, each in a different direc-
tion.

“On reaching a spot called le Champ-Landry, these male-
factors, obeying the prompting which go often leads such
wretches into blunders and miscaleulations, threw their mus-
kets away into a field of standing corn. The fact that all three
did so at the same time is a crowning proof of their collusion.
Then, terrified by the boldness and success of their crime,
they separated.

“The robbery having been committed, with the additional
features of violence and attempt to murder, the chain of sub-
sidiary events was already in preparation, and other actors
were implicated in receiving and disposing of the stolen prop-
erty. Ruifoél, hidden in Paris, whence he pulled all the wires
of the plot, sent an order to Léveillé to forward to him im-
mediately fifty thousand franes. Courceuil, apt at the man-
agement of such felonies, had sent off Hiley to inform Léveillé
of their success and of his arrival at Mortagne, where the
notary at once joined them.

“Vauthier, to whose fidelity they believed they might trust,
undertook to find the Chaussards’ uncle; he went to the house,
but was told by the old man that he must apply to the nephews,
who had given over large sums to the woman Bryond. How-
ever, he bid Vauthier wait for him on the road, and he there
gave him a bag containing twelve hundred francs, which Vau-
thier took to the woman Lechantre for her daughter.

“By Léveillé’s advice Courceuil then went to Bourget, who
sent him direct to his nephews. The elder Chaussard led
Vauthier to the wood and showed him a tree beneath which a
bag of a thousand francs was found buried. In short, Léveillé,
Hiley, and Vauthier went to and fro several times, and each
time obtained a small sum, trifling in comparison with the
whole amount stolen.

“These moneys were handed over to the woman LeehantreTHE SHEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 93

at Mortagne; and, in obedience to a letter from her daugh-
ter, she carried them to Saint-Savin, whither the said Bryond
had returned.

“It is not immediately necessary to inquire whether this
woman Lechantre had any previous knowledge of the plot.
For the present it need only be noted that she had left Mor-
tagne to go to Saint-Savin the day before the crime was com-
mitted in order to fetch away her daughter; that the two wo-
men met half-way, and returned to Mortagne; that, on the fol-
lowing day, the notary, being informed of this by Hiley, went
from Alengon to Mortagne, and straight to their house, where
he persuaded them to transport the money, obtained with so
much difficulty from the Chaussards and from Bourget, to a
certain house in Alencon, presently to be mentioned as be-
longing to one Pannier, a merchant there. The woman Le-
chantre wrote to the man in charge at Saint-Savin to come to
Mortagne and escort her and her daughter by cross-roads to
© Alengon. The money, amounting to twenty thousand francs
in all, was packed into a vehicle at night, the girl Godard
helping to dispose of it.

“The notary had planned the way they were to travel. They
reached an inn kept by one of their allies, a man named Louis
Chargegrain, in the hamlet of Littray. But in spite of the
notary’s precautions—he riding ahead of the chaise—some
strangers were present and saw the portmanteaus and bags
taken out which contained the coin.

“But just as Courceuil and Hiley, disguised as women, were
consulting, in the market place at Alencon, with the afore-
named Pannier—who since 1794 had been the rebels’
treasurer, and who was devoted to Rifoél—as to the best means
of transmitting the required sum to Rifoél, the terror occa-
sioned by the arrests and inquiries already made was so great
that the woman Lechantre, in her alarm, set off at night from
the inn where they were, and fled with her daughter by coun-
try byways, leaving Léveillé behind, and took refuge in the
hiding-places known to them in the chateau Saint-Savin. The
same alarm came over the other criminals. Courceuil, Bois-94 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

 

Jaurier, and his relation Dubut exchanged two thousand
francs in silver for gold_at a dealer’s, and fled across Brittany
to England.

“On arriving at Saint-Savin, the mother and daughter
heard that Bourget was arrested with the driver and the run-
away conscripts.

“The magistrates, the police, and the authorities acted
with so much decision, that it was deemed necessary to pro-
tect the woman Bryond from their investigations, for all these
felons were devotedly attached to her, and she had won them
all. So she was removed from Saint-Savin, and hid at first
at Alencon, where her adherents held council and succeeded
in concealing her in Pannier’s cellars.

“Hereupon fresh incidents occurred. After the arrest of
Bourget and his wife, the Chaussards refused to give up any
more money, saying they had been betrayed. This unex-
pected defection fell out at the very moment when all the con-
spirators were in the greatest need of supplies, if only as a@
means of escape. Rifoél was thirsting for money. Hiley,
Cibot, and Léveillé now began to doubt the honesty of the
two Chaussards. This led to a fresh complication which seems
to demand the intervention of the law.

“Two gendarmes, commissioned to discover the woman
Bryond, succeeded in getting into Pannier’s house, where they
were present at a council held by the criminals; but these men,
false to the confidence placed in them, instead of arresting
Bryond, were enslaved by her charms. Thege rascally soldiers
—named Ratel and Mallet—showed the woman every form of
interest and devotion, and offered to escort her to the Chaus-
sards’ inn and compel them to make restitution. The woman
went off on horseback, dressed as a man, and accompanied by
Ratel, Mallet, and the maid-servant Godard. She set out at
night, and on reaching the inn she and one of the Chaussard
brothers had a private but animated interview. She had a
pistol, and was resolved to blow her accomplice’s brains out
in case of his refusal; in fact, he led her to the wood, and
she brought back a heavy sack. In it she found copper coinTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 95

and twelve-sou pieces to the value of fifteen hundred francs.

“It was then suggested that as many of the conspirators as
could be got together should take the Chaussards by surprise,
seize them, and put them to torture. Pannier, on hearing of
this disappointment, flew into a rage and broke out in threats ;
and though the woman Bryond threatened him in return with
Rifoél’s vengeance, she was compelled to fly.

“All these facts were confessed by Ratel.

“Mallet, touched by her position, offered the woman
Bryond a place of shelter; they all set off together and spent
the night in the wood of Troisville. Then Mallet and Ratel,
with Hiley and Cibot, went by night to the Chaussards’ inn,
but they found that the brothers had left the place, and that
the remainder of the money had certainly been removed.

“This was the last attempt on the part of the conspirators
to recover the stolen money.

“It is now important to define more accurately the part
played by each of the criminals implicated in this affair.

“Dubut, Boislaurier, Gentil, Herbomez, Courceuil, and
Hiley are all leaders, some in council, and some in action.
Boislaurier, Dubut, and Courceuil, all three contumacious de-
serters, are habitual rebels, stirring up troubles, the implaca-
ble foes of Napoleon the Great, of his successes, his dynasty,
and his government, of our new code of laws and of the
Imperial constitution. Herbomez and Hiley, as their right-
hand men, boldly carried out what the three others planned.
The guilt of the seven instruments of the crime is beyond
question—Cibot, Lisieux, Grenier, Bruce, Horeau, Cabot, and
Minard. It is proved by the depositions of those who are
now in the hands of justice: Lisieux died during the prelimi-
nary inquiry, and Bruce has evaded capture.

“The conduct of the chaise-driver Rousseau marks him as
an accomplice. ‘The slow progress on the highroad, the pace
to which he flogged the horses on reaching the wood, his per-
sistent statement that his head was muffled, whereas, by the
evidence of the young fellow-travelers, the leader of the96 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

brigands had the handkerchief removed and ordered him to
recognize the men,—all contribute to afford presumptive evi-
dence of his collusion.

“As to the woman Bryond and Léveillé the notary, their
complicity was constant and continuous from the first. They
supplied funds and means for the crime; they knew of it and
abetted it. Léveillé was constantly traveling to and fro. The
woman Bryond invented plot upon plot; she risked every-
thing—even her life—to secure the money. She lent her
house, her carriage, and was concerned in the plot from the
beginning, nor did she attempt to persuade the chief leader
to desist from it when she might have exerted her evil in-
fluence to hinder it. She led the maid-servant Godard
into its toils. Léveillé was go entirely mixed up in _ it,
that it was he who tried to procure the hatchet needed by the
robbers.

“The woman Bourget, Vauthier, the Chaussards, Pannier,
the woman Lechantre, Mallet, and Ratel were all incrimi-
nated in various degrees, as also the innkeepers Mélin, Binet,
Laraviniére, and Chargegrain.

“Bourget died during the preliminary inquiry, after mak-
ing a confession which leaves no doubt as to the part taken
by Vauthier and the woman Bryond; and though he tried to
mitigate the charge against his wife and his nephews the
Chaussards, the reasons for his reticence are self-evident.

“But the Chaussards certainly knew that they were supply-
ing provisions to highway robbers; they saw that the men were
armed and were informed of all their scheme; they allowed
them to take the hatchet needed for breaking open the chests,
knowing the purpose for which it was required. Finally, they
received wittingly the money obtained by the robbery, they hid
it, and in fact made away with the creater part of it.

“Pannier, formerly treasurer to the rebel party, concealed
the woman Bryond; he is one of the most dangerous partici-
pators in the plot of which he was informed from its origin.
With regard to him we are in the dark as to some circum-
stances as yet unknown, but of which Justice will take cog-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 97

nizance. He is Rifoél’s immediate ally and in all the secrets
of the ante-revolutionary party in the West; he greatly re-
gretted the fact that Rifoél should have admitted the women
into the plot or have trusted them at all. He forwarded money
to Rifoél and received the stolen coin.

“As to the two gendarmes, Ratel and Mallet, their conduct
deserves the utmost rigor of the Jaw. They were traitors to
their duty. One of them, foreseeing his fate, committed
suicide after making some important revelations. The other,
Mallet, denied nothing, and his confession removes all doubt.

“The woman Lechantre, in spite of her persistent denials,
was informed of everything. The hypocrisy of this woman,
who attempts to shelter her professed innocence under the
practice of assumed devotion, is known by her antecedents to
be prompt and intrepid in extremities, She asserts that she
was deceived by her daughter, and believed that the money in
question belonged to the man Bryond. The trick is too trans-
parent. If Bryond had had any money,he would not have fled
from the neighborhood to avoid witnessing his own ruin. Le-
chantre considered that there was no harm in the robbery
when it was approved of by her ally Boislaurier. But how,
then, does she account for Rifoél’s presence at Saint-Savin,
her daughter’s expeditions and connection with the man, and
the visit of the brigands who were waited on by the women
Godard and Bryond? She says she sleeps heavily, and is in
the habit of going to bed at seven o’clock, and did not know
what answer to make when the examining Judge observed that
then she must rise at daybreak, and could not have failed to
discern traces of the plot and of the presence of so many men,
or to be uneasy about her daughter’s nocturnal expeditions.
To this she could only say that she was at her prayers.

“The woman is a model hypocrite. In fact, her absence
on the day when the crime was committed, the care she took
to remove her daughter to Mortagne, her journey with the
money, and her precipitate flight when everything was dis-
covered, the care with which she hid herself, and the circum-
stances of her arrest, all prove her complicity from an early

a98 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

stage of the affair. Her conduct was not that of a mother
anxious to explain the danger to her daughter and to save her
from it, but that of a terrified accomplice; and she was an
accessory, not out of foolish affection, but from party spirit
inspired by hatred, as is well known, for his Imperial
Majesty’s government. Maternal weakness indeed could not
excuse her, and it must not be forgotten that consent, long
premeditated, is an evident sign of her complicity.

“Not the crime alone, but its moving spirits, are now known.
We see in it the monstrous combination of the delirium of
faction with a thirst for repine; murder prompted by party
spirit, under which men take shelter, and justify themselves
for the most disgraceful excesses. The orders of the leaders
gave the signal for the robbery of State moneys to pay for
subsequent violence; base and ferocious hirelings were found
to do it for wretched pay, and fully prepared to murder; while
the agitators to rebellion, not less guilty, helped in dividing
and concealing the booty. What society can allow such at-
tempts to go unpunished? The law has no adequate punish-
ment.

“The Bench of this Criminal and Special Court, then, will
be called upon to decide whether the afore-named Her-
bomez, Hiley, Cibot, Grenier, Horeau, Cabot, Minard, Meélin,
Binet, Laraviniére, Rousseau, the woman Bryond, Léveillé,
the woman Bourget, Vauthier, the elder Chaussard, Pannier,
the widow Lechantre, and Mallet, all hereinbefore described
and in presence of the Court, and the afore-named Bois-
laurier, Dubut, Courceuil, Bruce, Chaussard the younger,
Chargegrain, and the girl Godard, being absent or having
fled, are or are not guilty of the acts described in this bill of
indictment.

“Given in to the Court at Caen the ist of December,
180—

“( Signed) Baron Bouruac.”

This legal document, much shorter and more peremptory
than such bills of indictment are in these days, so full of de-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 99

tail and so complete on every point, especially as to the pre-
vious career of the accused, excited Godefroid to the utmost.
The bare, dry style of an official pen, setting forth, in red ink,
as it were, the principal facts of the case, was enough to set
his imagination working. Concise, reserved narrative is to
Some minds a problem in which they lose themselves in ex-
ploring the mysterious depths.

In the dead of night, stimulated by the silence, by the dark-
ness, by the dreadful connection hinted at by Monsieur Alain
of this document with Madame de la Chanterie, Godefroid
concentrated all his intelligence on the consideration of this
terrible affair.

The name of Lechantre was evidently the first name of the
la Chanterie family, whose aristocratic titular name had of
course been curtailed under the Republic and the Empire.

His fancy painted the scenery where the drama was played
out, and the figures of the accomplices rose before him.
Imagination showed him, not indeed “the afore-named
Rifoél,” but the Chevalier du Vissard, a youth resembling
Walter Scott’s Fergus—in short, a French edition of the
Jacobite. He worked out a romance on the passion of a young
girl grossly betrayed by her husband’s infamy—a tragedy
then very fashionable—and in love with a young leader re-
belling against the Emperor; rushing headlong, like Diana
Vernon, into the toils of a conspiracy, fired with enthusiasm,
and then, having started on the perilous descent, unable to
check her wild career.—Had she ended it on the scaffold?

The whole world seemed to rise before Godefroid. He was
wandering through the groves of Normandy; he could see the
Breton gentleman and Madame Bryond in the copse; he
dwelt in the old chateau of Saint-Savin; he pictured the win-
ning over of so many conspirators—the notary, the merchant,
and the bold Chouan leaders. He could understand the almost
unanimous adhesion of a district where the memory was. still’
fresh of the famous Marche-a-Terre, of the Comtes-de. Bau:
van and de Longuy, of the massacre at la Vivetiére, and of the
death of the Marquis de Montauran, of whose exploits he had
heard from Madame de la Chanterie.and in the records of the Paris police as Contenson.

  

100 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

This vision, as it were, of men and things and places, was
but brief. As he realized the fact that this story was that of
the noble and pious old lady whose virtues affected him to the
point of a complete metamorphosis, Godefroid, with a thrill
of awe, took up the second document given to him by Mon-
sieur Alain, which bore the title:

“An APPEAL ON BEHALF OF MADAME HENRIETTE BRYOND
DES Tours-MINiIgRES,née LECHANTRE DE LA CHANTERIE.”

“That settles it,” thought Godefroid.
The paper ran as follows:

“We are condemned and guilty; but if ever the Sovereign
had cause to exercise his prerogative of mercy, would it not
be under the circumstances herein set forth?

“The culprit is a young woman, who says she is a mother,
and is condemned to death.

“On the threshold of the prison, and in view of the scaffold,
this woman will tell the truth. That statement will be in her
favor, and to that she looks for pardon.

“The case, tried in the Criminal Court of Alencon, presents
some obscure features, as do all cases where several accused
persons have combined in a plot inspired by party feeling.

“His Imperial and Kingly Majesty’s Privy Council are now
fully informed as to the identity of a mysterious personage,
known as le Marchand, whose presence in the department of
the Orne was not disputed by the public authorities in the
course of the trial, though the pleader for the Crown did not
think it advisable to produce him in Court, and the defendants
had no right to call him, nor, indeed, power to produce him.

“This man, as is well known to the Bench, to the local au-
thorities, to the Paris police, and to the Imperial and Royal
Council, is Bernard-Polydor Bryond de la Tour-Miniéres,
who, since 1794, has been in correspondence with the Comte
de Lille; he is known abroad as the Baron des Tours-Miniéres,THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 101

“He is a very exceptional man, whose youth and rank were
stained by unremitting vice, such utter immorality and such
criminal excesses, that so infamous a life would inevitably
have ended on the scaffold but for the skill with which he
played a double part under shelter of his two names. Still,
as he is more and more the slave of his passions and in-
satiable necessities, he will at last fall below infamy, and find
himself in the lowest depths in spite of indisputable gifts and
an extraordinary mind.

“When the Comte de Lille’s better Judgment led to his for-
bidding Bryond to draw money from abroad, the man tried to
get out of the blood-stained field on to which his necessities
had led him. Was it that this career no longer paid him well
enough? Or was it remorse or shame that led the man back
to the district where his estates, loaded with debt when he
went away, could have but little to yield even to his skill?
This it is impossible to believe. It seems more probable that
he had some mission to fulfil in those departments where some
sparks were still lingering of the civil broils.

“When wandering through the provinces, where his per-
fidious adhesion to the schemes of the English and of the
Comte de Lille gained him the confidence of certain families
still attached to the party that the genius of our immortal
Emperor has reduced to silence, he met one of the former
leaders of the Rebellion—a man with whom he had had deal-
ings as an envoy from abroad at the time of the Quiberon
expedition, during the last rising in the year VII. He en-
couraged the hopes of this agitator, who has since paid the
penalty of his treasonable plots on the scaffold. At that time,
then, Bryond was able to learn all the secrets of the incor-
rigible faction who misprize the glory of His Majesty the Em-
peror Napoleon I., and the true interests of the country ag
represented by his sacred person.

“At the age of five-and-thirty, this man, who affected the
deepest piety, who professed unbounded devotion to the in-

terests of the Comte de Lille, and perfect adoration for
the rebels of the West who perished in the struggle, who skil-102 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

fully disguised the ravages of a youth of ar
whose personal appearance was in his favor, came, ee ci
protection of his creditors, who told no tales, and of the mos
extraordinary good-nature on the part of all the ci-devants of
the district, to be introduced with all these claims on her re-
gard to the woman Lechantre, who was supposed to have a
very fine fortune. The scheme in view was to secure a ne
riage between Madame Lechantre’s only daughter, Henriette,
and this protegé of the Royalist party.

“Priests, ex-nobles, and creditors, all from different motives,
conspired to promote the marriage between Bernard Bryond
and Henriette Lechantre.

“The good judgment of the notary who took charge of Ma-
dame Lechantre’s affairs, and his shrewd suspicions, led per-
haps to the poor girl’s undoing. For Monsieur Chesnel, a no-
tary at Alencon, settled the lands of Saint-Savin, the bride’s
sole estate, on her and her children, reserving a small charge
on it and the right of residence to the mother for life.

“Bryond’s creditors, who, judging from her methodical and
economical style of living, had supposed that Madame Le-
chantre must have saved large sums, were disappointed in
their hopes, and believing that she must be avaricious, they
sued Bryond, and this led to a revelation of his impecuniosity
and difficulties.

“Then the husband and wife quarreled violently, and the
young woman came to full knowledge of the dissipated habits,
the atheistical opinions both in religion and in polities, nay,
I may say, the utter infamy, of the man to whom fate had
irrevocably bound her. Then Bryond, being obliged to let his
wite into the secret of the atrocious plots against the Imperial
Government, offered an asylum under his roof to Rifosl du
Vissard.

“Rifoél’s character, adventurous, brave, and lavish, had
an extraordinary charm for all who came under his influence ;
of this there is abundant proof in the cases tried in no less
than three special criminal courts.

“The irresistible influence, in fact the absolute power, he
acquired over a young woman who found herself at the bot-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 103

tom of a gulf, is only too evident in the catastrophe of which
the horror brings her as a suppliant to the foot of the throne.
And His Imperial and Kingly Majesty’s Council will have no
difficulty in verifying the infamous collusion of Bryond, who,
far from doing his’ duty as the guide and adviser of the girl
intrusted to his care by the mother he had deceived, condoned
and encouraged the intimacy between his wife Henriette and
the rebel leader.

“This was the plan imagined by this detestable man, who
makes it his glory that he respects nothing, and that he never
considers any end but the gratification of his passions, while
he regards every sentiment based on social or religious mo-
rality as a mere vulgar prejudice. And it may here be re-
marked that such scheming is habitual to a man who has been
playing a double part ever since 1794, who for eight years has
deceived the Comte de Lille and his adherents, probably de-
ceiving at the same time the superior police of the Empire—
for such men are always ready to serve the highest bidder.

“Bryond, then, was urging Rifoél to commit a crime; he it
was who insisted on an armed attack and highway robbery
of the State treasure in transit, and on heavy contributions
to be extorted from the purchasers of the national land, by
means of atrocious tortures which he invented, and which
carried terror into five Departments. He demanded no less
than three hundred thousand francs to pay off the mortgages
on his property.

“In the event of any objection on the part of Rifoél or
Madame Bryond, he intended to revenge himself for the con-
tempt he had inspired in his wife’s upright mind, by handing
them both over to be dealt with by the law as soon as they
should commit some capital crime.

“As soon as he perceived that party spirit was a stronger
motive than self-interest in these two whom he had thus
thrown together, he disappeared ; he came to Paris, armed with
ample information as to the state of affairs in the western
departments.

“The Chaussard brothers and Vauthier were, it is well
known, in constant correspondence with Bryond.104 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

 

“As soon as the robbery on the chests from Caen was ac-
complished, Bryond, assuming the name of le Marchand,
opened secret communications with the préfet and the magis-
trates. What was the consequence? No conspiracy of equal
extent, and in which so many persons in such different grades
of the social scale were involved, has ever been so immediately
divulged to justice as this, of which the first attempt was the
robbery of the treasure from Caen. Within six days of the
crime, all the guilty parties had been watched and followed
with a certainty that betrays perfect knowledge of the persons
in question, and of their plans. The arrest, trial, and execu-
tion of Rifoél and his companions are a sufficient proof, and
mentioned here only to demonstrate our knowledge of this
fact, of which the Supreme Council knows every particular.

“If ever a condemned criminal might hope for the clem-
ency of the Sovereign, may not Henriette Lechantre?

“Carried away by a passion and by rebellious principles im-
bibed with her mother’s milk, she is, no doubt, unpardonable
in the eye of the law; but in the sight of our most magnani-
mous Emperor, may not the most shameless betrayal on one
hand, and the most vehement enthusiasm on the other, plead
her cause?

“The greatest of Generals, the immortal genius who par-
doned the Prince of Hatzfeld, and who, like God Himself, can
divine the arguments suggested by a blind passion, may, per-
haps, vouchsafe to consider the temptations invincible in the
young, which may palliate her crime, great as it is.

“Twenty-two heads have already fallen under the sword of
Justice and the sentence of the three courts. One alone re-
mains—that of a young woman of twenty, not yet of age.
Will not the Emperor Napoleon the Great grant her time for
repentance? Is not that a tribute to the grace of God?

or Henriette Lechantre, wife of Bryond des Tour-Mi-
nieres,
“BORDIN,

“Retained for the defence, Advocate in the Lower
Court of the Department of the Seine.”THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 105

This terrible tragedy haunted the little sleep Godefroid was
able to get. He dreamed of decapitation, as the physician
Guillotin perfected it with philanthropic intentions. Through
the hot vapors of a nightmare he discerned a beautiful young
woman, full of enthusiasm, undergoing the last preparations,
drawn in a cart, and mounting the scaffold with a ery of “Vive
le Roi!”

Godefroid was goaded by curiosity. He rose at daybreak,
dressed, and paced his room, till at length he posted himself
at the window, and mechanically stared at the sky, recon-
structing the drama, as a modern romancer might, in several
volumes. And always against the murky background of
Chouans, of country folks, of provincial gentlemen, of rebel
leaders, police agents, lawyers and spies, he saw the radiant
figures of the mother and daughter; of the daughter deceiving
her mother, the victim of a wretch, and of her mad passion for
one of those daring adventurers who were afterwards regarded
as heroes—a man who, to Godefroid’s imagination, had points
of resemblance to Georges Cadoudal and Charette, and the
giants of the struggle between the Republic and the Mon-
archy.

As soon as Godefroid heard old Alain stirring, he went to
his room; but on looking in through the half-opened door, he
shut it again, and withdrew. The old man, kneeling on his
prie-Dieu, was saying his morning prayers. The sight of that
white head bent in an attitude of humble piety recalled Gode-
froid to a sense of duty, and he prayed too, with fervency.

“I was expecting you,” said the good man when, at the end
of a quarter of an hour, Godefroid entered his room. “I an-
ticipated your impatience, and rose earlier than usual.”

“Madame Henriette ?——-” Godefroid began, with evident
agitation.

“Was Madame’s daughter,” replied Alain, interrupting
him. “Madame’s name is Lechantre de la Chanterie. Under
the Empire old titles were not recognized, nor the names
added to the patronymic or first surname. Thus the Baronne
des Tours-Miniéres was ‘the woman Bryond’; the Marquis106 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

d’Esgrignon was called Carol—Citizen Carol, and afterwards
the Sieur Carol; the Troisvilles were the Sieurs Guibelin.”

“But what was the end? Did the Emperor pardon her?”

“No, alas!” said Alain. “The unhappy little woman per-
ished on the scaffold.at the age of twenty-one.—After reading
Bordin’s petition, the Emperor spoke to the Supreme Judge
much to this effect:

“Why make an example of a spy? A secret agent ceases
to be a man, and ought to have none of a man’s feelings; he is
but a wheel in the machine. Bryond did his duty. If our in-
struments of that kind were not what they are—steel bars,
intelligent only in behalf of the Government they serve—gov-
ernment would be impossible. The sentences of Special Crim-
inal Courts must be carried out, or my magistrates would
lose all confidence in themselves and in me. And besides,
the men who fought for these people are executed, and they
were less guilty than their leaders. The women of the western
provinces must be taught nos to meddle in conspiracies. It is
because the victim of the sentence is a woman that the law
must take its course. No excuse is available as against the in-
terests of authority.’

“This was the substance of what the Supreme Judge was so
obliging as to repeat to Bordin after his interview with the
Emperor. To re-establish tranquillity in the west, which was
full of refractory conscripts, Napoleon thought it needful
to produce a real ‘terror.’ The Supreme Judge, in fact, ad-
vised the lawyer to trouble himself no further about his
clients.”

“And the lady?” said Godefroid.

“Madame de la Chanterie was condemned to twenty-two
years’ imprisonment,” replied Alain. “She had already been
transferred to Bicétre, near Rouen, to undergo her sentence,
and nothing could be thought of till her Henriette was safe :
for after these dreadful scenes, she was so wrapped up in her
daughter that, but for Bordin’s promise to petition for the
mitigation of the sentence of death, it was thought that Ma-
dame would not have survived her condemnation. So theyTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 107

deceived the poor mother. She saw her daughter after the
execution of the men who had been sentenced to death, but
did not know that the respite was granted in consequence of a
false declaration that her daughter was expecting her confine-
ment.”

“Ah, now I understand everything !” cried Godefroid.

“No, my dear boy. There are some things which cannot be
guessed.—For a long time after that, Madame believed that
her daughter was alive.”

“How was that?”

“When Madame des Tours-Miniéres heard through Bordin
that her appeal was rejected, the brave little woman had
enough strength of mind to write a score of letters dated for
several months after her execution to make her mother believe
that she was still alive, but gradually suffering more and more
from an imaginary malady, till it ended in death. These
letters were spread over a period of two years. Thus Madame
de la Chanterie was prepared for her daughter’s death, but
for a natural death; she did not hear of her execution ¢ll
1814.

“For two years she was kept in the common prison with the
most infamous creatures of her sex, wearing the prison dress;
then, thanks to the efforts of the Champignelles and the Beau-
séants, after the second year she was placed in a private cell,
where she lived like a cloistered nun.”

“And the others?”

“The notary Léveillé, Herbomez, Hiley, Cibot, Grenier,
Hureau, Cabot, Minard, and Mallet were condemned to death,
and executed the same day; Pannier, with Chaussard and
Vauthier, was sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude: they
were branded and sent to the hulks; but the Emperor par-
doned Chaussard and Vauthier. Mélin, Laraviniére, and
Binet had five years’ imprisonment. The woman Bourget was
imprisoned for twenty-two years. Chargegrain and Rousseau
were acquitted. Those who had got away were all sentenced
to death, with the exception of the maid-servant Godard, who,
as you have guessed, is none other than our good Manon.”108 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“Manon!” exclaimed Godefroid in amazement.

“Oh, you do not yet know Manon,” replied the worthy man.
“That devoted soul, condemned to twenty-two years’ imprison-
ment, had given herself up to justice that she might be with
Madame de la Chanterie in prison. Our beloved vicar is the
priest from Mortagne who gave the last sacrament to Madame
des Tours-Miniéres, who had the fortitude to escort her to the
scaffold, and to whom she gave her last farewell kiss. The
same brave and exalted priest had attended the Chevalier du
Vissard. So our dear Abbé de Véze learned all the secrets
of the conspirators.”

“T see now when his hair turned white,” said Godefroid.

“Alas!” said Alain.—“Hereceived from Amédée du Vissard
a miniature of Madame des Tours-Miniéres, the only like-
ness of her that exists; and the Abbé has been a sacred person-
age to Madame de la Chanterie ever since the day when she
was restored triumphant to social life.”

“Tow was that?” asked Godefroid in surprise.

“Well, on the restoration of Louis XVIII. in 1814, Bois-
laurier, who was the younger brother of Monsieur de Boisfre-
lon, was still under the King’s orders to organize a rising in
the West—first in 1809, and afterwards in 1812. Their name
is Dubut; the Dubut of Caen was related to them. There were
three brothers: Dubut de Boisfranc, President of the Court
of Subsidies; Dubut de Boisfrelon, Councillor at Law; and
Dubut-Boislaurier, a Captain of Dragoons. Their father had
given each the name of one of his three several estates to give
them a titleandstatus (savonnette a la vilain, as itwascalled),
for their grandfather was a linen merchart. Dubut of Caen,
who succeeded in escaping, was one of the branch who had
stuck to trade; but he hoped, by devoting himself to the Royal
cause, to be allowed to succeed to Monsieur de Boisfranc’s
title. And in fact Louis XVIII. gratified the wish of his
faithful adherent, who, in 1815, was made Grand Provost, and
subsequently became a Public Prosecutor under the name of
Boisfrane; he was President of one of the Higher Courts when
he died. The Marquis du Vissard, the unhappy Chevalier’sTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 109

elder brother, created peer of France, and loaded with honors
by the King, was made Lieutenant of the Maison Rouge, and
when that was abolished became Préfet. Monsieur d’Her-
bomez had a brother who was made a Count and Receiver-
General. The unfortunate banker Pannier died on the hulks
of a broken heart. Boislaurier died childless, a Lieutenant-
General and Governor of one of the Royal residences.

“Madame de la Chanterie was presented to His Majesty by
Monsieur de Champignelles, Monsieur de Beauséant, the Due
de Verneuil, and the Keeper of the Seals —‘You have suffered
much for me, Madame la Baronne, said the King; ‘you have
every claim on my favor and gratitude.’

“Sir, she replied, your Majesty has so much to do in
comforting the sufferers, that I will not add the burden of an
inconsolable sorrow. To live forgotten, to mourn for my
daughter, and do some good—that is all I have to live for. If
anything could mitigate my grief, it would be the graciousness
of my Sovereign, and the happiness of seeing that Providence
did not suffer so much devoted service to be wasted.’ ”

“And what did the King do?” asked Godefroid.

“He restored to Madame de la Chanterie two hundred thou-
sand francs in money,” said the good man, “for the estate of
Saint-Savin had been sold to make good the loss to the treas-
ury. The letters of pardon granted to Madame la Baronne
and her woman express the Sovereign’s regret for all they had
endured in his service, while acknowledging that the zeal of
his adherents had carried them teo far in action; but the
thing that will seem to you most horrible of all is, that
throughout his reign Bryond was still the agent of his secret
police.”

“Oh, what things kings can do!” cried Godefroid.—“And is
the wretch still living?”

“No. The scoundrel, who at any rate concealed his name,
calling himself Contenson, died at the end of 1829, or early
in 1830. He fell from a roof into the street when in pursuit
of a criminal.—Louis XVIII. was of the same mind as Na-
poleon as regards police agents...110 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“Madame de la Chanteric, a perfect saint, prays for this
monster’s soul, and has two masses said for him every year.

“Though her defence was undertaken by one of the famous
pleaders of the day, the father of one of our great orators,
Madame de la Chanterie, who knew nothing of her daugh-
ter’s risks till the moment when the money was brought in—
and even then only because Boislaurier, who was related to
her, told her the facts—could never establish her innocence.
The Président du Ronceret, and Blondet, Vice-President of
the Court at Alencon, vainly tried to clear the poor lady; the
influence of the notorious Mergi, the Councillor to the Su-
preme Court under the Empire, who presided over these trials
—a man fanatically devoted to the Church and Throne, who
afterwards, as Public Prosecutor, brought many a Bonapartist
head under the axe—was so great at this time over his two col-
leagues that he secured the condemnation of the unhappy
Baronne de la Chanterie. Bourlac and Mergi argued the case
with incredible virulence. The President always spoke of
the Baronne des Tours-Miniéres as the woman Bryond, and
of Madame as the woman Lechantre. The names of all the
accused were reduced to the barest Republican forms, and cur-
tailed of all titles,

“There were some extraordinary features of the trial, and
I cannot recall them all; but I remember one stroke of au-
dacity, which may show you what manner of men these
Chouans were.—The crowd that pressed to hear the trials was
beyond anything your fancy can conceive of; it filled the cor-
ridors, and the square outside was thronged as if on market
days. One morning at the opening of the Court, before the
arrival of the judges, Pille-Miche, the famous Chouan, sprang
over the balustrade into the middle of the mob, made play with
his elbows, mixed with the crowd, and fled among the terrified
spectators, ‘butting like a wild boar,’ as Bordin told me. The
gendarmes and the people rushed to stop him, and he was
caught on the steps just as he had reached the market-place.
After this daring attempt, they doubled the guard, and a de-
tachment of men-at-arms was posted on the square, for it wasTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY et

feared that there might be among the crowd some Chouans
ready to aid and abet the accused. Three persons were crushed
to death in the crowd in consequence of this attempt.

“It was subsequently discovered that Contenson—for, like
my old friend Bordin, I cannot bring myself to call him Baron
des Tours-Miniéres, or Bryond, which is a respectable old
name—that wretch, it was discovered, had made away with
sixty thousand francs of the stolen treasure. He gave ten
thousand to the younger Chaussard, whom he enticed into the
police and inoculated with all his low tastes and rices; but
all his accomplices were unlucky. The Chaussard who escaped
was pitched into the sea by Monsieur de Boislaurier, who un-
derstood from something said by Pannier that Chaussard had
turned traitor. Contenson indeed had advised him to join the
fugitives in order to spy upon them. Vauthier was killed in
Paris, no doubt by one of the Chevalier du Vissard’s obscure
but devoted followers. The younger Chaussard too was finally
murdered in one of the nocturnal raids conducted by the po-
lice ; it seems probable that Contenson took this means of rid-
ding himself of his demands or of his remorse by sending him
to sermon, as the saying goes.

“Madame de la Chanterie invested her money in the funds,
and purchased this house by the particular desire of her uncle,
the old Councillor de Boisfrelon, who in fact gave her the
money to buy it. This quiet neighborhood lies close to the
Archbishop’s residence, where our beloved Abbé has an ap-
pointment under the Cardinal. And this was Madame’s chief
reason for acceding to the old lawyer’s wish when his income,
after twenty-five years of revolutions, was reduced to six thou-
sand francs a year. Besides, Madame wished to close a life
of such terrible misfortunes as had overwhelmed her for six-
and-twenty years in almost cloistered seclusion.

“You may now understand the dignity, the majesty, of this
long-suffering woman—august indeed, as I may say a

“Yes,” said Godefroid, “the stamp of all she has endured
has given her an indefinable air of grandeur and majesty.”

“Hach blow, each fresh pang, has but increased her patience112 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

and resignation,” Alain went on. “And if you could know her
as we do, if you knew how keen her feelings are, and how ac-
tive is the spring of tenderness that wells up in her heart, you
would be afraid to take count of the tears she must shed, and
her fervent prayers that ascend to God. Only those who, like
her, have known but a brief season of happiness can resist such
shocks. Hers is a tender heart, a gentle soul clothed in a
frame of steel, tempered by privation, toil, and austerity.”

“Such a life as hers explains the life of hermits,” said Gode-
froid.

“There are days when I wonder what can be the meaning
of such an existence. Is it that God reserves these utmost, bit-
terest trials for those of His creatures who shall sit on His
right hand on the day after their death?” said the good old
man, quite unaware that he was artlessly expressing Sweden-
borg’s doctrine concerning the angels.

“What!” exclaimed Godefroid, “Madame de la Chanterie
was mixed up with——?”

“Madame was sublime in prison,” Alain said. “In the
course of three years the story of the Vicar of Wakefield came
true, for she reclaimed several women of profligate lives. And
in the course of her imprisonment, as she took note of the con-
duct of those confined with her, she learned to feel that great
pity for the misery of the people which weighs on her soul, and
has made her the queen of Parisian charity. It was in the
horrible Bicétre at Rouen that she conceived of the plan which
we devote ourselves to carry out. It was, as she declared, a
dream of rapture, an angelic inspiration in the midst of hell ;
she had no thought of ever seeing it realized.

“But here, in 1819, when peace seemed to be descending
on Paris, she came back to her dream. Madame la Duchesse
d’Angouléme, the Dauphiness, the Duchesse de Berri, the
Archbishop, and then the Chancellor and some pious persons
contributed very liberally to the first necessary expenses. The
fund was increased by what we could spare from our income,
for each of us spends no more than is absolutely necessary.”
Tears rose to Godefroid’s eyes.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 113

“We are the faithful priesthood of a Christian idea, and
belong body and soul to this work, of which Madame de la
Chanterie is the founder and the soul—that lady whom you
hear us respectfully designate as Madame.”

“Ah, and I too am wholly yours!” cried Godefroid, holding
out his hands to the worthy man.

“Now, do you understand that there are subjects of con-
versation absolutely prohibited here, never even to be alluded
to?” Alain went on. “Do you appreciate the obligation of
reticence under which we all feel ourselves to a lady whom we
reverence as a saint? Do you understand the charm exerted
by a woman made sacred by her misfortunes, having learned
so many things, knowing the inmost secret of every form of
suffering—a woman who has derived a lesson from every grief,
whose every virtue has the twofold sanction of the hardest
tests and of constant practice, whose soul is spotless and above
reproach; who has known motherhood only through its sor-
rows, and conjugal affection only through its bitterness; on
whom life never smiled but for a few months—for whom
Heaven no doubt keeps a palm in store as the reward of such
resignation and gentleness amid sorrows? Is she not superior
to Job in that she has never murmured ?

“So you need never again be surprised to find her speech so
impressive, her old age so fresh, her spirit so full of com-
munion, her looks so persuasive; she has had powers extra-
ordinary bestowed on her as a confidante of the sorrowing, for
she has known every sorrow. In her presence smaller griefs
are mube.@

“She is the living embodiment of charity,” cried Godefroid
with enthusiasm. “May I become one of you?”

“You must pass the tests, and above all else, Believe!” said
the old man with gentle excitement. “So long as you have
not hold on faith, so long as you have not assimilated in your
heart and brain the divine meaning of Saint Paul’s epistle on
Charity, you can take no part in our work.”

PARIS, 1843-1845.
8SECOND EPISODE
INITIATED

WHAT is nobly good is contagious, as evil is. And by the
time Madame de la Chanterie’s boarder had dwelt for some
months in this silent old house, after the story told him by
Monsieur Alain, which filled him with the deepest respect for
the half-monastic life he saw around him, he became conscious
of the ease of mind that comes of a regular life, of quiet habits
and harmonious tempers in those we live with. In four
months Godefroid, never hearing an angry tone or the least
dispute, owned to himself that since he had come to years of
discretion he did not remember ever being so completely at
peace—for he could not say happy. He looked on the world
from afar, and judged it sanely. At last the desire he had
cherished these three months past to take his part in the deeds
of this mysterious association had become a passion; and with-
out being a very profound philosopher, the reader may imagine
what strength such a passion may assume in seclusion.

So one day—a day marked as solemn by the ascendency of
the Spirit—Godefroid, after sounding his heart and measur-
ing his powers, went up to his good friend Alain—whom
Madame de la Chanterie always called her lamb—for of all
the dwellers under that roof he had always seemed to Gode-
froid the most accessible and the least formidable. To him,
then, he would apply, to obtain from the worthy man some
information as to the sort of priesthood which these Brethren
in God exercised in Paris. Many allusions to a period of pro-
bation suggested to him that he would be put to initiatory tests
of some kind. His curiosity had not been fully satisfied by
what the venerable old man had told him of the reasons why
he had joined Madame de la Chanterie’s association; he
wanted to know more about this.

(114)THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 115

At half-past ten o’clock that evening Godefroid found him-
self for the third time in Monsieur Alain’s rooms, just as the
old man was preparing to read his chapter of The Imitation.
This time the mild old man could not help smiling, and he said
to the young man, before allowing him to speak:

“Why do you apply to me, my dear boy, instead of address-
ing yourself to Madame? I am the most ignorant, the least
spiritual, the most imperfect member of the household.—For
the last three days Madame and my iriends have seen into
your heart,” he added, with a little knowing air.

“And what have they seen?” asked Godefroid. 7

“Oh,” said the good man, with perfect simplicity, “they
have seen a guileless desire to belong to our community. But
the feeling is not yet a very ardent vocation. Nay,” he replied
to an impulsive gesture of Godefroid’s, “you have more curi-
osity than fervor. In fact, you have not so completely freed
yourself from your old ideas but that you imagine something
adventurous, something romantic, as the phrase goes, in the
incidents of our life a

Godefroid could not help turning red.

“You fancy that there is some resemblance between our
occupations and those of the Khalifs in the Arabian Nights,
and you anticipate a kind of satisfaction in playing the part
of the good genius in the idyllic beneficences of which you
dream! Ah, ha! my son, your smile of confusion shows me
that we were not mistaken. How could you expect to con-
ceal your thoughts from us, who make it our business to detect
the hidden impulses of the soul, the cunning of poverty, the
calculations of the needy; who are honest spies, the police of a
merciful Providence, old judges whose code of law knows only
absolution, and physicians of every malady whose only pre-
scription is a wise use of money? Still, my dear boy, we do
not quarrel with the motives that bring us a neophyte if only
he stays with us and becomes a brother of our Order. We
shall judge you by your works. There are two kinds of curi-
osity—one for good, and one for evil. At this moment your
curiosity is for good. If you are to become a laborer in ourRe SDS

116 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

vineyard, the juice of the grapes will give you perpetual thirst
for the divine fruit. The initiation looks easy, but is difficult,
as in every natural science. In well-doing, as in poetry,
nothing can be easier than to clutch at its semblance; but here,
as on Parnassus, we are satisfied with nothing short of perfec-
tion. To become one of us, you must attain to great knowledge
of life—and of such life. Good God! ~* Of that Paris life
which defies the scrutiny of the Chief of the Police and his
men. It is our task to unmask the permanent conspiracy of
evil, and detect it under forms so endlessly changing that they
might be thought infinite. In Paris, Charity must be as om-
niscient as Sin, just as the police agent must be as cunning as
a thief. We have to be at once frank and suspicious; our
judgment must be as certain and as swift as our eye.

“As you see, dear boy, we are all old and worn out; but then
we are so well satisfied with the results we have achieved, that
we wish not to die without leaving successors, and we hold
you all the more dear because you may, if you will, be our first
disciple. For us there is no risk, we owe you to God! Yours
is a sweet nature turned sour, and since you came to live here
the evil leaven is weaker. Madame’s heavenly nature has had
its effect on you.

“We held council yesterday ; and as you have given me your
confidence, my good brothers decided on making me your in-
structor and guide.—Are you satisfied ?”

“Oh, my kind Monsieur Alain, your eloquence has
aroused a

“Tt is not I that speak well, my dear boy, it is that great
deeds are eloquent.—We are always sure of soaring high if we
obey God and imitate Jesus Christ so far as lies in man aided
by faith.”

“This moment has decided my fate; I feel the ardor of the
neophyte!” cried Godefroid. “I too would fain spend my life
in well-doing a

“That is the secret of dwelling in God,” replied the good
man. “Have you meditated on our motto, Transire bene-
faciendo? Transire means to pass beyond this life, leaving
a Jong train of good actions behind you.”THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY DLT

“I have understood it so, and I have written up the motto
of the order in front of my bed.”

“That is well.And that action, so trivial in itself, is of
great value in my eyes.—Well, my son, I have your first task
ready for you, I will see you with your foot in the stirrup. We
must part.—Yes, for I have to leave our retreat and take my
place in the heart of a volcano. I am going as foreman in a
large factory where all the workmen are infected with com-
munistic doctrines—and dream of social destruction, of mur-
dering the masters, never seeing that this would be to mur-
der industry, manufacture, and commerce.

“I shall remain there—who knows—a year, perhaps, as
cashier, keeping the books, and making my way into a hundred
or more humble homes, among men who were misled by pov-
erty, no doubt, before they were deluded by bad books. How-
ever, we shall see each other here every Sunday and holiday;
as I shall live in the same quarter of the town we may meet at
the Church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas; I shall attend mass
there every morning at half-past seven. If you should happen
to meet me elsewhere, you must never recognize me, unless I
rub my hands with an air of satisfaction. That is one of our
signals.—Like the deaf-mutes, we have a language by signs,
of which the necessity will soon be more than abundantly evi-
dent to you.”

Godefroid’s expression was intelligible to Monsieur Alain,
for he smiled and went on:

“Now for your business. We do not practise either bene-
ficence or philanthropy as they are known to you, under a
variety of branches which are preyed upon by swindlers, just
like any other form of trade. We exercise eharity as it is de-
fined by our great and sublime master Saint Paul; for it is

our belief, my son, that such charity alone can heal the woes
of Paris. Thus, in our eyes, sorrow, poverty, suffering, trou-
ble, evil—from whatever cause they may proceed and in what-
ever class of society we find them—have equal claims upon us.
Whatever their creed or their opinions, the unfortunate are,
first and foremost, unfortunate; we do not try to persuade118 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

them to look to our Holy Mother the Church till we have res-
cued them from despair and starvation. And even then we
try to convert them by example and kindness, for thus we be-
lieve that we have the help of God. All coercion is wrong.

“Of all the wretchedness in Paris, the most difficult to dis-
cover and the bitterest to endure is that of the respectable
middle-class, the better class of citizens, when they fall into
poverty, for they make it a point of honor to conceal it. Such
disasters as these, my dear Godefroid, are the object of our
particular care. Such persons, when we help them, show in-
telligence and good feeling; they return us with interest what
we may lend to them; and in the course of time their repay-
ments cover the losses we meet with through the disabled, or by
swindlers, or those whom misfortune has stultified. Some-
times we get useful information from those we have helped;
but the work has grown to such vast dimensions, and its de-
tails are so numerous, that it is beyond our powers. Now, for
the last seven or eight months, we have a physician in our
employment in each district of the city of Paris. Hach of us
has four arrondissements (or wards) under his eye; and we
are prepared to pay to each three thousand francs a year to
take charge of our poor. He is required to give up his time
and care to them by preference, but we do not prevent his tak-
ing other patients. Would you believe that we have not in
eight months been able to find twelve euch men, twelve good
men, in spite of the pecuniary aid offered by our friends and
acquaintance? You see, we needed men of absolute secrecy,
of pure life, of recognized abilities, and with a love of doing
good. Well, in Paris there are perhaps ten thousand men fit
for the work, and yet in a year’s search the twelve elect have
not been found.”

“Our Lord found it hard to collect His apostles,’ said
Godefroid, “and there were a traitor and a disbeliever among
them after all!”

“At last, within the past fortnight, each arrondissement has
been provided with a visitor,” said the old man, smiling—“for
so we call our physicians—and, indeed, within that fortnightTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 119

there has been a vast increase of business. However, we have
worked all the harder. I tell you this secret of our infant
fraternity because you must make acquaintance with the phy-
sician of your district, all the more so because we depend on
him for information. This gentleman’s name is Berton—
Doctor Berton—and he lives in the Rue de l’Enfer.

“Now for the facts. Doctor Berton is attending a lady
whose disease seems in some way to defy science. That indeed
does not concern us, but only the Faculty; our business is to
find out the poverty of the sick woman’s family, which the
doctor believes to be frightful, and concealed with a determi-
nation and pride that baffle all our inquiries. Hitherto, my
dear boy, this would have been my task; but now the work
to which I am devoting myself makes an assistant necessary
in my four districts, and you must be that assistant. The
family lives in the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, in a house
looking out over the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse. You will
easily find a room to let there, and while lodging there for a
time you must try to discover the truth. Be sordid as regards
your own expenses, but do not trouble your head about the
money you give. I will send you such sums as we consider
necessary, taking all the circumstances of the case into con-
sideration. But study the moral character of these unfor-
tunate people. A good heart and noble feelings are the secur-
ity for our loans. Stingy to ourselves and generous to suffer-
ing, we must still be careful and never rash, for we dip into
the treasury of the poor.—Go to-morrow, and remember how
much power lies in your hands. The Brethren will be on your,
side.”

“Ah!” cried Godefroid, “you have given me so much pleas-
ure in trusting me to do good and be worthy of some day being
one of you, that I shall not sleep for joy.”

“Stay, my boy, one last piece of advice. Whe prohibition to
recognize me unless I make the sign concerns the other gentle-
men and Madame, and even the servants of the house. Abso-
Jute incognito is indispensable to all our undertakings, and
we are so constantly obliged to preserve it that we have made it
a law without exceptions. We must be unknown, lost in Paris.120 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

   

“Remember, too, my dear Godefroid, the very spirit of our
Order, which requires us never to appear as benefactors, but to
play the obscure part of intermediaries. We always represent
ourselves as the agents of some saintly and beneficent person-
age—are we not toiling for God?—so that no gratitude may
be considered due to ourselves, and that we may not be sup-
posed to be rich. True, sincere humility, not the false hu-
mility of those who keep in the shade that others may throw
a light on them, must inspire and govern all your thoughts.—
You may rejoice when-you succeed ; but so long as you feel the
least impulse of vanity, you will be unworthy to join the
Brotherhood. We have known two perfect men. One, who
was one of our founders, Judge Popinot; the other, who was
known by his works, was a country doctor who has left his
name written in a remote parish. He, my dear. Godefroid,
was one of the greatest men of our day; he raised a whole dis-
triet from a savage state to one of prosperity, from irreligion
to the Catholic faith, from barbarism to civilization. The
names of those two men are graven on eur hearts, and we re-
gard them as our examples. We should be happy indeed if we
might one day have in Paris such influence as that country
doctor had in his own district.

“But here the plague-spot is immeasurable, and, so far,
quite beyond our powers. May God long preserve Madame,
and send us many such helpers as you, and then perhaps we
may found an Institution that will lead men to bless His holy
religion.

“Well, farewell. Your initiation now begins.

“Bless me! I chatter lke a Professor, and was forgetting
the most important matter. Here is the address of the family
I spoke of,” he went on, handing a scrap of paper to Gode-
froid. “And [I have added the number of Monsieur Berton’s
house in the Rue de l Enfer.—Now, go and pray God to help

ou.”

Godefroid took the good old man’s hands and pressed them
affectionately, bidding him good-night, and promising to for-
get none of his injunctions.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 121

“All you have said,” he added, “is stamped on my memory
for life.”

Alain smiled with no expression of doubt, and rose to gd
and kneel on his prie-Dieu. Godefroid went back to his own
room, happy in being at last allowed to know the mysteries
of this household, and to have an occupation which, in his
present frame of mind, was really a pleasure.

At breakfast next morning there was no Monsieur Alain,
but Godefroid made no remark on his absence. Nor was he
questioned as to the mission given him by the old man; thus
he received his first lesson in secrecy. After breakfast, how-
ever, he took Madame de la Chanterie aside, and told her that
he should be absent for a few days.

“Very well, my child,” replied Madame de la Chanterie.
“And try to do your sponsor credit, for Monsieur Alain has
answered for you to his brethren.”

Godefroid took leave of the other three men, who embraced
him affectionately, seeming thus to give him their blessing
on his outset in his laborious career.

Association—one of the greatest social forces which was
the making of Europe in the Middle Ages—is based on feel-
ings which have ceased, since 1792, to exist in France, where
the individual is now supreme over the State. Association
requires, in the first place, a kind of devotedness which is not
understood in this country; a simplicity of faith which is con-
trary to the national spirit; and finally, a discipline against
which everything rebels, and which nothing but the Catholic
faith can exact. As soon as an Association is formed in
France, each member of it, on returning home from a meet-
ing where the finest sentiments have been expressed, makes
a bed for himself of the collective devotion of this combina-
tion of forces, and tries to milk for his own benefit the cow
belonging to all, till the poor thing, inadequate to meet so
many individual demands, dies of attenuation.
None can tell how many generous emotions have been
nipped, how many fervid germs have perished, how much re-122 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

 

source has been crushed and lost to the country by the shame-
ful frauds of the French secret Societies, of the patriotic fund
for the Champs d’Asile (emigration to America), and other
political swindles, which ought to have produced great and
noble dramas, and turned out mere farces of the lower police
courts.

It was the same with industrial as with political associa-
tions. Self-interest took the place of public spirit. The
Corporations and Hanseatic Guilds of the Middle Ages, to
which we shall some day return, are as yet out of the question;
the only Societies that still exist are religious institutions,
and at this moment they are being very roughly attacked,
for the natural tendency of the sick is to rebel against the
remedies and often to rend the physician. France knows not
what self-denial means. Hence no Association can hold to-
gether but by the aid of religious sentiment, the only power
that can quell the rebellion of the intellect, the calculations
of ambition, and greed of every kind. Those who are in search
of worlds fail to understand that Association has worlds in its
gift.

Godefroid, as he made his way through the streets, felt
himself a different man. Any one who could have read his
mind would have wondered at the curious phenomenon of the
communication of the spirit of union. He was no longer
one man, but a being multiplied tenfold, feeling himself the
representative of five persons whose united powers were at
the back of all he did, and who walked with him on his way.
With this strength in his heart, he was conscious of a fulness
of life, a lofty power that uplifted him. It was, as he after-
wards owned, one of the happiest moments of his life, for
he rejoiced in a new sense—that of an omnipotence more
absolute than that of despots. Moral force, like thought,
knows no limits.

“This is living for others,” said he to himself, “acting with
others as if we were but one man, and acting alone as if we
were all together! This is having Charity for a leader, the
fairest and most living of all the ideals that have been createdTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 123

of the Catholic virtues.—Yes, this ig living !—Come, I must
subdue this childish exultation which Father Alain would
laugh to scorn.—Still, is it not strange that it is by dint of
trying to annul my Self that I have found the power so long
wished for? The world of misfortune is to be my
heritance.”

He crossed the precincts of Notre-Dame to the Avenue
de Observatoire in such high spirits that he did not heed
the length of the walk.

Having reached the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, at the

1a

Sy;

end of the Rue de l’Ouest, he was surprised to find such pools
of mud in so handsome a quarter of the town, for neither of
those streets was as yet paved. The foot-passenger had to
walk on planks laid close to the walls of the marshy gardens,
or creep by the houses on narrow side-paths, which were soon
swamped by the stagnant waters that turned them into
gutters.

After much seeking, he discovered the house described to
him, and got to it, not without some difficulty. It was evi-
dently an old manufactory which had been abandoned. The
building was narrow, and the front was a long wall pierced
with windows quite devoid of any ornament; but there were
none of these square openings on the ground floor—only a
wretched back-door.

Godefroid supposed that the owner had contrived a number
of rooms in this structure to his own profit, for over the
door there was a board scrawled by hand to this effect: Sev-
eral rooms to let. Godefroid rang, but no one came; and as he
stood waiting, a passer-by pointed out to him that there was
another entrance to the house from the boulevard, where he
would find somebody to speak to.

Godefroid acted on the information, and from the boule-
vard he saw the front of the house screened by the trees of a
small garden-plot. This garden, very ill-kept, sloped to the
house, for there is such a difference of level between the
boulevard and the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs as to make
the garden a sort of ditch. Godefroid went down the path,Sere eee

124 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

and at the bottom of it saw an old woman whose dilapidated
garb was in perfect harmony with the dwelling.

“Was it you who rang in the Rue Notre-Dame?” she asked.

“Yes, madame.—Is it your business to show the rooms?”

On a reply in the affirmative from this portress, whose
age it was difficult to determine, Godefroid inquired whether
the house was tenanted by quiet folk; his occupations required
peace and silence; he was a bachelor, and wished to arrange
with the doorkeeper to cook and clean for him.

On this hint the woman became gracious, and said:

“Monsieur could not have done better than to hit on this
house; for excepting the days when there are doings at the
Chaumiere, the boulevard is as deserted as the Pontine
Marshes .

“Do you know the Pontine Marshes?” asked Godefroid.

“No, sir; but there is an old gentleman upstairs whose
daughter is always in a dying state, and he says so.—I only
repeat it. That poor old man will be truly glad to think that
you want peace and quiet, for a lodger who stormed around
would be the death of his daughter.—And we have two writers
of some kind on the second floor, but they come in for the day
at midnight, and then at night they go out at eight in the
morning. Authors, they say they are, but I do not know where
or when they work.”

As she spoke, the portress led Godefroid up one of those
horrible stairs built of wood and brick, in such an unholy
alliance that it is impossible to say whether the wood is
parting from the bricks or the bricks are disgusted at being
set in the wood; while both materials seem to fortify their
disunion by masses of dust in summer and of mud in winter.
The walls, of cracked plaster, bore more inscriptions than the
Academy of Belles-lettres ever invented.

The woman stopped on the first floor.

“Now, here, sir, are two very good rooms, opening into
each other, and on to Monsieur Bernard’s landing. He is the
old gentleman I mentioned—and quite the gentleman. He
has the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, but he has had greatTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 125

troubles, it would seem, for he never wears it.—When first
they came they had a servant to wait on them, a man from the
country, and they sent him away close on three years ago.
The lady’s young gentleman—her son—doeg everything now;
he manages it all i

Godefroid looked shocked.

“Oh!” said the woman, “don’t be uneasy, they will say
nothing to you; they never speak to anybody. The gentle-
man has been here ever since the revolution of July; he came
in 1831.—They are some high provincial family, I believe,
ruined by the change of government; and proud! and as mute
as fishes.—For four years, sir, they have never let me do the
least thing for them, for fear of having to pay.—A five-franc
piece on New Year’s day, that’s every sou I get out of them.—
Give me your authors! I get ten francs a month, only to tell
everybody who comes to ask for them that they left at the
end of last quarter.”

All this babble led Godefroid to hope for an ally in this
woman, who explained to him, as she praised the airiness of
the two rooms and adjoining dressing-closets, that she was
not the portress, but the landlord’s deputy and housekeeper,
managing everything for him to a great extent.

“And you may trust me, monsieur, I promise you! Ma-
dame Vauthier—that’s me—would rather have nothing at
all than take a sou of anybody else’s.”

Madame Vauthier soon came to terms with Godefroid, who
wished to take the rooms by the month and ready furnished.
These wretched lodgings, rented by students or authors
“down on their luck,” were let furnished or unfurnished, as
might be required. The spacious lofts over the whole house
were full of furniture. But Monsieur Bernard himself had
furnished the rooms he was in.

In getting Madame Vauthier to talk, Godefroid discovered
that her ambition was set up in a pension bourgeoise; but
in the course of five years she had failed to meet with a single
boarder among her lodgers. She inhabited the ground floor,
on the side towards the boulevard; thus she was herself the126 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

doorkeeper, with the help of a big dog, a sturdy girl, and a
boy who cleaned the boots, ran errands, and did the rooms,
two creatures as poor as herself, in harmony with the squalor
of the house and its inhabitants, and the desolate, neglected
appearance of the garden in front.

They were both foundlings, to whom the widow Vauthier
gave no wages but their food—and such food! The boy, of
whom Godefroid caught a glimpse, wore a ragged blouse, list
slippers instead of shoes, and sabots to go out in. With a
shock of hair, as touzled as a sparrow taking a bath, and
blackened hands, as soon as he had done the work of the
house, he went off to measure wood logs in a woodyard hard
by, and when his day was over—at half-past four for wood-
sawyers—he returned for his occupations. He fetched water
for the household from the fountain by the Observatory, and
the widow supplied it to the lodgers, as well as the faggots
which he chopped and tied.

Népomucéne—this was the name of the widow Vauthier’s
slave—handed over his earnings to his mistress. In summer-
time the unhappy waif served as waiter in the wineshops by
the barriére on Sundays and Mondays. Then the woman
gave him decent clothes.

As for the girl, she cooked under the widow’s orders, and
helped her in her trade work at other times, for the woman
plied a trade; she made list slippers for peddlers to sell.

All these details were known to Godefroid within an hour,
for Madame Vauthier took him all over the house, showing
him how it had been altered. A silkworm establishment had
been carried on there till 1828, not so much for the produc-
tion of sill as that of the eggs—the seed, as it is called.
Eleven acres of mulberry-trees at Mont-Rouge, and three
acres in the Rue de |’Ouest, since built over, had supplied
food for this nursery for silkworms’ eggs.

Madame Vauthier was telling Godefroid that Monsieur
Barbet, who had lent the capital to an Italian named Fres-
coni to carry on this business, had been obliged to sell those
three acres to recover the money secured by a mortgage onTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 127

the land and buildings, and was pointing out the plot of
ground, lying on the other side of the Rue N otre-Dame des
Champs, when a tall and meagre old man, with perfectly
white hair, came in sight at the end of the street where it
crosses the Rue de l’Ouest.

“In the very nick of time!” cried Madame Vauthier.
“Look, that is your neighbor, Monsieur Bernard.—Monsieur
Bernard,” cried she, as soon as the old man was within hear-
ing, “you will not be alone now; this gentleman here has just
taken the rooms opposite yours zs

Monsieur Bernard looked up at Godefroid with an appre-
hensive eye that was easy to read; it was as though he had
said, “Then the misfortune I have go long feared has come
upon me!”

“What, monsieur,” said he, “you propose to reside here?”

“Yes, monsieur,” said Godefroid civilly. “This is no home
for those who are lucky in the world, and it is the cheapest
lodging I have seen in this part of the town. Madame Vau-
thier does not expect to harbor millionaires.—Good-day, then,
Madame Vauthier; arrange things so that I may come in at
six o'clock this evening. I shall return punctually.”

And Godefroid went off towards the Rue de VOuest, walk-
ing slowly, for the anxiety he had read in the old man’s face
led him to suppose that he wanted to dispute the matter with
him. And, in fact, after some little hesitation, Monsieur
Bernard turned on his heel and walked quickly enough to
come up with Godefroid.

“That old wretch! he wants to hinder him from coming
back,” said Madame Vauthier to herself. “Twice already he
has played me that trick—Patience! His rent is due in
five days, and if he does not pay it down on the nail, out he
goes! Monsieur Barbet is a tiger of a sort that does not need
much lashing, and—I should like to know what he is saying
to him-—Feélicité! Félicité! you lazy hussy, will you make
haste?” cried the widow in a formidable croak, for she had
assumed an affable piping tone in speaking to Godefroid.
The girl, a sturdy, red-haired slut, came running out.128 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“Just keep a sharp eye on everything for a few seconds,
do you hear? I shall be back in five minutes.”

And the widow Vauthier, formerly cook to the bookseller’s
shop kept by Barbet, one of the hardest money-lenders on
short terms in the neighborhood, stole out at the heels of her
two lodgers, so as to watch them from a distance and rejoin
Godefroid as soon as he and Monsieur Bernard should part
company.

Monsieur Bernard was walking slowly, hke a man in two
minds, or a debtor seeking for excuses to give to a creditor
who has left him to take proceedings.

Godefroid, in front of this unknown neighbor, turned round
to look at him under pretence of looking about him. And it
was not till they had reached the broad walk in the Luxem-
bourg Gardens that Monsieur Bernard came up with Gode-
froid and addressed him.

“T beg your pardon a thousand times, monsieur,” said he,
bowing to Godefroid, who returned the bow, “for stopping
you, when I have not the honor of knowing you; but is it
your firm intention to live in the horrible house where I am
lodging ?”

“Indeed, monsicur

“T know,” said the old man, interrupting Godefroid with a
commanding air, “that you have a right to ask me what con-
cern of mine it is to meddle in your affairs, to question you.
—TJisten, monsicur; you are young, and I am very old; I
am older than my years, and they are sixty-six—I might be
taken for eighty !—Age and misfortune justify many things,
since the law exempts septuagenarians from various public
duties; still, I do not dwell on the privileges bestowed by
white hairs; it is you whom I am concerned for. Do you
know that the part of the town in which you think of living
is a desert by eight in the evening, and full of dangers, of
which being robbed is the least? Have you noticed the wide
plots where there are no houses, the waste ground and

29THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 129

market gardens?—You will, perhaps, retort that I live there :
but I, monsieur, am never out of doors after six in the even-
ing. Or you will say that two young men are lodgers on the
second floor, above the rooms you propose to take; but, mon-
sieur, those two unhappy writers are the victims of writs out
against them; they are pursued by their creditors ; they are
in hiding, and go out all day to come in at midnight; and as
they always keep together and carry arms, they have no fear
of being robbed.—I myself obtained permission from the chief
of the police for them each to carry a weapon.”

“Indeed, monsieur,” said Godefroid, “I have no fear of
robbers, for the same reasons as leave these gentlemen in-
vulnerable, and so great a contempt for life, that if I should
be murdered by mistake, I should bless the assassin.”

“And yet you do not look go very wretched,” said the old
man, who was studying Godefroid.

“I have barely enough to live on, to give me bread, and I
chose that part of town for the sake of the quiet that
reigns there.—But may I ask, monsieur, what object you can
have in keeping me out of the house 2”

The old man hesitated; he saw Madame Vauthier in pur-
suit! Godefroid, who was examining him attentively, was
surprised at the excessive emaciation to which grief, and per-
haps hunger, or perhaps hard work, had reduced him ; there
were traces of all these causes of weakness on the face where
the withered skin looked dried on to the bones, as tf it had
been exposed to the African sun. The forehead, which was
high and threatening, rose in a dome above a pair of steel-
blue eyes, cold, hard, shrewd, and piercing as those of a say-
age, and set in deep, dark, and very wrinkled circles, like a
bruise round each. A large, long, thin nose, and the upward
curve of the chin, gave the old man a marked likeness to the
familiar features of Don Quixote; but this was a sinister
Don Quixote, a man of no delusions, a terrible Don Quixote.

The old man, in spite of his look of severity, betrayed
nevertheless the timidity and weakness that poverty gives to
the unfortunate. And these two feelings seemed to have

9130 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

graven lines of ruin on a face so strongly framed that the
destroying pickaxe of misery had rough hewn it. The mouth
was expressive and grave. Don Quixote was crossed with the
Président de Montesquieu.

The man’s dress was of black cloth throughout, but utterly
threadbare; the coat, old-fashioned in cut, and the trousers
showed many badly-executed patches. ‘The buttons had been
recently renewed. The coat was fastened to the chin, show-
ing no linen, and a rusty-black stock covered the absence of
a collar. These black clothes, worn for many years, reeked of
poverty. But the mysterious old man’s air of dignity, his
gait, the mind that dwelt behind that brow and lighted up
those eyes, seemed irreconcilable with poverty. An observer
would have found it hard to class this Parisian.

Monsieur Bernard was so absent-minded that he might
have been taken for a professor of the college-quarter, a
learned man lost in jealous and overbearing meditation; and
Godefroid was filled with excessive interest and a degree of
curiosity to which his beneficent mission added a spur.

“Monsieur,” said the old man presently, “if I were assured
that all you seek is silence and privacy, I] would say, ‘Come
and live near me.’? Take the rooms,” he went on in a louder
voice, so that the widow might hear him, as she passed them,
listening to what they were saying. “I am a father, mon-
sieur, | have no one belonging to me in the world but my
daughterand her son to help me to endure the miseries of life ;
but my daughter needs silence and perfect quiet—LEvery one
who has hitherto come to take the rooms you wish to lodge
in has yielded to the reasoning and the entreaties of a heart-
broken father; they did not care in which street they settled
of so desolate a part of the town, where cheap lodgings are
plenty and boarding-houses at very low rates. But you, I see,
are very much bent on it, and I can only beg you, monsieur,
not to deceive me; for if you should, I can but leave and
settle beyond the barrier.—And, in the first place, a removal
might cost my daughter her life,” he said in a broken voice,
“and then, who knows whether the doctors who come to at-THE SEAMY SIDE oF HISTORY 131

tend her—for the love of God—w
gates ?. ee

If the man could have shed tears, they would have run down
his cheeks as he spoke these last words; but there were tears
in his voice, to use a phrase that has become commonplace,

and he covered his brow with a hand that was mere bone and
sinew.

ould come outside the

 

“What, then, is the matter with madame, your daughter ?”
asked Godefroid in a voice of ingratiating sympathy.

“A terrible disease to which the doctors give a variety of

names—or rather, which has no name.—All my fortune
went a

But he checked himself, and said, with one of those move-
ments peculiar to the unfortunate:

“The little money I had—for in 1830, dismissed from a
high position, I found myself without an income—in short,
everything I had was soon eaten up by my daughter, who
had already ruined her mother and her husband’s family. At
the present time the pension I draw hardly suffices to pay
for necessities in the state in which my poor saintly daughter
now is.—She has exhausted all my power to weep.

“T have endured every torment, monsieur; I must be of
granite still to live—or rather, God preserves the father that
his child may still have a nurse or a providence, for her
mother died of exhaustion.

“Ay, young man, you have come at a moment when this
old tree that has never bent is feeling the axe of suffering,
sharpened by poverty, cutting at its heart. And T. who have
never complained to anybody, will tell you about this long ill-
ness to keep you from coming to the house—or, if you insist,
to show you how necessary it is that our quiet should not be
disturbed.

“At this moment, monsieur, day and night, my daughter
barks like a dog!”

“She is mad, then?” said Godefroid.

“She is in her right mind, and a perfect saint,” replied
Monsieur Bernard. “You will think I am mad when I have1382 THH SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

told you all. My only daughter is the child of a mother who
enjoyed excellent health. I never in my life loved but one
woman—she was my wife. I chose her myself, and married
for love the daughter of one of the bravest colonels in the
Imperial guard, a Pole formerly on the Emperor’s staff, the
gallant General Tarlovski. In the place I held strict morality
was indispensable; but my heart is not adapted to accommo-
date my fancies—I loved my wife faithfully, and she de-
served it. And Iam as constant as a father as I was as a hus-
band; I can say no more.

“My daughter never left her mother’s care; no girl ever led
a chaster or more Christian life than my dear child. She was
more than pretty—lovely; and her husband, a young man of
whose character I was certain, for he was the son of an old
friend, a President of the Supreme Court, I am sure was in
no way contributory to his wife’s malady.”

Monsieur Bernard and Godefroid involuntarily stood still
a moment looking at each other.

“Marriage, as you know, often changes a woman’s constitu-
tion,” the old man went on. “My daughter’s first child was
safely brought into the world, a son—my grandson, who lives
with us, and who is the only descendant of either of the
united families. The second time my daughter was expecting
an infant, she had such singular symptoms that the physicians,
all puzzled, could only ascribe them to the singular condi-
tions which sometimes occur in such cases, and which are
recorded in the memoirs of medical science. The infant was
born dead, literally strangled by internal convulsions. Thus
began the illness—temporary conditions had nothing to do
with it—Perhaps you are a medical student?” Godefroid re-
plied with a nod, which might be either negative or affirma-
tive.

“After this disastrous child-bearing,’ Monsieur Bernard
went on—“a scene that made so terrible an impression on my
son-in-law that it laid the foundations of the decline of which
he died—my daughter, at the end of two or three months,
complained of general debility, more particularly affecting herTHE SEAMY SIDE or HISTORY 138

feet, which felt, as she described it, as if they were made of
cotton. This weakness became paralysis, but what a strange
form of paralysis! You may bend my daughter’s feet under
her, twist them round, and she feels nothing. The limbs
are there, but they seem to have no blood, no flesh, no bones,
This condition, which is unlike any recognized disease, has
attacked her arms and hands; it was supposed to be connected
with her spine. Doctors and remedies have only made her
worse; my poor child cannot move without dislocating her
hips, shoulders, or wrists. We have had for a long time an
excellent surgeon, almost in the house, who makes it his care,
with the help of a doctor—or doctors, for several have seen
her out of curiosity—to replace the joints—would you
believe me, monsieur ?—as often as three or four times a day.

“Ah! I was forgetting to tell you—for this illness has so
many forms—that during the early weak stage, before paraly-
sis supervened, my daughter was liable to the most extraor-
dinary attacks of catalepsy. You know what catalepsy is.
She would lie with her eyes open and staring, sometimes in
the attitude in which the fit seized her. She has had the most
incredible forms of this affection, even attacks of tetanus.

“This phase of the disease suggested to me the application
of mesmerism as a cure when I saw her so strangely paralyzed.
Then, monsieur, my daughter became miraculously clairvoy-
ante, her mind was subject to every marvel of somnambulism,
as her body is to every form of disease.”

Godefroid was indeed wondering whether the old man were
quite sane.

“For my part,” he went on, heedless of the expression of
Godefroid’s eyes, “I, brought up on Voltaire, Diderot, and
Helvétius, am a son of the eighteenth century, of the Revolu-
tion ; and I laughed to scorn all the records handed down from
antiquity and middle ages of persons possessed—yes, and yet
possession is the only explanation of the state my child is in.
Even in her mesmeric sleep she has never been able to reveal
the cause of her sufferings; she could not see it; and the
methods of treatment suggested by her under those conditions,134 THE SHEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

though carefully followed, have had no good result. For in-
stance, she said she must be wrapped in a freshly-killed pig;
then she was to have points of highly magnetized red-hot
iron applied to her legs; to have metal sealing-wax on her
spine.—And what a wreck she became; her teeth fell out; she
became deaf, and then dumb; and suddenly, after six months
of perfect deafness and silence, she recovered hearing and
speech. She occasionally recovers the use of her hands as
unexpectedly as she loses it, but for seven years she has never
known the use of her feet.

“She has sometimes had well-defined and characteristic at-
tacks of hydrophobia. Not only may the sight or sound of
water, of a glass or a cup, rouse her to frenzy, but she barks
like a dog, a melancholy bark, or howls, as dogs do at the
sound of an organ.

“She has several times seemed to be dying, and has re-
ceived the last sacraments, and then eome back to life again
to suffer with full understanding and clearness of mind, for
her faculties of heart and brain remain unimpaired. Though
she is alive, she has caused the death of her husband and her
mother, who could not stand such repeated trials. Alags!—
Nor is this all. Every function of nature is perverted; only
a medical man could give you a complete account of the
strange condition of every organ.

“In this state did I bring her to Paris from the country in
1829; for the famous physicians to whom I described the
case—Desplein, Bianchon, and Haudry—believed I was try-
ing to impose upon them. At that time magnetism was stoutly
denied by the schools. Without throwing any doubt on the
provincial doctors’ good faith or mine, they thought there was
some inaccuracy, or, if you like, some exaggeration, such as
18 common enough in families or in the sufferers themselves.
But they have been obliged to change their views; to these
phenomena, indeed, it is due that nervous diseases have of late
years been made the subject of investigation, for this strange
case is now classed as nervous. The last consultation held
by these gentlemen led them to give up all medicine; theyTHE SEAMY SIDE or HISTORY 135

decided that nature must be studied, but left to itself; and
since then I have had but one doctor—the doctor who attends
the poor of this district. In fact, all that can be done is done
to alleviate her sufferings, since their causes remain un-
known.”

The old man paused, as if this terrible confession were too
much for him.

“For five years now my daughter has lived through alterna-
tions of amendment and relapse; but no new symptoms have
appeared. She suffers more or less from the various forms
of nervous attack which I have briefly described to you; but
the paralysis of the legs and organic disturbances are con-
stant. Our narrow means—increasingly narrow—compelled
us to move from the rooms I took in 1829 in the Rue du
Roule; and as my daughter cannot bear being moved, and I
nearly lost her twice, first in coming to Paris, and then in
moving her from the Beaujon side, I took the lodging in
which we now are, foreseeing the disasters which ere long
overtook us; for, after thirty years’ service, I was kept wait-
ing for my pension till 1833. I have drawn it only for six
months, and the new government has crowned its severities
by granting me only the minimum.”

Godefroid expressed such surprise as seemed to demand
entire confidence, and so the old man understood it, fom he
went on at once, not without a reproachful glance towards
heaven.

“I am one of the thousand victims to political reaction. I
carefully hide a name that is obnoxious to revenge; and if the
lessons of experience ever avail from one generation to the
next, remember, young man, never to lend yourself to the se-
verity of any side in politics. Not that I repent of having
done my duty, my conscience is at peace; but the powers of
to-day have ceased to have that sense of common responsi-
bility which binds governments together, however dissimilar;
when zeal meets with a reward, it is the result of transient
fear. The instrument, having served its purpose, is, sooner
or later, completely forgotten. In me you see one of the186 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

staunchest supporters of the throne under the elder branch
of the Bourbons, as I was, too, of the Imperial rule, and I
am a beggar! As I am too proud to ask charity, no one will
ever guess that I am suffering intolerable ills.

“Hive days since, monsieur, the district medical officer who
attends my daughter, or who watches the case, told me that
he had no hope of curing a disease of which the symptoms
vary every fortnight. His view is that neurotic patients are
the despair of the Faculty because the causes lie in a system
that defies investigation. He advises me to call in a certain
Jewish doctor, who is spoken of as a quack; but at the same
time he remarked that he was a foreigner, a Polish refugee,
and that physicians are extremely jealous of certain extra-
ordinary cures that have been much talked of; some people
regard him as very learned and skilful.

“But he is exacting and suspicious; he selects his patients,
and will not waste time; and then he is—a communist. His
name is Halpersohn. My grandson has called on him twice,
but in vain; for he has not yet been to the house, and I un-
derstand why.”

“Why?” asked Godefroid.

“Oh, my grandson, who is sixteen, is worse clothed even
than I am; and, will you believe me, monsieur, I dare not show
myself to this doctor; my dress is too ill-suited to what is
expected in a man of my age, and of some dignity too. If he
should see the grandfather so destitute as I am when the
grandson has shown himself in the same sorry plight, would
he devote due care to my daughter? He would treat her as
paupers are always treated.—And you must remember, mon-
sieur, that I love my daughter for the grief she has caused me,
as of old I loved her for the care she lavished upon me. She
has become a perfect angel. Alas! She is now no more
than a soul—a soul that beams on her son and on me; her
body is no more, for she has triumphed over pain.

“Tmagine what a spectacle for a father! My daughter’s
world is her bedroom. She must have flowers which she loves;
she reads a great deal; and when she has the use of her hands,THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 137

she works like a fairy. She knows nothing of the misery in
which we live. Our life is such a strange one, that we can ad-
mit no one to our rooms.—Do you understand me, monsieur ?
Do you see that a neighbor is intolerable? I should have to
ask so much of him that I should be under the greatest obliga-
tions—and I could never discharge them. In the first place,
I have no time for anything: I am educating my grandson,
and I work so hard, monsieur—so hard, that I never sleep for
more than three or four hours at night.”

“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, interrupting the old man, to
whom he had listened attentively while watching him with
grieved attention, “I will be your neighbor, and I will help
you 39

The old gentleman drew himself up with pride, indeed,
with impatience, for he did not believe in any good thing in
man.

“I will help you,” repeated Godefroid, taking the old man’s
hands and pressing them warmly, “in such ways as I can.—
Listen to me. What do you intend to make of your grand-
son?”

“He is soon to begin studying the law; I mean him to be
an advocate.”

“Then your grandson will cost you six hundred francs a
year, and you is

The old man said nothing.

“I have nothing,” said Godefroid after a pause, “but I have
influence ; I will get at the Jewish doctor ; and if your daugh-

y)

ter is curable, she shall be cured. We will find means to repay
this Halpersohn.”

“Oh, if my daughter were cured, I would make the sacri-
fice that tan be made but once; I would give up what I am
saving for a rainy day.”

“You may keep that too.”

“Ah! what a thing it is to be young !”’ said the old man,
shaking his head. “Good-bye, monsieur, or rather ay revoir.
The library is open, and as I have sold all my books, I have-to
go there every day for my work.aie eres
a

138 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“T am grateful for the kind feeling you have shown; but
we must see whether you can show me such consideration as
I am obliged to require of a neighbor. That is all I ask of
you-——”

“Yes, monsieur, pray accept me as your neighbor; for
Barbet, as you know, is not the man to put up long with empty
rooms, and you might meet with a worse companion in misery
than I.—I do not ask you to believe in me, only to allow me
to be of use to you.”

“And what interest can you have in serving me?” cried
the old man, as he was about to go down the steps of the
Cloister of the Carthusians, through which there was at that
time a passage from the broad walk of the Luxembourg to the
Rue d’Enfer.

“Have you never, in the course of your career, obliged
anybody ?”

The old man looked at Godefroid with knit brows, his eyes
vague with reminiscence, like a man searching through the
record of his life for an action for which he might deserve
such rare gratitude ; then he coldly turned away, after bowing
with evident suspicion.

“Come! for a first meeting he was not particularly distant,”
said the disciple to himself.

Godefroid went at once to the Rue d’Enfer, the address
given him by Monsieur Alain, and found Doctor Berton at
home—a stern, cold man, who surprised him greatly by assur-
ing him that the details given by Monsieur Bernard of his
daughter’s illness were absolutely correct; he then went in
search of Doctor Halpersohn.

The Polish physician, since so famous, at that time lived at
Chaillot in a little house in the Rue Marbeuf, of which he oc-
cupied the first floor. General Roman Zarnovicki lived on
the ground floor, and the servants of the two refugees occupied
the attics of the little hotel, only one story high. Godefroid
did not see the doctor; he had been sent for to some distance
in the country by a rich patient. But Godefroid was almostTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 139

glad not to have met him, for in his haste he had neglected
to provide himself with money, and was obliged to return to
the Hotel de la Chanterie to fetch some from his room.

These walks, and the time it took to dine in a restaurant
in the Rue de POdéon, kept him busy till the hour when he
was to take possession of his lodgings on the Boulevard Mont-
Parnasse.

Nothing could be more wretched than the furniture pro-
vided by Madame Vauthier for the two rooms. It seemed as
though the woman was in the habit of letting rooms not to be
inhabited. The bed, the chairs, the tables, the drawers, the
desk, the curtains, had all evidently been purchased at sales
under compulsion of the law, where the money-lender had
kept them on account, no cash value being obtainable—a not
infrequent case.

Madame Vauthier, her arms akimbo, expected thanks, and
she took Godefroid’s smile for one of surprise.

“Oh yes, I have given you the best of everything, my dear
Monsieur Godefroid,” said she with an air of triumph. “Qook
what handsome silk curtains, and a mahogany bedstead that
is not at all worm-eaten. It belonged to the Prince de Wissem-
bourg, and was bought out of his mansion. When he left
the Rue Louis-le-Grand, in 1809, I was scullery-maid in his
kitchen, and from there I went to live with my landlord x

Godefroid checked this confidential flow by paying his
month’s lodging in advance, and at the same time gave Ma-
dame Vauthier six francs, also in advance, for doing his
rooms. At this moment he heard a bark; and if he had not
been forewarned, he might have thought that his neighbor

kept a dog in his lodgings.

“Does that dog bark at night ?” he asked.

“Oh, be easy, sir, and have patience ; there will not be above
a week of it. Monsieur Bernard will not be able to pay his
rent, and he will be turned out.—Still, they are queer folks,

I must say! I never saw their dog.—For months that dog—
for months, did I say?—for six months at a time you will
never hear that dog, and you might think they didn’t keep one.140 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

The creature never comes out of madame’s room. There is a
lady who is very bad; she has never been out of her bed since
they carried her in. Old Monsieur Bernard works very hard,
and his son too, who is a day pupil at the Collége Louis-le-
Grand, where he is in the top class for philosophy, and he is
but sixteen. A bright chap that! but that little beggar works
like a-good *un. |

“You will hear them presently moving the flower pots in
the lady’s room—for they eat nothing but dry bread, the old
man and his grandson, but they buy flowers and nice things
for her. She must be very bad, poor thing, never to have
stirred out since she came; and if you take Monsieur Ber-
ton’s word—he is the doctor who comes to see her—she never
will go out but feet foremost.”

“And what is this Monsieur Bernard ?”

“A very learned man, so they say; for he writes and goes
to work in the public libraries, and the master lends him
money on account of what he writes.”

“The master—who ?”

“The landlord, Monsieur Barbet, the old bookseller; he has
been in business this sixteen years. He is a man from Nor-
mandy, who once sold salad in the streets, and who started
as a dealer in old books on the quay, in 1818; then he set up
a little shop, and now he is very rich.—He is a sort of old
Jew who runs six-and-thirty businesses at once, for he was a
kind of partner with the Italian who built this great barn to
keep silkworms in "

“And so the house is a place of refuge for authors in
trouble?” said Godefroid.

“Are you so unlucky as to be one?” asked the widow Vau-
thier.

“T am only a beginner,” said Godefroid.

“Oh, my good gentleman, for all the ill I wish you, never
get any further! A newspaper man, now—I won’t say——”

Godefroid could not help laughing, and he bid the woman
good-night—a cook unconsciously representing the whole
middle class.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 141

As he went to bed in the wretched room, floored with bricks
that had not even been colored, and hung with paper at seven
sous the piece, Godefroid not only regretted his little lodg-
ing in the Rue Chanoinesse, but more especially the society
of Madame de la Chanterie. There was a great void in his
soul. He had already acquired certain habits of mind, and he
could not remember ever having felt such keen regrets for
anything in his previous life. This comparison, brief as it
was, made a great impression on his mind; he understood that
no life he could lead could compare with that he was about
to embrace, and his determination to follow in the steps of
good Father Alain was thenceforth unchangeable. If he had
not the vocation, he had the will.

Next morning, Godefroid, whose new way of life accus-
tomed him to rising very early, saw, out of his window, a
youth of about seventeen, wearing a blouse, and coming in
evidently from a public fountain, carrying in each hand a
pitcher full of water. The lad’s face, not knowing that any
one could see him, betrayed his thoughts; and never had Gode-
froid seen one more guileless and more gad. The charm of
youth was depressed by misery, study, and great physical
fatigue. Monsieur Bernard’s grandson was remarkable for an
excessively white skin, in strong contrast to very dark-brown
hair. He made three expeditions; and the third time he saw
a load of wood being delivered which Godefroid had ordered
the night before; for the winter, though late, of 1838 was be-
ginning to be felt, and there had been a light fall of snow in
the night.

Népomucéne, who had just begun his day’s work by fetching
this wood, on which Madame Vauthier had already levied
heavy toll, stood talking to the youth while waiting till the
sawyer had cut up the logs for him to take indoors. It was
very evident that the sight of this wood, and of the ominous
gray sky, had reminded the lad of the desirability of laying in
some fuel. And then suddenly, as if reproaching himself for
waste of time, he took up the pitchers and hurried into the142 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

house. It was indeed half-past seven; and as he heard the
quarters strike by the clock at the Convent of the Visitation,
he reflected that he had to be at the Collége Louis-le-Grand
by half-past eight.

At the moment when the young man went in, Godefroid
opened his door to Madame Vauthier, who was bringing up
some live charcoal to her new lodger; so it happened that he
witnessed a scene that took place on the landing. A gardener
living in the neighborhood, after ringing several times at Mon-
sieur Bernard’s door without arousing anybody, for the bell
was muffled in paper, had a rough dispute with the youth,
insisting on the money due for the hire of plants which
he had supplied. As the creditor raised his voice, Monsieur
Bernard came out.

“Auguste,” said he to his grandson, “get dressed. It is
time to be off.”

He himself took the pitchers and carried them into the
ante-room of his apartment, where Godefroid could see stands
filled with flowers; then he closed the door and came outside
to talk to the nurseryman. Godefroid’s door was ajar, for
Népomucéne was passing in and out and piling up the logs in
the second room. The gardener had become silent when Mon-
sieur Bernard appeared, wrapped in a purple silk dressing-
gown, buttoned to the chin, and looking really imposing.

“You might ask for the money we owe you without shout-
ing,” said the gentleman.

“Be just, my dear sir,” replied the gardener. “You were
to pay me week by week, and now, for three months—ten
weeks—lI have had no money, and you owe me a hundred and
twenty frances. We are accustomed to hire out our plants to
rich people, who give us our money as soon as we ask for i
and I have called here five times. We have our rent to pay
and our workmen, and I am no richer than you are. My wife,
who used to supply you with milk and eggs, will not call this
morning neither; you owe her thirty francs, and she would
rather not come at all than come to nag, for she has a good
heart, has my wife! If I listened to her, trade would neverTHE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 143

oO

pay.—And that is why I came, you understand, for that is not
my way of looking at things, you sce a

Just then out came Auguste, dressed in a miserable green
cloth coat, and trousers of the same, a black cravat, and shabby
boots. These clothes, though brushed with care, revealed the
very last extremity of poverty, for they were too short and
too tight, so that they looked as if the least movement on the
lad’s part would split them. The whitened seams, the dog’s-
eared corners, the worn-out button-holes, in spite of mending,
betrayed to the least practised eye the stigmata of poverty.
This garb contrasted painfully with the youthfulness of the
wearer, who went off eating a piece of stale bread, in which
his fine strong teeth left their mark. This was his breakfast,
eaten as he made his way from the Boulevard du Mont-Par-
nasse to the Rue Saint-Jacques, with his books and papers un-
der his arm, and on his head a cap far too small for his power-
ful head and his mass of fine dark hair.

As he passed his grandfather, they exchanged rapid glances
of deep dejection; for he saw that the old man was in almost
irremediable difficulties, of which the consequences might be
terrible. To make way for the student of philosophy, the gar-
dener retreated as far as Godcfroid’s door; and at the moment
when he reached the door, Népomucéne, with a load of wood,
came up to the landing, driving the creditor quite to the win-
dow.

“Monsieur Bernard,’ exclaimed the widow, “do you sup-
pose that Monsieur Godefroid took these rooms for you to hold
meetings in?”

“I beg pardon, madame,” replied the nurseryman, “the
landing was crowded f

“T did not mean it for you, Monsieur Cartier,” said the
woman.

“Stay here!” cried Godefroid, addressing the nurseryman.
“And you, my dear sir,” he added, turning to Monsieur
Bernard, whom this insolent remark left unmoved, “if it
suits you to settle matters with your gardener in my room,
pray come in.”144 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

The old gentleman, stupefied with trouble, gave Godefroid
a stony look, which conveyed a thousand thanks.

“As for you, my dear Madame Vauthier, do not be so rough
to monsieur, who, in the first place, is an old man, and to
whom you also owe your thanks for having me as your lodger.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed the woman.

“Besides, if poor folks do not help each other, who is to
help them ?—Leave us, Madame Vauthier; I can blow up my
own fire. See to having my wood stowed in your cellar; I
have no doubt you will take good care of it.”

Madame Vauthier vanished ; for Godefroid, by placing his
fuel in her charge, had afforded pasture to her greed.

“Come in,” said Godefroid, signing to the gardener, and
setting two chairs for the debtor and creditor. The old man
talked standing; the tradesman took a seat.

“Come, my good man,” Godefroid went on, “the rich do
not always pay so punctually as you say they do, and you
should not dun a worthy gentleman for a few louis. Monsieur
draws his pension every six months, and he cannot give you a
draft in anticipation for so small a sum; but I will advance
the money if you insist on it.”

“Monsieur Bernard drew his pension about three weeks
since, and he did not pay me. I should be very sorry to annoy
him ie

“What, and you have been supplying him with flowers
for %

“Yes, monsieur, for six years, and he has always paid until
now.”

Monsieur Bernard, who was listening to all that might be
going on in his own lodgings, and paying no heed to this dis-
cussion, heard screams through the partition, and hurried
away in alarm, without saying a word.

“Come, come, my good man, bring some fine flowers, your
best flowers, this very morning, to Monsieur Bernard, and
let your wife send in some fresh eggs and milk; I will pay you
myself this evening.”

Cartier looked somewhat askance at Godefroid.THE SEAMY SIDE or HISTORY 145

“Well, I Suppose you know more about it than Madame
Vauthier ; she sent me word that I had better look sharp if I
meant to be paid,” said he. “Neither she nor I, sir, can ac-
count for it when people who live on bread, who pick up odds
and ends of vegetables, and bits of carrot and potatoes, and
turnip outside the eating-house doors—yes, sir, I have seen
the boy filling a little basket,—well, when those people spend
near on a hundred francs a month on flowers. The old man,
they say, has but three thousand francs a year for his pen-
slon——”

“At any rate,” said Godefroid, “if they ruin themselves in
flowers, it is not for you to complain.”

“Certainly not, sir, so long as I am paid.”

“Bring me your bill.”

“Very good, sir,” said the gardener, with rather more re-
spect. “You hope to see the lady they hide so carefully, no
doubt ?”

“Come, come, my good fellow, you forget yourself,” said
Godefroid stiffly. “Go home and pick out your best flowers to
replace those you are taking away. If you can supply me with
rich milk and new-laid eggs, you may have my custom. I will
go this morning and look at your place.”

“It is one of the best in Paris, and I exhibit at the Luxem-
bourg shows. I have three acres of garden on the boulevard,
Just behind that of the Grande-Chaumiére.”

“Very good, Monsieur Cartier. You are richer than I am, I
can see. So have some consideration for us; for who knows
but that one day we may need each other.”

The nurseryman departed, much puzzled as to what Gode-
froid could be.

“And time was when I was just like that!” said Godefroid
to himself, as he blew the fire. “What a perfect specimen of
the commonplace citizen; a gossip, full of curiosity, possessed
by the idea of equality, but jealous of other dealers; furious
at not knowing why a poor invalid stays in her room and is
never seen; secretive as to his profits, but vain enough to let
out the secret if he could crow over his neighbor. Such a man

Io146 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

ought to be heutenant at least of his crew. How easily and
how often in every age does the scene of Monsieur Dimanche
recur! Another minute, and Cartier would have been my
sworn ally!”

The old man’s return interrupted this soliloquy, which
shows how greatly Godefroid’s ideas had changed during the
past four months.

“I beg your pardon,” said Monsieur Bernard, in a husky
voice, “I see you have sent off the nurseryman quite satisfied,
for he bowed politely. In fact, my young friend, Providence
seems to have sent you here for our express benefit at the very
moment when all seemed at an end! Alas! The man’s chatter
must have told you many things.—It is quite true that I drew
my half-year’s pension a fortnight since; but I had other and
more pressing debts, and I was obliged to keep back the money
for the rent or be turned out of doors. You, to whom I have
confided the secret of my daughter’s state—who have heard
her <

He looked anxiously at Godefroid, who nodded affirmation.

“Well, you can judge if that would not be her death-blow.
For I should have to place her in a hospital—My grandson
and I have been dreading this day, not that Cartier was our
chief fear; it is the cold e

“My dear Monsieur Bernard, I have plenty of wood; take
some!” cried Godefroid.

“But how can I ever repay such kindness?” said the old
man.

“By accepting it without ceremony,” answered Godefroid
cordially, “and by giving me your entire confidence.”

“But what claims have I on such generosity?” asked Mon-
sieur Bernard with revived suspicions. “My pride and my
grandson’s is broken!” he exclaimed. “For we have already
fallen so far as to argue with our two or three creditors. The
very poor can have no creditors. Only those can owe money
who keep up a certain external display which we have utterly
Jost.—But I have not yet lost my common sense, my reason,”
he added, as if speaking to himself.THH SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 147

“Monsieur,” said Godefroid gravely, “the story you told me
yesterday would draw tears from an usurer— —”

“No, no! for Barbet the publisher, our landlord, speculates
on my poverty, and sets his old servant, the woman Vauthier,
to spy it out.”

“How can he speculate on it?” asked Godefroid.

“T will tell you at another time,” replied the old man, “My
daughter may be feeling cold, and since you are so kind, and
since I am in a situation to accept charity, even if it were from
my worst enemy i:

“I will carry the wood,” said Godefroid, who went across
the landing with half a score of logs, which he laid down in
his neighbor’s outer room.

Monsieur Bernard had taken an equal number, and when
he beheld this little stock of fuel, he could not conceal the
simple, almost idiotic, smile by which men rescued from mor-
tal and apparently inevitable danger express their Joy, for
there still is fear even in their belief.

“Accept all I can give you, my dear Monsieur Bernard, with-
out hesitation, and when we have saved your daughter, and
you are happy once more, I will explain everything. Till then
leave everything to me.—I went to cal] on the Jewish doctor,
but unfortunately Halpersohn is absent; he will not be back
for two days.”

Just then a voice which sounded to Godefroid, and which
really was, sweet and youthful, called out, “Papa, papa!” in
an expressive tone.

While talking to the old man, Godefroid had already re-
marked, through the crack of the door opposite to that on the
landing, lines of neat white paint, showing that the sick wo-
man’s room must be very different from the others that com-
posed the lodging. His curiosity was now raised to the high-
est pitch; the errand of mercy was to him no more than a
means ; its end was to see the invalid. He would not believe
that any one who spoke in such a voice could be horrible to
behold.

“You are taking too much trouble, papa,” said the voice.
“Why do not you have more servants—at your age—Dear me!”148 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“But you know, dear Vanda, that I will not allow any one
to wait on you but myself or your boy.”

These two sentences, which Godefroid overheard, though
with some difficulty, for a curtain dulled the sound, made him
understand the case. The sick woman, surrounded by every
luxury, knew nothing of the real state in which her father
and son lived. Monsieur Bernard’s silk wrapper, the flowers,
and his conversation with Cartier had already roused Gode-
froid’s suspicions, and he stood riveted, almost confounded,
by this marvel of paternal devotion. The contrast between the
invalid’s room as he imagined it and what he saw was in fact
amazing. 'The reader may judge:

Through the door of a third room which stood open, Gode-
froid saw two narrow beds of painted wood like those of the
vilest lodging-houses, with a straw mattress and a thin upper
mattress; on each there was but one blanket. A small iron
stove such as porters use to cook on, with a few lumps of dried
fuel by the side of it, was enough to show the destitution of
the owner, without other details in keeping with this wretched
stove.

Godefroid by one step forward could see the pots and pans
of the wretched household—glazed earthenware jars, in which
a few potatoes were soaking in dirty water. Two tables of
blackened wood, covered with papers and books, stood in front
of a window looking out on the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs,
and showed how the father and son occupied themselves in
the evening. On each table there was a candlestick of wrought
iron of the poorest description, and in them candles of the
cheapest kind, eight to the pound. On a third table, which
served as a dresser, there were two shining sets of silver-gilt
forks and spoons, some plates, a basin and cup in Sévres china,
and a knife with a gilt handle lying in a case, all evidently
for the invalid’s use.

The stove was alight; the water in the kettle was steaming
gently. A wardrobe of painted deal contained no doubt the
lady’s linen and possessions, for he saw on her father’s bed the
clothes he had worn the day before, spread by way of a cover-
ing.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 149

Some other rags laid in the same w
led him to conclude that this was all their wardrobe; and
under the bed he saw their shoes,

The floor, swept but seldom no doubt, was like that of a
schoolroom. A large loaf that had been eut was visible on a
shelf over the table. In short, it was poverty in the last stage
of squalor, poverty reduced to a system, with the decent order
of a determination to endure it; driven poverty that has to do
everything at home, that insists on doing it, but that finds it
impossible, and so puts every poor possession to a Wrong use.
A strong and sickening smell pervaded the room, which eyi-
dently was but rarely cleaned.

The ante-room where Godefroid stood was at any rate de-
cent, and he guessed that it commonly served to hide the hor-
rors of the room inhabited by the old man and the youth. This
room, hung with a Scotch plaid paper, had four walnut-wood
chairs and a small table, and was graced with portraits—a
colored print of Horace Vernet’s picture of the Emperor ;
those of Louis XVIIL and Charles X.; and one of Prince
Poniatowski, a friend no doubt of Monsieur Bernard’s father-
in-law. There were cotton window-curtains bound with red
and finished with fringe.

Godefroid, keeping an eye on Népomucéne, and hearing
him come up with a load of wood, signed to him to stack it
noiselessly in Monsieur Bernard’s ante-room ; and, with a deli-
cate feeling that showed he was making good progress, he shut
the bedroom door that Madame Vauthier’s boy might not see
the old man’s squalor.

The ante-room was parthy filled up by three flower-stands
full of splendid plants, two oval and one round, all three of
rosewood, and elegantly finished; and Népomucéne, as he
placed the logs on the floor, could not help saying:

“Isn’t that lovely ?—It must cost a pretty penny !”

“Jean, do not make too much noise ” Monsieur Bernard
called out.

“There, you hear him?” said N épomucéne to Godefroid,
“the poor old boy is certainly cracked !”

ay on his grandson’s bed150 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“And what will you be at his age?”

“Oh, I know sure enough!” said Népomucéne; “I shall be
in a sugar-basin.”

“Tn a sugar-basin?”

“Yes, my bones will have been made into charcoal. I have
seen the sugar-boilers’ carts often enough at Mont Souris
come to fetch bone-black for their works, and they told me
they used it in making sugar.” And with this philosophical
reply, he went off for another basketful of wood.

Godefroid quietly closed Monsieur Bernard’s door, leaving
him alone with his daughter.

Madame Vauthier had meanwhile prepared her new lodger’s
breakfast, and came with Félicité to serve it. Godefroid, lost
in meditation, was staring at the fire on the hearth. He was
absorbed in reflecting on this poverty that included so many
different forms of misery, though he perceived that it had its
pleasures too; the ineffable joys and triumphs of fatherly and
of filial devotion. They were like pearls sewn on sackcloth.

“What romance—even the most famous—can compare with
such reality?” thought he. “How noble is the hfe that mingles
with such lives as these, enabling the soul to discern their
cause and effect; to assuage suffermg and encourage what is
good; to become one with misfortune and learn the secrets of
such a home as this; to be an actor in ever-new dramas such as
delight us in the works of the most famous authors !—I had
no idea that goodness could be more interesting than vice.”

“Ts everything to your mind, sir?” asked Madame Vauthier,
who, helped by Félicité, had placed the table close to Gode-
froid. He then saw an excellent cup of coffee with milk, a
smoking hot omelette, fresh butter, and little red radishes.

“Where did you find those radishes?” asked Godefroid.

“Monsieur Cartier gave them to me,” said she. “I thought
you might like them, sir.

“And what do you expect me to pay for a breakfast like this
every day?” said Godefroid.

“Well, monsieur, to be quite fair—it would be hard to sup-
ply it under thirty sous.”THE SEAMY SIDE orf HISTORY 151

“Say thirty sous,” said Godefroid. “But how is it that close
by this, at Madame Machillot’s, they only ask me forty-five
franes a month for dinner, which is just thirty sous a day?”

“Oh, but what a difference, sir, between getting a dinner
for fifteen people and going to buy everything that is needed
for one breakfast: a roll, you see, eggs, butter,—lichting the
fire—and then sugar, milk, coffee.—Why, they will ask you
sixteen sous for nothing but a cup of coffee with milk in the
Place de l’Odéon, and you have to give a sou or two to the
waiter !—Here you have no trouble at all; you breakfast at
home, in your slippers.

“Well, then it is settled,” said Godefroid.

“And even then, but for Madame Cartier, from whom I
get the milk and eggs and parsley, I could not do it at all.—
You must go and see their place, sir. Oh, it is really a fine
sight. They employ five gardeners’ apprentices, and Népomu-
céne goes to help with the watering all the summer; they
pay me to let him go. And you make a lot of money out of
strawberries and melons.—You are very much interested in
Monsieur Bernard, it would seem 2” asked the widow in her
sweetest tones. “For really to answer for their debts in that
way!—But perhaps you don’t know how much they owe.—
There is the lady that keeps the circulating library on the
Place Saint-Michel; she calls every three or four days for
thirty francs, and she wants it badly too. Heaven above! that
poor woman in bed does read and read. And at two sous a
volume, thirty francs in two months i

“Ts a hundred volumes a month,” said Godefroid.

“There goes the old fellow to fetch madame’s cream and
roll,” the woman went on. “It is for her tea; for she lives
on nothing but tea, that lady; she has it twice a day, and then
twice a week she wants sweets.—She is dainty, I can tell you!
The old boy buys her cakes and tarts at the pastry-cook’s in
the Rue de Buci. Oh, when it is for her, he sticks at nothing.
He says she is his daughter !—Where’s the man who would do
all he does, and at his age, for his daughter? He is killing
himself—himself and his Auguste—and all for her.—If you152 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY
are like me, sir—I would give twenty francs to see her. Mon-
sieur Berton says she is shocking, an object to make a show
of.—They did well to come to this part of the town where
nobody ever comes.—And you think of dining at Madame Ma-
ehillotis, sir?”

“Yes, I thought of making an arrangement with her.”

“Well, sir, it is not to interfere with any plan of yours; but,
take ’em as you find ’em, you will find a better eating-place in
the Rue de Tournon; you need not bind yourself for a month,
and you will have a better table <

“Where in the Rue de Tournon?”

“At the successors of old Madame Girard. That is where
the gentlemen upstairs dine, and they are satisfied—they
could not be better pleased.”

“Very well, Madame Vauthier, I will take your advice and
dine there.”

“And, my dear sir,” the woman went on, emboldened by the
easy-going air which Godefroid had intentionally assumed,
“do you mean to say, seriously, that you are such a flat as to
think of paying Monsieur Bernard’s debts 2—I should be really
very sorry; for you must remember, my good Monsieur Gode-
froid, that he is very near on seventy, and after him where
are you? ‘There’s an end to his pension. What will there be
to repay you? Young men are so rash. Do you know that he
owes above a thousand crowns?”

“But to whom ?” asked Godefroid.

“Oh, that is no concern of mine,” said Madame Vauthier
mysteriously. “He owes the money, and that’s enough; and
between you and me, he is having a hard time of it: he can-
not get credit for a sou in all the neighborhood for that very
reason.”

“A thousand crowns!” said Godefroid. “Be sure of one
thing; if I had a thousand crowns, I should be no lodger of
yours. But I, you see, cannot bear to see others suffering;
and for a few hundred franes that it may cost me, I will make
sure that my neighbor, a man with white hair, has bread and
firing. Why, a man often loses as much at cards.—But three
thousand francs—why, what do you think? Good Heavens!”THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 153

Madame Vauthier, quite taken in by Godefroid’s affected
candor, allowed a gleam of satisfaction to light up her face,
and this confirmed her lodger’s suspicions. Godefroid was
convinced that the old woman was implicated in some plot
against the hapless Monsieur Bernard.

“It is a strange thing, monsieur, what fancies come into
one’s head. You will say that I am very inquisitive ; but yes-
terday, when I saw you talking to Monsieur Bernard, it struck
me that you must be a publisher’s clerk—for this is their part
of the town. I had a lodger, a foreman printer, whose works
are in the Rue de Vaugirard, and he was named the same name
as you i

“And what concern is it of yours what my business is?” said
Godefroid.

“Lor’! whether you tell me or whether you don’t, I shall
know just the same,” said the widow. “Look at Monsieur
Bernard, for instance ; well, for eighteen months I could never
find out what he was; but in the nineteenth month I discoy-
ered that he had been a Judge or a magistrate, or something of
the kind, in the law, and that now he is writing a book about
it. What does he get by it? That’s what I say. And if he had
told me, I should have held my tongue; so there!”

“I am not at present a publisher’s agent, but I may be, per-
haps, before long.” ;

“There, I knew it!” exclaimed the woman eagerly, and
turning from the bed she was making as an excuse to stay
chattering to her lodger. “You have come to cut the ground
from under Well, well, ‘a nod’s as good as a wink’ e

“Hold hard!” cried Godefroid, standing between Madame
Vauthier and the door. “N ow, tell me, what are you paid
to meddle in this?”

“Heyday !” cried the old woman, with a keen look at Gode-
froid. “You are pretty sharp after all!”

She shut and locked the outer door ; then she came back
and sat down by the fire.

“On my word and honor, as sure as my name is Vauthier, I
took you for a student till I saw you giving your logs to old154 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

Father Bernard. My word, but you’re a sharp one! By the
Piper! you can play a part well! I thought you were a perfect
flat. Now, will you promise me a thousand francs? For as
sure as the day above us, old Barbet and Monsieur Métivier
have promised me five hundred if I keep my eyes open.”

“What? Not they! Two hundred at the very outside, my
good woman, and only promised at that—and you cannot sum-
mons them for payment !—Look here; if you will put me in a
position to get the job they are trying to manage with Mon-
sieur Bernard, I will give you four hundred !—Come, now,
what are they up to?”

“Well, they have paid him fifteen hundred francs on ac-
count for his work, and made him sign a bill for a thousand
crowns. They doled it out to him a hundred francs at a time,
contriving to keep him as poor as poor.—They set the duns
upon him; they sent Cartier, you may wager.”

At this, Godefroid, by a look of cynical perspicacity that he
shot at the woman, made it clear to her that he quite under-
stood the game she was playing for her landlord’s benefit. Her
speech threw a light on two sides of the question, for it also
explained the rather strange scene between the gardener and
himself.

“Oh yes!” she went on, “they have him fast; for where is
he ever to find a thousand crowns! They intend to offer him
five hundred francs when the work is in their hands complete,
and five hundred francs per volume as they are brought out for
sale. The business is all in the name of a bookseller these
gentlemen have set up in business on the Quai des Augus-
tins

“Oh yes—that little—what’s-his-name ?”

“Yes, that’s your man.—Morand, formerly Monsieur Bar-
bet’s agent.—There is a heap of money to be got out of it, it
would seem.”

“There will be a heap of money to put into it,” said Gode-
froid, with an expressive grimace.

There was a gentle knock at the door, and Godefroid, very
glad of the interruption, rose to open it.THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 155

“All this is between you and me, Mother Vauthier,” said
Godefroid, seeing Monsieur Bernard.

“Monsieur Bernard,” cried she, “TI have a letter for you.”

The old man went down a few steps.

No, m0, Wi have noi letter for you, Monsieur Bernard; I
only wished to warn you against that young fellow there. He
is a publisher.”

“Oh, that accounts for everything,” said the old man to
himself. And he came back to his neighbor’s room with a
quite altered countenance.

The calmly cold expression on Monsieur Bernard’s face
when he reappeared was in such marked contrast to the frank
and friendly manner his gratitude had lent him, that Gode-
froid was struck by so sudden a change.

“Monsieur, forgive me for disturbing your solitude, but you
have since yesterday loaded me with favors, and a benefactor
confers rights on those whom he obliges.”

Godefroid bowed.

“I, who for five years have suffered once a fortnight the
torments of the Redeemer: I, who for six-and-thirty years
was the representative of Society and the Government, who
was then the arm of public vengeance, and who, as you may
suppose, have no illusions left—nothing, nothing but suffer-
ings,—well, monsieur, your careful attention in closing the
door of the dog-kennel in which my grandson and I sleep—
that trifling act was to me the cup of water of which Bossuet
speaks. I found in my heart, my wornout heart, which is as
dry of tears as my withered body is of sweat, the last drop of
that elixir which in youth leads us to see the best side of every
human action, and I came to offer you my hand, which I never
give to any one but my daughter; I came to bring you the
heavenly rose of belief, even now, in goodness.”

“Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid, remembering good old
Alain’s injunctions, “I did nothing with a view to winning
your gratitude.—You are under a mistake.”

“That is frank and above board,” said the old lawyer. “Well,
that is what I like. I was about to reproach you. Forgive156 THE SHEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

me; I esteem you.—So you are a publisher, and you want to
get my book in preference to Messicurs Barbet, Métivier, and
Morand ?—That explains all. You are prepared to deal with
me as they were; only you do it with a good grace.”

“Old Vauthier has just told you, I suppose, that I am a
publisher’s agent ?”

mics, said: he:

“Well, Monsieur Bernard, before I can say what we are
prepared to pay more than those gentlemen offer, I must un-
derstand on what terms you stand with them.”

“Very true,” said the old man, who seemed delighted to find
himself the object of a competition by which he could not
fail to benefit. “Do you know what the work is?”

“No; I only know that there is something to be made by it.”

“It is only half-past nine; my daughter has had her break-
fast, my grandson Auguste will not come in till a quarter to
eleven. Cartier will not be here with the flowers for an hour
—we have time to talk, monsieur—monsieur who ?”

“Godefroid.”

“Monsieur Godefroid.—The book in question was planned
by me in 1825, at a time when the Ministry, struck by the con-
stant reduction of personal estate, drafted the Law of Entail
and Seniority which was thrown out. I had observed many
defects in our codes and in the fundamental principle of
French law. The codes have been the subject of many im-
portant works; but all those treatises are essentially on juris-
prudence; no one has been so bold as to study the results of
the Revolution—or of Napoleon’s rule, if you prefer it—as a
whole, analyzing the spirit of these laws and the working of
their application. That is, in general terms, the purpose of
my book. I have called it the Spirit of the Modern Laws. It
covers organic law as well as the codes—all the codes, for we
have five! My book, too, is in five volumes, and a sixth volume
of authorities, quotations, and references. I have still three
months’ work before me.

“The owner of this house, a retired publisher, scented a
speculation. I, in the first instance, thought only of benefit-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 157

Ing my country. This Barbet has got the better of me.—You

will wonder how a publisher could entrap an old lawyer; but
you, monsieur, know my history, and this man is a money-
lender. He has the sharp eye and the knowledge of the world
that such men must have. His advances have just kept pace
with my necessity; he has always come in at the very mo-
ment when despair has made me a defenceless prey.”

“Not at all, my dear sir,” said Godefroid. “He has simply
kept Madame Vauthier as a spy.—But the terms, tell me
honestly.”

“They advanced me fifteen hundred franes, represented at
the present rates by three bills for a thousand franes each,
and these three thousand francs are secured to them by a
lien on the property of my book, which I cannot dispose of
elsewhere till I have paid off the bills; the bills have been
protested ; judgment has been pronounced.—Here, monsieur,
you see the complications of poverty.

“At the most moderate estimate, the first edition of this
vast work, the result of ten years’ labor and thirty-six years’
experience, will be well worth ten thousand francs.—Well,
Just five days since, Morand offered me a thousand crowns
and my note of hand paid off for all rights.—As I could never
find three thousand two hundred and forty franes, unless you
intervene between us, I must yield.

“They would not take my word of honor; for further se-
curity they insisted on bills of exchange which have been pro-
tested, and I shall be imprisoned for debt. If I pay up, these
money-lenders will have doubled their loan; if I deal with
them, they will make a fortune, for one of them was a paper-
maker, and God only knows how low they can keep the price
of materials. And then, with my name on it, they know that
they are certain of a sale of ten thousand copies.”

“Why, monsieur—you, a retired Judge—— |!”

“What can I say? I have not a friend, no one remembers
me!—And yet I saved many heads even if I sentenced many
to fall!—And then there is my daughter, my daughter whose
nurse and companion I am, for I work only at night.—Ah!158 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY
young man, none but the wretched should be set to judge the
wretched. I see now that of yore I was too severe.”

“I do not ask you your name, monsieur. I have not a
thousand crowns at my disposal, especially if I pay Halper-
sohn and your little bills; but I can save you if you will pledge
your word not to dispose of your book without due notice to
me; it is impossible to embark in so important a matter with-
out consulting professional experts. ‘The persons I work for
are powerful, and I can promise you success if you can
promise me perfect secrecy, even from your children—and
keep your word.”

“The only success I care for is my poor Vanda’s recovery ;
for, I assure you, the sight of such sufferings extinguishes
every other feeling in a father’s heart; the loss of fame is
nothing to the man who sees a grave yawning at his feet a

“I will call on you this evening. Halpersohn may come
home at any moment, and I go every day to see if he has
returned.—I will spend to-day in your service.”

“Oh, if you could bring about my daughter’s recovery, mon-
sieur » monsieur, I would make you a present of my
book

“But,” said Godefroid, “I am not a publisher.”

The old man started with surprise.

“IT could not help letting old Vauthier think so for the
sake of ascertaining what snares had been laid for you.”

“But who are you, then?”

“Godefroid,” was the reply; “and as you have allowed me
to supply you with the means of living better,” added the
young man, smiling, “you may call me Godefroid de Bouil-
lon.

The old lawyer was too much touched to laugh at the jest.
He held out his hand to Godefroid and grasped the young
man’s warmly.

“You wish to remain unknown?” said Monsieur Bernard,
looking at Godefroid with melancholy, mixed with some un-
easiness.

“Tf you will allow me.”

 

 

{>THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 159

“Well, do as you think proper.—And come in this even-
ing; you will see my daughter, if her state allows.”

This was evidently the greatest concession the poor father
could make; and seeing Godefroid’s grateful look, the old
man had the pleasure of feeling that he was understood.

An hour later Cartier came back with some beautiful
flowers, replanted the stands with his own hands in fresh
moss, and Godefroid paid the bill, as he did the subscription
to the lending library, for which the account was sent in
soon after. Books and flowers were the staff of life to this

poor sick—or rather, tormented woman, who could live on so
little food.

As he thought of this family in the toils of disaster, like
that of Laocoon—a sublime allegory of many lives !—Gode-
froid, making his way leisurely on foot to the Rue Marbeuf,
felt in his heart that he was curious rather than benevolent.
The idea of the sick woman, surrounded with luxuries in
the midst of abject squalor, made him forget the horrible
details of the strange nervous malady, which is happily an
extraordinary exception, though abundantly proved by various
historians. One of our gossiping chronicle writers, Talle-
mant des Réaux, mentions an instance. We like to think of
women as elegant even in their worst sufferings, and Gode-
froid promised himself some pleasure in penetrating into the
room which only the physician, the father, and the son had
entered for six years past. However, he ended by reproaching
himself for his curiosity. The neophyte even understood
that his feeling, however natural, would die out by degrees
as he carried out his merciful errands, by dint of seeing
new homes and new sorrows. Such messengers, in fact, at-
tain to a heavenly benignity which nothing can shock or
amaze, just as in love we attain to a sublime quiescence of
feeling in the conviction of its strength and duration, by a
constant habit of submission and sweetness.

Godefroid was told that Halpersohn had come home during
the night, but had been obliged to go out in his carriage the160 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

first thing in the morning to see the patients who were wait-
ing for him. The woman at the gate told Godefroid to come
back next morning before nine.

Remembering Monsieur Alain’s advice as to parsimony
in his personal expenses, Godefroid dined for twenty-five sous
in the Rue de Tournon, and was rewarded for his self-denial
by finding himself among compositors and proof-readers. He
heard a discussion about the cost of production, and, join-
ing in, picked up the information that an octavo volume of
forty sheets, of which a thousand copies were printed, would
not cost more than thirty sous per copy under favorable cir-
cumstances. He determined on going to inquire the price
commonly asked for such volumes on sale at the law pub-
lishers, so as to be in a position to dispute the point with the
publishers who had got a hold on Monsieur Bernard, if he
should happen to meet them.

At about seven in the evening he came back to the Boule-
vard Mont-Parnasse along the Rue de Vaugirard, the Rue
Madame, and the Rue de l’Ouest, and he saw how deserted
that part of the town is, for he met nobody. It is true that
the cold was severe, snow fell in large flakes, and the carts
made no noise on the stones.

“Ah, here you are, monsieur!” said Madame Vauthier when
she saw him. “If I had known you would come in so early,
I would have lighted your fire.”

“Tt is unnecessary,” replied Godefroid, as the woman fol-
lowed him; “I am going to spend the evening with Monsieur
Bernard.”

“Ah! very good. You are cousins, I suppose, that you are
hand and glove with him by the second day. I thought per-
haps you would have liked to finish what we were saying a

“Oh, about the four hundred frances?” said Godefroid in an
undertone. “Look here, Mother Vautier, you would have
had them this evening if you had said nothing to Monsieur
Bernard. You want to hunt with the hounds and run with
the hare, and you will get neither; for, so far as I am con-
cerned, you have spoiled my game—my chances are alto-
gether ruined aTHE SEAMY SIDH OF HISTORY 161

“Don’t you believe tha
you are at breakfast ;

“Oh, to-morrow I must be off at daybreak like your au-
thors.”

Godefroid’s past experience and life as a dandy and jour-
nalist had been so far of use to him as to lead him to guess
that if he did not take this line, Barbet’s spy would warn
the publisher that there was something in the wind, and he
would then take such steps as would ere long endanger Mon-
sieur Bernard’s liberty; whereas, by leaving the three
usurious negotiators to believe that their schemes were not in
peril, they would keep quiet.

But Godefroid was not yet a match for Parisian humanity
when it assumes the guise of a Madame Vauthier. This wo-
man meant to have Godefroid’s money and her landlord’s too.
She flew off to Monsieur Barbet, while Godefroid changed his
dress to call on Monsieur Bernard’s daughter.

Hight o’clock was striking at the Convent of the Visita-
tion, whose clock regulated the life of the whole neighbor-
hood, when Godefroid, full of curiosity, knocked at his friend’s
door. Auguste opened it; as it was Saturday, the lad spent
his evening at home; Godefroid saw that he wore a jacket
of black velvet, black trousers that were quite decent, and
a blue silk tie; but his surprise at seeing the youth so unlike
his usual self ceased when he entered the invalid’s room. He
at once understood the necessity for the father and the boy to
be presentably dressed.

The walls of the room, hung with yellow silk, paneled with
bright green cord, made the room look extremely cheerful; the
cold tiled floor was covered by a flowered carpet on a white
ground. The two windows, with their handsome curtains
lined with white silk, were like bowers, the flower-stands
were so full of beauty, and blinds hindered them from being
seen from outside in a quarter where such lavishness was rare.
The woodwork, painted white, and varnished, was touched
up with gold lines. A heavy curtain, embroidered in tent
stitch, with grotesque foliage on a yellow ground, hung over

II

t, my good sir. To-morrow, when
2162 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

the door and deadened every sound from outside. This splen-
did curtain had been worked by the invalid, who embroidered
like a fairy when she had the use of her hands.

Opposite the door, at the further end of the room, the
chimney-shelf, covered with green velvet, had a set of very
costly ornaments, the only relic of the wealth of the two fami-
lies. There was a very curious clock; an elephant supporting
a porcelain tower filled with beautiful flowers; two candelabra
in the same style, and some valuable Oriental pieces. The
fender, the dogs, and fire-irons were all of the finest work-
manship.

The largest of the three flower stands stood in the middle
of the room, and above it hung a porcelain chandelier of floral
design.

The bed on which the judge’s daughter lay was one of those
fine examples of carved wood, painted white and gold, that
were made in the time of Louis XV. By the invalid’s pillow
was a pretty inlaid table, on which were the various objects
necessary for a life spent in bed; a bracket light for two
candles was fixed to the wall, and could be turned backwards
and forwards by a touch. In front of her was a bed-table,
wonderfully contrived for her convenience. The bed was
covered with a magnificent counterpane, and draped with cur-
tains looped back in festoons; it was loaded with books and a
work-basket, and among these various objects Godefroid
would hardly have discovered the sick woman but for the
tapers in the two candle-branches.

There seemed to be nothing of her but a very white face,
darkly marked round the eyes by much suffering; her eyes
shone like fire; and her principal ornament was her splendid
black hair, of which the heavy curls, set out in bunches of
numerous ringlets, showed that the care and arrangement of
her hair occupied part of the invalid’s day; a movable mirror
at the foot of the bed confirmed the idea.

No kind of modern elegance was lacking, and a few trifling
toys for poor Vanda’s amusement showed that her father’s
affection verged on mania.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 165

The old man rose from a very handsome easy-chair of
Louis XV. style, white and gold, and covered with needlework,
and went forward a few steps to welcome Godefroid, who cer-
tainly would not have recognized him; for his cold, stern
face had assumed the gay expression peculiar to old men
who have preserved their dignity of manner and the super-
ficial frivolity of courtiers. His purple wadded dressing-
gown was in harmony with the luxury about him, and he took
snuff out of a gold box set with diamonds.

“Here, my dear,” said Monsieur Bernard to his daugh-
ter, “is our neighbor of whom I spoke to you.” And he
signed to his grandson to bring forward one of two armchairs,
in the same style as his own, which were standing on each
side of the fire.

“Monsieur’s name is Godefroid, and he is most kind in
standing on no ceremony

Vanda moved her head in acknowledgment of Godefroid’s
low bow; and by the movement of her throat as it bent and
unbent, he discovered that all this woman’s vitality was
seated in her head. Her emaciated arms and lifeless hands
lay on the fine white sheet like objects quite apart from the
body, and that seemed to fill no space in the bed. The things
needed for her use were on a set of shelves behind the bed,
and screened by a silk curtain.

“You, my dear sir, are the first person, excepting only the
doctors—who have ceased to be men to me—whom I have set
eyes on for six years; so you can have no idea of the interest
I have felt in you ever since my father told me you were com-
ing to callon us. It was passionate, unconquerable curiosity,
like that of our mother Eve. My father, who is so good to
me; my son, of whom I am so fond, are undoubtedly enough
to fill up the vacuum of a soul now almost bereft of body;
but that soul is still a woman’s after all! I recognized that
in the childish joy I felt in the idea of your visit—yYou will
do us the pleasure of taking a cup of tea with us, I hope?”

“Yes, Monsieur Godefroid has promised us the pleasure
of his company for the evening,” said the old man, with the
air of a millionaire doing the honors of his house.164 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

Auguste, seated in a low, worsted-work chair by a small
table of inlaid wood, finished with brass mouldings, was read-
ing by the light of the wax-candles on the chimney-shelf.

“Auguste, my dear, tell Jean to bring tea in an hour’s
time.”

She spoke with some pointed meaning, and Auguste re-
plied by a nod. ,

“Will you believe, monsieur, that for the past six years no
one has waited on me but my father and my boy, and I could
not endure anybody else. If I were to lose them, I should
die of it—My father will not even allow Jean, a poor old
Normandy peasant who has lived with us for thirty years—
will not even let him come into the room.”

“I should think not, indeed!” said the old man readily.
“Monsieur Godefroid has seen him; he saws and brings in
the wood, he cooks and runs errands, and wears a dirty apron;
he would have made hay of all these pretty things, which are
So necessary to my poor child, to whom this elegance is sec-
ond nature.”

“Indeed, madame, your father is quite right se

“But why?” she urged. “If Jean had damaged my room,
my father would have renewed it.”

“Of course, my child; but what would have prevented me is
the fact that you cannot leave it; and you have no idea what
Paris workmen are. It would take them more than three
months to restore your room! Only think of the dust that
would come out of your carpet if it were taken up. Let
Jean do your room! Do not think of such a thing.
By taking the extreme care which only your father and your

boy can take, we have spared you sweeping and dust; if Jean
came in to help, everything would be done for in a month.”

“It is not so much out of economy as for the sake of your
health,” said Godefroid. “Monsieur your father is quite
molt a

“Oh, I am not complaining,” said Vanda in a saucy tone.

Her voice had the quality of a concert; soul, action, and
life were all concentrated in her eyes and her voice =) LorTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 165

Vanda, by careful practice, for which time had certainly
not been lacking, had succeeded in overcoming the difficulties
arising from her loss of teeth.

“Iam still happy, monsieur, in spite of the dreadful malady
that tortures me; for wealth is certainly a great help in endur-
ing my sufferings. If we had been in poverty, I should have
died eighteen years ago, and I amstill alive. I have many
enjoyments, and they are all the keener because I live on,
triumphing over death—yYou will think me a great chatter-
box.7 she added, with a smile.

“Madame,” said Godefroid, “I could beg you to talk for
ever, for I never heard a voice to compare with yours
—it is music! Rubini is not more delightful a

“Do not mention Rubini or the opera,” said the old man
sadly. “However rich we may be, it is impossible to give my
daughter, who was a great musician, a pleasure to which she
was devoted.”

“I apologize,” said Godefroid.

“You will fall into our ways,” said the old man.

“This is your training,” said the invalid, smiling. “When
we have warned you several times by crying, ‘Look out! you
will know all the blind man’s buff of our conversation !”

Godefroid exchanged a swift glance with Monsieur Ber-
nard, who, seeing tears in his new friend’s eyes, put his finger
to his lip as a warning not to betray the heroic devotion he
and the boy had shown for the past seven years.

This devoted and unflagging imposture, proved by the
invalid’s entire deception, produced on Godefroid at this mo-
ment the effect of looking at a precipitous rock whence two
chamois-hunters were on the point of falling.

The splendid gold and diamond snuff-box with which the
old man trifled, leaning over the foot of his daughter’s bed,
was like the touch of genius which in a great actor wrings
from us a cry of admiration. Godefroid looked at the snuft-
box, wondering why it had not been sold or pawned, but he
postponed the idea till he could discuss it with the old man.
“This evening, Monsieur Godefroid, my daughter was soPs aaa ois nae ee)

    
  
  
    
   
   
 
   
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
 

   

166 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

greatly excited by the promise of your visit, that the various
strange symptoms of her malady which, for nearly a fortnight
past, have driven us to despair, suddenly disappeared. You
may imagine my gratitude!’
“And mine!” cried Vanda, in an insinuating voice, with
a graceful inclination of her head. “You are a deputation
from the outer world.—Since I was twenty I have not known
what a drawing-room is like, or a party, or a ball; and I love
dancing, I am crazy about the play, and above all about
| music. Well, I imagine everything in my mind. I read
| a great deal, and my father tells me all about the gay
world As he listened, Godefroid felt prompted to kneel
at the feet of this poor old man.
“When he goes to the opera—and he often goes—he de-
scribes the dresses tq me, and all the singers. Oh! I should
| like to be well again; in the first place, for my father’s sake,
for he lives for me alone, as I live for him and through him,
and then for my son’s—I should like him to know another
mother. Oh! monsieur, what perfect men are my dear old
father and my admirable son!—Then I could wish for health
also, that I might hear Lablache, Rubini, Tamburini, Grisi,
the Puritant too !—But %

“Come, my dear, compose yourself. If we talk about music,
it is fatal! said the old father, with a smile.

And that smile, which made him look younger, evidently
constantly deceived the sick woman.

“Well, I will be good,” said Vanda, with a saucy pout. “But
let me have a harmonium.”

This instrument had lately been invented; it could, by a
little contrivance, be placed by the invalid’s bed, and would
only need the pressure of the foot to give out an organ-like
tone. This instrument, in its most improved form, was as
effective as a piano; but at that time it cost three hundred
francs. Vanda, who read newspapers and reviews, had heard
of such an instrument, and had been longing for one for two
| months past. 7
“Yes, madame, and I can procure you one,” replied Gode-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 167

froid at an appealing glance from the old man. “A friend of
mine who is setting out for Algiers has a very fine one, which
I will borrow of him; for before buying one, you had better
try it. It is quite possible that the sound, which is strongly
vibrating, may be too much for you.”

“Can I have it to-morrow 2” she asked, with the eagerness
of a Creole.

“To-morrow !” objected Monsieur Bernard. “That is very
soon ; besides, to-morrow will be Sunday.”

“To be sure,” said she, looking at Godefroid, who felt as
though he saw a soul fluttering, as he admired the ubiquity
of Vanda’s eyes.

Until now he had never understood what the power of the
voice and eyes might be when the entire vitality was concen-
trated in them. Her glance was more than a glance; it was
a flame, or rather a blaze of divine light, a communicative
ray of life and intelligence, thought made visible. The voice,
with its endless intonations, supplied the place of movement,
gesture, and turns of the head. And her changing color, vary-
ing like that of the fabled chameleon, made the illusion—or,
if you will, the delusion—complete. That weary head, buried
in a cambric pillow frilled with lace, was a complete woman.

Never in his life had Godefroid seen so noble a spectacle,
and he could hardly endure his emotions. Another grand
feature, where everything was strange in a situation so full
of romance and of horror, was that the soul alone seemed to
be living in the spectators. This atmosphere, where all was
sentiment, had a celestial influence. They were as uncon-
scious of their bodies as the woman in bed; everything was
pure spirit. By dint of gazing at these frail remains of a
pretty woman, Godefroid forgot the elegant luxury of the
room, and felt himself in heaven. It was not till half-an-hour
after that he noticed a what-not covered with curiosities, over
which hung a noble portrait that Vanda desired him to look
at, as it was by Géricault.

“Géricault,’ said she, “was a native of Rouen, and his
family being under some obligations to my father, who was163 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

President of the Supreme Court there, he showed his grati-
tude by painting that masterpiece, in which you see me at the
age of sixteen.”

“You have there a very fine picture,” said Godefroid, “and
one that is quite unknown to those who have studied the rare
works of that great genius.”

“To me it is no longer an object of anything but affec-
tionate regard,” said she, “since I live only by my feelings;
and I have a beautiful life,” she went on, looking at her father
with her whole soul in her eyes. “Oh, monsieur, if you could
but know what my father is! Who would believe that the au-
stere and dignified Judge to whom the Emperor owed so much
yi that he gave him that snuff-box, and whom Charles X. re-
| warded by the gift of that Sévres tray”—and she looked at
a side-table—“that the staunch upholder of law and authority,
a the learned political writer, has in a heart of rock all the ten-
nf derness of a mother?—Oh, papa, papa! Come, kiss me—I
insist on it—if you love me.”

The old man rose, leaned over the bed, and set a kiss on
his daughter’s high poetic brow, for her sickly fancies were
not invariably furies of affection. Then he walked up and
down the room, but without a sound, for he wore slippers—
the work of his daughter’s hands.

“And what is your occupation?” she asked Godefroid after
a pause.

“Madame, I am employed by certain pious persons to take
help to the unfortunate.”

“A beautiful mission!” said she. “Do you know that the
idea of devoting myself to such work has often occurred to
me? But what ideas have not occurred to me?” said she,
ee with a little shake of her head. “Pain is a torch that throws
a light on life, and if I ever recover my health

“You shall enjoy yourself, my child,” the old man put in.

“Certainly I long to enjoy life,” said she, “but should I be
able for it?—My son, I hope, will be a lawyer, worthy of his
two grandfathers, and he must leave me. What is to be done?
—If God restores me to life, I will dedicate it to Him,—Oh,THE SEAMY SIDE oF HISTORY 169

not till I have given you both as much of it as you desire!”
she exclaimed, looking at her father and her boy. “There
are times, my dear father, when Monsieur de Maistre’s ideas
work in my brain, and I fancy I am expatiating some sin.”

“That is what comes of reading so much!” cried the old
man, visibly grieved.

“There was that brave Polish General, my great-grand-
father; he meddled very innocently in the concerns of Po-
land 2

“Now we have come back to Poland !” exclaimed Bernard.

“How can I help it, papa? My sufferings are intolerable,
they make me hate life, and disgust me with myself. Well,
what have I done to deserve them ? Such an illness is not
mere disordered health; it is a complete wreck of the whole
constitution, and a

“Sing the national air your poor mother used to sing; it
will please Monsieur Godefroid, I have spoken to him of your
voice,” said her father, evidently anxious to divert his daugh-
ter’s mind from the ideas she was following out.

Vanda began to sing in a low, soft voice a hymn in the
Polish tongue, which left. Godefroid bewildered with admira-
tion and sadness. This melody, a good deal like the long-
drawn melancholy tunes of Brittany, is one of those poetic
airs that linger in the mind long after being heard. As he
listened to Vanda, Godefroid at frst looked at her; but he
could not bear the ecstatic eyes of this remnant of a woman
now half-crazed, and he gazed at some tassels that hung on
each side of the top of the bed.

“Ah, hal? said Vanda, laughing at Godefroid’s evident
curiosity, “you are wondering what those are for?”

“Vanda, Vanda, be calm, my child! See, here comes the
tea.—This, monsieur, is a very expensive contrivance,” he
said to Godefroid. “My daughter cannot raise herself, nor
can she remain in bed without its being made and the sheets
changed. Those cords work over pulleys, and by slipping a
sheet of leather under her and attaching it to rings at the
corners to those ropes, we can lift her without fatiguing her
or ourselves.”SD SARS TRESS EASES

    
  
 
   
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

  

170

 

THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“Yes, I am carried up—up!” said Vanda deliriously.

Auguste happily came in with a teapot, which he set on a
little table, where he also placed the Sévres tray, covered with
sandwiches and cakes. Then he brought in the cream and but-
ter. This diverted the sick woman’s mind; she had been on
the verge of an attack.

“Here, Vanda, is Nathan’s last novel. If you should lie

awake to-night, you will have something to read.”

“La Perle de Dol! That will be a love-story no doubt.—
| Auguste, what do you think? I am to have a harmonium!”
| Auguste raised his head quickly, and looked strangely at
: his grandfather.

- “You see how fond he is of his mother!” Vanda. went on.
cs | —*“Come and kiss me, dear rogue.—No, it is not your grand-
z father that you must thank, but Monsieur Godefroid; our

: | kind neighbor promises to borrow one for me to-morrow morn-

a i ing.—What is it like, monsieur ?”

as Godefroid, at a nod from the old man, gave a long descrip-

tion of the harmonium while enjoying the tea Auguste had
made, which was of superior quality and delicious flavor.

‘| At about half-past ten the visitor withdrew, quite over-
powered by the frantic struggle maintained by the father and
son, while admiring their heroism and the patience that
enabled them, day after day, to play two equally exhausting
parts.

“Now,” said Monsieur Bernard, accompanying him to his

own door, “now you know the life I lead! At every hour I
have to endure the alarms of a robber, on the alert for every-
thing. One word, one look might kill my daughter. One
toy removed from those she is accustomed to see about her

a would reveal everything to her, for mind sees through walls.”

| “Monsieur,” said Godefroid, “on Monday Halpersohn will

pronounce his opinion on your daughter, for he is at home
again. I doubt whether science can restore her frame.”
“Oh, I do not count upon it,” said the old man with a sigh.

“If they will only make her life endurable.—I trusted to your

tact, monsieur, and I want to thank you, for you understood.THE SHAMY SIDE oF HISTORY 171

4

—Ah! the attack has come on!”

“She has done too much Z
He pressed Godefroid’s hand and hurried aw

cried he, hearing a scream.

 

ay.

At eight next morning Godefroid knocked at the fa-
mous doctor’s door. He was shown up by the servant to a
room on the first floor of the house, which he had had time
to examine while the porter found the man-servant.

Happily, Godefroid’s punctuality had saved him the vexa-
tion of waiting, as he had hoped it might. He was evidently
the first-comer. He was led through a very plain ante-room
into a large study, where he found an old man in a dressing-
gown, smoking a long pipe. The dressing-gown, of black
moreen, was shiny with wear, and dated from the time of
the Polish dispersion.

“What can I do to serve you?” said the Jew, “for you are
MOE willie

And he fixed Godefroid with a look that had all the sharp
inquisitiveness of the Polish Jew, eyes which seem to have
ears.

To Godefroid’s great surprise, Halpersohn was a man of
fifty-six, with short bow-legs and a broad, powerful frame.
There was an Oriental stamp about the man, and his face must
in youth have been singularly handsome ; the remains showed
a marked Jewish nose, as long and as curved as a Damas-
cus scimitar. His forehead was truly Polish, broad and lofty,
wrinkled all over like crumpled paper, and recalling that of
a Saint-Joseph by some old Italian master. His eyes were
sea-green, set like a parrot’s in puckered gray lids, and ex-
pressive of cunning and avarice in the highest degree. His
mouth, thin and straight, like a cut in his face, lent this sin-
ister countenance a crowning touch of suspiciousness.

The pale, lean features—for Halpersohn was extraor-
dinarily thin—were crowned by ill-kept gray hair, and graced
by a very thick, long beard, black. streaked with white, that
hid half his face, so that only the forehead and eyes, the

cheek-bones, nose, and lips were visible.Sa REL AREONASE

   
  
   
    
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
 

   

172 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

: This man, a friend of the agitator Lelewel, wore a black
velvet cap that came down in a point on his forehead and
showed off its mellow hue, worthy of Rembrandt’s brush.

The doctor, who subsequently became equally famous for
his talents and his avarice, startled Godefroid by his ques-
tion, and the young man asked himself, “Can he take me for
a thief ?”

The reply to the question was evident on the doctor’s table
and chimney-piece. Godefroid had fancied himself the first-
comer—he was the last. His patients had laid very handsome
sums on the table and shelf, for Godefroid saw piles of
twenty and forty-frane pieces and two thousand-franec notes.
Was all this the fruit of a single morning? He greatly
doubted it, and he suspected an ingenious trick. The infallible
but money-loving doctor perhaps tried thus to encourage his

patients’ liberality, and to make his rich clients believe that
: he was given banknotes as if they were curl-papers.
of Moise Halpersohn was no doubt largely paid, for he cured
. his patients, and cured them of those very complaints which
the profession gave up in despair. It is very little known in
| Western Europe that the Slav nations possess a store of med-
ical secrets. They have a number of sovereign remedies de-
rived from their intercourse with the Chinese, the Persians,
the Cossacks, the Turks, and the Tartars. Some peasant wo-
men, regarded as witches, have been known to cure hydro-
phobia completely in Poland with the juice of certain plants.
There is among those nations a great mass of uncodified in-
formation as to the effects of certain plants and the powdered
bark of trees, which is handed down from family to family,
and miraculous cures are effected there.

Halpersohn, who for five or six years was regarded as a
charlatan, with his powders and mixtures, had the innate in-
stinct of a great healer. Not only was he learned, he had ob-
served with great care, and had traveled all over Germany,
Russia, Persia, and Turkey, where he had picked up much
traditional lore; and as he was learned in chemistry, he be-
came a living encyclopedia ofthe secrets preserved by “theTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 173

good women,” as they were called, the midwives and “wise
women” of every country whither he had followed his father,
a wandering trader.

It must not be supposed that the scene in Richard in Pales-
tine, in which Saladin cures the King of England, is pure fic-
tion. Halpersohn has a little silk bag, which he soaks in water
till it is faintly colored, and certain fevers yield to this infu-
sion taken by the patient. The virtues residing in plants are
infinitely various, according to him, and the most terrible
maladies admit of cure. He, however, like his brother physi-
clans, pauses sometimes before the incomprehensible. Halper-
sohn admires the invention of homceopathy, less for its med-
ical system than for its therapeutics; he was at that time in
correspondence with Hedenius of Dresden, Chelius of Heidel-
berg, and the other famous Germans, but keeping his own
hand dark though it was full of discoveries. He would have
no pupils.

The setting of this figure, which might have stepped out of
a picture by Rembrandt, was quite in harmony with it. The
study, hung with green flock paper, was poorly furnished
with a green divan. The carpet, also of moss green, showed
the thread. A large armchair covered with black leather,
for the patients, stood near the window, which was hung with
green curtains. The doctor’s seat was a study-chair with
arms, in the Roman style, of mahogany with a green leather
seat. Besides the chimney-piece and the long table at which
he wrote, there was in the middle of the wall opposite the
fireplace a common iron chest supporting a clock of Vienna
granite, on which stood a bronze group of Love sporting with
Death, the gift of a famous German sculptor whom Halper-
sohn had, no doubt, cured. A tazza between two candlesticks
was all the ornament of the chimney-shelf. Two bracket
shelves, one at each end of the divan, served to place trays on,
and Godefroid noted that there were silver bowls on them,
water-bottles, and table-napkins.

This simplicity, verging on bareness, struck Godefroid, who
took everything in at a glance, and he recovered his presence
of mind.174 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“IT am perfectly well, monsicur. I have not come to consult
you myself, but on behalf of a lady whom you ought long since
to have seen—a lady living on the Boulevard du Mont-Par-
nasse.”

“Oh yes, that lady has sent her son to me several times.
Well, monsieur, tell her to come to see me 2”

“Tell her to come!” cried Godefroid indignantly. “Why,
monsieur, she cannot be lifted from her bed to a sofa; she
has to be raised by straps.”

“You are not a doctor?” asked the Jew, with a singular
grimace which made his face look even more wicked.

“If Baron de Nucingen sent to tell you that he was ill and
to ask you to visit him, would you reply, ‘Tell him to come to
me’ ?”

“I should go to him,” said the Jew drily, as he spat into a
Dutch spittoon made of mahogany and filled with sand.

“You would go to him,” Godefroid said mildly, “because
the Baron has two millions a year, and M4

“Nothing else has to do with the matter. I should for

“Very well, monsieur, you may come and see the lady on
the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse for the same reason. Though
J have not such a fortune as the Baron de Nucingen, I am here
to tell you that you can name your own price for the cure,
or, if you fail, for your care of her. I am prepared to pay
you in advance. But how is it, monsieur, that you, a Polish
exile, a communist, I believe, will make no sacrifice for the
sake of Poland! For this lady is the granddaughter of Gen-
eral Tarlovski, Prince Poniatowski’s friend——”

“Monsieur, you came to ask me to prescribe for this lady,
and not to give me your advice. In Poland I am a Pole; in
Paris a Parisian. Every one does good in his own way, and
you may believe me when I tell you that the greed attributed
to me has its good reasons. The money I accumulate has
its uses; it is sacred. TI sell health; rich persons can pay for
it, and I make them buy it. The poor have their physicians.
—If I had no aim in view, I should not practise medicine.
I live soberly, and I spend my time in rushing from one to an-

 

&THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 175

other; I am by nature lazy, and I used to be a gambler. You
may draw your own conclusions, young man !—You are not
old enough to judge the aged 1”?

Godefroid kept silence.

“You live with the granddaughter of the foolhardy soldier
who had no courage but for fighting, and who betrayed his
country to Catherine II, ?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Then be at home on Monday at three o’clock,” said he,
laying down his pipe and taking up his notebook, in which he
wrote a few words. “When I call, you will please to pay me
two hundred francs; then, if I undertake to cure her, you will
give me a thousand crowns.—I have been told,” he went on,
“that the lady is shrunken as if she had fallen in the fire.”

“It is a case, monsieur, if you will believe the first physi-
cians of Paris, of nervous disease, with symptoms so strange
that no one can imagine them who has not seen them.”

“Ah, yes, now I remember the details given me by that
little fellow.—Till to-morrow, monsieur.”

Godefroid left with a bow to this singular and extraordinary
man. ‘There was nothing about him to show or suggest a
medical man, not even in that bare consulting-room, where
the only article of furniture that was at all remarkable was
the ponderous chest, made by Huret or Fichet.

Godefroid reached the Passage Vivienne in time to pur-
chase a splendid harmonium before the shop was shut, and
he despatched it forthwith to Monsieur Bernard, whose ad-
dress he gave.

Then he went to the Rue Chanoinesse, passing along the
Quai des Augustins, where he hoped still to find a bookseller’s
shop open; he was, in fact, so fortunate, and had a long con-
versation on the cost of law-books, with the clerk in charge.

He found Madame de la Chanterie and her friend just
come in from high mass, and he answered her first inquiring
glance with a significant shake.

“And our dear Father Alain is not with you?” said he.
“He will not be here this Sunday,” replied Madame de laeR ea ecerremempecsminsseiiemin.cu

    

176

   
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
    
  

THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

' Chanterie. “You will not find him here till this day week,
unless you go to the place where you know you can meet him.”
“Madame,” said Godefroid, in an undertone, “you know I
am less afraid of him than of these gentlemen, and I intended
to confess to him.”
Peon dling
“Oh, you—I will tell you everything, for I have many
things to say to you. As a beginning, I have come upon the
most extraordinary case of destitution, the strangest union of
poverty and luxury, and figures of a sublimity which outdoes
the inventions of our most admired romancers.”
“Nature, and especially moral nature, is always as far above
A art as God is above His creatures. But come,” said Madame
ae de la Chanterie, “and tell me all about your expedition into
the unknown lands where you made your first venture.”
Monsieur Nicolas and Monsieur Joseph—for the Abbé de
| Véze had remained for a few minutes at Notre-Dame—lecft
Madame de la Chanterie alone with Godefroid; and he, fresh
| from the emotions he had gone through the day before, re-
lated every detail with the intensity, the gesticulation, and the
| eagerness that come of the first impression produced by such
a scene and its accessories of men and things. He had a suc-
cess too; for Madame de la Chanterie, calm and gentle as she
was, and accustomed to look into gulfs of suffering, shed tears.
“You did right,” said she, “to send the harmonium.”
“I wish I could have done much more,” replied Godefroid,
“since this is the first family through whom I have known the
pleasures of charity; I want to secure to the noble old man
the chief part of the profits on his great work. I do not know
whether you have enough confidence in me to enable me to un-
S dertake such a business. From the information I have
Li gained, it would cost about nine thousand francs to bring out
an edition of fifteen hundred copies, and their lowest selling
value would be twenty-four thousand frances. Ags we must,
in the first instance, pay off the three thousand and odd francs
that have been advanced on the manuscript, we should have
to risk twelve thousand francs.THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY aT

“Oh, madame! if you could but imagine how bitterly, as I
made my way hither from the Quai des Augustins, I rued
having so foolishly wasted my little fortune. The Genius of
Charity appeared to me, as it were, and filled me with the
ardor of a neophyte; I desire to renounce the world, to live
the life of these gentlemen, and to be Worthy of you. Many
a time during the past two days have I blessed the chance that
brought me to your house. I will obey you in every particular
till you judge me worthy to join the brotherhood.”

“Well,” said Madame de la Chanterie very seriously, after
a few minutes of reflection, “listen to me, I have important
things to say to you. You have been fascinated, my dear
boy, by the poetry of misfortune. Yes, misfortune often has
a poetry of its own; for, to me, poetry is a certain exaltation
of feeling, and suffering is feeling. We live so much through
suffering !”

“Yes, madame, I was captured by the demon of curiosity.
How could I help it! TI have not yet acquired the habit of
seeing into the heart of these unfortunate lives, and I cannot
set out with the calm resolution of your three pious soldiers
of the Lord. But I may tell you, it was not till I had quelled
this incitement that I devoted myself to your work.”

“Listen, my very dear son,” said Madame de la Chanterie,
saying the words with a saintly sweetness which deeply
touched Godefroid, “we have forbidden ourselves absolutely
—and this is no exaggeration, for we do not allow ourselves
even to think of what is forbidden—we have forbidden our-
selves ever to embark in a speculation. To print a book for
sale, and looking for a return, is business, and any transac-
tion of that kind would involve us in the difficulties of trade.
T’o be sure, it looks in this case very feasible, and even neces-
sary. Do you suppose that it is the first instance of the kind
that has come before us? Twenty times, a hundred times,
we have seen how a family, a concern, could be saved. But,
then, what should we have become in undertaking matters
of this kind? We should be simply a trading firm. To be a
sleeping partner with the unfortunate is not work; it is only

12178 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

helping misfortune to work. In a few days you may meet
with even harder cases than this; will you do the same thing?
You would be overwhelmed.

“Remember, for one thing, that the house of Mongenod, for
a year past, has ceased to keep our accounts. Quite half of
your time will be taken up by keeping our books. ‘There are,
at this time, nearly two thousand persons in our debt in Paris;
and of those who may repay us, at any rate, it is necessary
that we should check the amounts they owe us. We never sue
—we wait. We calculate that half of the money given out is
lost. The other half sometimes returns doubled.

“Now, suppose this lawyer were to die, the twelve thousand
francs would be badly invested! But if his daughter re-
covers, if his grandson does well, if he one day gets another
appointment—then, if he has any sense of honor, he will re-
member the debt, and return the funds of the poor with in-
terest. Do you know that more than one family, raised from
poverty and started by us on the road to fortune by con-
siderable loans without interest, has saved for the poor and re-
turned us sums of double and sometimes treble the amount?

“This is our only form of speculation.

“In the first place, as to this case which interests you, and
ought to interest you, consider that the sale of the lawyer’s
book depends on its merits; have you read it? Then, even if
the work is excellent, how many excellent books have re-
mained two or three years without achieving the success they
deserved. How many a wreath is laid on a tomb! And, as
I know, publishers have ways of driving bargains and taking
their charges, which make the business one of the most risky
and the most difficult to disentangle of all in Paris. Monsieur
Nicolas can tell you about these difficulties, inherent in the
nature of book-making. So, you see, we are prudent; we have
ample experience of every kind of misery, as of every branch
of trade, for we have long been studying Paris. The Monge-
nods give us much help; they are a light to our path, and
through them we know that the Bank of France is always
suspicious of the book-trade, though it is a noble trade—but
it is badly conducted.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 179

é

“As to the four thousand francs needed to save this noble
family from the horrors of indigence, I will give you the
money; for the poor boy and his grandfather must be fed
and decently dressed —There are Sorrows, miseries, wounds,
which we bind up at once without Inquiring who it is that
we are helping; religion, honor, character, are not inquired
into; but as soon as it is a case of lending the money belong-
ing to the poor to assist the unfortunate under the more active
form of industry or trade, then we require some guarantee,
and are as rigid as the money-lenders. So, for all beyond
this immediate relief, be satisfied with finding the most honest
publisher for the old man’s book. This is a matter for Mon-
sieur Nicolas. He is acquainted with lawyers and professors
and authors of works in jurisprudence; next Saturday he will,
no doubt, be prepared with some good advice for you.

“Be easy ; the difficulty will be got over if possible. At the
same time, it might be well if Monsieur Nicolas could read
the magistrate’s book; if you can persuade him to lend it.”

Godefroid was amazed at this woman’s sound sense, for
he had believed her to be animated solely by the spirit of
charity. He knelt on one knee and kissed one of her beauti-
ful hands, saying:

“Then you are Reason too !”?

“In our work we have to be everything,” said she, with the
peculiar cheerfulness of a true saint.

There was a brief silence, broken by Godefroid, who ex-
claimed:

“Two thousand debtors, did you say, madame? Two thou-
sand accounts! It is tremendous!”

“Two thousand accounts, which may lead, as I have told
you, to our being repaid from the delicate honor of the hor-
rowers. But there are three thousand more—familics who will
never make us any return but in thanks. Thus, as I have
told you, we feel that it is necessary to keep books; and if
your secrecy 1s above suspicion, you will be our financial
oracle. We ought to keep a day-book, a ledger, a book of cur-
rent expenses, and a cash-book. Of course, we have receipts,180

 

THD SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

notes of hand, but it takes a great deal of time to look for
them Here come the gentlemen.”

Godefroid, at first serious and thoughtful, took little part
in the conversation ; he was bewildered by the revelation Ma-
dame de la Chanterie had just imparted to him in a way which
showed that she meant it to be the reward of his zeal.

“Two thousand families indebted to us!” said he to him-
self. “Why, if they all cost as much as Monsieur Bernard will
cost us, we must have millions sown broadcast in Paris!”

This reflection was one of the last promptings of the
worldly spirit which was fast dying out in Godefroid. As
he thought the matter over, he understood that the united for-
tunes of Madame de la Chanterie, of Messieurs Alain, Nico-
las, Joseph, and Judge Popinot, with the gifts collected by the
Abbé de Véze, and the loans from the Mongenods, must have
produced a considerable capital; also, that in twelve or fif-
teen years this capital, with the interest paid on it by those
who had shown their gratitude, must have increased like a
snowball, since the charitable holders took nothing from it.
By degrees he began to see clearly how the immense affair was
managed, and his wish to co-operate was increased.

 

At nine o’clock he was about to return on foot to the
Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse; but Madame de la Chanterie,
distrustful of so lonely a neighborhood, insisted on his taking
acab. As he got out of the vehicle, though the shutters were
so closely fastened that not a gleam of light was visible, Gode-
froid heard the sounds of the instrument; and Auguste, who,
no doubt, was watching for Godefroid’s return, half opened
the door on the landing, and said:

“Mamma would very much like to see you, and my grand-
father begs you will take a cup of tea.”

Godefroid went in and found the invalid transfigured by
the pleasure of the music; her face beamed and her eyes
sparkled like diamonds.

“I ought to have waited for you, to let you hear the first
chords; but I flew at this little organ as a hungry man rushesTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 181

on a banquet. But you have a soul to understand me, and I
know I am forgiven.”

Vanda made a sign to her son, who placed himself where
he could press the pedal that supplied the interior of the in-
strument with wind; and, with her eyes raised to heaven like
Saint Cecilia, the invalid, whose hands had for a time re-
covered their strength and agility, performed some variations
on the prayer in Mfosé which her son had bought for her. She
had composed them in a few hours. Godefroid discerned in
her a talent identical with that of Chopin. It was a soul
manifesting itself by divine sounds in which sweet melan-
choly predominated.

Monsieur Bernard greeted Godefroid with a look express-
ing a sentiment long since in abeyance. If the tears had not
been for ever dried up in the old man scorched by so many
fierce sorrows, his eyes would at this moment have been wet.

The old lawyer was fingering his snuff-box and gazing at
his daughter with unutterable rapture.

“To-morrow, madame,” said Godefroid, when the music
had ceased, “your fate will be sealed, for I have good news
for you. The famous Halpersohn will come at three o'clock.
—And he has promised,” he added in Monsieur Bernard’s ear,
“to tell me the truth.” ;

The old man rose, and taking Godefroid by the hand, led
him into a corner of the room near the fireplace. He was
trembling.

“What a night lies before me! It is the final sentence!”
said he in a whisper. “My daughter will be cured or con-
demned !”

“Take courage,” said Godefroid, “and after tea come to my
rooms.”

“Cease playing, my child,” said Monsieur Bernard; “you
will bring on an attack. Such an expenditure of strength
will be followed by a reaction.”

He made Auguste remove the instrument, and brought his
daughter her cup of tea with the coaxing ways of a nurse who
wants to anticipate the impatience of a baby.182 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“And what is this doctor like?” asked she, already diverted
by the prospect of seeing a stranger.

Vanda, like all prisoners, was consumed by curiosity. When
the physical symptoms of her complaint gave her some respite,
they seemed to develop in her mind, and then she had the
strangest whims and violent caprices. She wanted to see Ros-
sini, and cried because her father, who could, she imagined,
do everything, assured her he could not bring him.

Godefroid gave her a minute description of the Jewish
physician and his consulting-room, for she knew nothing of
the steps taken by her father. Monsieur Bernard had en-
joined silence on his grandson as to his visits to Halpersohn;
he had so much feared to excite hopes which might not be
realized. Vanda seemed to hang on the words that fell from
Godefroid’s lips; she was spellbound and almost crazy, so
ardent did her desire become to see the strange Pole.

“Poland has produced many singular and mysterious
figures,” said the old lawyer. “Just now, for instance, besides
this doctor there is Hoéné Vronski the mathematician and
seer, Mickievicz the poet, the inspired Tovianski, and Chopin
with his superhuman talent. Great national agitations al-
ways produce these crippled giants.”

“Oh, my dear papa, what a man you are! If you were to
write down all that we hear you say simply to entertain me,
you would make a fortune! For, would you believe me, mon-
sieur, my kind old father invents tales for me when I
have no more novels to read, and so sends me to sleep. His
voice lulls me, and he often socthes my pain with his clever-
ness. Who will ever repay him?—Auguste, my dear boy, you
ought to kiss your grandfather’s footprints for me.”

The youth looked at his mother with his fine eyes full of
tears; and that look, overflowing with long repressed com-
passion, was a poem in itself. Godefroid rose, took Auguste’s
hand, and pressed it warmly.

“God has given you two angels for your companions, ma-
dame!” he exclaimed.

“Indeed I know it. And I blame myself for so often pro-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 183

voking them. Come, dear Auguste, and kiss your mother.
He is a son, monsieur, of whom any mother would be proud.
He is as good as gold, candid—a soul without sin; but a
rather too impassioned creature, like his mamma. God has
nailed me to my bed to preserve me perhaps from the follies
women commit—when they have too much heart!” she ended
with a smile.

Godefroid smiled in reply and bowed good-night.

“Good-night, monsieur; and be sure to thank your friend,
for he has made a poor cripple very happy.”

“Monsieur,” said Godefroid when he was in his rooms, alone
with Monsieur Bernard, who had followed hima, think
May promise you that you shall not be robbed by those three
sharpers. I can get the required sum, but you must place the
papers proving the loan in my hands. If I am to do anything
more, you should allow me to have your book—not to read
myself, for I am not learned enough to judge of it, but to
be read by an old lawyer I know, a man of unimpeachable in-
tegrity, who will undertake, according to the character of the
work, to find a respectable firm with whom you may deal on
equitable terms.—On this, however, I do not insist.

“Meanwhile, here are five hundred francs,” he went on,
offering a note to the astonished lawyer, “to supply your more
pressing wants. I ask for no receipt; you will be indebted
on no evidence but that of your conscience, and your con-
science may lie silent till you have to some extent recovered
yourself—I will settle with Halpersohn.”

“But who are you?” asked the old man, sinking on to a
chair.

“I,” replied Godefroid, “am nobody; but I serve certain
powerful persons to whom your necessities are now made
known, and who take an interest in you.u—Ask no more.”

“And what motive can these persons have ei

“Religion, monsieur,” replied Godefroid.

“Ts it possible ?—Religion !”

“Yes, the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman religion.”

. “Then you are of the Order of Jesus?”
“No, monsieur,” said Godefroid. “Be perfectly easy. No184 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

one has any design on you beyond that of helping you and
restoring your family to comfort.”

“Can philanthropy then wear any guise but that of
vanity ?”

“Nay, monsieur, do not insult holy Catholic Charity, the
virtue described by Saint Paul!’ cried Godefroid eagerly.

At this reply Monsieur Bernard began to stride up and
down the room.

“I accept!” he suddenly said. “And I have but one way of
showing my gratitude—that is, by intrusting you with my
work. The notes and quotations are unnecessary to a lawyer;
and I have, as I told you, two months’ work before me yet in
copying them out.—To-morrow then,” and he shook hands
with Godefroid.

“Can I have effected a conversion?” thought Godefroid,
struck by the new expression he saw on the old man’s face as
he had last spoken.

Next day, at three o’clock, a hackney coach stopped at the
door, and out stepped Halpersohn, buried in a vast bearskin
coat. The cold had increased in the course of the night, and
the thermometer stood at ten degrees below freezing.

The Jewish doctor narrowly though furtively examined the
room in which his visitor of yesterday received him, and Gode-
froid detected a gleam of suspicion sparkling in his eye like
the point of a dagger. This swift flash of doubt gave Gode-
froid an internal chill; he began to think that this man would
be merciless in his money dealings; and it is so natural to
think of genius as allied to goodness, that this gave him an
impulse of discust.

“Monsieur,” said he, “I perceive that the plainness of my
lodgings arouses your uneasiness; so you will not be surprised
at my manner of proceeding. Here are your two hundred
frances, and here, you see, are three notes for a thousand francs
each”—and he drew out the notes which Madame de la Chan-
terie had given him to redeem Monsieur Bernard’s manu-
script. “If you have any further doubts as to my solvency,
I may refer you, as a guarantee for the carrying out of myTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 185

pledge, to Messrs. Mongenod the bankers, Rue de la Victoire.”

“I know them,” said Halpersohn, slipping the ten gold
pieces into his pocket.

“And he will go there!” thought Godefroid.

“And where does the sick lady live?” asked the doctor, ris-
ing, as a man who knows the value of time.

“Come this way, monsieur,” said Godefroid, going first to
show him the way.

The Jew cast a shrewd and scrutinizing glance on the
rooms he went through, for he had the eye of a spy; and he
was able to sce the misery of poverty through the door into
Monsieur Bernard’s bedroom, for, unluckily, Monsieur Ber-
nard had just been putting on the dress in which he always
showed himself to his daughter, and in his haste to admit his
visitors he left the door of his kennel ajar.

He bowed with dignity to Halpersohn, and softly opened
his daughter’s bedroom door.

“Vanda, my dear, here is the doctor,” he said.

Fie stood aside to let Halpersohn pass, still wrapped in hig
furs.

The Jew was surprised at the splendor of this room, which
in this part of the town seemed anomalous; but his aston-
ishment was of no long duration, for he had often seen in the
houses of German and Polish Jews a similar discrepancy be-
tween the display of extreme penury and concealed wealth.
While walking from the door to the bed he never took his eyes
off the sufferer; and when he stood by her side, he said to her
in Polish:

“Are you a Pole?”

“T am not; my mother was.”

“Whom did your grandfather, General Tarlovski, marry ?”
“A Pole.”

“Of what province?”

“A Sobolevska of Pinsk.”

“Good.—And this gentleman is your father?”

“Yes, monsieur.”186 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“Monsieur,” said Halpersohn, “is your wife ee

“She is dead,” replied Monsieur Bernard.

“Was she excessively fair?” said Halpersohn, with some im-
patience at the interruption.

“Here is a portrait of her,” replied Monsieur Bernard, tak-
ing down a handsome frame containing several good minia-
tures.

Halpersohn was feeling the invalid’s head and hair, while he
looked at the portrait of Vanda Tarlovska née Comtesse Sobo-
levska.

“Tell me the symptoms of the patient’s illness.” And he
seated himself in the armchair, gazing steadily at Vanda dur-
ing twenty minutes, while the father and daughter spoke by
turns.

“And how old is the lady?”

“TWight-and-thirty.”

“Very good!” he said as he rose. “Well, I undertake to
cure her. I cannot promise to give her the use of her legs,
but she can be cured. Only, she must be placed in a private
hospital in my part of the town.”

“But, monsieur, my daughter cannot be moved ee

“I will answer for her life,” said Halpersohn sententiously.
“But I answer for her only on those conditions.—Do you
know she will exchange her present symptoms for another
horrible form of disease, which will last for a year perhaps,
or six months at the very least >—You can come to see her, as
you are her father.”

“And it is certain?” asked Monsieur Bernard.

“Certain,” repeated the Jew. “Your daughter has a vicious
humor, a national disorder, in her blood, and it must be
brought out. When you bring her, carry her to the Rue
Basse-Saint-Pierre at Chaillot—Dr. Halpersohn’s private hos-
outa

“But how ?”

“On a stretcher, as the sick people are always carried to
a hospital.”

“But it will kill her to be moved.”THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 187

EINiow-

And Halpersohn, as he spoke this curt No, was at the
door, where Godefroid met him on the landing.

The Jew, who was suffocating with heat, said in his ear:

“The charge will be fifteen francs a day, besides the thou-
sand crowns; three months paid in advance.”

“Very good, monsieur.—And,” asked Godefroid, standing
on the step of the cab into which the doctor had hurried, “you
answer for the cure?”

“Positively,” said the Pole. “Are you in love with the
lady 2”

“No,” said Godefroid.

“You must not repeat what I am about to tell you, tor i
am saying it only to prove to you that I am sure of the cure ;
but if you say anything about it, you will be the death of the
woman a

Godefroid replied only by a gesture.

“For seventeen years she has been suffering from the disease
known as Plica Polonica, which can produce all these tor-
ments; I have seen the most dreadful cases. Now I am the
only man living who knows how to bring out the Plica in such
a form as to be curable, for not every one gets over it. You
see, monsieur, that I am really very liberal. If this were some
great lady—a Baronne de Nucingen or any other wife or
daughter of some modern Creesus—I should get a hundred—
two hundred thousand francs for this cure—whatever I might
like to ask !—However, that is a minor misfortune.”

“And moving her?”

“Oh, she will seem to be dying, but she will not die of it!
She may live a hundred years when once she is cured.—Now,
Jacques, quick—Rue Monsieur, and make haste!” said he to
the driver.

He left Godefroid standing in the street, where he gazed in
bewilderment after the retreating cab.

“Who on earth is that queer-looking man dressed in bear-
skin?” asked Madame Vauthier, whom nothing could escape.
“Ts it true, as the hackney coachman said, that he is the most
famous doctor in Paris?”188 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

 

“And what can that matter to you, Mother Vauthier ?”

“Oh, not at all,” said she with a sour face.

“You made a great mistake in not siding with me,” said
Godefroid, as he slowly went into the house. “You would
have done better than by sticking to Monsieur Barbet and
Monsieur Métivier; you will get nothing out of them.”

“And am I on their side?” retorted she with a shrug. “Mon-
sieur Barbet is my landlord, that is all.”

It took two days to persuade Monsieur Bernard to part from
his daughter and carry her to Chaillot. Godefroid and the
old lawyer walked all the way, one on each side of the
stretcher, screened in with striped blue-and-white tickings, on
which the precious patient lay, almost tied down to the mat-
tress, so greatly did her father fear the convulsions of a ner-
vous attack. However, having set out at three o’clock, the pro-
cession reached the private hospital at five, when it was dusk.
Godefroid paid the four hundred and fifty francs demanded
for the three months’ board, and took a mecelot 1On its shen,
when he went down to pay the two porters, Monsieur Bernard
joined him and took from under the mattress a very volu-
minous sealed packet, which he handed to Godefroid.

“One of these men will fetch you a cab,” said he, “for you
cannot carry those four volumes very far. This is my book;
place it in my censor’s hands; I will leave it with him for a
week. I shall remain at least a week in this neighborhood,
for I cannot abandon my daughter to her fate. I know my
grandson ; he can mind the house, especially with you to help
him; and I commend him to your care. If I were myself
what once I was, I would ask you my critic’s name; for if
he was once a magistrate, there were few whom I did not
know .

“It is no mystery,” said Godefroid, interrupting Monsieur
Bernard. “Since you show such entire confidence in me, I
may tell you that the reader is the President Lecamus de
Tresnes.”

“Oh, of the Supreme Court in Paris. Take it—by all
means. He is one of the noblest men of our time. He andTHE SHEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 189

the late Judge Popinot, the judge of the Lower Court, were
lawyers worthy of the best days of the old Parlements. All
my iears, if I had any, must vanish—And where does he
live? I should like to go and thank him when he has taken
so much trouble.”

“You will find him in the Rue Chanoinesse, under the name
of Monsieur Nicolas. I am just going there.—But your agree-
ment with those rascals?”

“Auguste will give it you,” said the old man, going back
into the hospital.

A cab was found on the Quai de Billy and brought by one
of the men; Godefroid got in and stimulated the driver by
the promise of drink money if he drove quickly to the Rue
Chanoinesse, where he intended to dine.

 

Half an hour after Vanda’s removal, three men, dressed
in black, were let in by Madame Vauthier at the door in the
Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, where they had been waiting,
no doubt, till the coast should be clear. They went upstairs
under the guidance of the Judas in petticoats, and gently
knocked at Monsieur Bernard’s door. As it happened to be a
Thursday, the young collegian was at home. He opened the
door, and three men slipped like shadows into the outer room.

“What do you want, gentlemen?” asked the youth.

“This is Monsieur Bernard’s—that is to say, Monsieur le
Baron ey

“But what do you want here?”

“Oh, you know that pretty well, young man, for your grand-
father has just gone off with a closed litter, I am told.—Well,
that does not surprise us; he shows his wisdom. I ama bailiff,
and I have come to seize everything here. On Monday last
you were summoned to pay three thousand francs and the
expenses to Monsieur Métivier, under penalty of imprison-
ment; and as a man who has grown onions knows the smell
of chives, the debtor has taken the key of the fields rather than
wait for that of the lock-up. However, if we cannot secure
him, we can get a wing or a leg of his gorgeous furniture—190 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

for we know all about it, young man, and we are going to make
an official report.”

“Here are some stamped papers that your grandpapa would
never take,” said the widow Vauthier, shoving three writs
into Auguste’s hand.

“Stay here, ma’am; we will put you in possession. The
law gives you forty sous a day; it is not to be sneezed at.”

“Ah, ha! Then I shall see what there is in the grand bed-
room!” cried Madame Vauthier.

“You shall not go into my mother’s room!” cried the lad
in a fury, as he flung himself between the door and the three
men in black.

On a sign from their leader, the two men and a lawyer’s
clerk who came in seized Auguste.

“No resistance, young man; you are not master here. We
shall draw up a charge, and you will spend the night in the
lock-up.”

At this dreadful threat, Auguste melted into tears.

“Oh, what a mercy,” cried he, “that mamma is gone! This
would have killed her!”

The men and the bailiff now held a sort of council with
the widow Vauthier. Auguste understood, though they talked
in a low voice, that what they chiefly wanted was to seize his
grandfather’s manuscripts, so he opened the bedroom door.

“Walk in then, gentlemen,” said he, “but spoil nothing.
You will be paid to-morrow morning.” Then, still in tears, he
went into his own squalid room, snatched up all his grand-
father’s notes, and stuffed them into the stove, where he knew
that there was not a spark of fire.

The thing was done so promptly, that the bailiff, though
he was keen and cunning, and worthy of his employers Barbet
and Métivier, found the boy in tears on a chair when he rushed
into the room, having concluded that the manuscripts would
not be in the ante-room. Though books and manuscripts may
not legally be seized for debt, the lien signed by the old lawyer
in this case justified the proceeding. Still, it would have been
easy to find means of delaying the distraint, as MonsieurTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 191

Bernard would certainly have known. Hence the necessity
for acting with cunning.

The widow Vauthier had been an invaluable ally to her
landlord by failing to serve his notices on her lodger; her plan
was to throw them on him when entering at the heels of the
officers of justice; or, if necessary, to declare to Monsieur
Bernard that she had supposed them to be intended for the
two writers who had been absent for two days.

The inventory of the goods took above an hour to make
out, for the bailiff would omit nothing, and regarded the value
as sufficient to pay off the debts.

As soon as the officers were gone, the poor youth took the
writs and hurried away to find his grandfather at Halper-
sohn’s hospital; for, as the bailiff assured him that Madame
Vauthier was responsible for everything under heavy penal-
ties, he could leave the place without fear.

The idea of his grandfather’s being taken to prison for
debt drove the poor boy absolutely mad—mad in the way in
which the young are mad; that is to say, a victim to the dan-
gerous and fatal excitement in which every energy of youth is
in a ferment and may lead to the worst as to the most heroic
actions.

When poor Auguste reached the Rue Basse-Saint-Pierre,
the doorkeeper told him that he did not know what had be-
come of the father of the patient brought in at five o’clock,
but that by Monsieur Halpersohn’s orders no one—not even
her father—was to be allowed to see the lady for a week, or it
might endanger her life.

This reply put a climax to Auguste’s desperation. He went
back again to the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, revolving the
most extravagant schemes as he went. He got home by about
half-past eight, almost starving, so exhausted by hunger and
grief, that he accepted when Madame Vauthier invited him
to share her supper, consisting of a stew of mutton and pota-
toes. The poor boy dropped half dead into a chair in the
dreadful woman’s room.

Encouraged by the old woman’s coaxing and insinuating192 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

words, he answered a few cunningly arranged questions about
Godefroid, and gave her to understand that it was he who
would pay off his grandfather’s debts on the morrow, and
that to him they owed the improvement that had taken place
in their prospects during the past week. The widow listened
to all this with an affectation of doubt, plying Auguste with a
few glasses of wine.

At ten o’clock the wheels of a cab were heard to stop in
front of the house, and the woman exclaimed:

“Oh, there is Monsieur Godefroid !”

Auguste took the key of his rooms and went upstairs to
see the kind friend of the family; but he found Godefroid
so entirely unlike himself, that he hesitated to speak till the
thought of his grandfather’s danger spurred the generous
youth.

This is what had happened in the Rue Chanoinesse, and
had caused Godefroid’s stern expression of countenance.

The neophyte, arriving in good time, had found Madame
de la Chanterie and her adherents in the drawing-room, and
he had taken Monsieur Nicolas aside to deliver to him the
Spirit of the Modern Laws. Monsieur Nicolas at once carried
the sealed parcel to his room, and came down to dinner. Then,
after chatting during the first part of the evening, he went up
again, intending to begin reading the work.

Godefroid was greatly surprised when, a few minutes after,
Manon came from the old judge to beg him to go up to speak
with him. Following Manon, he was led to Monsieur Nicolas’
room ; but he could pay no attention to its details, so greatly
was he startled by the evident distress of a man usually so
placid and firm.

“Did you know,” said Monsieur Nicolas, quite the Judge
again, “the name of the author of this work 2”

“Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid. “I know him only
by that name. I did not open the parce]——_”

“True,” said Monsieur Nicolas. “I broke the seals myself.
—And you made no inquiry as to his previous history ?”THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 193

“No. I know that he married for love the daughter of
General Tarlovski, that his daughter is named Vanda after
her mother, and his grandson Auguste. And the portrait I
saw of Monsieur Bernard is, I believe, in the dress of a Pre-
siding Judge—a red gown.”

“Look here!” said Monsieur Nicolas, and held out the title
of the work in Auguste’s handwriting, and in the following
form :

TUE SP PRE

OF THE MODERN LAWS

BY
M. BERNARD-JEAN-BAPTISTE MACLOUD

BARON BOURLAC

Formerly Attorney-General to the High Court of Justice at Rouen
Commander of the Legion of Honor.

“Oh! The man who condemned Madame, her daughter,
and the Chevalier du Vissard!” said Godefroid in a choked
voice.

His knees gave way, and the neophyte dropped on to a
chair.

“What a beginning!” he murmured.

“This, my dear Godefroid, is a business that comes home
to us all. You have done your part; we must deal with it
now! I beg you to do nothing further of any kind; go and
fetch whatever you left in your rooms; and not a word!—In
fact, absolute silence. Tell Baron Bourlac to apply to me.
Between this and then, we shall have decided how it will be
best to act in such circumstances.”

Godefroid went downstairs, called a hackney cab, and hur-
ried back to the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, filled with hor-
ror as he thought of the examination and trials at Caen, of
the hideous drama that ended on the scaffold, and of Madame
de la Chanterie’s sojourn in Bicttre. Te understood the neg-

13194 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

lect into which this lawyer, almost a second Fouquier-Tin-
ville, had fallen in his old age, and the reasons why he so care-
fully concealed his name.

“I hope Monsieur Nicolas will take some terrible revenge
for poor Madame de la Chanterie!”’

He had just thought out this not very Christian wish, when
he saw Auguste. |

“What do you want of me?” asked Godefroid.

“My dear sir, a misfortune has befallen us which is turning
my brain! Some scoundrels have been here to take possession
of everything belonging to my mother, and they are hunting
for my grandfather to put him into prison. But it is not
by reason of these disasters that I turn to you for help,” said
the lad with Roman pride; “it is to beg you to do me such a
service as you would do to a condemned criminal a

“Speak,” said Godefroid.

“They wanted to get hold of my grandfather’s manuscripts ;
and as I believe he placed the work in your hands, I want to
beg you to take the notes, for the woman will not allow me to
remove a thing.—Put them with the volumes, and then——”

“Very well,” said Godefroid, “make haste and fetch them.”

While the lad went off, to return immediately, Godefroid
reflected that the poor boy was guilty of no crime, that he
must not break his heart by telling him about his grandfather,
or the desertion which was the punishment in his sad old age
of the passions of his political career; he took the packet not
unkindly.

“What is your mother’s name?” he asked.

“My mother, monsieur, is the Baronne de Mergi. My
father was the son of the Presiding Judge of the Supreme
Court at Rouen.”

“Ah!” said Godefroid, “so your grandfather married his
daughter to the son of the famous Judge Mero?

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Leave me, my little friend,” said Godefroid.

He went out on to the landing with the young Baron de
Mergi, and called Madame Vauthier.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 195

“Mother Vauthier,” said he, “you can relet my rooms; I
am never coming back again.”

And he went, down to the eab.

“Have you intrusted anything to that gentleman?” asked
the widow of Auguste.

ses said the lad.

“Yowre a pretty fool. He is one of your enemies’ agents.
He has been at the bottom of it all, you may be sure. It is
proof enough that the trick has turned out all right that a
never means to come back. He told me I could let his rooms.’

Auguste flew out, and down the boulevard, running after
the cab, and at last succeeded in stopping it by his shouts and
cries.

“What is it?” asked Godefroid.

“My Sander s manuscripts ?”

“Tell him to apply for them to Monsieur Nicolas.”

The lad took this reply as the cruel jest of a thief who has
no shame left; he sat down in the snow as he saw the cab set
off again at a brisk trot.

He rose in a fever of fierce energy and went home to bed,
worn out with rushing about Paris, and quite heart-broken.

Next morning, Auguste de Mergi awoke to find himself
alone in the rooms where yesterday his mother and his erand-
father had been with him, and he went through all the mis-
erles of his position, of which he fully understood the extent.
The utter desertion of the place, hitherto so amply filled,
where every minute had brought with it a duty and an occu-
pation, was so painful to fat that he went down to ask the
widow Vauthier whether his grandfather had come in during
the night or early morning; for he himself had slept very
late, and he supposed that if the Baron Bourlac had come
home the woman would have warned him against his pur-
suers. She replied, with a sneer, that he must know full well
where to look for his grandfather; for if he had not come in,
it was evident that he had taken up his abode in the “Chateau
de Clichy.” This impudent irony from the woman who, the
day before, had cajoled him so effectually, again drove the196 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

poor boy to frenzy, and he flew to the private hospital in the
Rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, in despair, as he thought of his
grandfather in prison.

Baron Bourlac had hung about all night in front of the
hospital which he was forbidden to enter, or close to the house
of Doctor Halpersohn, whom he naturally wished to call to
account for this conduct. The doctor did not get home till
two in the morning. The old man, who, at half-past one, had
been at the doctor’s door, had just gone off to walk in the
Champs-Elysées, and when he returned at half-past two the
gatekeeper told him that Monsieur Halpersohn was now in
bed and asleep, and was on no account to be disturbed.

Here, alone, at half-past two in the morning, the unhappy
father, in utter despair, paced the quay, and under the trees,
loaded with frost, of the sidewalks of the Cours-la-Reine,
waiting for the day.

At nine o’clock he presented himself at the doctor’s, and
asked him why he thus kept his daughter under lock and key.

“Monsieur,” said Halpersohn, “TI yesterday made myself
answerable for your daughter’s recovery; and at this moment
I am responsible for her life, and you must understand that
in such a case I must have sovereign authority. I may tell
you that your daughter yesterday took a remedy which will
give her the Plica, that till the disease is brought out the lady
must remain invisible. I will not allow myself to lose my
patient or you to lose your daughter by exposing her to any
excitement, any error of treatment; if you really insist on
seeing her, I shall demand a consultation of three medical
men to protect myself against any responsibility, as the pa-
tient might die.”

The old man, exhausted with faticue, had dropped on to a
chair; he quickly rose, however, saying:

“Forgive me, monsieur; I have spent the night in mortal
anguish, for you cannot imagine how much I love my daugh-
ter, whom I have nursed for fifteen years between life and
death, and this week of waiting is torture to me!”THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 197

The Baron left Halpersohn’s study, tottering like a drunken
man, the doctor giving him his arm to the top of the stairs.

About an hour later, he saw Auguste de Mergi walk into
his room. On questioning the lodge-keeper of the private
hospital, the poor lad had just heard that the father of the
lady admitted the day before had called again in the evening,
had asked for her, and had spoken of going early in the day
to Doctor Halpersohn, who, no doubt, would know something
about him. At the moment when Auguste de Mergi appeared
in the doctor’s room, Halpergohn was breakfasting off a cup
of chocolate and a glass of water, all on a small round table ;
he did not disturb himself for the youth, but went on soaking
his strip of bread in the chocolate; for he ate nothing but a
roll, cut into four with an aceuracy that argued some skill as
an operator. Halpersohn had, in fact, practised surgery in
the course of his travels.

“Well, young man,” said he as Vanda’s son came in, “you
too have come to require me to account for your mother ?”

“Yes, monsieur,” said Auguste.

The young fellow had come forward as far as the large
table, and his eye was immediately caught by several bank-
notes lying among the little piles of gold pieces. In the posi-
tion in which the unhappy boy found himself, the temptation
was stronger than his principles, well grounded as they were.
He saw before him the means of rescuing his grandfather, and
saving the fruits of twenty years’ labor imperiled by avari-
cious speculators. He fell. The fascination was as swift as
thought, and justified itself by an idea of self-immolation that
smiled on the boy. He said to himself:

“I shall be done for, but I shall save my mother and my
grandfather.”

Under this stress of antagonism between his reason and the
impulse to crime, he acquired, as madmen do, a strange and
fleeting dexterity, and instead of asking after his grandfather,
he listened and agreed to all the doctor was saying.

Halpersohn, like all acute observers, had understood the
whole past history of the father, the daughter, and her son.198 THE SHAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

He had scented or guessed the facts which Madame de Mergi’s
conversation had confirmed, and he felt in consequence a sort
of benevolence towards his new clients ;—as to respect or ad-
miration, he was incapable of them.

“Well, my dear boy,” said he familiarly, “I am keeping
your mother to restore her to you young, handsome, and in
good health. Hers is one of those rare diseases which doc-
tors find very interesting; and besides, she is, through her
mother, a fellow-countrywoman of mine. You and your
grandfather must be brave enough to live without seeing her
for a fortnight, and madame on

“La Baronne de Mergi.”

“If she is a Baroness, you are Baron
sohn.

At this moment the theft was effected. While the doctor
was looking at his bread, heavy with chocolate, Auguste
snatched up four folded notes, and had slipped them into his
trousers pocket, affecting to keep his hand there out of sheer
embarrassment.

“Yes, monsieur, J am a Baron. So too is my grandfather;
he was public prosecutor at the time of the Restoration.”

“You blush, young man. You need not blush because you
are a Baron and poor—it is a very common case.”

“And who told you, monsieur, that we are poor?”

“Well, your grandfather told me that he had spent the night
in the Champs-Elysées; and though I know no palace where
there is so fine a vault overhead as that which was glittering
at two o’clock this morning, it was cold, I can tell you, in the
palace where your grandfather was taking his airing. A man’
does not go to the Hétel de la belle-Htoile by preference.”

“Has my grandfather been here?” cried Auguste, seizing
the opportunity to beat a retreat. “Thank you, monsieur. I
will come again, with your permission, for news of my
mother.”

As soon as he got out, the young Baron went off to the bail-
ifs office, taking a hackney cab to get there the sooner. The
man gave up the agreement, and the bill of costs duly re-

 

 

?” asked Halper-THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 199

ceipted, and then desired the young man to take one of the
clerks with him to release the person in charge from her func-
tions.

“And as Messrs. Barbet and Métivier live in your part of
the town,” added he, “my boy will take them the money and
desire them to restore you the deed of lien on the property.”

Auguste, who understood nothing of these phrases and
formalities, submitted. He received seven hundred francs in
silver, the change out of his four thousand-franc notes, and
went off in the clerk’s company. He got inte the cab in a
state of indescribable bewilderment, for the end being
achieved, remorse was making itself felt; he saw himself dis-
graced and cursed by his grandfather, whose austerity was
well known to him; and he believed that his mother would die
of grief if she heard of his guilt. All nature had changed
before his eyes. He was lost; he no longer saw the snow, the
houses looked like ghosts.

No sooner was he at home than the young Baron decided
on his course of action, and it was certainly that of an honest
man. He went into his mother’s room and took the diamond
snuff-box given to his grandfather by the Emperor to send it
with the seven hundred francs to Doctor Halpersohn with the
following letter, which required several rough copies:

“Monsizur,—The fruits of twenty years’ labor—my grand-
father’s work—were about to be absorbed by some money-
lenders, who threatened him with imprisonment. Three thou-
sand three hundred frances were enough to save him; and sce-
ing so much gold on your table, I could not resist the idea of
seeing my parent free by thus making good to him the earn-
ings of his long toil. I borrowed from you, without your
leave, four thousand franes; but as only three thousand three
hundred franes were needed, I send you the remaining seven
hundred, and with them a snuff-box set with diamonds, given
by the Emperor to my grandfather ; this will, I hope, indem-
nify you.

“If you should not after this believe that I, who shall all200 THE SHEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

my life regard you as my benefactor, am a man of honor, if
you will at any rate preserve silence as to an action so unjusti-
able in any other circumstances, you will have saved my grand-
father as you will save my mother, and I shall be for life your
devoted slave.

“AUGUSTE DE Merci.”

At about half-past two, Auguste, who had walked to the
Champs-Elysées, sent a messenger on to deliver at Doctor
Halpersohn’s door a sealed box containing ten louis, a five-
hundred-frane note, and the snuff-box; then he slowly went
home across the Pont d’Iéna by the Invalides and the Boule-
vards, trusting to Doctor Halpersohn’s generosity.

The physician, who had at once discovered the theft, had
meanwhile changed his views as to his clients. He supposed
that the old man had come to rob him, and, not having suc-
ceeded, had sent this boy. He put no credence in the rank
and titles they had assumed, and went off at once to the public
prosecutor’s office to state his case, and desire that immediate
steps should be taken for the prosecution.

The prudence of the law rarely allows of such rapid pro-
ceedings as the complaining parties would wish; but, at about
three in the afternoon, a police officer, followed by some detec-
tives, who affected to be lounging on the boulevard, was cate-
chizing Madame Vauthier as to her lodgers, and the widow
quite unconsciously was confirming the constable’s suspi-
clons.

Népomucéne, scenting the policeman, thought that it was
the old man they wanted; and as he was very fond of Mon-
sieur Auguste, he hurried out to meet Monsieur Bernard,
whom he intercepted in the Avenue de l’Observatoire.

“Make your escape, monsieur,” cried he. “They have come
to take you. The bailiffs were in yesterday and laid hands
on everything. Mother Vauthier, who has hidden some
stamped papers of yours, said you would be in Clichy by last
night or this morning. There, do you see those sneaks ?”

The old judge recognized the men as bailiffs, and he under-
stood everything.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 201

“And Monsieur Godefroid?” he asked.

“Gone, never to come back. Mother Vauthier says he was a
spy for your enemies.”

Monsieur Bourlae determined that he would go at once to
Barbet, and in a quarter of an hour he wag there; the old
bookseller lived in the Rue Sainte-Catherine-d’Enfer.

“Oh, you have come yourself to fetch your agreement,” said
the publisher, bowing to his victim. “Here it is,’ and, to the
Baron’s great amazement, he handed him the document, which
the old lawyer took, saying:

“TI do not understand "

“Then it was not you who paid up?” said Barbet.

“Are you paid?”

“Your grandson carried the money to the bailiff this morn-
Tne

“And is it true that you took possession of my goods yester-
day ?”

“Have you not been home for two days?” said Barbet.
“Still, a retired public prosecutor must know what if is to be
threatened with imprisonment for debt!”

On this the Baron bowed coldly to Barbet, and returned
home, supposing that the authorities had in fact come in
search of the authors living on the first floor. He walked
slowly, absorbed in vague apprehensions, for Népomucéne’s
warning seemed to him more and more inexplicable. Could
Godefroid have betrayed him? He mechanically turned down
the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, and went in by the back
door, which happened to be open, running against Népomu-
céne.

“Oh, monsieur, make haste, come on; they are taking Mon-
sieur Auguste to prison; they caught him on the boulevard;
it was him they were hunting—they have been questioning
him——”

The old man, with a spring like a tiger’s, rushed through
the house and garden and out on to the boulevard, as swift as
an arrow, and was just in time to see his grandson get into
a hackney coach between three men.202 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“Auguste,” he cried, “what is the meaning of this?”

The youth burst into tears, and turned faint.

“Monsieur,” said he to the police officer, whose scarf struck
his eye, “I am Baron Bourlac, formerly a public prosecutor;
for pity’s sake, explain the matter.”

“Monsieur, if you are Baron Bourlac, you will understand
it in two words. I have just questioned this young man, and
he has unfortunately confessed —~”

pinay

“A theft of four thousand francs from Doctor Halpersohn.”

“Auguste! Is it possible?”

“Grandpapa, I have sent him your diamond snuff-box as a
guarantee. I wanted to save you from the disgrace of im-
prisonment.”

“Wretched boy, what have you done?” cried the Baron.
“The diamonds are false; I gold the real stones three years
ago.”

The police officer and his clerk looked at each other with
strange meaning. This glance, full of suggestions, was seen
by the Baron, and fell like a thunderbolt.

“Monsieur,” said he to the officer, “be quite easy; I will go
and see the public prosecutor; you can testify to the delusion
in which I have kept my daughter and my grandson. You
must do your duty, but in the name of humanity, send my
granudson to a cell by himself.—I will go to prison.—Where
are you taking him?”

“Are you Baron Bourlac?” said the constable.

“Oh! Monsieur @

“Because the public prosecutor, the examining judge, and
I myself could not believe that such men as you and your
grandson could be guilty; like the doctor, we concluded that
some swindlers had borrowed your names.”

He took the Baron aside and said:

“Were you at Doctor Halpersohn’s house this morning 2?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“And your grandson too, about half-an-hour later ?”

“I know nothing about that; I have this instant come in,
and I have not seen my grandson since yesterday.”THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 203

“The writs he showed me and the warrant for arrest ex-
plain everything,” said the police agent. “I know his motive
for the crime. I ought indeed to arrest you, monsieur, as
abetting your grandson, for your replies confirm the facts
alleged by the complainant; but the notices served on you,
and which I return to you,” he added, holding out a packet
of stamped papers which he had in his hand, “certainly prove
you to be Baron Bourlac. At the same time, you must be pre-
pared to be called up before Monsieur Marest, the examining
judge in this case. I believe I am right in relaxing the usual
rule in consideration of your past dignity.

“As to your grandson, I will speak of him to the public
prosecutor as soon as I go in, and we will show every possible
consideration for the grandson of a retired judge, and the vic-
tim of a youthful error. Still, there is the indictment, the
accused has confessed; I have sent in my report, and have a
warrant for his imprisonment; I cannot help myself. As to
the place of detention, your grandson will be taken to the
Conciergerie.”

“Thank you, monsieur,” said the miserable Bourlac. He
fell senseless on the snow, and tumbled into one of the rain-
water cisterns, which at that time divided the trees on the
boulevard.

The police officer called for help, and Népomucéne hurried
out with Madame Vauthier. The old man was carried in-
doors, and the woman begged the police constable, as he went
by the Rue d’Enfer, to send Doctor Berton as quickly as pos-
sible.

“What is the matter with my grandfather?” asked poor
Auguste.

“He is crazed, sir. That is what comes of thieving !”

Auguste made a rush as though to crack his skull; but the
two men held him back.

“Come, come, young man. Take it quietly,” said the officer.
“Be calm. You have done wrong, but it is not irremediable.”

“But pray, monsieur, tell the woman that my grandfather
has probably not touched food for these twenty-four hours.”204 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“Oh, poor creatures!” said the officer to himself.

He stopped the coach, which had started, and said a word
in his clerk’s ear; the man ran off to speak to old Vauthier,
and then returned at once.

Monsieur Berton was of opinion that Monsieur Bernard—
for he knew him by no other name—was suffering from an
attack of high fever; but when Madame Vauthier had told
him of all the events that had led up to it in the way in which
a housekeeper tells a story, the doctor thought it necessary
to report the whole business next day to Monsieur Alain at
the Church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, and Monsieur
Alain sent a pencil note by messenger to Monsieur Nicolas,
Rue Chanoinesse.

Godefroid, on reaching home the night before, had given
the notes on the book to Monsieur Nicolas, who spent the
greater part of the night in reading the first volume of Baron
Bourlac’s work.

On the following day Madame de la Chanterie told Gode-
froid that if his determination still held good, he might begin
on his work at once.

Godefroid, initiated by her into the financial secrets of the
Society, worked for seven or eight hours a day, and for several
months, under the supervision of Frédéric Mongenod, who
came every Sunday to look through the work, and who praised
him for the way in which it was done.

“You are a valuable acquisition for the saints among whom
you live,” said the banker when all the accounts were clearly
set forth and balanced. “Two or three hours a day will now
be enough to keep the accounts in order, and during the rest
of your time you can help them, if you still feel the vocation
as you did six months since.”

This was in the month of July 1838. During the time that
had elapsed since the affair of the Boulevard du Mont-Par-
nasse, Godefroid, eager to prove himself worthy of his com-
panions, had never asked a single question as to Baron Bour-
lac; for, as he had not heard a word, nor found anything inTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 205

the account-books that bore on the matter, he suspected that
the silence that was preserved with regard to the two men who
had been so ruthless to Madame de la Chanterie, was intended
as a test to which he was being put, or perhaps as proof that
the noble lady’s friends had avenged her.

But, two months later, in the course of a walk one day, he
went as far as the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, managed
to meet Madame Vauthier, and asked her for some news of the
Bernard family.

“Who can tell, my dear Monsieur Godefroid, what has be-
come of those people. Two days after your expedition—for it
was you, you cunning dog, who blabbed to my landlord—
somebody came who took that old swaggerer off my hands.
Then, in four-and-twenty hours, everything was cleared out
—not a stick left, nor a word said—perfect strangers to me,
and they told me nothing. I believe he packed himself off
to Algiers with his precious grandson; for Népomucéne, who
was very devoted to that young thief—he is no better than he
should be himself—did not find him in the Conciergerie, and
he alone knows where they are, and the scamp has gone off and
left me. You bring up these wretched foundlings, and this
is the reward you get; they leave you high and dry. I have
not been able to find any one to take his place, and as the
neighborhood is very crowded, and the house is full, I am
worked to death.”

And Godefroid would never have known anything more of
Baron Bourlac but for the conclusion of the adventure, which
came about through one of the chance meetings which occur
ita ares

In the month of September, Godefroid was walking down
the Champs-Elysées, when, as he passed the end of the Rue
Marbeuf, he remembered Doctor Halpersohn.

“T ought to call on him,” thought he, “and ask if he cured
Bourlac’s daughter. What a voice, what a gift she had! She
wanted to dedicate herself to God!”

As he got to the Rond-Point, Godefroid crossed the road
hurriedly to avoid the carriages that came quickly down the206

 

THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

grand avenue, and he ran up against a youth who had a young-

looking woman on his arm.

“Take care!” cried the young man. “Are you, blind ?”

; “Why, it is you!” cried Godefroid, recognizing Auguste de
Mergi.

Auguste was so well dressed, so handsome, so smart, so
proud of the lady he was escorting, that, but for the mem-
ories that rushed on his mind, Godefroid would hardly have
recognized them. |

“Why, it is dear Monsieur Godefroid!” exclaimed the lady.

On hearing the delightful tones of Vanda’s enchanting
voice, and seeing her walking, Godefroid stood riveted to the
spot.

“Cured!” he exclaimed.
of “Ten days ago he allowed me to walk,” she replied.
““Halpersohn ?”

“Yes,” said she. “And why have you never come to see us?
—But, indeed, you were wise. My hair was not cut off till
about a week ago. This that you see is but a wig; but the
doctor assures me it will grow again !—But we have so much
to say to each other. Will you not come to dine with us?-—
Oh, that harmonium !—Oh, monsieur!” and she put her hand-
kerchief to her eyes. “I will treasure it all my life! My son
will preserve it as a relic.—My father has sought for you all
through Paris, and he is anxiously in search, too, of his un-
known benefactors. He will die of grief if you cannot help
him to find them. He suffers from the darkest melancholy,

and I cannot always succeed in rousing him from it.”

Fascinated alike by the voice of this charming woman re-
called from the grave, and by that of irresistible curiosity,
Godefroid gave his arm to the hand held out by the Baronne
de Mergi, who let her son go on in front with an errand, which
the lad had understood from his mother’s nod.

“T shall not take you far; we are living in the Allée d’Antin
in a pretty little house d PAnglaise; we have it all to our-
selves, each of us occupies a floor. Oh, we are very comfort-

able! And my father believes that you have had a great deal
| to do with the good fortune that is poured upon us eTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 207

co Pee

“Did you not know that a place has been created for him
in consequence of a report from the Minister for Public In-
struction, a Chair of Legislature, like one at the Sorbonne ?
My father will give his first course of lectures in the month
of November next. The great work on which he was engaged
will be published in a month or so; the house of Cavalier is
bringing it out on half-profits with my father, and has paid
him thirty thousand francs on account of his share; so he is
buying the house we live in. The Minister of Justice allows
me a pension of twelve hundred francs as the daughter of a
retired magistrate; my father has his pension of a thousand
crowns, and he had five thousand francs with his professor-
ship. We are so economical that we shall be almost rich.

“My Auguste will begin studying the law a few months
hence; meanwhile, he has employment in the public prosecu-
tor’s office, and gets twelve hundred francs.—Oh, Monsieur
Godefroid, never mention that miserable business of my poor
Auguste’s. For my part, I bless him every day for the deed
which his grandfather has not yet forgiven. His mother
blesses him, Halpersohn is devoted to him, but the old public
prosecutor is implacable!”

“What business?” asked Godefroid.

“Ah! that is just like your generosity! cried Vanda. “You
have a noble heart. Your mother must be proud of you! a

“On my word, I know nothing of the matter you allude LO
said Godefroid.

“Really, you did not hear?” And she frankly told the story
of Auguste’s borrowing from the doctor, admiring her son for
the action.

“But if I am to say nothing about this before the Baron,”
said Godefroid, “tell me how your son got out of the scrape.”

“Well,” said Vanda, “as I told you, my son is in the public
prosecutor’s office, and has met with the greatest kindness. He
was not kept more than eight-and-forty hours in the Con-
clergerie, where he was lodged with the governor. The
worthy doctor, who did not get Auguste’s beautiful, sublime208 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

letter till the evening, withdrew the charge ; and by the inter-
vention of a former presiding judge of the Supreme Court—
a man my father had never even seen—the public prosecutor
had the police agent’s report and the warrant for arrest both
destroyed. In fact, not a trace of the affair survives but in my
heart, in my son’s conscience, and in his grandfather’s mind
—who, since that day, speaks to my boy in the coldest terms,
and treats him as a stranger.

“Only yesterday, Halpersohn was interceding for him; but
my father, who will not listen to me, much as he loves me,
replied: “You are the person robbed, you can and ought to
forgive. But I am answerable for the thief—and when I sat
on the Bench, I never pronounced a pardon !—‘You will kill
your daughter,’ said Halpersohn—I heard them. My father
kept silence.”

“But who is it that has helped you?”

“A gentleman who is, we believe, employed to distribute
the benefactions of the Queen.”

“What is he like?” asked Godefroid.

“He is a grave, thin man, sad-looking—something like my
father. It was he who had my father conveyed to the house
where we now are, when he was in a high fever. And, just
fancy, as soon as my father was well, I was removed from the
private hospital and brought there, where I found my old
bedroom just as though I had never lett it.—Halpersohn,
whom the tall gentleman had quite bewitched—how I know
not—then told me all about my father’s sufferings, and how he
had sold the diamonds off his snuff-box! My father and my
boy often without bread, and making believe to be rich in my
presence !—Oh, Monsieur Godefroid, those two men are mat-
tyrs! What can I say to my father? I can only repay him
and my son by suffering for them, like them.”

“And had the tall gentleman something of a military air?”

“Oh, you know him!” cried Vanda, as they reached the
door of the house.

She seized Godefroid’s hand with the grip of a woman in
hysterics, and dragging him into a drawing-room of whichTHE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 209

the door stood open, she exclaimed—“Father, Monsieur Gode-
froid knows your benefactor.”

Baron Bourlac, whom Godefroid found dressed in a style
suitable to a retired judge of his high rank, held out his hand
to Godefroid, and said:

“I thought as much.”

Godefroid shook his head in negation of any knowledge of
the details of this noble revenge; but the Baron did not give
him time to speak.

“Monsieur,” he want on, “only Providence can be more
powerful, only Love can be more thoughtful, only Mother-
hood can be more clear-sighted, than your friends who are
allied with those great divinities —I bless the chance that has
led to our meeting again, for Monsieur Joseph has vanished
completely ; and as he has succeeded in avoiding every snare I
could lay to ascertain his real name and residence, I should
have died in grief—But here, read his letter—And you know
ham?

Godefroid read as follows:

“Monsieur le Baron Bourlac, the money we have laid out
for you by the orders of a charitable lady amounts to a sum
of fifteen thousand francs. Take note of this, that it may be
repaid either by you or by your descendants when your family
is sufficiently prosperous to allow of it, for it belongs to the
poor. When such repayment is possible, deposit the money
you owe with the Brothers Mongenod, bankers. God forgive
you your sins!”

The letter was mysteriously signed with five crosses.

Godefroid returned it.—The five crosses, sure enough !”
said he to himself.

“Now, since you know all,” said the old man, “you who
were this mysterious lady’s messenger—tell me her name.”

“Her name!” cried Godefroid; “her name! Unhappy man,
never ask it! never try to find it out.—Oh, madame,” said he,
taking Madame de Mergi’s hand in his own, which shook, “if

14210 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

you value your father’s sanity, keep him in his ignorance;
never let him make any attempt 4

The father, the daughter, and Auguste stood frozen with
amazement.

“Well, then, the woman who has preserved your daughter
for you,” said Godefroid, looking at the old lawyer, “who has
restored her to you, young, lovely, fresh, and living—who has
snatched her from the grave—who has rescued your grandson
from disgrace—who has secured to you a happy and respected
old age—who has saved you all three——” he paused, “is a
woman whem you sent innocent to thehulks for twenty years,”
he went on, addressing Monsieur Bourlac, “on whom, from
your judgment-seat, you poured every insult, whose saintli-
ness you mocked at, and from whom you snatched a lovely
daughter to send her to the most horrible death, for she was
guillotined !”

Godefroid, seeing Vanda drop senseless on to a chair, rushed
out of the room, and from thence into the Allée d’Antin,
where he took to his heels.

“If you would earn my forgiveness,” said Baron Bourlae
to his grandson, “follow that man and find out where he lives.”

Auguste was off like a dart.

 

By half-past eight next morning, Baron Bourlac was knock-
ing at the old yellow gate of the Hétel de la Chanterie, Rue
Chanoinesse. He asked for Madame de la Chanterie, and
the porter pointed to the stone steps. Happily they were all
going to breakfast, and Godefroid recognized the Baron in the
courtyard through one of the loopholes that lighted the stairs.
He had but just time to fly down and into the drawing-room
where they were all assembled, erying out—“Baron Bourlac.”

On hearing this name, Madame de la Chanterie, supported
by the Abbé de Véze, disappeared into her room.

“You shall not come in, you imp of Satan!” cried Manon,
who recognized the lawyer, and placed herself in front of the
drawing-room door. “Do you want to kill my mistress?”

“Come, Manon, let the gentleman pass,” said Monsieur
Alain.THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 211

Manon dropped on to a chair as if her knees had both given
way at once.

“Gentlemen,” said the Baron in ay
he recognized Godefroid and Monsieu
the two strangers, “Beneficence confer

fited by it!”

“You owe nothing to us,” said the worthy Alain; “you owe
everything to God.”

“You are saints, and you have the serenity of saints,” re-
plied the old lawyer. “Yoy will hear me, I beg.—I have
learned that the superhuman blessings that have been heaped
on me for eighteen months past are the work of a person whom
I deeply injured in the course of my duty; it was fifteen years
before I was assured of her innocence ; this, gentlemen, is the
single remorse I have known as due to the exercise of my
powers.—Listen! I have not much longer to live, but I shall
lose that short term of life, necessary still to my children
whom Madame de la Chanterie has saved, if I cannot win her
forgiveness. Gentlemen, I will remain kneeling on the square
of Notre-Dame till she has spoken one word !—T will wait for
her there !—I will kiss the print of her feet; I will find tears
to soften her heart—I who have been dried up like a straw
by seeing my daughter’s sufferings a

The door of Madame de Ja Chanterie’s room was opened,
the Abbé de Véze came through like a shade, and said to Mon-
sieur Joseph:

“That voice is killing Madame.”

“What! she is there! She has passed there!” cried Bourlac.

He fell on his knees, kissed the floor, and melted i
crying in a heartrending tone:

“In the name of Jesus who died on the Cross, forgive! for-
give! For my child has suffered a thousand deaths!”

The old man collapsed so entirely that the spectators be-
lieved he was dead.

At this moment Madame de la Chanterie appeared like a

spectre in the doorway, leaning, half-fainting, against the
side-post.

oice of deep emotion, as
r Joseph, and bowed to
Ss a claim on those bene-

 

nto tears,Re sania RI omer i oe oa,

212 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY

“In the name of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, whom
I see on the scaffold, of Madame Elizabeth, of my daughter,
and of yours—in the name of Jesus, I forgive you.”

As he heard the words, the old man looked up and said:

“Thus are the angels avenged.”

Monsieur Joseph and Monsieur Nicolas helped him to his
feet, and led him out to the courtyard; Godefroid went to
call a coach; and when they heard the rattle of wheels, Mon-
sieur Nicolas said as he helped the old man into it:

“Come no more, monsieur, or you will kill the mother too.
The power of God is infinite, but human nature has its
limits.”

That day Godefroid joined the Order of the Brethren of
Consolation.

VIERZCHOVNIA, UKRAINE, December 1847.A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA
To Henri Heine.

I inscribe this to you, my dear Heine, to you that represent in
Paris the ideas and poetry of Germany, in Germany the lively and
witty criticism of France; for you better than any other will know
whatsoever this Study may contain of criticism and of jest, of
love and truth.

Dr Bauzac.

“My dear friend,” said Mme. de la Baudraye, drawing a pile
of manuscript from beneath her sofa cushion, “will you par-
don me in our present straits for making a short story of some-
thing which you told me a few weeks ago ??

“Anything is fair in these times. Have you not seen writers
serving up their own hearts to the public, or very often their
mistress’ hearts when invention fails? We are coming to
this, dear; we shall go in quest of adventures, not so much for
the pleasure of them as for the sake of having the story to
tell afterwards.”

“After all, you and the Marquise de Rochefide have paid
the rent, and I do not think, from the way things are going
here, that I ever pay yours.”

“Who knows? Perhaps the same good luck that befell
Mme. de Rochefide may come to you. 7

“Do you call it good luck to go back to one’s husband?”

“No; only great luck. Come, I am listening.”

And Mme. de la Baudraye read as follows:

“Scene—a splendid salon in the Rue de Chartres-du-Roule.
One of the most famous writers of the day discovered sit-
ting on a settee beside a very illustrious Marquise, with whom
(213)214 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

he is on such terms of intimacy, as a man has a right to claim
when a woman singles him out and keeps him at her side as a
complacent souffre-douleur rather than a makeshift.”

“Well,” says she, “have you found those letters of which
you spoke yesterday? You said that you could not tell me
all about him without them?”

“Yes, I have them.”

“Tt is your turn to speak; I am listening like a child when
his mother begins the tale of Le Grand Serpentin Vert.”

“I count the young man in question in that group of our
acquaintances which we are wont to style our friends. He
comes of a good family; he is a man of infinite parts and
ill-luck, full of excellent dispositions and most charming
conversation; young as he is, he has seen much, and while
awaiting better things, he dwells in Bohemia. Bohemianism,
which by rights should be called the doctrine of the Boule-
vard des Italiens, finds its recruits among young men be-
tween twenty and thirty, all of them men of genius in their
way, little known, it is true, as yet, but sure of recognition
one day, and when that day comes, of great distinction. They
are distinguished as it is at carnival time, when their ex-
uberant wit, repressed for the rest of the year, finds a vent
in more or less ingenious buffoonery.

“What times we live in! What an irtational central power
which allows such tremendous energies to run to waste!
There are diplomatists in Bohemia quite capable of over-
turning Russia’s designs, if they but felt the power of
France at their backs. There are writers, adminis-
trators, soldiers, and artists in Bohemia; every faculty,
every kind of brain is represented there. Bohemia is a
microcosm. If the Czar would buy Bohemia for a score
of millions and set its population down in Odessa—always
supposing that they consented to leave the asphalt of the
boulevards—Odessa would be Paris with the year. In
Bohemia, you find the flower doomed to wither and come
to nothing; the flower of the wonderful young manhood ofA PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 215

France, so sought after by Napoleon and Louis SIV. so
neglected for the last thirty years by the modern Gerontocracy
that is blighting everything else—that splendid young man-
hood of whom a witness so little prejudiced as Professor
Tissot wrote, ‘On all sides the Emperor employed a younger
generation in every way worthy of him; in his councils, in
the general administration, in negotiations bristling with
difficulties or full of danger, in the government of conquered
countries ; and in all places Youth responded to his demands
upon it. Young men were for Napoleon the missi hominici
of Charlemagne.’

“The word Bohemia tells you everything. Bohemia has
nothing and lives upon what it has. Hope is its religion;
faith (in oneself) its creed; and charity is supposed to be its
budget. All these young men are greater than their mis-
fortune; they are under the feet of F ortume, yet more than
equal to Fate. Always ready to mount and ride an af, witty
as a feutlleton, blithe as only those can be that are deep in
debt and drink deep to match, and finally—for here I come to
my point—hot lovers, and what lovers! Picture to yourself
Lovelace, and Henri Quatre, and the Regent,and Werther, and
Saint-Preux, and René, and the Maréchal de Richelieu—think
of all these in a single man, and you will have some idea of
their way of love. What lovers! Eclectic of all things in
love, they will serve up a passion to a woman’s order; their
hearts are like a bill of fare in a restaurant. Perhaps they
have never read Stendhal’s De rAmour, but unconsciously
they put it in practice. They have by heart their chapters
—Love-Taste, Love-Passion, Love-Caprice, Love-Crystal-
ized, and more than all, Love-Transient. All is good in their
eyes. They invented the burlesque axiom, “In the sight of
man, all women are equal.’ The actual text is more vigorously
worded, but as in my opinion the spirit is false, I do not stand
nice upon the letter.

“My friend, madame, is named Gabriel Jean Anne Victor
Benjamin George Ferdinand Charles Edward Rusticoli,
Comte de la Palférine. The Rusticolis came to France withA PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

 

216

Catherine dei Medici, having been ousted about that time
from their infinitesimal Tuscan sovereignty. They are dis-
tantly related to the house of Este, and connected by mar-
riage with the Guises. On the Day of Saint-Bartholomew
they slew a goodly number of Protestants, and Charles IX.
bestowed the hand of the heiress of the Comte de la Palférine
upon the Rusticoli of that time. The Comté, however, being
a part of the confiscated lands of the Duke of Savoy, was re-
purchased by Henri LV. when that great king so far blun-
dered as to restore the fief; and in exchange, the Rusticoli—
who had borne arms long before the Medici bore them,
to-wit, argent a cross flory azure (the cross flower-de-luced
by letters patent granted by Charles IX.), and a count’s coro-
net, with two peasants for supporters with the motto IN Hoc
SIGNO VINCIMUS—the Rusticoli, I repeat, retained their title,
and received a couple of offices under the crown with the
government of a province.

“From the time of the Valois till the reign of Richelieu, as
it may be called, the Rusticoli played a most illustrious part;
under Louis XIV. their glory waned somewhat, under Louis
XY. it went out altogether. My friend’s grandfather wasted
all that was left to the once brilliant house with Mlle. La-
guerre, whom he first discovered, and brought into fashion
before Bouret’s time. Charles Edward’s own father was an
officer without any fortune in 1789. The Revolution came
to his assistance ; he had the sense to drop his title, and became
plain Rusticoh. Among other deeds, M. Rusticoli married a
wife during the war in Italy, a Capponi, a goddaughter of the
Countess of Albany (hence La Palférine’s final names). Rus-
ticoli was one of the best colonels in the army. The Emperor
made him a commander of the Legion of Honor and a count.
His spine was slightly curved, and his son was wont to say
of him laughingly that he was un comte refait (contrefait).

“General Count Rusticoli, for he became a brigadier-gen-
eral at Ratisbon and a general of the division on the field of
Wagram, died at Vienna almost immediately after his promo-
tion, or his name and ability would sooner or later haveA PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 217

brought him the marshal’s baton. Under the Restoration
he would certainly have repaired the fortunes of a great and
noble family so brilliant even as far back as 1100, centuries
before they took the French title—for the Rusticoli had given
a pope to the church and twice revolutionized the kingdom
of Naples—so illustrious again under the Valois; so dexterous
in the days of the Fronde, that obstinate Frondeurs though
they were, they still existed through the reign of Louis XIV.
Mazarin favored them; there was the Tuscan strain in them
still, and he recognized it.

“To-day, when Charles Edward de la Palférine’s name is
mentioned, not. three persons in a hundreél know the history
of his house. But the Bourbons have actually left a Foix-
Grailly to live by his easel.

“Ah! if you but knew how brilliantly Charles Edward ac-
cepts his obscure position! how he scoffs at the bourgeois of
1830! What Attic salt in his wit! He would be the king of |
Bohemia, if Bohemia would endure a king. His verve is in-
exhaustible. To him we owe a map of the country and the
names of the seven castles which Nodier could not discover.”

“The one thing wanting in one of the cleverest skits of
our time,” said the Marquise.

“You can form your own opinion of La Palférine from
a few characteristic touches,” continued Nathan. “He once
came upon a friend of his, a fellow-Bohemian, involved in a
dispute on the boulevard with a bourgeois who chose to con-
sider himself affronted. To the modern powers that be, Bo-
hemia is insolent in the extreme. There was talk of calling
one another out.

“One moment,’ interposed La Palférine, as much Lauzun
for the occasion as Lauzun himself could have been. ‘One
moment. Monsieur was born, I suppose?’

Wiha, sir 27

“Yes, are you born? What is your name?’

se Godmne

* “Godin, eh!’ exclaimed La Palférine’s friend.

““One moment, my dear fellow,’ interrupted La Palférine.
“There are the Trigaudins. Are you one of them?’A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

 

218

*Astonishment.

“No? Then you are one of the new dukes of Gaéta, I
suppose, of imperial creation? No? Oh, well, how can you
expect my friend to cross swords with you when he will be
secretary of an embassy and ambassador some day, and you
will owe him respect? Godin! the thing is non-existent! You
are a nonentity, Godin. My friend cannot be expected to beat
the air! When one is somebody, one cannot fight with a no-
body! Come, my dear fellow—good-day.’

“ “My respects to madame,’ added the friend.

“Another day La Palférine was walking with a friend who
flung his cigar end in the face of a passer-by. The recipient
had the bad taste to resent this.

“*You have stood your antagonist’s fire,’ said the young
Count, ‘the witnesses declare that honor is satisfied.’

“La Palférine owed his tailor a thousand francs, and the
man instead of going himself sent his assistant to ask for the
money. ‘The assistant found the unfortunate debtor up six
pairs of stairs at the back of a yard at the further end of the
Faubourg du Roule. The room was unfurnished save for a
bed (such a bed!), a table, and such a table! La Palférine
heard the preposterous demand—‘A demand which I should
qualify as illegal, he said when he told us the story, ‘made, ag
it was, at seven o’clock in the morning.’

““Go,’ he answered, with the gesture and attitude of a
Mirabeau, ‘tell your master in what condition you find me.’

“The assistant apologized and withdrew. La Palférine,
seeing the young man on the landing, rose in the attire cele-
brated in verse in Britannicus to add, ‘Remark the stairs!
Pay particular attention to the stairs; do not forget to tell
him about the stairs !’

“In every position into which chance has thrown La Pal-
férine, he has never failed to rise to the occasion. All that
he does is witty and never in bad taste; always and in every-
thing he displays the genius of Rivarol, the polished subtlety
of the old French noble. It was he who told that delicious
anecdote of a friend of Laflitte the banker. A national fundA PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 219

had been started to give back to Laffitte the mansion in which
the Revolution of 1830 was brewed, and this friend ap-
peared at the offices of the fund with, “Here are five francs,
give me a hundred sous change !’—A caricature was made of
it.—It was once La Palférine’s usfortune, in judicial style,
to make a young girl a mother. The girl,not a very simple in-
nocent, confessed all to her mother, a respectable matron, who
hurried forthwith to La Palférine and asked what he meant
to do.

“Why, madame,’ said he, ‘I am neither a surgeon nor a
midwife.’

“She collapsed, but three or four years later she returned to
the charge, still persisting in her inquiry, ‘What did La Pal-
férine mean to do”

“Well, madame,’ returned he, ‘when the child is seven
years old, an age at which a boy ought to pass out of wo-
men’s hands’—an indication of entire agreement on the
mother’s part—‘if the child is really mine’—another gesture
of assent—‘f there is a striking likeness, if he bids fair to
be a gentleman, if I can recognize in him my turn of mind,
and more particularly the Rusticoli air; then, oh—ah!’—_a
hew movement from the matron—‘on my word and honor, I
will make him a cornet of—sugar-plums !’

“All this, if you will permit me to make use of the phraseol-
ogy employed by M. Sainte-Beuve for his biographies of ob-
scurities—all this, I repeat, is the playful and sprightly yet
already somewhat decadent side of a strong race. It smacks
rather of the Parc-aux-Cerfs than of the Hétel de Rambouillet.
It is a race of the strong rather than of the sweet; I incline
to lay a little debauchery to its charge, and more than I should
wish in brilliant and generous natures: it is gallantry after
the fashion of the Maréchal de Richelieu, high spirits and
frolic carried rather too far; perhaps we may see in it the
outrances of another age, the Eighteenth Century pushed to
extremes; it harks back to the Musketeers; it is an exploit
stolen from Champcenetz; nay, such light-hearted incon-
stancy takes us back to the festooned and ornate period of the220

 

A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

old court of the Valois. In an age as moral as the present,
we are bound to regard audacity of this kind sternly; still, at
the same time that ‘cornet of sugar-plums’ may serve to warn
young girls of the perils of lingering where fancies, more
charming than chastened, come thickly from the first; on the
rosy flowery unguarded slopes, where trespasses ripen into
errors full of equivocal effervescence, into too palpitating
issues. ‘The anecdote puts La Palférine’s genius before you
in all its vivacity and completeness. He realizes Pascal’s
entre-deux, he comprehends the whole scale between tender-
ness and pitilessness, and, like Epaminondas, he is equally
great in extremes. And not merely so, his epigram stamps
the epoch; the accoucheur is a modern innovation. All the
refinements of modern civilization are summed up in the
phrase. It is monumental.”

“Look here, my dear Nathan, what farrago of nonsense
is this?” asked the Marquise in bewilderment.

“Madame la Marquise,’ returned Nathan, “you do not
know the value of these ‘precious’ phrases; I am talking
Sainte-Beuve, the new kind of French.—I resume. Walking
one day arm in arm with a friend along the boulevard, he was
accosted by a ferocious creditor, who inquired:

“Are you thinking of me, sir?

“ “Not the least in the world,’ answered the Count.

“Remark the difficulty of the position. Talleyrand, in
similar circumstances, had already replied, ‘You are very in-
quisitive, my dear fellow!’ To imitate the inimitable great
man was out of the question—bLa Palférine, generous as
Buckingham, could not bear to be caught empty-handed. One
day when he had nothing to give a little Savoyard chimney-
sweeper, he dipped a hand into a barrel of grapes in a grocer’s
doorway and filled the child’s cap from it. The little one ate
away at his grapes; the grocer began by laughing, and ended
by holding out his hand.

““Oh, fie! monsieur, said La Palférine, ‘your left hand
ought not to know what my right hand doth.’

“With his adventurous courage, he never refuses any odds,A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 221

but there is wit in his bravado. In the Passage de VOpéra
he chanced to meet a man who had spoken slightingly of him,

elbowed him as he passed, and then turned and jostled him a
second time.

“*You are very clumsy !’

““On the contrary; I did it on purpose.’

“The young man pulled out his card. La Palférine dropped
it. ‘It has been carried too long in the pocket. Be good
enough to give me another.’

“On the ground he received a thrust ; blood was drawn; his
antagonist wished to stop.

““You are wounded, monsieur !’

“‘T disallow the bolte, said La Palférine, as coolly as if
he had been in the fencing-saloon ; then as he riposted (send-
ing the point home this time), he added, “There is the right
thrust, monsieur ’

“His antagonist kept his bed for six months.

Salhis, still following on M. Sainte-Beuve’s tracks, recalls
the raffinés, the fine-edged raillery of the best days of the
monarchy. In this speech you discern an untrammeled but
drifting life; a gaiety of imagination that deserts us when
our first youth is past. The prime of the blossom is over,
but there remains the dry compact seed with the germs of life
in it, ready against the coming winter. Do you not see that
these things are symptoms of something unsatisfied, of an un-
rest impossible to analyze, still less to describe, yet not in-
comprehensible; a something ready to break out if occasion
calls into flying upleaping flame? It is the accidia of the
cloister; a trace of sourness, of ferment engendered by the
enforced stagnation of youthful energies, a vague, obscure
melancholy.”

“That will do,” said the Marquise; “you are giving me a
mental shower bath.”

“It is the early afternoon languor. If a man has noth-
ing to do, he will sooner get into mischief than do nothing at
all; this invariably happens in France. Youth at the pres-
ent day has two sides to it; the studious or unappreciated,
and the ardent or passionné.”

Sha tht Sh Tere222 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

“That will do!” repeated Mme. de Rochefide, with an au-
thoritative gesture. “You are setting my nerves on edge.”

“To finish my portrait of La Palférine, I hasten to make
the plunge into the gallant regions of his character, or you
will not understand the peculiar genius of an admirable rep-
resentative of a certain section of mischievous youth—youth
strong enough, be it said, to laugh at the position in which
it is put by those in power; shrewd enough to do no work,
since work profiteth nothing, yet so full of life that it fastens
upon pleasure—the one thing that cannot be taken away.
And meanwhile a bourgeois, mereantile, and bigoted policy
continues to cut off all the sluices through which so much
aptitude and ability would find an outlet. Poets and men
of science are not wanted.

“To give you an idea of the stupidity of the new court, I
will tell you of something which happened to La Palférine.
There is a sort of relieving officer on the civil list. This func-
tionary one day discovered that La Palférine was in dire dis-
tress, drew up a report, no doubt, and brought the descendant
of the Rusticolis fifty francs by way of alms. La Palférine
received the visitor with perfect courtesy, and talked of
various persons at court.

““Ts it true, he asked, ‘that Mlle. d’Orléans contributes
such and such a sum to this benevolent scheme started by her
nephew? If so, it is very gracious of her.’

“Now La Palférine had a servant, a little Savoyard, aged
ten, who waited on him without wages. La Palférine called
him Father Anchises, and used to say, ‘I have never seen such
a mixture of besotted foolishness with great intelligence; he
would go through fire and water for me; he understands
everything—and yet he cannot grasp the fact that I can do
nothing for him.’

“Anchises was despatched to a livery stable with instruc-
tions to hire a handsome brougham with a man in livery be-
hind it. By the time the carriage arrived below, La Palférine
had skilfully piloted the conversation to the subject of the
functions of his visitor, whom he has since called ‘the un-SNES ame pee OS eT eae eae

      
  
 
  
 
   
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
   
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 

A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 223

mitigated misery man,’ and learned the nature of his duties
and his stipend.

“ “Do they allow you a carriage to go about the town in this
way ?”

© Oh! no2

“At that La Palférine and a friend who happened to be
with him went downstairs with the poor soul, and insisted
on putting him into the carriage. It was raining in torrents.
La Palférine had thought of everything. He offered to drive
the official to the next house on his list ; and when the almoner
came down again, he found the carriage waiting for him at

the door. The man in livery handed him a note written in
pencil:

““The carriage has been engaged for three days. Count
Rusticoli de la Palférine is too happy to associate himself
with Court charities by lending wings to Royal beneficence.’

“La Palférine now calls the civil list the uncivil list.

“Fe was once passionately loved by a lady of somewhat light
conduct. Antonia lived in the Rue du Helder; she had seen
and been seen to some extent, but at the time of her ac-
quaintance with La Palférine she had not yet ‘an establish-
ment.’ Antonia was not wanting in the insolence of old
days, now degenerating into rudeness among women of her
class. After a fortnight of unmixed bliss, she was compelled,
in the interest of her civil list, to return to a less exclusive
system; and La Palférine, discovering a certain lack of sin-
cerity in her dealings with him, sent Madame Antonja a note
which made her famous.

““MADAME,—Your conduct causes me much surprise and
no less distress. Not content with rending my heart with
your disdain, you have been so little thoughtful as to retain
a toothbrush, which my means will not permit me to replace,
my estates being mortgaged beyond their value.

“*“Adieu, too fair and too ungrateful friend ! May we meet
again in a better world.

“CHARLES EDWARD.’224 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

 

““Assuredly (to avail ourselves yet further of Sainte-Beuve’s
Babylonish dialect), this far outpasses the raillery of Sterne’s
Sentimental Journey; it might be Scarron without his gross-
ness. Nay, I do not know but that Moliére in his lighter
mood would not have said of it, as of Cyrano de Bergerac’s
best—‘This is mine.’ Richelieu himself was not more com-
plete when he wrote to the princess waiting for him in the
Palais Royal—‘Stay there, my queen, to charm the scullion
lads.’ At the same time, Charles Edward’s humor is less
biting. I am not sure that this kind of wit was known
among the Greeks and Romans. Plato, possibly, upon a
closer inspection approaches it, but from the austere and
musical side 4

“No more of that jargon,” the Marquise broke in, “in print
if may be endurable; but to have it grating upon my ears is
a punishment which I do not in the least deserve.”

“He first met Claudine on this wise,” continued Nathan.
“Tt was one of the unfilled days, when Youth is a burden to
itself; days when youth, reduced by the overweening presump-
tion of Age to a condition of potential energy and dejection,
emerges therefrom (like Blondet under the Restoration),
either to get into mischief or to set about some colossal piece
of buffoonery, half excused by the very audacity of its concep-
tion. La Palférine was sauntering, cane in hand, up and
down the pavement between the Rue de Grammont and the
Rue de Richelieu, when in the distance he descried a woman
too elegantly dressed, covered, as he phrased it, with a great
deal of portable property, too expensive and too carelessly
worn for its owner to be other than a princess of the Court
or of the stage, it was not easy at first to say which. But
after July 1830, in his opinion, there is no mistaking the in-
dications—the princess can only be a princess of the stage.

“The Count came up and walked by her side as if she had
given him an assignation. He followed her with a courteous
persistence, a persistence in good taste, giving the lady from
time to time, and always at the right moment, an authorita-
tive glance, which compelled her to submit to his escort. Any-u : BSP: - eres Pr 2 cae ake és ye ie sek aS
ee eee SPN

  

A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 225

body but La Palférine would have been frozen by his recep-
tion, and disconcerted by the lady’s first efforts to rid herself
of her cavalier, by her chilly air, her curt speeches; but no
gravity, with all the will in the world, could hold out long
against La Palférine’s jesting replies. The fair stranger went
into her milliner’s shop. Charles Edward followed, took a
seat, and gave his opinions and advice like a man that meant
to pay. ‘This coolness disturbed the lady. She went out.

“On the stairs she spoke to her persecutor.

“Monsieur, I am about to call upon one of my hus-
band’s relatives, an elderly lady, Mme. de Bonfalot i

“*Ah! Mme. de Bonfalot, charmed, I am sure. I am going
there.’

“The pair accordingly went. Charles Edward came in
with the lady, every one believed that she had brought him
with her. He took part in the conversation, was lavish of
his polished and brilliant wit. The visit lengthened out. That
was not what he wanted.

““Madame,’ he said, addressing the fair stranger, ‘do not
forget that your husband is waiting for us, and only allowed
us a quarter of an hour.’

“Taken aback by such boldness (which, as you know, is
never displeasing to you women), led captive by the con-
queror’s glance, by the astute yet candid air which Charles
Edward can assume when he chooses, the lady rose, took the
arm of her self-constituted escort, and went downstairs, but
on the threshold she stopped to speak to him.

“Monsieur, I like a joke :

} And coydo te

“She laughed.

““But this may turn to earnest,’ he added; ‘it only rests
with you. Iam the Comte de la Palférine, and I am delighted
that it is in my power to lay my heart and my fortune at
your feet.’

“La Palférine was at that time twenty-two years old.
(This happened in 1834.) Luckily for him, he was fashion-
ably dressed. I can paint his portrait for you in a few words.

I5226 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

He was the living image of Louis XIII., with the same white
forehead and gracious outline of the temples, the same olive
skin (that Italian olive tint which turns white where the
light falls on it), the brown hair worn rather long, the
black ‘royale,’ the grave and melancholy expression, for La
Palférine’s character and exterior were amazingly at variance.

“At the sound of the name, and the sight of its owner,
something like a quiver thrilled through Claudine. La Pal-
férine saw the vibration, and shot a glance at her out of the
dark depths of almond-shaped eyes with purpled lids, and
those faint lines about them which tell of pleasures as costly
as painful fatigue. With those eyes upon her, she said—
“Your address ?”

“What want of address!’

“Oh, pshaw!’ she said, smiling. ‘A bird on the bough?

“Good-bye, madame, you are such a woman as I seek,
but my fortune is far from equaling my desire

“He bowed, and there and then left her. Two days later,
by one of the strange chances that can only happen in Paris,
he had betaken himself to a money-lending wardrobe dealer
to sell such of his clothing as he could spare. He was just re-
ceiving the price with an uneasy air, after long chaffering,
when the stranger lady passed and recognized him.

“Once for all,’ cried he to the bewildered wardrobe dealer,
‘I tell you I am not going to take your trumpet !

“He pointed to a huge, much-dinted musical instrument,
hanging up outside against a background of uniforms, civil
and military. Then, proudly and impetuously, he followed
the lady.

“From that great day of the trumpet these two understood
one another to admiration. Charles Edward’s ideas on the
subject of love are as sound as possible. According to him,
a man cannot love twice, there is but one love in his life-
time, but that love is a deep and shoreless sea. It may break
in upon him at any time, as the grace of God found St. Paul;
and a man may live sixty years and never know love. Per-
haps, to quote Heine’s superb phrase, it is “the secret maladytee SUSERRSOSASPSERESE CaaS ER eRe e eee
a MIE LIN TET TIPLE TTT

  

A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 227

of the heart’>—a sense of the Infinite that there is within us,
together with the revelation of the ideal Beauty in its visible
form. This love, in short, comprehends both the creature and
creation. But so long as there is no question of this great
poetical conception, the loves that cannot last can only be
taken lightly, as if they were in a manner snatches of song
compared with Love the epic.

“To Charles Edward the adventure brought neither the
thunderbolt signal of love’s coming, nor yet that gradual
revelation of an inward fairness which draws two natures
by degrees more and more strongly each to each. For there
are but two ways of love—love at first sight, doubtless akin
to the Highland ‘second-sight,’ and that slow fusion of two
natures which realizes Plato’s ‘man-woman. But if Charles
Edward did not love, he was loved to distraction. Claudine
found love made complete, body and soul; in her, in short,
La Palférine awakened the one passion of her life; while for
him Claudine was only a most charming mistress. The Devil
himself, a most potent magician certainly, with all hell at
his back, could never have changed the natures of these two
unequal fires. I dare affirm that Claudine not unfrequently
bored Charles Edward.

“Stale fish and the woman you do not love are only fit to
fling out of the window after three days,’ he used to say.

“In Bohemia there is little secrecy observed over these af-
fairs. La Palférine used to talk a good deal of Claudine;
but, at the same time, none of us saw her, nor so much as
knew her name. For us Claudine was almost a mythical per-
sonage. All of us acted in the same way, reconciling the re-
quirements of our common life with the rules of good taste.
Claudine, Hortense, the Baroness, the Bourgeoise, the Em-
press, the Spaniard, the Lioness,—these were cryptic
titles which permitted us to pour out our JOYS, our cares, vexa-
tions, and hopes, and to communicate our discoveries. Fur-
ther, none of us went. It has been known, in Bohemia, that
chance discovered the identity of the fair unknown; and at
once, as by tacit convention, not one of us spoke of her again.228 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

This fact may show how far youth possesses a sense of true
delicacy. How admirably certain natures of a finer clay know
the limit line where jest must end, and all that host of things
French covered by the slang word blague, a word which will
shortly be cast out of the language (let us hope), and yet it
is the only one which conveys an idea of the spirit of Bo-
hemia.

“So we often used to joke about Claudine and the Count
—‘Toujours Claudine?’ sung to the air of Toujours Gessler.
—‘What are you making of Claudine ?—‘How is Claudine?’

“<T wish you all such a mistress, for all the harm I wish
you,’ La Palférine began one day. ‘No greyhound, no basset-
dog, no poodle can match her in gentleness, submissiveness,
and complete tenderness. There are times when I reproach
myself, when I take myself to task for my hard heart.
Claudine obeys with saintly sweetness. She comes to me,
I tell her to go, she goes, she does not even cry till she 1s out
in the courtyard. J refuse to see her for a whole week at a
time. I tell her to come at such an hour on Tuesday; and
be it midnight or six o’clock in the morning, ten o’clock, five
o’clock, breakfast time, dinner time, bed time, any particu-
larly inconvenient hour in the day—she will come, punctual
to the minute, beautiful, beautifully dressed, and enchanting.
And she is a married woman, with all the compheations and
duties of a household. The fibs that she must invent, the rea-
sons she must find for conforming to my whims would tax
the: imecmuivy. ot some of us! . ). . ‘Claudine never
wearies; you can always count upon her. It is not love, I
tell her, it is infatuation. She writes to me every day; I do
not read her letters; she found that out, but still she writes.
See here; there are two hundred letters in this casket. She
begs me to wipe my razors on one of her letters every day,
and I punctually do so. She thinks, and rightly, that the
sight of her handwriting will put me in mind of her.’

“Ta Palférine was dressing as he told us this. I took up the
letter which he was about to put to this use, read it, and kept

it, as he did not ask to have it back. Here it is. I looked
for it, and found it as I promised.BSEeeh See ae eee ee a eee eae eo

  
     
 
 
  
   
    
  
 
 
    
 
 
    
   
 
   
  
  
   
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 

A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 229

‘“ Monday (Midnight).

“Well, my dear, are you satisfied with me? I did not
even ask for your hand, yet you might easily have given it
to me, and I longed so much to hold it to my heart, to my
lips. No, I did not ask, I am co afraid of displeasing you.
Do you know one thing?- Though I am cruelly sure that any-
thing I do is a matter of perfect indifference to you, I am
none the less extremely timid in my conduct: the woman
that belongs to you, whatever her title to call herself yours,
must not incur so much as the shadow of blame. In so far
as love comes from the angels in heaven, from whom there
are no secrets hid, my love is as pure as the purest ; wherever
I am I feel that I am in your presence, and I try to do you
honor.

““All that you said about my manner of dress impressed
me very much; I began to understand how far above others
are those that come of a noble race. There was still some-
thing of the opera girl in my gowns, in my way of dressing
my hair. In a moment I saw the distance between me and
good taste. Next time you shall receive a duchess, you shall
not know me again! Ah! how good you have been to your
Claudine! How many and many a time I have thanked you
for telling me those things! What interest lay in those few
words! You had taken thought for that thing belonging to
you called Claudine? This imbecile would never have opened
my eyes; he thinks that everything I do is right; and besides,
he is much too humdrum, too matter-of-fact to have any feel-
ing for the beautiful.

““Tuesday is very slow of coming for my impatient mind!
On Tuesday I shall be with you for several hours. Ah! when
it comes I will try to think that the hours are months, that it
will be so always. I am living in hope of that morning now,
as I shall live upon the memory of it afterwards. Hope is
memory that craves; and recollection, memory sated. What a
beautiful life within life thought makes for us in this way!

“Sometimes I dream of inventing new ways of tenderness
all my own, a secret which no other woman shall guess. A230 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

cold sweat breaks out over me at the thought that something
may happen to prevent this meeting. Oh, I would break
with him for good, if need was, but nothing here could pos-
sibly interfere; it would be from your side. Perhaps you may
decide to go out, perhaps to go to see some other woman.
Oh! spare me this Tuesday for pity’s sake. If you take it
from me, Charles, you do not know what he will suffer; I
should drive him wild. But even if you do not want me, if
you are going out, let me come, all the same, to be with you
while you dress; only to see you, I ask no more than that;
only to show you that I love you without a thought of self.

““<Since you gave me leave to love you, for you gave me
Jeave, since I am yours; since that day I loved and love you
with the whole strength of my soul; and I shall love you for
ever, for once having loved you, no one could, no one ought
to love another. And, you see, when those eyes that ask
nothing but to see you are upon you, you will feel that in
your Claudine there is a something divine, called into exist-
ence by you.

“Alas! with you I can never play the coquette. I am like
a mother with her child; I endure anything from you; I,
that was once so imperious and proud. I have made dukes
and princes fetch and carry for me; aides-de-camp, worth
more than all the court of Charles K. put together, have done
my errands, yet I am treating you as my spoilt child. But
where is the use of coquetry? It would be pure waste. And
yet, monsieur, for want of coquetry I shall never inspire love
in you. I know it; I feel it; yet I do as before, feeling a
power that I cannot withstand, thinking that this utter self-
surrender will win me the sentiment innate in all men (so
he tells me) for the thing that belongs to them.

** Wednesday.

““Ah! how darkly sadness entered my heart yesterday
when I found that I must give up the joy of seeing you. One
single thought held me back from the arms of Death !—It was
thy will! To stay away was to do thy will, to obey an orderA PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 231

o

from thee. Oh! Charles, I was so pretty ; I looked a lovelier
woman for you than that beautiful German princess whom
you gave me for an example, whom I have studied at the Opéra.
And yet—you might have thought that I had overstepped
the limits of my nature. You have left me no confidence
in myself; perhaps I am plain after all. Oh! I loathe myself,
I dream of my radiant Charles Edward, and my brain turns.
I shall go mad, I know I shall. Do not laugh, do not talk
to me of the fickleness of women. If we are inconstant, you
are strangely capricious. You take away the hours of love
that made a poor creature’s happiness for ten whole days;
the hours on which she drew to be charming and kind to all
that came to see her! After all, you were the source of my
kindness to him; you do not know what pain you give him.
I wonder what I must do to keep you, or simply to keep the
right to be yours sometimes. . .. When I think that you
hever would come here tome! . . . With what delicious
emotion I would wait upon you!—There are other women
more favored than I. There are women to whom you say,
‘I love you.’ To me you have never said more than ‘You are a
good girl.’ Certain speeches of yours, though you do not
know it, gnaw at my heart. Clever men sometimes ask me
what lem ihonkine «6 ag en thinking of my self-
abasement—the prostration of the poorest outcast in the
presence of the Saviour.’

“There are still three more pages, you see. La Pal-
férine allowed me to take the letter, with the traces of tears
that still seemed hot upon it! Here was proof of the truth of
his story. Marcas, a shy man enough with women, was in
ecstacies over a second which he read in his corner before
lighting his pipe with it.

“Why, any woman in love will write that sort of thing!’
cried La Palférine. ‘Love gives all women intelligence and
style, which proves that here in France style proceeds from
the matter and not from the words. See now how well this is
thought out, how clear-headed sentiment is’—and with thate28 anaemia. ——

232 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

he reads us another letter, far superior to the artificial and
labored productions which we novelists write.

“Qne day poor Claudine heard that La Palférine was in a
critical position; it was a question of meeting a bill of ex-
change. An unlucky idea occurred to her; she put a tolerably
large sum in gold into an exquisitely embroidered purse and
went to him.

“Who has taught you to be so bold as to meddle with my
household affairs?’ La Palférine cried angrily. ‘Mend my
socks and work slippers for me, if it amuses you. So!
you will play the duchess, and you turn tho story of Danae
against the aristocracy.’

“He emptied the purse into his hand as he spoke, and made
as though he would fling the money in her face. Claudine,
in her terror, did not guess that he was joking; she shrank
back, stumbled over a chair, and fell with her head against
the corner of the marble chimney-piece. She thought she
should have died. When she could speak, poor woman, as
she lay on the bed, all that she said was, ‘I deserved it,
Charles !’

“For a moment La Palférine was in despair; his anguish
revived Claudine. She rejoiced in the mishap; she took ad-
vantage of her suffering to compel La Palferine to take the
money and release him from an awkward position. ‘Then
followed a variation on La Fontaine’s fable, in which a man
blesses the thieves that brought him a sudden impulse of
tenderness from his wife. And while we are upon this sub-
ject, another saying will paint the man for you.

“Claudine went home again, made up some kind of tale as
best she could to account for her bruised forehead, and fell
dangerously ill. An abscess formed in the head. The doctor
—Bianchon, I believe—yes, it was Bianchon—wanted to cut
off her hair. The Duchesse de Berri’s hair is not more beauti-
ful than Claudine’s; she would not hear of it, she told Bian-
chon in confidence that she could not allow it to be cut with-
out leave from the Comte de Palférine. Bianchon went toSL Eee SPT EAA RPS IA FETE

  

A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 233

Charles Edward. Charles Edward heard him with much
seriousness. The doctor had explained the case at length,
and showed that it was absolutely necessary to sacrifice the
hair to insure the success of the operation.

““Cut off Claudine’s hair! cried he in peremptory tones.
“No. I would sooner lose her. ”

“Even now, after a lapse of four years, Bianchon still
quotes that speech; we have laughed over it for half an hour
together. Claudine, informed of the verdict, saw in it a
proof of affection; she felt sure that she was loved. In the
face of her weeping family, with her husband on his knees,
she was inexorable. She kept her hair. The strength that
came with the belief that she was loved came to her aid, the
operation succeeded perfectly. There are stirrings of the
inner life which throw all the calculations of surgery into
disorder and baffle the laws of medical science.

“Claudine wrote a delicious letter to La Palférine, a letter
in which the orthography was doubtful and the punctuation
all to seek, to tell him of the happy result of the operation,
and to add that Love was wiser than all the sciences.

“ ‘Now,’ said La Palférine one day, ‘what am I to do to get
rid of Claudine”

““Why, she is not at all troublesome ; she leaves you master
of your actions,’ objected we.

““That is true,’ returned La Palférine, ‘but I do not choose
that anything shall slip into my life without my consent.’

“From that day he set himself to torment Claudine. It
seemed that he held the bourgeoise, the nobody, in utter
horror; nothing would satisfy him but a woman with a title.
Claudine, it was true, had made progress; she had learned to
dress as well as the best-dressed women of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain; she had freed her bearing of unhallowed

traces; she walked with a chastened, inimitable grace; but this
was not enough. This praise of her enabled Claudine to swal-
low down the rest.

“But one day La Palférine said, ‘If you wish to be the mis-
tress of one La Palférine, poor, penniless, and without pros-234 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

pects as he is, you ought at least to represent him worthily.
You should have a carriage and liveried servants and a title.
Give me all the gratifications of vanity that will never be
mine in my own person. The woman whom I honor with my
regard ought never to go on foot; if she is bespattered with
mud, I suffer. That is how I am made. If she is mine, she
must be admired of all Paris. All Paris shall envy me my
good fortune. If some little whipper-snapper seeing a
brilliant countess pass in her brilliant carriage shall say to
himself, “Who can call such a divinity his?’ and grow
thoughtful—why, it will double my pleasure.’

“Ta Palférine owned to us that he flung this programme
at Claudine’s head simply to rid himself of her. As a result
he was stupefied with astonishment for the first and probably
the only time in his life.

“Dear, she said, and there was a ring in her voice that
betrayed the great agitation which shook her whole being,
‘Sit is well. All this shall be done, or I will die.’

“She let fall a few happy tears on his hand as she kissed it.

“¢You have told me what I must do to be your mistress
still,’ she added; ‘I am glad,’

“And then’ (La Palférine told us) ‘she went out with a
little coquettish gesture like a woman that has had her way.
As she stood in my garret doorway, tall and proud, she
seemed to reach the stature of an antique sibyl.’

“All this should sufficiently explain the manners and cus-
toms of the Bohemia in which the young condottiere is one
of the most brilliant figures,’ Nathan continued after a
pause. “Now it so happened that I discovered Claudine’s
identity, and could understand the appalling truth of one
line which you perhaps overlooked in that letter of hers. It
was on this wise.”

The Marquise, too thoughtful now for laughter, bade Na-
than “Go on,” in a tone that told him plainly how deeply
she had been impressed by these strange things, and even
more plainly how much she was interested in La Palferine.

“In 1829, one of the most influential, steady, and clever otfeeee ere!

  
    
 
  
 
 
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
 
 

A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 235

dramatic writers was du Bruel. His real name is unknown to
the public, on the play-bills he is de Cursy. Under the Resto-
ration he had a place in the Civil Service; and being really
attached to the elder branch, he sent in his resignation
bravely in 1830, and ever since has written twice as many
plays to fill the deficit in his budget made by his noble con-
duct. At that time du Bruel was forty years old; you know
the story of his life. Like many of his brethren, he bore a
stage dancer an affection hard to explain, but well known in
the whole world of letters. The woman, as you know, was
Tullia, one of the premiers sujets of the Académie Royale de
Musique. Tullia is merely a pseudonym like du Bruel’s name
of de Cursy.

“For the ten years between 1817 and 1827 Tullia was in
her glory on the heights of the stage of the Opéra. With more |
beauty than education, a mediocre dancer with rather more
sense than most of her class, she took no part in the virtuous
reforms which ruined the corps de ballet; she continued the
Guimard dynasty. She owed her ascendency, moreover, to
various well-known protectors, to the Duc de Rhétoré (the
Due de Chaulieu’s eldest son), to the influence of a famous
Superintendent of Fine Arts, and sundry diplomatists and
rich foreigners. During her apogee she had a neat little house
in the Rue Chauchat, and lived as Opera nymphs used to live
in the old days. Du Bruel was smitten with her about the
time when the Duke’s fancy came to an end in 1823. Being
a mere subordinate in the Civil Service, du Bruel tolerated
the Superintendent of Fine Arts, believing that he himself
was really preferred. After six years this connection was
almost a marriage. Tullia has always been very careful to
say nothing of her family; we have a vague idea that she
comes from Nanterre. One of her uncles, formerly a simple
bricklayer or carpenter, is now, it is said, a very rich con-
tractor, thanks to her influence and generous loans. This
fact. leaked out through du Bruel. He happened to say that
Tullia would inherit a fine fortune sooner or later. The con-
tractor was a bachelor; he had a weakness for the niece to
whom he is indebted.236 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

“Te is not clever enough to be ungrateful,’ said she.

“Tn 1829 Tullia retired from the stage of her own accord.
At the age of thirty she saw that she was growing somewhat
stouter, and she had tried pantomime without success. Her
whole art consisted in the trick of raising her skirts, after
Noblet’s manner, in a pirouette which inflated them balloon-
fashion and exhibited the smallest possible quantity of cloth-
ing to the pit. The aged Vestris had told her at the very be-
ginning that this temps, well executed by a fine woman, 1s
worth all the art imaginable. It is the chest-note C of
dancing. For which reason, he said, the very greatest
dancers—Camargo, Guimard, and Taglioni, all of them
thin, brown, and plain—could only redeem their physi-
cal defects by their genius. Tullia, still in the height
of her glory, retired before younger and cleverer dancers; she
did wisely. She was an aristocrat; she had scarcely stooped
below the noblesse in her liaisons; she declined to dip her
ankles in the troubled waters of July. Insolent and beautiful
as she was, Claudine possessed handsome souvenirs, but very
little ready money; still, her jewels were magnificent, and
she had as fine furniture as any one in Paris.

“On quitting the stage when she, forgotten to-day, was yet
in the height of her fame, one thought possessed her—she
meant du Bruel to marry her; and at the time of this story,
you must understand that the marriage had taken place, but
was kept a secret. How do women of her class contrive to
make a man marry them after seven or eight years of in-
timacy? What springs do they touch? What machinery
do they set in motion? But, however comical such domestic
dramas may be, we are not now concerned with them. Du
Bruel was secretly married; the thing was done.

“Cursy before his marriage was supposed to be a jolly com-
panion; now and again he stayed out all night, and to some
extent led the life of a Bohemian; he would unbend at a
supper-party. He went out to all appearance to a rehearsal
at the Opéra-Comique, and found himself in some unaccount-
able way at Dieppe, or Baden, or Saint-Germain; he gaveA PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 237

dinners, led the Titanic thriftless life of artists, journalists,
and writers; levied his tribute on all the greenrooms of Paris;
and, in short, was one of us. Finot, Lousteau, du Tillet,
Desroches, Bixiou, Blondet, Couture, and des Lupeaulx
tolerated him in spite of his pedantic manner and ponderous
official attitude. But once married, Tullia made a slave of
du Bruel. There was no help for it. He was in love with
Tullia, poor devil.

“*Tullia’ (so he said) ‘had left the stage to be his alone,
to be a good and charming wife.’ And somehow Tullia man-
aged to induce the most Puritanical members of du Bruel’s
family to accept her. From the very first, before any one
suspected her motives, she assiduously visited old Mme. de
Bonfalot, who bored her horribly; she made handsome pres-
ents to mean old Mme. de Chissé, du Bruel’s great-aunt; she
spent a summer with the latter lady, and never missed a
single mass. She even went to confession, received absolu-
tion, and took the sacrament; but this, you must remember,
was in the country, and under the aunt’s eyes.

“*T shall have real aunts now, do you understand ?’ she
said to us when she came back in the winter.

“She was so delighted with her respectability, so glad to
renounce her independence, that she found means to compass
her end. She flattered the old people. She went on foot
every day to sit for a couple of hours with Mme. du Bruel
the elder while that lady was ill—a Maintenon’s stratagem
which amazed du Bruel. And he admired his wife without
criticism; he was so fast in the toils already that he did not
feel his bonds.

“Claudine succeeded in making him understand that only
under the elastic system of a bourgeois government, only at
the bourgeois court of the Citizen-King, could a Tulha, now
metamorphosed into a Mme. du Bruel, be accepted in the so-
ciety which her good sense prevented her from attempting
to enter. Mme. de Bonfalot, Mme. de Chissé, and Mme. du
Bruel received her; she was satisfied. She took up the posi-
tion of a well-conducted, simple, and virtuous woman, andi a ESE

  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

238 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

never acted out of character. In three years’ time she was
introduced to the friends of these ladies.

“And still I cannot persuade myself that young Mme. du
Bruel used to display her ankles, and the rest, to all Paris,
with the light of a hundred gas-jets pouring upon her,’ Mme.
Anselme Popinot remarked naively. |

“From this point of view, July 1830 inaugurated an era
not unlike the time of the Empire, when a waiting-woman
was received at Court in the person of Mme. Garat, a chiet-
justice’s ‘lady.? Tullia had completely broken, as you may
guess, with all her old associates ; of her former acquaintances,
she only recognized those who could not compromise her.
At the time of her marriage she had taken a very charming
little hdtel between a court and a garden, lavishing money
on it with wild extravagance and putting the best part of her
furniture and du Bruel’s into it. Everything that she thought
common or ordinary was sold. To find anything comparable
to her sparkling splendor, you could only look back to the
days when a Sophie Arnould, a Guimard, or a Duthé, in all
her glory, squandered the fortunes of princes.

“How far did this sumptuous existence affect du Bruel?
It is a delicate question to ask, and a still more delicate one
to answer. A single incident will suffice to give you an idea
of Tullia’s crotchets. Her bed-spread of Brussels lace was
worth ten thousand frances. A famous actress had another
like it. As soon as Claudine heard this, she allowed her cat,
a splendid Angora, to sleep on the bed. That trait gives you
the woman. Du Bruel dared not say a word; he was ordered
to spread abroad that challenge in luxury, so that it might
reach the other. Tullia was very fond of this gift from the
Due de Rhétoré; but one. day, five years after her marriage,
she played with her cat to such purpose that the coverlet—fur-
belows, flounces, and all—was torn to shreds, and replaced by
a sensible quilt, a quilt that was a quilt, and not a symptom
of the peculiar form of insanity which drives these women
to make up by an insensate luxury for the childish days when
they lived on raw apples, to quote the expression of a journal-A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 239

ist. The day when the bed-spread was torn to tatters marked
a new epoch in her married life.

“Cursy was remarkable for his ferocious industry. No-
body suspects the source to which Paris owes the patch-and-
powder eighteenth century vaudevilles that flooded the stage.
Those thousand-and-one vaudevilles, which raised such an
outcry among the feuilletonistes, were written at Mme. du
Bruel’s express desire. She insisted that her husband should
purchase the hétel on which she had spent so much, where she
had housed five hundred thousand francs’ worth of furniture.
Wherefore Tullia never enters into explanations; she under-
stands the sovereign woman’s reason to admiration,

“People made a good deal of fun of Cursy,’ said she;
‘but, as a matter of fact, he found this house in the eight-
eenth century rouge-box, powder, puffs, and spangles. He
would never have thought of it but for me,’ she added, bury-
ing herself in her cushions in her fireside corner.

“She delivered herself thus on her return from a first night.
Du Bruel’s piece had succeeded, and she foresaw an avalanche
of criticisms. Tullia had her At Homes. Every Monday
she gave a tea-party; her society was as select as might be,
and she neglected nothing that could make her house pleasant.
There was bouillotte in one room, conversation in another,
and sometimes a concert (always short) in the large draw-
ing-room. None but the most eminent artists performed in
her house. Tullia had so much good sense, that she attained
to the most exquisite tact, and herein, in all probability, lay
the secret of her ascendency over du Bruel; at any rate, he
loved her with the love which use and wont at length makes
indispensable to life. Every day adds another thread to the
strong, irresistible, intangible web, which enmeshes the most
delicate fancies, takes captive every most transient mood, and

binding them together, holds a man captive hand and foot,
heart and head.

“Tullia knew Cursy well; she knew every weak point in his
armor, knew also how to heal his wounds.

“A passion of this kind is inscrutable for any observer, even240 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

for a man who prides himself, as I do, on a certain expertness.
It is everywhere unfathomable; the dark depths in it are
darker than in any other mystery; the colors confused even
in the highest lights.

“Cursy was an old playwright, jaded by the life of the
theatrical world. He liked comfort; he liked a luxurious,
affluent, easy existence; he enjoyed being a king in his own
house; he liked to be host to a party of men of letters in a
hdtel resplendent with royal luxury, with carefully chosen
works of art shining in the setting. Tullia allowed du Bruel
to enthrone himself amid the tribe; there were plenty of
journalists whom it was easy enough to catch and ensnare;
and, thanks to her evening parties and a well-timed loan here
and there, Cursy was not attacked too seriously—his plays
succeeded. For these reasons he would not have separated
from Tullia for an empire. If she had been unfaithful, he
would probably have passed it over, on condition that none
of his accustomed joys should be retrenched; yet, strange to
say, Tullia caused him no twinges on this account. No fancy
was laid to her charge; if there had been any, she certainly
had been very careful of appearances.

“My dear fellow,’ du Bruel would say, laying down the
law to us on the boulevard, ‘there is nothing like one of these
women who have sown their wild oats and got over their pas-
sions. Such women as Claudine have lived their bachelor
life; they have been over head and ears in pleasure, and make
the most adorable wives that could be wished; they have noth-
ing to learn, they are formed, they are not in the least
prudish ; they are well broken in, and indulgent. So I strongly
recommend everybody to take the “remains of a racer... ab
am the most fortunate man on earth.’

“Du Bruel said this to me himself with Bixiou there to
hear it.

“ My dear fellow,’ said the caricaturist, ‘perhaps he is right
to be in the wrong.’

“About a week afterwards, du Bruel asked us to dine with
him one Tuesday. That morning I went to see him on a piece
of theatrical business, a case submitted to us for arbitrationA PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 241

by the commission of dramatic authors. We were obliged
to go out again; but before we started he went to Claudine’s
room, knocked, as he always does, and asked for leave to enter.
““We live in grand style,’ said he, smiling; “we are free.
Hach is independent.’

“We were admitted. Du Bruel spoke to Claudine. ‘I have
asked a few people to dinner to-day a

“ ‘Just like you! eried she. ‘You ask people without speak-
ing to me; I count for nothing here.—Now’ (taking me as ar-
bitrator by a glance) ‘I ask you yourself. When a man has
been so foolish as to live with a woman of my sort; for, after
all, I was an opera dancer—yes, I ought always to remember
that, if other people are to forget it—well, under those cir-
cumstances, a clever man seeking to raise his wife in public
opinion would do his best to impose her upon the world as a
remarkable woman, to justify the step he had taken by ac-
knowledging that in some ways she was something more
than ordinary women. ‘The best way of compelling respect
from others is to pay respect to her at home, and to leave
her absolute mistress of the house. Well, and yet it is enough
to waken one’s vanity to see how frightened he is of seeming
to listen to me. I must be in the right ten times over if he
concedes a single point.’

“(Emphatic negative gestures from du Bruel at every other
word. )

““Oh, yes, yes, she continued quickly, in answer to this
mute dissent. ‘I know all about it, du Bruel, my dear, I that
have been like a queen in my house all my life till I married
you. My wishes were guessed, fulfilled, and more than fulfilled.
After all, I am thirty-five, and at five-and-thirty a woman can-
not expect to be loved. Ah, if I were a girl of sixteen, if I had
not lost something that is dearly bought at the Opéra, what at-
tention you would pay me, M. du Bruel! I feel the most su-
preme contempt for men who boast that they can love and grow
careless and neglectful in little things as time grows on. You
are short and insignificant, you see, du Bruel ; you love to tor-
ment a woman; it is your only way of showing your strength.
16242 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

A Napoleon is ready to be swayed by the woman he loves; he
loses nothing by it; but as for such as you, you believe that you
are nothing apparently, you do not wish to be ruled.—Five-
and-thirty, my dear boy,’ she continued, turning to me, ‘that is
the clue to the riddle-—“No,” does he say again?—You know
quite well that I am thirty-seven. J am very sorry, but just
ask your friends to dine at the Rocher de Cancale. I could
have them here, but I will not; they shall not come. And
then perhaps my poor little monologue may engrave that
salutary maxim, “Each is master at home,” upon your mem-
ory. That is our charter,’ she added, laughing, with a return
of the opera girl’s giddiness and caprice.

“Well, well, my dear little puss; there, there, never mind.
We can manage to get on together, said du Bruel, and he
kissed her hands, and we came away. But he was very wroth.

“The whole way from the Rue de la Victoire to the boule-
vard a perfect torrent of venomous words poured from his
mouth like a waterfall in flood; but as the shocking language
which he used on the occasion was quite unfit to print, the
report is necessarily inadequate.

“My dear fellow, I will leave that vile, shameless opera
dancer, a worn-out jade that has been set spinning like a top
to every operatic air; a foul hussy, an organ-grinder’s monkey !
Oh, my dear boy, you have taken up with an actress; may the
notion of marrying your mistress never get a hold on you.
It is a torment omitted from the hell of Dante, you see.
Look here! I will beat her; I will give her a thrashing; I will
give it to her! Poison of my life, she sent me off like a run-
ning footman.’

“By this time we had reached the boulevard, and he had
worked himself up to such a pitch of fury that the words
stuck in his throat.

“<T will kick the stuffing out of her!

«And why?’

“My dear fellow, you will never know the thousand-and-
one fancies that slut takes into her head. When I want to
stay at home, she, forsooth, must go out; when I want to goA PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 243

out, she wants me to stop at home; and she spouts out argu-
ments and accusations and reasoning and talks and talks till]
she drives you crazy. Right means any whim that they
happen to take into their heads, and wrong means our notion.
Overwhelm them with something that cuts their arguments
to pieces—they hold their tongues and look at you as if you
were a dead dog. My happiness indeed! I lead the life of a
yard-dog; I am a perfect slave. The little happiness that I
have with her costs me dear. Confound it all. I will leave
her everything and take myself off to a garret. Yes, a garret
and liberty. I have not dared to have my Own way once in
these five years.’

“But instead of going to his guests, Cursy strode up and
down the boulevard between the Rue de Richelieu and the
Rue du Mont Blane, indulging in the most fearful impreca-
tions, his unbounded language was most comical to hear. His
paroxysm of fury in the street contrasted oddly with his
peaceable demeanor in the house. Exercise assisted him to
work off his nervous agitation and inward tempest. About
two o’clock, on a sudden frantic impulse, he exclaimed:

““These damned females never know what they want. I
will wager my head now that if I go home and tell her that
I have sent to ask my friends to dine with me at the Rocher
de Cancale, she will not be satisfied though she made the
arrangement herself.—But she will have gone off somewhere
or other. I wonder whether there is something at the bottom
of all this, an assignation with some goat~ No. Ini the bot
tom of her heart she loves me!’ ”

The Marquise could not help smiling.

“Ah; madame,” said Nathan, looking keenly at her, “only
women and prophets know how to turn faith to account.—Du
Bruel would have me go home with him,” he continued, “and
we went slowly back. It was three o’clock. Before he ap-
peared, he heard a stir in the kitchen, saw preparations
going forward, and glanced at me as he asked the cook the
reason of this.

*“*“Madame ordered dinner,’ said the woman. ‘Madameieadeiiamtheiacedin ee

244 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

dressed and ordered a cab, and then she changed her mind
and ordered it again for the theatre this evening.’

“<Good, exclaimed du Bruel, ‘what did I tell you?’

“We entered the house stealthily. No one was there. We
went from room to room until we reached a little boudoir,
and came upon Tullia in tears. She dried her eyes without
affectation, and spoke to du Bruel.

“‘Qond a note to the Rocher de Cancale, she said, ‘and ask
your guests to dine here.’

“She was dressed as only women of the theatre can dress,
in a simply-made gown of some dainty material, neither too
costly nor too common, graceful, and harmonious in outline
and coloring; there was nothing conspicuous about her, noth-
ing exaggerated—a word now dropping out of use, to be re-
placed by the word ‘artistic, used by fools as current coin.
In short, Tullia looked like a gentlewoman. At thirty-seven
she had reached the prime of a Frenchwoman’s beauty. At
this moment the celebrated oval of her face was divinely pale;
she had laid her hat aside; I could see a faint down like the
bloom of fruit softening the silken contours of a cheek itself
so delicate. There was a pathetic charm about her face with
its double cluster of fair hair; her brilhant gray eyes were
veiled by a mist of tears; her nose, delicately carved as a
Roman cameo, with its quivering nostrils; her little mouth,
like a child’s even now; her long queenly throat, with the
veins standing out upon it; her chin, flushed for the moment
by some secret despair; the pink tips of her ears, the hands
that trembled under her gloves, everything about her told
of violent feeling. The feverish twitching of her eyebrows
betrayed her pain. She looked sublime.

“Wer first words had crushed du Bruel. She looked at us
both, with that penetrating, impenetrable cat-like glance
which only actresses and great ladies can use. Then she held
out her hand to her husband.

“Poor dear, you had scarcely gone before I blamed myself
a thousand times over. It seemed to me that I had been
horribly ungrateful. I told myself that I had been unkind.A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 245

—Was I very unkind?’ she asked, turning to me.— Why not
receive your friends? Is it not your house? Do you want
to know the reason of it al] ? Well, I was afraid that I was not
loved; and indeed I was half-way between repentance and the
shame of going back. I read the newspapers, and saw that
there was a first night at the Variétés, and I thought you had
meant to give the dinner to a collaborator. Left to myself,
I gave way, I dressed to hurry out after you—poor pet.’

Du Bruel looked at me triumphantly, not a vestige of a
recollection of his orations contra Tullia in his mind.

“Well, dearest, I have not spoken to any one of them,’ he
said.

“How well we understand each other !? quoth she.

“Even as she uttered those bewildering sweet words, I
caught sight of something in her belt, the corner of a little
note thrust sidewise into it; but I did not need that indica-
tion to tell me that Tullia’s fantastic conduct was referable
to occult causes. Woman, in my opinion, is the most logical
of created beings, the child alone excepted. In both we be-
hold a sublime phenomenon, the unvarying triumph of one
dominant, ll-excluding thought. The child’s thought
changes every moment; but while it possesses him, he acts
upon it with such ardor that others give way before him, fas-
cinated by the ingenuity, the persistence of a strong desire.
Woman is less changeable, but to call her capricious is a
stupid insult. Whenever she acts, she is always swayed by
one dominant passion; and wonderful it is to see how she
makes that passion the very centre of her world.

“Tullia was irresistible; she twisted du Bruel round her
fingers, the sky grew blue again, the evening was glorious.
And ingenious writer of plays as he is, he never so much as
saw that his wife had buried a trouble out of sight.

* Such? is lite, my dear fellow,’ he said to me, ‘ups and
downs and contrasts.’

“ ‘Especially life off the stage,’ I put in.

© That is just waar i mean,’ he continued. ‘Why, but
for these violent emotions, one would be bored to death! Ah!
that woman has the gift of rousing me.’te of Rlsinenanarmm eae. Be " —
: = See ne a
eC aterm ett cmon

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

246 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

“We went to the Variétés after dinner; but before we left
the house I slipped into du Bruel’s room, and on a shelf
; among a pile of waste papers found the copy of the Pelvtes-
a} Affieches, in which, agreeably to the reformed law, notice of
the purchase of the house was inserted. The words stared
me in the face—‘At the request of Jean Francois du Bruel
and Claudine Chaffaroux, his wife > Here was the expla-
nation of the whole matter. I offered my arm to Claudine,
and allowed the guests to descend the stairs in front of us.
7) When we were alone—If I were La Palférine, I said, ‘I
2 would not break an appointment.’

“Gravely she laid her finger on her lips. She leant on my
arm as we went downstairs, and looked at me with almost
something like happiness in her eyes because I knew La Pal-
férine. Can you see the first idea that occurred to her? She
thought of making a spy of me, but I turned her off with the
light jesting talk of Bohemia. :

“A month later, after a first performance of one of du
Bruel’s plays, we met in the vestibule of the theatre. It was
raining; I went to call a cab. We had been delayed for a
few minutes, so that there were no cabs in sight. Claudine
scolded du Bruel soundly; and as we rolled through the
streets (for she set me down at Florine’s), she continued
the quarrel with a series of most mortifying remarks.

“What is this about?’ I inquired.

“Oh, my dear fellow, she blames me for allowing you to
| run out for a cab, and thereupon proceeds to wish for a car-
riage.’

“<“As a dancer,’ said she, ‘I have never been accustomed
to use my feet except on the boards. If you have any spirit,
you will turn out four more plays or so in a year; you will
make up your mind that succeed they must, when you think
of the end in view, and that your wife will not walk in the
mud. It is a shame that I should have to ask for it. You
ought to have guessed my continual discomfort during the five
years since J married you.’

i) “<T am quite willing,’ returned du Bruel. ‘But we shall
ruin ourselves.’A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 247

““Tf you run into debt,’ she said, ‘my uncle’s money will
clear it off some day.’

“*You are quite capable of leaving me the debts and tak-
ing the property.’

“‘Oh! is that the way you take it? retorted she. ‘I have
nothing more to say to you; such a speech stops my mouth.’

“Whereupon du Bruel poured out his soul in excuses and
protestations of love. Not a word did she say. He took her
hands, she allowed him to take them; they were like ice, like
a dead woman’s hands. Tullia, you can understand, was
playing to admiration the part of corpse that women can
play to show you that theyrefuse their consent to anything and
everything; that for you they are suppressing soul, spirit,
and life, and regard themselves as beasts of burden. Noth-
ing so provokes a man with a heart as this strategy. Women
can only use it with those who worship them.

“She turned to me. “Do you suppose,’ she said scornfully,
‘that a Count would have uttered such an insult even if the
thought had entered his mind? For my misfortune I have
lived with dukes, ambassadors, and great lords, and I know
their ways. How intolerable it makes bourgeois life! After
all, a playwright is not a Rastignac nor a Rhétoré ‘

“Du Bruel looked ghastly at this. Two days afterwards
we met in the foyer at the Opéra, and took a few turns to-
gether. The conversation fell on Tullia.

“Do not take my ravings on the boulevard too seriously,’
said he; ‘I have a violent temper.’

“For two winters I was a tolerably frequent visitor at du
Bruel’s house, and I followed Claudine’s tactics closely. She
had a splendid carridge. Du Bruel entered public life; she
made him abjure his Royalist opinions. He rallied himself ;
he took his place again in the administration; the National
Guard was discreetly canvassed, du Bruel was elected major,
and behaved so valorously in a street riot, that he was deco-
rated with the rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honor.
He was appointed Master of Requests and head of a depart-
ment. Uncle Chaffaroux died and left his niece forty thou-cei

= : —
ae a aa et

  
  

248 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

sand francs per annum, three-fourths of his fortune. Du
Bruel became a deputy; but beforehand, to save the necessity
of re-election, he secured his nomination to the Council of
State. He reprinted divers archeeological treatises, a couple
of political pamphlets, and a statistical work, by way of pre-
text for his appointment to one of the obliging academies of
the Institut. At this moment he is a Commander of the Le-
gion, and (after fishing in the troubled waters of political
intrigue) has quite recently been made a peer of France and
a count. As yet our friend does not venture to bear his
honors; his wife merely puts ‘La Comtesse du Bruel’ on her
cards. The sometime playwright has the Order of Leopold,
the Order of Isabella, the Cross of Saint-Vladimir, second
class, the Order of Civil Merit of Bavaria, the Papal Order of
the Golden Spur,—all the lesser orders, in short, besides the
Grand Cross.

“Three months ago Claudine drove to La Palférine’s door
in her splendid carriage with its armorial bearings. Du
Bruel’s grandfather was a farmer of taxes ennobled towards
the end of Louis Quatorze’s reign. Chérin composed his coat-
of-arms for him, so the Count’s coronet looks not amiss above
a scutcheon innocent of Imperial absurdities. In this way,
in the short space of three years, Claudine had carried out
the programme laid down for her by the charming, light-
hearted La Palférine.

“One day, just a month ago, she climbed the miserable
staircase to her lover’s lodging; climbed in her glory, dressed
like a real countess of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to our
friend’s garret. La Palférine, seeing her, said, “You have
made a peeress of yourself I know. But’it is too late, Claud-
ine; every one is talking just now about the Southern Cross,
I should like to see it!’

“*T will get it for you.’

“Ta Palférine burst into a peal of Homeric laughter.

“<Most distinetly,’ he returned, ‘I do not wish to have a
woman as ignorant as a carp for my mistress, a woman that

springs like a flying fish from the green-room of the OpérayPee SE

 

 

 

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A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 249

to Court, for I should like to see you at the Court of the Citi-
zen King.’

“She turned to me.

““What is the Southern Cross?’ she asked, in a sad, down-
east voice.

“TI was struck with admiration for this indomitable love,
outdoing the most ingenious marvels of fairy tales in real
life—a love that would spring over a precipice to find a roc’s
egg, or to gather the singing flower. I explained that the
Southern Cross was a nebulous constellation even brighter
than the Milky Way, arranged in the form of a cross, and
that it could only be seen in southern latitudes.

““Very well, Charles, let us go,’ said she.

“La Palférine, ferocious though he was, had tears in his
eyes; but what a look there was in Claudine’s face, what a
note in her voice! I have seen nothing like the thing that
followed, not even in the supreme touch of a great actor’s
art; nothing to compare with her movement when she saw
the hard eyes softened in tears: Claudine sank upon her knees
and kissed La Palférine’s pitiless hand. He raised her with
his grand manner, his ‘Rusticoli air,’ as he calls it—‘There,
child !’ he said, ‘I will do something for you; I will put you—
in my will.’

“Well,” concluded Nathan, “I ask myself sometimes
whether du Bruel is really deceived. Truly there is nothing
more comic, nothing stranger than the sight of a careless
young fellow ruling a married couple, his slightest whims
received as law, the weightiest decisions revoked at a word
from him. That dinner incident, as you can see, is repeated
times without number, it interferes with important matters.
Still, but for Claudine’s caprices, du Bruel would be de Cursy
still, one vaudevillist among five hundred; whereas he is in
the House of Peers.”

“You will change the names, I hope!” said Nathan, ad-
dressing Mme. de la Baudraye.
“I should think so! I have only set names to the masks for~ ee

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 

  

250 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA

you. My dear Nathan,” she added in the poet’s ear, “I know
another case in which the wife takes du Bruel’s place.”

“And the catastrophe?” queried Lousteau, returning just
at the end of Mme. de la Baudraye’s story.

“I do not believe in catastrophes. One has to invent such
good ones to show that art is quite a match for chance; and
nobody reads a book twice, my friend, except for the details.”

“But there is a catastrophe,” persisted Nathan.

“What is it?”

“The Marquise de Rochefide is infatuated with Charles
Edward. My story excited her curiosity.”

“Oh, unhappy woman!” cried Mme. de la Baudraye.

“Not so unhappy,” said Nathan, “for Maxime de Trailles
and La Palférine have brought about a rupture between the
Marquis and Mme. Schontz, and they mean to make it up
between Arthur and Béatrix.”

1839-1845,A MAN OF BUSINESS

To Monsieur le Baron James de Rothschild, Banker and
Austrian Consul-General at Paris.

THE word lorette is a euphemism invented to describe the
status of a personage, or a personage of a status, of which it
is awkward to speak; the French Académie, in its modesty,
having omitted to supply a definition out of regard for the
age of its forty members. Whenever a new word comes to
supply the place of an unwieldy cireumlocution, its fortune
is assured; the word lorette has passed into the language of
every class of society, even where the lorette herself will never
gain an entrance. It was only invented in 1840, and derived

beyond a doubt from the agglomeration of such swallows’

nests about the Church of Our Lady of Loretto. This infor-
mation is for etymologists only. Those gentlemen would not
be so often in a quandary if medieval writers had only taken
such pains with details of contemporary manners as we take
in these days of analysis and description.

Mule. Turquet, or Malaga, for she is better known by her
pseudonym,* was one of the earliest parishioners of that
charming church. At the time to which this story belongs,
that lighthearted and lively damsel gladdened the existence
of a notary with a wife somewhat too bigoted, rigid, and frigid
for domestic happiness.

Now, it so fell out that one Carnival evening Maitre Cardot
was entertaining guests at Mlle. Turquet’s house—Desrocheg
the attorney, Bixiou of the caricatures, Lousteau the journal-
ist, Nathan, and others; it is quite unnecessary to give any
further description of these personages, all bearers of illus-
trious names in the Comédie Humaine. Young La Palférine,

*See La fausse Maitresse.

(251)a ST

  

AES MSTA Roa TERaR eyes atscance: ns a

252 A MAN OF BUSINESS

in spite of his title of Count and his great descent, which,
alas! means a great descent in fortune likewise, had honored
the notary’s little establishment with his presence.

At dinner, in such a house, one does not expect to meet
the patriarchal beef, the skinny fowl and salad of domestic
and family life, nor is there any attempt at the hypocritical
conversation of drawing-rooms furnished with highly respect-
able matrons. When, alas! will respectability be charming?
When will the women in good society vouchsafe to show rather
less of their shoulders and rather more wit or geniality? Mar-
guerite Turquet, the Aspasia of the Cirque-Olympique, is
one of those frank, very living personalities to whom all is
forgiven, such unconscious sinners are they, such intelligent
penitents; of such as Malaga one might ask, like Cardot—a
witty man enough, albeit a notary—to be well “deceived.”
And yet you must not think that any enormities were com-
mitted. Desroches and Cardot were good fellows grown toc
gray in the profession not to feel at ease with Bixiou, Lous-
teau, Nathan, and young La Palférine. And they on their
side had too often had recourse to their legal advisers, and
knew them tco well to try to “draw them out,” in lorette lan-
guage.

Conversation, perfumed with seven cigars, at first was as
fantastic as a kid let loose, but finally it settled down upon
the strategy of the constant war waged in Paris between cred-
itors and debtors.

Now, if you will be so good as to recall the history and
antecedents of the guests, you will know that in all Paris you
could scarcely find a group of men with more experience in
this matter; the professional men on one hand, and the artists
on the other, were something in the position of magistrates
and criminals hobnobbing together. A set of Bixiou’s draw-
ings to illustrate hfe in the debtors’ prison, led the conversa-
tion to take this particular turn; and from debtors’ prisons
they went to debts.

It was midnight. They had broken up into little knots
round the table and before the fire, and gave themselves upeee SR nv > ot Nit owen Te ES eal Sh

      
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 

A MAN OF BUSINESS 253

to the burlesque fun which is only possible or comprehensible
in Paris and in that particular region which is bounded
by the Faubourg Montmartre, the Rue Chaussée @Antin, the
upper end of the Rue de Navarin and the line of the boule-
vards.

In ten minutes’ time they had come to an end of all the
deep reflections, all the moralizings, small and great, all the
bad puns made on a subject already exhausted by Rabelais
three hundred and fifty years ago. It is not a little to their
credit that the pyrotechnic display was cut short with a final
squib from Malaga.

“Tt all goes to the shoemakers,” she said. “TI left a milliner
because she failed twice with my hats. The vixen has been
here twenty-seven times to ask for twenty francs. She did
not know that we never have twenty francs. One has a thou-
sand francs, or one sends to one’s notary for five hundred; A
but twenty francs I have never had in my life. My cook and
my maid may, perhaps, have so much between them; but for /
my own part, I have nothing but credit, and I should lose that
if I took to borrowing small sums. If I were to ask for twenty
franes, I should have nothing to distinguish me from my col-
leagues that walk the boulevard.”

“Is the milliner paid?” asked La Palférine.

“Oh, come now, are you turning stupid?” said she, with a
wink. “She came this morning for the twenty-seventh time,
that is how I came to mention it.”

“What did you do?” asked Desroches,

“I took pity upon her, and—ordered a little hat that I
have just invented, a quite new shape. If Mlle. Amanda
succeeds with it, she will say no more about the money, her
fortune is made.”

“In my opinion,” put in Desroches, “the finest things that
I have seen in a duel of this kind give those who know Paris
a far better picture of the city than all the fancy portraits
that they paint. Some of you think that you know a thing
or two,” he continued, glancing round at Nathan, Bixiou, La
Palférine, and Lousteau, “but the king of the ground is a254 A MAN OF BUSINESS

certain Count, now busy ranging himself. In his time, he
was supposed to be the cleverest, adroitest, canniest, boldest,
stoutest, most subtle and experienced of all the pirates, who,
equipped with fine manners, yellow kid gloves, and cabs, have
ever sailed or ever will sail upon the stormy sea of Paris. He
fears neither God nor man. He applies in private life the
principles that guide the English Cabinet. Up to the time
of his marriage, his life was one continual war, like—Lous-
teau’s, for instance. I was, and am still his solicitor.”

“And the first letter of his name is Maxime de Trailles,”
said La Palférine.

“For that matter, he has paid every one, and injured no
one,” continued Desroches. “But as our friend Bixiou was
saying just now, it is a violation of the liberty of the subject
to be made to pay in March when you have no mind to pay
till October. By virtue of this article of his particular code,
Maxime regarded a creditor’s scheme for making him pay at
once as a swindler’s trick. It was long since he had grasped
the significance of the bill of exchange in all its bearings,
direct and remote. A young mar once, in my place, called a
bill of exchange the ‘asses’ bridge’ in his hearing. ‘No,’ said
he, “it is the Bridge of Sighs; it is the shortest way to an exe-
cution.” Indeed, his knowledge of commercial law was so
complete, that a professional could not have taught him any-
thing. At that time he had nothing, as you know. His car-
riage and horses were jobbed; he lived in his valet’s house;
and, by the way, he will be a hero to his valet to the end of
the chapter, even after the marriage that he proposes to make.
He belonged to three clubs, and dined at one of them when-
ever he did not dine out. Asa rule, he was to be found very
seldom at his own address ”

“He once said to me,” interrupted La Palférine, “ ‘My one
affectation is the pretence that I make of living in the Rue
Pigalle.’ ”

“Well,” resumed Desroches, “he was one of the combatants;
and now for the other. You have heard more or less talk of
one Claparon?”a eDiets gO Met Caran STN

  
    
 
 
  
   
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A MAN OF BUSINESS 255

“Had hair like this!’ cried Bixiou, ruffling his locks till
they stood on end. Gifted with the same talent for mimick-
ing absurdities which Chopin the pianist possesses to so high
a degree, he proceeded forthwith to represent the character
with startling truth.

“He rolls his head like this when he speaks; he was once a
commercial traveler; he has been all sorts of things a

“Well, he was born to travel, for at this minute, as I speak,
he is on the sea on his way to America,” said Desroches. “Tt
is his only chance, for in all probability he will be condemned
by default as a fraudulent bankrupt next session.”

“Very much at sea!” exclaimed Malaga.

“For six or seven years this Claparon acted as man of straw,
cat’s-paw, and scapegoat to two friends of ours, du Tillet and
Nucingen ; but in 1829 his part was so well known that a

“Our friends dropped him,” put in Bixiou.

“They left him to his fate at last, and he wallowed in the
mire,” continued Desroches. “In 1833 he went into partner-
ship with one Cérizet fe

“What! he that promoted a joint-stock company so nicely
that the Sixth Chamber cut short his career with a couple
of years in jail?” asked the lorette.

“The same. Under the Restoration, between 1823 and
1827, Cérizet’s occupation consisted in first putting his name
intrepidly to various paragraphs, on which the public prose-
cutor fastened with avidity, and subsequently marching off
to prison. A man could make a name for himself with small
expense in those days. The Liberal party called their pro-
vincial champion ‘the courageous Cérizet,’ and towards 1828
so much zeal received its reward in ‘general interest.’

“General interest’ is a kind of civic crown bestowed on the
deserving by the daily press. Cérizet tried to discount the
‘general interest? taken in him. He came to Paris, and, with
some help from capitalists in the Opposition, started as a
broker, and conducted financial operations to some extent, the
capital being found by a man in hiding, a skilful gambler who
overreached himself, and in consequence, in July 1830, his
capital foundered in the shipwreck of the Government.”256 A MAN OF BUSINESS

“Oh! it was he whom we used to call the System,” cried
Bixiou.

“Say no harm of him, poor fellow,” protested Malaga.
“D’Estourny was a good sort.”

“You can imagine the part that a ruined man was sure to
play in 1830 when his name in politics was ‘the courageous
Cérizet.” He was sent off into a very snug little sub-prefec-
ture. Unluckily for him, it is one thing to be in opposition—
any missile is good enough to throw, so long as the fight lasts;
but quite another to be in office. Three months later, he was
obliged to send in his resignation. Had he not taken it into
his head to attempt to win popularity? Still, as he had
done nothing as yet to imperil his title of ‘courageous Cérizet,’
the Government proposed by way of compensation that he
should manage a newspaper; nominally an Opposition paper,
but Ministerialist in petto. So the fall of this noble nature was
really due to the Government. To Cérizet, as manager of the
paper, it was rather too evident that he was as a bird perched
on a rotten bough; and then it was that he promoted that nice
little joint-stock company, and thereby secured a couple of
years in prison; he was caught, while more ingenious swin-
dlers succeeded in catching the public.”

“We are acquainted with the more ingenious,” said Bixiou;
“let us say no ill of the poor fellow; he was nabbed; Couture
allowed them to squeeze his cash-box; who would ever have
thought it of him?”

“At all events, Cérizet was a low sort of fellow, a good deal
damaged by low debauchery. Now for the duel I spoke about.
Never did two tradesmen of the worst type, with the worst
manners, the lowest pair of villains imaginable, go into part-
nership in a dirtier business. Their stock-in-trade consisted
of the peculiar idiom of the man about town, the audacity of
poverty, the cunning that comes of experience, and a special
knowledge of Parisian capitalists, their origin, connections,
acquaintances, and intrinsic value. This partnership of two
‘dabblers’ (let the Stock Exchange term pass, for it is the
only word which describes them), this partnership of dabblersA MAN OF BUSINESS 257

did not last very long. They fought like famished curs over
every bit of garbage.

“The earlier speculations of the firm of Cérizet and Cla-
paron were, however, well planned. The two scamps joined
forces with Barbet, Chaboisseau, Samanon, and usurers of
that stamp, and bought up hopelessly bad debts.

“Claparon’s place of business at that time was a cramped
entresol in the Rue Chabannais—five rooms at a rent of seven
hundred franes at most. Each partner slept in a little closet,
so carefully closed from prudence, that my head-clerk could
never get inside. The furniture of the other three rooms—
an ante-chamber, a waiting-room, and a private office—would
not have fetched three hundred francs altogether at a distress-
warrant sale. You know enough of Paris to know the look
of it; the stuffed horsehair-covered chairs, a table covered with
a green cloth, a trumpery clock between a couple of candle
sconces, growing tarnished under glass shades, the small gilt-
framed mirror over the chimney-piece, and in the grate a
charred stick or two of firewood which had lasted them for
two winters, as my head-clerk put it. As for the office, you
can guess what it was like—more letter-files than business
letters, a set of common pigeon-holes for either partner, a
cylinder desk, empty as the cash-box, in the middle of the
room, and a couple of armchairs on either side of a coal fire.
The carpet on the floor was bought cheap at second-hand (like
the bills and bad debts). In short, it was the mahogany fur-
niture of furnished apartments which usually descends from
one occupant of chambers to another during fifty years of ser-
vice. Now you know the pair of antagonists.

“During the first three months of a partnership dissolved
four months later in a bout of fisticuffs, Cérizet and Claparon
bought up two thousand franes’ worth of bills bearing Max-
ime’s signature (since Maxime is his name), and filled a
couple of letter files to bursting with judgments, appeals, or-
ders of the court, distress-warrant, application for stay of
proceedings, and all the rest of it; to put it briefly, they had

5S

bills for three thousand two hundred francs odd centimes, for258 A MAN OF BUSINESS

which they had given five hundred francs; the transfer being
made under private seal, with special power of attorney, to
save the expense of registration. Now it so happened at this
juncture, Maxime, being of ripe age, was seized with one of
the fancies peculiar to the man of fifty a

“Antonia !” exclaimed La Palférine. ‘That Antonia whose
fortune I made by writing to ask for a toothbrush !”

“Her real name is Chocardelle,” said Malaga, not over well
pleased by the fine-sounding pseudonym.

“The same,” continued Desroches.

“It was the only mistake Maxime ever made in his life.
But what would you have, no vice is absolutely perfect?” put
in Bixiou.

“Maxime had still to learn what sort of a life a man may
be led into by a girl of eighteen when she is minded to take
a header from her honest garret into a sumptuous carriage; it
is a lesson that all statesmen should take to heart. At this
time, de Marsay had just been employing his friend, our friend
de Trailles, in the high comedy of politics. Maxime had
looked high for his conquests; he had no experience of un-
titled women ; and at fifty years he felt that he had a right to
take a bite of a little so-called wild fruit, much as a sports-
man will halt under a peasant’s apple-tree. So the Count
found a reading-room for Mlle. Chocardelle, a rather smart
little place to be had cheap, as usual .

“Pooh!” said Nathan. “She did not stay in it six months.
She was too handsome to keep a reading-room.”

“Perhaps you are the father of her child?” suggested the
lorette.

Desroches resumed.

“Since the firm bought up Maxime’s debts, Cérizet’s like-
ness to a bailiff’s officer grew more and more striking, and
one morning after seven fruitless attempts he succeeded in
penetrating into the Count’s presence. Suzon, the old man-
servant, albeit he was by no means in his novitiate, at last
mistook the visitor for a petitioner, come to propose a thou-
sand crowns if Maxime would obtain a license to sell postageA MAN OF BUSINESS 259

stamps for a young lady. Suzon, without the slichtest sus-

picion of the little Scamp, a thoroughbred Paris street-boy

into whom prudence had been rubbed by repeated personal ex-

perience of the police-courts, induced his master to receive

him. Can you see the man of business, with an uneasy eye,

a bald forehead, and scarcely any hair on his head, standing
in his threadbare jacket and muddy boots 8

“What a picture of a Dun!” cried Lousteau.

5 standing before the Count, that image of flaunting
Debt, in his blue flannel dressing-gown, slippers worked by
some Marquise or other, trousers of white woolen stuff, and
a dazzling shirt? There he stood, with a gorgeous cap on
his black dyed hair, playing with the tassels at his waist “

“°Tis a bit of genre for anybody who knows the pretty little
morning room, hung with silk and full of valuable paintings,
where Maxime breakfasts,” said Nathan. “You tread on a
Smyrna carpet, you admire the sideboards filled with curiosi-
ties and rarities fit to make a King of Saxony envious 4

“Now for the scene itself,” said Desroches, and the deep-
est silence followed.

““Monsieur le Comte,’ began Cérizet, ‘I have come from a
M. Charles Claparon, who used to be a banker :

“*Ah! poor devil, and what does he want with me”

“Well, he is at present your creditor for a matter of three
thousand two hundred francs, seventy-five centimes, princi-
pal, interest, and costs %

““Coutelier’s business?’ put in Maxime, who knew his af-
fairs as a pilot knows his coast.

“*Yes, Monsieur le Comte,’ said Cérizet with a) bow, oh
have come to ask your intentions.’

““I shall only pay when the fancy takes me, returned
Maxime, and he rang for Suzon. ‘It was very rash of Cla-
paron to buy up bills of mine without speaking to me before-
hand. I am sorry for him, for he did so very well for such a
long time as a man of straw for friends of mine. I always
said that a man must really be weak in his intellect to work

for men that stuff themselves with millions, and to serve themarcane caren oe ae -

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

260 A MAN OF BUSINESS

ay so faithfully for such low wages. And now here he gives me
ae | another proof of his stupidity! Yes, men deserve what they
te get. It is your own doing whether you get a crown on your
forehead or a bullet through your head; whether you are a
| millionaire or a porter, justice is always done you. I cannot
ti help it, my dear fellow; I myself am nota king, I stick to my
| principles. I have no pity for those that put me to expense
| i or do not know their business as creditors.—Suzon ! my tea!
i | Do you see this gentleman ?’ he continued when the man came
Ne in. ‘Well, you have allowed yourself to be taken in, poor old
a boy. This gentleman is a creditor; you ought to have known
Dit him by his boots. No friend nor foe of mine, nor those that
: are neither and want something of me, come to see me on foot.
—My dear M. Cérizet, do you understand? ‘You will not
Wipe your boots on my carpet again’ (looking as he spoke at
the mud that whitened the enemy’s soles). ‘Convey my com-
pliments and sympathy to Claparon, poor buffer, for I shall
file this business under the letter Z.’
“All this with an easy good-humor fit to give a virtuous
eitizen the colic.
“You are wrong, Monsieur le Comte,’ retorted Ceérizet, in
a slightly peremptory tone. ‘We will be paid in full, and that
in a way which you may not like. That was why I came to
you first in a friendly spirit, as is right and fit between gen-
tlemen ;
\ “‘Oh! so that is how you understand it?’ began Maxime,
i enraged by this last piece of presumption. There was some-
thing of Talleyrand’s wit in the insolent retort, if you have
quite grasped the contrast between the two men and their
costumes. Maxime scowled and looked full at the intruder ;
Cérizet not merely endured the glare of cold fury, but even
returned it, with an icy, cat-like malignance and fixity of gaze.
““Very good, sir, go out ;
““Very well, good-day, Monsieur le Comte. We shall be
quits before six months are out.’
_““Tf you can steal the amount of your bill, which is legally
ih due I own, I shall be indebted to yon, sir,’ replied Maxime.A MAN OF BUSINESS 261

“You will have taught me a new precaution to take. I am very
much your servant.’

““Monsieur le Comte,’ said Cérizet, ‘it is I, on the con-
trary, who am yours.’

“Here was an explicit, forcible, confident declaration on
either side. A couple of tigers confabulating, with the prey
before them, and a fight impending, would have been no finer
and no shrewder than this pair; the insolent fine gentleman
as great a blackguard as the other in his soiled and mud-
stained clothes.

“Which will you lay your money on?” asked Desroches,
looking round at an audience, surprised to find how deeply it
was interested.

“A pretty story!” cried Malaga. “My dear boy, go on, I
beg of you. This goes to one’s heart.”

“Nothing commonplace could happen between two fighting-
cocks of that calibre,’ added La Palférine.

“Pooh!” cried Malaga, “I will wager my cabinet-maker’s
Invoice (the fellow is dunning me) that the little toad was
too many for Maxime.”

“I bet on Maxime,” said Cardot. “Nobody ever caught
him napping.”

Desroches drank off a glass that Malaga handed to him.

“Mlle. Chocardelle’s reading-room,” he continued, after a
pause, “was in the Rue Coquenard, just a step or two from
the Rue Pigalle where Maxime was living. The said Mlle.
Chocardelle lived at the back on the garden side of the house,
beyond a big, dark place where the books were kept. Antonia
left her aunt to look after the business a

“Had she an aunt even then?” exclaimed Malaga. “Hang
it all, Maxime did things handsomely.”

“Alas! it was a real aunt,” said Desroches; “her name was
—let me see——”

“Tda Bonamy,” said Bixiou.

“So as Antonia’s aunt took a good deal of the work off her
hands, she went to bed late and lay late of a morning, never
showing her face at the desk until the afternoon, some time“ ; i
we a ed om — RAE H
f a aaa amor cree Se

   
   
  
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

   

262 A MAN OF BUSINESS

| i between two and four. From the very first her appearance

mi | was enough to draw custom. Several elderly men in the quar-

se | ter used to come, among them a retired coach-builder, one

: Croizeau. Beholding this miracle of female loveliness

ane through the window-panes, he took it into his head to read

at | the newspapers in the beauty’s reading-room ; and a sometime
| custom-house officer, named Denisart, with a ribbon in his

t button-hole, followed the example. Croizeau chose to look

7 upon Denisart as a rival. ‘Mésieur,’ he said afterwards, ‘I
|| did not know what to buy for you!
“That speech should give you an idea of the man. The

i Sieur Croizeau happens to belong to a particular class of old

| man which should be known as ‘Coquerels’ since Henri Mon-

nier’s time; so well did Monnier render the piping voice, the
little mannerisms, little queue, little sprinkling of powder,
little movements of the head, prim little manner, and tripping
gait in the part of Coquerel in La Famille Improvisée. This
Croizeau used to hand over his halfpence with a flourish and a
‘There, fair lady

“Mme. Ida Bonamy the aunt was not long in finding out
through the servant that Croizeau, by popular report of the
neighborhood of the Rue de Buffault, where he lived, was a
man of exceeding stinginess, possessed of forty thousand
francs per annum. A week after the instalment of the charm-
ing librarian he was delivered of a pun:

\ “*You lend me books (livres), but I give you plenty of

francs in return,’ said he.

“A few days later he put on a knowing little air, as much
as to say, ‘I know you are engaged, but my turn will come one
day; I am a widower.’

“He always came arrayed in fine linen, a cornflower blue
coat, a paduasoy waistcoat, black trousers, and black ribbon
' bows on the double soled shoes that creaked like an abbé’s; he

always held a fourteen franc silk hat in his hand.

““T am old and I have no children, he took occasion to
| confide to the young lady some few days after Cérizet’s visit to

Maxime. ‘I hold my relations in horror. They are peasantsen eee eae

      
  
  
 
   
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
  
 

A MAN OF BUSINESS 263

a

born to work in the fields. Just imagine it, I came up from |
the country with six francs in my pocket, and made my for-
tune here. I am not proud. A pretty woman is my equal.
Now would it not be nicer to be Mime. Croizeau for some years
to come than to do a Count’s pleasure for a twelvemonth? He
will go off and leave you some time or other; and when that
day comes, you will think of me
pretty lady!’

“All this was simmering below the surface. The slightest
approach at love-making was made quite on the sly. Nota
soul suspected that the trim little old fogy was smitten with
Antonia; and so prudent was the elderly lover, that no rival
could have guessed anything from his behavior in the reading-
room. For a couple of months Croizeau watched the retired
custom-house official; but before the third month was out he
had good reason to believe that his suspicions were groundless.
He exerted his ingenuity to scrape an acquaintance with De-
nisart, came up with him in the street, and at length seized his
opportunity to remark, ‘It is a fine day, sir!’

“Whereupon the retired official responded with, ‘Austerlitz
weather, sir. I was there myself—I was wounded indeed, I
won my Cross on that glorious day.’

“And so from one thing to another the two drifted wrecks
of the Empire struck up an acquaintance. Little Croizeau
was attached to the Empire through his connection with Na-
poleon’s sisters. He had been their coach-builder, and had
frequently dunned them for money; so he gave out that he
‘had had relations with the Imperial family.’ Maxime, duly
informed by Antonia of the ‘nice old man’s’ proposals (for so
the aunt called Croizeau), wished to see him. Cérizet’s de-
claration of war had so far taken effect that he of the yellow
kid gloves was studying the position of every piece, however
insignificant, upon the board; and it so happened that at

the mention of that ‘nice old man,’ an ominous tinkling
sounded in his ears. One evening, therefore, Maxime seated
himself among the book-shelves in the dimly lighted back
room, reconnoitred the seven or eight customers through the

your ser vant, my264 A MAN OF BUSINESS

chink between the green curtains, and took the little coach-
builder’s measure. He gauged the man’s infatuation, and
was very well satisfied to find that the varnished doors of a
tolerably sumptuous future were ready to turn at a word
from Antonia so soon as his own fancy had passed off.

““And that other one yonder? asked” he, pointing out the
stout fine-looking elderly man with the Cross of the Legion
of Honor. ‘Who is he?’

“A retired custom-house officer.’

““The cut of his countenance is not reassuring, said Max-
ime, beholding the Sieur Denisart.

“And indeed the old soldier held himself upright as a
steeple. His head was remarkable for the amount of powder
and pomatum bestowed upon it; he looked almost like a pos-
tilion at a fancy ball. Underneath that felted covering,
moulded to the top of the wearer’s cranium, appeared an eld-
erly profile, half-official, half-soldierly, with a comical ad-
mixture of arrogance,—altogether something like caricatures
of the Constitutionnel. The sometime official finding that
age, and hair-powder, and the conformation of his spine made
it impossible to read a word without spectacles, sat dis-
playing a very creditable expanse of chest with all the pride
of an old man with a mistress. Like old General Montcornet,
that pillar of the Vaudeville, he wore earrings. Denisart was
partial to blue; his roomy trousers and well-worn greatcoat
were both of blue cloth.

““How long is it since that old fogy came here?’ inquired
Maxime, thinking that he saw danger in the spectacles.

“*Oh, from the beginning, returned Antonia, ‘pretty
nearly two months ago now.’

““Good,’ said Maxime to himself, ‘Cérizet only came to me
a month ago.—Just get him to talk,’ he added in Antonia’s
ear; ‘I want to hear his voice.’

““Pshaw,’ said she, ‘that is not so easy. He never says a
word to me.’

““Then why does he come here?’ demanded Maxime.

“<For a queer reason,’ returned the fair Antonia. ‘In the
first place, although he is sixty-nine, he has a fancy; and be-% =
iT : om Te Bi f443t; SEE TEDECESN ESS CHEESE re! { ii pit “ os,
ee Se ees niet y

E
,

      
  
 
   
   
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
   
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

A MAN OF BUSINESS 265

cause he is sixty-nine, he is as methodical as a clock face. |
Hivery day at five o’clock the old gentleman goes to dine with
her in the Rue de la Victoire. (I am sorry for her.) Then
at six o’clock, he comes here, reads steadily at the papers for
four hours, and goes back at ten o’clock. Daddy Croizeau says
that he knows M. Denisart’s motives, and approves his con-
duct; and in his place, he would do the same. So I know
exactly what to expect. If ever I am Mme. Croizeau, I shall
have four hours to myself between six and ten o'clock.’

“Maxime looked through the directory, and found the fol-
lowing reassuring item:

** DENISART, * retired custom-house officer, Rue de la Victoire,

“His uneasiness vanished.

“Gradually the Sieur Denisart and the Sieur Croizeau be-
gan to exchange confidences. Nothing so binds two men to-
gether as a similarity of views in the matter of womankind.

. Daddy Croizeau went to dine with “M. Denisart’s fair lady,’
as he called her. And here I must make a somewhat impor-
tant observation.

“The reading-room had been paid for half in cash, half in
bills signed by the said Mlle. Chocardelle. The guart dheure
de Rabelats arrived; the Count had no money. So the first
bill of three thousand-franc bills was met by the amiable
coach-builder; that old scoundrel Denisart having recom-
mended him to secure himself with a mortgage on the reading-
room.

““For my own part,’ said Denisart, ‘I have seen pretty
doings from pretty women. So, in all cases, even when [
have lost my head, I am always on my guard with a woman.
There is this creature, for instance; I am madly in love with
her; but this is not her furniture; no, it belongs to me. The
lease is taken out in my name.’

“You know Maxime! He thought the coach-builder un=
commonly green. Croizeau might pay all three bills, and get
nothing for a long while; for Maxime felt more infatuated
with Antonia than ever.”266 A MAN OF BUSINESS

“T can well believe it,” said La Palférine. “She is the
bella Imperia of our day.”

“With her rough skin!” exclaimed Malaga; “so rough, that
she ruins herself in bran baths!”

“Croizeau spoke with a coach-builder’s admiration of the
sumptuous furniture provided by the amorous Denisart as a
setting for his fair one, describing it all in detail with dia-
bolical complacency for Antonia’s benefit,” continued Des-
roches. “The ebony chests inlaid with mother-of-pearl and
gold wire, the Brussels carpets, a medieval bedstead worth
three thousand francs, a Boule clock, candelabra in the four
corners of the dining-room, silk curtains, on which Chinese
patience had wrought pictures of birds, and hangings over
the doors, worth more than the portress that opened them.

““And that is what you ought to have, my pretty lady.—
And that is what I should like to offer you, he would con-
clude. ‘I am quite aware that you scarcely care a bit about
me; but, at my age, we cannot expect too much. J udge how
much I love you; I have lent you a thousand francs. I must
confess that, in all my born days, I have not lent anybody that
much :

“He held out his penny as he spoke, with the important air
of a man that gives a learned demonstration.

“That evening at the Variétés, Antonia spoke to the Count.

““A reading-room is very dull, all the same,’ said she; ‘I
feel that I have no sort of taste for that kind of hfe, and I
see no future in it. It is only fit for a widow that wishes to
keep body and soul together, or for some hideously ugly thing
that fancies she can catch a husband with a little finery.’

““It was your own choice,’ returned the Count. Just at
that moment, in came Nucingen, of whom Maxime, king of
lions (the ‘yellow kid gloves’ were the lions of that day) had
won three thousand franes the evening before. Nucingen
had come to pay his gaming debt.

““Hin writ of attachment haf shoost peen served on me by
der order of dot teufel Glabaron,’ he said, seeing Maxime’s
astonishment.A MAN OF BUSINESS 267

“Oh, so that is how they are going to work, is it? cried
Maxime. ‘They are not up to much, that pair :

“It makes not,’ said the banker, ‘bay dem, for dey may
apply demselfs to oders pesides, und do you harm. TI dake
dees bretty voman to vitness dot I haf b
long pefore dat writ vas serfed?”

“Queen of the boards,” smiled La Palférine, looking at
Malaga, “thou art about to lose thy bet.”

“Once, a long time ago, in a similar case,’ resumed Des-
roches, “a too honest debtor took fright at the idea of a solemn
declaration in a court of law, and declined to pay Maxime
after notice was given. That time we made it hot for the
creditor by piling on writs of attachment, so as to absorb the
whole amount in costs ze

“Oh, what is that?” cried Malaga; “it all sounds like gib-
berish to me. Ag you thought the sturgeon so excellent at
dinner, let me take out the value of the sauce in lessons in
chicanery.”

“Very well,” said Desroches. “Suppose that a man owes
you money, and your creditors serve a writ of attachment upon
him ; there is nothing to prevent all your other creditors from
doing the same thing. And now what does the court do when
all the creditors make application for orders to pay? The
court divides the whole sum attached, proportionately among
them all. That division, made under the eye of a magistrate,
is what we call a contribution. Tf you owe ten thousand
francs, and your creditors issue writs of attachment on a debt
due to you of a thousand francs, each one of them gets so

much per cent, ‘so much in the pound,’ in legal phrase; so
much (that means) in proportion to the amounts severally
claimed by the creditors. But—the creditors cannot touch the
money without a special order from the clerk of the court. Do
you guess what all this work drawn up by a judge and pre-
pared by attorneys must mean? It means a quantity of
stamped paper full of diffuse lines and blanks, the figures
almost lost in vast spaces of completely empty ruled columns.
The first proceeding is to deduct the costs. N ow, as the costs

 

aid you dees morning,268 A MAN OF BUSINESS

 

are precisely the same whether the amount attached is one
thousand or one million francs, it is not difficult to eat up
three thousand frances (for instance) in costs, especially if
you can manage to raise counter applications.”

“And an attorney always manages to do it,” said Cardot.
“How many a time one of you has come to me with, ‘What is
there to be got out of the case?’ ”

“It is particularly easy to manage it if the debtor eggs you
on to run up costs till they eat up the amount. And, as a
rule, the Count’s creditors took nothing by that move, and
were out of pocket in law and personal expenses. To get
money out of so experienced a debtor as the Count, a creditor
should really be in a position uncommonly difficult to reach;
it is a question of being creditor and debtor both, for then you
are legally entitled to work the confusion of rights, in law
language a

“To the confusion of the debtor?” asked Malaga, lending
an attentive ear to this discourse.

“No, the confusion of rights of debtor and creditor, and pay
yourself through your own hands. So Claparon’s innocence
in merely issuing writs of attachment eased the Count’s mind.
As he came back from the Variétés with Antonia, he was
so much the more taken with the idea of selling the reading-
room to pay off the last two thousand franes of the purchase-
money, because he did not care to have his name made public
as a partner in such a concern. So he adopted Antonia’s plan.
Antonia wished to reach the higher ranks of her calling, with
splendid rooms, a maid, and a carriage; in short, she wanted
to rival our charming hostess, for instance 5

“She was not woman enough for that,” cried the famous
beauty of the Circus; “still, she ruined young d’Esgrignon
very neatly.”

“Ten days afterwards, little Croizeau, perched on his dig-
nity, said almost exactly the same thing, for the fair Antonia’s
benefit,” continued Desroches.

““Child, said he, ‘your reading-room is a hole of a place.
You will lose your complexion; the gas will ruin your eye-A MAN OF BUSINESS 269

sight. You ought to come out of it; and, look here, let us take
advantage of an opportunity. I have found a young lady for
you that asks no better than to buy your reading-room. She is
a ruined woman with nothing before her but a plunge into
the river; but she has four thousand francs in cash, and the
best thing to do is to turn them to account, so as to feed and
educate a couple of children.’

“Very well. It is kind of you, Daddy Croizeau,’ said An-
tonia.

**Oh, I shall be much kinder before I have done. Just
imagine it, poor M. Denisart has been worried into the jaun-
dice! Yes, it has gone to the liver, as it usually does with
susceptible old men. It is a pity he feels things so. I told
him so myself; I said, “Be passionate, there is no harm in
that, but as for taking things to heart—draw the line at that!
It is the way to kill yourself.”—Really, I would not have
expected him to take on so about it; a man that has sense
enough and experience enough to keep away as he does while
he digests his dinner

“<But what is the matter?’ inquired Mlle. Chocardelle.

“<That little baggage with whom I dined has cleared out
and left him! . . . Yes. Gave him the slip without any
warning but a letter, in which the spelling was all to seek.’ q

“<There, Daddy Croizeau, you see what comes of boring a eo
woman ie

“Tt is indeed a lesson, my pretty lady,’ said the guileful |
Croizeau. ‘Meanwhile, I have never seen a man in such a ie
state. Our friend Denisart cannot tell his left hand from | He

 

 

his aa he will not go back to look at the “scene of his hap-
piness,” as he calls it. He has so thoroughly lost his wits, that
he proposes that I should buy all Hortense’s furniture (Hor-
tense was her name) for four thousand francs.’

“*A pretty name,’ said Antonia.

“Yes. Napoleon’s stepdaughter was called Hortense. I
built carriages for her, as you know.’

“Very well, I will see,’ said ona Atanas ‘begin by
sending this young woman to me.’270 A MAN OF BUSINESS

“Antonia hurried off to see the furniture, and came back
fascinated. She brought Maxime under the spell of anti-
quarian enthusiasm. That very evening the Count agreed to
the sale of the reading-room. ‘The establishment, you see,
nominally belonged to Mlle. Chocardelle. Maxime burst out
laughing at the idea of little Croizeau’s finding him a buyer.
The firm of Maxime and Chocardelle was losing two thousand
francs, it is true, but what was the loss compared with four
glorious thousand-franec notes in hand? ‘Four thousand
francs of live coin !—there are moments in one’s life when one
would sign bills for eight thousand to get them,’ as the Count
said to me.

“Two days later the Count must see the furniture himself,
and took the four thousand frances upon him. The sale had
been arranged ; thanks to little Croizeau’s diligence, he pushed
matters on; he had ‘come round’ the widow, as he expressed
it. It was Maxime’s intention to have all the furniture re-
moved at once to a lodging in a new house in the Rue Tron-
chet, taken in the name of Mme. Ida Bonamy; he did not
trouble himself much about the nice old man that was about
to lose his thousand franes. But he had sent beforehand for
several big furniture vans.

“Once again he was fascinated by the beautiful furniture
which a wholesale dealer would have valued at six thousand
francs. By the fireside sat the wretched owner, yellow with
jaundice, his head tied up in a couple of printed handker-
chiefs, and a cotton night-cap on the top of them; he was
huddled up in wrappings like a chandelier, exhausted, unable
to speak, and altogether so knocked to pieces that the Count
was obliged to transact his business with the man-servant.
When he had paid down the four thousand francs, and the
servant had taken the money to his master for a receipt, Max-
ime turned to tell the man to call up the vans to the door; but
even as he spoke, a voice like a rattle sounded in his ears.

“It is not worth while, Monsieur le Comte. You and I are
quits; I have six hundred and thirty francs fifteen centimes
to give you!’A MAN OF BUSINESS 271

“To his utter consternation, he saw Cérizet, emerged from I |
his wrappings like a butterfly from the chrysalis, holding out
the accursed bundle of documents.

““When I was down on my luck, I learned to act on the
stage,’ added Cérizet. ‘I am as good as Bouffé at old men.’

““T have fallen among thieves!’ shouted Maxime.

““No, Monsieur le Comte, you are in Mlle. Hortense’s
house. She is a friend of old Lord Dudley’s; he keeps her
hidden away here; but she has the bad taste to like your hum-
ble servant.’

“Tf ever I longed to kill a man,’ so the Count told me
afterwards, ‘it was at that moment; but what could one do?
Hortense showed her pretty face, one had to laugh. To keep
my dignity, I flung her the six hundred francs. “There’s for
we) sir said: Ie 7 =e

“That is Maxime all over!” cried La Palférine. #

“More especially as it was little Croizeau’s money,” added
Cardot the profound.

“Maxime scored a triumph,” continued Desroches, “for
Hortense exclaimed, ‘Oh! if I had only known that it was

ou Y 22
: “A pretty ‘confusion’ indeed!” put in Malaga. “You have
lost, milord,” she added, turning to the notary. Ee

And in this way the cabinetmaker, to whom Malaga owed a |
hundred crowns, was paid. =

PARIS, 1845,“=
,
3
§GAUDISSART II.

   
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

To Madame la Princesse Cristina de Belgiojoso, née
Trivulzio.

To know how to sell, to be able to sell, and to sell. People
generally do not suspect how much of the stateliness of Paris
is due to these three aspects of the same problem. The brill-
lant display of shops as rich as the salons of the noblesse
before 1789; the splendors of cafés which eclipse, and easily
eclipse, the Versailles of our day; the shop-window illusions,
new every morning, nightly destroyed; the grace and elegance i
of the young men that come in contact with fair customers;
the piquant faces and costumes of young damsels, who cannot
fail to attract the masculine customer; and (and this espe-
cially of late) the length, the vast spaces, the Babylonish
luxury of galleries where shopkeepers acquire a monopoly of
the trade in various articles by bringing them all together,—
all this is as nothing. Everything, so far, has been done to
appeal to a single sense, and that the most exacting and jaded
human faculty, a faculty developed ever since the days of the
Roman Empire, until, in our own times, thanks to the efforts
of the most fastidious civilization the world has yet seen, its
demands are grown limitless. That faculty resides in the
“eyes of Paris.”

Those eyes require illuminations costing a hundred thou-
sand francs, and many-colored glass palaces a couple of miles
long and sixty feet high; they must have a fairyland at some
fourteen theatres every night, and a succession of panoramas
and exhibitions of the triumphs of art; for them a whole Be
world of suffering and pain, and a universe of joy, must re- -
volve through the boulevards or stray through the streets of i
Paris; for them encyclopedias of carnival frippery and a
(273)274 GAUDISSART II.

score of illustrated books are brought out every year, to say
nothing of caricatures by the hundred, and vignettes, litho-
graphs, and prints by the thousand. To please those eyes,
fifteen thousand francs’ worth of gas must blaze every night;
and, to conclude, for their delectation the great city yearly
spends several millions of francs in opening up views and
planting trees. And even yet this is as nothing—it is only
the material side of the question; in truth, a mere trifle com-
pared with the expenditure of brain power on the shifts,
worthy of Molicre, invented by some sixty thousand assistants
and forty thousand damsels of the counter, who fasten upon
the customer’s purse, much as myriads of Seine whitebait fall
upon a chance crust floating down the river.

Gaudissart in the mart is at least the equal of his illustrious
namesake, now become the typical commercial traveler. Take
him away from his shop and his line of business, he is like a
collapsed balloon; only among his bales of merchandise do
his faculties return, much as an actor is sublime only upon
the boards. A French shopman is better educated than his
fellows in other European conntries; he can at need talk as-
phalt, Bal Mabille, polkas, literature, illustrated books, rail-
ways, politics, parliament, and _ revolution; transplant
him, take away his stage, his yardstick, his artificial
graces ; he is foolish beyond belief; but on his own boards, on
the tight-rope of the counter, as he displays a shawl with a
speech at his tongue’s end, and his eye on his customer, he
puts the great Talleyrand into the shade; he has more wit
than a Désaugiers, more wiles than Cleopatra; he is a match
for a Monrose and a Moliére to boot. Talleyrand in his own
house would have outwitted Gaudisgart, but in the shop the
parts would have been reversed.

An incident will illustrate the paradox.

Two charming duchesses were chatting with the above-men-
tioned great diplomatist. The ladies wished for a bracelet ;
they were waiting for the arrival of a man from a great Pa-
risian jeweler. A Gaudissart accordingly appeared with three
bracelets of marvelous workmanship. 'The great ladies hesi-GAUDISSART II. 275

tated. Choice is a mental lightning flash; hesitate—there
is no more to be said, you are at fault. Inspiration in matters
of taste will not come twice. At last, after about ten minutes,
the Prince was called in. He saw the two duchesses confront-
ing doubt with its thousand facets, unable to decide between
the transcendent merits of two of the trinkets, for the third
had been set aside at once. Without leaving his book, without
a glance at the bracelets, the Prince looked at the jeweler’s
assistant.

“Which would you choose for your sweetheart?” asked he.

The young man indicated one of the pair.

“In that case, take the other, you will make two women
happy,” said the subtlest of modern diplomatists, “and make
your sweetheart happy too, in my name.”

The two fair ladies smiled, and the young shopman took
his departure, delighted with the Prince’s present and the
impled compliment to his taste.

A woman alights from her splendid carriage before one of
the expensive shops where shawls are sold in the Rue Vivi-
enne. She is not alone; women almost always go in pairs on
these expeditions; always make the round of half a score of
shops before they make up their minds, and laugh together in
the intervals over the little comedies played for their benefit.
Let us see which of the two acts most in character—the fair
customer or the seller, and which has the best of it in such
miniature vaudevilles?

If you attempt to describe a sale, the central fact of Pari-
sian trade, you are in duty bound, if you attempt to give the
gist of the matter, to produce a type, and for this purpose a
shawl or a chatelaine costing some three thousand francs is a
more exciting purchase than a length of lawn or dress that
costs three hundred. But know, oh foreign visitors from the
Old World and the New (if ever this study of the physiology
of the Invoice should be by you perused), that this selfsame
comedy is played in haberdashers’ shops over a barége at two
francs or a printed muslin at four francs the yard.

And you, princess, or simple citizen’s wife, whichever you276 GAUDISSART II.

may be, how should you distrust that good-looking, very young
man, with those frank, innocent eyes, and a cheek like a peach
covered with down? He is dressed almost as well as your—
cousin, let us say. His tones are as soft as the woolen stuffs
which he spreads before you. There are three or four more of
his like. One has dark eyes, a decided expression, and an
imperial manner of saying, “This is what you wish” ; another,
that blue-eyed youth, diffident of manner and meek of speech,
prompts the remark, “Poor boy! he was not born for busi-
ness”; a third, with light auburn hair, and laughing tawny
eyes, has all the lively humor, and activity, and gaiety of the
South; while the fourth, he of the tawny red hair and fan-
shaped beard, is rough as a communist, with his portentous
cravat, his sternness, his dignity, and curt speech.

These varieties of shopmen, corresponding to the principal
types of feminine customers, are arms, as it were, directed
by the head, a stout personage with a full-blown countenance,
a partially bald forehead, and a chest measure befitting a
Ministerialist deputy. Occasionally this person wears the rib-
bon of the Legion of Honor in recognition of the manner
in which he supports the dignity of the French draper’s wand.
From the comfortable curves of his figure you can see that he
has a wife and family, a country house, and an account with
the Bank of France. He descends like a deus ex machina,
whenever a tangled problem demands a swift solution. The
feminine purchasers are surrounded on all sides with urban-
ity, youth, pleasant manners, smiles, and jests; the most
seeming-simple human products of civilization are here, all
sorted in shades to suit all tastes,

Just one word as to the natural effects of architecture, op-
tical science, and house decoration; one short, decisive, ter-
rible word, of history made on the spot. The work which
contains this instructive page is sold at number 76 Rue de
Richelieu, where above an elegant shop, all white and gold
and crimson velvet, there is an entresol into which the light
pours straight from the Rue de Ménars, as into a painter’s
studio—clean, clear, even daylight. What idler in the streetsGAUDISSART II. 277

has not beheld the Persian, that Asiatic potentate, ruffling
it above the door at the corner of the Rue de la Bourse and
the Rue de Richelieu, with a message to deliver urbi et orbi,
“Here I reign more tranquilly than at Lahore”? Perhaps
but for this immortal analytical study, archeologists might
begin to puzzle their heads about him five hundred years
hence, and set about writing quartos with plates (like M.
Quatremére’s work on Olympian J ove) to prove that Napoleon
was something of a Sofi in the East before he became “Em-
peror of the French.” Well, the wealthy shop laid siege to
the poor little entresol; and after a bombardment with bank-
notes, entered and took possession. The Human Comedy gave
way before the comedy of cashmeres. The Persian sacrificed
a diamond or two from his crown to buy that so necessary
daylight; for a ray of sunlight shows the play of the colors,
brings out the charms of a shawl, and doubles its value; ’tis
an irresistible light; literally, a golden ray. From this fact
you may judge how far Paris shops are arranged with a view
to effect.

But to return to the young assistants, to the beribboned
man of forty whom the King of the French receives at his
table, to the red-bearded head of the department with his
autocrat’s air. Week by week these emeritus Gaudissarts are
brought in contact with whims past counting; they know
every vibration of the cashmere chord in the heart of woman.
No one, be she lady or lorette, a young mother of a family,
a respectable tradesman’s wife, a woman of easy virtue, a
duchess or a brazen-fronted ballet-dancer, an innocent young
girl or a too innocent foreigner, can appear in the shop, but
she is watched from the moment when she first lays her fin-
gers upon the door-handle. Her measure is taken at a glance
by seven or eight men that stand, in the windows, at the coun-
ter, by the door, in a corner, in the middle of the shop, med-
itating, to all appearance, on the joys of a bacchanalian Sun-
day holiday. As you look at them, you ask yourself invol-
untarily, “What can they be thinking about?” Well, in the
space of one second, a woman’s purse, wishes, intentions, and278 GAUDISSART II.

whims are ransacked more thoroughly than a traveling car-
riage at a frontier in an hour and three-quarters. Nothing is
lost on these intelligent rogues. As they stand, solemn as
noble fathers on the stage, they take in all the details of a
fair customer’s dress; an invisible speck of mud on a little
shoe, an antiquated hat-brim, soiled or ill-judged bonnet-
strings, the fashion of the dress, the age of a pair of gloves.
They can tell whether the gown was cut by the intelligent
scissors of a Victorine IV.; they know a modish gewgaw or a
trinket from Froment-Meurice. Nothing, in short, which can
reveal a woman’s quality, fortune, or character passes unre-
marked.

Tremble before them. Never was the Sanhedrim of Gaudis-
sarts, with their chief at their head, known to make a mis-
take. And, moreover, they communicate their conclusions to
one another with telegraphic speed, in a glance, a smile, the
movement of a muscle, a twitch of the lip. If you watch
them, you are reminded of the sudden outbreak of light along
the Champs-Elysées at dusk; one gas-jet does not succeed an-
other more swiftly than an idea flashes from one shopman’s
eyes to the next.

At once, if the lady is English, the dark, mysterious, por-
tentous Gaudissart advances like a romantic character out of
one of Byron’s poems.

If she is a city madam, the oldest is put forward. He
brings out a hundred shawls in fifteen minutes; he turns
her head with colors and patterns: every shawl that he shows
her is like a circle described by a kite wheeling round a hap-
less rabbit, till at the end of half an hour, when her head is
swimming and she is utterly incapable of making a decision
for herself, the good lady, meeting with a flattering response
to all her ideas, refers the question to the assistant, who
promptly leaves her on the horns of a dilemma between two
equally irresistible shawls.

“This, madame, is very becoming—apple-green, the color
of the season; still, fashions change; while as for this other
black-and-white shawl (an opportunity not to be missed),GAUDISSART II. 279

you will never see the end of it, and it will go with any dress.”

This is the A B C of the trade.

“You would not believe how much eloquence is wanted
in that beastly line,” the head Gaudissart of this particular
establishment remarked quite lately to two acquaintances
(Duronceret and Bixiou) who had come trusting in his judg-
ment to buy a shawl. “Look here; you are artists and dis-
creet, I can tell you about the governor’s tricks, and of all
the men I ever saw, he is the cleverest. I do not mean as a
manufacturer, there M. Fritot is first; but as a salesman. He
discovered the ‘Selim shawl,’ an absolutely unsalable article,
yet we never bring it out but we sell it. We keep always a
shawl worth five or six hundred francs in a cedar-wood box,
perfectly plain outside, but lined with satin. It is one of the
shawls that Selim sent to the Emperor Napoleon. It is our
Imperial Guard; it is brought to the front whenever the day
is almost lost; a se vend et ne meurt pas—it sells its life
dearly time after time.”

As he spoke, an Englishwoman stepped from her jobbed
carriage and appeared in all the glory of that phlegmatic
humor peculiar to Britain and to all its products which make
believe they are alive. The apparition put you in mind of the
Commandant’s statue in Don Juan, it walked along, jerkily
by fits and starts, in an awkward fashion invented in London,
and cultivated in every family with patriotic care.

“An Englishwoman!” he continued for Bixiou’s ear. “An
Englishwoman is our Waterloo. There are women who slip
through our fingers like eels; we catch them on the staircase.
There are lorettes who chaff us, we join in the laugh, we have
a hold on them because we give credit. There are sphinx-like
foreign ladies; we take a quantity of shawls to their houses,
and arrive at an understanding by flattery; but an Hnglish-
woman !—you might as well attack the bronze statue of Louis
Quatorze! That sort of woman turns shopping into an occu-
pation, an amusement. She quizzes us, forsooth!”

The romantic assistant came to the front.

“Does madame wish for real Indian shawls or French, some-
thing expensive or -280 GAUDISSART IT.

“TI will see.” (Je véraie.)

“How much would madame propose -

“T will see.”

The shopman went in quest of shawls to spread upon the
mantle-stand, giving his colleagues a significant glance. “What
a bore!’ he said plainly, with an almost imperceptible shrug
of the shoulders.

“These are our best quality in Indian red, blue, and pale
orange—all at ten thousand francs. Here are shawls at five
thousand francs, and others at three.”

The Englishwoman took up her eyeglass and looked round
the room with gloomy indifference: then she submitted the
three stands to the same scrutiny, and made no sign.

“Have you any more?” (Havaivod’héte ?) demanded she.

“Yes, madame. But perhaps madame has not quite de-
cided to take a shawl 2?”

“Oh, quite decided” (tret-deycidat).

The young man went in search of cheaper wares. These he
spread out solemnly as if they were things of price, saying
by his manner, “Pay attention to all this magnificence !”

“These are much more expensive,” said he. “They have
never been worn; they have come by courier direct from the
manufacturers at Lahore.”

“Oh! I see,” said she; “they are much more like the thing
I want.”

The shopman kept his countenance in spite of inward irri-
tation, which communicated itself to Duronceret and Bixiou.
The Englishwoman, cool as a cucumber, appeared to rejoice
in her phlegmatic humor.

“What price?” she asked, indicating a sky-blue shawl coy-
ered with a pattern of birds nestling in pagodas.

“Seven thousand francs.”

She took it up, wrapped it about her shoulders, looked in
the glass, and handed it back again.

“No, I do not like it at all.” (Je name pouinte.)

A long quarter of an hour went by in trying on other
shawls; to no purpose.GAUDISSART II. 281

“This is all we have, madame,” said the assistant, glanc-
ing at the master as he spoke.

“Madame is fastidious, like all persons of taste,” said the
head of the establishment, coming forward with that trades-
man’s suavity in which pomposity is agreeably blended with
subservience. The Englishwoman took up her eyeglass and
scanned the manufacturer from head to foot, unwilling to
understand that the man before her was eligible for Parlia-
ment and dined at the Tuileries.

“T have only one shawl left,” he continued, “but I never
show it. It is not to everybody’s taste; it is quite out of the
common. I was thinking this morning of giving it to my wife.
We have had it in stock since 1805; it belonged to the Em-
press Josephine.”

*‘Let me see it, monsieur.”

“Go for it,’ said the master, turning toa shopman. “It is
at my house.”

“T should be very much pleased to see it,” said the English
lady.

This was a triumph. The splenetic dame was apparently
on the point of going. She made as though she saw nothing
but the shawls; but all the while she furtively watched the
shopmen and the two customers, sheltering her eyes behind
the rims of her eyeglasses.

“Tt cost sixty thousand francs in Turkey, madame.”

“Ohi (raw!)

“Tt is one of seven shawls which Selim sent, before his fall,
to the Emperor Napoleon. The Empress Josephine, a Creole,
as you know, my lady, and very capricious in her tastes, ex-
changed this one for another brought by the Turkish ambassa-
dor, and purchased by my predecessor; but I have never seen
the money back. Our ladies in France are not rich enough;
it is not as it is in England. The shawl is worth seven thou-
sand francs; and taking interest and compound interest al-
together, it makes up fourteen or fifteen thousand by now—”
“How does it make up?” asked the Englishwoman,

“Here it is, madame.”282 GAUDISSART II.

 

With precautions, which a custodian of the Dresden Griine
(rewolbe might have admired, he took out an infinitesimal
key and opened a square cedar-wood box. The Englishwoman
was much impressed with its shape and plainness. From that
box, lined with black satin, he drew a shawl worth about fif-
teen hundred francs, a black pattern on a golden-yellow
ground, of which the startling color was only surpassed by
the surprising efforts of the Indian imagination.

“Splendid,” said the lady, in a mixture of French and
English, “it is really handsome. Just my ideal” (idéol) “of a
shawl; it is very magnificent.” The rest was lost in a ma-
donna’s pose assumed for the purpose of displaying a pair of
frigid eyes which she believed to be very fine.

“It was a great favorite with the Emperor Napoleon; he
took——__”

“A great favorite,” repeated she with her English accent.
Then she arranged the shawl about her shoulders and looked
at herself in the glass. The proprietor took it to the light,
gathered it up in his hands, smoothed it out, showed the gloss
on it, played on it as Liszt plays on the pianoforte keys.

“It is very fine; beautiful, sweet!” said the lady, as com-
posedly as possible.

Duronceret, Bixiou, and the shopmen exchanged amused
glances. “The shawl is sold,” they thought.

“Well, madame?” inquired the proprietor, as the English-
woman appeared to be absorbed in meditations infinitely pro-
longed.

“Decidedly,” said she; “I would rather have a carriage”
(une véteure).

All the assistants, listening with silent rapt attention,
started as one man, as if an electric shock had gone through
them.

“T have a very handsome one, madame,” said the proprietor
with unshaken composure; “it belonged to a Russian princess,
the Princess Narzicof; she left it with me in payment for
goods received. If madame would like to see it, she would
be astonished. It is new; it has not been in use altogether
for ten days; there is not its like in Paris.”1 TY TIT

  

GAUDISSART II. 283

The shopmen’s amazement was suppressed by profound
admiration.

“T am quite willing.”

“If madame will keep the shawl,” suggested the proprietor,
“she can try the effect in the carriage.” And he went for his
hat and gloves.

“How will this end?” asked the head assistant, as he
watched his employer offer an arm to the English lady and
go down with her to the jobbed brougham.

By this time the thing had come to be as exciting as the
last chapter of a novel for Duronceret and Bixiou, even with-
out the additional interest attached to all contests, however
trifling, between England and France.

Twenty minutes later the proprietor returned.

“Go to the Hotel Lawson (here is the card, ‘Mrs. Nos-
well’), and take an invoice that I will give you. There are
six thousand francs to take.”

“How did you do it?” asked Duronceret, bowing before
the king of invoices.

“Oh, I saw what she was, an eccentric woman that loves to
be conspicuous. As soon as she saw that every one stared at
her, she said, ‘Keep your carriage, monsieur, my mind is
made up; I will take the shawl.’ While M. Bigorneau (indi-
cating the romantic-looking assistant) was serving, I watched
her carefully ; she kept one eye on you all the time to see what
you thought of her; she was thinking more about you than of
the shawls. Englishwomen are peculiar in their distaste (for
one cannot call it taste) ; they do not know what they want;
they make up their minds to be guided by circumstances at
the time, and not by their own choice. I saw the kind of
woman at once, tired of her husband, tired of her brats, re-
gretfully virtuous, craving excitement, always posing as a
weeping willow. a

These were his very words.

Which proves that in all other countries of the world a shop-
keeper is a shopkeeper; while in France, and in Paris more
particularly, he is a student from a Collége Royal, a well-read284 GAUDISSART II.

man with a taste for art, or angling, or the theatre, and con-
sumed, it may be, with a desire to be M. Cunin-Gridaine’s
successor, or a colonel of the National Guard, or a member
of the General Council of the Seine, or a referee in the Com-
mercial Court.

“M. Adolphe,” said the mistress of the establishment, ad-
dressing the slight fair-haired assistant, “go to the joiner and
order another cedar-wood box.”

“And now,” remarked the shopman who had assisted Du-
ronceret and Bixiou to choose a shawl for Mme. Schontz, “now

we will go through our old stock to find another Selim shawl.

PARIS, November 1844.SARRASINE

caer

i
oe
pe
,COPYRIGHT, 1899,

By CROSCUP & STERLING COMPANYSARRASINE
To Monsieur Charles Bernard du Grail.

I was buried in one of those profound reveries to which every-
body, even a frivolous man, is subject in the midst of the most
uproarious festivities. The clock on the Elysée-Bourbon had
just struck midnight. Seated in a window recess and con-
cealed behind the undulating folds of a curtain of watered
silk, I was able to contemplate at my leisure the garden of the
mansion at which I was passing the evening. The trees, being
partly covered with snow, were outlined indistinctly against
the grayish background formed by a cloudy sky, barely whit-
ened by the moon. Seen through the medium of that strange
atmosphere, they bore a vague resemblance to spectres care-
lessly enveloped in their shrouds, a gigantic image of the fa-
mous Dance of Death. Then, turning in the other direction,
I could gaze admiringly upon the dance of the living! a mag-
nificent salon, with walls of silver and gold, with gleaming
chandeliers, and bright with the light of many candles. There
the loveliest, the wealthiest women in Paris, bearers of the
proudest titles, moved hither and thither, fluttered from room
to room in swarms, stately and gorgeous, dazzling with dia-
monds; flowers on their heads and breasts, in their hair, scat-
tered over their dresses or lying in garlands at their feet.
Light quiverings of the body, voluptuous movements, made
the laces and gauzes and silks swirl about their graceful fig-
ures. Sparkling glances here and there eclipsed the lights,
and the blaze of the diamonds, and fanned the flame of hearts
already burning too brightly. I detected also significant nods
of the head for lovers and repellent attitudes for husbands.
The exclamations of the card-players at every unexpected
coup, the jingle of gold, mingled with the music and the mur-
(287)288 SARRASINE

mur of conversation; and to put the finishing touch to the
vertigo of that multitude, intoxicated by all the seductions the
world can offer, a perfume-laden atmosphere and general ex-
altation acted upon their over-wrought imaginations. Thus,
at my right was the depressing, silent image of death; at my
left the decorous bacchanalia of life; on the one side nature,
cold and gloomy, and in mourning garb; on the other side,
man on pleasure bent. And, standing on the borderland of
those two incongruous pictures, which, repeated thousands
of times in diverse ways, make Paris the most entertaining
and most philosophical city in the world, I played a mental
macédoine,* half jesting, half funereal. With my left foot I
kept time to the music, and the other felt as if it were in a
tomb. My leg was, in fact, frozen by one of those draughts
which congeal one half of the body while the other suffers
from the intense heat of the salons—a state of things not un-
usual at balls.

“Monsieur de Lanty has not owned this house very long,
has he?”

“Oh, yes! It is nearly ten years since the Maréchal de Ca-
rigliano sold it to him.”

Nh 122

“These people must have an enormous fortune.”

“They surely must.”

“What a magnificent party! It is almost insolent in its
splendor.”

“Do you imagine they are as rich as Monsieur de Nucin-
gen or Monsieur de Gondreville ?”

“Why, don’t you know?”

I leaned forward and recognized the two persons who were
talking as members of that inquisitive genus which, in Paris,
busies itself exclusively with the Whys and Hows. Where
does he come from? Who are they? What's the matter with
him? What has she done? They lowered their voices and

Macédoine, in the sense in which it is here used, is a game, or rather a series of

games, of cards, each player, when it is his turn to deal, selecting the game to
be played.SARRASINE 289

walked away in order to talk more at their ease on some re-
tired couch. Never was a more promising mine laid open to
seekers after mysteries. No one knew from what country
the Lanty family came, nor to what souree—commerce, extor-
tion, piracy, or inheritance—they owed a fortune estimated
at several millions. All the members of the family spoke
Italian, French, Spanish, English, and German, with sufh-
cient fluency to lead one to suppose that they had lived long
among those different peoples. Were they gypsies? were they |
buccaneers?

“Suppose they’re the devil himself,” said divers young poli-
ticians, “they entertain mighty well.”

“The Comte de Lanty may have plundered some Casbah for |
all I care; I would like to marry his daughter!” cried a phil- .
osopher.

Who would not have married Marianina, a girl of sixteen,
whose beauty realized the fabulous conceptions of Oriental ee
poets! Like the Sultan’s daughter in the tale of the Won- |
derful Lamp, she should have remained always veiled. Her
singing obscured the imperfect talents of the Malibrans, the
Sontags, and the Fodors, in whom some one dominant quality
always mars the perfection of the whole; whereas Marianina
combined in equal degree purity of tone, exquisite feeling,
accuracy of time and intonation, science, soul, and delicacy.
She was the type of that hidden poesy, the link which con-
nects all the arts and which always eludes those who seek it.
Modest, sweet, well-informed, and clever, none could eclipse
Marianina unless it were her mother.

Have you ever met one of those women whose startling
beauty defies the assaults of time, and who seem at thirty-
six more desirable than they could have been fifteen years
earlier? Their faces are impassioned souls; they fairly
sparkle; each feature gleams with intelligence ; each possesses
a brilliancy of its own, especially in the light. Their capti-
vating eyes attract or repel, speak or are silent; their gait is \
artlessly seductive ; their voices unfold the melodious treasures |
of the most coquettishly sweet and tender tones. Praise of290 SARRASINE

their beauty, based upon comparisons, flatters the most sensi-
tive self-esteem. A movement of their eyebrows, the slightest
play of the eye, the curling of the lip, instils a sort of terror
in those whose lives and happiness depend upon their favor.
A maiden inexperienced in love and easily moved by words
may allow herself to be seduced; but in dealing with women
of this sort, a man must be able, like M. de Jaucoutrt, to re-
frain from crying out when, in hiding him in a closet, the
lady’s maid crushes two of his fingers in the crack of a door.
To love one of these omnipotent sirens is to stake one’s life, is
it not? And that, perhaps, is why we love them so passion-
ately! Such was the Comtesse de Lanty.

Filippo, Marianina’s brother, inherited, as did his sister, the
Countess’ marvelous beauty. To tell the whole story in a
word, that young man was a living image of Antinoiis, with
somewhat slighter proportions. But how well such a slender
and delicate figure accords with youth, when an olive com-
plexion, heavy eyebrows, and the gleam of a velvety eye prom-
ise virile passions, noble ideas for the future! If Pilippo
remained in the hearts of young women as a type of manly
beauty, he likewise remained in the memory of all mothers as
the best match in France.

The beauty, the great wealth, the intellectual qualities, of
these two children came entirely from their mother. The
Comte de Lanty was a short, thin, ugly little man, as dismal
as a Spaniard, as great a bore as a banker. He was looked
upon, however, as a profound politician, perhaps because he
rarely laughed, and was always quoting M. de Metternich or
Wellington.

This mysterious family had all the attractiveness of a poem
by Lord Byron, whose difficult passages were translated dif-
ferently by each person in fashionable society; a poem that
grew more obscure and more sublime from strophe to strophe.
The reserve which Monsieur and Madame de Lanty main-
tained concerning their origin, their past lives, and their re-
lations with the four quarters of the globe would not, of itself,
have been for long a subject of wonderment in Paris. In noSARRASINE 291

other country, perhaps, is Vespasian’s maxim more thor-
oughly understood. Here gold pieces, even when stained with
blood or mud, betray nothing, and represent everything. Pro-
vided that good society knows the amount of your fortune, you
are classed among those figures which equal yours, and no
one asks to see your credentials, because everybody knows how
little they cost. In a city where social problems are solved
by algebraic equations, adventurers have many chances in
their favor. Even if this family were of gypsy extraction, it
was so wealthy, so attractive, that fashionable society could
well afford to overlook its little mysteries. But, unfortu-
nately, the enigmatical history of the Lanty family offered a
perpetual subject of curiosity, not unlike that aroused by the
novels of Anne Radcliffe.

People of an observing turn, of the sort who are bent upon
finding out where you buy your candelabra, or who ask you
what rent you pay when they are pleased with your apart-
ments, had noticed, from time to time, the appearance of an
extraordinary personage at the fétes, concerts, balls, and
routs given by the countess. It was aman. The first time
that he was seen in the house was at a concert, when he seemed
to have been drawn to the salon by Marianina’s enchanting
voice.

“T have been cold for the last minute or two,” said a lady
near the door to her neighbor.

The stranger, who was standing near the speaker, moved
away.

“This is very strange! now I am warm,” she said, after
his departure. “Perhaps you will call me mad, but I cannot
help thinking that my neighbor, the gentleman in black who
just walked away, was the cause of my feeling cold.”

Ere long the exaggeration to which people in society are
naturally inclined, produced a large and growing crop of the
most amusing ideas, the most curious expressions, the most ab-
surd fables concerning this mysterious individual. Without
being precisely a vampire, a ghoul, a fictitious man, a sort of
Faust or Robin des Bois, he partook of the nature of all these292 SARRASINE

anthropomorphic conceptions, according to those persons who
were addicted to the fantastic. Occasionally some German
would take for realities these ingenious jests of Parisian evil-
speaking. The stranger was simply an old man. Some young
men, who were accustomed to decide the future of Europe
every morning in a few fashionable phrases, chose to see in
the stranger some great criminal, the possessor of enormous
wealth. Novelists described the old man’s life and gave some
really interesting details of the atrocities committed by him
while he was in the service of the Prince of Mysore. Bankers,
men of a more positive nature, devised a specious fable.

“Bah!” they would say, shrugging their broad shoulders
pityingly, “that little old fellow’s a Genoese head!”

“If it is not an impertinent question, monsieur, would
you have the kindness to tell me what you mean by a Genoese
head 2”

“T mean, monsieur, that he is a man upon whose life enor-
mous sums depend, and whose good health is undoubtedly es-
sential to the continuance of this family’s income. I remem-
ber that I once heard a mesmerist, at Madame d’ Espard’s,
undertake to prove by very specious historical deductions,
that this old man, if put under the magnifying glass, would
turn out to be the famous Balsamo, otherwise called Cagli-
ostro. According to this modern alchemist, the Sicilian had
escaped death, and amused himself making gold for his grand-
children. And the Bailli of Ferette declared that he recog-
nized in this extraordinary personage the Comte de Saint-
Germain.”

Such nonsense as this, put forth with the assumption of
superior cleverness, with the air of raillery, which in our day
characterize a society devoid of faith, kept alive vague sus-
picions concerning the Lanty family. At last, by a strange
combination of circumstances, the members of that family jus-
tified the conjectures of society by adopting a decidedly mys-
terious course of conduct with this old man, whose life was,
in a certain sense, kept hidden from all investigations.

If he crossed the threshold of the apartment he was sup-SARRASINE 293

posed to occupy in the Lanty mansion, his appearance always
caused a great sensation in the family. One would have sup-
posed that it was an event of the greatest importance. Only
Filippo, Marianina, Madame de Lanty, and an old servant
enjoyed the privilege of assisting the unknown to walk, to rise,
to sit down. Each one of them kept a close watch on his
slightest movements. It seemed as if he were some enchanted
person upon whom the happiness, the life, or the fortune of all
depended. Was it fear or affection? Society could discover
no indication which enabled them to solve this problem. Con-
cealed for months at a time in the depths of an unknown
sanctuary, this familar spirit suddenly emerged, furtively as
it were, unexpectedly, and appeared in the salons like the fair-
ies of old, who alighted from their winged dragons to disturb
festivities to which they had not been invited. Only the most
experienced observers could divine the anxiety, at such times,
of the masters of the house, who were peculiarly skilful in
concealing their feelings. But sometimes, while dancing a
quadrille, the too ingenuous Marianina would cast a terrified
glance at the old man, whom she watched closely from the
circle of dancers. Or perhaps Filippo would leave his place
and glide through the crowd to where he stood, and remain be-
side him, affectionate and watchful, as if the touch of man,
or the faintest breath, would shatter that extraordinary crea-
ture. The countess would try to draw nearer to him without
apparently intending to join him; then, assuming a manner
and an expression in which servility and affection, submissive-
ness and tyranny, were equally noticeable, she would say two
or three words, to which the old man almost always deferred ;
and he would disappear, led, or I might better say carried
away, by her. If Madame de Lanty were not present, the
Count would employ a thousand ruses to reach his side; but
it always seemed as if he found difficulty in inducing him to
listen, and he treated him like a spoiled child, whose mother
eratifies his whims and at the same time suspects mutiny.
Some prying persons having ventured to question the Comte
de Lanty indiscreetly, that cold and reserved individualwas tossing about in my brain, emerged from it and stood be-

  

294 SARRASINE

seemed not to understand their questions. And so, after many
attempts, which the circumspection of all the members of the
family rendered fruitless, no one sought to discover a secret so
well guarded. Society spies, triflers, and politicians, weary of
the strife, ended by ceasing to concern themselves about the
mystery.

But at that moment, it may be, there were in those gor-
geous salons philosophers who said to themselves, as they dis-
cussed an ice or a sherbet, or placed their empty punch glasses
on a tray:

“TI should not be surprised to learn that these people are
knaves. That old fellow who keeps out of sight and appears
only at the equinoxes or soelstices, looks to me exactly like an
assassin.”

“Or a bankrupt.”

“There’s very little difference. To destroy a man’s fortune
is worse sometimes than to kill the man himself.”

“T bet twenty louis, monsieur; there are forty due me.”

“Faith, monsieur; there are only thirty left on the cloth.”

“Just see what a mixed company there is here! One can’t
play cards in peace.”

“Very true. But it’s almost six months since we saw the
Spirit. Do you think he’s a living being ?”

“Well, barely.”

‘These last remarks were made in my neighborhood by per-
sons whom I did not know, and who passed out of hearing just
as I was summarizing in one last thought my reflections, in
which black and white, life and death, were inextricably
mingled. My wandering imagination, like my eyes, contem-
plated alternately the festivities, which had now reached the
climax of their splendor, and the gloomy picture presented by
the gardens. I have no idea how long I meditated upon those
two faces of the human medal; but I was suddenly aroused by
the stifled laughter of a young woman. I was stupefied at the
picture presented to my eyes. By virtue of one of the strang-
est of nature’s freaks, the thought half draped in black, whichSARRASINE 295

fore me personified, living; it had come forth like Minerva
from Jupiter’s brain, tall and strong; it was at once a hundred
years old and twenty-two; it was alive and dead. TEscaped
from his chamber, like a madman from his cell, the little old
man had evidently crept behind a long line of people who were
listening attentively to Marianina’s voice as she finished the
cavatina from J'ancred. He seemed to have come up through
the floor, impelled by some stage mechanism. He stood for a
moment motionless and sombre, watching the festivities, a
murmur of which had perhaps reached his ears. His almost
somnambulistiec preoccupation was so concentrated upon
things that, although he was in the midst of many people, he
saw nobody. He had taken his place unceremoniously beside
one of the most fascinating women in Paris, a young and
graceful dancer, with slender figure, a face as fresh as a child’s,
all pink and white, and so fragile, so transparent, that it
seemed that a man’s glance must pass through her as the sun’s
rays pass through flawless glass. They stood there before
me, side by side, so close together, that the stranger rubbed
against the gauze dress, and the wreaths of flowers, and the
hair, slightly crimped, and the floating ends of the sash.

I had brought that young woman to Madame de. Lanty’s
ball. As it was her first visit to that house, I forgave her her
stifled langh; but I hastily made an imperious sign which
abashed her and inspired respect for her neighbor. She sat
down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the
charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the
silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old
persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children.
In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a fold-
ing-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the inert
heaviness, the stupid hesitancy, which characterize the move-
ments of a paralytic. He sat slowly down upon his chair with
great caution, mumbling some unintelligible words. His
cracked voice resembled the noise made by a stone falling into
a well. The young woman nervously pressed my hand, as if
she were trying to avoid a precipice, and shivered when that

     
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

TscemacL ai 2296 SARRASINE

man, at whom she happened to be looking, turned upon her
two lifeless, sea-green eyes, which could be compared to
nothing save tarnished mother-of-pearl.

“T am afraid,” she said, putting her lips to my ear.

“You can speak,” I replied; “he hears with great difficulty.”

“You know him, then?”

OViaci2

Thereupon she summoned courage to scrutinize for a mo-
ment that creature for which no human language has a name,
form without substance, a being without life, or life without
action. She was under the spell of that timid curiosity which
impels women to seek perilous excitement, to gaze at chained
tigers and boa-constrictors, shuddering all the while because
the barriers between them are so weak. Although the little
old man’s back was bent like a day-laborer’s, it was easy to
see that he must formerly have been of medium height. His
excessive thinness, the slenderness of his limbs, proved that he
had always been of slight build. He wore black silk breeches
which hung about his fleshless thighs in folds, like a lowered
veil. An anatomist would instinctively have recognized the
symptoms of consumption in its advanced stages, at sight of
the tiny legs which served to support that strange frame. You
would have said that they were a pair of cross-bones on a
gravestone. A feeling of profound horror seized the heart
when a close scrutiny revealed the marks made by decrepitude
upon that frail machine.

He wore a white waistcoat embroidered with gold, in the
old style, and his linen was of dazzling whiteness. A shirt-
frill of English lace, yellow with age, the magnificence of
which a queen might have envied, formed a series of yellow
ruffles on his breast; but upon him the lace seemed rather a
worthless rag than an ornament. In the centre of the frill a
diamond of inestimable value gleamed like a sun. That super-
annuated splendor, that display of treasure, of great intrinsic
worth, but utterly without taste, served to bring out in still
bolder relief the strange creature’s face. The frame was
worthy of the portrait. That dark face was full of anglesSARRASINE 297

and furrowed deep in every direction; the chin was furrowed;
there were great hollows at the temples; the eyes were sunken
in yellow orbits. The maxillary bones, which his indescribable
gauntness caused to protrude, formed deep cavities in the
centre of both cheeks. These protuberances, as the light fell
upon them, caused curious effects of light and shadow which
deprived that face of the last vestige of resemblance to the
human countenance. And then, too, the lapse of years had
drawn the fine, yellow skin so close to the bones that it de- |
scribed a multitude of wrinkles everywhere, either circular like
the ripples in the water caused by a stone which a child throws
in, or star-shaped like a pane of glass cracked by a blow; but
everywhere very deep, and as close together as the leaves of a
closed book. We often see more hideous old men; but what
contributed more than aught else to give to the spectre that Hee
rose before us the aspect of an artificial creation was the red | Aae
and white paint with which he glistened. The eyebrows shone
in the hight with a lustre which disclosed a very well executed A
bit of painting. Luckily for the eye, saddened by such a mass
of ruins, his corpse-like skull was concealed beneath a light
wig, with innumerable curls which indicated extraordinary
pretensions to elegance. Indeed, the feminine coquettishness
of this fantastic apparition was emphatically asserted by the
gold ear-rings which hung at his ears, by the rings contain- (3
ing stones of marvelous beauty which sparkled on his fingers,
like the brilliants in a river of gems around a woman’s neck.
Lastly, this species of Japanese idol had constantly upon his
blue lips, a fixed, unchanging smile, the shadow of an implac- ie
able and sneering laugh, like that of a death’s head. As silent ie
and motionless as a statue, he exhaled the musk-like odor of Es}
the old dresses which a duchess’ heirs exhume from her ward-
robe during the inventory. If the old man turned his eyes
toward the company, it seemed that the movements of those
globes, no longer capable of reflecting a gleam, were accom-
plished by an almost imperceptible effort ; and, when the eyes |
stopped, he who was watching them was not certain finally
that they had moved at all. As I saw, beside that human ruin,298 SARRASINE

 

a young woman whose bare neck and arms and breast were
white as snow; whose figure was well-rounded and beautiful
in its youthful grace; whose hair, charmingly arranged above
an alabaster forehead, inspired love; whose eyes did not re-
ceive but gave forth light, who was sweet and fresh, and whose
fluffy curls, whose fragrant breath, seemed too heavy, too
harsh, too overpowering for that shadow, for that man of dust
—ah! the thought that came into my mind was of death and
life, an imaginary arabesque, a half-hideous chimera, divinely
feminine from the waist up.

“And yet such marriages are often made in society!” I said
to myself.

“He smells of the cemetery!” cried the terrified young wo-
man, grasping my arm as if to make sure of my protection,
and moving about in a restless, excited way, which convinced
me that she was very much frightened. “It’s a horrible
vision,” she continued; “I cannot stay here any longer. If I
look at him again I shall believe that Death himself has come
in search of me. But is he alive?”

She placed her hand on the phenomenon, with the boldness
which women derive from the violence of their wishes, but a
cold sweat burst from her pores, for, the instant she touched
the old man, she heard a ery like the noise made by a rattle.
That shrill voice, if indeed it were a voice, escaped from a
throat almost entirely dry. It was at once succeeded by a
convulsive little cough like a child’s, of a peculiar resonance.
At that sound, Marianina, Filippo, and Madame de Lanty
looked toward us, and their glances were like lightning
flashes. The young woman wished that she were at the bot-
tom of the Seine. She took my arm and pulled me away to-
ward a boudoir. Everybody, men and women, made room for
us to pass. Having reached the farther end of the suite of
reception-rooms, we entered a small semi-circular cabinet.
My companion threw herself on a divan, breathing fast with
terror, not knowing where she was.
f'You are mad, madame,” I said to her.

“But,” she rejoined, after a moment’s silence, during whichSARRASINE 259

I gazed at her in admiration, “is it my fault? Why does
Madame de Lanty allow ghosts to wander round her house?”

‘“‘Nonsense,” I replied; ‘“‘you are doing just what fools do.
You mistake a little old man for a spectre.”

“Hush,” she retorted, with the imposing, yet mocking, air
which all women are so well able to assume when they are
determined to put themselves in the right. “Oh! what a sweet
boudoir !” she cried, looking about her. “Blue satin hangings
always produce an admirable effect. How coolitis! Ah! the
lovely picture!” she added, rising and standing in front of a
magnificently framed painting.

We stood for a moment gazing at that marvel of art, which
seemed the work of some supernatural brush. The picture
represented Adonis stretched out on a lion’s skin. The lamp,
in an alabaster vase, hanging in the centre of the boudoir, cast
upon the canvas a soft light which enabled us to grasp all the
beauties of the picture.

“Does such a perfect creature exist?’ she asked me, after
examining attentively, and not without a sweet smile of sat-
isfaction, the exquisite grace of the outlines, the attitude, the
color, the hair, in fact everything.

“He is too beautiful for a man,” she added, after such a
scrutiny as she would have bestowed upon a rival.

Ah! how sharply I felt at that moment those pangs of
jealousy in which a poet had tried in vain to make me believe!
the jealousy of engravings, of pictures, of statues, wherein
artists exaggerate human beauty, as a result of the doctrine
which leads them to idealize everything.

“It is a portrait,” I replied. “It is a product of Vien’s
genius. But that great painter never saw the original, and
your admiration will be modified somewhat perhaps, when I
tell you that this study was made from a statue of a woman.”

“But who is it?”

I hesitated.

“T insist upon knowing,” she added earnestly.

“I believe,” I said, “that this Adonis represents a—a rela-
tive of Madame de Lanty.”300 SARRASINE

I had the chagrin of seeing that she was lost in contempla-
tion of that figure. She sat down in silence, and I seated my-
self beside her and took her hand without her noticing it.
Forgotten for a portrait! At that moment we heard in the
silence a woman’s footstep and the faint rustling of a dress.
We saw the youthful Marianina enter the boudoir, even more
resplendent by reason of her expression of innocence than by
reason of her grace and her fresh costume; she was walking
slowly and leading with motherly care, with a daughter’s
solicitude, the spectre in human attire, who had driven us
from the music-room; as she led him, she watched with some
anxiety the slow movement of his feeble fect. They walked
painfully across the boudoir to a door hidden in the hang-
ings. Marianina knocked softly. Instantly a tall, thin man,
a sort of familar spirit, appeared as if by magic. Before en-
trusting the old man to this mysterious guardian, the lovely
child, with deep veneration, kissed the ambulatory corpse, and
her chaste caress was not without a touch of that graceful
playfulness, the secret of which only a few privileged women
possess.

“Addio, addio!” she said, with the sweetest inflection of
her young voice.

She added to the last syllable a wonderfully executed trill,
in a very low tone, as if to depict the overflowing affection
of her heart by a poetic expression. The old man, suddenly
arrested by some memory, remained on the threshold of that
secret retreat. In the profound silence we heard the sigh that
came forth from his breast; he removed the most beautiful of
the rings with which his skeleton fingers were laden, and
placed it in Marianina’s bosom. The young madcap laughed,
plucked out the ring, slipped it on one of her fingers over her
glove, and ran hastily back toward the salon, where the or-
chestra were, at that moment, beginning the prelude of a
contra-dance.

She spied us.
“Ah! were you here?” she said, blushing.
After a searching glance at us as if to question us, she ranSARRASINE 301

away to her partner with the careless petulance of her years.

“What does this mean?” queried my young partner. “Is
he her husband? I believe lam dreaming. Where am I?”

“You!” I retorted, “you, madame, who are easily excited,
and who, understanding so well the most imperceptible emo-
tions, are able to cultivate in a man’s heart the most delicate
of sentiments, without crushing it, without shattering it at
the very outset, you who have compassion for the tortures of
the heart, and who, with the wit of the Parisian, combine a
passionate temperament worthy of Spain or Italy e

She realized that my words were heavily charged with bit-
ter irony; and, thereupon, without seeming to notice it, she
interrupted me to say:

“Oh! you describe me to suit your own taste. A strange
kind of tyranny! You wish me not to be myself!”

“Oh! I wish nothing,” I cried, alarmed by the severity of
her manner. “At all events, it is true, is it not, that you like
to hear stories of the fierce passions kindled in our hearts by
the enchanting women of the South?”

“Yes. And then?’

“Why, I will come to your house about nine o’elock to-
morrow evening, and elucidate this mystery for you.”

“No,” she replied, with a pout; “I wish it done now.”

“You have not yet given me the right to obey you when
you say, ‘I wish it.”

“At this moment,” she said, with an exhibition of coquetry
of the sort that drives men to despair, “I have a most violent
desire to know this secret. ‘To-morrow it may be that I will
not listen to you.”

She smiled and we parted, she still as proud and as cruel, I
as ridiculous, as ever. She had the audacity to waltz with a
young aide-de-camp, and I was by turns angry, sulky, admir-
ing, loving, and jealous.

“TIntil to-morrow,” she said to me, as she left the ball about
two o’clock in the morning.

“I won’t go,” I thought. “I give you up. You are a thou-
sand times more capricious, more fanciful, than—my imagina-
tion.”302 SARRASINE

i The next evening we were seated in front of a bright fire
yh in a dainty little salon, she on a couch, I on cushions almost
f | at her feet, looking up into her face. The street was silent.
hil The lamp shed a soft light. It was one of those evenings
: i which delight the soul, one of those moments which are never
i: forgotten, one of those hours passed in peace and longing,
fa whose charm is always in later years a source of regret, even
we when we are happier. What can efface the deep imprint of
the first solicitations of love?

“Go on,” she said. “I am listening.”

“But I dare not begin. There are passages in the story
which are dangerous to the narrator. If I become excited,
| you will make me hold my peace.”

“Speak.”

“I obey.

“Ernest-Jean Sarrasine was the only son of a prosecuting
attorney of Franche-Comté,” I began, after a pause. © Tis
father had, by faithful work, amassed a fortune which yielded
an income of six to eight thousand francs, then considered a
colossal fortune for an attorney in the provinces. Old Maitre
Sarrasine, having but one child, determined to give him a
thorough education; he hoped to make a magistrate of him,
and to live long enough to see, in his old age, the grandson
of Mathieu Sarrasine, a ploughman in the Saint-Dié country,
seated on the lilies, and dozing through the sessions for the

\ greater glory of the Parliament; but Heaven had not that joy
in store for the attorney. Young Sarrasine, entrusted to the
care of the Jesuits at an early age, gave indications of an ex-
traordinarily unruly disposition. His was the childhood of a
man of talent. He would not study except as his inclination
led him, often rebelled, and sometimes remained for whole
hours at a time buried in tangled meditations, engaged now
in watching his comrades at play, now in forming mental
pictures of Homer’s heroes. And, when he did choose to

| amuse himself, he displayed extraordinary ardor in his games.

a Whenever there was a contest of any sort between a comrade

and himself, it rarely ended without bloodshed. If he wereSARRASINE 303

the weaker, he would use his teeth. Active and passive by

turns, either lacking in aptitude, or too intelligent, his ab-

normal temperament caused him to distrust his masters as

much as his schoolmates. Instead of learning the elements of

the Greek language, he drew a picture of the reverend father

who was interpreting a passage of Thucydides, sketched the

teacher of mathematics, the prefect, the assistants, the man

who administered punishment, and smeared all the walls with

shapeless figures. Instead of singing the praises of the Lord

in the chapel, he amused himself, during the services, by

notching a bench; or, when he had stolen a piece of wood, he

would carve the figure of some saint. If he had no wood or

stone or pencil, he worked out his ideas with bread. Whether |

he copied the figures in the pictures which adorned the choir,

or improvised, he always left at his seat rough sketches whose

obscene character drove the young fathers to despair; and the

evil-tongued alleged that the Jesuits smiled at them. At last,

if we are to believe college traditions, he was expelled because, i

while awaiting his turn to go to the confessional one Good (a

Friday, he carved a figure of the Christ from a stick of wood.

The impiety evidenced by that figure was too flagrant not to

draw down chastisement on the artist. He had actually had

the hardihood to place that decidedly cynical image on the top FF

of the tabernacle! ee
“Sarrasine came to Paris to seek a refuge against the | &

threats of a father’s malediction. Having one of those strong

wills which know no obstacles, he obeyed the behests of his

genius and entered Bouchardon’s studio. He worked all day

and went about at night begging for subsistence. Bouchardon,

marveling at the young artist’s intelligence and rapid prog-

ress, soon divined his pupil’s destitute condition ; he assisted

him, became attached to him, and treated him like his own

child. Then, when Sarrasine’s genius stood revealed in one

of those works wherein future talent contends with the effer-

vescence of youth, the generous Bouchardon tried to restore

him to the old attorney’s good graces. The paternal wrath (4

subsided in face of the famous sculptor’s authority. All Be-

nya «304 SARRASINE

sancon congratulated itself on having brought forth a future
great man. In the first outburst of delight due to his flat-
tered vanity, the miserly attorney supplied his son with the
Means to appear to advantage in society. The long and la-
borious study demanded by the sculptor’s profession subdued
for a long time Sarrasine’s impetuous temperament and un-
ruly genius. Bouchardon, foreseeing how violently the pas-
sions would some day rage in that youthful heart, as highly
tempered perhaps as Michelangelo’s, smothered its vehemence
with constant toil. He succeeded in restraining within rea-
sonable bounds Sarrasine’s extraordinary impetuosity, by for-
bidding him to work, by proposing diversions when he saw
that he was carried away by the violence of some idea, or by
placing important work in his hands when he saw that he was
on the point of plunging into dissipation. But with that
passionate nature, gentleness was always the most powerful of
all weapons, and the master did not acquire great influence
over his pupil until he had aroused his gratitude by fatherly
kindness.

“At the age of twenty-two Sarrasine was forcibly removed
from the salutary influence which Bouchardon exercised over
his morals and his habits. He paid the penalty of his genius
by winning the prize for sculpture founded by the Marquis de
Marigny, Madame de Pompadour’s brother, who did so much
for art. Diderot praised Bouchardon’s pupil’s statue as a
masterpiece. Not without profound sorrow did the king’s
sculptor witness the departure for Italy of a young man whose
profound ignorance of the things of life he had, as a matter
of principle, refrained from enlightening. Sarrasine was
Bouchardon’s guest for six years. Fanatically devoted to his
art, as Canova was at a later day, he rose at dawn and went
to the studio, there to remain until night, and lived with his
muse alone. If he went to the Comédie-Francaise, he was
dragged thither by his master. He was so bored at Madame
Geoffrin’s, and in the fashionable society to which Bouchardon
tried to introduce him, that he preferred to remain alone, and
held aloof from the pleasures of that licentious age. He hadREUSE STC!

  

SARRASINE 305

no other mistresses than sculpture and Clotilde, one of the
celebrities of the Opéra. Even that intrigue was of brief du-
ration. Sarrasine was decidedly ugly, always badly dressed,
and naturally so independent, so irregular in his private life,
that the illustrious nymph, dreading some catastrophe, soon
remitted the sculptor to love of the arts. Sophie Arnould
made some witty remark on the subject. She was surprised, I
think, that her colleague was able to triumph over statues.

“Sarrasine started for Italy in 1758. On the journey his
ardent imagination took fire beneath a sky of copper and at
sight of the marvelous monuments with which the fatherland
of the arts is strewn. He admired the statues, the frescoes,
the pictures; and, fired with a spirit of emulation, he went on
to Rome, burning to inscribe his name between the names of
Michelangelo and Bouchardon. At first, therefore, he divided
his time between his studio work and examination of the works
of art which abound in Rome. He had already passed a fort-
night in the ecstatic state into which all youthful imagina-
tions fall at sight of the queen of ruins, when he happened
one evening to enter the Argentina theatre, in front of which
there was an enormous crowd. He inquired the reasons for
the presence of so great a throng, and every one answered by
two names:

“ <Zambinella! Jomell !’

“He entered and took a seat in the pit, crowded between
two unconscionably stout abbati; but luckily he was quite
near the stage. The curtain rose. For the first time in his
life he heard the music whose charms Monsieur Jean-Jacques
Rousseau had extolled so eloquently at one of Baron d’Hol-
bach’s evening parties. The young sculptor’s senses were lu-
bricated, so to speak, by Jomelli’s harmonious strains. ‘The
languorous peculiarities of those skilfully blended Italian
voices plunged him in an ecstasy of delight. He sat there,
mute and motionless, not even conscious of the crowding of
the two priests. His soul poured out through his ears and
his eyes. He seemed to be listening with every one of his
pores. Suddenly a whirlwind of applause greeted the appear-

20

ie ee eR GR
cWsrre Fe Te)306 SARRASINE

 

ance of the prima donna. She came forward coquettishly to
the footlights and courtesied to the audience with infinite
grace. The brilliant light, the enthusiasm of a vast multitude,
the illusion of the stage, the glamour of a costume which was
most attractive for the time, all conspired in that woman’s
favor. Sarrasine cried aloud with pleasure. He saw before
him at that moment the ideal beauty whose perfections he had
hitherto sought here and there in nature, taking from one
model, often of humble rank, the rounded outline of a shapely
leg; from another the contour of the breast; from another
her white shoulders; stealing the neck of that young girl, the
hands of this woman, and the polished knees of yonder child,
but never able to find beneath the cold skies of Paris the rich
and satisfying creations of ancient Greece. La Zambinella
displayed in her single person, intensely alive and delicate
beyond words, all those exquisite proportions of the female
form which he had so ardently longed to behold, and of which
a sculptor is the most severe and at the same time the most
passionate judge. She had an expressive mouth, eyes instinct
with love, flesh of dazzling whiteness. And add to these de-
tails, which would have filled a painter’s soul with rapture, all
the marvelous charms of the Venuses worshiped and copied
by the chisel of the Greeks. The artist did not tire of admir-
ing the inimitable grace with which the arms were attached
to the body, the wonderful roundness of the throat, the grace-
ful curves described by the eyebrows and the nose, and the
perfect oval of the face, the purity of its clean-cut lines, and
the effect of the thick, drooping lashes which bordered the
large and voluptuous eyelids. She was more than a woman;
she was a masterpiece! In that unhoped-for creation there
was love enough to enrapture all mankind, and beauties cal-
culated to satisfy the most exacting critic.

“Sarrasine devoured with his eyes what seemed to him Pyg-
malion’s statue descended from its pedestal. When La Zam-
binella sang, he was beside himself. He was cold; then sud-
denly he felt a fire burning in the secret depths of his being,
in what, for lack of a better word, we call the heart. He didWeise

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

SARRASINE 307
not applaud, he said nothing; he felt a mad impulse, a sort
of frenzy of the sort that seizes us only at the age when there
is a something indefinably terrible and infernal in our desires.
Sarrasine longed to rush upon the stage and seize that woman.
His strength, increased a hundredfold by a moral depression
impossible to describe,—for such phenomena take place in a
sphere inaccessible to human observation,—insisted upon man-
ifesting itself with deplorable violence. Looking at him, you
would have said that he was a cold, dull man. Renown, sci-
ence, future, life, prizes, all vanished.

“<To win her love or die!’ Such was the sentence Sarrasine
pronounced upon himself.

“He was so completely intoxicated that he no longer saw
theatre, audience, or actors, no longer heard the music. Nay,
more, there was no space between him and La Zambinella;
he possessed her; his eyes, fixed steadfastly upon her, took
possession of her. An almost diabolical power enabled him
to feel the breath of that voice, to inhale the fragrant powder
with which her hair was covered, to see the slightest inequali-
ties of her face, to count the blue veins which threaded their
way beneath the satiny skin. And that fresh, brisk voice of
silvery timbre, flexible as a thread to which the faintest breath
of air gives form, which it rolls and unrolls, tangles and blows
away, that voice attacked his heart so fiercely that he more
than once uttered an involuntary exclamation, extorted by
the convulsive ecstasy too rarely evoked by human passions.
He was soon obliged to leave the theatre. His trembling legs
almost refused to bear him. He was prostrated, weak, like a
nervous man who has given way to a terrible burst of anger.
He had had such exquisite pleasure, or perhaps had suffered
so, that his life had flowed away like water from an overturned
vessel. He felt'a void within him, a sense of goneness like
the utter lack of strength which discourages a convalescent
just recovering from a serious sickness. Overwhelmed by in-
explicable melancholy, he sat down on the steps of a church.
There, with his back resting against a pillar, he lost himself
in a fit of meditation as confused as a dream. Passion had

Sa +308 SARRASINE

dealt him a crushing blow. On his return to his apartments
he was seized by one of those paroxysms of activity which re-
veal to us the presence of new principles in our existence. A
prey to that first fever of love which resembles pain as much
as pleasure, he sought to defeat his impatience and his frenzy
by sketching La Zambinella from memory. It was a sort of
material meditation. Upon one leaf La Zambinclla appeared
in that pose, apparently calm and cold, affected by Raphael,
Georgione, and all the great painters. On another, she was
coyly turning her head as she finished a roulade, and seemed
to be listening to herself. Sarrasine drew his mistress in all
poses: he drew her unveiled, seated, standing, reclining,
chaste, and amorous—interpreting, thanks to the delirious ac-
tivity of his pencil, all the fanciful ideas which beset our
imagination when our thoughts are completely engrossed by
a mistress. But his frantic thoughts outran his pencil. He
met La Zambinella, spoke to her, entreated her, exhausted a
thousand years of life and happiness with her, placing her
in all imaginable situations, trying the future with her, so
to speak. The next day he sent his servant to hire a box near
the stage for the whole season. Then, like all young men of
powerful feelings, he exaggerated the difficulties of his under-
taking, and gave his passion, for its first pasturage, the joy
of being able to admire his mistress without obstacle, The
golden age of love, during which we enjoy our own sentiments,
and in which we are almost as happy by ourselves, was not
likely to last long with Sarrasine. However, events surprised
him when he was still under the spell of that springtime hal-
lucination, as naive as it was voluptuous. In a week he lived
a whole lifetime, occupied through the day in molding the
clay with which he succeeded in copying La Zambinella, not-
withstanding the veils, the skirts, the waists, and the bows of
ribbon which concealed her from him. In the evening, in-
stalled at an early hour in his box, alone, reclining on a sofa,
he made for himself, like a Turk drunk with opium, a happi-
ness as fruitful, as lavish, as he wished. First of all, he fa-
miliarized himself gradually with the too intense emotionsSARRASINE 309

which his mistress’ singing caused him; then he taught his
eyes to look at her, and was finally able to contemplate her at
his leisure without fearing an explosion of concealed frenzy,
like that which had seized him the first day. His passion be-
came more profound as it became more tranquil. But the un-
sociable sculptor would not allow his solitude, peopled as it
was with images, adorned with the fanciful creations of hope,
and full of happiness, to be disturbed by his comrades. His
love was so intense and so ingenuous, that he had to undergo
the innocent scruples with which we are assailed when we love
for the first time. As he began to realize that he would soon
be required to bestir himself, to intrigue, to ask where La
Zambinella lived, to ascertain whether she had a mother, an
uncle, a guardian, a family,—in a word, as he reflected upon
the methods of seeing her, of speaking to her, he felt that his |
heart was so swollen with such ambitious ideas, that he post- |
poned those cares until the following day, as happy in his |
physical sufferings as in his intellectual pleasures.” 4
“But,” said Madame de Rochefide, interrupting me, “I
see nothing of Marianina or her little old man in all this.”
“You see nothing but him!” I cried, as vexed as an author
for whom some one has spoiled the effect of a coup de thédtre.
“Tor some days,” I resumed after a pause, “Sarrasine had
been so faithful in attendance in his box, and his glances ex-
pressed such passionate love, that his passion for La Zam-
binella’s voice would have been town-talk in Paris, if the epi-
sode had happened here; but in Italy, madame, every one
goes to the theatre for his own enjoyment, with all his own
passions, with a heartfelt interest which precludes all thought
of espionage with opera-glasses. However, the sculptor’s fran-
tic admiration could not long escape the notice of the per- |
formers, male and female. One evening the Frenchman no-
ticed that they were laughing at him in the wings. It is hard
to say what violent measures he might have resorted to, had
not La Zambinella come on the stage. She cast at Sarrasine
one of those eloquent glances which often say more than wo-
men intend. That glance was a complete revelation in itself.
Sarrasine was beloved!310 SARRASINE

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

“Tf it is a mere caprice,’ he thought, already accusing his
mistress of too great ardor, ‘she does not know the sort of
domination to which she is about to become subject. Her
caprice will last, I trust, as long as my-life.’

“At that moment, three light taps on the door of his box
attracted the artist’s attention. He opened the door. An old
woman entered with an air of mystery.

“Young man,’ she said, ‘if you wish to be happy, be pru-
dent. Wrap yourself in a cloak, pull a broad-brimmed hat
over your eyes, and be on the Rue du Corso, in front of the
Hotel d’Espagne, about ten o’clock to-night.”

“‘T will be there,’ he replied, putting two louis in the du-
enna’s wrinkled hand.

“He rushed from his box, after a sign of intelligence to La
Zambinella, who lowered her voluptuous eyelids modestly, like
a woman overjoyed to be understood at last. Then he hurried
home, in order to borrow from his wardrobe all the charms it
could loan him. As he left the theatre, a stranger grasped
his arm.

“Beware, Signor Frenchman,’ he said in his ear. “This is
a matter of life and death. Cardinal Cicognara is her pro-
tector, and he is no trifler.’

“Tf a demon had placed the deep pit of hell between Sar-
rasine and La Zambinella, he would have crossed it with one
stride at that moment. Like the horses of the immortal gods
described by Homer, the sculptor’s love had traversed vast
spaces in a twinkling.

“<<Tf death awaited me on leaving the house, I would go
the more quickly,’ he rephed.

“*Poverino!’ cried the stranger, as he disappeared.

“To talk of danger to a man in love is to sell him pleasure.
Sarrasine’s valet had never seen his master so painstaking in
the matter of dress. His finest sword, a gift from Bouchar-
don, the bow-knot Clotilde gave him, his coat with gold braid,
his waistcoat of cloth of silver, his gold snuff-box, his valuable
watch, everything was taken from its place, and he arrayed
himself like a maiden about to appear before her first lover.SARRASINE 311

At the appointed hour, drunk with love and boiling over with
hope, Sarrasine, his nose buried in his cloak, hurried to the
rendezvous appointed by the old woman. She was waiting.

“Vou are very late,’ she said. ‘Come.’

“She led the Frenchman through several narrow streets and
stopped in front of a palace of attractive appearance. She
knocked; the door opened. She led Sarrasine through a laby-
rinth of stairways, galleries, and apartments which were
lighted only by uncertain gleams of moonlight, and soon
reached a door through the cracks of which stole a bright ght,
and from which came the joyous sound of several voices. Sar-
rasine was suddenly blinded when, at a word from the old
woman, he was admitted to that mysterious apartment and
found himself in a salon as brilhantly lighted as it was sump-
tuously furnished ; in the centre stood a bountifully supphed
table, laden with inviolable bottles, with laughing decanters
whose red facets sparkled merrily. He recognized the singers
from the theatre, male and female, mingled with charming
women, all ready to begin an artists’ spree and waiting only
for him. Sarrasine restrained a feeling of displeasure and
put a good face on the matter. He had hoped for a dimly
lighted chamber, his mistress leaning over a brazier, a jealous
rival within two steps, death and love, confidences exchanged
in low tones, heart to heart, hazardous kisses, and faces so
near together that La Zambinella’s hair would have touched
caressingly his desire-laden brow, burning with happiness.

“ ‘Vive la folie!’ he cried. ‘Signori e belle donne, you will
allow me to postpone my revenge and bear witness to my erati-
tude for the welcome you offer a poor sculptor.”

“After receiving congratulations not lacking in warmth
from most of those present, whom he knew by sight, he tried
to approach the couch on which La Zambinella was noncha-
lantly reclining. Ah! how his heart beat when he spied a tiny
foot in one of those slippers which—if you will allow me to
say so, madame—formerly imparted to a woman’s feet such a
coquettish, voluptuous look that I cannot conceive how men
could resist them. Tightly fitting white stockings with green312 SARRASINE

clocks, short skirts, and the pointed, high-heeled slippers of
Louis XV.’s time contributed somewhat, I fancy, to the de-
moralization of Europe and the clergy.”

“Somewhat!” exclaimed the marchioness. “Have you read
nothing, pray?”

“La Zambinella,” I continued, smiling, “had boldly crossed
her legs, and as she prattled swung the upper one, a duchess’
attitude very well suited to her capricious type of beauty, over-
flowing with a certain attractive suppleness. She had laid
aside her stage costume, and wore a waist which outlined a
slender figure, displayed to the best advantage by a panier
and a satin dress embroidered with blue flowers. Her breast,
whose treasures were concealed by a coquettish arrangement
of lace, was of a gleaming white. Her hair was dressed al-
most like Madame du Barry’s; her face, although overshad-
owed by a large cap, seemed only the daintier therefor, and
the powder was very becoming to her. To see her thus was
to adore her. She smiled graciously at the sculptor. Sarra-
sine, disgusted beyond measure at finding himself unable to
speak to her without witnesses, courteously seated himself
beside her, and discoursed of music, extolling her prodigious
talent; but his voice trembled with love and fear and hope.

““What do you fear? queried Vitagliani, the most cele-
brated singer in the troupe. ‘Go on, you have no rival here
to fear.’

“After he had said this the tenor smiled silently. The lips
of all the guests repeated that smile, in which there was a
lurking expression of malice likely to escape a lover. The
publicity of his love was like a sudden dagger-thrust in Sar-
rasine’s heart. Although possessed of a certain strength of
character, and although nothing that might happen could
subdue the violence of his passion, it had not before occurred
to him that La Zambinella was almost a courtesan, and that
he could not hope to enjoy at one and the same time the pure
delights which make a maiden’s love so sweet, and the pas-
sionate transports with which one must purchase the perilous
favors of an actress. He reflected and resigned himself to hisSARRASINE 313

fate. The supper was served. Sarrasine and La Zambinella
seated themselves side by side without ceremony. During
the first half of the feast the artists exercised some restraint,
and the sculptor was able to converse with the singer. He
found that she was very bright and quick-witted; but she
was amazingly ignorant and seemed weak and superstitious.
The delicacy of her organs was reproduced in her understand-
ing. When Vitagliani opened the first bottle of champagne,
Sarrasine read in his neighbor’s eyes a shrinking dread of the
report caused by the release of the gas. The involuntary
shudder of that thoroughly feminine temperament was inter-
preted by the amorous artist as indicating extreme delicacy of
feeling. This weakness delighted the Frenchman. There is
so much of the element of protection in a man’s love!

“*You may make use of my power as a shield!’

“Ts not that sentence written at the root of all declarations
of love? Sarrasine, who was too passionately in love to make
fine speeches to the fair Italian, was, like all lovers, grave,
jovial, meditative, by turns. Although he seemed to listen
to the guests, he did not hear a word that they said, he was
so wrapped up in the pleasure of sitting by her side, of touch-
ing her hand, of waiting on her. He was swimming in a sea
of concealed joy. Despite the eloquence of divers glances they
exchanged, he was amazed at La Zambinella’s continued re-
serve toward him. She had begun, it is true, by touching
his foot with hers and stimulating his passion with the mis-
chievous pleasure of a woman who is free and in love; but
she had suddenly enveloped herself in maidenly modesty, after
she had heard Sarrasine relate an incident which illustrated
the extreme violence of his temper. When the supper became
a debauch, the guests began to sing, inspired by the Peralta
and the Pedro-Ximenes. There were fascinating duets, Cala-
brian ballads, Spanish sequidillas,and Neapolitan canzonettes.
Drunkenness was in all eyes, in the music, in the hearts and
voices of the guests. There was a sudden overflow of bewitch-
ing vivacity, of cordial unconstraint, of Italian good nature,
of which no words can convey an idea to those who know only314 SARRASINE

the evening parties of Paris, the routs of London, or the clubs
of Vienne. Jests and words of love flew from side to side
like bullets in a battle, amid laughter, impieties, invocations
to the Blessed Virgin or the Bogie: One man lay on a sofa
and fell asleep. ‘A young woman listened to a declaration,
unconscious that she was spilling Xeres wine on the table-
cloth. Amid all this confusion La Zambinella, as if terror-
stricken, seemed lost in thought. She refused to drink, but
ate perhaps a little too much; but gluttony is attractive in
women, it is said. Sarrasine, admiring his mistress’ modesty,
indulged in serious reflections concerning the future.

*““ “She desires to be married, I presume,’ he said to himself.

“Thereupon he abandoned himself to blissful anticipations
of marriage with her. It seemed to him that his whole life
would be too short to exhaust the living spring of happiness
which he found in the depths of his heart, Vitaghani, who sat
on his other side, filled his glass so often that, aoe three
in the morning, Sarrasine, while not absolutely drunk, was
powerless to resist his delirious passion. In a moment of
frenzy he seized the woman and carried her to a sort of bou-
doir which opened from the salon, and toward which he had
more than once turned his eyes. The Itahan was armed with
a dagger.

“Tf you come near me,’ she said, ‘I shall be compelled to
plunge this blade into your heart. Go! you would despise
me. I have conceived too great a respect for your character to
abandon myself to you thus. I do not choose to destroy the
sentiment with which you honor me.’

““AhYP said Sarrasine, ‘to stimulate a passion is a poor
way to extinguish it! Are you already so corrupt that, being
old in heart, you act like a young prostitute who inflames the
emotions in which she trades?”

“Why, this is Friday,’ she replied, alarmed by the French-
man’s violence.

“Sarrasine, who was not piously inclined, began to laugh.
La Zambinella gave a bound like a young deer, and darted
into the salon. When Sarrasine appeared, running after her,See ee eee eee eee

      
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

SARRASINE 315

he was welcomed by a roar of infernal laughter. He saw La
Zambinella swooning on a sofa. She was very pale, as if ex-
hausted by the extraordinary effort she had made. Although
Sarrasine knew but little Italian, he understood his mistress
when she said to Vitagliani in a low voice:
“But he will kill me!’
“This strange scene abashed the sculptor. His reason re-
turned. He stood still for a moment; then he recovered his
speech, sat down beside his mistress, and assured her of his |
profound respect. He found strength to hold his passion in
check while talking to her in the most exalted strain; and, to
describe his love, he displayed all the treasures of eloquence
—that sorcerer, that friendly interpreter, whom women rarely
refuse to believe. When the first rays of dawn surprised the
boon companions, some woman suggested that they go to Fras-
eati. One and all welcomed with loud applause the idea of ia
passing the day at Villa Ludovisi. Vitagliani went down to i
hire carriages. Sarrasine had the good fortune to drive La ia
Zambinella in a phaeton. When they had left Rome behind, |
the merriment of the party, repressed for a moment by the
battle they had all been fighting against drowsiness, suddenly
awoke. All, men and women alike, seemed accustomed to that
strange life, that constant round of pleasures, that artistic
energy, which makes of life one never ending féte, where
laughter reigns, unchecked by fear of the future. The sculp-
tor’s companion was the only one who seemed out of spirits.
“‘Are you ill? Sarrasine asked her. ‘Would you prefer to
go home?’
“‘T am not strong enough to stand all this dissipation,’
she replied. ‘I have to be very careful; but I feel so happy
with you! Except for you, I should not have remained to
this supper; a night like this takes away all my freshness.’
“You are so delicate!’ rejoined Sarrasine, gazing in rap-
ture at the charming creature’s dainty features.
“ TNissipation ruins my voice.’
“ ‘Now that we are alone,’ cried the artist, ‘and that you |
no longer have reason to fear the effervescence of my passion,
tell me that you love me.’316 SARRASINE

““Why ? said she; ‘for what good purpose? You think me
pretty. But you are a Frenchman, and your fancy will pass
away. Ah! you would not love me as I should like to be loved.’

> cElow :

““Purely, with no mingling of vulgar passion. I abhor’
men even more, perhaps, than I hate women. I need to take
refuge in friendship. The world is a desert to me. I am an
accursed creature, doomed to understand happiness, to feel it,
to desire it, and like many, many others, compelled to see it
always fly from me. Remember, signor, that I have not de-
ceived you. I forbid you to love me. I can be a devoted friend
to you, for I admire your strength of will and your character.
I need a brother, a protector. Be both of these to me, but
nothing more.”

“*And not love you!’ cried Sarrasine; ‘but you are my life,
my happiness, dear angel!’

““If I should say a word, you would spurn me with hor-
ror.’

““Coquette! nothing can frighten me. Tell me that you
will cost me my whole future, that I shall die two months
hence, that I shall be damned for having kissed you but
once ;

“And he kissed her, despite La Zambinella’s efforts to avoid
that passionate caress.

“Tell me that you are a demon, that I must give you my
fortune, my name, all my renown! Would you have me cease
to be a sculptor? Speak.’

“Suppose I were not a woman?’ queried La Zambinella,
timidly, in a sweet, silvery voice.

““A merry jest! cried Sarrasine. ‘Think you that you can
deceive an artist’s eye? Have I not, for ten days past, ad-
mired, examined, devoured, thy perfections? None but a
woman can have this soft and beautifully rounded arm, these
graceful outlines. Ah! you seek compliments!’

“She smiled sadly, and murmured:

“ “Fatal beauty !

“She raised her eyes to the sky. At that moment, thereSARRASINE 317

was in her eyes an indefinable expression of horror, so start-
ling, so intense, that Sarrasine shuddered.

“Signor Frenchman, she continued, ‘forget forever a
moment's madness. I esteem you, but as for love, do not ask
me for that; that sentiment is suffocated in my heart. I have
no heart!’ she cried, weeping bitterly. “The stage on which
you saw me, the applause, the music, the renown to which I
am condemned—those are my life; I have no other. A few
hours hence you will no longer look upon me with the same
eyes, the woman you love will be dead,’

“The sculptor did not reply. He was seized with a dull
rage which contracted his heart. He could do nothing but
gaze at that extraordinary woman, with inflamed, burning
eyes. That feeble voice, La Zambinella’s attitude, manners,
and gestures, instinct with dejection, melancholy, and dis-
couragement, reawakened in his soul all the treasures of pas-
sion. Each word was a spur. At that moment, they arrived
at Frascati. When the artist held out his arms to help his
mistress to alight, he felt that she trembled from head to foot.

“What is the matter? You would kill me, he cried, seeing
that she turned pale, “if you should suffer the slightest pain
of which I am, even innocently, the cause.’

“A snake! she said, pointing to a reptile which was glid-
ing along the edge of a ditch. ‘I am afraid of the disgusting
creatures.’

“Sarrasine crushed the snake’s head with a blow of his foot.

“ “FTow could you dare to do it?’ said La Zambinella, gaz-
ing at the dead reptile with visible terror.

“<Aha!? said the artist, with a smile, ‘would you venture
to say now that you are not a woman?’

“They joined their companions and walked through the
woods of Villa Ludovisi, which at that time belonged to Car-
dinal Cicognara. The morning passed all too swiftly for the
amorous sculptor, but it was crowded with incidents which
laid bare to him the coquetry, the weakness, the daintiness, of
that pliant, inert soul. She was a true woman with her sud-
den terrors, her unreasoning caprices, her instinctive worries,318

 

SARRASINE

her causeless audacity, her bravado, and her fascinating deli-
cacy of feeling. At one time, as the merry little party of sing-
ers ventured out into the open country, they saw at some dis-
tance a number of men armed to the teeth, whose costume was
by no means reassuring. At the words, “Those are brigands ?’
they all quickened their pace in order to reach the shelter of
the wall enclosing the cardinal’s villa. At that critical mo-
ment Sarrasine saw from La Zambinella’s manner that she no
longer had strength to walk; he took her in his arms and car-
ried her for some distance, running. When he was within
call of a vineyard near by, he set his mistress down.

““Tell me,’ he said, ‘why it is that this extreme weakness,
which in another woman would be hideous, would disgust me,
so that the slightest indication of it would be enough to de-
stroy my love,—why is it that in you it pleases me, fascinates
me?’ Oh, how I love you!’ he continued. ‘All your faults,
your frights, your petty foibles, add an indescribable charm
to your character. I feel that I should detest a Sappho, a
strong, courageous woman, overflowing with energy and pas-
sion. O sweet and fragile creature! how couldst thou be
otherwise? That angel’s voice, that refined voice, would have
been an anachronism coming from any other breast than
thine.’

““T can give you no hope,’ she said. ‘Cease to speak thus
to me, for people would make sport of you. It is impossible
for me to shut the door of the theatre to you; but if you love
me, or if you are wise, you will come there no more. Listen to
me, monsieur,’ she continued in a grave voice.

“Oh, hush! said the excited artist. ‘Obstacles inflame the
love in my heart.’

“La Zambinella maintained a graceful and modest attitude;
but she held her peace, as if a terrible thought had suddenly
revealed some catastrophe. When it was time to return to
Rome she entered a berlin with four seats, bidding the sculp-
tor, with a cruelly imperious air, to return alone in the phae-
ton. On the road, Sarrasine determined to carry off La Zam-
binella. He passed the whole day forming plans, each moreSARRASINE 319

extravagant than the last. At nightfall, as he was going out
to inquire of somebody where his mistress lived, he met one
of his fellow-artists at the door.

“ “My dear fellow, he said, ‘I am sent by our ambassador
to invite you to come to the embassy this evening. He gives a
magnificent concert, and when I tell you that La Zambinella
will be there——’

“‘Zambinella!? cried Sarrasine, thrown into delirium by
that name; ‘I am mad with love of her.’

“You are like everybody else,’ replied his comrade.

“ ‘But if you are friends of mine, you and Vien and Lauter-
bourg and Allegrain, you will lend me your assistance for a
coup de main, after the entertainment, will you not? asked
Sarrasine.

“<There’s no cardinal to be killed? no e

“ ‘No, no!’ said Sarrasine, ‘I ask nothing of you that men
of honor may not do.’

“In a few moments the sculptor laid all his plans to as-
sure the success of his enterprise. He was one of the last to
arrive at the ambassador’s, but he went thither in a traveling
carriage drawn by four stout horses and driven by one of the
most skilful vetturini in Rome. The ambassador’s palace
was full of people; not without difficulty did the sculptor,
whom nobody knew, make his way to the salon where La Zam-
binella was singing at that moment.

“Tt must be in deference to all the cardinals, bishops, and
abbés who are here,’ said Sarrasine, ‘that she is dressed as a
man, that she has curly hair which she wears in a bag, and
that she has a sword at her side?’

“She! what she?’ rejoined the old nobleman whom Sarra-
sine addressed.

“Tia Zambinella.”

“‘La Zambinella!’? echoed the Roman prince. ‘Are you
jesting? Whence have you come? Did a woman ever appear
in a Roman theatre? And do you not know what sort of crea-
tures play female parts within the domains of the Pope? It
was I, monsieur, who endowed Zambinella with his voice. I320 SARRASINE

paid all the knave’s expenses, even his teacher in singing. And
he has so little gratitude for the service I have done him that
he has never been willing to step inside my house. And yet,
if he makes his fortune, he will owe it all to me’

“Prince Chigi might have talked on forever, Sarrasine did
not listen to him. A ghastly truth had found its way into his
mind. He was stricken as if by a thunderbolt. He stood like
a statue, his eyes fastened on the singer. His flaming glance
exerted a sort of magnetic influence on Zambinella, for he
turned his eyes at last in Sarrasine’s direction, and his divine
voice faltered. He trembled! An involuntary murmur es-
caped the audience, which he held fast as if fastened to his
lips; and that completely disconcerted him; he stopped in
the middle of the aria he was singing and sat down. Cardinal
Cicognara, who had watched from the corner of his eye the
direction of his protégé’s glance, saw the Frenchman; he
leaned toward one of his ecclesiastical aides-de-camp, and ap-
parently asked the sculptor’s name. When he had obtained
the reply he desired he scrutinized the artist with great at-
tention and gave orders to an abbé, who instantly disappeared.
Meanwhile Zambinella, having recovered his self-possession,
resumed the aria he had go capriciously broken off; but he
sang badly, and refused, despite all the persistent appeals
showered upon him, to sing anything else. It was the first
time he had exhibited that humorsome tyranny, which, at a
later date, contributed no less to his celebrity than his talent
and his vast fortune, which was said to be due to his beauty
as much as to his voice.

** “Tt’s a woman,’ said Sarrasine, thinking that no one could
overhear him. ‘There’s some secret intrigue beneath all this.
Cardinal Cicognara is hoodwinking the Pope and the whole
city of Rome?’

“The sculptor at once left the salon, assembled his friends,
and lay in wait in the courtyard of the palace. When Zam-
binella was assured of Sarrasine’s departure he seemed to
recover his tranquillity in some measure. About midnight,
after wandering through the salons like a man looking for anSARRASINE 321

=

enemy, the musico left the party. As he passed through the
palace gate he was seized by men who deftly gagged him with
a handkerchief and placed him in the carriage hired by Sar-
rasine. Frozen with terror, Zambinella lay back in a corner,
not daring to move a muscle. He saw before him the terrible
face of the artist, who maintained a deathlike silence. The
Journey was a short one. Zambinella, kidnapped by Sarra-
sine, soon found himself in a dark, bare studio. He sat, half
dead, upon a chair, hardly daring to glance at a statue of a
woman, in which he recognized his own features. He did not
utter a word, but his teeth were chattering; he was paralyzed
with fear. Sarrasine was striding up and down the studio.
Suddenly he halted in front of Zambinella.

“Tell me the truth,’ he said, in a changed and hollow voice.
‘Are you not a woman? Cardinal Cicognara ;

“Zambinella fell on his knees, and replied only by hanging
his head.

“Ah! you are a woman!’ cried the artist in a frenzy; ‘for
even a |

“He did not finish the sentence.

“No, he continued, ‘even he could not be so utterly base.’

“Oh, do not kill me!’ cried Zambinella, bursting into tears.
‘I consented to deceive you only to gratify my comrades, who
wanted an opportunity to laugh.’

“<Taugh! echoed the sculptor, in a voice in which there was
a ring of infernal ferocity. ‘Laugh! laugh! You dared to
make sport of a man’s passion—you ?’

“Oh, merey!’ cried Zambinella.

“ T ought to kill you!’ shouted Sarrasine, drawing his sword
in an outburst of rage. ‘But, he continued, with cold dis-
dain, ‘if I searched your whole being with this blade, should I
find there any sentiment to blot out, anything with which to
satisfy my thirst for vengeance? You are nothing! If you
were a man or a woman, I would kill you, but i

“Sarrasine made a gesture of disgust, and turned his face
away; thereupon he noticed the statue.

“And that is a delusion!’ he cried.

 

 

 

Lace ap322 SARRASINE

“Then, turning to Zambinella once more, he continued:

“*A woman’s heart was to me a place of refuge, a father-
land. Have you sisters who resemble you? No. Then die!
But no, you shall hve. ‘To leave you your life is to doom you
to a fate worse than death. I regret neither my blood nor
my life, but my future and the fortune of my heart. Your
weak hand has overturned my happiness. What hope can I
extort from you in place of all those you have destroyed?
You have brought me down to your level. To love, to be loved!
are henceforth meaningless words to me, as to you. I shall
never cease to think of that imaginary woman when I see a
real woman.’

“He pointed to the statue with a gesture of despair.

““T shall always have in my memory a divine harpy who
will bury her talons in all my manly sentiments, and who
will stamp all other women with a seal of imperfection. Mon-
ster! you, who can give life to nothing, have swept all women
off the face of the earth’

“Sarrasine seated himself in front of the terrified singer.
Two great tears came from his dry eyes, rolled down his
swarthy cheeks, and fell to the floor—two tears of rage, two
scalding, burning tears.

“*An end of love! I am dead to all pleasure, to all human
emotions !’

“As he spoke, he seized a hammer and hurled it at the statue
with such excessive force that he missed it. He thought that
he had destroyed that monument of his madness, and there-
upon he drew his sword again, and raised it to kill the singer.
Zambinella uttered shriek after shriek. Three men burst into
the studio at that moment, and the sculptor fell, pierced by
three daggers.

“From Cardinal Cicognara,’ said one of the men.

“A benefaction worthy of a Christian,’ retorted the
Frenchman, as he breathed his last.

“These ominous emissaries told Zambinella of the anxiety
of his patron, who was waiting at the door in a closed carriage
in order to take him away as soon as he was set at liberty.”SARRASINE 323

“But,” said Madame de Rochefide, “what connection is
there between this story and the little old man we saw at the
Lantys’ ?”

“Madame, Cardinal Cicognara took possession of Zambi-
nella’s statue and had it reproduced in marble; it is in the
Albani Museum to-day. In 1794 the Lanty family discovered
it there, and asked Vien to copy it. The portrait which
showed you Zambinella at twenty, a moment after you had
seen him as a centenarian, afterward figured in Girodet’s
Endymion; you yourself recognized the type in Adonis.”

“But this Zambinella, male or female y

“Must be, madame, Marianina’s maternal great uncle. You
can conceive now Madame de Lanty’s interest in concealing
the source of a fortune which comes i

“Hnough !” said she, with an imperious gesture.

We remained for a moment in the most profound silence.

“Well?” I said at last.

“Ah!” she cried, rising and pacing the floor.

She came and looked me in the face, and said in an altered
voice :

“You have disgusted me with life and passion for a long
time to come. Leaving monstrosities aside, are not all human
sentiments dissolved thus, by ghastly disillusionment? Chil-
dren torture mothers by their bad conduct, or their lack of
affection. Wives are betrayed. Mistresses are cast aside,
abandoned. Talk of friendship! Is there such a thing! I
would turn pious to-morrow if I did not know that I can re-
main like the inaccessible summit of a cliff amid the tempests
of life. If the future of the Christian is an illusion too, at all
events it is not destroyed until after death. Leave me to my-
self.”

“Ah! said I, “you know how to punish.”

“Am I in the wrong?”

“Yes” I replied, with a sort of desperate courage. “By
finishing this story, which is well known in Italy, I can give
you an excellent idea of the progress made by the civilization
of the present day. There are none of those wretched crea-

tures now.”

 

 

Tce a RC324 SARRASINE

“Paris,” said she, “is an exceedingly hospitable place; it
welcomes one and all, fortunes stained with shame, and for-
tunes stained with blood. Crime and infamy have a right of
asylum here; virtue alone is without altars. But pure hearts
have a fatherland in heaven! No one will have known me!
J am proud of it.”

And the marchioness was lost in thought.eI ETT EET

 

FACINO CANE

 
   
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I oNCE used to live in a little street which probably is not

known to you—the Rue de Lesdiguieres. It is a turning
out of the Rue Saint-Antoine, beginning just opposite a foun-

tain near the Place de la Bastille, and ending in the Rue de

la Cerisaie. Love of knowledge stranded me in a garret; my

nights I spent in work, my days in reading at the Bibliothéque
d’Orléans, close by. I lived frugally, I had accepted the con-

ditions of the monastic life, necessary conditions for every

worker, scarcely permitting myself a walk along the Boulevard

Bourdon when the weather was fine, One passion only had |
power to draw me from my studies; and yet, what was that
passion but a study of another kind? I used to watch the \
manners and customs of the Faubourg, its inhabitants, and
their characteristics. As I dressed no better than a working
man, and cared nothing for appearances, I did not put them
on their guard; I could join a group and look on while they
drove bargains or wrangled among themselves on their way
home from work. Even then observation had come to be an
instinct with me; a faculty of penetrating to the soul without
neglecting the body; or rather, a power of grasping external
details so thoroughly that they never detained me for a mo-
ment, and at once I passed beyond and through them. I could
enter into the life of the human creatures whom I watched,
just as the dervish in the Arabian Nights could pass into any
soul or body after pronouncing a certain formula.

If I met a working man and his wife in the streets between
eleven o’clock and midnight on their way home from the Am-
bigu Comique, I used to amuse myself by following them
from the Boulevard du Pont aux Choux to the Boulevard
Beaumarchais. The good folk would begin by talking about
the play; then from one thing to another they would come to
(325)

 

Gin a326 FACINO CANE

their own affairs, and the mother would walk on and on, heed-
less of complaints or question from the little one that dragged
at her hand, while she and her husband reckoned up the wages
to be paid on the morrow, and spent the money in a score of
different ways. ‘Then came domestic details, lamentations
over the excessive dearness of potatoes, or the length of the
winter and the high price of block fuel, together with forcible
representations of amounts owing to the baker, ending in an
acrimonious dispute, in the course of which such couples
reveal their characters in picturesque language. As I listened,
I could make their lives mine, I felt their rags on my back, I
walked with their gaping shoes on my feet; their cravings,
their needs, had all passed into my soul, or my soul had passed
into theirs. It was the dream of a waking man. I waxed hot
with them over the foreman’s tyranny, or the bad customers
that made them call again and again for payment.

To come out of my own ways of life, to be another than my-
self through a kind of intoxication of the intellectual facul-
ties, and to play this game at will, such was my recreation.
Whence comes the gift? Is it a kind of second sight? Is it
one of those powers which when abused end in madness? I
have never tried to discover its source; I possess it, I use it,
that is all. But this it behoves you to know, that in those days
I began to resolve the heterogeneous mass known as the People
into its elements, and to evaluate its good and bad qualities.
Even then I realized the possibilities of my suburb, that hot-
bed of revolution in which heroes, inventors, and practical
men of science, rogues and scoundrels, virtues and vices, were
all packed together by poverty, stifled by, necessity, drowned
in drink, and consumed by ardent spirits.)

You would not imagine how many adventures, how many
tragedies, lie buried away out of sight in that Dolorous City ;
how much horror and beauty lurks there. No imagination
can reach the Truth, no one can go down into that city to make
discoveries ; for one must needs descend too low into its depths
to see the wonderful scenes of tragedy or comedy enacted
there, the masterpieces brought forth by chance.FACINO CANE 327

I do not know how it is that I have kept the following story
so long untold. It is one of the curious things that stop in the
bag from which Memory draws out stories at haphazard, like
numbers in a lottery. There are plenty of tales just as
strange and just as well hidden still left; but some day, you
may be sure, their turn will come.

One day my charwoman, a working man’s wife, came to
beg me to honor her sister’s wedding with my presence. If
you are to realize what this wedding was lke, you must know
that I paid my charwoman, poor creature, four francs a
month; for which sum she came every morning to make my
bed, clean my shoes, brush my clothes, sweep the room, and
make ready my breakfast, before going to her day’s work of
turning the handle of a machine, at which hard drudgery she
earned five-pence. Her husband, a cabinetmaker, made four
frances a day at his trade; but as they had three children, it
was all that they could do to gain an honest living. Yet I
have never met with more sterling honesty than in this man
and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mére Vail-
lant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and
some oranges for me—she that had never a sixpence to put by!
Want had drawn us together. I never could give her more
than a ten-franc piece, and often I had to borrow the money
for the occasion. This will perhaps explain my promise to
go to the wedding; I hoped to efface myself in these poor peo-
ple’s merry-making.

The banquet and the ball were given on a first floor above
a wineshop in the Rue de Charenton. It was a large room,
lighted by oil lamps with tin reflectors. A row of wooden
benches ran round the walls, which were black with grime to
the height of the tables. Here some eighty persons, all in
their Sunday best, tricked out with ribbons and bunches of
flowers, all of them on pleasure bent, were dancing away with
heated visages as if the world were about to come to an end.
Bride and bridegroom exchanged salutes to the general satis-
faction, amid a chorus of facetious “Oh, chs!” and “Ah, ahs!”328 FACINO CANE

 

less really indecent than the furtive glances of young girls
that have been well brought up. There was something inde-
scribably infectious about the rough, homely enjoyment in all
countenances. ,

But neither the faces, nor the wedding, nor the wedding-
guests have anything to do with my story. Simply bear them
in mind as the odd setting to it. Try to realize the scene,
the shabby red-painted wineshop, the smell of wine, the yells
of merriment; try to feel that you are really in the faubourg,
among old people, working men and poor women giving them-
selves up to a night’s enjoyment.

The band consisted of a fiddle, a clarionet, and a flageolet
from the Blind Asylum. The three were paid seven francs
in a lump sum for the night. For the money, they gave us,
not Beethoven certainly, nor yet Rossini; they played as they
had the will and the skill; and every one in the room (with
charming delicacy of feeling) refrained from finding fault.
The music made such a brutal assault on the drum of my
ear, that after a first glance round the room my eyes fell at
once upon the blind trio, and the sight of their uniform in-
clined me from the first to indulgence. As the artists stood
in a window recess, it was difficult to distinguish their faces
except at close quarters, and I kept away at first; but when I
came nearer (I hardly know why) I thought of nothing else;
the wedding party and the music ceased to exist, my curiosity
was roused to the highest pitch, for my soul passed into the
body of the clarionet player.

The fiddle and the flageolet were neither of them interest-
ing; their faces were of the ordinary type among the blind—
earnest, attentive, and grave. Not so the clarionet player; any
artist or philosopher must have come to a stop at the sight of
him.

Picture to yourself a plaster mask of Dante in the red lamp-
light, with a forest of silver-white hair above the brows. Blind-
ness intensified the expression of bitterness and sorrow in that
grand face of his; the dead eyes were lighted up, as it were,
by a thought within that broke forth like a burning flame, liter ee nde aaa ahs eae and, alee ae ea ee ee Re Usaha an eA. «

      
   
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

FACINO CANE 329

by one sole insatiable desire, written large in vigorous char-
acters upon an arching brow scored across with as many lines
as an old stone wall.

The old man was playing at random, without the slightest
regard for time or tune. His fingers traveled mechanically
over the worn keys of his instrument; he did not trouble him-
self over a false note now and again (a canard, in the lan-
guage of the orchestra), neither did the dancers, nor, for that
matter, did my old Italian’s acolytes; for I had made up my |
mind that he must be an Italian, and an Italian he was. There
was something great, something too of the despot about this
old Homer bearing within him an Odyssey doomed to oblivion. bs
The greatness was so real that it triumphed over his abject po- oa
sition ; the despotism so much a part of him, that it rose above if
his poverty.

There are violent passions which drive a man to good or
evil, making of him a hero or a convict; of these there was
not one that had failed to leave its traces on the grandly-hewn,
lividly Italian face. You trembled lest a flash of thought
should suddenly light up the deep sightless hollows under the
grizzled brows, as you might fear to see brigands with torches
and poniards in the mouth of a cavern. You felt that there
was a lion in that cage of flesh, a lion spent with useless rag-
ing against iron bars. The fires of despair had burned them-
selves out into ashes, the lava had cooled; but the tracks of  &
the flames, the wreckage, and a little smoke remained to bear oo
witness to the violence of the eruption, the ravages of the fire.
These images crowded up at the sight of the clarionet player,
till the thoughts now grown cold in his face burned hot within
my soul.

The fiddle and the flageolet took a deep interest in bottles
and glasses; at the end of a country-dance, they hung their
instruments from a button on their reddish-colored coats, and
stretched out their hands to a little table set in the window
recess to hold their liquor supply. Each time they did so they
held out a full glass to the Italian, who could not reach it for |
himself because he sat in front of the table, and each time330 FACINO CANE

the Italian thanked them with a friendly nod. All their
movements were made with the precision which always amazes
you so much at the Blind Asylum. You could almost think
that they can see. I came nearer to listen; but when I stood
beside them, they evidently guessed I was not a working man,
and kept themselves to themselves.

“What part of the world do you come from, you that are
playing the clarionet?”

‘From Venice,” he said, with a trace of Italian accent.

“Have you always been blind, or did it come on after-
wards ne

“Afterwards,” he answered quickly. “A cursed gutta se-
rena.”

“Venice is a fine city; I have always had a fancy to go
there.”

The old man’s face lighted up, the wrinkles began to work,
he was violently excited.

“Tf I went with you, you would not lose your time,” he said.

“Don’t talk about Venice to our Doge,” put in the fiddle,
“or you will start him off, and he has stowed away a couple
of bottles as it is—has the prince!”

“Come, strike up, Daddy Canard!” added the flageolet, and
the three began to play. But while they executed the four
figures of a square dance, the Venetian was scenting my
thoughts; he guessed the great interest I felt in him. The
dreary, dispirited look died out of his face, some mysterious
hope brightened his features and slid like a blue flame over his
wrinkles. He smiled and wiped his brow, that fearless, ter-
rible brow of his, and at length grew gay hke a man mounted
on his hobby.

“How old are you?’ I asked.

“Highty-two.”

“How long have you been blind?”

“Yor very nearly fifty years,” he said, and there was that in
his tone which told me that his regret was for something more
than his lost sight, for great power of which he had been
robbed. , :FACINO CANE 331

“Then why do they call you ‘the Doge’ ?” I asked.

“Oh, it isa joke. Iam a Venetian noble, and I might have
been a doge like any one else.”

“What is your name?”

+ Here, mars) lam ere Canet.4 he sade “ly wag the
only way of spelling my name on the register. But in Italy I
am Marco Facino Cane, Prince of Varese.”

“What, are you descended from the great condottiere Facino
Cane, whose lands won by the sword were taken by the Dukes
of Milan?”

“EH vero,’ returned he. ‘His son’s life was not safe under
the Visconti; he fled to Venice, and his name was inscribed
on the Golden Book. And now neither Cane nor Golden
Book are in existence.” His gesture startled me; it told of
patriotism extinguished and weariness of life.

“But if you were once a Venetian senator, you must have
been a wealthy man. How did you lose your fortune?”

“In evil days.”

He waved away the glass of wine handed to him by the
flageolet, and bowed his head. He had no heart to drink.
These details were not calculated to extinguish my curiosity.

As the three ground out the music of the square dance, I
gazed at the old Venetian noble, thinking thoughts that set a
young man’s mind afire at the age of twenty. I saw Venice
and the Adriatic; I saw her ruin in the ruin of the face before
me. I walked to and fro in that city, so beloved of her citi-
zens; I went from the Rialto Bridge, along the Grand Canal,
and from the Riva degli Schiavoni to the Lido, returning to
St. Mark’s, that cathedral so unlike all others in its sublimity.
I looked up at the windows of the Casa Doro, each with its
different sculptured ornaments; I saw old palaces rich in mar-
bles, saw all the wonders which a student beholds with the
more sympathetic eyes because visible things take their color
of his fancy, and the sight of realities cannot rob him of the
glory of his dreams. Then I traced back a course of life for
this latest scion of a race of condottieri, tracking down his
misfortunes, looking for the reasons of the deep moral and302 FACINO CANE

 

physical degradation out of which the lately revived sparks
of greatness and nobility shone so much the more brightly.
My ideas, no doubt, were passing through his mind, for all
processes of thought-communications are far more swift, I
think, in blind people, because their blindness compels them
to concentrate their attention. I had not long to wait for
proof that we were in sympathy in this way. Facino Cane
left off playing, and came up tome. “Let us go out!” he said;
his tones thrilled through me like an electric shock. I gave
him my arm, and we went.

Outside in the street he said, “Will you take me back to
Venice? will you be my guide? Will you put faith in me?
You shall be richer than ten of the richest houses in Amster-
dam or London, richer than Rothschild; in short, you shall
have the fabulous wealth of the Arabian Nights.”

The man was mad, I thought; but in his voice there was a
potent something which I obeyed. I allowed him to lead, and
he went in the direction of the Fossés de la Bastille, as if he
could see; walking till he reached a lonely spot down by the
river, just where the bridge has since been built at the
junction of the Canal Saint-Martin and the Seine. Here he
sat down on a stone, and I, sitting opposite to him, saw the
old man’s hair gleaming like threads of silver in the moon-
light. The stillness was scarcely troubled by the sound of the
far-off thunder of traffic along the boulevards; the clear
night air and everything about us combined to make a
strangely unreal scene.

“You talk of millions to a young man,” I began, “and do
you think that he will shrink from enduring any number of
hardships to gain them? Are you not laughing at me?”

“May I die unshriven,” he cried vehemently, “if all that
I am about to tell you is not true. I was one-and-twenty
years old, like you at this moment. I was rich, I was hand-
some, and a noble by birth. I began with the first madness
of all—with Love. I loved as no one can love nowadays. I
I have hidden myself in a chest, at the risk of a dagger thrust,
for nothing more than the promise of a kiss. To die for Hera stoneFACINO CANE 333

—it seemed to me to be a whole life in itself. In 1760 I
fell in love with a lady of the Vendramin family; she was
eighteen years old, and married to a Sagredo, one of the
richest senators, a man of thirty, madly in love with his wife.
My mistress and I were guiltless as cherubs when the sposo
caught us together talking of love. He was armed, I was not,
but he missed me; I sprang upon him and killed him with my
two hands, wringing his neck as if he had been a chicken.
I wanted Bianca to fly with me; but she would not. That is
the way with women! So I went alone. I was condemned
to death, and my property was confiscated and made over to
my next-of-kin; but I had carried off my diamonds, five of
Titian’s pictures taken down from their frames and rolled up,
and all my gold. |

“T went to Milan, no one molested me, my affair in nowise
interested the State-—One small observation before I go fur-
ther,” he continued, after a pause, “whether it is true or no |
that the mother’s fancies at the time of conception or in the
months before birth can influence her child, this much is cer-
tain, my mother during her pregnancy had a passion for gold,
and I am the victim of a monomania, of a craving for gold
which must be gratified. Gold is so much of a necessity of life
for me, that I have never been without it; I must have gold to
toy with and finger. As a young man I always wore jewelry,
and carried two or three hundred ducats about with me wher-
ever I went.”

He drew a couple of gold coins from his pocket and showed
them to me as he spoke.

“T can tell by instinct when gold is near. Blind as I am, i
I stop before the jeweler’s shop windows. That passion was
the ruin of me; I took to gambling to play with gold. I was
not a cheat, I was cheated, I ruined myself. I lost all my
fortune. Then the longing to see Bianca once more possessed
me like a frenzy. I stole back to Venice and found her again.
For six months I was happy; she hid me in her house and fed
me. I thought thus deliciously to finish my days. But the
Provyeditore courted her, and guessed that he had a rival;334 FACINO CANE

we in Italy can feel that. He played the spy upon us, and
surprised us together in bed, base wretch. You may judge
what a fight for life it was; I did not kill him outright, but
I wounded him dangerously. |

“That adventure broke my luck. I have never found
another Bianca; I have known great pleasures; but among the
most celebrated women at the court of Louis XV. I never
found my beloved Venetian’s charm, her love, her great quali-
ties.

“The Provveditore called his servants, the palace was sur-
rounded and entered; I fought for my life that I might die
beneath Bianca’s eyes; Bianca helped me to kill the Provvedi-
tore. Once before she had refused flight with me; but after
six months of happiness she wished only to die with me, and re-
ceived several thrusts. I was entangled in a great cloak that
they flung over me, carried down to a gondola, and hurried
to the Pozzi dungeons. I was twenty-two years old. I gripped
the hilt of my broken sword so hard, that they could only have
taken it from me by cutting off my hand at the wrist. A cu-
rious chance, or rather the instinct of self-preservation, led me
to hide the fragment of the blade in a corner of my cell, as if
it might still be of use. They tended me; none of my wounds
were serious. At two-and-twenty one can recover from any-
thing. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I shammed ill-
ness to gain time. It seemed to me that the canal lay just out-
side my cell. I thought to make my escape by boring a hole
through the wall and swimming for my life. I based my hopes
on the following reasons.

“Every time that the jailer came with my food, there was
light enough to read directions written on the walls—
‘Side of the Palace,’ ‘Side of the Canal,’ ‘Side of the Vaults.’
At last I saw a design in this, but I did not trouble myself
much about the meaning of it; the actual incomplete condition
of the Ducal Palace accounted for it. The longing to regain
my freedom gave me something like genius. Groping about
with my fingers, I spelled out an Arabic inscription on the
wall. The-author of the work informed those to come afterFACINO CANE 339

him that he had loosed two stones in the lowest course of
masonry and hollowed out eleven feet beyond underground.
As he went on with his excavations, it became necessary to
spread the fragments of stone and mortar over the floor of
his cell. But even if jailers and inquisitors had not felt sure
that the structure of the buildings was such that no watch
was needed below, the level of the Pozzi dungeons being sev-
eral steps below the threshold, it was possible gradually to
raise the earthen floor without exciting the warder’s sus-
picions.

“The tremendous labor had profited nothing—nothing at
least to him that began it. The very fact that it was left un-
finished told of the unknown worker’s death. Unless his de-
voted toil was to be wasted for ever, his successor must have
some knowledge of Arabic, but I had studied Oriental lan-
guages at the Armenian Convent. A few words written on
the back of the stone recorded the unhappy man’s fate; he had
fallen a victim to his great possessions; Venice had coveted
his wealth and seized upon it. A whole month went by before
I obtained any result; but whenever I felt my strength fail-
ing as I worked, I heard the chink of gold, I saw gold spread
before me, I was dazzled by diamonds.—Ah! wait.

“One night my blunted steel struck on wood. I whetted
the fragment of my blade and cut a hole; I crept on my belly
like a serpent; I worked naked and mole-fashion, my hands
in front of me, using the stone itself to gain a purchase. I
was to appear before my judges in two days’ time, I made
a final effort, and that night I bored through the wood and
felt that there was space beyond.

“Judge of my surprise when I applied my eye to the hole.
I was in the ceiling of a vault, heaps of gold were dimly
visible in the faint light. The Doge himself and one of the
Ten stood below; I could hear their voices and sufficient of
their talk to know that this was the Secret Treasury of the
Republic, full of the gifts of Doges and reserves of booty
called the Tithe of Venice from the spoils of military expedi-
tions. I was saved!

 

   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

 

ncaa RAE >336 FACINO CANE

 

“When the jailer came I proposed that he should help me
to escape and fly with me, and that we should take with us
as much as we could carry. ‘There was no reason for hesita-
tion; he agreed. Vessels were about to*sail for the Levant.
All possible precautions were taken. Bianca furthered the
schemes which I suggested to my accomplice. It was ar-
ranged that Bianca should only rejoin us in Smyrna for fear
of exciting suspicion. In a single night the hole was enlarged,
and we dropped down into the Secret Treasury of Venice.

“What a night that was! Four great casks full of gold
stood there. In the outer room silver pieces were piled in
heaps, leaving a gangway between by which to cross the cham-
ber. Banks of silver coins surrounded the walls to the height
of five feet.

“T thought the jailer would go mad. He sang and laughed
and danced and capered among the gold, till I threatened to
strangle him if he made a sound or wasted time. In his joy
he did not notice at first the table where the diamonds lay.
I flung myself upon these, and deftly filled the pockets of
my sailor jacket and trousers with the stones. Ah! Heaven,
I did not take the third of them. Gold ignots lay underneath
the table. I persuaded my companion to fill as many bags as
we could carry with the gold, and made him understand that
this was our only chance of escaping detection abroad.

“Pearls, rubies, and diamonds might be recognized,’ I
told him.

“Covetous though we were, we could not possibly take more
than two thousand livres weight of gold, which meant six
journeys across the prison to the gondola. The sentinel at the
water gate was bribed with a bag containing ten livres weight
of gold; and as for the two gondoliers, they believed they were
serving the Republic. At daybreak we set out.

“Once upon the open sea, when I thought of that night,
when I recollected all that I had felt, when the vision of that
great hoard rose before my eyes, and I computed that I had
left behind thirty millions in silver, twenty in gold, andFACINO CANE O37

many more in diamonds, pearls, and rubies—then a sort of
madness began to work in me. T had the gold fever.

“We landed at Smyrna and took ship at once for France.
‘As we went on board the French vessel, Heaven favored me
by ridding me of my accomplice. I did not think at the time
of all the. possible consequences of this mishap, and rejoiced
not a little. We were so completely unnerved by all that had
happened, that we were stupid, we said not a word to each
other, we waited till it should be safe to enjoy ourselves at
our ease. It was not wonderful that the rogue’s head was
dizzy. You shall see how heavily God has punished me.

“T never knew a quiet moment until I had sold two-thirds
of my diamonds in London or Amsterdam, and held the value
of my gold dust in a negotiable shape. For five years I hid
myself in Madrid, then in 1770 I came to Paris with a Spanish
name, and led as brilliant a life as may be. Then in the
midst of my pleasures, as I enjoyed a fortune of six millions,
I was smitten with blindness. I do not doubt but that my in-
firmity was brought on by my sojourn in the cell and my work
in the stone, if, indeed, my peculiar faculty for ‘seeing’ gold
was not an abuse of the power of sight which predestined me to
lose it. Bianca was dead.

“At this time I had fallen in love with a woman to
whom I thought to link my fate. I had told her the secret
of my name; she belonged to a powerful family; she was a
friend of Mme. du Barry; I hoped everything from the favor
shown me by Louis XV.; I trusted in her. Acting on her
advice, I went to England to consult a famous oculist, and
after a stay of several months in London she deserted me in
Hyde Park. She had stripped me of all that I had, and lett
me without resource. Nor could I make complaint, for to
disclose my name was to lay myself open to the vengeance of
my native city; I could appeal to no one for aid, I feared Ven-
ice. The woman put spies about me to exploit my infirmity.
I spare you a tale of adventures worthy of Gil Blas.—Your
Revolution followed. For two whole years that creature
kept me at the Bicétre as a lunatic, then she gained admit-

22338 FACINO CANE

 

tance for me at the Blind Asylum; there was no help for it,
I went. I could not kill her; I could not see; and I was so
poor that I could not pay another arm.

“Tf only I had taken counsel with my jailer, Benedetto
Carpi, before I lost him, I might have known the exact posi-
tion of my cell, I might have found my way back to the Treas-
ury and returned to Venice when Napoleon crushed the Re-
public

“Still, blind as I am, let us go back to Venice! I shall find
the door of my prison, I shall see the gold through the prison
walls, I shall hear it where it hes under the water; for the
events which brought about the fall of Venice befell in such
a way that the secret of the hoard must have perished with
Bianca’s brother, Vendramin, a doge to whom [I looked to
make my peace with the Ten. I sent memorials to the First
Consul; I proposed an agreement with the Emperor of Aus-
tria; every one sent me about my business for a lunatic. Come!
we will go to Venice; let us set out as beggars, we shall come
back millionaires. We will buy back my estates, and you shall
be my heir! You shall be Prince of Varese!”

My head was swimming. For me his confidences reached
the proportions of tragedy; at the sight of that white head
of his and beyond it the black water in the trenches of the
Bastille lying still as a canal in Venice, I had no words to
answer him. Facino Cane thought, no doubt, that I judged
him, as the rest had done, with a disdainful pity; his gesture
expressed the whole philosophy of despair.

Perhaps his story had taken him back to happy days and to
Venice. He caught up his clarionet and made plaintive music,
playing a Venetian boat-song with something of his lost
skill, the skill of the young patrician lover. It was a sort of
Super flumina Babylonis. Tears filled my eyes. Any belated
persons walking along the Boulevard Bourdon must have stood
still to listen to an exile’s last prayer, a last cry of regret for a
lost name, mingled with memories of Bianca. But gold soon
gained the upper hand, the fatal passion quenched the light
of youth.FACINO CANE 339

“I see it always,” he said; “dreaming or waking, I see it;
and as I pace to and fro, I pace in the Treasury, and the dia-
monds sparkle. I am not as blind as you think; gold and
diamonds light up my night, the night of the last Facino
Cane, for my title passes to the Memmi. My God! the mur-
derer’s punishment was not long delayed! Ave Maria,’ and
he repeated several prayers that I did not heed.

“We will go to Venice!” I said, when he rose.

“Then I have found a man!” he cried, with his face on
fire.

I gave him my arm and went home with him. We reached
the gates of the Blind Asylum just as some of the wedding
guests were returning along the street, shouting at the top
of their voices. He squeezed my hand.

“Shall we start to-morrow?” he asked.

“As soon as we can get some money.” |

“But we can go on foot. I will beg. I am strong, and you | '
feel young when you see gold before you.” \@

Facino Cane died before the winter was out after a two
months’ illness. The poor man had taken a chill.

 

PARIS, March 1836.ews ; PESO PE ROR ReURSCEOELELOE DUPE ta!
pASSSUBADESERASLSUPRCU RSE Peas Seh sh RAeaeSe Pe PORE UOC RRSEERRS SECA R CE RSCCERICEESECERES

 

Z. MARCAS

Lo His Highness Count William of Wurtemberg, as a token
of the Author's respectful gratitude.
De Balzac.

I NEVER saw anybody, not. even among the most remarkable

men of the day, whose appearance was so striking as this
man’s; the study of his countenance at first gave me a feel-
ing of great melancholy, and at last produced an almost pain-
ful impression.

There was a certain harmony between the man and his
name. The Z. preceding Marcas, which was seen on the ad-
dresses of his letters, and which he never omitted from his
signature, as the last letter of the alphabet, suggested some
mysterious fatality.

Marcas! say this two-syllabled name again and again; do
you not feel as if it had some sinister meaning? Does it not
seem to you that its owner must be doomed to martyrdom ?
Though foreign, savage, the name has a right to be handed
down to posterity; it is well constructed, easily pronounced,
and has the brevity that beseems a famous name. Is it not
pleasant as well as odd? But does it not sound unfinished ?

I will not take it upon myself to assert that names have
no influence on the destiny of men. There is a certain secret
and inexplicable concord or a visible discord between the
events of a man’s life and his name which is truly surprising;
often some remote but very real correlation is revealed. Our
globe is round; everything is linked to everything else. Some
day perhaps we shall revert to the occult sciences.

Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence?
Does it not prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a
(341)

pb cael «342 Z. MARCAS

storm-tossed life? What wind blew on that letter, which,
whatever language we find it in, begins scarcely fifty words?
Marcas’ name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin is highly
venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a-Breton.

Study the name once more: Z. Marcas! The man’s whole
life lies in this fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters ; seven !
the most significant of all the cabalistic numbers. And he
died at five-and-thirty, so his life extended over seven lustres.

Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is
broken with a fall, with or without a crash?

I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived
at that time in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but
students came to lodge, one of those large houses where there
is a winding staircase quite at the back, lighted below from
the street, higher up by borrowed lights, and at the top by a
skylight. There were forty furnished rooms—furnished as
students’ rooms are! What does youth demand more than was
here supplied? A bed, a few chairs, a chest of drawers, a
looking-glass, and a table. As soon as the sky is blue the stu-
dent opens his window.

But in this street there are no fair neighbors to flirt with.
In front is the Odéon, long since closed, presenting a wall
that is beginning to go black, its tiny gallery windows and its
vast expanse of slate roof. I was not rich enough to have a
good room; I was not even rich enough to have a room to my-
self. Juste and I shared a double-bedded room on the fifth
floor.

On our side of the landing there were but two rooms—
ours and a smaller one, occupied by Z. Marcas, our neighbor.
For six months Juste and I remained in perfect ignorance
of the fact. The old woman who managed the house had
indeed told us that the room was inhabited, but she had added
that we should not be disturbed, that the occupant was ex-
ceedingly quiet. In fact, for those six months, we never
met our fellow-lodger, and we never heard a sound in his room,
in spite of the thinness of the partition that divided us—oneZ. MARCAS 343

of those walls of lath and plaster which are common in Paris
houses.

Our room, a little over seven feet high, was hung with a
vile cheap paper sprigged with blue. The floor was painted,
and knew nothing of the polish given by the frotteur’s brush.
By our beds there was only a serap of thin carpet. The chim-
ney opened immediately to the roof, and smoked so abomi-
nably that we were obliged to provide a stove at our own ex-
pense. Our beds were mere painted wooden cribs like those
in schools; on the chimney shelf there were but two brass
candlesticks, with or without tallow candles in them, and our
two pipes with some tobacco in a pouch or strewn abroad, also
the little piles of cigar-ash left there by our visitors or our-
selves.

A pair of calico curtains hung from the brass window rods,
and on each side of the window was a small bookcase in
cherry-wood, such as every one knows who has stared into the
shop windows of the Quartier Latin, and in which we kept the
few books necessary for our studies.

The ink in the inkstand was always in the state of lava con-

gealed in the crater of a voleano. May not any inkstand nowa-
days become a Vesuvius? The pens, all twisted, served to
clean the stems of our pipes; and, in opposition to all the
laws of credit, paper was even scarcer than coin.

How can young men be expected to stay at home in such
furnished lodgings? The students studied in the cafés, the
theatre, the Luxembourg gardens, in grisettes’ rooms, even in
the law schools—anywhere rather than in their horrible rooms
—horrible for purposes of study, delightful as soon as they
are used for gossiping and smoking in. Put a cloth on the
table, and the impromptu dinner sent in from the best
eating-house in the neighborhood—places for four—two of
them in petticoats—show a lithograph of this “Interior” to
the veriest bigot, and she will be bound to smile.

We thought only of amusing ourselves. The reason for our
dissipation lay in the most serious facts of the politics of the
time. Juste and I could not see any room for us in the two344 Z. MARCAS

professions our parents wished us to take up. There are a
hundred doctors, a hundred lawyers, for one that is wanted.
The crowd is choking these two paths which are supposed to
lead to fortune, but which are merely two arenas; men kill
each other there, fightang, not indeed with swords or fire-
arms, but with intrigue and calumny, with tremendous toil,
campaigns in the sphere of the intellect as murderous as those
in Italy were to the soldiers of the Republic. In these days,
when everything is an intellectual competition, a man must
be able to sit forty-eight hours on end in his chair before a
table, as a General could remain for two days on horseback
and in his saddle.

The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the
Faculty of Medicine into categories. There is the physician
who writes and the physician who practises, the political physi-
cian, and the physician militant—four different ways of being
a physician, four classes already filled up. As to the fifth
class, that of physicians who sell remedies, there is such a
competition that they fight each other with disgusting ad-
vertisements on the walls of Paris.

In all the law courts there are almost as many lawyers as
there are cases. The pleader is thrown back on journalism,
on politics, on literature. In fact, the State, besieged for the
smallest appointments under the law, has ended by requiring
that the applicants should have some little fortune. The pear-
shaped head of the grocer’s son is selected in preference to
the square skull of a man of talent who has not a sou. Work
as he will, with all his energy, a young man, starting from
zero, may at the end of ten years find himself below the point
he set out from. In these days, talent must have the good
luck which secures success to the most incapable; nay, more, if
it scorns the base compromises which insure advancement
to crawling mediocrity, it will never get on.

If we thoroughly knew our time, we also knew ourselves,
and we preferred the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir,
easy-going pleasure to the useless toil which would have ex-
hausted our courage and worn out the edge of our intelligence.Z. MARCAS 345

We had analyzed social life while smoking, laughing, and
loafing. But, though elaborated by such means as these, our
reflections were none the less judicious and profound.

While we were fully conscious of the slavery to which youth
is condemned, we were amazed at the brutal indifference of the
authorities to everything connected with intellect, thought,
and poetry. How often have Juste and I exchanged glances
when reading the papers as we studied political events, or the
debates in the Chamber, and discussed the proceedings of a
Court whose wilful ignorance could find no parallel but in
the platitude of the courtiers, the mediocrity of the men
forming the hedge round the newly-restored throne, all alike
devoid of talent or breadth of view, of distinction or learning,
of influence or dignity!

Could there be a higher tribute to the Court of Charles X.
than the present Court, if Court it may be called? What a
hatred of the country may be seen in the naturalization of
vulgar foreigners, devoid of talent, who are enthroned in the
Chamber of Peers! What a perversion of justice! What an
insult to the distinguished youth, the ambitions native to the
soil of France! We looked upon these things as upon a spec-
tacle, and groaned over them, without taking upon ourselves
to act.

Juste, whom no one ever sought, and who never sought any
one, was, at five-and-twenty, a great politician, a man with
a wonderful aptitude for apprehending the correlation be-
tween remote history and the facts of the present and of the
future. In 1831, he told me exactly what would and did hap-
pen—the murders, the conspiracies, the ascendency of the
Jews, the difficulty of doing anything in France, the scarcity
of talent in the higher circles, and the abundance of intellect
in the lowest ranks, where the finest courage is smothered
under cigar ashes.

What was to become of him? His parents wished him to
be a doctor. But if he were a doctor, must he not wait twenty
years for a practice? You know what he did? No? Well,
he is a doctor; but he left France, he isin Asia. At this mo-

a, a Rm ©ee ee "

SS

  

346 Z. MARCAS

ment he is perhaps sinking under fatigue in a desert, or dying
of the lashes of a barbarous horde—or perhaps he is some In-
dian prince’s prime minister.

Action is my vocation. Leaving a civil college at the age
of twenty, the only way for me to enter the army was by en-
listing as a common soldier; so, weary of the dismal outlook
that lay before a lawyer, I acquired the knowledge needed
fora sailor. I imitate Juste, and keep out of France, where
men waste, in the struggle to make way, the energy needed
for the noblest works. Follow my example, friends; I am
going where a man steers his destiny as he pleases.

These great resolutions were formed in the little room in
the lodging-house in the Rue Corneille, in spite of our haunt-
ing the Bal Musard, flirting with girls of the town, and lead-
ing a careless and apparently reckless life. Our plans and
arguments long floated in the air.

Marcas, our neighbor, was in some degree the guide who
led us to the margin of the precipice or the torrent, whe made
us sound it, and showed us beforehand what our fate would
be if we let ourselves fall into it. It was he who put us on
our guard against the time-bargains a man makes with
poverty under the sanction of hope, by accepting precarious
situations whence he fights the battle, carried along by the
devious tide of Paris—that great harlot who takes you up or
leaves you stranded, smiles or turns her back on you with
equal readiness, wears out the strongest will in vexatious wait-
ing, and makes misfortune wait on chance.

At our first meeting, Marcas, as it were, dazzled us. On our
return from the schools, a little before the dinner-hour, we
were accustomed to go up to our room and remain there a
while, either waiting for the other, to learn whether there were
any change in our plans for the evening. One day, at four
o’clock, Juste met Marcas on the stairs, and I saw him in the
street. It was in the month of November, and Marcas had no
cloak; he wore shoes with heavy soles, corduroy trousers, and
a blue double-breasted coat buttoned to the throat, which gaveeeeeESEL ane

  

Z. MARCAS 347

a military air to his broad chest, all the more so because he
wore a black stock. The costume was not in itself extraor-
dinary, but it agreed well with the man’s mien and counte-
nance.

My first impression on seeing him was neither surprise,
nor distress, nor interest, nor pity, but curiosity mingled with
all these feelings. He walked slowly, with a step that be-
trayed deep melancholy, his head forward with a stoop, but
not bent like that of a conscience-stricken man. That head,
large and powerful, which might contain the treasures neces-
sary for a man of the highest ambition, looked as if it were
loaded with thought; it was weighted with grief of mind,
but there was no touch of remorse in his expression. As to
his face, it may be summed up in a word. A common super-
stition has it that every human countenance resembles some
animal. The animal for Marcas was the lion. His hair was
like a mane, his nose was short and flat; broad and dented
at the tip like a lion’s; his brow, like a lion’s, was strongly
marked with a deep median furrow, dividing two powerful
bosses. His high, hairy cheek-bones, all the more prominent
because his cheeks were so thin, his enormous mouth and
hollow jaws, were accentuated by lines of haughty signifi-
cance, and marked by a complexion full of tawny shadows.
This almost terrible countenance seemed illuminated by two
lamps—two eyes, black indeed, but infinitely sweet, calm and
deep, full of thought. If I may say so, those eyes had a
humiliated expression.

Marcas was afraid of looking directly at others, not for
himself, but for those on whom his fascinating gaze might
rest ; he had a power, and he shunned using 1t; he would spare
those he met, and he feared notice. This was not from mod-
esty, but from resignation—not Christian resignation, which
implies charity, but resignation founded on reason, which had
demonstrated the immediate inutility of his gifts, the impos-
sibility of entering and living in the sphere for which he was
fitted. Those eyes could at times flash ightnings. From
those lips a voice of thunder must surely proceed; it was a
mouth like Mirabeau’s.

   
  
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

Pare e >348 Z. MARCAS

“T have seen such a grand fellow in the street,” said I to
Juste on coming in.

“Tt must be our neighbor,” replied Juste, who described,
in fact, the man I had just met. “A man who lives lke a
wood-louse would be sure to look like that,” he added.

“What dejection and what dignity!’

“One is the consequence of the other.”

“What ruined hopes! What schemes and failures!”

“Seven leagues of ruins! Obelisks—palaces—towers !—
The ruins of Palmyra in the desert!” said Juste, laughing.

So we called him the Ruins of Palmyra.

As we went out to dine at the wretched eating-house in the
Rue de la Harpe to which we subscribed, we asked the name
of Number 37, and then heard the weird name Z. Marcas.
Like boys, as we were, we repeated it more than a hundred
times with all sorts of comments, absurd or melancholy, and
the name lent itself to the jest. Juste would fire off the Z
like a rocket rising, z-z-z-z-zed; and after pronouncing the
first syllable of the name with great importance, depicted a
fall by the dull brevity of the second.

“Now, how and where does the man live?”

From this query, to the innocent espionage of curiosity
there was no pause but that required for carrying out our
plan. Instead of loitering about the streets, we both came
in, each armed with a novel. We read with our ears open.
And in the perfect silence of our attic rooms, we heard the
even, dull sound of a sleeping man breathing.

“He is asleep,” said I to Juste, noticing this fact.

“At seven o’clock!” replied the Doctor.

This was the name by which I called Juste, and he called
me the Keeper of the Seals.

“A man must be wretched indeed to sleep as much as our
neighbor!” cried I, jumping on to the chest of drawers with
a knife in my hand, to which a corkscrew was attached.

I made a round hole at the top of the partition, about as
big as a five-sou piece. I had forgotten that there would be
mo light in the room, and on putting my eye to the hole, IZ. MARCAS 349

saw only darkness. At about one in the morning, when we
had finished our books and were about to undress, we heard
a noise in our neighbor’s room. He got up, struck a match,
and lighted his dip. I got on to the drawers again, and I
then saw Marcas seated at his table and copying law-papers.

His room was about half the size of ours; the bed stood in
a recess by the door, for the passage ended there, and its
breadth was added to his garret; but the ground on which
the house was built was evidently irregular, for the party-wall
formed an obtuse angle, and the room was not square. There
was no fireplace, only a small earthenware stove, white
blotched with green, of which the pipe went up through the
roof. The window, in the skew side of the room, had shabby
red curtains. The furniture consisted of an armchair, a table,
a chair, and a wretched bed-table. A cupboard in the wall
held his clothes. The wall-paper was horrible; evidently
only a servant had ever lodged there before Marcas.

“What is to be seen?” asked the Doctor as I got down.

“Look for yourself,” said I.

At nine next morning, Marcas was in bed. He had break-
fasted off a saveloy; we saw on a plate, with some crumbs
of bread, the remains of that too familiar delicacy. He was
asleep ; he did not wake till eleven. He then set to work again
on the copy he had begun the night before, which was lying
on the table.

On going downstairs we asked the price of that room, and
were told fifteen francs a month.

In the course of a few days, we were fully informed as to
the mode of life of Z. Marcas. He did copying, at so much a
sheet no doubt, for a law-writer who lived in the courtyard of
the Sainte-Chapelle. He worked half the night; after sleep-
ing from six till ten, he began again and wrote till three.
Then he went out to take the copy home before dinner, which
he ate at Mizerai’s in the Rue Michel-le-Comte, at a cost of
nine sous, and came in to bed at six o’clock. It became known
to us that Marcas did not utter fifteen sentences in a month;
he never talked to anybody, nor said a word to himself in his
dreadful garret.350 Z. MARCAS
“The Ruins of Palmyra are terribly silent!’ said Juste.
This taciturnity in a man whose appearance was so im-

posing was strangely significant. Sometimes when we met
him, we exchanged glances full of meaning on both sides,
but they never led to any advances. Insensibly this man be-
came the object of our secret admiration, though we knew no
reason for it. Did it lie in his secretly simple habits, his
monastic regularity, his hermit-like frugality, his idiotically
mechanical labor, allowing his mind to remain neuter or to
work on its own lines, seeming to us to hint at an expectation
of some stroke of good luck, or at some foregone conclusion
as to his life?

After wandering for a leng time among the Ruins of Pal-
myra, we forget them—we were young! Then came the
Carnival, the Paris Carnival, which, henceforth, will eclipse
the old Carnival of Venice, unless some ill-advised Prefect of
Police is antagonistic.

Gambling ought to be allowed during the Carnival; but
the stupid moralists who have had gambling suppressed are
inert financiers, and this indispensable evil will be re-estab-
lished among us when it is proved that France leaves millions
at the German tables.

This splendid Carnival brought us to utter penury, as it
does every student. We got rid of every object of luxury; we
sold our second coats, our second boots, our second waistcoats—
everything of which we had a duplicate, except our friend.
We ate bread and cold sausages; we looked where we walked;
we had set to work in earnest. We owed two months’ rent,
and were sure of having a bill from the porter for sixty or
eighty items each, and amounting to forty or fifty francs.
We made no noise, and did not laugh as we crossed the little
hall at the bottom of the stairs; we commonly took it at
a flying leap from the lowest step into the street. On the
day when we first found ourselves bereft of tobacco for our
pipes, it struck us that for some days we had been eating
bread without any kind of butter.

Great was our distress.Z. MABCAS

“No tobacco!” said the Doctor.

“No cloak!’ said the Keeper of the Seals.

“Ah, you rascals, you would dress as the postillon de
Longjumeau, you would appear as Débardeurs, sup in the
morning, and breakfast at night at Véry’s—sometimes even
at the Rocher de Cancale—Dry bread for you, my boys!
Why,” said I, in a big bass voice, “‘you deserve to sleep under
the bed, you are not worthy to le in it eB

“Yes, yes; but, Keeper of Seals, there is no more tobacco !”
said Juste.

“Tt is high time to write home, to our aunts, our mothers,
and our sisters, to tell them we have no underlinen left, that
the wear and tear of Paris would ruin garments of wire. Then
we will solve an elegant chemical problem by transmuting
linen into silver.”

“But we must live till we get the answer.”

“Well, I will go and bring out a loan among such of our
friends as may still have some capital to invest.”

“And how much will you find?”

“Say ten francs!” rephed I with pride.

It was midnight. Marcas had heard everything. He
knocked at our door.

“Messieurs,” said he, “here is some tobacco; you can repay
me on the first opportunity.”

We were struck, not by the offer, which we accepted, but
by the rich, deep, full voice in which it was made; a tone only
comparable to the lowest string of Paganini’s violin. Marcas
vanished without waiting for our thanks.

Juste and I looked at each other without a word. To be
rescued by a man evidently poorer than ourselves! Juste
sat down to write to every member of his family, and I went
off to effect a loan. I brought in twenty francs lent me by a
fellow-provincial. In that evil but happy day gambling was
still tolerated, and in its lodes, as hard as the rocky ore of
Brazil, young men, by risking a small sum, had a chance of
winning a few gold pieces. My friend, too, had some Turkish
tobacco brought home from Constantinople by a sailor, and352 Z. MARCAS

he gave me quite as much as we had taken from Z. Marcas.
I conveyed the splendid cargo into port, and we went in tri-
umph to repay our neighbor with a tawny wig of Turkish
tobacco for his dark Caporal.

“You are determined not to be my debtors,” said he.
“You are giving me gold for copper——You are boys—good
boys——”

The sentences, spoken in varying tones, were variously em-
phasized. The words were nothing, but the expression !—
That made us friends of ten years’ standing at once.

Marcas, on hearing us coming, had covered up his papers;
we understood that it would be taking a liberty to allude to his
means of subsistence, and felt ashamed of having watched
him. His cupboard stood open; in it there were two shirts,
a white necktie, and a razor. The razor made me shudder.
A looking-glass, worth five franes perhaps, hung near the
window.

The man’s few and simple movements had a sort of savage
grandeur. The Doctor and I looked at each other, wonder-
ing what we could say in reply. Juste, seeing that I was
speechless, asked Marcas jestingly:

“You cultivate literature, monsieur ?”

“Far from it!” replied Marcas. “I should not be go
wealthy.”

“I fancied,” said I, “that poetry alone, in these days, was
amply sufficient to provide a man with lodgings as bad as
ours.”

My remark made Marcas smile, and the smile gave a charm
to his yellow face.

“Ambition is not a less severe taskmaster to those who rhea ges
said he. “You, who are beginning life, walk in the beaten
paths. Never dream of rising superior, you will be ruined!”

“You advise us to stay just as we are?” said the Doctor,
smiling.

There is something so infectious and childlike in the pleas-
antries of youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply.

“What incidents can have given you this detestable philos-
ophy ?” asked I.Z. MARCAS 353

“T forgot once more that chance is the result of an immense
equation of which we know not all the factors. When we start
from zero to work up to the unit, the chances are incalculable.
To ambitious men Paris is an immense roulette table, and
every young man fancies he can hit on a successful progres-
sion of numbers.”

He offered us the tobacco I had brought that we might
smoke with him; the Doctor went to fetch our pipes; Marcas
filled his, and then he came to sit in our room, bringing the
tobacco with him, since there were but two chairs in his. Juste,
as brisk as a squirrel, ran out, and returned with a boy carry-
ing three bottles of Bordeaux, some Brie cheese, and a loaf.

“Hah!” said I to myself, “fifteen francs,” and I was right
to a sou.

Juste gravely laid five francs on the chimney-shelf.

There are immeasurable differences between the gregarious
man and the man who lives closest to nature. Toussaint
Louverture, after he was caught, died without speaking a
word. Napoleon, transplanted to a rock, talked like a magpie
—he wanted to account for himself. Z. Marcas erred in the
same way, but for our benefit only. Silence in all its majesty
is to be found only in the savage. There never is a criminal
who, though he might let his secrets fall with his head into
the basket of sawdust, does not feel the purely social impulse
to tell them to somebody.

Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Fau-
bourg Saint-Marceau who raised the Parisian to the level of
the natural savage—a republican, a conspirator, a French-
man, an old man, who outdid all we have heard of Negro de-
termination, and all that Cooper tells us of the tenacity and
coolness of the Redskins under defeat. Morey, the Guati-
mozin of the “Mountain,” preserved an attitude unparalleled

in the annals of European justice.

This is what Marcas told us during the small hours, sand-
wiching his discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese
and washed down with wine. All the tobacco was burned out.354 Z. MARCAS

Now and then the hackney coaches clattering across the Place
de Odéon, or the omnibuses toiling past, sent up their dull
rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still close to us.

His family lived at Vitré; his father and mother had
fifteen hundred francs a year in the funds. He had received
an education gratis in a Seminary, but had refused to enter
the priesthood. He felt in himself the fires of immense
ambition, and had come to Paris on foot at the age of twenty,
the possessor of two hundred francs. He had studied the
law, working in an attorney’s office, where he had risen to
be superior clerk. He had taken his doctor’s degree in law,
had mastered the old and modern codes, and could hold his
own with the most famous pleaders. He had studied the law
of nations, and was familiar with European treaties and in-
ternational practice. He had studied men and things in five
capitals—London, Berlin, Vienna, Petersburg, and Con-
stantinople.

No man was better informed than he as to the rules of the
Chamber. Jor five years he had been reporter of the debates
for a daily paper. He spoke extempore and admirably, and
could go on for a long time in that deep, appealing voice
which had struck us to the soul. Indeed, he proved by the
narrative of his life that he was a great orator, a concise
orator, serious and yet full of piercing eloquence; he re-
sembled Berryer in his fervor and in the impetus which com-
mands the sympathy of the masses, and was like Thiers
in refinement and skill; but he would have been less diffuse,
less in difficulties for a conclusion. He had intended to rise

' rapidly to power without burdening himself first with the

doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in opposition,
but an incubus later to the statesman.

Marcas had learned everything that a real statesman should
know; indeed, his amazement was considerable when he had
occasion to discern the utter ignorance of men who have risen
to the administration of public affairs in France. Though
in him it was vocation that had led to study, nature had been
generous and bestowed all that cannot be acquired—keen per-Z, MARCAS 3595

ceptions, self-command, a nimble wit, rapid judgment, de-
cisiveness, and, what is the genius of these men, fertility in
resource.

By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped,
France was torn by intestine divisions arising from the tri-
umph of the House of Orleans over the elder branch of the
Bourbons.

The field of political warfare is evidently changed. Civil
war henceforth cannot last for long, and will not be fought
out in the provinces. In France such struggles will be of
brief duration and at the seat of government; and the battle
will be the close of the moral contest which will have been
brought to an issue by superior minds. This state of things
will continue so long as France has her present singular form
of government, which has no analogy with that of any other
country ; for there is no more resemblance between the Eng-
lish and the French constitutions than between the two lands.

Thus Marcas’ place was in the political press. Being poor
and unable to secure his election, he hoped to make a sudden
appearance. He resolved on making the greatest possible sacri-
fice for a man of superior intellect, to work as subordinate
to some rich and ambitious deputy. Like a second Bonaparte,
he sought his Barras; the new Colbert hoped to find a Ma-
zarin. He did immense services, and he did them then and
there; he assumed no importance, he made no boast, he did
not complain of ingratitude. He did them in the hope that
his patron would put him in a position to be elected deputy ;
Marcas wished for nothing but a loan that might enable him
to purchase a house in Paris, the qualification required by
law. Richard III. asked for nothing but his horse.

In three years Marcas had made his man—one of the fifty
supposed great statesmen who are the battledores with which
two cunning players toss the ministerial portfolios exactly
as the man behind the puppet-show hits Punch against the
constable in his street theatre, and counts on always getting
paid. This man existed only by Marcas, but he had just
brains enough to appreciate the value of his “ghost” and to356 Z. MARCAS

know that Marcas, if he ever came to the front, would remain
there, would be indispensable, while he himself would be
translated to the polar zone of the Luxembourg. So he deter-
mined to put insurmountable obstacles.in the way of his
Mentor’s advancement, and hid his purpose under the sem-
blance of the utmost sincerity. Like all mean men, he could
dissimulate to perfection, and he soon made progress in the
ways of ingratitude, for he felt that he must kill Marcas, not
to be killed by him. These two men, apparently so united,
hated each other as soon as one had once deceived the other.

The politician was made one of a ministry; Marcas re-
mained in the opposition to hinder his man from being at-
tacked ; nay, by skilful tactics he won him the applause of the
opposition. To excuse himself for not rewarding his subal-
tern, the chief pointed out the impossibility of finding a place
suddenly for a man on the other side, without a great deal of
manceuvring. Marcas had hoped confidently for a place to
enable him to marry, and thus acquire the qualification he so
ardently desired. He was two-and-thirty, and the Chamber
ere long must be dissolved. Having detected his man in this
flagrant act of bad faith, he overthrew him, or at any rate con-
tributed largely to his overthrow, and covered him with mud.

A fallen minister, if he is to rise again to power, must show
that he is to be feared; this man, intoxicated by Royal glib-
ness, had fancied that his position would be permanent; he
acknowledged his delinquencies; besides confessing them,
he did Marcas a small money service, for Marcas had got into
debt. He subsidized the newspaper on which Marcas worked,
and made him the manager of it.

Though he despised the man, Marcas, who, practically, was
being subsidized too, consented to-take the part of the fallen
minister. Without unmasking at once all the batteries of his
superior intellect, Marcas came a little further than before;
he showed half his shrewdness. The Ministry lasted only a
hundred and eighty days; it was swallowed up. Marcas had
put himself into communication with certain deputies, had
moulded them like dough, leaving each impressed with a highZ. MARCAS 357

opinion of his talent; his puppet again became a member of
the Ministry, and then the paper was ministerial. The Min-
istry united the paper with another, solely to squeeze out
Marcas, who in this fusion had to make way for a rich and
insolent rival, whose name was well known, and who already
had his foot in the stirrup.

Marcas relapsed into utter destitution; his haughty patron
well knew the depths into which he had cast him.

Where was he to go? ‘The ministerial papers, privily
warned, would have nothing to say to him. The opposition
papers did not care to admit him to their offices. Marcas
could side neither with the Republicans nor with the Le-
gitimists, two parties whose triumph would mean the over-
throw of everything that now is.

“Ambitious men like a fast hold on things,” said he with a
smile.

He lived by writing a few articles on commercial affairs,
and contributed to one of those encyclopedias brought out by
speculation and not by learning. Finally a paper was
founded, which was destined to live but two years, but which
secured his services. From that moment he renewed his con-
nection with the minister’s enemies; he joined the party who
were working for the fall of the Government; and as soon as
his pickaxe had free play, it fell.

This paper had now for six months ceased to exist; he had
failed to find employment of any kind; he was spoken of as a
dangerous man, calumny attacked him; he had unmasked a
huge financial and mercantile job by a few articles and a pam-
phlet. He was known to be the mouthpiece of a banker who
was said to have paid him largely, and from whom he was sup-
posed to expect some patronage in return for his champion-
ship. Marcas, disgusted by men and things, worn out by five
years of fighting, regarded as a free lance rather than as a
great leader, crushed by the necessity for earning his daily
bread, which hindered him from gaining ground, in despair
at the influence exerted by money over mind, and given over
to dire poverty, buried himself in a garret, to make thirty

    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Se eas358 Z. MARCAS

sous a day, the sum strictly answering to his needs. Medi-
tation had leveled a desert all round him. He read the pa-
pers to be informed of what was going on. Pozzo di Borgo
had once lived like this for sonre time. |.

Marcas, no doubt, was planning a serious attack, accustom-
ing himself to dissimulation, and punishing himself for his
blunders by Pythagorean muteness. But he did not tell us
the reasons for his conduct.

It is impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the
highest comedy that lay behind this algebraic statement of
his career; his useless patience dogging the footsteps of for-
tune, which presently took wings, his long tramps over the
thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases as a petitioner,
his attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only to fail
through the influence of some frivolous woman; the meetings
with men of business who expected their capital to bring
them places and a peerage, as well as large interest. Then the
hopes rising in a towering wave only to break in foam on the
shoal; the wonders wrought in reconciling adverse interests
which, after working together for a week, fell asunder; the
annoyance, a thousand times repeated, of seeing a dunce deco-
rated with the Legion of Honor, and preferred, though as
ignoramt as a shop-boy, to a man of talent. Then, what Mar-
cas called the stratagems of stupidity—you strike a man, and
he seems convinced, he nods his head—everything is settled;
next day, this india-rubber ball, flattened for a moment, has
recovered itself in the course of the night; it is as full of wind
as ever; you must begin all over again; and you go on till you
understand that you are not dealing with a man, but with a
lump of gum that loses shape in the sunshine.

These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human
energy on barren spots, the difficulty of achieving any good,
the incredible facility of doing mischief; two strong games
played out, twice won, and then twice lost; the hatred of a
statesman—a blockhead with a painted face and a wig,
but in whom the world believed—all these things, greatZ.

 

MARCAS 309

and small, had not crushed, but for the moment had dashed,
Marcas. In the days when money had come into his hands,
his fingers had not elutched it; he had allowed himself the
exquisite pleasure of sending it ‘all to his family—to his sis-
ters, his brothers, his old father. Like Napoleon in his fall,
he asked for no more than thirty sous a day, and any man
of energy can earn thirty sous for a day’s work in Paris.

When Marcas had finished the story of his life, inter-
mingled with reflections, maxims, and observations, revealing
him as a great politician, a few questions and answers on both
sides as to the progress of affairs in France and in Europe
were enough to prove to us that he was a real statesman; for
a man maybe quicklyand easily judged when he can be brought
on to the ground of immediate difficulties: there is a certain
Shibboleth for men of superior talents, and we were of the
tribe of modern Levites without belonging as yet to the Tem-
ple. As I have said, our frivolity covered certain purposes
which Juste has carried out, and which I am about to execute.

When we had done talking, we all three went out, cold as
it was, to walk in the Luxembourg gardens till the dinner
hour. In the course of that walk our conversation, grave
throughout, turned on the painful aspects of the political
situation. Hach of us contributed his remarks, his com-
ment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was no
longer exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale
just described by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare.
Nor was it the distressful monologue of the wrecked navi-
gator, stranded in a garret in the Hotel Corneille; it was a
dialogue in which two well-informed young men, having
gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring, under the
guidance of a man of talent, to gain some light on their own
future prospects.

“Why,” asked Juste, “did you not wait patiently for an
opportunity, and imitate the only man who has been able
to keep the lead since the Revolution of July by holding
his head above water ?”

“Have I-not said that we never know where the roots of

Sco SRE ©360 Z. MARCAS

chance lie? Carrel was in identically the same position as
the orator you speak of. That gloomy young man, of a bitter
spirit, had a whole government in his head; the man of
whom you speak had no idea beyond mounting on the crupper
of every event. Of the two, Carrel was the better man.
Well, one became a minister, Carrel remained a journalist ;
the incomplete but craftier man is living; Carrel is dead.

“TI may point out that your man has for fifteen years been
making his way, and is but making it still. He may yet be
caught and crushed between two cars full of intrigues on
the highroad to power. He has no house; he has not the
favor of the palace like Metternich; nor, like Villele, the
protection of a compact majority.

“T do not believe that the present state of things will last
ten years longer. Hence, supposing I should have such poor
good luck, I am already too late to avoid being swept away
by the commotion I foresee. I should need to be established
in a superior position.”

“What commotion?’ asked Juste.

“Aucust, 1830,” said Marcas in solemn tones, holding out
his hand towards Paris; “August, the offspring of Youth
which bound the sheaves, and of Intellect which had ripened
the harvest, forgot to provide for Youth and Intellect.

“Youth will explode like the boiler of a steam-engine.
Youth has no outlet in France; it is gathering an avalanche
of underrated capabilities, of legitimate and restless ambi-
tions; young men are not marrying now; families cannot tell
what to do with their children. What will the thunderclap
be that will shake down these masses? I know not, but they
will crash down into the midst of things, and overthrow
everything. These are laws of hydrostatics which act on the
human race; the Roman Empire had failed to understand
them, and the Barbaric hordes came down.

“The Barbaric hordes now are the intelligent class. The
laws of overpressure are at this moment acting slowly and
silently in our midst. The Government is the great criminal ;
it does not appreciate the two powers to which it owes every-Z. MARCAS 361

thing; it has allowed its hands to be tied by the absurdities
of the Contract ; it is bound, ready to be the victim.

“Louis XIV., Napoleon, England, all were or are eager for
intelligent youth. In France the young are condemned by
the new legislation, by the blundering principles of elective
rights, by the unsoundness of the ministerial constitution.

“Look at the elective Chamber; you will find no deputies
of thirty ; the youth of Richelieu and of Mazarin, of Turenne
and of Colbert, of Pitt and of Saint-Just, of Napoleon and
of Prince Metternich, would find no admission there; Burke,
Sheridan, or Fox could not win seats. Even if political
majority had been fixed at one-and-twenty, and eligibility
had been relieved of evey disabling qualification, the Depart-
ments would have returned the very same members, men
devoid of political talent, unable to speak without murdering
French grammar, and among whom, in ten years, scarcely
one statesman has been found.

“The causes of an impending event may be seen, but the
event itself cannot be foretold. At this moment the youth
of France is being driven into Republicanism, because it be-
lieves that the Republic would bring it emancipation. It
will always remember the young representatives of the people
and the young army leaders! The imprudence of the Govy-
ernment is only comparable to its avarice.”

That day left its echoes in our lives. Marcas confirmed us
in our resolution to leave France, where young men of talent
and energy are crushed under the weight of successful com-
monplace, envious, and insatiable middle age.

We dined together in the Rue de la Harpe. We thence-
forth felt for Marcas the most respectful affection; he gave
us the most practical aid in the sphere of the mind. That
man knew everything; he had studied everything. For us
he cast his eye over the whole civilized world, seeking the
country where openings would be at once the most abundant
and the most favorable to the success of our plans. He in-
dicated what should be the goal of our studies; he bid us
make haste, explaining to us that time was precious, that362 Z. MARCAS

emigration would presently begin, and that its effect would
be to deprive France of the cream of its powers and of its
youthful talent; that their intelligence, necessarily sharpened,
would select the best places, and that the great thing was to
be first in the field.

Thenceforward, we often sat late at work under the lamp.
Our generous instructor wrote some notes for our guidance—
two pages for Juste and three for me—full of invaluable
advice—the sort of information which experience alone can
supply, such landmarks as only genius can place. In those
papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so vile
as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a
fortune, and forecasts of unerring acumen. ‘There are hints
as to certain parts of America and Asia which have been fully
justified, both before and since Juste and I could set out.

Marcas, like us, was in the most abject poverty. He earned,
indeed, his daily bread, but he had neither linen, clothes, nor
shoes. He did not make himself out any better than he was;
his dreams had been of luxury’as well as of power. He did
not admit that this was the real Marcas; he abandoned his
person, indeed, to the caprices of life. What he lived by was
the breath of ambition; he dreamed of revenge while blaming
himself for yielding to so shallow a feeling. The true states-
man ought, above all things, to be superior to vulgar passions;
like the man of science, he should have no passion but for his
science. It was in these days of dire necessity that Marcas
seemed to us so great—nay, so terrible; there was something
awful in the gaze which saw another world than that which
strikes the eye of ordinary men. ‘To us he was a subject of
contemplation and astonishment; for the young—which of
us has not known it ?—the young have a keen craving to ad-
mire; they love to attach themselves, and are naturally in-
clined to submit to the men they feel to be superior, as they
are to devote themselves to a great cause.

Our surprise was chiefly aroused by his indifference in mat-
ters of sentiment; woman had no place in his life. When we
spoke of this matter, a perennial theme of conversation among
Frenchmen, he simply remarked:Z. MARCAS 363

“Gowns cost too much.”

He saw the look that passed between Juste and me, and
went on:

“Yes, far too much. The woman you buy—and she is the
least expensive—takes a great deal of money. The woman
who gives herself takes all your time! Woman extinguishes
every energy, every ambition. Napoleon reduced her to what
she should be. From that point of view, he really was great.
He did not indulge such ruinous fancies of Louis XIV. and
Louis XV.; at the same time, he could love in secret.”

We discovered that, like Pitt, who made England his wife,
Marcas bore France in his heart; he idolized his country; he
had not a thought that was not for his native land. His fury
at feeling that he had in his hands the remedy for the evils
which so deeply saddened him, and could not apply it, ate
into his soul, and this rage was increased by the inferiority of
France at that time, as compared with Russia and England.
France a third-rate power! This cry came up again and
again in his conversation. The intestinal disorders of his
country had entered into his soul. All the contests between
the Court and the Chamber, showing, as they did, incessant
change and constant vacillation, which must injure the pros-
perity of the country, he scoffed at as backstairs squabbles.

“This is peace at the cost of the future,” said he.

One evening Juste and I were at work, sitting in perfect
silence. Marcas had just risen to toil at his copying, for he
had refused our assistance in spite of-our most earnest en-
treaties. We had offered to take it in turns to copy a batch
of manuscript, so that he should do but a third of his dis-
tasteful task; he had been quite angry, and we had ceased to
insist.

We heard the sound of gentlemanly boots in the pas-
sage, and raised our heads, looking at each other. There was
a tap at Marcas’ door—he never took the key out of the lock—
and we heard the hero answer:

“Come in.” Then—‘“What! you here, monsieur?”

Pore ert eel364 Z. MARCAS

“T myself,” replied the retired minister.

It was the Diocletian of this unknown martyr.

For some time he and our neighbor conversed in an under-
tone. Suddenly Marcas, whose voice had been heard but
rarely, as is natural in a dialogue in which the applicant be-
gins by setting forth the situation, broke out loudly in reply
te some offer we had not overheard.

“You would laugh at me for a fool,” cried he, “if I took
you at your word. Jesuits are a thing of the past, but Jesuit-
ism is eternal. Your Machiavelism and your generosity are
equally hollow and untrustworthy. You can make your own
calculations, but who can calculate on you? Your Court is
made up of owls who fear the light, of old men who quake
in the presence of the young, or who simply disregard them.
The Government is formed on the same pattern as the Court.
You have hunted up the remains of the Empire, as the
Restoration enlisted the Voltigeurs of Louis XIV.

“Titherto the evasions of cowardice have been taken for
the manceuvring of ability; but dangers will come, and the
younger generation will rise as they did in 1790. They did
grand things then.—Just now you change ministries as a
sick man turns in his bed; these oscillations betray the weak-
ness of the Government. You work on an underhand system
of policy which will be turned against you, for France will
be tired of your shuffling. France will not tell you that she
is tired of you; a man never knows whence his ruin comes;
it is the historian’s task to find out; but you will undoubtedly
perish as the reward of not having the youth of France to
lend you its strength and energy; for having hated really
capable men; for not having lovingly chosen them from this
noble generation ; for having in all cases preferred mediocrity.

“You have come to ask my support, but you are an atom
in that decrepit heap which is made hideous by self-interest,
which trembles and squirms, and, because it is so mean, tries
to make France mean too. My strong nature, my ideas,
would work like poison in you; twice you have tricked me,
twice have I overthrown you. -If we unite a third time, itZ. MARCAS 365

must be a very serious matter. I should kill myself if I
allowed myself to be duped; for I should be to blame, not
Vou.”

Then we heard the humblest entreaties, the most fervent
adjurations, not to deprive the country of such superior
talents. The man spoke of patriotism, and Marcas uttered
a significant “Ouh! ouh!”’ He laughed at his would-be
patron. Then the statesman was more explicit; he bowed to
the superiority of his erewhile counselor; he pledged himself
to enable Marcas to remain in office, to be elected deputy;
then he offered him a high appointment, promising him that
he, the speaker, would thenceforth be the subordinate of a
man whose subaltern he was only worthy to be. He was in
the newly-formed ministry, and he would not return to power
unless Marcas had a post in proportion to his merit; he had
already made it a condition, Marcas had been regarded as
indispensable.

Marcas refused.

“T have never before been in a position to keep my prom-
ises; here is an opportunity of proving myself faithful to my
word, and you fail me.”

To this Marcas made no reply. The boots were again
audible in the passage on the way to the stairs.

“Marcas! Marcas!” we both cried, rushing into his room.
“Why refuse? He really meant it. His offers are very
handsome; at any rate, go to see the ministers.”

In a twinkling, we had given Marcas a hundred reasons.
The minister’s voice was sincere; without seeing him, we had
felt sure that he was honest.

“T have no clothes,” replied Marcas.

“Rely on us,” said Juste, with a glance at me.

Marcas had the courage to trust us; a light flashed in his
eye, he pushed his fingers through his hair, lifting it from his
forehead with a gesture that showed some confidence in his
luck; and when he had thus unveiled his face, so to speak, we
caw in him a man absolutely unknown to us—Mareas sublime,
Marcas in his power! His mind in its element—the bird366 Z. MARCAS

 

restored to the free air, the fish to the water, the horse gal-
loping across the plain.

It was transient. His brow clouded again; he had, it
would seem, a vision of his fate. Halting doubt had followed
close on the heels of white-winged hope.

We left him to himself.

“Now, then,” said I to the Doctor, “we have given our
word; how are we to keep it?”

“We will sleep upon it,” said Juste, “and to-morrow morn-
ing we will talk it over.”

Next morning we went for a walk in the Luxembourg.

We had had time to think over the incident of the past
night, and were both equally surprised at the lack of address
shown by Marcas in the minor difficulties of life—he, a man
who never saw any difficulties in the solution of the hardest
problems of abstract or practical politics. But these elevated
characters can all be tripped up on a grain of sand, and will,
like the grandest enterprise, miss fire for want of a thousand
frances. It is the old story of Napoleon, who, for lack of a
pair of boots, did not set out for India.

“Well, what have you hit upon?” asked Juste.

“T have thought of a way to get him a complete outfit.”

“Where ?”

“From Humann.”

Belo Wim

“Humann, my boy, never goes to his customers—his cus-
tomers go to him; so that he does not know whether I am
rich or poor. He only knows that I dress well and look
decent in the clothes he makes for me. I shall tell him that
an uncle of mine has dropped in from the country, and that
his indifference in matters of dress is quite a discredit to me
in the upper circles where I am trying to find a wife.—It will
not be Humann if he sends in his bill before three months.”

The Doctor thought this a capital idea for a vaudeville,
but poor enough in real life, and doubted my success. But
I give you my word of honor, Humann dressed Marcas, and,
being an artist, turned him out as a political personage ought
to be dressed.Z. MARCAS 367

Juste lent Marcas two hundred frances in gold, the product
of two watches bought on credit, and pawned at the Mont-
de-Piété. For my part, I had said nothing of six shirts and
all necessary linen, which cost me no more than the pleasure
of asking for them from a forewoman in a shop whom I had
treated to Musard’s during the carnival.

Marcas accepted everything, thanking us no more than he
ought. He only inquired as to the means by which we had
got possession of such riches, and we made him laugh for the
last time. We looked on our Marcas as shipowners, when
they have exhausted their credit and every resource at their
command to fit out a vessel, must look on it as it puts to sea.

Here Charles was silent; he seemed crushed by his mem-
ories.

“Well,” cried the audience, “and what happened?”

“T will tell you in a few words—for this is not romance—
it is history.”

We saw no more of Marcas. The administration lasted
for three months; it fell at the end of the session. Then
Marcas came back to us, worked to death. He had sounded
the crater of power ; he came away from it with the beginnings
of brain fever. The disease made rapid progress; we nursed
him. Juste at once called in the chief physician of the hos-
pital where he was working as house-surgeon. I was then
living alone in our room, and I was the most attentive at-
tendant; but care and science alike were in vain. By the
month of January, 1838, Marcas himself felt that he had but
a few days to live.

The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months
never even sent to inquire after him. Marcas expressed the
greatest contempt for the Government; he seemed to doubt
what the fate of France might be, and it was this doubt that
had made him ill. He had, he thought, detected treason
in the heart of power, not tangible, seizable treason, the result
of facts, but the treason of a system, the subordination of
national interests to selfish ends. His belief in the degrada-
tion of the country was enough to aggravate bis complaint.368 Z. MARCAS

 

I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one
of the leaders of the antagonistic party which he had fought
against. His hatred of the men he had tried to serve was
so virulent, that he would gladly have joined the coalition
that was about to be formed among certain ambitious spirits
who, at least, had one idea in common—that of shaking off
the yoke cf the Court. But Marcas could only reply to the
envoy in the words of the Hotel de Ville:

“Tt is too late!”

Marcas did not leave money enough to pay for his funeral.
Juste and I had great difficulty in saving him from the
ignominy of a pauper’s bier, and we alone followed the coffin
of Z. Marcas, which was dropped into the common grave of
the cemetery of Mont-Parnasse.

We looked sadly at each other as we listened to this tale,
the last we heard from the lips of Charles Rabourdin the
day before he embarked at le Havre on a brig that was to
convey him to the islands of Malay. We all knew more than
one Marcas, more than one victim of his devotion to a party,
repaid by betrayal or neglect.

, LES JARDIES, May 1840.UNDER THE TERROR

TRANSLATED BY

JAMES CLARKSONCOPYRIGHT, 1900,
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.UNDER THE TERROR
To M. Guyonnet-Merville.

Am I not bound to explain to an over-curious public the reason
why I have become sufficiently versed in law to manage the affairs
of my little community? And am I not also bound to do my best
to keep alive the memory of the amiable and gifted man who, on
meeting Scribe (another amateur jurist) at a table, said:

‘Spend some time in a lawyer’s office; take my word for it, you
will find the time thus spent useful to you.”’

But is this public testimony necessary to convince you of the
writer’s affection?

De Bauzac.

On the 22nd of January, 1793, close upon eight in the evening,
an old lady happened to be descending the rapid slope in the
Faubourg Saint-Martin which ends at the Church of Saint-
Laurent. There had been such a heavy fall of snow during
the day that her footsteps were scarcely audible. The streets
were deserted ; the very natural fear inspired by the death-like
silence was heightened by the universal terror under which
France writhed at the time. Consequently, the old lady
had not yet encountered any other wayfarer, and her eye-
sight, long dimmed by years, did not enable her to discover,
by the glimmering of the lanterns, the few straggling pedes-
trians that, far apart from one another, loomed up like
shadows from the broad thoroughfare of the faubourg. Alone
but courageous, she proceeded on her solitary course, as if her
age was a talisman that must guard her from every peril.
When she had passed the Rue des Morts, however, she fancied
she heard the firm, heavy tread of a man behind her. Then
the thought occurred to her that this was not the first time

(371)3712 UNDER THE TERROR

the same sound had caught her ears. Alarmed at the idea
of being followed, she made an effort to walk faster and
reach a shop window that was fairly well illuminated,
hoping the light would give her an opportunity to test the
reality of the suspicion which had taken possession of her
mind. As soon as she came into the flood of light that
streamed horizontally across the street, she turned round
abruptly and descried the faint outline of a human form in
the fog. But that confused vision was enough; she tottered
for a moment, weighed down by the terror that was over-
whelming her; she was now quite certain that this stranger
had tracked her every step from the moment she had left
her own home. Then the hope of escape from this spy re-
vived her strength. Incapable of reasoning, she quickened
her pace, as if she could thus get clear of a man who must
needs be far more active than herself. After running for a
few minutes, she reached a pastry-cook’s shop, entered and
sat down, or rather fell, upon a chair in front of the counter.
At the noise made by the raising of the door-latch, a young
woman, busy with a piece of embroidery, had looked up from
her work, peered through the panes at the antiquated
mantle of violet silk in which the old lady was muffled, and
hurriedly opened a drawer, apparently for the purpose of
taking some article out of it she had been keeping there for
her. Not only were the gestures and features of the young
woman significant of her wish to be speedily relieved
of the company of her strange visitor, as if the latter was one
of those persons whose presence is unwelcome, but she even
uttered an angry exclamation on finding the drawer empty.
Then, without another look at the old lady, she left the
counter, passed hastily into the back-shop and called her
husband, who appeared immediately.

“Where did you put——?”. she asked, with an air of
mystery, directing his attention to the old lady by a glance,
and leaving the question unfinished.

Although the pastry-cook could only see the huge black silk
cap, encircled with its knots. of violet ribbon, that formed theUNDER THE TERROR 373

old lady’s headdress, he gave a look at his wife which seemed
to say: “Do you imagine I should leave a thing like that
hear your counter?” and quickly disappeared.

Astonished at the silence and immobility of the old lady, the
pastry-cook’s wife approached her, spurred on by an impulse
of pity, and, perhaps, of curiosity. What she saw was a
countenance whose natural pallor, resulting probably from the
practice of secret austerities, must have been fearfully in-
tensified by some recent emotion. The covering of her head
was so arranged as almost to conceal her hair, whitened no
doubt by age, for the cleanliness of her collar proved that
she did not wear powder. The absence of all ornament gave
a tinge of religious severity to her face, which had an air of
gravity and distinction. Formerly, the manners and customs
of people of rank were so different from those of other classes
of society that a patrician was very easily recognized. Con-
sequently, the young woman felt pretty sure that her unknown
visitor was a member of the outlawed nobility, and that she
had belonged to the court.

“Madame!” said she, respectfully but unwittingly, for-
getful for the moment that the title was proscribed.

The old lady did not answer. Her eyes were riveted on
the shop window, as if some terrible object were pictured on
the glass.

“What is the matter, citoyenne?” inquired the master of
the household, as soon as he returned.

The lady became at once conscious of her surroundings,
when he held out a little cardboard box wrapped in blue
paper.

“Nothing, nothing, my friends,” she replied, in a soft voice,
raising her eyes, as if to thank him by a look. But when she
saw the bonnet rouge on his head, a cry escaped her:

“Ah! you have betrayed me!”

The gesture of horror with which the young woman and her
husband answered her, brought a flush of color to the un-
known lady’s cheeks, either because she was ashamed she hadBt4 UNDER THE TERROR

suspected them or pleased because her suspicions were un-
founded.

“I beg your pardon,” said she, in tones of childlike sim-
plicity.

Then drawing a louis d’or from her pocket, she handed
it to the pastry-cook:

“This is the price upon which we agreed,” she added.

There is a kind of poverty which the poor are quick to guess
at. The pastry-cook and his wife exchanged looks, then
glanced askance at the old woman; they had read the same
thought in each other’s eyes. That louis d’or was her last
one, beyond a doubt. Her hands trembled while she was
offering it. The way in which she gazed at it—sorrowfully,
but not grudgingly—proved that she felt the full extent
of the sacrifice. The lines traced by hunger and misery
were as legibly graven on her features as were those of fear
and asceticism. Her dress showed evidences of past gran-
deur; the threadbare silk, the spotless though faded mantle,
the carefully mended lace—rags of by-gone splendor !—
settled the question conclusively. The tradesman and his
wife, dragged in different directions by pity and self-in-
terest, at first made an effort to relieve their consciences by
means of words:

“Why, citoyenne, you really do seem very weakly
the husband.

“Perhaps madame would do us the favor to take some-
thing ?” interrupted the wife.

“We have some remarkably fine soup,” added the husband.

“And it is so frightfully cold! Madame has, perhaps,
caught a chill on the way? Hadn’t you better rest a while
and warm yourself?” continued the wife.

“We're not so black as we’re painted !’’ exclaimed the pastry-
cook.

The tone of kindliness in which these words were spoken
completely won the old lady’s confidence. She confessed that
she had been followed by a strange man, and was afraid of re-
turning home alone.

? saidERE CR ET!

 

  

UNDER THE TERROR 375

“Is that all that troubles you?” answered the man of the
bonnet rouge. “Wait for me, citoyenne.”

He handed the louis to his wife; then, under the influence
of that strange sort of gratitude which creeps into the soul
of every tradesman on receiving an exorbitant price for wares
of little value, he retired to rig himself in his National Guard’s
uniform and buckle on his short sabre. He soon returned
in this warlike array. Meanwhile, his wife had had time
for reflection, and, as is the case with many hearts as well as
hers, reflection shut the hand that charity had opened. She be-
came anxious and alarmed lest her husband should be involved
in some hazardous adventure, and caught him by the skirt of
his tunic to hold him back. But the worthy man’s good-nature
was still in the ascendant, and he at once offered to act as the
lady’s escort.

“T suppose the man who frightened the citoyenne is still
prowling about in front of the shop?” said the young woman
sharply.

“I fear he is,” answered the old lady, simply.

“But what if he be a spy? What if there has been a con-
spiracy ?—Don’t go out. ‘Take back the box from her.”

These words, whispered in the pastry-cook’s ear, had the
effect of entirely cooling the sudden fit of courage that had
for a moment taken hold of him.

“You think so? Well, I’ll go out, but only to speak a few
words to him. Jl] rid you of the fellow in a twinkling,
citoyenne,” he cried, and, opening the door, he rushed into
the street.

The old lady, passive as a child, and almost as dazed as a
child would be in such circumstances, again sat down on her
chair. It did not take the honest pastry-cook many moments
to return, his face, naturally rubicund, and rendered more so
by the fires of his ovens, had all of a sudden become livid;
he was so frightfully panic-stricken that his legs trembled
under him, and his eyes had the glassy stare of a drunkard’s.

“Wretched aristocrat!’ he shouted, furiously, “do you
want to have our heads cut off? Come, be off as fast as your376 UNDER THE TERROR
heels will carry you, and never show your face here again.
Don’t fancy you're going to get the means of concocting your
plots in my shop!”

When he had uttered these words, he tried to tear from the
old lady the little box, which she had slipped into one of her
pockets. But, as soon as the audacious tradesman’s hands
touched her clothes, she regained for a moment all her youth-
ful energy, and, resolving to face the perils of the street with
no protection save that of God, rather than surrender the
article she had just purchased, she sprang to the door, opened
it in a trice, and vanished from the eyes of the quaking and
astounded shopkeepers.

Once outside, she made what haste she could; but her
strength soon failed her, for she heard again the crunching
of the snow under the heavy footfall of the spy, who was still
relentlessly pursuing her. She was forced to stop; he stopped
also. She was either too much frightened or too much be-
wildered to venture on speaking to him, or even looking at
him. She still kept moving, but at a slower pace; the man
slackened his steps to keep time with hers, always, however,
only falling back to a distance that enabled him to have her in
sight. He seemed the very shadow of that old woman. It
was striking nine when the silent pair passed for the second
time the Church of Saint-Laurent. Every soul, even the
feeblest, has this peculiar characteristic: it may be ruffled by
violent emotion, but calmness must ultimately replace that
emotion, for, though feeling may be infinite, its organs are
finite. Consequently, as the old lady had not, so far, suffered
any harm from herunknown persecutor,it occurred to her that,
perhaps, this persecutor was an unknown friend, eager to
protect her. She ran over all the circumstances attendant on
the several appearances of the stranger, with the view of dis-
covering some plausible reason for this comforting supposi-
tion, and, on the whole, was inclined to credit him with good
intentions rather than bad. Forgetting the terror with which
this man had lately inspired the pastry-cook, she advanced
with a firmer step into the upper part of the Faubourg Saint-UNDER THE TERROR 377

Martin. After walking for half an hour, she reached a
house situated near the junction of the main street of the
: faubourg with the street leading to the Barriére de Pantin.
Even at the present day, there is no lonelier spot in Paris than
this. A bleak wind, passing over the Butte-Chaumont and
the Butte de Belleville, whistles through the houses, or rather
hovels, scattered here and there through this sparsely settled
little valley, where the fences are heaps of earth and bones.
This desolate place would seem to be the natural refuge of
want and despair. The man who was so bent on tracking a
poor creature daring enough to make her way at night through
these deathlike streets was apparently struck by the spectacle
that met his eyes. He stood still, evidently communing with
himself, and in an attitude that denoted hesitation. Fear
strengthened the sight of the old lady. The faint light of a
street lamp that sent its dim, flickering rays through the ofg
enabled her to discern him faintly now. She fancied his
features had a sinister expression. Her terrors revived, and,
taking advantage of the manifest irresolution which had made
him pause, she swept through the darkness up to the door
of the lonely house, pressed a spring, and vanished with the
fleetness of a phantom. The stranger, still motionless, gazed
intently at this house, a house typical of the other miserable
buildings in the faubourg. It was a tottering hovel, built
of freestone, covered with a layer of yellowish plaster, and so
full of cracks that it looked as if a puff of wind must tumble
it over. The brown-tiled and moss-covered roof had sunk
in so many spots that it would not be surprising if the weight
of the snow had crushed it altogether. Hach story had three
windows, the frames of which, rotten with damp and warped
by the sun, gave plain notice that it was useless trying to
keep out the cold. The house, in its utter loneliness, re-
sembled some old tower which Time had forgotten to de-
molish. A dull light gleamed through the casemcnts which
pierced at irregular intervals the attic that crowned the build-
ing, while the rest of the wretched edifice remained in complete
obscurity. The old lady climbed laboriously the rough,378 UNDER THE TERROR

clumsy staircase, aided by a rope which took the place of a
baluster. She gave a mysterious knock at the door of one of
the three apartments in the attic. It opened, and an old man
offered her a chair, upon which she sank hurriedly.

“Hide! hide yourself!’ said she. “Seldom as we venture
outside, everything we do is known, every step we take is
spied i

“But what has occurred?” asked another old woman, who
sat close to the fire.

“The man who has been prowling about the house ever since
yesterday, followed me to-night a

At these words the three tenants of this wretched apartment
stared at one another, the faces of the two women betraying
the most intense fear. The old man showed less alarm, per-
haps because he ran the greatest danger. Under the stress
of a dire misfortune or under the yoke of persecution, a
valiant man begins by, in a manner, making the sacrifice of
himself; he then considers every day of his life as a victory
snatched from fate. From the looks the two old women
fixed on the old man it was easy to surmise that the anxiety
which tortured them was for him, not for themselves.

“But why should we lose our faith in God, sisters?” said
he, in a low, impressive voice. “We sang His praises amid
the howls of the assassins and the cries of their victims in
the Convent of Les Carmes. If it was His decree that I
should be saved from that butchery, it was, no doubt, because
He reserved me for a destiny which I must accept without
a murmur. God will protect His own, and has the right to
dispose of them according to His will. It is for your safety,
not for mine, that we must take our precautions.”

“No,” answered one of the old women. “What is our life
in comparison with a priest’s hfe?”

“Ever since I stood outside the walls of the Abbaye de
Chelles, I have considered myself dead,” said the nun who had
not left the house.

“Here are the Hosts,” said the nun who had just entered,UNDER THE TERROR 379

handing the little blue box to the priest.—But,” she eried, “I
hear steps on the stairs!”

At this, the three began to listen eagerly.—The noise
ceased.

“Do not be frightened,” said the priest, “though gome one
may try to enter. A person upon whose fidelity we may place
the utmost reliance is completing all the arrangements neces-
sary to permit you to cross the frontier in safety. He is sure
to come here for the letters I have written to the Duc de
Langeais and the Marquis de Beauséant, in which I entreat
them to adopt some means of rescuing you from the death
or misery likely to be your portion in this frightful country.”

“But will you not follow us?” cried the two nuns, in gentle
but despairing tones.

“My place is near the victims,” replied the priest, quietly.

They did not speak, but gazed at their guest with a sort of
holy admiration.

“Sister Marthe,” he continued, addressing the nun who had
gone for the Hosts, “the messenger I speak of will answer
Frat voluntas to your Hosanna.”

“There is some one on the stairs!” cried the second re-
ligieuse, at once opening a hiding-place under the roof.

She was not mistaken. The silence was so profound that
they could easily distinguish the sound made by a man’s tread,
which echoed along the steps, covered with solid cakes of dry
mud. The priest slipped, not without considerable trouble,
into a sort of cupboard, and the nun hastily threw some old
clothes over him.

“You may now shut the door, Sister Agathe,” said the
priest, in a stifled voice.

The priest was barely concealed, when the two holy women
were startled by three knocks on the door. Not daring to
answer, they looked for guidance into each other’s eyes. They
were both, apparently, about sixty. Separated from the
world for forty years, they were like hot-house plants, for
which exposure to the open air means death. They could not
even conceive the possibility of any other existence for them-
selves than that to which they had been accustomed: the life380 UNDER THE TERROR

of the convent. One fine morning their gratings had been
broken down, and they learned with horror that they were
free. It can be easily imagined that, in souls so innocent, the
events of the Revolution produced a kind of adventitious 1m-
becility. Incapable of adjusting the ideas taught in a cloister
to the difficulties of life, and hopelessly dazed by their novel
situation, they were like those children taken care of by others
up to a certain point; and then bereft of the providential tute-
lage that had hitherto been their shield; but—unlike children
in such circumstances—they did not cry, they prayed. And
now, in presence of the peril which they knew menaced them,
they were dumb and passive, knowing of no defence save that
of Christian resignation. The man who wanted to enter must
have interpreted their silence favorably; he opened the door
and abruptly stood before them. The two sisters shuddered.
They recognized at once the person who had been for some
time hanging about their lodgings and seeking for informa-
tion with regard to them. They did not move, but eyed him
with uneasy curiosity, somewhat after the manner of bashful
children who stare silently at a stranger. The subject of
their inspection was tall and coarse-looking, but it could not be
inferred, either from his bearing or from his physiognomy,
that he was of a malignant disposition. Like the two sisters,
he stood motionless, while his eyes wandered slowly round the
apartment.

Two straw-mats, laid upon planks, supplied the place of the
sisters’ beds. Upon the only table in the room rested a brass
candlestick, three knives, some plates, and a round loaf. There
was a poor little fire in the chimney. A few sticks of wood,
piled up in one of the corners, also bore loud testimony to
the destitution of the two recluses. The walls must have been
coated with paint at a very ancient period indeed, and a glance
at them sufficed to account for the bad condition of the
roofing, where brown streaks pointed to spots through which
the rain had filtered. A relic, doubtless saved out of the
wreck of the Abbaye de Chelles, was the sole ornament of the
mantelpiece. Three chairs, two boxes, and a battered chestUNDER THE TERROR 381

of drawers completed the list of furniture. A door near the
chimney hinted at the existence of another room behind.

This inventory was quickly made by the individual whose
introduction into the little household had created such a ter-
rible emotion. A feeling of pity might be read on his coun-
tenance, and the eyes that were bent on the two old ladies,
whose embarrassment, to say the least, was not greater than
his, were full of kindliness. The strange silence, observed by
every one of the three, did not, however, last long, for the
stranger soon had a suspicion of the mental feebleness and
the inexperience of the two poor creatures, and said, in tones
he did his best to render gentle:

“T have not come hither as an enemy, citoyennes He

He paused for a moment, and then continued:

“Sisters, should any misfortune befall you, rest assured
that I have not been concerned in it—I—I have a favor to
ask of you.”

They still kept silent.

“If my presenceoccasion you annoyance or—embarrassment,
you have but to say the word, and—I withdraw. But, believe
me, I am wholly devoted to your service, and that, if there be
any way in which I can help you, you may have recourse to
me without fear, for I, and I alone, perhaps, am above the law
—since we no longer have a King e

The tone itself in which the words were spoken was so
indicative of the speaker’s blunt honesty, that Sister Agathe,
whose manner suggested that she had once been familiar with
brilliant festivals and had breathed the atmosphere of courts,
abruptly pointed to a chair, as if inviting their guest to be
seated. The expression of the stranger’s features when he
understood the meaning of the gesture denoted sadness as well
as pleasure. He remained standing until the worthy old

ladies were themselves seated.

“You have given asylum,” he resumed, “to a venerable
priest who refused to take the oath, and who escaped miracu-
lously from the massacre at Les Carmes e382 UNDER THE TERROR

“Hosanna!” interrupted Sister Agathe, watching the
stranger with anxious curiosity.

“That is not his name, I think,” he answered.

“But, monsieur,” said Sister Agatha, eagerly, “there is no
priest here, and——-”

“Then you should be more careful and guarded,” he replied,
gently, stretching his arm toward the table and taking up a
breviary. “I do not think you know Latin, and a

He went no further ; the anguish painted on the faces of the
two nuns made him fear he had already gone too far. They
were trembling, and their eyes were full of tears.

“Do not be uneasy,” said he, frankly. “I know the name
of your guest and I know yours. I was informed of your dis-
tress three days ago, and also of your devotion to the venerable
Abbé de a

“Oh! hush!” broke in the simple-minded Sister Agathe,
laying a finger on her lips.

“You see, then, sisters, that if I had conceived the horrible
purpose of betraying you, I could have already accomplished
it more than once i

As soon as the priest heard these words, he released himself
from his prison and advanced to the centre of the room.

“T cannot believe, monsieur,” said he to the stranger, “that
you are one of our persecutors, and I trust you. What do you
want with me?”

This sacred trustfulness, the nobleness expressed in every
lineament of the priest’s features, would have disarmed an
assassin. The eyes of the mysterious individual, whose pres-
ence was giving a touch of life to this scene of misery and
resignation, dwelt for a moment upon the little group, and
then, in the tone of a person revealing a secret, he said:

“Father, I have come to ask you to celebrate a dead Mass
for the repose of the soul of—of—a consecrated personage
whose body will never rest in holy ground fc

The abbé shuddered. The two sisters, who did not yet
know to what personage the stranger was alluding, strained
their necks and turned their faces toward the two speakers,UNDER THE TERROR 383

od:

their whole attitude betraying the most absorbing curiosity.
The ecclesiastic scrutinized the stranger's face; every line
in it expressed the most undoubted anxiety and the most
ardent entreaty.

“Very well, then,” answered the priest; “return at mid-
night. I shall be ready to celebrate the only funeral service
that can now be offered in expiation of the crime of which you
speak.”

The stranger winced, but a feeling of contentment, at once
sweet and serious, seemed to be triumphing over some secret
grief. After a respectful salutation to the priest and the
two holy women, he passed out silently. His unspoken grati-
tude, however, was understood by these three generous souls.

About two hours later, the stranger came back and knocked
lightly at the garret door. It was opened by Mademoiselle
de Beauséant, who showed him into the second apartment of
their modest lodging. There everything had been prepared
for the ceremony. The sisters had moved the old chest of
drawers ; it stood now between the two chimney-flues, and its
quaint outlines were hidden beneath a magnificent altar-cloth
of green watered silk.

I'he large ebony crucifix with an ivory Christ, which they
had hung on the wall, caught the eye at once and brought into
stronger relief the total absence of other ornaments. Four
thin little tapers, which the sisters had managed to fasten on
this improvised altar with sealing-wax, shed a faint and poorly
reflected light on the wall, leaving the rest of the room almost
in darkness. But this feeble glimmer, in concentrating what-
ever brightness it contained on holy things, looked like a ray
from heaven shining down upon this unadorned shrine. The
floor was damp. The roof, like most attic roofs, sloped down
abruptly, and had several chinks through which a freezing
wind swept into the room. Nothing, certainly, could be less
pompous, but the very absence of ecclesiastical pomp lent an
added grandeur to the mournful solemnity. A silence so pro-
found that the faintest cry uttered on the Route d’Allemagne
could easily reach their ears, invested this nocturnal drama

Lighisigdtiz384 UNDER THE TERROR

with a sort of sombre majesty. In a word, the sublimity of
the act contrasted so strongly with the meanness of its ac-
cessories that the souls of the worshipers were thrilled with a
feeling of religious terror. On either side of the altar, the
two aged recluses knelt upon the tiled floor, regardless of its
unhealthy dampness,and prayed in unison with the priest, who,
arrayed in his pontifical vestments, brought out a goldenchalice
set with precious stones, no doubt one of the vessels saved from
the pillage of the Abbaye de Chelles. Near this ciborium,
royal in its magnificence, stood two glasses, hardly fit for a
tavern, containing the wine and water to be used in the
Holy Sacrifice. The priest had no missal: his breviary, laid
on a corner of the altar, served in its stead. A commonplace
earthen plate was put aside for the laving of the pure hands
that had never been soiled with blood.

It was all so infinitely great, and yet so small; so noble, and
yet so shabby; so sacred, and yet so profane. The stranger
advanced reverently and fell upon his knees between the two
nuns. But, on suddenly noticing bands of crape on the
chalice and crucifix—the priest, having no other way of pub-
lishing the intention for which this Mass was offered, had, as
it were, put God himself in mourning—he was harrowed by
some appalling memory, for big drops of sweat stood on his
broad forehead. Thereupon the four silent actors in this
scene exchanged mysterious glances, and then heart spoke to
heart and soul to soul, until there was an emulous and sympa-
thetic reciprocation of emotions, and all their feelings were
fused into an ecstasy of awestruck compassion. It seemed
to them as if the shade of the royal martyr, whose remains
had been consumed by quicklime, had responded to their
prayerful entreaties, and now stood in their midst in all its
regal majesty. ‘They were celebrating an obit, the body of the
deceased not being present. Under these disjointed laths and
tiles, four Christians were interceding with God for a King
of France, and holding a funeral service without a coffin.
No purer act of devotion was ever accomplished; it was the
very climax of peerless loyalty and disinterestedness. Surely,UNDER THE TERROR 385

in the eyes of God it must have been like that cup of cold
water which outweighed the greatest virtues. The whole Mon-
archy was present, present in the prayers of a priest and two
old women. Perhaps, also, the Revolution was present, in
the person of yonder man whose features betrayed too poign-
ant a remorse not to lead to the belief that he was now ful-
filling some vow under the pressure of a heartfelt repentance.

Instead of pronouncing the words, “Introibo ad altare Dei,”
the priest, prompted by some divine inspiration, turned his
eyes upon the three kneeling figures who represented Christian
France, and said, as if to force them to forget the poverty of
their surroundings:

“We are about to enter the Sanctuary of God!”

At these words, uttered with impressive solemnity, a sacred
awe fell upon the stranger and the two sisters. Under the
dome of St. Peter’s at Rome, God would not have manifested
Himself in greater majesty than that in which He revealed
Himself to these humble Christians under the roof of their
wretched refuge. So true it is that between man and Him
every intermediary would appear to be useless, and that His
greatness depends on Himself alone. The sincerity of the
stranger’s fervor was self-evident, and so the sentiments that
united these four servants of God and the King were in per-
fect unison. The sacred words echoed through the silence
like celestial music. At a certain moment there were tears
in the stranger’s eyes; it was at the intoning of the Pater
noster. ‘The priest added to it this petition:

“Ht remitte scelus regicidis sicut Ludovicus eis remisit
semetipse! (Forgive the regicides as Louis himself forgave
them ).”

The stranger must have understood these Latin words, for
the sisters saw two big drops course down his cheeks and fall
on the floor. Then the Office of the Dead was recited.

The Domine, saluum fac regem, chanted in an undertone,
wrung the very heartstrings of these faithful royalists, when
they remembered that the child-King for whom they were at
that moment beseeching the Almighty was a captive in the

25ee

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

386 UNDER THE TERROR

hands of his enemies. The stranger shuddered; a fresh
crime might yet be committed in which doubtless he should
be forced to share. When Mass was over, the priest made a
sign to the two nuns, and they retired. As soon as he was
alone with the stranger, he went up to him with a mild and
serious face, and said, in a fatherly voice:

“My son, if you have steeped your hands in the blood of the
royal martyr, confide in me. ‘There is no sin that, in the eyes
of God, may not be effaced by such ardent and sincere re-
pentance as you have manifested.”

At the first words uttered by the ecclesiastic the stranger
could not repress an involuntary movement of terror; but,
the next moment, he recovered his composure, and, looking
coolly at the astonished priest:

“Father,” said he, in a voice that trembled a little, how-
ever, “no one is more innocent than I of the blood shed a

“T am bound to believe you,” answered the priest.

He paused for a few moments, during which he watched his
penitent closely. But, persisting in the idea that he had be-
fore him one of those cowardly members of the Convention
who surrendered an inviolable and anointed head to preserve
their own, he continued, in a solemn tone:

“Do not imagine, my son, that because a person may have
taken no active part in the horrible crime, he is, therefore,
absolved from the guilt of its commission. Those who could
defended their King and yet allowed their swords to rest in
their scabbards, will have a very heavy account to render to the
King of Heaven—Ah! yes,” added the old priest, shaking his
head impressively, “yes, a very heavy one indeed !—By idly
standing by, they became accomplices in the heinous felony.”

“You believe, then, that an indirect participation will be
punished ?—Take the soldier ordered to fall into line on the
route to the scaffold—was he guilty?”

The priest was evidently perplexed. Pleased at having em-
barrassed this puritan royalist by placing him between the
dogma of passive obedience—according to the partisans of the
Monarchy, the first principle of every military code—and theUNDER THE TERROR 387

equally important dogma of the sanctity of a King’s person-
ality, the stranger was eager to see in the priest’s hesitation
a solution favorable to the doubts by which he was apparently
harassed. Then, to bring the venerable Jansenist’s reflec-
tions to a halt, he said:

“I should blush to offer you any recompense whatever
for the funeral service you have just celebrated for the repose
of the soul of the King and the relief of my conscience. That
which is inestimable can only be purchased by an offering
that is beyond price. Deign, then, monsieur, to accept the
gift which I make you of a holy relic. Perhaps the day may
come when you will understand its value.”

When the stranger had concluded, he presented the ec-
clesiastic with a small box, very light in weight; the priest
took it, almost unconsciously, so amazed was he at the
solemnity of the man’s words, the tones in which they were
uttered, and the reverence with which he held out the gift.
The priest and the stranger then returned to the room in
which the sisters were waiting for them.

“The house in which you lodge,” said the stranger, “be-
longs to Mucius Scevola, the plasterer on the first floor; he
is famous in his section for his patriotism, but is secretly at-
tached to the Bourbons. He was formerly one of the Prince
de Conti’s whippers-in, and owes all his success in life to
him. As long as you stay here you are safer than you could
be in any other part of France. Do not go elsewhere. Pious
souls will minister to your wants, and you can wait for the
advent of better times. In a year from now, on the 21st of
January’—he shuddered involuntarily as he pronounced these
words—“if this wretched place is still your asylum, I will
return to celebrate the expiatory Mass with you

He did not finish. After saluting the speechless tenants
of the garret, he gave a last look at the evidences that re-
vealed their destitution, and disappeared.

For the two simple-minded nuns such an adventure as this
had all the interest of a romance. Consequently, when the
venerable abbé informed them of the mysterious gift so388 UNDER THE TERROR

solemnly presented to him, the box was placed by them on
the table, and their anxious faces, feebly lit up by a tallow
candle, betrayed an uncontrollable curiosity. Mademoiselle
de Langeais opened the box; it contained a very fine cambric
handkerchief, soiled with perspiration; after unfolding it,
they noticed that there were stains on 1t.

“Blood!” exclaimed the priest.

“Tt is marked with the royal crown!” cried the other sister.

The two nuns, in their horror, dropped the precious relic.
To their artless souls the mystery that hung about the
stranger became inexplicable; as for the priest, from that
day onward he never even made an effort to explain it.

It did not take the three prisoners long to find out that, in
spite of the Terror, a powerful hand was extended over them.
First, they received wood and provisions; then the sisters
surmised that their protector must be aided by a woman, for
they were supplied with linen and with garments that allowed
them to go outside without being remarked for the aristocratic
fashion of the dresses they had been forced to use; finally,
Mucius Scevola gave them two civic cards. Warnings,
needed for the safety of the priest, often reached them by
roundabout ways; and these warnings were so timely that they
could have come only from a person initiated into state
secrets. Notwithstanding the famine under which Paris
labored, the outlaws found outside their garret dor rations
of bread,—white bread, actually !—borne thither by invisible
hands. They believed, however, that Mucius Scevola was
but the mysterious agent of this ingenious and intelligent
benevolence, never for a moment doubting that their pro-
tector was that stranger who had come for the expiatory Mass

‘on the 22nd of January, 1793. He became, therefore, the

object of a sort of worship on the part of the three beings who
hoped only in him and lived only by him. To their regular
prayers they had added special prayers for his benefit ; morn-
ing and evening, these pious souls sent up petitions for his
happiness, his prosperity, his salvation, and they besought
God to clear his path of all pitfalls, to deliver him fromUNDER THE TERROR 389

his enemies, and grant him a long and peaceful life. This
gratitude of theirs, being, so to speak, renewed from day to
day, was of necessity allied to a curiosity that grew more
eager from day to day also. The circumstances attendant
on the stranger’s appearance formed the subjects of their
conversation. ‘They made any number of conjectures in
connection with him. The employment the stranger gave
their minds was not the least of the benefits for which they
were indebted to him. They vowed he should not be allowed
to decline their friendly overtures on the night he returned,
in fulfilment of his promise, to celebrate the sad anniversary
of the death of Louis XVI.

The night, so impatiently expected, arrived at last. At
midnight, the sound of the stranger’s heavy footfall echoed
from the old wooden stairs. The room had been adorned for
his reception, and the altar was prepared. ‘his time, the
sisters kept the door open for his entrance, and both hur-
ried out to light him up the stairs. Mademoiselle de Langeais
even descended a few steps to be the first to greet their bene-
factor.

“Come,” said she, in tones that denoted strong emotion as
well as affection, “come in—we are waiting for you.”

The man raised his head, looked darkly at the religieuse,
and did not reply; she felt as if a mantle of ice had suddenly
enveloped her, and became as silent as the grave. The very
expression of his features killed gratitude and curiosity in
every heart. He was not, perhaps, so cold, taciturn, and
formidable as they thought him, for their souls were wrought
up to a high pitch of emotion which sought an outlet in a
strong manifestation of their friendly feelings. But when
the three poor prisoners saw clearly that the man wished
to continue to be a stranger, they were resigned. The priest,
however, fancied he noticed a smile on his lips, a smile at
once banished from them as soon as he perceived the prepara-
tions for his visit. He heard Mass and prayed. Then he
passed out, declining, in a few polite words, to share the little
collation provided for him.390

After the 9th Thermidor, the nuns and the Abbé de Ma-
rolles could move about in Paris without incurring the slight-
est danger. The first visit of the old priest was paid to a
perfumer’s shop at the sign of the Reine des fleurs, kept by
Citizen Ragon and his wife, ex-perfumers to the Court. They
had remained faithful to the royal family, and had been the
medium of communication between the Vendeans and the
Princes and Royalist Committee of Paris. The abbé,
dressed in the fashion prescribed at the time, was at the door
of the shop—situated between Saint-Roch and the Rue des
Frondeurs—when the Rue de Saint-Honoré was suddenly
filled with a crowd, and he could not get out.

“What is it all about ?” said he to Madame Ragon.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she answered; “the tumbril wagon and
the executioner going to the Place Louis XV. Ah! we saw it
often enough last year; but to-day, the fourth day from the
anniversary of the 2ist of January, we can witness the ghastly
procession without feeling any great sorrow.”

“Why do you say so?” inquired the abbé. “Such a senti-
ment is not Christian.”

“Indeed? Why, Robespierre’s accomplices are on their
way to the guillotine. They defended themselves as well as
they could, but now they’re going the same road upon which
they sent so many innocent victims.”

The crowd rolled along like a flood. Yielding to an im-
pulse of curiosity, the Abbé de Marolles looked upward and
saw, standing in the tumbril, the very man at whose request
he had said Mass three days before.

“Who is that ?” asked he; “who is that one——?”

“The executioner,” answered M. Ragon, giving the func-
tionary the designation by which he was known under the
Monarchy—lexécuteur des hauts euvres.

“Help! help! my dear,” cried Madame Ragon to her hus-
band, “the abbé is dying!”

And the old lady took up a flask of vinegar and tried to
restore the venerable priest to consciousness.

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eeUNDER THE TERROR

“He must have given me the handkerchief,’ murmured
the abbé, “with which the King wiped his forehead on his road
to martyrdom—Poor man!—The steel blade felt pity, when
none was to be found in all France!”

‘Ihe perfumers feared that the unfortunate priest was going
mad.

PARIS, January 1831..
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ALDERMAN LIBRARY

 

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