CHAPTER VII.
REFLECTIONS.--A SOIREE.--THE APPEARANCE OF ONE IMPORTANT IN THE
HISTORY.--A CONVERSATION WITH MADAME DE BALZAC HIGHLY SATISFACTORY AND
CHEERING.--A RENCONTRE WITH A CURIOUS OLD SOLDIER.--THE EXTINCTION OF A
ONCE GREAT LUMINARY.
I HAD now been several weeks at Paris; I had neither eagerly sought nor
sedulously avoided its gayeties. It is not that one violent sorrow
leaves us without power of enjoyment; it only lessens the power, and
deadens the enjoyment: it does not take away from us the objects of
life; it only forestalls the more indifferent calmness of age. The
blood no longer flows in an irregular but delicious course of vivid and
wild emotion; the step no longer spurns the earth; nor does the ambition
wander, insatiable, yet undefined, over the million paths of existence:
but we lose not our old capacities; they are quieted, not extinct. The
heart can never utterly and long be dormant: trifles may not charm it
any more, nor levities delight; but its pulse has not yet ceased to
beat. We survey the scene that moves around, with a gaze no longer
distracted by every hope that flutters by; and it is therefore that we
find ourselves more calculated than before for the graver occupations of
our race. The overflowing temperament is checked to its proper level,
the ambition bounded to its prudent and lawful goal. The earth is no
longer so green, nor the heaven so blue, nor the fancy that stirs within
us so rich in its creations; but we look more narrowly on the living
crowd, and more rationally on the aims of men. The misfortune which has
changed us has only adapted us the better to a climate in which
misfortune is a portion of the air. The grief that has thralled our
spirit to a more narrow and dark cell has also been a change that has
linked us to mankind with a strength of which we dreamed not in the day
of a wilder freedom and more luxuriant aspirings. In later life, a new
spirit, partaking of that which was our earliest, returns to us. The
solitude which delighted us in youth, but which, when the thoughts that
make solitude a fairy land are darkened by affliction, becomes a fearful
and sombre void, resumes its old spell, as the more morbid and urgent
memory of that affliction crumbles away by time. Content is a hermit;
but so also is Apathy. Youth loves the solitary couch, which it
surrounds with dreams. Age, or Experience (which is the mind's age),
loves the same couch for the rest which it affords; but the wide
interval between is that of exertion, of labour, and of labour among
men. The woe which makes our /hearts/ less social, often makes our
/habits/ more so. The thoughts, which in calm would have shunned the
world, are driven upon it by the tempest, even as the birds which
forsake the habitable land can, so long as the wind sleeps and the
thunder rests within its cloud, become the constant and solitary
brooders over the waste sea: but the moment the storm awakes and the
blast pursues them, they fly, by an overpowering instinct, to some
wandering bark, some vestige of human and social life; and exchange,
even for danger from the hands of men, the desert of an angry Heaven and
the solitude of a storm.
I heard no more either of Madame de Maintenon or the King. Meanwhile,
my flight and friendship with Lord Bolingbroke had given me a
consequence in the eyes of the exiled Prince which I should not
otherwise have enjoyed; and I was honoured by very flattering overtures
to enter actively into his service. I have before said that I felt no
enthusiasm in his cause, and I was far from feeling it for his person.
My ambition rather directed its hope towards a career in the service of
France. France was the country of my birth, and the country of my
father's fame. There no withering remembrances awaited me; no private
regrets were associated with its scenes, and no public penalties with
its political institutions. And although I had not yet received any
token of Louis's remembrance, in the ordinary routine of court favours
expectation as yet would have been premature; besides, his royal
fidelity to his word was proverbial; and, sooner or later, I indulged
the hope to profit by the sort of promise he had insinuated to me. I
declined, therefore, with all due respect, the offers of the Chevalier,
and continued to live the life of idleness and expectation, until Lord
Bolingbroke returned to Paris, and accepted the office of secretary of
state in the service of the Chevalier. As he has publicly declared his
reasons in this step, I do not mean to favour the world with his private
conversations on the same subject.
A day or two after his return, I went with him to a party given by a
member of the royal family. The first person by whom we were
accosted--and I rejoiced at it, for we could not have been accosted by a
more amusing one--was Count Anthony Hamilton.
"Ah! my Lord Bolingbroke," said he, sauntering up to us; "how are
you?--delighted to see you again. Do look at Madame la Duchesse
d'Orleans! Saw you ever such a creature? Whither are you moving, my
Lord? Ah! see him, Count, see him, gliding off to that pretty duchess,
of course; well, he has a beautiful bow, it must be owned; why, you are
not going too?--what would the world say if Count Anthony Hamilton were
seen left to himself? No, no, come and sit down by Madame de Cornuel:
she longs to be introduced to you, and is one of the wittiest women in
Europe."
"With all my heart! provided she employs her wit ill-naturedly, and uses
it in ridiculing other people, not praising herself."
"Oh! nobody can be more satirical; indeed, what difference is there
between wit and satire? Come, Count!"
And Hamilton introduced me forthwith to Madame de Cornuel. She received
me very politely; and, turning to two or three people who formed the
circle round her, said, with the greatest composure, "Messieurs, oblige
me by seeking some other object of attraction; I wish to have a private
conference with my new friend."
"I may stay?" said Hamilton.
"Ah! certainly; you are never in the way."
"In that respect, Madame," said Hamilton, taking snuff, and bowing very
low, "in that respect, I must strongly remind you of your excellent
husband."
"Fie!" cried Madame de Cornuel; then, turning to me, she said, "Ah!
Monsieur, if you /could/ have come to Paris some years ago, you would
have been enchanted with us: we are sadly changed. Imagine the fine old
King thinkinj it wicked not to hear plays, but to hear /players/ act
them, and so making the royal family a company of comedians. /Mon
Dieu!/ how villanously they perform! but do you know why I wished to be
introduced to you?"
"Yes! in order to have a new listener: old listeners must be almost as
tedious as old news."
"Very shrewdly said, and not far from the truth. The fact is, that I
wanted to talk about all these fine people present to some one for whose
ear my anecdotes would have the charm of novelty. Let us begin with
Louis Armand, Prince of Conti; you see him."
"What, that short-sighted, stout, and rather handsome man, with a cast
of countenance somewhat like the pictures of Henri Quatre, who is
laughing so merrily?"
"/O Ciel/! how droll! No! that handsome man is no less a person than
the Duc d'Orleans. You see a little ugly thing like an anatomized
ape,--there, see,--he has just thrown down a chair, and, in stooping to
pick it up, has almost fallen over the Dutch ambassadress,--that is
Louis Armand, Prince of Conti. Do you know what the Duc d'Orleans said
to him the other day? '/Mon bon ami/,' he said, pointing to the
prince's limbs (did you ever see such limbs out of a menagerie, by the
by?) '/mon bon ami/, it is a fine thing for you that the Psalmist has
assured us "that the Lord delighteth not in any man's legs."' Nay,
don't laugh, it is quite true!"
It was now for Count Hamilton to take up the ball of satire; he was not
a whit more merciful than the kind Madame de Cornuel. "The Prince,"
said he, "has so exquisite an awkwardness that, whenever the King hears
a noise, and inquires the cause, the invariable answer is that 'the
Prince of Conti has just tumbled down'! But, tell me, what do you think
of Madame d'Aumont? She is in the English headdress, and looks /triste
a la mort/."
"She is rather pretty, to my taste."
"Yes," cried Madame de Cornuel, interrupting the gentle Antoine (it did
one's heart good to see how strenuously each of them tried to talk more
scandal than the other), "yes, she is thought very pretty; but I think
her very like a /fricandeau/,--white, soft, and insipid. She is always
in tears," added the good-natured Cornuel, "after her prayers, both at
morning and evening. I asked why; and she answered, pretty simpleton,
that she was always forced to pray to be made good, and she feared
Heaven would take her at her word! However, she has many worshippers,
and they call her the evening star."
"They should rather call her the Hyades!" said Hamilton, "if it be true
that she sheds tears every morning and night, and her rising and setting
are thus always attended by rain."
"Bravo, Count Antoine! she shall be so called in future," said Madame de
Cornuel. "But now, Monsieur Devereux, turn your eyes to that hideous
old woman."
"What! the Duchesse d'Orleans?"
"The same. She is in full dress to-night; but in the daytime you
generally see her in a riding habit and a man's wig; she is--"
"Hist!" interrupted Hamilton; "do you not tremble to think what she
would do if she overheard you? she is such a terrible creature at
fighting! You have no conception, Count, what an arm she has. She
knows her ugliness, and laughs at it, as all the rest of the world does.
The King took her hand one day, and said smiling, 'What could Nature
have meant when she gave this hand to a German princess instead of a
Dutch peasant?' 'Sire,' said the Duchesse, very gravely, 'Nature gave
this hand to a German princess for the purpose of boxing the ears of her
ladies in waiting!'"
"Ha! ha! ha!" said Madame de Cornuel, laughing; "one is never at a loss
for jokes upon a woman who eats /salade au lard/, and declares that,
whenever she is unhappy, her only consolation is ham and sausages! Her
son treats her with the greatest respect, and consults her in all his
amours, for which she professes the greatest horror, and which she
retails to her correspondents all over the world, in letters as long as
her pedigree. But you are looking at her son, is he not of a good
mien?"
"Yes, pretty well; but does not exhibit to advantage by the side of Lord
Bolingbroke, with whom he is now talking. Pray, who is the third
personage that has just joined them?"
"Oh, the wretch! it is the Abbe Dubois; a living proof of the folly of
the French proverb, which says that Mercuries should /not/ be made /du
bois/. Never was there a Mercury equal to the Abbe,--but, do look at
that old man to the left,--he is one of the most remarkable persons of
the age."
"What! he with the small features, and comely countenance, considering
his years?"
"The same," said Hamilton; "it is the notorious Choisi. You know that
he is the modern Tiresias, and has been a woman as well as man."
"How do you mean?"
"Ah, you may well ask!" cried Madame de Cornuel. "Why, he lived for
many years in the disguise of a woman, and had all sorts of curious
adventures."
"/Mort Diable/!" cried Hamilton; "it was entering your ranks, Madame, as
a spy. I hear he makes but a sorry report of what he saw there."
"Come, Count Antoine," cried the lively de Cornuel, "we must not turn
our weapons against each other; and when you attack a woman's sex you
attack her individually. But what makes you look so intently, Count
Devereux, at that ugly priest?"
The person thus flatteringly designated was Montreuil; he had just
caught my eye, among a group of men who were conversing eagerly.
"Hush! Madame," said I, "spare me for a moment;" and I rose, and mingled
with the Abbe's companions.
"So, you have only arrived to-day," I heard one of them say to him.
"No, I could not despatch my business before."
"And how are matters in England?"
"Ripe! if the life of his Majesty (of France) be spared a year longer,
we will send the Elector of Hanover back to his principality."
"Hist!" said the companion, and looked towards me. Montreuil ceased
abruptly: our eyes met; his fell. I affected to look among the group as
if I had expected to find there some one I knew, and then, turning away,
I seated myself alone and apart. There, unobserved, I kept my looks on
Montreuil. I remarked that, from time to time, his keen dark eye
glanced towards me, with a look rather expressive of vigilance than
anything else. Soon afterwards his little knot dispersed; I saw him
converse for a few moments with Dubois, who received him I thought
distantly; and then he was engaged in a long conference with the Bishop
of Frejus, whom, till then, I had not perceived among the crowd.
As I was loitering on the staircase, where I saw Montreuil depart with
the Bishop, in the carriage of the latter, Hamilton, accosting me,
insisted on my accompanying him to Chaulieu's, where a late supper
awaited the sons of wine and wit. However, to the good Count's great
astonishment, I preferred solitude and reflection, for that night, to
anything else.
Montreuil's visit to the French capital boded me no good. He possessed
great influence with Fleuri, and was in high esteem with Madame de
Maintenon, and, in effect, very shortly after his return to Paris, the
Bishop of Frejus looked upon me with a most cool sort of benignancy; and
Madame de Maintenon told her friend, the Duchesse de St. Simon, that it
was a great pity a young nobleman of my birth and prepossessing
appearance (ay! my prepossessing appearance would never have occurred to
the devotee, if I had not seemed so sensible of her own) should not only
be addicted to the wildest dissipation, but, worse still, to
Jansenistical tenets. After this there was no hope for me save in the
King's word, which his increasing infirmities, naturally engrossing his
attention, prevented my hoping too sanguinely would dwell very acutely
on his remembrance. I believe, however, so religiously scrupulous was
Louis upon a point of honour that, had he lived, I should have had
nothing to complain of. As it was--but I anticipate! Montreuil
disappeared from Paris, almost as suddenly as he had appeared there.
And, as drowning men catch at a straw, so, finding my affairs at a very
low ebb, I thought I would take advice, even from Madame de Balzac.
I accordingly repaired to her hotel. She was at home, and, fortunately,
alone.
"You are welcome, /mon fils/," said she; "suffer me to give you that
title: you are welcome; it is some days since I saw you."
"I have numbered them, I assure you, Madame," said I, "and they have
crept with a dull pace; but you know that business has claims as well as
pleasure!"
"True!" said Madame de Balzac, pompously: "I myself find the weight of
politics a little insupportable, though so used to it; to your young
brain I can readily imagine how irksome it must be!"
"Would, Madame, that I could obtain your experience by contagion; as it
is, I fear that I have profited little by my visit to his Majesty.
Madame de Maintenon will not see me, and the Bishop of Frejus (excellent
man!) has been seized with a sudden paralysis of memory whenever I
present myself in his way."
"That party will never do,--I thought not," said Madame de Balzae, who
was a wonderful imitator of the fly on the wheel; "/my/ celebrity, and
the knowledge that /I/ loved you for your father's sake, were, I fear,
sufficient to destroy your interest with the Jesuits and their tools.
Well, well, we must repair the mischief we have occasioned you. What
place would suit you best?"
"Why, anything diplomatic. I would rather travel, at my age, than
remain in luxury and indolence even at Paris!"
"Ah, nothing like diplomacy!" said Madame de Balzac, with the air of a
Richelieu, and emptying her snuff-box at a pinch; "but have you, my son,
the requisite qualities for that science, as well as the tastes? Are
you capable of intrigue? Can you say one thing and mean another? Are
you aware of the immense consequence of a look or a bow? Can you live
like a spider, in the centre of an inexplicable net--inexplicable as
well as dangerous--to all but the weaver? That, my son, is the art of
politics; that is to be a diplomatist!"
"Perhaps, to one less penetrating than Madame de Balzac," answered I, "I
might, upon trial, not appear utterly ignorant of the noble art of state
duplicity which she has so eloquently depicted."
"Possibly!" said the good lady; "it must indeed be a profound
dissimulator to deceive /me/."
"But what would you advise me to do in the present crisis? What party
to adopt, what individual to flatter?"
Nothing, I already discovered and have already observed, did the
inestimable Madame de Balzac dislike more than a downright question: she
never answered it.
"Why, really," said she, preparing herself for a long speech, "I am
quite glad you consult me, and I will give you the best advice in my
power. /Ecoutez donc/; you have seen the Duc de Maine?"
"Certainly!"
"Hum! ha! it would be wise to follow him; but--you take me--you
understand. Then, you know, my son, there is the Duc d'Orleans, fond of
pleasure, full of talent; but you know--there is a little--what do you
call it? you understand. As for the Duc de Bourbon, 'tis quite a
simpleton; nevertheless we must consider: nothing like consideration;
believe me, no diplomatist ever hurries. As for Madame de Maintenon,
you know, and I know too, that the Duchesse d'Orleans calls her an old
hag; but then--a word to the wise--eh?--what shall we say to Madame the
Duchess herself?--what a fat woman she is, but excessively clever,--such
a letter writer!--Well--you see, my dear young friend, that it is a
very difficult matter to decide upon,--but you must already be fully
aware what plan I should advise."
"Already, Madame?"
"To be sure! What have I been saying to you all this time?--did you not
hear me? Shall I repeat my advice?"
"Oh, no! I perfectly comprehend you now; you would advise me--in
short--to--to--do--as well as I can."
"You have said it, my son. I thought you would understand me on a
little reflection."
"To be sure,--to be sure," said I.
And three ladies being announced, my conference with Madame de Balzac
ended.
I now resolved to wait a little till the tides of power seemed somewhat
more settled, and I could ascertain in what quarter to point my bark of
enterprise. I gave myself rather more eagerly to society, in proportion
as my political schemes were suffered to remain torpid. My mind could
not remain quiet, without preying on itself; and no evil appeared to me
so great as tranquillity. Thus the spring and earlier summer passed on,
till, in August, the riots preceding the Rebellion broke out in
Scotland. At this time I saw but little of Lord Bolingbroke in private;
though, with his characteristic affectation, he took care that the load
of business with which he was really oppressed should not prevent his
enjoyment of all gayeties in public. And my indifference to the cause
of the Chevalier, in which he was so warmly engaged, threw a natural
restraint upon our conversation, and produced an involuntary coldness in
our intercourse: so impossible is it for men to be private friends who
differ on a public matter.
One evening I was engaged to meet a large party at a country-house about
forty miles from Paris. I went, and stayed some days. My horses had
accompanied me; and, when I left the chateau, I resolved to make the
journey to Paris on horseback. Accordingly, I ordered my carriage to
follow me, and attended by a single groom, commenced my expedition. It
was a beautiful still morning,--the first day of the first month of
autumn. I had proceeded about ten miles, when I fell in with an old
French officer. I remember,--though I never saw him but that once,--I
remember his face as if I had encountered it yesterday. It was thin and
long, and yellow enough to have served as a caricature rather than a
portrait of Don Quixote. He had a hook nose, and a long sharp chin; and
all the lines, wrinkles, curves, and furrows of which the human visage
is capable seemed to have met in his cheeks. Nevertheless, his eye was
bright and keen, his look alert, and his whole bearing firm, gallant,
and soldier-like. He was attired in a sort of military undress; wore a
mustachio, which, though thin and gray, was carefully curled; and at the
summit of a very respectable wig was perched a small cocked hat, adorned
with a black feather. He rode very upright in his saddle; and his
horse, a steady, stalwart quadruped of the Norman breed, with a terribly
long tail and a prodigious breadth of chest, put one stately leg before
another in a kind of trot, which, though it seemed, from its height of
action and the proud look of the steed, a pretension to motion more than
ordinarily brisk, was in fact a little slower than a common walk.
This noble cavalier seemed sufficiently an object of curiosity to my
horse to induce the animal to testify his surprise by shying, very
jealously and very vehemently, in passing him. This ill breeding on his
part was indignantly returned on the part of the Norman charger, who,
uttering a sort of squeak and shaking his long mane and head, commenced
a series of curvets and capers which cost the old Frenchman no little
trouble to appease. In the midst of these equine freaks, the horse came
so near me as to splash my nether garment with a liberality as little
ornamental as it was pleasurable.
The old Frenchman seeing this, took off his cocked hat very politely and
apologized for the accident. I replied with equal courtesy; and, as our
horses slid into quiet, their riders slid into conversation. It was
begun and chiefly sustained by my new comrade; for I am little addicted
to commence unnecessary socialities myself, though I should think very
meanly of my pretensions to the name of a gentleman and a courtier, if I
did not return them when offered, even by a beggar.
"It is a fine horse of yours, Monsieur," said the old Frenchman; "but I
cannot believe--pardon me for saying so--that your slight English steeds
are so well adapted to the purposes of war as our strong chargers,--such
as mine for example."
"It is very possible, Monsieur," said I. "Has the horse you now ride
done service in the field as well as on the road?"
"Ah! /le pauvre petit mignon/,--no!" (/petit/, indeed! this little
darling was seventeen hands high at the very least) "no, Monsieur: it is
but a young creature this; his grandfather served me well!"
"I need not ask you, Monsieur, if you have borne arms: the soldier is
stamped upon you!"
"Sir, you flatter me highly!" said the old gentleman, blushing to the
very tip of his long lean ears, and bowing as low as if I had called him
a Conde. "I have followed the profession of arms for more than fifty
years."
"Fifty years! 'tis a long time."
"A long time," rejoined my companion, "a long time to look back upon
with regret."
"Regret! by Heaven, I should think the remembrance of fifty years'
excitement and glory would be a remembrance of triumph."
The old man turned round on his saddle, and looked at me for some
moments very wistfully. "You are young, Sir," he said, "and at your
years I should have thought with you; but--" (then abruptly changing his
voice, he continued)--"Triumph, did you say? Sir, I have had three
sons: they are dead; they died in battle; I did not weep; I did not shed
a tear, Sir,--not a tear! But I will tell you when I did weep. I came
back, an old man, to the home I had left as a young one. I saw the
country a desert. I saw that the /noblesse/ had become tyrants; the
peasants had become slaves,--such slaves,--savage from despair,--even
when they were most gay, most fearfully gay, from constitution. Sir, I
saw the priest rack and grind, and the seigneur exact and pillage, and
the tax-gatherer squeeze out the little the other oppressors had left;
anger, discontent, wretchedness, famine, a terrible separation between
one order of people and another; an incredible indifference to the
miseries their despotism caused on the part of the aristocracy; a sullen
and vindictive hatred for the perpetration of those miseries on the part
of the people; all places sold--even all honours priced--at the court,
which was become a public market, a province of peasants, of living men
bartered for a few livres, and literally passed from one hand to
another, to be squeezed and drained anew by each new possessor: in a
word, Sir, an abandoned court; an unredeemed /noblesse/,--unredeemed,
Sir, by a single benefit which, in other countries, even the most
feudal, the vassal obtains from the master; a peasantry famished; a
nation loaded with debt which it sought to pay by tears,--these are what
I saw,--these are the consequences of that heartless and miserable
vanity from which arose wars neither useful nor honourable,--these are
the real components of that /triumph/, as you term it, which you wonder
that I regret."
Now, although it was impossible to live at the court of Louis XIV. in
his latter days, and not feel, from the general discontent that
prevailed even there, what a dark truth the old soldier's speech
contained, yet I was somewhat surprised by an enthusiasm so little
military in a person whose bearing and air were so conspicuously
martial.
"You draw a melancholy picture," said I; "and the wretched state of
culture which the lands that we now pass through exhibit is a witness
how little exaggeration there is in your colouring. However, these are
but the ordinary evils of war; and, if your country endures them, do not
forget that she has also inflicted them. Remember what France did to
Holland, and own that it is but a retribution that France should now
find that the injury we do to others is (among nations as well as
individuals) injury to ourselves."
My old Frenchman curled his mustaches with the finger and thumb of his
left hand: this was rather too subtile a distinction for him.
"That may be true enough, Monsieur," said he; "but, /morbleu/! those
/maudits/ Dutchmen deserved what they sustained at our hands. No, Sir,
no: I am not so base as to forget the glory my country acquired, though
I weep for her wounds."
"I do not quite understand you, Sir," said I; "did you not just now
confess that the wars you had witnessed were neither honourable nor
useful? What glory, then, was to be acquired in a war of that
character, even though it was so delightfully animated by cutting the
throats of those /maudits/ Dutchmen?"
"Sir," answered the Frenchman, drawing himself up, "you did /not/
understand me. When we punished Holland, we did rightly. We
/conquered/."
"Whether you conquered or not (for the good folk of Holland are not so
sure of the fact)," answered I, "that war was the most unjust in which
your king was ever engaged; but pray, tell me, Sir, what war it is that
you lament?"
The Frenchman frowned, whistled, put out his under lip, in a sort of
angry embarrassment, and then, spurring his great horse into a curvet,
said,--
"That last war with the English!"
"Faith," said I, "that was the justest of all."
"Just!" cried the Frenchman, halting abruptly and darting at me a glance
of fire, "just! no more, Sir! no more! I was at Blenheim and at
Ramilies!"
As the old warrior said the last words, his voice faltered; and though I
could not help inly smiling at the confusion of ideas by which wars were
just or unjust, according as they were fortunate or not, yet I respected
his feelings enough to turn away my face and remain silent.
"Yes," renewed my comrade, colouring with evident shame and drawing his
cocked hat over his brows, "yes, I received my last wound at Ramilies.
/Then/ my eyes were opened to the horrors of war; /then/ I saw and
cursed the evils of ambition; /then/ I resolved to retire from the
armies of a king who had lost forever his name, his glory, and his
country."
Was there ever a better type of the French nation than this old soldier?
As long as fortune smiles on them, it is "Marchons au diable!" and "Vive
la gloire!" Directly they get beaten, it is "Ma pauvre patrie!" and
"Les calamites affreuses de la guerre!"
"However," said I, "the old King is drawing near the end of his days,
and is said to express his repentance at the evils his ambition has
occasioned."
The old soldier shoved back his hat, and offered me his snuff-box. I
judged by this that he was a little mollified.
"Ah!" he renewed, after a pause, "ah! times are sadly changed since the
year 1667; when the young King--he was young then--took the field in
Flanders, under the great Turenne. /Sacristie/! What a hero he looked
upon his white war-horse! I would have gone--ay, and the meanest and
backwardest soldier in the camp would have gone--into the very mouth of
the cannon for a look from that magnificent countenance, or a word from
that mouth which knew so well what words were! Sir, there was in the
war of '72, when we were at peace with Great Britain, an English
gentleman, then in the army, afterwards a marshal of France: I remember,
as if it were yesterday, how gallantly he behaved. The King sent to
compliment him after some signal proof of courage and conduct, and asked
what reward he would have. 'Sire,' answered the Englishman, 'give me
the white plume you wore this day.' From that moment the Englishman's
fortune was made."
"The flattery went further than the valour!" said I, smiling, as I
recognized in the anecdote the first great step which my father had made
in the ascent of fortune.
"/Sacristie/!" cried the Frenchman, "it was no flattery then. We so
idolized the King that mere truth would have seemed disloyalty; and we
no more thought that praise, however extravagant, was adulation, when
directed to him, than we should have thought there was adulation in the
praise we would have given to our first mistress. But it is all changed
now! Who now cares for the old priest-ridden monarch?"
And upon this the veteran, having conquered the momentary enthusiasm
which the remembrance of the King's earlier glories had excited,
transferred all his genius of description to the opposite side of the
question, and declaimed, with great energy, upon the royal vices and
errors, which were so charming in prosperity, and were now so detestable
in adversity.
While we were thus conversing we approached Versailles. We thought the
vicinity of the town seemed unusually deserted. We entered the main
street: crowds were assembled; a universal murmur was heard; excitement
sat on every countenance. Here an old crone was endeavouring to explain
something, evidently beyond his comprehension, to a child of three years
old, who, with open mouth and fixed eyes, seemed to make up in wonder
for the want of intelligence; there a group of old disbanded soldiers
occupied the way, and seemed, from their muttered conversations, to vent
a sneer and a jest at a priest who, with downward countenance and
melancholy air, was hurrying along.
One young fellow was calling out, "At least, it is a holy-day, and I
shall go to Paris!" and, as a contrast to him, an old withered artisan,
leaning on a gold-headed cane, with sharp avarice eloquent in every line
of his face, muttered out to a fellow-miser, "No business to-day, no
money, John; no money!" One knot of women, of all ages, close by which
my horse passed, was entirely occupied with a single topic, and that so
vehemently that I heard the leading words of the discussion.
"Mourning--becoming--what fashion?--how long?--/O Ciel/!" Thus do
follies weave themselves round the bier of death!
"What is the news, gentlemen?" said I.
"News! what, you have not heard it?--the King is dead!"
"Louis dead! Louis the Great, dead!" cried my companion.
"Louis the Great?" said a sullen-looking man,--"Louis the persecutor!"
"Ah, he's a Huguenot!" cried another with haggard cheeks and hollow
eyes, scowling at the last speaker. "Never mind what he says: the King
was right when he refused protection to the heretics; but was he right
when he levied such taxes on the Catholics?"
"Hush!" said a third--"hush: it may be unsafe to speak; there are spies
about; for my part, I think it was all the fault of the /noblesse/."
"And the Favourites!" cried a soldier, fiercely.
"And the Harlots!" cried a hag of eighty.
"And the Priests!" muttered the Huguenot.
"And the Tax-gatherers!" added the lean Catholic.
We rode slowly on. My comrade was evidently and powerfully affected.
"So, he is dead!" said he. "Dead!--well, well, peace be with him! He
conquered in Holland; he humbled Genoa; he dictated to Spain; he
commanded Conde and Turenne; he--Bah! What is all this!--" then,
turning abruptly to me, my companion cried, "I did not speak against the
King, did I, Sir?"
"Not much."
"I am glad of that,--yes, very glad!" And the old man glared fiercely
round on a troop of boys who were audibly abusing the dead lion.
"I would have bit out my tongue rather than it had joined in the base
joy of these yelping curs. Heavens! when I think what shouts I have
heard when the name of that man, then deemed little less than a god, was
but breathed!--and now--why do you look at me, Sir? My eyes are moist;
I know it, Sir,--I know it. The old battered broken soldier, who made
his first campaigns when that which is now dust was the idol of France
and the pupil of Turenne,--the old soldier's eyes shall not be dry,
though there is not another tear shed in the whole of this great
empire."
"Your three sons?" said I; "you did not weep for them?"
"No, Sir: I loved them when I was old; but I loved Louis /when I was
young/!"
"Your oppressed and pillaged country?" said I, "think of that."
"No, Sir, I will not think of it!" cried the old warrior in a passion.
"I will not think of it--to-day, at least."
"You are right, my brave friend: in the grave let us bury even public
wrongs; but let us not bury their remembrance. May the joy we read in
every face that we pass--joy at the death of one whom idolatry once
almost seemed to deem immortal--be a lesson to future kings!"
My comrade did not immediately answer; but, after a pause and we had
turned our backs upon the town, he said, "Joy, Sir,--you spoke of joy!
Yes, we are Frenchmen: we forgive our rulers easily for private vices
and petty faults; but we never forgive them if they commit the greatest
of faults, and suffer a stain to rest upon--"
"What?" I asked, as my comrade broke off.
"The national glory, Monsieur!" said he.
"You have hit it," said I, smiling at the turgid sentiment which was so
really and deeply felt. "And had you written folios upon the character
of your countrymen, you could not have expressed it better."
