CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PARK OF VERSAILLES
The instructions delivered to me soon after my arrival in Versailles convinced me that the transmission of despatches was not the service we were called on to discharge, but merely a pretence to blind others as to our presence; the real duty being the establishment of a cordon around the Royal Palace, permitting no one to enter or pass within the precincts who was not provided with a regular leave, and empowering us to detain all suspected individuals, and forward them for examination to St. Cloud.
To avoid all suspicion as to the true object, the men were ordered to pass from place to place as if with despatches, many being stationed in different parts of the park; my duty requiring me to be continually on the alert to visit these pickets, and make a daily report to the Préfet de Police at Paris.
What the nature of the suspicion, or from what quarter Monsieur Savary anticipated danger, I could not even guess; and though I well knew that his sources of information were unquestionable, I began at last to think that the whole was merely some plot devised by the police themselves, to display uncommon vigilance and enhance their own importance. This conviction grew stronger as day by day I remarked that no person more than ordinary had even approached near the town of Versailles itself, while the absurd exactitude of inquiry as to every minute thing that occurred went on just as before.
While my life passed on in this monotonous fashion, the little Court of Madame Bonaparte seemed to enjoy all its accustomed pleasure. The actors of the Français came down expressly from Paris, and gave nightly representation in the Palace; fourgons continued to arrive from the capital with all the luxuries for the table; new guests poured in day after day; and the lighted-up saloons, and the sounds of music that filled the Court, told each evening, that whatever fear prevailed without, the minds of those within the Palace, had little to cause depression.
It was not without a feeling of wounded pride I saw myself omitted in all the invitations; for although my rank was not sufficient of itself to lead me to expect such an attention, my position as the officer on guard would have fully warranted the politeness, had I not even already received marks of civility while in Paris. From time to time, as I passed through the park, I came upon some of the Court party; and it was with a sense of painful humiliation I observed that Madame Bonaparte had completely forgotten me, while from one whose indifference was more galling still, I did not even obtain a look in passing. How had I forfeited the esteem which voluntarily they had bestowed on me, – the good opinion which had raised me from an humble cadet of the Polytechnique to a commission in one of the first corps in the service? Under what evil influence was I placed?
Such were the questions that forced themselves on me night and day; that haunted my path as I walked, and my dreams at night. As the impression grew on me, I imagined that every one I met regarded me with a look of distance and distrust, – that each saw in me one who had forfeited his fair name by some low or unworthy action, – till at last I actually avoided the walks where I was likely to encounter the visitors of the Palace, and shunned the very approach of a stranger, like a guilty thing. All the brilliant prospects of my soldier’s life, that a few days back shone out before me, were now changed into a dreamy despondence. The service I was employed on – so different from what I deemed became a chivalrous career – was repugnant to all my feelings; and when the time for visiting my pickets came, I shrank with shame from a duty that suited rather the spy of the police than the officer of hussars.
Every day my depression increased. My isolation, doubly painful from the gayety and life around me, seemed to mark me out as one unfit to know, and lessened me in my own esteem; and as I walked the long, dark alleys of the park, a weighty load upon my heart, I envied the meanest soldier of my troop, and would willingly have changed his fortune with my own. It was a relief to me even when night came – the shutters of my little room closed, my lamp lighted – to think that there at least I was free from the dark glances and sidelong looks of all I met; that I was alone with my own sorrow, – no contemptuous eye to pierce my sad heart, and see in my gloom a self-convicted criminal. Had I one, but one friend, to advise with! to pour out all my sufferings before him, and say, “Tell me, how shall I act? Am I to go on enduring? or where shall I, where can I, vindicate my fame?”
With such sad thoughts for company, I sat one evening alone, – my mind now recurring to the early scenes of my childhood, and to that harsh teaching which even in infancy had marked me for suffering; now straying onward to a vision of the future I used to paint so brightly to myself, – when a gentle tap at the door aroused me.
“Come in,” said I, carelessly, supposing it a sergeant of my troop.
The door slowly opened, and a figure wrapped in a loose horseman’s cloak entered.
“Ah! Lieutenant, don’t you know me?” said a voice, whose peculiar tone struck me as well known. “The Abbé d’Ervan, at your service.”
“Indeed!” said I, starting with surprise, not less at the unexpected visitor himself than at the manner of his appearance. “Why, Abbé, you must have passed the sentinel.”
“And so I did, my dear boy,” replied he, as he folded up his cloak leisurely on one chair, and seated himself on another opposite me. “Nothing wonderful in that, I suppose?”
“But the countersign; they surely asked you for it?”
“To be sure they did, and I gave it, – ‘Vincennes;’ au easy word enough. But come, come! you are not going to play the police with me. I have taken you in, on my way back to St. Cloud, where I am stopping just now, to pay you a little visit and talk over the news.”
“Pardon me once more, my dear abbé; but a young soldier may seem over-punctilious. Have you the privilege to pass through the royal park after nightfall?”
“I think I have shown you that already, my most rigid inquisitor, otherwise I should not have known the password. Give me your report for to-morrow. Ah, here it is! What’s the hour now? – a quarter to eleven. This will save you some trouble.”
So saying, he took a pen and wrote in a large free hand, “The Abbe d’Ervan, from the château d’Ancre to St. Cloud.”
“Monsieur Savary will ask you no further questions, trust me. And now, if you have got over all your fears and disquietudes, may I take the liberty to remind you that the château is ten leagues off; that I dined at three, and have eaten nothing since. Abbés you are aware, are privileged gastronomists, and the family of D’Ervan have a most unhappy addiction to good things. A poulet, however, and a flask of Chablis, will do for the present; for I long to talk with you.”
While I made my humble preparations to entertain him, he rambled on in his usual free and pleasant manner, – that mixture of smartness and carelessness which seemed equally diffused through all he said, imparting a sufficiency to awake, without containing anything to engage too deeply, the listener’s attention.
“Come, come, Lieutenant, make no apology for the fare: the paté is excellent; and as for the Burgundy, it is easy enough to see your Chambertin comes from the Consul’s cellar. And so you tell me that you find this place dull, which I own I’m surprised at. These little soirées are usually amusing; but perhaps at your age the dazzling gayety of the ballroom is more attractive.”
“In truth, Abbé, the distinction would be a matter of some difficulty to me, I know so little of either. And indeed, Madame la Consulesse is not over likely to enlighten my ignorance; I have never been asked to the Palace.”
“You are jesting, surely?”
“Perfectly in earnest, I assure you. This is my third week of being quartered here; and not only have I not been invited, but, stranger still, Madame Bonaparte passed and never noticed me; and another, one of her suite, did the same: so you see there can be no accident in the matter.”
“How strange!” said the abbé, leaning his head on his hand. And then, as if speaking to himself, muttered, “But so it is; there is no such tyrant as your parvenu. The caprice of sudden elevation knows no guidance. And you can’t even guess at the cause of all this?”
“Not with all my ingenuity could I invent anything like a reason.”
“Well, well; we may find it out yet. These are strange times altogether. Lieutenant. Men’s minds are more unsettled than ever they were. The Jacobin begins to feel he has been laboring for nothing; that all he deems the rubbish of a monarchy has been removed, only to build up a greater oppression. The soldier sees his conquests have only made the fortune of one man in the army, and that one not overmindful of his old companions. Many begin to think – and they may have some cause for the notion – that the old family of France knew the interests of the nation best, after all; and certain it is, they were never ungrateful to those who served them. Your countrymen had always their share of favor shown them; you do surprise me when you say you’ve never been invited.”
“So it is, though; and, worse still, there is evidently some secret reason. Men look at me as if I had done something to stain my character and name.”
“No, no; you mistake all that. This new and patchwork Court does but try to imitate the tone of its leader. When did you see De Beauvais?”
“Not for some months past. Is he in Paris?”
“No; the poor fellow has been ill. He ‘s in Normandy just now, but I expect him back soon. There is a youth who might be anything he pleased: his family, one of the oldest in the South; his means abundant; his own ability first-rate. But his principles are of that inflexible material that won’t bend for mere convenience’ sake; he does not like, he does not approve of, the present Government of France.”
“What would he have, then? Does not Bonaparte satisfy the ambition of a Frenchman? Does he wish a greater name than that at the head of his nation?”
“That’s a brilliant lamp before us. But see there,” cried the abbé, as he flung open the shutter, and pointed to the bright moon that shone pale and beautiful in the clear sky – “see there! Is there not something grander far in the glorious radiance of the orb that has thrown its lustre on the world for ages? Is it not a glorious thought to revel in the times long past, and think of those, our fathers, who lived beneath the same bright beams, and drank in the same golden waters? Men are too prone to measure themselves with one of yesterday; they find it hard to wonder at the statue of him whom they have themselves placed on the pedestal. Feudalism, too, seems a very part of our nature.”
“These are thoughts I’ve never known, nor would I now wish to learn them,” said I; “and as for me, a hero needs no ancestry to make him glorious in my eyes.”
“All true,” said the abbé, sipping his glass, and smiling kindly on me. “A young heart should feel as yours does; and time was when such feelings had made the fortune of their owner. But even now the world is changed about us. The gendarmes have the mission that once belonged to the steel-clad cuirassiers; and, in return, the hussar is little better than a mouchard.”
The blood mounted to my face and temples, and throbbed in every vein and artery of my forehead, as I heard this contemptuous epithet applied to the corps I belonged to, – a sarcasm that told not less poignantly on me, that I felt how applicable it was to my present position. He saw how deeply mortified the word had made me; and, putting his hand in mine, with a voice of winning softness he added: —
“One who would be a friend must risk a little now and then; as he who passes over a plank before his neighbor will sometimes spring to try its soundness, even at the hazard of a fall. Don’t mistake me, Lieutenant; you have a higher mission than this. France is on the eve of a mighty change; let us hope it may be a happy one. And now it ‘s getting late, – far later, indeed, than is my wont to be abroad, – and so I ‘ll wish you good-night. I ‘ll find a bed in the village; and since I have made you out here, we must meet often.”
There was something – I could not define what exactly – that alarmed me in the conversation of the abbé; and lonely and solitary as I was, it was with a sense of relief I saw him take his departure.
The pupil of a school where the Consul’s name was never mentioned without enthusiasm and admiration, I found it strange that any one should venture to form any other estimate of him than I was used to hear; and yet in all he said I could but faintly trace out anything to take amiss. That men of his cloth should feel warmly towards the exiled family was natural enough. They could have but few sympathies with the soldier’s calling, and of course felt themselves in a very different position now from what they once had occupied. The restoration of Catholicism was, I well knew, rather a political and social than a religious movement; and Bonaparte never had the slightest intention of replacing the Church in its former position of ascendency, but rather of using it as a state engine and giving a stability to the new order of things, which could only be done on the foundation of prejudices and convictions old as the nation itself.
In this way the rising generation looked on the priests; and in this way had I been taught to regard the whole class of religionists. It was, then, nothing wonderful if ambitious men among them, of whom D’Ervan might be one, felt somewhat indignant at the post assigned them, and did not espouse with warmth the cause of one who merely condescended to make them the tool of his intentions. “Yes, yes,” said I to myself, “I have defined my friend the abbé; and though not a very dangerous character after all, it ‘s just as well I should be on my guard. His being in possession of the password, and his venturing to write his name in the police report, are evidences that he enjoys the favor of the Préfet de Police. Well, well, I’m sure I am heartily tired of such reflections. Would that the campaign were once begun! The roll of a platoon and the deep thunder of an artillery fire would soon drown the small whispering of such miserable plottings from one’s head.”
About a week passed over after this visit, in which, at first, I was rather better pleased that the abbé, did not come again; but as my solitude began to press more heavily on me, I felt a kind of regret at not seeing him. His lively tone in conversation, though spiced with that morqueur spirit which Frenchmen nearly all assume, amused me greatly; and little versed as I was in the world or in its ways, I saw that he knew it thoroughly.
Such were my thoughts as I returned home one evening along the broad alley of the park, when I heard a foot coming rapidly up behind me.
“I say, Lieutenant,” cried the voice of the very man I was thinking of, “your people are terribly on the alert to-night. They refused to let me pass, until I told them I was coming to you; and here are two worthy fellows who won’t take my word for it without your corroboration.”
I then perceived that two dismounted dragoons followed him at the distance of a few paces.
“All right, men,” said I, passing my arm beneath the abba’s, and turning again towards my quarters. “Would n’t they take the password, then?” continued I, as we walked on.
“Ma foi, I don’t know, for I haven’t got it.”
“How I not got it?”
“Don’t look so terribly frightened, my dear boy! you ‘ll not be put under arrest or any such mishap on my account. But the truth is, I ‘ve been away some days from home, and have not had time to write to the minister for the order; and as I wanted to go over to St. Cloud this evening, and as this route saves me at least a league’s walking, of course I availed myself of the privilege of our friendship both to rest my legs and have a little chat with you. Well! and how do you get on here now? I hope the château is more hospitable to you, eh? Not so? – that is most strange. But I have brought you a few books which may serve to while away the hours; and as a recompense, I ‘ll ask you for a supper.”
By this time we were at the door of my quarters, where, having ordered up the best repast my cuisine afforded, we sat down to await its appearance. Unlike the former evening, the abbe now seemed low and depressed; spoke little, and then moodily, over the unsettled state of men’s minds, and the rumors that pervaded Paris of some momentous change, – men knew not what; and thus, by a stray phrase, a chance word, or an unfinished sentence, gave me to think that the hour was approaching for some great political convulsion.
“But, Lieutenant, you never told me by what accident you came first amongst us: let me hear your story. The feeling with which I ask is not the fruit of an impertinent curiosity. I wish sincerely to know more about one in whose fortunes I have taken a deep interest. De Beauvais told me the little anecdote which made you first acquainted; and though the event promised but little of future friendship, the circumstances have turned out differently. You have not one who speaks and thinks of you more highly than he does. I left him this morning not many miles from this. And now that I think of it, he gave me a letter for you, – here it is.” So saying, he threw it carelessly on the chimney-piece, and continued: “I must tell you a secret of poor De Beauvais, for I know you feel interested in him. You must know, then, that our friend is desperately in love with a very beautiful cousin of his own, one of the suite of Madame Bonaparte. She ‘s a well-known Court beauty; and if you had seen more of the Tuileries, you’d have heard of La Rose de Provence.”
“I have seen her, I think,” muttered I, as my cheek grew crimson, and my lips trembled.
“Well,” resumed the abbé, and without noticing my embarrassment, “this love affair, which I believe began long ago, and might have ended in marriage, – for there is no disparity of rank, no want of wealth, nor any other difficulty to prevent it, – has been interrupted by General Bonaparte, because, and for no other reason, mark ye, than that De Beauvais’s family were Bourbonists. His father was a captain of the Garde du Corps, and his grandfather a grand falconer, or something or other, with Louis the Fifteenth. Now, the young marquis was well enough inclined to go with the current of events in France. The order of things once changed, he deemed it best to follow the crowd, and frequented the Tuileries like many others of his own politics, – I believe you met him there, – till one morning lately he resolved to try his fortune where the game was his all. And he waited on Madame Bonaparte to ask her consent to his marriage with his cousin; for I must tell you that she is an orphan, and in all such cases the parental right is exercised by the head of the Government. Madame referred him coldly to the General, who received him more coldly still; and instead of replying to his suit, as he expected, broke out into invectives against De Beauvais’s friends; called themChouansand assassins; said they never ceased to plot against his life with his most inveterate enemies, the English; that the exiled family maintained a corps of spies in Paris, of whom he half suspected him to be one; and, in a word, contrived to heap more insult on him in one quarter of an hour than, as he himself said, his whole family had endured from the days of Saint Louis to the present. De Beauvais from that hour absented himself from the Tuileries, and indeed almost entirely from Paris, – now living with his friends in Normandy, now spending a few weeks in the South. But at last he has determined on his course, and means to leave France forever. I believe the object of his coming here at this moment is to see his cousin for the last time. Perhaps his note to you has some reference to it.”
I took the letter with a trembling hand, – a fear of something undefined was over me, – and tearing it open, read as follows: —
Dear Friend, – The Abbé, d’Ervan will deliver this into your hands, and if you wish it, explain the reason of the request it contains, – which is simply that you will afford me the shelter of your quarters for one day in the park at Versailles. I know the difficulty of your position; and if any other means under heaven presented itself, I should not ask the favor, which, although I pledge my honor not to abuse, I shall value as the dearest a whole life’s gratitude can repay. My heart tells me that you will not refuse the last wish of one you will never see after this meeting. I shall wait at the gate below the Trianon at eleven o’clock on Friday night, when you can pass me through the sentries.
Yours, ever and devoted,
Henri De Beauvais.
“The thing is impossible,” said I, laying down the letter on the table, and staring over at D’Ervan.
“No more so, dear friend, than what you have done for me this evening, and which, I need not tell you, involves no risk whatever. Here am I now, without pass or countersign, your guest, – the partaker of as good a supper and as excellent a glass of wine as man need care for. In an hour hence, – say two at most, – I shall be on my way over to St. Cloud. Who is, then, I ask you, to be the wiser? You’ll not put me down in the night report. Don’t start: I repeat it, you can’t do it, for I had no countersign to pass through; and as the Consul reads these sheets every morning, you are not going to lose your commission for the sake of an absurd punctilio that nobody on earth will thank you for. Come, come, my worthy lieutenant, these same excellent scruples of yours savor far more of the scholar at the rigid old Polytechnique than the young officer of hussars. Help me to that ortolan there, and pass the bottle. There! a bumper of such a vintage is a good reward for so much talking.”
While the abbé, continued to exert himself, by many a flippant remark and many a smart anecdote, to dissipate the gloom that now fell over my spirits, I grew only more and more silent. The one false step I had taken already presented itself before me as the precedent for further wrong, and I knew not what course to take, nor how to escape from my dilemma.
“I say, Lieutenant,” said D’Ervan, after a pause of some minutes, during which he had never ceased to regard me with a fixed, steady stare, “you are about as unlike the usual character of your countrymen as one can well conceive.”
“How so?” said I, half smiling at the remark.
“All the Irishmen I have ever seen,” replied he, – “and I have known some scores of them, – were bold, dashing, intrepid fellows, that cared nothing for an enterprise if danger had no share in it; who loved a difficulty as other men love safety; who had an instinct for where their own reckless courage would give them an advantage over all others; and took life easily, under the conviction that, every day could present the circumstance where a ready wit and a stout heart could make the way to fortune. Such were the Irish I knew in the brigade; and though not a man of the number had ever seen what they called the Green Island, they were as unlike the English, or French, or Germans, or any other people, as – as the old Court of Louis the Fourteenth was unlike the guardroom style of reception that goes on nowadays yonder.”
“What you say may be just,” said I, coolly; “and if I seem to have few features of that headlong spirit which is the gift of my nation, the circumstances of my boyhood could well explain, perhaps excuse them. From my earliest years I have had to struggle against ills that many men in a long lifetime do not meet with. If suspicion and distrust have crept or stolen into my heart, it is from, watching the conduct of those I deemed high-spirited and honorable, and seeing them weak and, vacillating and faithless. And lastly, if every early hope that stirred my heart does but wane and pale within me, as stars go out when day is near, you cannot wonder that I, who stand alone here, without home or friend, should feel a throb of fear at aught which may tarnish a name that has yet no memory of past services to rely upon. And if you knew how sorely such emotions war against the spirit that lives here, believe me you had never made the reproach; my punishment is enough already.”
“Forgive me, my dear boy, if I said anything that could wound you for a moment,” said the abbé. “This costume of mine, they say, gives a woman’s privilege, and truly I believe it does something of the sex’s impertinence also.. I ought to have known you better; and I do know you better by this time. And now let me press a request I made some half an hour ago: tell me this same story of yours. I long to learn something of the little boy, where I feel such affection for the man.”
The look of kindness and the tone of soothing interest that accompanied these words I could not resist; so, drawing my chair close towards him, I began the narrative of my life. He listened with the most eager attention to my account of the political condition of Ireland; questioned me closely as to my connection with the intrigues of the period; and when I mentioned the name of Charles de Meudon, a livid paleness overspread his features as he asked, in a low, hollow tone, if I were with him when he died?
“Yes,” replied I, “by his bedside.”
“Did he ever speak to you of me? Did he ever tell you much of his early life when in Provence?”
“Yes, yes; he spoke often of those happy days in the old château, where his sister, on whom he doted to distraction, was his companion. Hers was a sad story, too. Strange, is it not, – I have never heard of her since I came to France?”
A long pause followed these words, and the abbé, leaned his head upon his hand, and seemed to be lost in thought.
“She was in love with her cousin,” I continued, “and Charles, unhappily, refused his consent. Unhappily, I say; for he wept over his conduct on his deathbed.”
“Did he?” cried the abbé, with a start, while his eye flashed fire, and his nostrils swelled and dilated like a chafed horse. “Did he do this?”
“Yes, bitterly he repented it; and although he never confessed it, I could see that he had been deceived by others, and turned from his own high-souled purpose, respecting his sister. I wonder what became of Claude, – he entered the Church.”
“Ay, and lies there now,” replied the abbé, sternly.
“Poor fellow! is he dead, too? and so young.”
“Yes; he contrived to entangle himself in some Jacobite plot.”
“Why, he was a Royalist.”
“So he was. It might have been another conspiracy, then, – some Chouan intrigue. Whatever it was, the Government heard of it. He was arrested at the door of his own presbyière; the grenadiers were drawn up in his own garden; and he was tried, condemned, and shot in less than an hour. The officer of the company ate the dinner that was preparing for him.”
“What a destiny! And Marie de Meudon?”
“Hush! the name is proscribed. The De Meudons professed strong Royalist opinions, and Bonaparte would not permit her bearing her family name. She is known by that of her mother’s family except by those poor minions of the Court who endeavor, with their fake affectation, to revive the graceful pleasantries of Marie Antoinette’s time, and they call her La Rose de Provence.”
“La Bose de Provence,” cried I, springing up from my chair, “the sister of Charles!” while a thrill of ecstasy ran through my frame, – followed the moment after by a cold, faint feel, – and I sank almost breathless in the chair.
“Ha!” cried the abbè, leaning over me, and holding the lamp close to my face, “what – ” And then, as he resumed his place, he slowly muttered between his teeth, “I did not dream of this!”
Not a word was now spoken by either. The abbè, sat mute and motionless, his eyes bent upon the floor, and his hands clasped before him. As for me, every emotion of hope and fear, joy and sorrow, succeeded one another in my mind; and it was only as I thought of De Beauvais once more that a gloomy despair spread itself before me, and I remembered that he loved her, and how the abbè, hinted his passion was returned.
“The day is breaking,” said D’Ervan, as he opened the shutter and looked out; “I must away. Well, I hope I may tell my poor friend De Beauvais that you ‘ll not refuse his request. Charles de Meudon’s sister may have a claim on your kindness too.”
“If I thought that she – ”
“You mean, that she loved him. You must take his word for that; she is not likely to make a confidant of you. Besides, he tells you it’s a last meeting; you can scarcely say nay. Poor girl, he is the only one remaining to her of all her house! On his departure you are not more a stranger here than is she in the land of her fathers.”
“I’ll do it I I’ll do it!” cried I, passionately. “Let him meet me where he mentioned; I ‘ll be there.”
“That’s as it should be,” said the abbé, grasping my hand, and pressing it fervently. “But come, don’t forget you must pass me through this same cordon of yours.”
With a timid and shrinking heart I walked beside the abbé, across the open terrace, towards the large gate, which with its bronzed and gilded tracery was already shining in the rich sunlight.
“A fine-looking fellow, that dragoon yonder; he ‘s deco’ rated, I see.”
“Yes; an old hussar of the Garde.”
“What ‘s he called?”
“Pierre Dulong; a name well known in his troop.”
“Halte-la!” cried the soldier, as we approached.
“Your officer,” said I.
“The word?”
“Arcole.”
“Pass, ‘Arcole;’ and good-morrow.”
“Adieu, Lieutenant; adieu, Pierre,” said the abbé, as he waved his hand and passed out.
I stood for a minute or two uncertain of purpose; why, I know not. The tone of the last few words seemed uttered in something like a sneer. “What folly, though!” said I to myself. “D’Ervan is a strange fellow, and it is his way.”
“We shall meet soon, Abbé,” I cried out, as he was turning the corner of the park wall.