THE BARRICADE.
He was abruptly roused from sleep
by the noise of a discharge of musketry; and, in spite
of Rosanette’s entreaties, Frederick was fully
determined to go and see what was happening. He
hurried down to the Champs-Elysees, from which shots
were being fired. At the corner of the Rue Saint-Honore
some men in blouses ran past him, exclaiming:
“No! not that way! to the Palais-Royal!”
Frederick followed them. The
grating of the Convent of the Assumption had been
torn away. A little further on he noticed three
paving-stones in the middle of the street, the beginning
of a barricade, no doubt; then fragments of bottles
and bundles of iron-wire, to obstruct the cavalry;
and, at the same moment, there rushed suddenly out
of a lane a tall young man of pale complexion, with
his black hair flowing over his shoulders, and with
a sort of pea-coloured swaddling-cloth thrown round
him. In his hand he held a long military musket,
and he dashed along on the tips of his slippers with
the air of a somnambulist and with the nimbleness
of a tiger. At intervals a detonation could be
heard.
On the evening of the day before,
the spectacle of the wagon containing five corpses
picked up from amongst those that were lying on the
Boulevard des Capucines had charged
the disposition of the people; and, while at the Tuileries
the aides-de-camp succeeded each other, and M. Mole,
having set about the composition of a new Cabinet,
did not come back, and M. Thiers was making efforts
to constitute another, and while the King was cavilling
and hesitating, and finally assigned the post of commander-in-chief
to Bugeaud in order to prevent him from making use
of it, the insurrection was organising itself in a
formidable manner, as if it were directed by a single
arm.
Men endowed with a kind of frantic
eloquence were engaged in haranguing the populace
at the street-corners, others were in the churches
ringing the tocsin as loudly as ever they could.
Lead was cast for bullets, cartridges were rolled
about. The trees on the boulevards, the urinals,
the benches, the gratings, the gas-burners, everything
was torn off and thrown down. Paris, that morning,
was covered with barricades. The resistance which
was offered was of short duration, so that at eight
o’clock the people, by voluntary surrender or
by force, had got possession of five barracks, nearly
all the municipal buildings, the most favourable strategic
points. Of its own accord, without any effort,
the Monarchy was melting away in rapid dissolution,
and now an attack was made on the guard-house of the
Chateau d’Eau, in order to liberate fifty prisoners,
who were not there.
Frederick was forced to stop at the
entrance to the square. It was filled with groups
of armed men. The Rue Saint-Thomas and the Rue
Fromanteau were occupied by companies of the Line.
The Rue de Valois was choked up by an enormous barricade.
The smoke which fluttered about at the top of it partly
opened. Men kept running overhead, making violent
gestures; they vanished from sight; then the firing
was again renewed. It was answered from the guard-house
without anyone being seen inside. Its windows,
protected by oaken window-shutters, were pierced with
loop-holes; and the monument with its two storys, its
two wings, its fountain on the first floor and its
little door in the centre, was beginning to be speckled
with white spots under the shock of the bullets.
The three steps in front of it remained unoccupied.
At Frederick’s side a man in
a Greek cap, with a cartridge-box over his knitted
vest, was holding a dispute with a woman with a Madras
neckerchief round her shoulders. She said to him:
“Come back now! Come back!”
“Leave me alone!” replied
the husband. “You can easily mind the porter’s
lodge by yourself. I ask, citizen, is this fair?
I have on every occasion done my duty in
1830, in ’32, in ’34, and in ’39!
To-day they’re fighting again. I must fight!
Go away!”
And the porter’s wife ended
by yielding to his remonstrances and to those of a
National Guard near them a man of forty,
whose simple face was adorned with a circle of white
beard. He loaded his gun and fired while talking
to Frederick, as cool in the midst of the outbreak
as a horticulturist in his garden. A young lad
with a packing-cloth thrown over him was trying to
coax this man to give him a few caps, so that he might
make use of a gun he had, a fine fowling-piece which
a “gentleman” had made him a present of.
“Catch on behind my back,”
said the good man, “and keep yourself from being
seen, or you’ll get yourself killed!”
The drums beat for the charge.
Sharp cries, hurrahs of triumph burst forth.
A continual ebbing to and fro made the multitude sway
backward and forward. Frederick, caught between
two thick masses of people, did not move an inch,
all the time fascinated and exceedingly amused by the
scene around him. The wounded who sank to the
ground, the dead lying at his feet, did not seem like
persons really wounded or really dead. The impression
left on his mind was that he was looking on at a show.
In the midst of the surging throng,
above the sea of heads, could be seen an old man in
a black coat, mounted on a white horse with a velvet
saddle. He held in one hand a green bough, in
the other a paper, and he kept shaking them persistently;
but at length, giving up all hope of obtaining a hearing,
he withdrew from the scene.
The soldiers of the Line had gone,
and only the municipal troops remained to defend the
guard-house. A wave of dauntless spirits dashed
up the steps; they were flung down; others came on
to replace them, and the gate resounded under blows
from iron bars. The municipal guards did not
give way. But a wagon, stuffed full of hay, and
burning like a gigantic torch, was dragged against
the walls. Faggots were speedily brought, then
straw, and a barrel of spirits of wine. The fire
mounted up to the stones along the wall; the building
began to send forth smoke on all sides like the crater
of a volcano; and at its summit, between the balustrades
of the terrace, huge flames escaped with a harsh noise.
The first story of the Palais-Royal was occupied by
National Guards. Shots were fired through every
window in the square; the bullets whizzed, the water
of the fountain, which had burst, was mingled with
the blood, forming little pools on the ground.
People slipped in the mud over clothes, shakos,
and weapons. Frederick felt something soft under
his foot. It was the hand of a sergeant in a grey
great-coat, lying on his face in the stream that ran
along the street. Fresh bands of people were
continually coming up, pushing on the combatants at
the guard-house. The firing became quicker.
The wine-shops were open; people went into them from
time to time to smoke a pipe and drink a glass of
beer, and then came back again to fight. A lost
dog began to howl. This made the people laugh.
Frederick was shaken by the impact
of a man falling on his shoulder with a bullet through
his back and the death-rattle in his throat. At
this shot, perhaps directed against himself, he felt
himself stirred up to rage; and he was plunging forward
when a National Guard stopped him.
“’Tis useless! the King
has just gone! Ah! if you don’t believe
me, go and see for yourself!”
This assurance calmed Frederick.
The Place du Carrousel had a tranquil aspect.
The Hotel de Nantes stood there as fixed as ever; and
the houses in the rear; the dome of the Louvre in
front, the long gallery of wood at the right, and
the waste plot of ground that ran unevenly as far as
the sheds of the stall-keepers were, so to speak, steeped
in the grey hues of the atmosphere, where indistinct
murmurs seemed to mingle with the fog; while, at the
opposite side of the square, a stiff light, falling
through the parting of the clouds on the façade of
the Tuileries, cut out all its windows into white
patches. Near the Arc de Triomphe a dead
horse lay on the ground. Behind the gratings groups
consisting of five or six persons were chatting.
The doors leading into the chateau were open, and
the servants at the thresholds allowed the people
to enter.
Below stairs, in a kind of little
parlour, bowls of cafe au lait were handed
round. A few of those present sat down to the
table and made merry; others remained standing, and
amongst the latter was a hackney-coachman. He
snatched up with both hands a glass vessel full of
powdered sugar, cast a restless glance right and left,
and then began to eat voraciously, with his nose stuck
into the mouth of the vessel.
At the bottom of the great staircase
a man was writing his name in a register.
Frederick was able to recognise him by his back.
“Hallo, Hussonnet!”
“Yes, ’tis I,” replied
the Bohemian. “I am introducing myself at
court. This is a nice joke, isn’t it?”
“Suppose we go upstairs?”
And they reached presently the Salle
des Marechaux. The portraits of those illustrious
generals, save that of Bugeaud, which had been pierced
through the stomach, were all intact. They were
represented leaning on their sabres with a gun-carriage
behind each of them, and in formidable attitudes in
contrast with the occasion. A large timepiece
proclaimed it was twenty minutes past one.
Suddenly the “Marseillaise”
resounded. Hussonnet and Frederick bent over
the balusters. It was the people. They rushed
up the stairs, shaking with a dizzying, wave-like
motion bare heads, or helmets, or red caps, or else
bayonets or human shoulders with such impetuosity that
some people disappeared every now and then in this
swarming mass, which was mounting up without a moment’s
pause, like a river compressed by an equinoctial tide,
with a continuous roar under an irresistible impulse.
When they got to the top of the stairs, they were scattered,
and their chant died away. Nothing could any
longer be heard but the tramp of all the shoes intermingled
with the chopping sound of many voices. The crowd
not being in a mischievous mood, contented themselves
with looking about them. But, from time to time,
an elbow, by pressing too hard, broke through a pane
of glass, or else a vase or a statue rolled from a
bracket down on the floor. The wainscotings cracked
under the pressure of people against them. Every
face was flushed; the perspiration was rolling down
their features in large beads. Hussonnet made
this remark:
“Heroes have not a good smell.”
“Ah! you are provoking,” returned Frederick.
And, pushed forward in spite of themselves,
they entered an apartment in which a dais of red velvet
rose as far as the ceiling. On the throne below
sat a representative of the proletariat in effigy with
a black beard, his shirt gaping open, a jolly air,
and the stupid look of a baboon. Others climbed
up the platform to sit in his place.
“What a myth!” said Hussonnet. “There
you see the sovereign people!”
The armchair was lifted up on the
hands of a number of persons and passed across the
hall, swaying from one side to the other.
“By Jove, ’tis like a
boat! The Ship of State is tossing about in a
stormy sea! Let it dance the cancan! Let
it dance the cancan!”
They had drawn it towards a window,
and in the midst of hisses, they launched it out.
“Poor old chap!” said
Hussonnet, as he saw the effigy falling into the garden,
where it was speedily picked up in order to be afterwards
carried to the Bastille and burned.
Then a frantic joy burst forth, as
if, instead of the throne, a future of boundless happiness
had appeared; and the people, less through a spirit
of vindictiveness than to assert their right of possession,
broke or tore the glasses, the curtains, the lustres,
the tapers, the tables, the chairs, the stools, the
entire furniture, including the very albums and engravings,
and the corbels of the tapestry. Since they had
triumphed, they must needs amuse themselves! The
common herd ironically wrapped themselves up in laces
and cashmeres. Gold fringes were rolled
round the sleeves of blouses. Hats with ostriches’
feathers adorned blacksmiths’ heads, and ribbons
of the Legion of Honour supplied waistbands for prostitutes.
Each person satisfied his or her caprice; some danced,
others drank. In the queen’s apartment a
woman gave a gloss to her hair with pomatum.
Behind a folding-screen two lovers were playing cards.
Hussonnet pointed out to Frederick an individual who
was smoking a dirty pipe with his elbows resting on
a balcony; and the popular frenzy redoubled with a
continuous crash of broken porcelain and pieces of
crystal, which, as they rebounded, made sounds resembling
those produced by the plates of musical glasses.
Then their fury was overshadowed.
A nauseous curiosity made them rummage all the dressing-rooms,
all the recesses. Returned convicts thrust their
arms into the beds in which princesses had slept, and
rolled themselves on the top of them, to console themselves
for not being able to embrace their owners. Others,
with sinister faces, roamed about silently, looking
for something to steal, but too great a multitude was
there. Through the bays of the doors could be
seen in the suite of apartments only the dark mass
of people between the gilding of the walls under a
cloud of dust. Every breast was panting.
The heat became more and more suffocating; and the
two friends, afraid of being stifled, seized the opportunity
of making their way out.
In the antechamber, standing on a
heap of garments, appeared a girl of the town as a
statue of Liberty, motionless, her grey eyes wide open a
fearful sight.
They had taken three steps outside
the chateau when a company of the National Guards,
in great-coats, advanced towards them, and, taking
off their foraging-caps, and, at the same time, uncovering
their skulls, which were slightly bald, bowed very
low to the people. At this testimony of respect,
the ragged victors bridled up. Hussonnet and
Frederick were not without experiencing a certain pleasure
from it as well as the rest.
They were filled with ardour.
They went back to the Palais-Royal. In front
of the Rue Fromanteau, soldiers’ corpses were
heaped up on the straw. They passed close to
the dead without a single quiver of emotion, feeling
a certain pride in being able to keep their countenance.
The Palais overflowed with people.
In the inner courtyard seven piles of wood were flaming.
Pianos, chests of drawers, and clocks were hurled out
through the windows. Fire-engines sent streams
of water up to the roofs. Some vagabonds tried
to cut the hose with their sabres. Frederick urged
a pupil of the Polytechnic School to interfere.
The latter did not understand him, and, moreover,
appeared to be an idiot. All around, in the two
galleries, the populace, having got possession of the
cellars, gave themselves up to a horrible carouse.
Wine flowed in streams and wetted people’s feet;
the mudlarks drank out of the tail-ends of the bottles,
and shouted as they staggered along.
“Come away out of this,”
said Hussonnet; “I am disgusted with the people.”
All over the Orleans Gallery the wounded
lay on mattresses on the ground, with purple curtains
folded round them as coverlets; and the small shopkeepers’
wives and daughters from the quarter brought them
broth and linen.
“No matter!” said Frederick;
“for my part, I consider the people sublime.”
The great vestibule was filled with
a whirlwind of furious individuals. Men tried
to ascend to the upper storys in order to put the finishing
touches to the work of wholesale destruction.
National Guards, on the steps, strove to keep them
back. The most intrepid was a chasseur, who had
his head bare, his hair bristling, and his straps in
pieces. His shirt caused a swelling between his
trousers and his coat, and he struggled desperately
in the midst of the others. Hussonnet, who had
sharp sight, recognised Arnoux from a distance.
Then they went into the Tuileries
garden, so as to be able to breathe more freely.
They sat down on a bench; and they remained for some
minutes with their eyes closed, so much stunned that
they had not the energy to say a word. The people
who were passing came up to them and informed them
that the Duchesse d’Orléans had been appointed
Regent, and that it was all over. They were experiencing
that species of comfort which follows rapid dénouements,
when at the windows of the attics in the chateau appeared
men-servants tearing their liveries to pieces.
They flung their torn clothes into the garden, as
a mark of renunciation. The people hooted at
them, and then they retired.
The attention of Frederick and Hussonnet
was distracted by a tall fellow who was walking quickly
between the trees with a musket on his shoulder.
A cartridge-box was pressed against his pea-jacket;
a handkerchief was wound round his forehead under
his cap. He turned his head to one side.
It was Dussardier; and casting himself into their arms:
“Ah! what good fortune, my poor
old friends!” without being able to say another
word, so much out of breath was he with fatigue.
He had been on his legs for the last
twenty-four hours. He had been engaged at the
barricades of the Latin Quarter, had fought in the
Rue Rabuteau, had saved three dragoons’ lives,
had entered the Tuileries with Colonel Dunoyer, and,
after that, had repaired to the Chamber, and then
to the Hotel de Ville.
“I have come from it! all goes
well! the people are victorious! the workmen and the
employers are embracing one another. Ha! if you
knew what I have seen! what brave fellows! what a
fine sight it was!”
And without noticing that they had no arms:
“I was quite certain of finding
you there! This has been a bit rough no
matter!”
A drop of blood ran down his cheek,
and in answer to the questions put to him by the two
others:
“Oh! ’tis nothing! a slight scratch from
a bayonet!”
“However, you really ought to take care of yourself.”
“Pooh! I am substantial!
What does this signify? The Republic is proclaimed!
We’ll be happy henceforth! Some journalists,
who were talking just now in front of me, said they
were going to liberate Poland and Italy! No more
kings! You understand? The entire land free!
the entire land free!”
And with one comprehensive glance
at the horizon, he spread out his arms in a triumphant
attitude. But a long file of men rushed over the
terrace on the water’s edge.
“Ah, deuce take it! I was
forgetting. I must be off. Good-bye!”
He turned round to cry out to them
while brandishing his musket:
“Long live the Republic!”
From the chimneys of the chateau escaped
enormous whirlwinds of black smoke which bore sparks
along with them. The ringing of the bells sent
out over the city a wild and startling alarm.
Right and left, in every direction, the conquerors
discharged their weapons.
Frederick, though he was not a warrior,
felt the Gallic blood leaping in his veins. The
magnetism of the public enthusiasm had seized hold
of him. He inhaled with a voluptuous delight
the stormy atmosphere filled with the odour of gunpowder;
and, in the meantime, he quivered under the effluvium
of an immense love, a supreme and universal tenderness,
as if the heart of all humanity were throbbing in
his breast.
Hussonnet said with a yawn:
“It would be time, perhaps, to go and instruct
the populace.”
Frederick followed him to his correspondence-office
in the Place de la Bourse; and he began to compose
for the Troyes newspaper an account of recent events
in a lyric style a veritable tit-bit to
which he attached his signature. Then they dined
together at a tavern. Hussonnet was pensive;
the eccentricities of the Revolution exceeded his own.
After leaving the cafe, when they
repaired to the Hotel de Ville to learn the news,
the boyish impulses which were natural to him had got
the upper hand once more. He scaled the barricades
like a chamois, and answered the sentinels with broad
jokes of a patriotic flavour.
They heard the Provisional Government
proclaimed by torchlight. At last, Frederick
got back to his house at midnight, overcome with fatigue.
“Well,” said he to his
man-servant, while the latter was undressing him,
“are you satisfied?”
“Yes, no doubt, Monsieur; but
I don’t like to see the people dancing to music.”
Next morning, when he awoke, Frederick
thought of Deslauriers. He hastened to his friend’s
lodgings. He ascertained that the advocate had
just left Paris, having been appointed a provincial
commissioner. At the soiree given the
night before, he had got into contact with Ledru-Rollin,
and laying siege to him in the name of the Law Schools,
had snatched from him a post, a mission. However,
the doorkeeper explained, he was going to write and
give his address in the following week.
After this, Frederick went to see
the Maréchale. She gave him a chilling reception.
She resented his desertion of her. Her bitterness
disappeared when he had given her repeated assurances
that peace was restored.
All was quiet now. There was
no reason to be afraid. He kissed her, and she
declared herself in favour of the Republic, as his
lordship the Archbishop of Paris had already done,
and as the magistracy, the Council of State, the Institute,
the marshals of France, Changarnier, M. de Falloux,
all the Bonapartists, all the Legitimists, and a considerable
number of Orleanists were about to do with a swiftness
indicative of marvellous zeal.
The fall of the Monarchy had been
so rapid that, as soon as the first stupefaction that
succeeded it had passed away, there was amongst the
middle class a feeling of astonishment at the fact
that they were still alive. The summary execution
of some thieves, who were shot without a trial, was
regarded as an act of signal justice. For a month
Lamartine’s phrase was repeated with reference
to the red flag, “which had only gone the round
of the Champ de Mars, while the tricoloured flag,”
etc.; and all ranged themselves under its shade,
each party seeing amongst the three colours only its
own, and firmly determined, as soon as it would be
the most powerful, to tear away the two others.
As business was suspended, anxiety
and love of gaping drove everyone into the open air.
The careless style of costume generally adopted attenuated
differences of social position. Hatred masked
itself; expectations were openly indulged in; the
multitude seemed full of good-nature. The pride
of having gained their rights shone in the people’s
faces. They displayed the gaiety of a carnival,
the manners of a bivouac. Nothing could be more
amusing than the aspect of Paris during the first
days that followed the Revolution.
Frederick gave the Maréchale
his arm, and they strolled along through the streets
together. She was highly diverted by the display
of rosettes in every buttonhole, by the banners hung
from every window, and the bills of every colour that
were posted upon the walls, and threw some money here
and there into the collection-boxes for the wounded,
which were placed on chairs in the middle of the pathway.
Then she stopped before some caricatures representing
Louis Philippe as a pastry-cook, as a mountebank,
as a dog, or as a leech. But she was a little
frightened at the sight of Caussidiere’s men
with their sabres and scarfs. At other times
it was a tree of Liberty that was being planted.
The clergy vied with each other in blessing the Republic,
escorted by servants in gold lace; and the populace
thought this very fine. The most frequent spectacle
was that of deputations from no matter what, going
to demand something at the Hotel de Ville, for every
trade, every industry, was looking to the Government
to put a complete end to its wretchedness. Some
of them, it is true, went to offer it advice or to
congratulate it, or merely to pay it a little visit,
and to see the machine performing its functions.
One day, about the middle of the month of March, as
they were passing the Pont d’Arcole, having
to do some commission for Rosanette in the Latin Quarter,
Frederick saw approaching a column of individuals
with oddly-shaped hats and long beards. At its
head, beating a drum, walked a negro who had formerly
been an artist’s model; and the man who bore
the banner, on which this inscription floated in the
wind, “Artist-Painters,” was no other
than Pellerin.
He made a sign to Frederick to wait
for him, and then reappeared five minutes afterwards,
having some time before him; for the Government was,
at that moment, receiving a deputation from the stone-cutters.
He was going with his colleagues to ask for the creation
of a Forum of Art, a kind of Exchange where the interests
of AEsthetics would be discussed. Sublime masterpieces
would be produced, inasmuch as the workers would amalgamate
their talents. Ere long Paris would be covered
with gigantic monuments. He would decorate them.
He had even begun a figure of the Republic. One
of his comrades had come to take it, for they were
closely pursued by the deputation from the poulterers.
“What stupidity!” growled
a voice in the crowd. “Always some humbug,
nothing strong!”
It was Regimbart. He did not
salute Frederick, but took advantage of the occasion
to give vent to his own bitterness.
The Citizen spent his days wandering
about the streets, pulling his moustache, rolling
his eyes about, accepting and propagating any dismal
news that was communicated to him; and he had only
two phrases: “Take care! we’re going
to be run over!” or else, “Why, confound
it! they’re juggling with the Republic!”
He was discontented with everything, and especially
with the fact that we had not taken back our natural
frontiers.
The very name of Lamartine made him
shrug his shoulders. He did not consider Ledru-Rollin
“sufficient for the problem,” referred
to Dupont (of the Eure) as an old numbskull, Albert
as an idiot, Louis Blanc as an Utopist, and Blanqui
as an exceedingly dangerous man; and when Frederick
asked him what would be the best thing to do, he replied,
pressing his arm till he nearly bruised it:
“To take the Rhine, I tell you!
to take the Rhine, damn it!”
Then he blamed the Reactionaries.
They were taking off the mask. The sack of the
chateau of Neuilly and Suresne, the fire at Batignolles,
the troubles at Lyons, all the excesses and all the
grievances, were just now being exaggerated by having
superadded to them Ledru-Rollin’s circular,
the forced currency of bank-notes, the fall of the
funds to sixty francs, and, to crown all, as the supreme
iniquity, a final blow, a culminating horror, the
duty of forty-five centimes! And over and
above all these things, there was again Socialism!
Although these theories, as new as the game of goose,
had been discussed sufficiently for forty years to
fill a number of libraries, they terrified the wealthier
citizens, as if they had been a hailstorm of aérolites;
and they expressed indignation at them by virtue of
that hatred which the advent of every idea provokes,
simply because it is an idea an odium from
which it derives subsequently its glory, and which
causes its enemies to be always beneath it, however
lowly it may be.
Then Property rose in their regard
to the level of Religion, and was confounded with
God. The attacks made on it appeared to them a
sacrilege; almost a species of cannibalism. In
spite of the most humane legislation that ever existed,
the spectre of ’93 reappeared, and the chopper
of the guillotine vibrated in every syllable of the
word “Republic,” which did not prevent
them from despising it for its weakness. France,
no longer feeling herself mistress of the situation,
was beginning to shriek with terror, like a blind man
without his stick or an infant that had lost its nurse.
Of all Frenchmen, M. Dambreuse was
the most alarmed. The new condition of things
threatened his fortune, but, more than anything else,
it deceived his experience. A system so good!
a king so wise! was it possible? The ground was
giving way beneath their feet! Next morning he
dismissed three of his servants, sold his horses, bought
a soft hat to go out into the streets, thought even
of letting his beard grow; and he remained at home,
prostrated, reading over and over again newspapers
most hostile to his own ideas, and plunged into such
a gloomy mood that even the jokes about the pipe of
Flocon had not the power to make him smile.
As a supporter of the last reign,
he was dreading the vengeance of the people so far
as concerned his estates in Champagne when Frederick’s
lucubration fell into his hands. Then it occurred
to his mind that his young friend was a very useful
personage, and that he might be able, if not to serve
him, at least to protect him, so that, one morning,
M. Dambreuse presented himself at Frederick’s
residence, accompanied by Martinon.
This is another political allusion.
Flocon was a well-known member of the Ministry of
the day. TRANSLATOR.
This visit, he said, had no object
save that of seeing him for a little while, and having
a chat with him. In short, he rejoiced at the
events that had happened, and with his whole heart
adopted “our sublime motto, Liberty, Equality,
and Fraternity,” having always been at bottom
a Republican. If he voted under the other regime
with the Ministry, it was simply in order to accelerate
an inevitable downfall. He even inveighed against
M. Guizot, “who has got us into a nice hobble,
we must admit!” By way of retaliation, he spoke
in an enthusiastic fashion about Lamartine, who had
shown himself “magnificent, upon my word of honour,
when, with reference to the red flag ”
“Yes, I know,” said Frederick.
After which he declared that his sympathies were on
the side of the working-men.
“For, in fact, more or less,
we are all working-men!” And he carried his
impartiality so far as to acknowledge that Proudhon
had a certain amount of logic in his views. “Oh,
a great deal of logic, deuce take it!”
Then, with the disinterestedness of
a superior mind, he chatted about the exhibition of
pictures, at which he had seen Pellerin’s work.
He considered it original and well-painted.
Martinon backed up all he said with
expressions of approval; and likewise was of his opinion
that it was necessary to rally boldly to the side
of the Republic. And he talked about the husbandman,
his father, and assumed the part of the peasant, the
man of the people. They soon came to the question
of the elections for the National Assembly, and the
candidates in the arrondissement of La Fortelle.
The Opposition candidate had no chance.
“You should take his place!” said M. Dambreuse.
Frederick protested.
“But why not?” For he
would obtain the suffrages of the Extremists owing
to his personal opinions, and that of the Conservatives
on account of his family; “And perhaps also,”
added the banker, with a smile, “thanks to my
influence, in some measure.”
Frederick urged as an obstacle that he did not know
how to set about it.
There was nothing easier if he only
got himself recommended to the patriots of the Aube
by one of the clubs of the capital. All he had
to do was to read out, not a profession of faith such
as might be seen every day, but a serious statement
of principles.
“Bring it to me; I know what
goes down in the locality; and you can, I say again,
render great services to the country to
us all to myself.”
In such times people ought to aid
each other, and, if Frederick had need of anything,
he or his friends
“Oh, a thousand thanks, my dear Monsieur!”
“You’ll do as much for me in return, mind!”
Decidedly, the banker was a decent man.
Frederick could not refrain from pondering
over his advice; and soon he was dazzled by a kind
of dizziness.
The great figures of the Convention
passed before his mental vision. It seemed to
him that a splendid dawn was about to rise. Rome,
Vienna and Berlin were in a state of insurrection,
and the Austrians had been driven out of Venice.
All Europe was agitated. Now was the time to make
a plunge into the movement, and perhaps to accelerate
it; and then he was fascinated by the costume which
it was said the deputies would wear. Already
he saw himself in a waistcoat with lapels and a tricoloured
sash; and this itching, this hallucination, became
so violent that he opened his mind to Dambreuse.
The honest fellow’s enthusiasm had not abated.
“Certainly sure enough! Offer
yourself!”
Frederick, nevertheless, consulted Deslauriers.
The idiotic opposition which trammelled
the commissioner in his province had augmented his
Liberalism. He at once replied, exhorting Frederick
with the utmost vehemence to come forward as a candidate.
However, as the latter was desirous of having the
approval of a great number of persons, he confided
the thing to Rosanette one day, when Mademoiselle
Vatnaz happened to be present.
She was one of those Parisian spinsters
who, every evening when they have given their lessons
or tried to sell little sketches, or to dispose of
poor manuscripts, return to their own homes with mud
on their petticoats, make their own dinner, which
they eat by themselves, and then, with their soles
resting on a foot-warmer, by the light of a filthy
lamp, dream of a love, a family, a hearth, wealth all
that they lack. So it was that, like many others,
she had hailed in the Revolution the advent of vengeance,
and she delivered herself up to a Socialistic propaganda
of the most unbridled description.
The enfranchisement of the proletariat,
according to the Vatnaz, was only possible by the
enfranchisement of woman. She wished to have her
own sex admitted to every kind of employment, to have
an enquiry made into the paternity of children, a
different code, the abolition, or at least a more
intelligent regulation, of marriage. In that case
every Frenchwoman would be bound to marry a Frenchman,
or to adopt an old man. Nurses and midwives should
be officials receiving salaries from the State.
There should be a jury to examine
the works of women, special editors for women, a polytechnic
school for women, a National Guard for women, everything
for women! And, since the Government ignored their
rights, they ought to overcome force by force.
Ten thousand citizenesses with good guns ought to
make the Hotel de Ville quake!
Frederick’s candidature appeared
to her favourable for carrying out her ideas.
She encouraged him, pointing out the glory that shone
on the horizon. Rosanette was delighted at the
notion of having a man who would make speeches at
the Chamber.
“And then, perhaps, they’ll give you a
good place?”
Frederick, a man prone to every kind
of weakness, was infected by the universal mania.
He wrote an address and went to show it to M. Dambreuse.
At the sound made by the great door
falling back, a curtain gaped open a little behind
a casement, and a woman appeared at it He had not time
to find out who she was; but, in the anteroom, a picture
arrested his attention Pellerin’s
picture which lay on a chair, no doubt
provisionally.
It represented the Republic, or Progress,
or Civilisation, under the form of Jesus Christ driving
a locomotive, which was passing through a virgin forest.
Frederick, after a minute’s contemplation, exclaimed:
“What a vile thing!”
“Is it not eh?”
said M. Dambreuse, coming in unexpectedly just at the
moment when the other was giving utterance to this
opinion, and fancying that it had reference, not so
much to the picture as to the doctrine glorified by
the work. Martinon presented himself at the same
time. They made their way into the study, and
Frederick was drawing a paper out of his pocket, when
Mademoiselle Cecile, entering suddenly, said, articulating
her words in an ingenuous fashion:
“Is my aunt here?”
“You know well she is not,”
replied the banker. “No matter! act as if
you were at home, Mademoiselle.”
“Oh! thanks! I am going away!”
Scarcely had she left when Martinon
seemed to be searching for his handkerchief.
“I forgot to take it out of my great-coat excuse
me!”
“All right!” said M. Dambreuse.
Evidently he was not deceived by this
manoeuvre, and even seemed to regard it with favour.
Why? But Martinon soon reappeared, and Frederick
began reading his address.
At the second page, which pointed
towards the preponderance of the financial interests
as a disgraceful fact, the banker made a grimace.
Then, touching on reforms, Frederick demanded free
trade.
“What? Allow me, now!”
The other paid no attention, and went
on. He called for a tax on yearly incomes, a
progressive tax, a European federation, and the education
of the people, the encouragement of the fine arts
on the liberal scale.
“When the country could provide
men like Delacroix or Hugo with incomes of a hundred
thousand francs, where would be the harm?”
At the close of the address advice
was given to the upper classes.
“Spare nothing, ye rich; but give! give!”
He stopped, and remained standing.
The two who had been listening to him did not utter
a word. Martinon opened his eyes wide; M. Dambreuse
was quite pale. At last, concealing his emotion
under a bitter smile:
“That address of yours is simply
perfect!” And he praised the style exceedingly
in order to avoid giving his opinion as to the matter
of the address.
This virulence on the part of an inoffensive
young man frightened him, especially as a sign of
the times.
Martinon tried to reassure him.
The Conservative party, in a little while, would certainly
be able to take its revenge. In several cities
the commissioners of the provisional government had
been driven away; the elections were not to occur
till the twenty-third of April; there was plenty of
time. In short, it was necessary for M. Dambreuse
to present himself personally in the Aube; and from
that time forth, Martinon no longer left his side,
became his secretary, and was as attentive to him
as any son could be.
Frederick arrived at Rosanette’s
house in a very self-complacent mood. Delmar
happened to be there, and told him of his intention
to stand as a candidate at the Seine elections.
In a placard addressed to the people, in which he
addressed them in the familiar manner which one adopts
towards an individual, the actor boasted of being able
to understand them, and of having, in order to save
them, got himself “crucified for the sake of
art,” so that he was the incarnation, the ideal
of the popular spirit, believing that he had, in fact,
such enormous power over the masses that he proposed
by-and-by, when he occupied a ministerial office,
to quell any outbreak by himself alone; and, with regard
to the means he would employ, he gave this answer:
“Never fear! I’ll show them my head!”
Frederick, in order to mortify him,
gave him to understand that he was himself a candidate.
The mummer, from the moment that his future colleague
aspired to represent the province, declared himself
his servant, and offered to be his guide to the various
clubs.
They visited them, or nearly all,
the red and the blue, the furious and the tranquil,
the puritanical and the licentious, the mystical and
the intemperate, those that had voted for the death
of kings, and those in which the frauds in the grocery
trade had been denounced; and everywhere the tenants
cursed the landlords; the blouse was full of spite
against broadcloth; and the rich conspired against
the poor. Many wanted indemnities on the ground
that they had formerly been martyrs of the police;
others appealed for money in order to carry out certain
inventions, or else there were plans of phalansteria,
projects for cantonal bazaars, systems of public felicity;
then, here and there a flash of genius amid these
clouds of folly, sudden as splashes, the law formulated
by an oath, and flowers of eloquence on the lips of
some soldier-boy, with a shoulder-belt strapped over
his bare, shirtless chest. Sometimes, too, a
gentleman made his appearance an aristocrat
of humble demeanour, talking in a plebeian strain,
and with his hands unwashed, so as to make them look
hard. A patriot recognised him; the most virtuous
mobbed him; and he went off with rage in his soul.
On the pretext of good sense, it was desirable to
be always disparaging the advocates, and to make use
as often as possible of these expressions: “To
carry his stone to the building,” “social
problem,” “workshop.”
Delmar did not miss the opportunities
afforded him for getting in a word; and when he no
longer found anything to say, his device was to plant
himself in some conspicuous position with one of his
arms akimbo and the other in his waistcoat, turning
himself round abruptly in profile, so as to give a
good view of his head. Then there were outbursts
of applause, which came from Mademoiselle Vatnaz at
the lower end of the hall.
Frederick, in spite of the weakness
of orators, did not dare to try the experiment of
speaking. All those people seemed to him too unpolished
or too hostile.
But Dussardier made enquiries, and
informed him that there existed in the Rue Saint-Jacques
a club which bore the name of the “Club of Intellect.”
Such a name gave good reason for hope. Besides,
he would bring some friends there.
He brought those whom he had invited
to take punch with him the bookkeeper,
the traveller in wines, and the architect; even Pellerin
had offered to come, and Hussonnet would probably
form one of the party, and on the footpath before
the door stood Regimbart, with two individuals, the
first of whom was his faithful Compain, a rather thick-set
man marked with small-pox and with bloodshot eyes;
and the second, an ape-like negro, exceedingly hairy,
and whom he knew only in the character of “a
patriot from Barcelona.”
They passed though a passage, and
were then introduced into a large room, no doubt used
by a joiner, and with walls still fresh and smelling
of plaster. Four argand lamps were hanging parallel
to each other, and shed an unpleasant light.
On a platform, at the end of the room, there was a
desk with a bell; underneath it a table, representing
the rostrum, and on each side two others, somewhat
lower, for the secretaries. The audience that
adorned the benches consisted of old painters of daubs,
ushers, and literary men who could not get their works
published.
In the midst of those lines of paletots
with greasy collars could be seen here and there a
woman’s cap or a workman’s linen smock.
The bottom of the apartment was even full of workmen,
who had in all likelihood come there to pass away
an idle hour, and who had been introduced by some
speakers in order that they might applaud.
Frederick took care to place himself
between Dussardier and Regimbart, who was scarcely
seated when he leaned both hands on his walking-stick
and his chin on his hands and shut his eyes, whilst
at the other end of the room Delmar stood looking
down at the assembly. Senecal appeared at the
president’s desk.
The worthy bookkeeper thought Frederick
would be pleased at this unexpected discovery.
It only annoyed him.
The meeting exhibited great respect
for the president. He was one who, on the twenty-fifth
of February, had desired an immediate organisation
of labour. On the following day, at the Prado,
he had declared himself in favour attacking the Hotel
de Ville; and, as every person at that period took
some model for imitation, one copied Saint-Just, another
Danton, another Marat; as for him, he tried to be like
Blanqui, who imitated Robespierre. His black
gloves, and his hair brushed back, gave him a rigid
aspect exceedingly becoming.
He opened the proceedings with the
declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen a
customary act of faith. Then, a vigorous voice
struck up Beranger’s “Souvenirs du
Peuple.”
Other voices were raised:
“No! no! not that!”
“‘La Casquette!’”
the patriots at the bottom of the apartment began to
howl.
And they sang in chorus the favourite lines of the
period:
“Doff your hat before
my cap
Kneel before the working-man!”
At a word from the president the audience became silent.
One of the secretaries proceeded to inspect the letters.
Some young men announced that they
burned a number of the Assemblée Nationale
every evening in front of the Pantheon, and they urged
on all patriots to follow their example.
“Bravo! adopted!” responded the audience.
The Citizen Jean Jacques Langreneux,
a printer in the Rue Dauphin, would like to have a
monument raised to the memory of the martyrs of Thermidor.
Michel Evariste Nepomucene, ex-professor,
gave expression to the wish that the European democracy
should adopt unity of language. A dead language
might be used for that purpose as, for example,
improved Latin.
“No; no Latin!” exclaimed the architect.
“Why?” said the college-usher.
And these two gentlemen engaged in
a discussion, in which the others also took part,
each putting in a word of his own for effect; and the
conversation on this topic soon became so tedious that
many went away. But a little old man, who wore
at the top of his prodigiously high forehead a pair
of green spectacles, asked permission to speak in order
to make an important communication.
It was a memorandum on the assessment
of taxes. The figures flowed on in a continuous
stream, as if they were never going to end. The
impatience of the audience found vent at first in
murmurs, in whispered talk. He allowed nothing
to put him out. Then they began hissing; they
catcalled him. Senecal called the persons who
were interrupting to order. The orator went on
like a machine. It was necessary to catch him
by the shoulder in order to stop him. The old
fellow looked as if he were waking out of a dream,
and, placidly lifting his spectacles, said:
“Pardon me, citizens! pardon
me! I am going a thousand excuses!”
Frederick was disconcerted with the
failure of the old man’s attempts to read this
written statement. He had his own address in his
pocket, but an extemporaneous speech would have been
preferable.
Finally the president announced that
they were about to pass on to the important matter,
the electoral question. They would not discuss
the big Republican lists. However, the “Club
of Intellect” had every right, like every other,
to form one, “with all respect for the pachas
of the Hotel de Ville,” and the citizens who
solicited the popular mandate might set forth their
claims.
“Go on, now!” said Dussardier.
A man in a cassock, with woolly hair
and a petulant expression on his face, had already
raised his hand. He said, with a stutter, that
his name was Ducretot, priest and agriculturist, and
that he was the author of a work entitled “Manures.”
He was told to send it to a horticultural club.
Then a patriot in a blouse climbed
up into the rostrum. He was a plebeian, with
broad shoulders, a big face, very mild-looking, with
long black hair. He cast on the assembly an almost
voluptuous glance, flung back his head, and, finally,
spreading out his arms:
“You have repelled Ducretot,
O my brothers! and you have done right; but it was
not through irreligion, for we are all religious.”
Many of those present listened open-mouthed,
with the air of catechumens and in ecstatic attitudes.
“It is not either because he
is a priest, for we, too, are priests! The workman
is a priest, just as the founder of Socialism was the
Master of us all, Jesus Christ!”
The time had arrived to inaugurate
the Kingdom of God. The Gospel led directly to
’89. After the abolition of slavery, the
abolition of the proletariat. They had had the
age of hate the age of love was about to
begin.
“Christianity is the keystone
and the foundation of the new edifice ”
“You are making game of us?”
exclaimed the traveller in wines. “Who has
given me such a priest’s cap?”
This interruption gave great offence.
Nearly all the audience got on benches, and, shaking
their fists, shouted: “Atheist! aristocrat!
low rascal!” whilst the president’s bell
kept ringing continuously, and the cries of “Order!
order!” redoubled. But, aimless, and, moreover,
fortified by three cups of coffee which he had swallowed
before coming to the meeting, he struggled in the
midst of the others:
“What? I an aristocrat? Come, now!”
When, at length, he was permitted
to give an explanation, he declared that he would
never be at peace with the priests; and, since something
had just been said about economical measures, it would
be a splendid one to put an end to the churches, the
sacred pyxes, and finally all creeds.
Somebody raised the objection that he was going very
far.
“Yes! I am going very far!
But, when a vessel is caught suddenly in a storm ”
Without waiting for the conclusion
of this simile, another made a reply to his observation:
“Granted! But this is to
demolish at a single stroke, like a mason devoid of
judgment ”
“You are insulting the masons!”
yelled a citizen covered with plaster. And persisting
in the belief that provocation had been offered to
him, he vomited forth insults, and wished to fight,
clinging tightly to the bench whereon he sat.
It took no less than three men to put him out.
Meanwhile the workman still remained
on the rostrum. The two secretaries gave him
an intimation that he should come down. He protested
against the injustice done to him.
“You shall not prevent me from
crying out, ’Eternal love to our dear France!
eternal love all to the Republic!’”
“Citizens!” said Compain, after this “Citizens!”
And, by dint of repeating “Citizens,”
having obtained a little silence, he leaned on the
rostrum with his two red hands, which looked like
stumps, bent forward his body, and blinking his eyes:
“I believe that it would be
necessary to give a larger extension to the calf’s
head.”
All who heard him kept silent, fancying
that they had misunderstood his words.
“Yes! the calf’s head!”
Three hundred laughs burst forth at the same time.
The ceiling shook.
At the sight of all these faces convulsed
with mirth, Compain shrank back. He continued
in an angry tone:
“What! you don’t know what the calf’s
head is!”
It was a paroxysm, a delirium.
They held their sides. Some of them even tumbled
off the benches to the ground with convulsions of laughter.
Compain, not being able to stand it any longer, took
refuge beside Regimbart, and wanted to drag him away.
“No! I am remaining till ’tis all
over!” said the Citizen.
This reply caused Frederick to make
up his mind; and, as he looked about to the right
and the left to see whether his friends were prepared
to support him, he saw Pellerin on the rostrum in
front of him.
The artist assumed a haughty tone in addressing the
meeting.
“I would like to get some notion
as to who is the candidate amongst all these that
represents art. For my part, I have painted a
picture.”
“We have nothing to do with
painting pictures!” was the churlish remark
of a thin man with red spots on his cheek-bones.
Pellerin protested against this interruption.
But the other, in a tragic tone:
“Ought not the Government to
make an ordinance abolishing prostitution and want?”
And this phrase having at once won
to his side the popular favour, he thundered against
the corruption of great cities.
“Shame and infamy! We ought
to catch hold of wealthy citizens on their way out
of the Maison d’Or and spit in their faces unless
it be that the Government countenances debauchery!
But the collectors of the city dues exhibit towards
our daughters and our sisters an amount of indecency ”
A voice exclaimed, some distance away:
“This is blackguard language! Turn him
out!”
“They extract taxes from us
to pay for licentiousness! Thus, the high salaries
paid to actors ”
“Help!” cried Pellerin.
He leaped from the rostrum, pushed
everybody aside, and declaring that he regarded such
stupid accusations with disgust, expatiated on the
civilising mission of the player. Inasmuch as
the theatre was the focus of national education, he
would record his vote for the reform of the theatre;
and to begin with, no more managements, no more privileges!
“Yes; of any sort!”
The actor’s performance excited
the audience, and people moved backwards and forwards
knocking each other down.
“No more academies! No more institutes!”
“No missions!”
“No more bachelorships! Down with University
degrees!”
“Let us preserve them,”
said Senecal; “but let them be conferred by
universal suffrage, by the people, the only true judge!”
Besides, these things were not the
most useful. It was necessary to take a level
which would be above the heads of the wealthy.
And he represented them as gorging themselves with
crimes under their gilded ceilings; while the poor,
writhing in their garrets with famine, cultivated
every virtue. The applause became so vehement
that he interrupted his discourse. For several
minutes he remained with his eyes closed, his head
thrown back, and, as it were, lulling himself to sleep
over the fury which he had aroused.
Then he began to talk in a dogmatic
fashion, in phrases as imperious as laws. The
State should take possession of the banks and of the
insurance offices. Inheritances should be abolished.
A social fund should be established for the workers.
Many other measures were desirable in the future.
For the time being, these would suffice, and, returning
to the question of the elections: “We want
pure citizens, men entirely fresh. Let some one
offer himself.”
Frederick arose. There was a
buzz of approval made by his friends. But Senecal,
assuming the attitude of a Fouquier-Tinville, began
to ask questions as to his Christian name and surname,
his antecedents, life, and morals.
Frederick answered succinctly, and
bit his lips. Senecal asked whether anyone saw
any impediment to this candidature.
“No! no!”
But, for his part, he saw some.
All around him bent forward and strained their ears
to listen. The citizen who was seeking for their
support had not delivered a certain sum promised by
him for the foundation of a democratic journal.
Moreover, on the twenty-second of February, though
he had had sufficient notice on the subject, he had
failed to be at the meeting-place in the Place de
Pantheon.
“I swear that he was at the
Tuileries!” exclaimed Dussardier.
“Can you swear to having seen him at the Pantheon?”
Dussardier hung down his head.
Frederick was silent. His friends, scandalised,
regarded him with disquietude.
“In any case,” Senecal
went on, “do you know a patriot who will answer
to us for your principles?”
“I will!” said Dussardier.
“Oh! this is not enough; another!”
Frederick turned round to Pellerin.
The artist replied to him with a great number of gestures,
which meant:
“Ah! my dear boy, they have
rejected myself! The deuce! What would you
have?”
Thereupon Frederick gave Regimbart a nudge.
“Yes, that’s true; ’tis time!
I’m going.”
And Regimbart stepped upon the platform;
then, pointing towards the Spaniard, who had followed
him:
“Allow me, citizens, to present to you a patriot
from Barcelona!”
The patriot made a low bow, rolled
his gleaming eyes about, and with his hand on his
heart:
“Ciudadanos! mucho aprecio
el honor that you have bestowed on me! however
great may be vuestra bondad, mayor vuestra
atención!”
“I claim the right to speak!” cried Frederick.
“Desde que se
proclamo la constitution de Cadiz, ése
pacto fundamental of las libertades Espanolas,
hasta la ultima revolución, nuestra
patria cuenta numerosos y heroicos martires.”
Frederick once more made an effort to obtain a hearing:
“But, citizens! ”
The Spaniard went on: “El
martes proximo tendra lugar en
la iglesia de la Magdelena un servicio
funèbre.”
“In fact, this is ridiculous! Nobody understands
him!”
This observation exasperated the audience.
“Turn him out! Turn him out!”
“Who? I?” asked Frederick.
“Yourself!” said Senecal, majestically.
“Out with you!”
He rose to leave, and the voice of the Iberian pursued
him:
“Y todos los Espanoles descarien
ver alli reunidas las disputaciones de los
clubs y de la milicia nacional.
An oración funèbre en honour of the
libertad Espanola y del mundo entero
will be prononciado por un miembro
del clero of Paris en la sala Bonne
Nouvelle. Honour al pueblo francés
que llamaria yo el primero pueblo
del mundo, sino fuese ciudadano
de otra nación!”
“Aristo!” screamed one
blackguard, shaking his fist at Frederick, as the
latter, boiling with indignation, rushed out into the
yard adjoining the place where the meeting was held.
He reproached himself for his devotedness,
without reflecting that, after all, the accusations
brought against him were just.
What fatal idea was this candidature!
But what asses! what idiots! He drew comparisons
between himself and these men, and soothed his wounded
pride with the thought of their stupidity.
Then he felt the need of seeing Rosanette.
After such an exhibition of ugly traits, and so much
magniloquence, her dainty person would be a source
of relaxation. She was aware that he had intended
to present himself at a club that evening. However,
she did not even ask him a single question when he
came in. She was sitting near the fire, ripping
open the lining of a dress. He was surprised to
find her thus occupied.
“Hallo! what are you doing?”
“You can see for yourself,”
said she, dryly. “I am mending my clothes!
So much for this Republic of yours!”
“Why do you call it mine?”
“Perhaps you want to make out that it’s
mine!”
And she began to upbraid him for everything
that had happened in France for the last two months,
accusing him of having brought about the Revolution
and with having ruined her prospects by making everybody
that had money leave Paris, and that she would by-and-by
be dying in a hospital.
“It is easy for you to talk
lightly about it, with your yearly income! However,
at the rate at which things are going on, you won’t
have your yearly income long.”
“That may be,” said Frederick.
“The most devoted are always misunderstood,
and if one were not sustained by one’s conscience,
the brutes that you mix yourself up with would make
you feel disgusted with your own self-denial!”
Rosanette gazed at him with knitted brows.
“Eh? What? What self-denial?
Monsieur has not succeeded, it would seem? So
much the better! It will teach you to make patriotic
donations. Oh, don’t lie! I know you
have given them three hundred francs, for this Republic
of yours has to be kept. Well, amuse yourself
with it, my good man!”
Under this avalanche of abuse, Frederick
passed from his former disappointment to a more painful
disillusion.
He withdrew to the lower end of the
apartment. She came up to him.
“Look here! Think it out
a bit! In a country as in a house, there must
be a master, otherwise, everyone pockets something
out of the money spent. At first, everybody knows
that Ledru-Rollin is head over ears in debt.
As for Lamartine, how can you expect a poet to understand
politics? Ah! ’tis all very well for you
to shake your head and to presume that you have more
brains than others; all the same, what I say is true!
But you are always cavilling; a person can’t
get in a word with you! For instance, there’s
Fournier-Fontaine, who had stores at Saint-Roch! do
you know how much he failed for? Eight hundred
thousand francs! And Gomer, the packer opposite
to him another Republican, that one he
smashed the tongs on his wife’s head, and he
drank so much absinthe that he is going to be put
into a private asylum. That’s the way with
the whole of them the Republicans!
A Republic at twenty-five percent. Ah! yes! plume
yourself upon it!”
Frederick took himself off. He
was disgusted at the foolishness of this girl, which
revealed itself all at once in the language of the
populace. He felt himself even becoming a little
patriotic once more.
The ill-temper of Rosanette only increased.
Mademoiselle Vatnaz irritated him with her enthusiasm.
Believing that she had a mission, she felt a furious
desire to make speeches, to carry on disputes, and sharper
than Rosanette in matters of this sort overwhelmed
her with arguments.
One day she made her appearance burning
with indignation against Hussonnet, who had just indulged
in some blackguard remarks at the Woman’s Club.
Rosanette approved of this conduct, declaring even
that she would take men’s clothes to go and
“give them a bit of her mind, the entire lot
of them, and to whip them.”
Frederick entered at the same moment.
“You’ll accompany me won’t
you?”
And, in spite of his presence, a bickering
match took place between them, one of them playing
the part of a citizen’s wife and the other of
a female philosopher.
According to Rosanette, women were
born exclusively for love, or in order to bring up
children, to be housekeepers.
According to Mademoiselle Vatnaz,
women ought to have a position in the Government.
In former times, the Gaulish women, and also the Anglo-Saxon
women, took part in the legislation; the squaws
of the Hurons formed a portion of the Council.
The work of civilisation was common to both. It
was necessary that all should contribute towards it,
and that fraternity should be substituted for egoism,
association for individualism, and cultivation on
a large scale for minute subdivision of land.
“Come, that is good! you know
a great deal about culture just now!”
“Why not? Besides, it is
a question of humanity, of its future!”
“Mind your own business!”
“This is my business!”
They got into a passion. Frederick
interposed. The Vatnaz became very heated, and
went so far as to uphold Communism.
“What nonsense!” said
Rosanette. “How could such a thing ever
come to pass?”
The other brought forward in support
of her theory the examples of the Essenes, the Moravian
Brethren, the Jesuits of Paraguay, the family of the
Pingons near Thiers in Auvergne; and, as she gesticulated
a great deal, her gold chain got entangled in her
bundle of trinkets, to which was attached a gold ornament
in the form of a sheep.
Suddenly, Rosanette turned exceedingly pale.
Mademoiselle Vatnaz continued extricating her trinkets.
“Don’t give yourself so
much trouble,” said Rosanette. “Now,
I know your political opinions.”
“What?” replied the Vatnaz,
with a blush on her face like that of a virgin.
“Oh! oh! you understand me.”
Frederick did not understand.
There had evidently been something taking place between
them of a more important and intimate character than
Socialism.
“And even though it should be
so,” said the Vatnaz in reply, rising up unflinchingly.
“’Tis a loan, my dear set off
one debt against the other.”
“Faith, I don’t deny my
own debts. I owe some thousands of francs a
nice sum. I borrow, at least; I don’t rob
anyone.”
Mademoiselle Vatnaz made an effort to laugh.
“Oh! I would put my hand in the fire for
him.”
“Take care! it is dry enough to burn.”
The spinster held out her right hand
to her, and keeping it raised in front of her:
“But there are friends of yours who find it
convenient for them.”
“Andalusians, I suppose? as castanets?”
“You beggar!”
The Maréchale made her a low bow.
“There’s nobody so charming!”
Mademoiselle Vatnaz made no reply.
Beads of perspiration appeared on her temples.
Her eyes fixed themselves on the carpet. She panted
for breath. At last she reached the door, and
slamming it vigorously: “Good night!
You’ll hear from me!”
“Much I care!” said Rosanette.
The effort of self-suppression had shattered her nerves.
She sank down on the divan, shaking all over, stammering
forth words of abuse, shedding tears. Was it this
threat on the part of the Vatnaz that had caused so
much agitation in her mind? Oh, no! what did
she care, indeed, about that one? It was the golden
sheep, a present, and in the midst of her tears the
name of Delmar escaped her lips. So, then, she
was in love with the mummer?
“In that case, why did she take
on with me?” Frederick asked himself. “How
is it that he has come back again? Who compels
her to keep me? Where is the sense of this sort
of thing?”
Rosanette was still sobbing.
She remained all the time stretched at the edge of
the divan, with her right cheek resting on her two
hands, and she seemed a being so dainty, so free from
self-consciousness, and so sorely troubled, that he
drew closer to her and softly kissed her on the forehead.
Thereupon she gave him assurances
of her affection for him; the Prince had just left
her, they would be free. But she was for the time
being short of money. “You saw yourself
that this was so, the other day, when I was trying
to turn my old linings to use.” No more
équipages now! And this was not all; the
upholsterer was threatening to resume possession of
the bedroom and the large drawing-room furniture.
She did not know what to do.
Frederick had a mind to answer:
“Don’t annoy yourself about it. I
will pay.”
But the lady knew how to lie.
Experience had enlightened her. He confined himself
to mere expressions of sympathy.
Rosanette’s fears were not vain.
It was necessary to give up the furniture and to quit
the handsome apartment in the Rue Drouot. She
took another on the Boulevard Poissonnière,
on the fourth floor.
The curiosities of her old boudoir
were quite sufficient to give to the three rooms a
coquettish air. There were Chinese blinds, a tent
on the terrace, and in the drawing-room a second-hand
carpet still perfectly new, with ottomans covered
with pink silk. Frederick had contributed largely
to these purchases. He had felt the joy of a newly-married
man who possesses at last a house of his own, a wife
of his own and, being much pleased with
the place, he used to sleep there nearly every evening.
One morning, as he was passing out
through the anteroom, he saw, on the third floor,
on the staircase, the shako of a National Guard who
was ascending it. Where in the world was he going?
Frederick waited. The man continued
his progress up the stairs, with his head slightly
bent down. He raised his eyes. It was my
lord Arnoux!
The situation was clear. They
both reddened simultaneously, overcome by a feeling
of embarrassment common to both.
Arnoux was the first to find a way out of the difficulty.
“She is better isn’t
that so?” as if Rosanette were ill, and he had
come to learn how she was.
Frederick took advantage of this opening.
“Yes, certainly! at least, so
I was told by her maid,” wishing to convey that
he had not been allowed to see her.
Then they stood facing each other,
both undecided as to what they would do next, and
eyeing one another intently. The question now
was, which of the two was going to remain. Arnoux
once more solved the problem.
“Pshaw! I’ll come
back by-and-by. Where are you going? I go
with you!”
And, when they were in the street,
he chatted as naturally as usual. Unquestionably
he was not a man of jealous disposition, or else he
was too good-natured to get angry. Besides, his
time was devoted to serving his country. He never
left off his uniform now. On the twenty-ninth
of March he had defended the offices of the Presse.
When the Chamber was invaded, he distinguished himself
by his courage, and he was at the banquet given to
the National Guard at Amiens.
Hussonnet, who was still on duty with
him, availed himself of his flask and his cigars;
but, irreverent by nature, he delighted in contradicting
him, disparaging the somewhat inaccurate style of the
decrees; and decrying the conferences at the Luxembourg,
the women known as the “Vesuviennes,”
the political section bearing the name of “Tyroliens”;
everything, in fact, down to the Car of Agriculture,
drawn by horses to the ox-market, and escorted by
ill-favoured young girls. Arnoux, on the other
hand, was the upholder of authority, and dreamed of
uniting the different parties. However, his own
affairs had taken an unfavourable turn, and he was
more or less anxious about them.
He was not much troubled about Frederick’s
relations with the Maréchale; for this discovery
made him feel justified (in his conscience) in withdrawing
the allowance which he had renewed since the Prince
had left her. He pleaded by way of excuse for
this step the embarrassed condition in which he found
himself, uttered many lamentations and Rosanette
was generous. The result was that M. Arnoux regarded
himself as the lover who appealed entirely to the
heart, an idea that raised him in his own estimation
and made him feel young again. Having no doubt
that Frederick was paying the Maréchale, he fancied
that he was “playing a nice trick” on
the young man, even called at the house in such a stealthy
fashion as to keep the other in ignorance of the fact,
and when they happened to meet, left the coast clear
for him.
Frederick was not pleased with this
partnership, and his rival’s politeness seemed
only an elaborate piece of sarcasm. But by taking
offence at it, he would have removed from his path
every opportunity of ever finding his way back to
Madame Arnoux; and then, this was the only means whereby
he could hear about her movements. The earthenware-dealer,
in accordance with his usual practice, or perhaps with
some cunning design, recalled her readily in the course
of conversation, and asked him why he no longer came
to see her.
Frederick, having exhausted every
excuse he could frame, assured him that he had called
several times to see Madame Arnoux, but without success.
Arnoux was convinced that this was so, for he had often
referred in an eager tone at home to the absence of
their friend, and she had invariably replied that
she was out when he called, so that these two lies,
in place of contradicting, corroborated each other.
The young man’s gentle ways
and the pleasure of finding a dupe in him made Arnoux
like him all the better. He carried familiarity
to its extreme limits, not through disdain, but through
assurance. One day he wrote saying that very
urgent business compelled him to be away in the country
for twenty-four hours. He begged of the young
man to mount guard in his stead. Frederick dared
not refuse, so he repaired to the guard-house in the
Place du Carrousel.
He had to submit to the society of
the National Guards, and, with the exception of a
sugar-refiner, a witty fellow who drank to an inordinate
extent, they all appeared to him more stupid than their
cartridge-boxes. The principal subject of conversation
amongst them was the substitution of sashes for belts.
Others declaimed against the national workshops.
One man said:
“Where are we going?”
The man to whom the words had been
addressed opened his eyes as if he were standing on
the verge of an abyss.
“Where are we going?”
Then, one who was more daring than the rest exclaimed:
“It cannot last! It must come to an end!”
And as the same kind of talk went
on till night, Frederick was bored to death.
Great was his surprise when, at eleven
o’clock, he suddenly beheld Arnoux, who immediately
explained that he had hurried back to set him at liberty,
having disposed of his own business.
The fact was that he had no business
to transact. The whole thing was an invention
to enable him to spend twenty-four hours alone with
Rosanette. But the worthy Arnoux had placed too
much confidence in his own powers, so that, now in
the state of lassitude which was the result, he was
seized with remorse. He had come to thank Frederick,
and to invite him to have some supper.
“A thousand thanks! I’m
not hungry. All I want is to go to bed.”
“A reason the more for having
a snack together. How flabby you are! One
does not go home at such an hour as this. It is
too late! It would be dangerous!”
Frederick once more yielded.
Arnoux was quite a favorite with his brethren-in-arms,
who had not expected to see him and he was
a particular crony of the refiner. They were
all fond of him, and he was such a good fellow that
he was sorry Hussonnet was not there. But he
wanted to shut his eyes for one minute, no longer.
“Sit down beside me!”
said he to Frederick, stretching himself on the camp-bed
without taking off his belt and straps. Through
fear of an alarm, in spite of the regulation, he even
kept his gun in his hand, then stammered out some
words:
“My darling! my little angel!”
and ere long was fast asleep.
Those who had been talking to each
other became silent; and gradually there was a deep
silence in the guard-house. Frederick tormented
by the fleas, kept staring about him. The wall,
painted yellow, had, half-way up, a long shelf, on
which the knapsacks formed a succession of little
humps, while underneath, the muskets, which had the
colour of lead, rose up side by side; and there could
be heard a succession of snores, produced by the National
Guards, whose stomachs were outlined through the darkness
in a confused fashion. On the top of the stove
stood an empty bottle and some plates. Three
straw chairs were drawn around the table, on which
a pack of cards was displayed. A drum, in the
middle of the bench, let its strap hang down.
A warm breath of air making its way
through the door caused the lamp to smoke. Arnoux
slept with his two arms wide apart; and, as his gun
was placed in a slightly crooked position, with the
butt-end downward, the mouth of the barrel came up
right under his arm. Frederick noticed this,
and was alarmed.
“But, no, I’m wrong, there’s
nothing to be afraid of! And yet, suppose he
met his death!”
And immediately pictures unrolled
themselves before his mind in endless succession.
He saw himself with her at night in
a post-chaise, then on a river’s bank on a summer’s
evening, and under the reflection of a lamp at home
in their own house. He even fixed his attention
on household expenses and domestic arrangements, contemplating,
feeling already his happiness between his hands; and
in order to realise it, all that was needed was that
the cock of the gun should rise. The end of it
could be pushed with one’s toe, the gun would
go off it would be a mere accident nothing
more!
Frederick brooded over this idea like
a playwright in the agonies of composition. Suddenly
it seemed to him that it was not far from being carried
into practical operation, and that he was going to
contribute to that result that, in fact,
he was yearning for it; and then a feeling of absolute
terror took possession of him. In the midst of
this mental distress he experienced a sense of pleasure,
and he allowed himself to sink deeper and deeper into
it, with a dreadful consciousness all the time that
his scruples were vanishing. In the wildness of
his reverie the rest of the world became effaced,
and he could only realise that he was still alive
from the intolerable oppression on his chest.
“Let us take a drop of white
wine!” said the refiner, as he awoke.
Arnoux sprang to his feet, and, as
soon as the white wine was swallowed, he wanted to
relieve Frederick of his sentry duty.
Then he brought him to have breakfast
in the Rue de Chartres, at Parly’s, and as he
required to recuperate his energies, he ordered two
dishes of meat, a lobster, an omelet with rum, a salad,
etc., and finished this off with a brand of Sauterne
of 1819 and one of ’42 Romanee, not to speak
of the champagne at dessert and the liqueurs.
Frederick did not in any way gainsay
him. He was disturbed in mind as if by the thought
that the other might somehow trace on his countenance
the idea that had lately flitted before his imagination.
With both elbows on the table and his head bent forward,
so that he annoyed Frederick by his fixed stare, he
confided some of his hobbies to the young man.
He wanted to take for farming purposes
all the embankments on the Northern line, in order
to plant potatoes there, or else to organise on the
boulevards a monster cavalcade in which the celebrities
of the period would figure. He would let all
the windows, which would, at the rate of three francs
for each person, produce a handsome profit. In
short, he dreamed of a great stroke of fortune by means
of a monopoly. He assumed a moral tone, nevertheless,
found fault with excesses and all sorts of misconduct,
spoke about his “poor father,” and every
evening, as he said, made an examination of his conscience
before offering his soul to God.
“A little curaçao, eh?”
“Just as you please.”
As for the Republic, things would
right themselves; in fact, he looked on himself as
the happiest man on earth; and forgetting himself,
he exalted Rosanette’s attractive qualities,
and even compared her with his wife. It was quite
a different thing. You could not imagine a lovelier
person!
“Your health!”
Frederick touched glasses with him.
He had, out of complaisance, drunk a little too much.
Besides, the strong sunlight dazzled him; and when
they went up the Rue Vivienne together again, their
shoulders touched each other in a fraternal fashion.
When he got home, Frederick slept
till seven o’clock. After that he called
on the Maréchale. She had gone out with somebody with
Arnoux, perhaps! Not knowing what to do with
himself, he continued his promenade along the boulevard,
but could not get past the Porte Saint-Martin, owing
to the great crowd that blocked the way.
Want had abandoned to their own resources
a considerable number of workmen, and they used to
come there every evening, no doubt for the purpose
of holding a review and awaiting a signal.
In spite of the law against riotous
assemblies, these clubs of despair increased to a
frightful extent, and many citizens repaired every
day to the spot through bravado, and because it was
the fashion.
All of a sudden Frederick caught a
glimpse, three paces away, of M. Dambreuse along with
Martinon. He turned his head away, for M. Dambreuse
having got himself nominated as a representative of
the people, he cherished a secret spite against him.
But the capitalist stopped him.
“One word, my dear monsieur!
I have some explanations to make to you.”
“I am not asking you for any.”
“Pray listen to me!”
It was not his fault in any way.
Appeals had been made to him; pressure had, to a certain
extent, been placed on him. Martinon immediately
endorsed all that he had said. Some of the electors
of Nogent had presented themselves in a deputation
at his house.
“Besides, I expected to be free as soon as ”
A crush of people on the footpath
forced M. Dambreuse to get out of the way. A
minute after he reappeared, saying to Martinon:
“This is a genuine service,
really, and you won’t have any reason to regret ”
All three stood with their backs resting
against a shop in order to be able to chat more at
their ease.
From time to time there was a cry
of, “Long live Napoleon! Long live
Barbes! Down with Marie!”
The countless throng kept talking
in very loud tones; and all these voices, echoing
through the houses, made, so to speak, the continuous
ripple of waves in a harbour. At intervals they
ceased; and then could be heard voices singing the
“Marseillaise.”
Under the court-gates, men of mysterious
aspect offered sword-sticks to those who passed.
Sometimes two individuals, one of whom preceded the
other, would wink, and then quickly hurry away.
The footpaths were filled with groups of staring idlers.
A dense crowd swayed to and fro on the pavement.
Entire bands of police-officers, emerging from the
alleys, had scarcely made their way into the midst
of the multitude when they were swallowed up in the
mass of people. Little red flags here and there
looked like flames. Coachmen, from the place where
they sat high up, gesticulated energetically, and
then turned to go back. It was a case of perpetual
movement one of the strangest sights that
could be conceived.
“How all this,” said Martinon,
“would have amused Mademoiselle Cecile!”
“My wife, as you are aware,
does not like my niece to come with us,” returned
M. Dambreuse with a smile.
One could scarcely recognise in him
the same man. For the past three months he had
been crying, “Long live the Republic!”
and he had even voted in favour of the banishment
of Orleans. But there should be an end of concessions.
He exhibited his rage so far as to carry a tomahawk
in his pocket.
Martinon had one, too. The magistracy
not being any longer irremovable, he had withdrawn
from Parquet, so that he surpassed M. Dambreuse in
his display of violence.
The banker had a special antipathy
to Lamartine (for having supported Ledru-Rollin) and,
at the same time, to Pierre Leroux, Proudhon, Considerant,
Lamennais, and all the cranks, all the Socialists.
“For, in fact, what is it they
want? The duty on meat and arrest for debt have
been abolished. Now the project of a bank for
mortgages is under consideration; the other day it
was a national bank; and here are five millions in
the Budget for the working-men! But luckily, it
is over, thanks to Monsieur de Falloux! Good-bye
to them! let them go!”
In fact, not knowing how to maintain
the three hundred thousand men in the national workshops,
the Minister of Public Works had that very day signed
an order inviting all citizens between the ages of
eighteen and twenty to take service as soldiers, or
else to start for the provinces to cultivate the ground
there.
They were indignant at the alternative
thus put before them, convinced that the object was
to destroy the Republic. They were aggrieved by
the thought of having to live at a distance from the
capital, as if it were a kind of exile. They
saw themselves dying of fevers in desolate parts of
the country. To many of them, moreover, who had
been accustomed to work of a refined description,
agriculture seemed a degradation; it was, in short,
a mockery, a decisive breach of all the promises which
had been made to them. If they offered any resistance,
force would be employed against them. They had
no doubt of it, and made preparations to anticipate
it.
About nine o’clock the riotous
assemblies which had formed at the Bastille and at
the Chatelet ebbed back towards the boulevard.
From the Porte Saint-Denis to the Porte Saint-Martin
nothing could be seen save an enormous swarm of people,
a single mass of a dark blue shade, nearly black.
The men of whom one caught a glimpse all had glowing
eyes, pale complexions, faces emaciated
with hunger and excited with a sense of wrong.
Meanwhile, some clouds had gathered.
The tempestuous sky roused the electricity that was
in the people, and they kept whirling about of their
own accord with the great swaying movements of a swelling
sea, and one felt that there was an incalculable force
in the depths of this excited throng, and as it were,
the energy of an element. Then they all began
exclaiming: “Lamps! lamps!” Many windows
had no illumination, and stones were flung at the
panes. M. Dambreuse deemed it prudent to withdraw
from the scene. The two young men accompanied
him home. He predicted great disasters.
The people might once more invade the Chamber, and
on this point he told them how he should have been
killed on the fifteenth of May had it not been for
the devotion of a National Guard.
“But I had forgotten! he is
a friend of yours your friend the earthenware
manufacturer Jacques Arnoux!” The
rioters had been actually throttling him, when that
brave citizen caught him in his arms and put him safely
out of their reach.
So it was that, since then, there
had been a kind of intimacy between them.
“It would be necessary, one
of these days, to dine together, and, since you often
see him, give him the assurance that I like him very
much. He is an excellent man, and has, in my
opinion, been slandered; and he has his wits about
him in the morning. My compliments once more!
A very good evening!”
Frederick, after he had quitted M.
Dambreuse, went back to the Maréchale, and, in
a very gloomy fashion, said that she should choose
between him and Arnoux. She replied that she did
not understand “dumps of this sort,” that
she did not care about Arnoux, and had no desire to
cling to him. Frederick was thirsting to fly from
Paris. She did not offer any opposition to this
whim; and next morning they set out for Fontainebleau.
The hotel at which they stayed could
be distinguished from others by a fountain that rippled
in the middle of the courtyard attached to it.
The doors of the various apartments opened out on
a corridor, as in monasteries. The room assigned
to them was large, well-furnished, hung with print,
and noiseless, owing to the scarcity of tourists.
Alongside the houses, people who had nothing to do
kept passing up and down; then, under their windows,
when the day was declining, children in the street
would engage in a game of base; and this tranquillity,
following so soon the tumult they had witnessed in
Paris, filled them with astonishment and exercised
over them a soothing influence.
Every morning at an early hour, they
went to pay a visit to the chateau. As they passed
in through the gate, they had a view of its entire
front, with the five pavilions covered with sharp-pointed
roofs, and its staircase of horseshoe-shape opening
out to the end of the courtyard, which is hemmed in,
to right and left, by two main portions of the building
further down. On the paved ground lichens blended
their colours here and there with the tawny hue of
bricks, and the entire appearance of the palace, rust-coloured
like old armour, had about it something of the impassiveness
of royalty a sort of warlike, melancholy
grandeur.
At last, a man-servant made his appearance
with a bunch of keys in his hand. He first showed
them the apartments of the queens, the Pope’s
oratory, the gallery of Francis I., the mahogany table
on which the Emperor signed his abdication, and in
one of the rooms cut in two the old Galerie des
Cerfs, the place where Christine got Monaldeschi
assassinated. Rosanette listened to this narrative
attentively, then, turning towards Frederick:
“No doubt it was through jealousy?
Mind yourself!” After this they passed through
the Council Chamber, the Guards’ Room, the Throne
Room, and the drawing-room of Louis XIII. The
uncurtained windows sent forth a white light.
The handles of the window-fastenings and the copper
feet of the pier-tables were slightly tarnished with
dust. The armchairs were everywhere hidden under
coarse linen covers. Above the doors could be
seen reliquaries of Louis XIV., and here and there
hangings representing the gods of Olympus, Psyche,
or the battles of Alexander.
As she was passing in front of the
mirrors, Rosanette stopped for a moment to smooth
her head-bands.
After passing through the donjon-court
and the Saint-Saturnin Chapel, they reached the Festal
Hall.
They were dazzled by the magnificence
of the ceiling, which was divided into octagonal apartments
set off with gold and silver, more finely chiselled
than a jewel, and by the vast number of paintings covering
the walls, from the immense chimney-piece, where the
arms of France were surrounded by crescents and quivers,
down to the musicians’ gallery, which had been
erected at the other end along the entire width of
the hall. The ten arched windows were wide open;
the sun threw its lustre on the pictures, so that
they glowed beneath its rays; the blue sky continued
in an endless curve the ultramarine of the arches;
and from the depths of the woods, where the lofty
summits of the trees filled up the horizon, there
seemed to come an echo of flourishes blown by ivory
trumpets, and mythological ballets, gathering together
under the foliage princesses and nobles disguised
as nymphs or fauns an epoch of ingenuous
science, of violent passions, and sumptuous art, when
the ideal was to sweep away the world in a vision
of the Hesperides, and when the mistresses of kings
mingled their glory with the stars. There was
a portrait of one of the most beautiful of these celebrated
women in the form of Diana the huntress, and even
the Infernal Diana, no doubt in order to indicate
the power which she possessed even beyond the limits
of the tomb. All these symbols confirmed her glory,
and there remained about the spot something of her,
an indistinct voice, a radiation that stretched out
indefinitely. A feeling of mysterious retrospective
voluptuousness took possession of Frederick.
In order to divert these passionate
longings into another channel, he began to gaze tenderly
on Rosanette, and asked her would she not like to
have been this woman?
“What woman?”
“Diane de Poitiers!”
He repeated:
“Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II.”
She gave utterance to a little “Ah!” that
was all.
Her silence clearly demonstrated that
she knew nothing about the matter, and had failed
to comprehend his meaning, so that out of complaisance
he said to her:
“Perhaps you are getting tired of this?”
“No, no quite the
reverse.” And lifting up her chin, and casting
around her a glance of the vaguest description, Rosanette
let these words escape her lips:
“It recalls some memories to me!”
Meanwhile, it was easy to trace on
her countenance a strained expression, a certain sense
of awe; and, as this air of gravity made her look
all the prettier, Frederick overlooked it.
The carps’ pond amused her more.
For a quarter of an hour she kept flinging pieces
of bread into the water in order to see the fishes
skipping about.
Frederick had seated himself by her
side under the linden-trees. He saw in imagination
all the personages who had haunted these walls Charles
V., the Valois Kings, Henry IV., Peter the Great, Jean
Jacques Rousseau, and “the fair mourners of
the stage-boxes,” Voltaire, Napoleon, Pius VII.,
and Louis Philippe; and he felt himself environed,
elbowed, by these tumultuous dead people. He
was stunned by such a confusion of historic figures,
even though he found a certain fascination in contemplating
them, nevertheless.
At length they descended into the flower-garden.
It is a vast rectangle, which presents
to the spectator, at the first glance, its wide yellow
walks, its square grass-plots, its ribbons of box-wood,
its yew-trees shaped like pyramids, its low-lying green
swards, and its narrow borders, in which thinly-sown
flowers make spots on the grey soil. At the end
of the garden may be seen a park through whose entire
length a canal makes its way.
Royal residences have attached to
them a peculiar kind of melancholy, due, no doubt,
to their dimensions being much too large for the limited
number of guests entertained within them, to the silence
which one feels astonished to find in them after so
many flourishes of trumpets, to the immobility of
their luxurious furniture, which attests by the aspect
of age and decay it gradually assumes the transitory
character of dynasties, the eternal wretchedness of
all things; and this exhalation of the centuries,
enervating and funereal, like the perfume of a mummy,
makes itself felt even in untutored brains. Rosanette
yawned immoderately. They went back to the hotel.
After their breakfast an open carriage
came round for them. They started from Fontainebleau
at a point where several roads diverged, then went
up at a walking pace a gravelly road leading towards
a little pine-wood. The trees became larger,
and, from time to time, the driver would say, “This
is the Frères Siamois, the Pharamond, the Bouquet
de Roi,” not forgetting a single one of these
notable sites, sometimes even drawing up to enable
them to admire the scene.
They entered the forest of Franchard.
The carriage glided over the grass like a sledge;
pigeons which they could not see began cooing.
Suddenly, the waiter of a cafe made his appearance,
and they alighted before the railing of a garden in
which a number of round tables were placed. Then,
passing on the left by the walls of a ruined abbey,
they made their way over big boulders of stone, and
soon reached the lower part of the gorge.
It is covered on one side with sandstones
and juniper-trees tangled together, while on the other
side the ground, almost quite bare, slopes towards
the hollow of the valley, where a foot-track makes
a pale line through the brown heather; and far above
could be traced a flat cone-shaped summit with a telegraph-tower
behind it.
Half-an-hour later they stepped out
of the vehicle once more, in order to climb the heights
of Aspremont.
The roads form zigzags between
the thick-set pine-trees under rocks with angular
faces. All this corner of the forest has a sort
of choked-up look a rather wild and solitary
aspect. One thinks of hermits in connection with
it companions of huge stags with fiery crosses
between their horns, who were wont to welcome with
paternal smiles the good kings of France when they
knelt before their grottoes. The warm air was
filled with a resinous odour, and roots of trees crossed
one another like veins close to the soil. Rosanette
slipped over them, grew dejected, and felt inclined
to shed tears.
But, at the very top, she became joyous
once more on finding, under a roof made of branches,
a sort of tavern where carved wood was sold. She
drank a bottle of lemonade, and bought a holly-stick;
and, without one glance towards the landscape which
disclosed itself from the plateau, she entered the
Brigands’ Cave, with a waiter carrying a torch
in front of her. Their carriage was awaiting
them in the Bas Breau.
A painter in a blue blouse was working
at the foot of an oak-tree with his box of colours
on his knees. He raised his head and watched them
as they passed.
In the middle of the hill of Chailly,
the sudden breaking of a cloud caused them to turn
up the hoods of their cloaks. Almost immediately
the rain stopped, and the paving-stones of the street
glistened under the sun when they were re-entering
the town.
Some travellers, who had recently
arrived, informed them that a terrible battle had
stained Paris with blood. Rosanette and her lover
were not surprised. Then everybody left; the
hotel became quiet, the gas was put out, and they
were lulled to sleep by the murmur of the fountain
in the courtyard.
On the following day they went to
see the Wolf’s Gorge, the Fairies’ Pool,
the Long Rock, and the Marlotte. Two days
later, they began again at random, just as their coachman
thought fit to drive them, without asking where they
were, and often even neglecting the famous sites.
They felt so comfortable in their
old landau, low as a sofa, and covered with a rug
made of a striped material which was quite faded.
The moats, filled with brushwood, stretched out under
their eyes with a gentle, continuous movement.
White rays passed like arrows through the tall ferns.
Sometimes a road that was no longer used presented
itself before them, in a straight line, and here and
there might be seen a feeble growth of weeds.
In the centre between four cross-roads, a crucifix
extended its four arms. In other places, stakes
were bending down like dead trees, and little curved
paths, which were lost under the leaves, made them
feel a longing to pursue them. At the same moment
the horse turned round; they entered there; they plunged
into the mire. Further down moss had sprouted
out at the sides of the deep ruts.
The “Overall.”
The word Marlotte means a loose wrapper worn
by ladies in the sixteenth century. TRANSLATOR.
They believed that they were far away
from all other people, quite alone. But suddenly
a game-keeper with his gun, or a band of women in
rags with big bundles of fagots on their backs,
would hurry past them.
When the carriage stopped, there was
a universal silence. The only sounds that reached
them were the blowing of the horse in the shafts with
the faint cry of a bird more than once repeated.
The light at certain points illuminating
the outskirts of the wood, left the interior in deep
shadow, or else, attenuated in the foreground by a
sort of twilight, it exhibited in the background violet
vapours, a white radiance. The midday sun, falling
directly on wide tracts of greenery, made splashes
of light over them, hung gleaming drops of silver from
the ends of the branches, streaked the grass with
long lines of emeralds, and flung gold spots on the
beds of dead leaves. When they let their heads
fall back, they could distinguish the sky through the
tops of the trees. Some of them, which were enormously
high, looked like patriarchs or emperors, or, touching
one another at their extremities formed with their
long shafts, as it were, triumphal arches; others,
sprouting forth obliquely from below, seemed like
falling columns. This heap of big vertical lines
gaped open. Then, enormous green billows unrolled
themselves in unequal embossments as far as the surface
of the valleys, towards which advanced the brows of
other hills looking down on white plains, which ended
by losing themselves in an undefined pale tinge.
Standing side by side, on some rising
ground, they felt, as they drank in the air, the pride
of a life more free penetrating into the depths of
their souls, with a superabundance of energy, a joy
which they could not explain.
The variety of trees furnished a spectacle
of the most diversified character. The beeches
with their smooth white bark twisted their tops together.
Ash trees softly curved their bluish branches.
In the tufts of the hornbeams rose up holly stiff
as bronze. Then came a row of thin birches, bent
into elegiac attitudes; and the pine-trees, symmetrical
as organ pipes, seemed to be singing a song as they
swayed to and fro. There were gigantic oaks with
knotted forms, which had been violently shaken, stretched
themselves out from the soil and pressed close against
each other, and with firm trunks resembling torsos,
launched forth to heaven despairing appeals with their
bare arms and furious threats, like a group of Titans
struck motionless in the midst of their rage.
An atmosphere of gloom, a feverish languor, brooded
over the pools, whose sheets of water were cut into
flakes by the overshadowing thorn-trees. The
lichens on their banks, where the wolves come to drink,
are of the colour of sulphur, burnt, as it were, by
the footprints of witches, and the incessant croaking
of the frogs responds to the cawing of the crows as
they wheel through the air. After this they passed
through the monotonous glades, planted here and there
with a staddle. The sound of iron falling with
a succession of rapid blows could be heard. On
the side of the hill a group of quarrymen were breaking
the rocks. These rocks became more and more numerous
and finally filled up the entire landscape, cube-shaped
like houses, flat like flagstones, propping up, overhanging,
and became intermingled with each other, as if they
were the ruins, unrecognisable and monstrous, of some
vanished city. But the wild chaos they exhibited
made one rather dream of volcanoes, of deluges, of
great unknown cataclysms. Frederick said they
had been there since the beginning of the world, and
would remain so till the end. Rosanette turned
aside her head, declaring that this would drive her
out of her mind, and went off to collect sweet heather.
The little violet blossoms, heaped up near one another,
formed unequal plates, and the soil, which was giving
way underneath, placed soft dark fringes on the sand
spangled with mica.
One day they reached a point half-way
up a hill, where the soil was full of sand. Its
surface, untrodden till now, was streaked so as to
resemble symmetrical waves. Here and there, like
promontories on the dry bed of an ocean, rose up rocks
with the vague outlines of animals, tortoises thrusting
forward their heads, crawling seals, hippopotami, and
bears. Not a soul around them. Not a single
sound. The shingle glowed under the dazzling
rays of the sun, and all at once in this vibration
of light the specimens of the brute creation that
met their gaze began to move about. They returned
home quickly, flying from the dizziness that had seized
hold of them, almost dismayed.
The gravity of the forest exercised
an influence over them, and hours passed in silence,
during which, allowing themselves to yield to the
lulling effects of springs, they remained as it were
sunk in the torpor of a calm intoxication. With
his arm around her waist, he listened to her talking
while the birds were warbling, noticed with the same
glance the black grapes on her bonnet and the juniper-berries,
the draperies of her veil, and the spiral forms assumed
by the clouds, and when he bent towards her the freshness
of her skin mingled with the strong perfume of the
woods. They found amusement in everything.
They showed one another, as a curiosity, gossamer
threads of the Virgin hanging from bushes, holes full
of water in the middle of stones, a squirrel on the
branches, the way in which two butterflies kept flying
after them; or else, at twenty paces from them, under
the trees, a hind strode on peacefully, with an air
of nobility and gentleness, its doe walking by its
side.
Rosanette would have liked to run after it to embrace
it.
She got very much alarmed once, when
a man suddenly presenting himself, showed her three
vipers in a box. She wildly flung herself on
Frederick’s breast. He felt happy at the
thought that she was weak and that he was strong enough
to defend her.
That evening they dined at an inn
on the banks of the Seine. The table was near
the window, Rosanette sitting opposite him, and he
contemplated her little well-shaped white nose, her
turned-up lips, her bright eyes, the swelling bands
of her nut-brown hair, and her pretty oval face.
Her dress of raw silk clung to her somewhat drooping
shoulders, and her two hands, emerging from their
sleeves, joined close together as if they were one carved,
poured out wine, moved over the table-cloth. The
waiters placed before them a chicken with its four
limbs stretched out, a stew of eels in a dish of pipe-clay,
wine that had got spoiled, bread that was too hard,
and knives with notches in them. All these things
made the repast more enjoyable and strengthened the
illusion. They fancied that they were in the
middle of a journey in Italy on their honeymoon.
Before starting again they went for a walk along the
bank of the river.
The soft blue sky, rounded like a
dome, leaned at the horizon on the indentations of
the woods. On the opposite side, at the end of
the meadow, there was a village steeple; and further
away, to the left, the roof of a house made a red
spot on the river, which wound its way without any
apparent motion. Some rushes bent over it, however,
and the water lightly shook some poles fixed at its
edge in order to hold nets. An osier bow-net
and two or three old fishing-boats might be seen there.
Near the inn a girl in a straw hat was drawing buckets
out of a well. Every time they came up again,
Frederick heard the grating sound of the chain with
a feeling of inexpressible delight.
He had no doubt that he would be happy
till the end of his days, so natural did his felicity
appear to him, so much a part of his life, and so
intimately associated with this woman’s being.
He was irresistibly impelled to address her with words
of endearment. She answered with pretty little
speeches, light taps on the shoulder, displays of
tenderness that charmed him by their unexpectedness.
He discovered in her quite a new sort of beauty, in
fact, which was perhaps only the reflection of surrounding
things, unless it happened to bud forth from their
hidden potentialities.
When they were lying down in the middle
of the field, he would stretch himself out with his
head on her lap, under the shelter of her parasol;
or else with their faces turned towards the green sward,
in the centre of which they rested, they kept gazing
towards one another so that their pupils seemed to
intermingle, thirsting for one another and ever satiating
their thirst, and then with half-closed eyelids they
lay side by side without uttering a single word.
Now and then the distant rolling of
a drum reached their ears. It was the signal-drum
which was being beaten in the different villages calling
on people to go and defend Paris.
“Oh! look here! ’tis the
rising!” said Frederick, with a disdainful pity,
all this excitement now presenting to his mind a pitiful
aspect by the side of their love and of eternal nature.
And they talked about whatever happened
to come into their heads, things that were perfectly
familiar to them, persons in whom they took no interest,
a thousand trifles. She chatted with him about
her chambermaid and her hairdresser. One day
she was so self-forgetful that she told him her age twenty-nine
years. She was becoming quite an old woman.
Several times, without intending it,
she gave him some particulars with reference to her
own life. She had been a “shop girl,”
had taken a trip to England, and had begun studying
for the stage; all this she told without any explanation
of how these changes had come about; and he found
it impossible to reconstruct her entire history.
She related to him more about herself
one day when they were seated side by side under a
plane-tree at the back of a meadow. At the road-side,
further down, a little barefooted girl, standing amid
a heap of dust, was making a cow go to pasture.
As soon as she caught sight of them she came up to
beg, and while with one hand she held up her tattered
petticoat, she kept scratching with the other her black
hair, which, like a wig of Louis XIV.’s time,
curled round her dark face, lighted by a magnificent
pair of eyes.
“She will be very pretty by-and-by,” said
Frederick.
“How lucky she is, if she has no mother!”
remarked Rosanette.
“Eh? How is that?”
“Certainly. I, if it were not for mine ”
She sighed, and began to speak about
her childhood. Her parents were weavers in the
Croix-Rousse. She acted as an apprentice to her
father. In vain did the poor man wear himself
out with hard work; his wife was continually abusing
him, and sold everything for drink. Rosanette
could see, as if it were yesterday, the room they
occupied with the looms ranged lengthwise against
the windows, the pot boiling on the stove, the bed
painted like mahogany, a cupboard facing it, and the
obscure loft where she used to sleep up to the time
when she was fifteen years old. At length a gentleman
made his appearance on the scene a fat man
with a face of the colour of boxwood, the manners
of a devotee, and a suit of black clothes. Her
mother and this man had a conversation together, with
the result that three days afterwards Rosanette
stopped, and with a look in which there was as much
bitterness as shamelessness:
“It was done!”
Then, in response to a gesture of Frederick.
“As he was married (he would
have been afraid of compromising himself in his own
house), I was brought to a private room in a restaurant,
and told that I would be happy, that I would get a
handsome present.
“At the door, the first thing
that struck me was a candelabrum of vermilion on a
table, on which there were two covers. A mirror
on the ceiling showed their reflections, and the blue
silk hangings on the walls made the entire apartment
resemble an alcove; I was seized with astonishment.
You understand a poor creature who had never
seen anything before. In spite of my dazed condition
of mind, I got frightened. I wanted to go away.
However, I remained.
“The only seat in the room was
a sofa close beside the table. It was so soft
that it gave way under me. The mouth of the hot-air
stove in the middle of the carpet sent out towards
me a warm breath, and there I sat without taking anything.
The waiter, who was standing near me, urged me to
eat. He poured out for me immediately a large
glass of wine. My head began to swim, I wanted
to open the window. He said to me:
“‘No, Mademoiselle! that is forbidden.’”
“And he left me.
“The table was covered with
a heap of things that I had no knowledge of.
Nothing there seemed to me good. Then I fell back
on a pot of jam, and patiently waited. I did
not know what prevented him from coming. It was
very late midnight at last I
couldn’t bear the fatigue any longer. While
pushing aside one of the pillows, in order to hear
better, I found under my hand a kind of album a
book of engravings, they were vulgar pictures.
I was sleeping on top of it when he entered the room.”
She hung down her head and remained pensive.
The leaves rustled around them.
Amid the tangled grass a great foxglove was swaying
to and fro. The sunlight flowed like a wave over
the green expanse, and the silence was interrupted
at intervals by the browsing of the cow, which they
could no longer see.
Rosanette kept her eyes fixed on a
particular spot, three paces away from her, her nostrils
heaving, and her mind absorbed in thought. Frederick
caught hold of her hand.
“How you suffered, poor darling!”
“Yes,” said she, “more
than you imagine! So much so that I wanted to
make an end of it they had to fish me up!”
“What?”
“Ah! think no more about it! I love you,
I am happy! kiss me!”
And she picked off, one by one, the
sprigs of the thistles which clung to the hem of her
gown.
Frederick was thinking more than all
on what she had not told him. What were the means
by which she had gradually emerged from wretchedness?
To what lover did she owe her education? What
had occurred in her life down to the day when he first
came to her house? Her latest avowal was a bar
to these questions. All he asked her was how she
had made Arnoux’s acquaintance.
“Through the Vatnaz.”
“Wasn’t it you that I once saw with both
of them at the Palais-Royal?”
He referred to the exact date.
Rosanette made a movement which showed a sense of
deep pain.
“Yes, it is true! I was not gay at that
time!”
But Arnoux had proved himself a very
good fellow. Frederick had no doubt of it.
However, their friend was a queer character, full of
faults. He took care to recall them. She
quite agreed with him on this point.
“Never mind! One likes him, all the same,
this camel!”
“Still even now?” said Frederick.
She began to redden, half smiling, half angry.
“Oh, no! that’s an old
story. I don’t keep anything hidden from
you. Even though it might be so, with him it
is different. Besides, I don’t think you
are nice towards your victim!”
“My victim!”
Rosanette caught hold of his chin.
“No doubt!”
And in the lisping fashion in which nurses talk to
babies:
“Have always been so good! Never went a-by-by
with his wife?”
“I! never at any time!”
Rosanette smiled. He felt hurt
by this smile of hers, which seemed to him a proof
of indifference.
But she went on gently, and with one
of those looks which seem to appeal for a denial of
the truth:
“Are you perfectly certain?”
“Not a doubt of it!”
Frederick solemnly declared on his
word of honour that he had never bestowed a thought
on Madame Arnoux, as he was too much in love with
another woman.
“Why, with you, my beautiful one!”
“Ah! don’t laugh at me! You only
annoy me!”
He thought it a prudent course to
invent a story to pretend that he was swayed
by a passion. He manufactured some circumstantial
details. This woman, however, had rendered him
very unhappy.
“Decidedly, you have not been lucky,”
said Rosanette.
“Oh! oh! I may have been!”
wishing to convey in this way that he had been often
fortunate in his love-affairs, so that she might have
a better opinion of him, just as Rosanette did not
avow how many lovers she had had, in order that he
might have more respect for her for there
will always be found in the midst of the most intimate
confidences restrictions, false shame, delicacy, and
pity. You divine either in the other or in yourself
precipices or miry paths which prevent you from penetrating
any farther; moreover, you feel that you will not be
understood. It is hard to express accurately the
thing you mean, whatever it may be; and this is the
reason why perfect unions are rare.
The poor Maréchale had never
known one better than this. Often, when she gazed
at Frederick, tears came into her eyes; then she would
raise them or cast a glance towards the horizon, as
if she saw there some bright dawn, perspectives of
boundless felicity. At last, she confessed one
day to him that she wished to have a mass said, “so
that it might bring a blessing on our love.”
How was it, then, that she had resisted
him so long? She could not tell herself.
He repeated his question a great many times; and she
replied, as she clasped him in her arms:
“It was because I was afraid,
my darling, of loving you too well!”
On Sunday morning, Frederick read,
amongst the list of the wounded given in a newspaper,
the name of Dussardier. He uttered a cry, and
showing the paper to Rosanette, declared that he was
going to start at once for Paris.
“For what purpose?”
“In order to see him, to nurse him!”
“You are not going, I’m sure, to leave
me by myself?”
“Come with me!”
“Ha! to poke my nose in a squabble of that sort?
Oh, no, thanks!”
“However, I cannot ”
“Ta! ta! ta! as if
they had need of nurses in the hospitals! And
then, what concern is he of yours any longer?
Everyone for himself!”
He was roused to indignation by this
egoism on her part, and he reproached himself for
not being in the capital with the others. Such
indifference to the misfortunes of the nation had in
it something shabby, and only worthy of a small shopkeeper.
And now, all of a sudden, his intrigue with Rosanette
weighed on his mind as if it were a crime. For
an hour they were quite cool towards each other.
Then she appealed to him to wait, and not expose himself
to danger.
“Suppose you happen to be killed?”
“Well, I should only have done my duty!”
Rosanette gave a jump. His first
duty was to love her; but, no doubt, he did not care
about her any longer. There was no common sense
in what he was going to do. Good heavens! what
an idea!
Frederick rang for his bill.
But to get back to Pans was not an easy matter.
The Leloir stagecoach had just left; the Lecomte berlins
would not be starting; the diligence from Bourbonnais
would not be passing till a late hour that night,
and perhaps it might be full, one could never tell.
When he had lost a great deal of time in making enquiries
about the various modes of conveyance, the idea occurred
to him to travel post. The master of the post-house
refused to supply him with horses, as Frederick had
no passport. Finally, he hired an open carriage the
same one in which they had driven about the country and
at about five o’clock they arrived in front of
the Hotel du Commerce at Melun.
The market-place was covered with
piles of arms. The prefect had forbidden the
National Guards to proceed towards Paris. Those
who did not belong to his department wished to go
on. There was a great deal of shouting, and the
inn was packed with a noisy crowd.
Rosanette, seized with terror, said
she would not go a step further, and once more begged
of him to stay. The innkeeper and his wife joined
in her entreaties. A decent sort of man who happened
to be dining there interposed, and observed that the
fighting would be over in a very short time.
Besides, one ought to do his duty. Thereupon the
Maréchale redoubled her sobs. Frederick
got exasperated. He handed her his purse, kissed
her quickly, and disappeared.
On reaching Corbeil, he learned at
the station that the insurgents had cut the rails
at regular distances, and the coachman refused to drive
him any farther; he said that his horses were “overspent.”
Through his influence, however, Frederick
managed to procure an indifferent cabriolet, which,
for the sum of sixty francs, without taking into account
the price of a drink for the driver, was to convey
him as far as the Italian barrier. But at a hundred
paces from the barrier his coachman made him descend
and turn back. Frederick was walking along the
pathway, when suddenly a sentinel thrust out his bayonet.
Four men seized him, exclaiming:
“This is one of them! Look
out! Search him! Brigand! scoundrel!”
And he was so thoroughly stupefied
that he let himself be dragged to the guard-house
of the barrier, at the very point where the Boulevards
des Gobelins and de l’Hopital and
Rues Godefroy and Mauffetard converge.
Four barricades formed at the ends
of four different ways enormous sloping ramparts of
paving-stones. Torches were glimmering here and
there. In spite of the rising clouds of dust he
could distinguish foot-soldiers of the Line and National
Guards, all with their faces blackened, their chests
uncovered, and an aspect of wild excitement.
They had just captured the square, and had shot down
a number of men. Their rage had not yet cooled.
Frederick said he had come from Fontainebleau to the
relief of a wounded comrade who lodged in the Rue
Bellefond. Not one of them would believe him at
first. They examined his hands; they even put
their noses to his ear to make sure that he did not
smell of powder.
However, by dint of repeating the
same thing, he finally satisfied a captain, who directed
two fusiliers to conduct him to the guard-house
of the Jardin des Plantes. They
descended the Boulevard de l’Hopital. A
strong breeze was blowing. It restored him to
animation.
After this they turned up the Rue
du Marche aux Chevaux. The Jardin des
Plantes at the right formed a long black mass,
whilst at the left the entire front of the Pitié,
illuminated at every window, blazed like a conflagration,
and shadows passed rapidly over the window-panes.
The two men in charge of Frederick
went away. Another accompanied him to the Polytechnic
School. The Rue Saint-Victor was quite dark, without
a gas-lamp or a light at any window to relieve the
gloom. Every ten minutes could be heard the words:
“Sentinels! mind yourselves!”
And this exclamation, cast into the
midst of the silence, was prolonged like the repeated
striking of a stone against the side of a chasm as
it falls through space.
Every now and then the stamp of heavy
footsteps could be heard drawing nearer. This
was nothing less than a patrol consisting of about
a hundred men. From this confused mass escaped
whisperings and the dull clanking of iron; and, moving
away with a rhythmic swing, it melted into the darkness.
In the middle of the crossing, where
several streets met, a dragoon sat motionless on his
horse. From time to time an express rider passed
at a rapid gallop; then the silence was renewed.
Cannons, which were being drawn along the streets,
made, on the pavement, a heavy rolling sound that
seemed full of menace a sound different
from every ordinary sound which oppressed
the heart. The sounds was profound, unlimited a
black silence. Men in white blouses accosted the
soldiers, spoke one or two words to them, and then
vanished like phantoms.
The guard-house of the Polytechnic
School overflowed with people. The threshold
was blocked up with women, who had come to see their
sons or their husbands. They were sent on to
the Pantheon, which had been transformed into a dead-house;
and no attention was paid to Frederick. He pressed
forward resolutely, solemnly declaring that his friend
Dussardier was waiting for him, that he was at death’s
door. At last they sent a corporal to accompany
him to the top of the Rue Saint-Jacques, to the Mayor’s
office in the twelfth arrondissement.
The Place du Pantheon was filled with
soldiers lying asleep on straw. The day was breaking;
the bivouac-fires were extinguished.
The insurrection had left terrible
traces in this quarter. The soil of the streets,
from one end to the other, was covered with risings
of various sizes. On the wrecked barricades had
been piled up omnibuses, gas-pipes, and cart-wheels.
In certain places there were little dark pools, which
must have been blood. The houses were riddled
with projectiles, and their framework could be seen
under the plaster that was peeled off. Window-blinds,
each attached only by a single nail, hung like rags.
The staircases having fallen in, doors opened on vacancy.
The interiors of rooms could be perceived with their
papers in strips. In some instances dainty objects
had remained in them quite intact. Frederick
noticed a timepiece, a parrot-stick, and some engravings.
When he entered the Mayor’s
office, the National Guards were chattering without
a moment’s pause about the deaths of Brea and
Négrier, about the deputy Charbonnel, and about
the Archbishop of Paris. He heard them saying
that the Duc d’Aumale had landed at Boulogne,
that Barbes had fled from Vincennes, that the
artillery were coming up from Bourges, and that abundant
aid was arriving from the provinces. About three
o’clock some one brought good news.
Truce-bearers from the insurgents
were in conference with the President of the Assembly.
Thereupon they all made merry; and
as he had a dozen francs left, Frederick sent for
a dozen bottles of wine, hoping by this means to hasten
his deliverance. Suddenly a discharge of musketry
was heard. The drinking stopped. They peered
with distrustful eyes into the unknown it
might be Henry V.
In order to get rid of responsibility,
they took Frederick to the Mayor’s office in
the eleventh arrondissement, which he was not permitted
to leave till nine o’clock in the morning.
He started at a running pace from
the Quai Voltaire. At an open window an old man
in his shirt-sleeves was crying, with his eyes raised.
The Seine glided peacefully along. The sky was
of a clear blue; and in the trees round the Tuileries
birds were singing.
Frederick was just crossing the Place
du Carrousel when a litter happened to be passing
by. The soldiers at the guard-house immediately
presented arms; and the officer, putting his hand to
his shako, said: “Honour to unfortunate
bravery!” This phrase seemed to have almost
become a matter of duty. He who pronounced it
appeared to be, on each occasion, filled with profound
emotion. A group of people in a state of fierce
excitement followed the litter, exclaiming:
“We will avenge you! we will avenge you!”
The vehicles kept moving about on
the boulevard, and women were making lint before the
doors. Meanwhile, the outbreak had been quelled,
or very nearly so. A proclamation from Cavaignac,
just posted up, announced the fact. At the top
of the Rue Vivienne, a company of the Garde Mobile
appeared. Then the citizens uttered cries of enthusiasm.
They raised their hats, applauded, danced, wished
to embrace them, and to invite them to drink; and
flowers, flung by ladies, fell from the balconies.
At last, at ten o’clock, at
the moment when the cannon was booming as an attack
was being made on the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Frederick
reached the abode of Dussardier. He found the
bookkeeper in his garret, lying asleep on his back.
From the adjoining apartment a woman came forth with
silent tread Mademoiselle Vatnaz.
She led Frederick aside and explained
to him how Dussardier had got wounded.
On Saturday, on the top of a barricade
in the Rue Lafayette, a young fellow wrapped in a
tricoloured flag cried out to the National Guards:
“Are you going to shoot your brothers?”
As they advanced, Dussardier threw down his gun, pushed
away the others, sprang over the barricade, and, with
a blow of an old shoe, knocked down the insurgent,
from whom he tore the flag. He had afterwards
been found under a heap of rubbish with a slug of
copper in his thigh. It was found necessary to
make an incision in order to extract the projectile.
Mademoiselle Vatnaz arrived the same evening, and
since then had not quitted his side.
She intelligently prepared everything
that was needed for the dressings, assisted him in
taking his medicine or other liquids, attended to his
slightest wishes, left and returned again with footsteps
more light than those of a fly, and gazed at him with
eyes full of tenderness.
Frederick, during the two following
weeks, did not fail to come back every morning.
One day, while he was speaking about the devotion of
the Vatnaz, Dussardier shrugged his shoulders:
“Oh! no! she does this through interested motives.”
“Do you think so?”
He replied: “I am sure
of it!” without seeming disposed to give any
further explanation.
She had loaded him with kindnesses,
carrying her attentions so far as to bring him the
newspapers in which his gallant action was extolled.
He even confessed to Frederick that he felt uneasy
in his conscience.
Perhaps he ought to have put himself
on the other side with the men in blouses; for, indeed,
a heap of promises had been made to them which had
not been carried out. Those who had vanquished
them hated the Republic; and, in the next place, they
had treated them very harshly. No doubt they
were in the wrong not quite, however; and
the honest fellow was tormented by the thought that
he might have fought against the righteous cause.
Senecal, who was immured in the Tuileries, under the
terrace at the water’s edge, had none of this
mental anguish.
There were nine hundred men in the
place, huddled together in the midst of filth, without
the slightest order, their faces blackened with powder
and clotted blood, shivering with ague and breaking
out into cries of rage, and those who were brought
there to die were not separated from the rest.
Sometimes, on hearing the sound of a detonation, they
believed that they were all going to be shot.
Then they dashed themselves against the walls, and
after that fell back again into their places, so much
stupefied by suffering that it seemed to them that
they were living in a nightmare, a mournful hallucination.
The lamp, which hung from the arched roof, looked
like a stain of blood, and little green and yellow
flames fluttered about, caused by the emanations from
the vault. Through fear of epidemics, a commission
was appointed. When he had advanced a few steps,
the President recoiled, frightened by the stench from
the excrements and from the corpses.
As soon as the prisoners drew near
a vent-hole, the National Guards who were on sentry,
in order to prevent them from shaking the bars of the
grating, prodded them indiscriminately with their bayonets.
As a rule they showed no pity.
Those who were not beaten wished to signalise themselves.
There was a regular outbreak of fear. They avenged
themselves at the same time on newspapers, clubs, mobs,
speech-making everything that had exasperated
them during the last three months, and in spite of
the victory that had been gained, equality (as if
for the punishment of its defenders and the exposure
of its enemies to ridicule) manifested itself in a
triumphal fashion an equality of brute
beasts, a dead level of sanguinary vileness; for the
fanaticism of self-interest balanced the madness of
want, aristocracy had the same fits of fury as low
debauchery, and the cotton cap did not show itself
less hideous than the red cap. The public mind
was agitated just as it would be after great convulsions
of nature. Sensible men were rendered imbéciles
for the rest of their lives on account of it.
Pere Roque had become very courageous,
almost foolhardy. Having arrived on the 26th
at Paris with some of the inhabitants of Nogent, instead
of going back at the same time with them, he had gone
to give his assistance to the National Guard encamped
at the Tuileries; and he was quite satisfied to be
placed on sentry in front of the terrace at the water’s
side. There, at any rate, he had these brigands
under his feet! He was delighted to find that
they were beaten and humiliated, and he could not
refrain from uttering invectives against them.
One of them, a young lad with long
fair hair, put his face to the bars, and asked for
bread. M. Roque ordered him to hold his tongue.
But the young man repeated in a mournful tone:
“Bread!”
“Have I any to give you?”
Other prisoners presented themselves
at the vent-hole, with their bristling beards, their
burning eyeballs, all pushing forward, and yelling:
“Bread!”
Pere Roque was indignant at seeing
his authority slighted. In order to frighten
them he took aim at them; and, borne onward into the
vault by the crush that nearly smothered him, the
young man, with his head thrown backward, once more
exclaimed:
“Bread!”
“Hold on! here it is!”
said Pere Roque, firing a shot from his gun.
There was a fearful howl then, silence.
At the side of the trough something white could be
seen lying.
After this, M. Roque returned to his
abode, for he had a house in the Rue Saint-Martin,
which he used as a temporary residence; and the injury
done to the front of the building during the riots
had in no slight degree contributed to excite his
rage. It seemed to him, when he next saw it,
that he had exaggerated the amount of damage done to
it. His recent act had a soothing effect on him,
as if it indemnified him for his loss.
It was his daughter herself who opened
the door for him. She immediately made the remark
that she had felt uneasy at his excessively prolonged
absence. She was afraid that he had met with some
misfortune that he had been wounded.
This manifestation of filial love
softened Pere Roque. He was astonished that she
should have set out on a journey without Catherine.
“I sent her out on a message,” was Louise’s
reply.
And she made enquiries about his health,
about one thing or another; then, with an air of indifference,
she asked him whether he had chanced to come across
Frederick:
“No; I didn’t see him!”
It was on his account alone that she had come up from
the country.
Some one was walking at that moment in the lobby.
“Oh! excuse me ”
And she disappeared.
Catherine had not found Frederick.
He had been several days away, and his intimate friend,
M. Deslauriers, was now living in the provinces.
Louise once more presented herself,
shaking all over, without being able to utter a word.
She leaned against the furniture.
“What’s the matter with
you? Tell me what’s the matter
with you?” exclaimed her father.
She indicated by a wave of her hand
that it was nothing, and with a great effort of will
she regained her composure.
The keeper of the restaurant at the
opposite side of the street brought them soup.
But Pere Roque had passed through too exciting an ordeal
to be able to control his emotions. “He
is not likely to die;” and at dessert he had
a sort of fainting fit. A doctor was at once sent
for, and he prescribed a potion. Then, when M.
Roque was in bed, he asked to be as well wrapped up
as possible in order to bring on perspiration.
He gasped; he moaned.
“Thanks, my good Catherine!
Kiss your poor father, my chicken! Ah! those
revolutions!”
And, when his daughter scolded him
for having made himself ill by tormenting his mind
on her account, he replied:
“Yes! you are right! But
I couldn’t help it! I am too sensitive!”