Next day, to my great regret, nothing was said about continuing our journey; it seemed to be almost settled that we should not go any further.
How were we better off at Mesnil than at Villers-Cotterets, a dozen leagues from our starting-point and upon the same road? Neither my mother nor Mademoiselle Adélaïde could say with certainty.
However, it was settled that, unless some serious event occurred, we had reached our journey's end.
We arrived at Mesnil on the 22nd of March.
On the 25th everybody was talking of a grand review of the National Guard, which was to be held by King Joseph in the court of the Tuileries.
This function roused Mademoiselle Adélaïde's curiosity, for she had never seen Paris, and it was decided to put the horse to our cart, to start on the afternoon of the 26th, to sleep in Paris, to see the review on the 27th, and to return on the 28th.
My mother did not care to take this little trip; for Paris recalled memories that my thoughtless childhood had forgotten. She entrusted me to Crétet and to Mademoiselle Adélaïde, who took me with them.
I have but two clear recollections of this journey—although it was eight years later than the last one.
One, radiant and poetic: and the other impure and stained.
The first was when, at the flourish of brazen trumpets and the waving of welcoming flags, they lifted up above the heads of 50,000 of the National Guard, the rosy, fair, curly head of a child of three, amid cries ofVive le roi de Rome? Vive la régence!
He was that poor child who was born a king, but who was destined by fate not only to be disinherited of both his kingdoms, but soon to lose both his parents.
A painting of this child was sent to the emperor at Moscow, and another followed Napoleon to Saint-Helena.
The father of this little martyr-innocent had scarcely time to realise his existence, except as a heavenly vision appearing for a brief space in this world. He saw him after the Russian campaign, after the Dresden campaign, and never again save in the dreams and hallucinations of his solitude and his despair.
His mother,—as disastrous an influence on the fortunes of France as all other daughters of the Cæsars: Anne of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and now Marie Louise—stood behind him, but her face left an indistinct and insipid impression on my mind, and her features are lost in the mists of time; I can only remember her fair hair fastened up on the top of her head by a diamond comb.
They swore fealty to this poor child, and, if the flourish of trumpets and the shouting had ceased for a moment, if the murmur of Paris with her million peoples had been stilled, the booming of the enemy's guns could have been heard thundering only two leagues away from the place where they were making all that futile cheering, and swearing those hollow vows!
In his name it was promised that he should never quit Paris; that he, Marie Louise his mother, and King Joseph his uncle, should die among the French people. And the carriages that were to bear them away next day were standing ready with the horses harnessed, in the courtyards of the Tuileries!
So it fell out that the King of Rome left the château of Catherine of Médicis the following morning—that castle which survived days like the 20th June, the 10th August, the 29th July, and the 24th February. On the morrow he left to his successors, the Duke of Bordeaux and the Count of Paris, the royal cradle presented by the Hôtel-de-Ville; they too—both great-nephews of Louis XVI.—were destined not to rest in it any longer than he had done.
This, then, was the flash of light and poetry still present to my memory.
The second recollection was of the number of girls of the town who, at that period, called out from the windows of their apartments to passers-by their licentious invitations with gestures obscene.
Every few moments I would turn round and say to Crétet and Mademoiselle Adélaïde, "They are calling to us." Both laughed, and I wondered why they laughed.
We left Paris quite early next day, but not too early, however, to learn the ill-starred news.
During the night the King of Rome, the Empress, and King Joseph had left Paris and were speeding towards the Loire.
On learning this news, which meant the abandonment of the capital, my mother felt that the place where we were—a little village on the great highway, six leagues from the barriers—was the place of all places where we should be least safe, even though we might not be in any danger at all.
Paris, we heard, was preparing to defend herself, so if we remained at Mesnil we should be right in the line of attack.
Moreover, the enemy was at Meaux—their advance-guard had been seen as far as Bondy.
My mother determined to turn back, and we started on our return journey to Villers-Cotterets the next day.
I have completely forgotten what we did with Crétet and Mademoiselle Adélaïde, I only know they were not with us during the subsequent events.
When we reached Nanteuil, we learnt that the enemy had turned the position at Soissons, and were at Villers-Cotterets, marching upon Nanteuil. The Cossacks had discovered the quarry, had gone down into it and, according to rumour, had committed abominations in its dark depths such as the sun itself would have blushed to see had they been done in the light of day.
We heard behind us, from the direction of Paris, the sound of firing, and we were informed that the Prussian advance-guard was at Levignan, two leagues from where we then were. Therefore, if we wished to escape entirely from the enemy, there was only the road to Crespy available.
Crespy, being situated two leagues north of the road from Laon to Paris, leads nowhere, and might be overlooked.
So we made for Crespy.
My mother knew an old lady there, named Madame de Longpré—the widow of an old valet de chambre of Louis XV.
Concerning her I only remember that she was addicted to the terrible habit of brandy-drinking, and that in order to procureher brandy she sold every single article of a collection of magnificent china such as I have never seen since.
And at what price do you think she sold them? Thirty or fortysousthe piece!
True, at that time Chinese porcelain was not so highly valued as is the fashion to-day.
We drew up at her house, but she had not enough room to take us in; and the sight of her perpetual drinking would have been repulsive.
She took us to a lady—Madame Millet—who had, she said, a spare room quite ready that she could let us have.
It was soon settled;—Crespy is so near Villers-Cotterets that my mother was perfectly well known there, and we installed ourselves that same day.
Madame Millet had two sons and two daughters:—one of these two daughters, Amélie, would have been very pretty had she not lost one eye, through an accident—it was always closed, and she hid it by a great mass of beautiful black hair.
I remember nothing at all about the youngest girl, not even her name.
The two sons were army surgeons like their father.
The eldest had already left the service some two or three years before, and practised medicine in Crespy.
The other was with his regiment, no one knew where. In the midst of this generaldébâclenothing had been heard of him for six or eight weeks past, and the poor mother and his two sisters were very uneasy about him.
As we crossed the main square of Crespy, we came upon a kind of bivouac; we inquired about this garrison—a source of danger rather than a means of help, in a town which was as open as a market-place, and we learnt that it was composed of 100 infantry and 200 cavalry. This little corps was completely cut off from all communication with the main army, and was stationed there, under inferior officers, without any orders: there they awaited the tide of events.
The enemy lay all round Crespy: at Compiègne, at Villers-Cotterets, at Levignan. But by some curious chance, for whichwe were most grateful, Crespy had remained, like Péronne, if not quite inviolable, at least inviolate.
Our two or three hundred men kept splendid guard; they had pickets all round, their muskets were kept ever ready piled, and their horses were only unbridled when they had to be fed.
The activity of this handful of men was a remarkable contrast to the negligence of the duc de Treviso and of his army corps, who, as we have related, allowed themselves to be surprised one night at Villers-Cotterets.
One day, in spite of this vigilance, or rather because of it, an alarm was spread; the enemy had been seen filing out of the wood of Tillet, at the foot of the rise of Montigny.
This was the same hillock I thought so high, when I travelled to Béthisy with Picard and my cousin Marianne.
However that might be, the enemy was approaching, and the little troop resolved to defend vigorously.
Madame Millet's house was the second or third on the right as you came into the town from Villers-Cotterets—the same road that the enemy was taking.
The windows looked up that road.
We went up into the attics, which we turned into a general camping ground,—for Madame Millet, my mother, and the two daughters had settled not to stir out. From the windows of these attics we could see the approach of a little corps of about a hundred men.
Was it, we questioned, an isolated corps like ours at Crespy? or the advance-guard of a more considerable force? We were unable to tell, or rather to see, from our attic windows, as the road turned a few paces outside the town, was lost behind the houses that stood on our right, and completely cut off from sight a quarter of a league further by the wood of Tillet, which was large enough to conceal a much larger force than the one that had just passed through it.
It was Prussian cavalry. The men were clothed in short blue coats, tight-fitting round the chest, loose below and fastened at the waist by belts.
They wore grey trousers, with a blue stripe like their coats, and had small vizored helmets on their heads, fastened by a leather chin-strap.
Each man carried a sabre and two pistols.
I can still see the first rank, preceded by two trumpeters, holding their trumpets in their hands but not blowing them.
An officer marched behind the trumpeters.
They were fine-looking young fellows, fair, and of a more distinguished bearing than the ordinary soldier; no doubt they were of the voluntary levies of 1813, who came to Leipzig to try their prentice hands on us; officers of theTugendbund, which had produced Staps and was to produce Sand.
They passed under our windows, and disappeared out of our sight; a moment later we heard a perfect hurricane of sound, and the house shook to the gallop of horses. At the end of the street the Prussians had been charged by our cavalry, and, as they were unaware of the size of our forces, they retreated at full gallop, hotly pursued by our hussars.
They all rushed past together pell-mell—a hurricane of smoke and noise. Our soldiers were slashing and firing, sabre in one hand and pistol in the other.
The Prussians fired back as they fled. Two or three bullets struck our house; and one of them broke the bar of the shutter through which I was watching.
Great was the terror of the women, who rushed downstairs at a break-neck pace to hide themselves in the cellar. My mother tried to drag me with her, but I held fast to the window-sash, and rather than leave me she stopped by me.
It was a terrible and yet a magnificent sight to witness.
When pressed hard the Prussians faced about, and there, only twenty paces from us, under our very eyes, as near as the first row of boxes at the circus is to the stage, a battle was taking place in deadly earnest—a hand-to-hand fight.
I saw five or six of the Prussians fall, and two or three of the French.
The first man who fell was a Prussian, who was flying with his head and body bent low over his horse's neck; one slashingstroke cut open his back, from his right shoulder to his left flank, and left a ribbon-like band of red across him.
The wound must have been twelve or fifteen inches long.
Of the others whom I saw fall, one fell from a slash which cut his head open; the rest were stabbed or shot.
Then, after ten minutes' struggle, the Prussians were beaten; they trusted afresh to the speed of their horses to save them, and set off at full gallop.
The pursuit began again.
The hurricane resumed its course, strewing three or four men on the pavement before it disappeared out of sight.
One of these men was certainly killed, for he never moved; the others got up, or dragged themselves away to the other side of the road. One of them sat up and leant with his back against the wall; the other two, who were probably more seriously wounded, remained lying.
Suddenly a drum was heard summoning to the charge—it was our hundred infantry coming up to take their share of the fight: they marched with fixed bayonets, and disappeared round the bend of the road.
Five minutes later we heard sharp firing, then our hussars reappeared, driven back by five or six hundred cavalry.
The pursuers were now the pursued: but it was quite impossible to see or to distinguish any details in this second flurry of fighting—we only saw three or four more corpses stretched on the road when all was over.
A deep silence succeeded this turmoil. French and Prussians had plunged forward into the town: and, though we waited, we neither saw nor heard anything more.
What had become of our hundred infantry men? Probably they had rushed out into the open country, and had been either killed or taken.
And as for our cavalry men, who knew the district round about the town, they had escaped, it would seem, by way of the mountain of Sery, in the valley of Gillocourt.
We saw no more of their pursuers; no doubt they left the town by some other route than the one by which they hadentered, and had gone to rejoin their comrades, who were drawn up in the plain of Tillet to the number of about two or three thousand.
We were emboldened by the solitude and silence; moreover, our host, the military surgeon, came forward to attend to the wounded men.
I hung to his coat-tails, in spite of my mother's entreaties, and we opened the street door. A Prussian sergeant, who was leaning against this door, fell backwards when his means of support suddenly failed him.
He was wounded through the right breast by a sword thrust. Directly the women saw they could be useful to a poor wounded man their fears vanished. They rushed to the rescue, raised the young man (who would be somewhere between twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age) and carried him into the sitting-room, which they speedily turned into a hospital.
Millet continued his rounds, and, with the assistance of the neighbours, who began to appear at their doors, he brought back four or five of the wounded, one of whom was a Frenchman. The remainder were either dead or at their last gasp.
And now the bandaging began.
Here the women played the divine part heaven intended should fall to their portion. My mother, Madame Millet and her two daughters turned into true Sisters of Mercy, comforting and tending at the same time.
I held the basin full of water, while Millet washed the wounds and the servants prepared lint.
We then learnt from one of the Prussians who was least seriously wounded (he had received a sabre cut on his head), that he and his comrades belonged to a detachment of three thousand men, which had refrained from entering the town for fear of being surprised; they were following their instructions, which were to camp out as much as possible, their commanders always fearing a nocturnal massacre if they ventured to stay in the towns.
"However, it will all be over soon," added the wounded man, "since Paris surrendered the day before yesterday."
This was the first intimation we had received of that important event.
We were just on the point of crying out at the news, when a voice in the doorway said suddenly—
"That is not true, Paris will not surrender like that."
We turned round, and there we saw, leaning against the door, pale, one of the officers of our small detachment of infantry. He had one of the finest and most soldierly heads imaginable, gashed, now, with a deep wound over the left eye-brow—hence his pallor and the blood that covered him.
He had received a pistol-shot in his face, which had felled him; but, the fresh air soon reviving him, he had managed to get up, and, seeing the town a hundred steps in front of him, he had reached it, leaning against its walls for support.
The kind neighbours who had assisted our host had directed this officer to our house, and, mortally wounded, he had arrived just in time to give that truly patriotic denial to the news announced by his enemy.
The bullet was still in the wound; it was extracted very skilfully by Millet, but, as we have said, the wound was mortal, and the officer died during the night, about two o'clock in the morning, just when a dog began to bark.
Millet went into the yard and listened. Someone was knocking at the garden gate which led into the open country, and knocking so cautiously that it was plain whoever it was had to be wary.
Our host opened the gate himself, and he who knocked thus at a private door in the dead of the night was the second son of the house, about whom they had been so terribly anxious.
Our host came back into the house alone, went into one of the rooms, and bent over the bed where his mother and his two sisters were sleeping for a little while, after their good offices as sisters of charity. It was indeed good news God had sent them as a reward for their devotion.
They smuggled in the new-comer by a landing window, so that he could reach our attics without being seen.
For ten minutes the three women sobbed for joy, then he told them that Paris had indeed practically surrendered on March 30th.
Georges Millet—so far as I can recollect I believe Georges was his name—Georges Millet realised then that all was over. He left his regiment, and, at the risk of being taken a score of times, he managed to return to Crespy, walking by night and across country.
It had only taken him a night and a half, for Crespy was but fifteen leagues from Paris.
His brother gave him a razor to shave off his moustache, and for clothing they sent to Madame de Longpré, whose eldest son was the same size, and borrowed a coat, a waistcoat, and a pair of trousers, as the clothes of his elder brother (who was twice as stout as he was) would not have fitted him.
Next day the news came.
The Allies entered Paris on the 31st March.
On the 1st April the Senate appointed a Provisional Government.
On the 2nd, a decree of the Senate declared Napoleon to have forfeited his throne.
A fortnight later we returned to Villers-Cotterets, and settled down again in our home.
What a host of events had happened during that fortnight! The face of Europe had been changed.
On the 4th, Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son.
On the 6th he made his plans for retiring south of the Loire.
On the 10th aTe Deumwas chanted in the place Louis XV. by the Allies.
On the 11th Napoleon signed the decree of abdication.
On the 12th he attempted to poison himself.
The same day, whilst he was struggling with the poison, which had been adulterated by Cabanis, the Count d'Artois entered Paris.
On the 13th the Senate nominated that prince Lieutenant-General of the kingdom.
On the 14th the Emperor of Austria entered Paris.
On the 19th the Emperor Napoleon, deserted by everyone, was left alone with only a single valet de chambre.
Finally, on the 20th, he said adieu to the Eagles of the Imperial Guard, and set out for the isle of Elba; on the same day, and almost at the same hour, Louis XVIII. reached Compiègne.
All this had passed during that fortnight; thus had history been made, and the noise of these exploits had been bruited abroad for all the world to hear, whilst I, in my careless and happy ignorance, was untouched by the sound thereof.
Who would have said then that one day I should visit the isle of Elba, whose very existence was unknown to me till I heard its name pronounced, and whose geographical position I forgot as soon as it was told me? Who would have said that one day I should visit this isle of Elba with the Emperor's nephew?
Am I to be called Davy de la Pailleterie or Alexandre Dumas?—Deus dedit, Deus dabit—The tobacco-shop—The cause of the Emperor Napoleon's fall, as it appeared to my writing-master—My first communion—How I prepared for it.
Am I to be called Davy de la Pailleterie or Alexandre Dumas?—Deus dedit, Deus dabit—The tobacco-shop—The cause of the Emperor Napoleon's fall, as it appeared to my writing-master—My first communion—How I prepared for it.
Two or three days after our return to Villers-Cotterets, M. Collard came to see us, and my mother had a long talk with him; after which he left us, inviting her to join him that evening at M. Deviolaine's house.
My mother went to M. Deviolaine's and took me with her. There was a large company of officers with their sabres and epaulettes at table, as on the last occasion I had been in the house: only, this time they were Russian sabres and epaulettes: the same language and manners, perhaps rather more polished manners—that was the only difference.
I could not understand that these were they whom the people spoke of as "the enemy"—the enemy represents a principle, not actual men themselves.
My mother and M. Collard continued their conversation. Next day M. Collard was to leave for Paris, but he promised to look in at our house again before going.
That night, when we returned home, my mother took me aside, and, looking at me more seriously than usual, but with as loving a face, she said:—
"My dear one, the Count d'Artois, who has been appointed Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and Louis XVII., who is just about to be made King of France, are both brothers of King Louis XVI. Your grandfather, the Marquis de la Pailleterie, served under Louis XVI. as your father served under the Republic. Listen now, and attend carefully towhat I say, for probably your whole future will depend on the resolution we are about to take. Would you rather be called Davy de la Pailleterie, like your grandfather, for you are the grandson of the Marquis Davy de la Pailleteril, who was Groom of the Bed-chamber to the Prince of Conti, and Commissary-General of Artillery; in which case we could obtain a commission for you, or you could become one of the pages; and in either case you would have a position made for you in the new reigning family? Or would you like to be called simply and briefly Alexandre Dumas, like your father? If you bear the name of the republican General Alexandre Dumas, no career will be open to you, for, instead of serving those who now reign, as your grandfather did, your father served against them!... M. Collard is going to Paris to-day; he knows M. de Talleyrand, who was in theCorps Législatifwhen he was; he knows the duc d'Orléans; in fact, he knows many people belonging to the new Court, and he will do his best for you according to your own decision. Think carefully before you reply."
"Oh! I don't need to think, mother!" I cried—"I will be called Alexandre Dumas, and nothing else. I remember my father; I never knew my grandfather. What would my father think, who came to bid me farewell at the moment of his death, if I should disown him in order to call myself by my grandfather's name?"
My mother's face brightened.
"Is that your opinion?" she said.
"Yes; and yours too, is it not, mother?"
"Alas! yes; but what is to become of us?"
"Nonsense!" I replied; "you forget that I can construe theDe viris, and therefore I understand my father's motto:'Deus dedit, Deus dabit—God has given, God will give.'"
"Well then, my child, go off to bed after that: you aggravate me very much sometimes, but I am sure your heart is in the right place."
I went to bed without realising quite the importance of the decision my filial instinct had just prompted me to make, andthat, as my mother had warned me, it might very probably mean the shaping of my whole future life.
Next day M. Collard came again, and it was settled he should ask nothing whatever on my behalf, but only apply for a tobacco-shop for my mother.
A strange anomaly this—the widow of the Horatius Codes of the Tyrol selling tobacco!
And my education was to be continued at the Abbé Grégoire's.
I sayatthe Abbé Grégoire's, but I should have said under the Abbé Grégoire. For, whilst all these things had been happening, the abbé had lost his certificate as master of the school.
Some decision of the University had forbade him to keep a school at his own house—although he was allowed to teach pupils in the town.
For the consideration of six francs a month, which my mother agreed to pay him, I became one of his town pupils.
I was, besides, to take lessons in arithmetic with Oblet—the town schoolmaster, and to continue my fencing lessons with old Mounier.
And as for riding, I had taught myself, as the Roman soldiers did, by mounting bare-backed any horses I could get hold of. My sole education then was limited to as much Latin as the Abbé Grégoire could teach me; to studying the four rules of arithmetic with M. Oblet; and to executing counter-stroke, feint and parry with old Mounier.
Oblet, I must say, had the least enviable task, for I have always had such a profound aversion towards arithmetic that I never have been able to get beyond multiplication.
And even to-day I am incapable of doing the slightest sum in division.
But if I did not learn how to calculate under Oblet—God, who watched over me, providentially saw that I learnt something else.
Besides a perfect knowledge of hisBarême, Oblet wrote a splendid hand; he could make all the letters of the alphabet, like M. Prudhomme, with one flourish of his pen; and, furthermore, he could draw the most marvellous designs,ornaments, hearts, rosettes,lacs d'amour, Adam and Eve, the portrait of Louis XVIII., and I know not what else.
Now, handwriting was quite a different matter,—here I was gifted! When Oblet had given me my arithmetic lessons, and, to acquit his conscience, had dunned the three rules into me—(for, as I have said, I never got beyond multiplication)—we got out fine pieces of white paper, pared three or four quill pens in advance, to coarse or fine or medium points, and then began writing round-hand, flourishes and up-strokes galore.
In three months I had attained to Oblet's standard, and if I were not afraid of offending his pride, I should say that, in some points, I had even surpassed him.
My progress in writing gave my mother some pleasure, though she would much rather it had been in arithmetic.
"Writing, writing!" she would say; "it is something to be proud of, I must say, to write well. Why, any duffer can write well. But look at Bonaparte, you have a score of his letters addressed to your father; can you make out a single one of them?"
"But, madame, M. Bonaparté is now at the island of Elba," Oblet would reply gravely.
Oblet was a hot Royalist, so he always pronounced the name Bonaparté, and gave the ex-Emperor the title ofmonsieur.
The same honour or the same insult that Oblet offered to Bonaparte was offered me in the Chamber of 1847.
"Do you mean to say," my mother replied, "that he is at Elba because he didn't know how to write?"
"Why should I not say so? It is an argument that may be maintained, madame. They say that M. Bonaparté was betrayed by his marshals; but I say 'Providence willed this usurper should not be able to write clearly so that his orders should be illegible, and therefore they were not able to be carried out.' 'His marshals betrayed him! 'Nothing of the kind, madame; they read his orders wrongly, so they acted contrary to what he had ordered them. Hence have arisen our reverses and our defeats, and the taking of Paris and the exile to the isle of Elba."
"Well, we will drop Bonaparte now, M. Oblet."
"Madame, you yourself introduced the man into the conversation and not I; I never speak of the man."
"But suppose if Alexandre..."
"If your son, madame, one day becomes emperor of the French, since he will have, or rather as he already has, a splendid hand, his orders will be literally carried out, unless his marshals do not know how to read."
But my mother was not comforted for my lack of mathematical ability by this contingency, she sighed a deep sigh, and gave expression to the final word let fall by weary consciences, and exhausted intellects, and faith that has reached the doubting point—
"If only!..."
So I continued my five sorts of writing, my down-strokes and my up-strokes, my flourishes, my hearts, my rosettes andlacs d'amour, with Oblet.
Oblet, be it understood, was not the worst of those who treated the dethroned emperor badly: it was bad enough to call him M. Bonaparté, but many even contested his very name, saying that it never was Napoleon, but Nicolas, thus depriving him of his title ofThe Lion of the Desert,—fools that they were,—in order to call himConqueror of the Nations.
While all these things were happening I attained my thirteenth year, and it became time to think of making my First Communion—a serious event in the life of every child, but specially so in mine.
For, young as I was, I had always felt deeply religious, apart from external observances. That sentiment is always ready to vibrate in my heart like a mysterious, hidden chord, but it never really thrills save under the influence of a vivid emotion of joy or sorrow. In both circumstances, my first impulse, whether of gratitude or of affliction, is always towards the Saviour. Churches I hardly ever enter, for directly I cross the threshold I feel, like Habakkuk, as though an angel were pulling me back by the hair. Yet churches are suchsacred places to me that I feel it sacrilege to go there as others do, merely out of curiosity or from a religious freak.
No, it takes a deep access of joy, or some profound grief, to make me go into our northern churches, and then I always choose the loneliest comer or the darkest place—(though with God no dark places exist)—there I often prostrate myself, near a pillar against which I can lean my head; there, with eyes riveted, my being isolated from all others, I can bury myself in the one thought, that of a God, good, all powerful, eternal and infinite. I cannot find a word to say to Him, not a prayer to address to Him. What can one say to God, and what use is it to pray to Him, when He can see the face behind the mask, impiety behind hypocrisy? No, I prostrate my body, my heart, my soul, before His mercy-seat, I humble myself at the feet of His greatness. I bless Him for past mercies, I praise Him for the present, and I hope in Him for the future.
But all this is not very orthodox; all this may be Christian enough but hardly Catholic; it was therefore feared that I should not turn out a very edifying example of piety.
Those who thought so could not grasp the fact that my apparent want of religious feeling was really from my excess of religious emotion.
It was just the same with prayers as with the rules of arithmetic; I never could learn more than three: "Our Father," "Hail Mary," and "I believe in God." Moreover, I only knew these in French, and not word for word: they tried to teach me them in Latin, but, as I had not yet become at that time a pupil of the Abbé Grégoire, I declined to learn them, saying that I wanted to understand what I was asking God for, to which they replied that God understood all languages.
"Never mind!" I insisted; "it isn't enough for me that God understands, I must understand too."
And I obtained leave to learn my prayers in French.
But, in spite of my Gallican prayers and my imperfect attention to the instruction of the Catechism, there were twopersons, my mother and the Abbé Grégoire, who never doubted my religious tendencies.
And, more than that, the Abbé Grégoire, who was only a curate, obtained for me, in spite of the strictness of the Abbé Remy, the priest of the church at Villers-Cotterets, the supreme honour of being allowed to renew my baptismal vows.
The matter had long been talked of, and the Abbé Grégoire had to make himself personally responsible for his pupil.
A week beforehand I was given the vows of baptism, copied in Oblet's very finest handwriting; the next day I knew them by heart.
The day before the ceremony, my mother found me absorbed in reading a book which seemed to cast a spell over all my faculties. She never doubted for an instant that the book I was thus so taken up with was theImitation of Christ, or thePratique du Chretien: she approached me gently and read over my shoulder.
I was reading theLettres d'Héloïse et d'Abeilard, a poetical version by Colardeau.
My mother snatched the book out of my hands.
"That is a nice book to read," said she, "to aid you in your first communion!"
I tried to defend the book; I said that Abelard's exhortations were highly moral, and the lamentations of Heloise extremely religious. I wished to know how either the one or the other could mar my sincere contrition for the sins I had committed, for which I was to receive absolution on the morrow. My mother did not think it meet to give me any explanation on the subject, but as the Abbé Grégoire happened to pass by, she called him in. The Abbé Grégoire, constituted judge, took the book, read half a page, shook his head and said—
"Really, the verses are very poor."
And he handed the book back to my mother.
I need hardly say I differed in my opinion from the abbé, and thought Colardeau's lines splendid. Who was in the right, the abbé or I? I strongly incline to think my mother was.
That night the Abbé Remy took me aside, after preparation, and explained to me that it was because of the name I bore, my mother's social position in the town, and specially because of the Abbé Grégoire's recommendation, that he had consented to allow me to repeat my baptismal vows. He hoped then that I should realise the importance of the responsibility with which I was to be invested, and that I should prove myself worthy of it.
I confess I did not quite understand his admonitions. If, among all the candidates, there was one child ready for this solemn rite, by reason of his own convictions, it was myself. I bitterly resented this injustice, the first that had ever been offered me.
I have since become more accustomed to false conceptions of my feelings, my conduct, my character. I hardly slept the whole of that night: the idea that I was going to place myself in communion with the sacred body of our Lord moved me profoundly; the greatness of the act weighed heavily on me, and tears were very near. I felt utterly unworthy of the grace that was to be vouchsafed to me.
They dressed me in a new suit for this solemn occasion; I wore Nankeen trousers, a white quilted waistcoat, and a blue coat with metal buttons,—all made by Dulauroy, the first tailor of Villers-Cotterets.
A white necktie, a cambric shirt, and a wax candle weighing two pounds, completed my toilet.
A previous ceremony had helped to deepen the impression of this one. The day before it was discovered that one of our companions, whose real name was, doubtless, Ismaël, but who was called Maël for short, whom I strongly suspected of being a Jew, had not been baptized; so he was baptized conditionally, and I and a young girl, who repeated the Vows for him, were chosen to be his godfather and godmother.
My fellow-sponsor was a very pretty girl with fair hair, slightly inclined to be reddish in tone, which did not at all spoil the general effect of her prettiness.
Her baptismal name was Laura, even that of Petrarch'sillustrious mistress; but I have totally forgotten anything about her family.
It was arranged that I was to communicate next day between my two godsons—Ismaël and Roussy.
I had been godfather to Roussy for ten months, with Augustine Deviolaine, who was nine months younger than I; and Ismaël was nine months older.
At last the hour arrived. We know what a festival was made of the communion of children formerly, in small towns: it was the counterpart of that grand festival of Corpus Christi, since suppressed. Popular instinct thought of the two together with almost equal reverence: extreme weakness and Supreme Power. All faces were radiant, every house was decked with flowers. At least, that seemingly was how it looked to me, through the eyes of a child of thirteen, my heart full of life and faith.
Hiraux performed marvellous things on his organ that day: he was, indeed, a great artist; his melodious chords seemed to represent that everything which was youthful, loving, and poetic in life, was poured forth at the feet of our Saviour.
I remember nothing of the details of the ceremony. I was wrapped in the deepest contemplation. I remember that everything around me seemed filled with light and hope. Whatsoever is granted to the eye of faith in contemplation of heavenly things, was granted that day to me. The feeling was so overwhelming, and so real, that, when the Host touched my lips, I burst into weeping and fainted away.
The Abbé Remy could not understand it at all.
Ever since that day I have felt a deep reverence for all that is holy, a religious worship for everything high and noble; each heavenly spark has kindled within me an inward fire, which has had its outward effect, like the lava in a volcano when the crater is full to bursting.
It took me two or three days to recover from this excitement; and, when the Abbé Grégoire came to see me, I flung myself, crying, into his arms.
"My dear boy," he said, "I would far rather your feelings were less intense, and that they would last longer."
The Abbé Grégoire was full of common-sense.
No, my dear abbé, it did not last. No; for, as I have said, I was not the type of man to practise religion. As a matter of fact, that first communion was the only one I ever made. But—I can say it to the dead as to the living—when the last communion shall come to me, as the pendant of the first, when the hand of the Lord shall have closed the two horizons of my life, and drawn the veil of His love between the nothingness that precedes and the nothingness that follows man's life, He can search every atom of the intermediate space with the most rigorous eye and He will not find in it one evil thought, or one action with which I can reproach myself.
Auguste Lafarge—Bird-snaring on a large scale—A wonderful catch—An epigram—I wish to write French verses—My method of translating Virgil and Tacitus—Montagnon—My political opinions.
Auguste Lafarge—Bird-snaring on a large scale—A wonderful catch—An epigram—I wish to write French verses—My method of translating Virgil and Tacitus—Montagnon—My political opinions.
It would seem as though in response to this outburst of my spirit towards God He rewarded my mother by giving her the only thing she had ever been able to obtain in return for her twelve years of petitioning.
To provide for this great event we had moved to the rue de Lormet, and had taken up our abode in the place de la Fontaine, in a house belonging to a coppersmith called Lafarge, who had let us the whole of his first floor, and engaged besides to let us his shop if we needed it.
The license to keep a tobacco-shop having been obtained, he kept his promise, and we established ourselves on the ground floor, facing the street, in a large room furnished with two counters: one for the retail of tobacco and the other for the sale of salt.
Our future prospects all centred in this twofold trade, which we owed to the protection of M. Collard.
Some time after we were installed, the son of the coppersmith came to see his father. He was a fine, light-complexioned young fellow, who held a post as head clerk in Paris; he was looking out for a lawyer's practice, but wanted the capital wherewith to purchase one. He had returned to his family with all the attractions of the capital about him; a box-coat with thirty-six bands to it in the latest fashion, a watch-chainwith massive trinkets, tight-fitting trousers, and bootsà la hussarde.He hoped to dazzle a wealthy heiress;—no difficult task, perhaps, to one accustomed to charm the fair ones of Paris.
Poor Auguste Lafarge was at that period a fascinating youth, with fair, pink complexion as I have said; a complexion which, under the disguise of health, hid the germs of consumption, the disease he later fell a victim to. Moreover, he had intellectual tastes, having been thrown into the literary atmosphere of the time, and he numbered Désaugiers, Béranger, and Armand Gouffé among his friends; he composed dainty songs, and, as though born wealthy, he knew how to draw a gold piece out of his pocket and fling it down carelessly in payment for the smallest article he bought.
Such a man of fashion could not, of course, sleep at the back of his father's shop; so they borrowed one of our rooms, which we willingly gave up to him, and Auguste was established in our quarters.
Greedy after novelty, I was, of course, anxious to cultivate so personable a model, and I made advances to Auguste, whom, moreover, my mother held up to me as a pattern. Auguste accepted my overtures, and offered, what he thought might please me most, to take me on a grand bird-catching expedition.
I agreed. I had hitherto recognised Auguste's superiority in everything, but I quite hoped to bear away the palm in the matter of bird-catching.
I was wrong: we country people perform our bird-catching like artists; Auguste did his as a lord of the manor.
He sent for Boudoux, and asked him which were the best bird-snaring pools in the forest?
"Those near the Compiègne and Vivières roads," promptly answered Boudoux.
"How many other pools are there within, say, a league of this neighbourhood?"
"Seven or eight."
"So then, if we block all the other pools three or four daysbeforehand, the birds will be obliged to go to the two pools on the Vivières and Compiègne roads?"
"Yes, poor little things, unless it rains; in which case, instead of leaving their haunts, they will, as you know, drink out of the hollows of the leaves."
"Do you think it will rain, Boudoux?"
Boudoux shook his head.
"My aunt's barometer is at set fair, M. Auguste; it will not rain till the moon changes."
"Very well! Boudoux, take these ten francs, and block all the pools round about; on Saturday evening Dumas and I will come and draw the two pools near the Compiègne and Vivières roads. We ought to have a first-class hut near one or other of these two pools, to spend the night in."
"Very good, M. Auguste," said Boudoux, "I will attend to it."
"I want, besides, two thousand lime-twigs to-night, so as to get them smeared beforehand."
"You shall have them, M. Auguste."
"All right," said Lafarge, with the gestures of an emperor.
This was my first lesson in extravagance; the readers ofMonte-Cristocan judge if it was lost on me!
On the Saturday night, all was ready, thanks to the ten francs Boudoux had received. When the robin's last song was ended we spread the two pools with snares. Then we wrapped ourselves up, Auguste in his greatcoat, I in my blanket, on a bed of ferns prepared by Boudoux, and we tried to sleep.
I say we tried to sleep, but, although the air around us was balmy, the forest quiet, the moonlight serene, the expectation of pleasure keeps one awake almost as much as pleasure itself. It is very rarely I sleep the night before a hunting expedition, and only when life is more seriously preoccupied do these pleasant attacks of insomnia cease.
It was then very rarely that I slept on fine nights, when excited by anticipation of a bird-snaring, or shooting, or hunting excursion. Those lonely vigils were not waste time,for I love solitude and silence and vastness, and I owe this love to those nights spent in the forest, at the foot of a tree, watching the stars through the canopy of leaves stretched between me and the sky, and listening to all the mysterious, incomprehensible sounds which are awake in the bosom of the wood while Nature sleeps.
Lafarge slept hardly more than I did. What was he dreaming of, I wonder? Probably of the face of a pretty grisette he had deserted in a Parisian garret; or, simpler explanation still, of that overweening ambition of his to become a solicitor, though only the son of a coppersmith.
At three o'clock in the morning the song of a robin, as it hopped among the bushes, announced to us that day had come, as it had announced night to us; next a blackbird fluted, then the tomtits and jays followed suit.
Each bird seemed to have his own special hour for waking and praising God. I never recollect to have taken part in or seen such a haul of birds as we took that day. We numbered jays, blackbirds, and thrushes by the dozen; redbreasts, tomtits, linnets, and warblers by the score; and we returned to the town bent down under the weight of our spoils.
Three days after, Auguste Lafarge returned to Paris. His attractions had failed; he had come to Villers-Cotterets to ask Mademoiselle Picot to marry him, and had been rejected.
The night he spent with me he was not dreaming of ambition, or of love, but of revenge: he was concocting an epigram, copies of which he gave to me and to twenty other persons when he left.
It ran as follows:—
"La fière Éléonor compte avec complaisanceLes nombreux soupirants qui briguèrent sa main,Et que sa noble indifférencePaya toujours d'un froid dédain.Pourtant, à ces discours que votre esprit résiste;S'il en fut un ou deux tenté par ses ducats,Un volume in quarto contiendrait il la listeDe tous ceux qui n'en voudraient pas?"
I cannot say whether the epigram is good or bad; I will leave the question to be decided by the Academy, which is learned in such matters, since it accepted M. de Sainte-Aulaire because of a quatrain. But I know very well that all the people I had seen the previous day laughing at the Lafarge family, on the morrow laughed at the Picot family.
Since the death of Demoustier there had not been an unpublished verse circulated in our little town; so Auguste's eight lines made a great sensation for eight days after.
I confess that the stir made over an absent man dazzled me. I was fired with ambition to have the glory attached to me of being talked of when away, and at the Abbé Grégoire's first lesson I begged him to teach me to make French verses, instead of insisting so tiresomely on my making Latin ones.
These lines of Auguste Lafarge were the first rays of light thrown upon my life; he kindled in me ambitions vague and nebulous until then; things which had been dreams rather than definite ideas, aspirations rather than determinations.
And it will be seen that Auguste Lafarge's influence on me was continued by Adolphe de Leuven.
I asked Abbé Grégoire to teach me to make French verses, for he was the official poet of the countryside.
I have said that since the days of Demoustier not an unpublished poem had tickled the wits of my fellow townspeople; but I am mistaken; for at every festival, at all christenings or baptisms of any importance, the Abbé Grégoire was called upon in his capacity as poet.
I have never seen more worthy verses than his were; therefore, when I made this request, which would have been tolerably presumptuous made to Hugo or Lamartine, "Teach me to make French verses," the Abbé Grégoire was not in the least taken aback, but answered simply—
"I shall be delighted; but you will be tired of it, as you are of everything else, at the end of a week."
He gave me someboûts-rimésto finish, and I strove hard to compose French poetry. But the abbé was right; and at the end of a week I had had enough of it.
All my other lessons continued as usual. The Abbé Grégoire came at eleven o'clock every day to give me two hours' lessons, while the rest of the day I had pretty much to myself; and this is what happened.
My professor, to save himself trouble, had a Virgil and a Tacitus, with the translation side by side with the original. These two volumes he left behind him at our house each day, to save carrying them backwards and forwards, and he locked them up in a little cabinet, carefully taking the key away, knowing what a great temptation they would be to an idle boy like me.
Unluckily, I made the discovery that the box had hinges on the outside. With the help of a screw-driver I half opened the hinges, and extracted whatever I wanted through this half-open space, sometimes the singer of Æneas, at others the historian of the Cæsars; and, thanks to the help of the French translation, I produced versions which astonished even the professor.
As for my mother, she was charmed.
"Look at that child," she would say to all callers; "he shuts himself up, and in an hour the whole of his home lessons for the day are done."
I did indeed shut myself up, and with the utmost precautions. But, unfortunately, things did not prosper so well on composition days as on those of translation.
The exercises were dictated by the abbé, but, alas! there was no translation to their Latin locked away in any sort of cabinet; they had to be done by the help of a dictionary, and the result was that they were full of mistakes, which counterbalanced, in the mind of my teacher, the good effect of my translations, and eternally puzzled the poor man with the question as to how "The child could be so good in translation and so weak in composition." He died without finding the solution to it.
So it came about that on composition days the work took me four hours instead of two: but, even then, the two or four hours' work left me ten or twelve hours free each day. It will be seen that I had plenty of time at my own disposal.
I spent the greater part of my time at a gunsmith's who lived opposite us.
He was called Montagnon. He had a son who took lessons with me from Abbé Grégoire, and who died of nervous exhaustion. They let me see him when he was laid out, and the sight completed the cure begun by M. Tissot.
I did not give up frequenting the father's shop after the death of his son, my companion; for the firearms there were what I loved above all else.
Amongst these firearms I found the single-barrelled gun which I had taken down on the day after my father's death, with which to kill God. I was to have that gunwhen I was big;—now, this definitionwhen I was bigwas utterly vague, and tormented me greatly. I thought I was by now quite big enough, for I was growing taller than the gun.
The consequence of my assiduous attendance at Montagnon's shop was that I became more learned in my knowledge of a gunsmith's trade than in translation; and I could take to pieces and put together again as complicated a mechanism as the breeching of a gun as well, and almost as ingeniously, as the cleverest gunsmith.
Old Montagnon would tell me that it was my vocation, and offered to take me free of premium as an apprentice; but he was mistaken, my enthusiasm did not go to that length.
The rest of my time was spent in making weapons with Mounier, or in going bird-snaring, or decoying, with my two best friends Saulnier and Arpin.
In these leisure times it was very rarely that a day passed without my receiving a dressing down on account of my political opinions!
Everybody had an opinion about the end of 1814 and the beginning of 1815, and generally each opinion was very strongly held; only, these opinions were not divided into as many shades as the colours in a rainbow, as nowadays, but were divided into two sharply defined colours—you were either a Royalist or a Bonapartist. The Republican party had passed away and Liberals had not yet appeared; there were nosuch parties as Saint Simonism, Fourierism, Democracy, Socialism, Cabétism.
I do not assert that my mother and I were Bonapartists, but we had been labelled such by other people.
We Bonapartists! It was a strange idea. Bonaparte had disgraced, exiled, and ruined us; Napoleon had forgotten, disowned, and left us to starve; and they dubbed us Bonapartists!
The feelings which made me resent this appellation, on behalf of my mother and myself, were so hearty, that whenever any children called me a Bonapartist as we met in the streets, I would throw off my cap and my jacket and, considering myself insulted, instantly demand reparation.
If the offender were of a size to offer it me, satisfaction was given, sometimes too satisfactorily; but it did not matter, for if that happened I began again the next day.
The persistency with which people called us Bonapartists made my mother very uneasy on two accounts: first, because it earned me so many blows; I had never come home so often with a bleeding nose or black eye as since the Restoration; and, secondly, because she detected, underlying this accusation, a feeling of hatred, or rather of jealousy, which would cause her to lose her tobacco-shop license: they would certainly not fail to take it away from her if the charge of Bonapartism were believed.
The single-barrelled gun—Quiot Biche—Biche and Boudoux compared—I become a poacher—It is proposed to issue a writ against me—Madame Darcourt as plenipotentiary—How it happened that Creton's writ caused me no bother.
The single-barrelled gun—Quiot Biche—Biche and Boudoux compared—I become a poacher—It is proposed to issue a writ against me—Madame Darcourt as plenipotentiary—How it happened that Creton's writ caused me no bother.
In this state of anxiety we passed the winter of 1814 to 1815, during which I began my first lessons in shooting, in spite of my mother's unwillingness.
My mother had positively forbidden Montagnon to give me the famous single-barrelled gun; but Montagnon thought me so skilful in handling guns that he had no sympathy with my poor mother's terrors; so he gave me (not the forbidden gun, for he was a native of Auvergne to the tips of his fingers, and was too honest a man to break his word; but) another single-barrelled gun that he had himself made for his son, and, consequently, felt able to guarantee its safe working. Moreover, as one could not go shooting without powder and without shot, he provided me with ammunition, and let me go abroad in the parterre.
This gun was the more precious in my sight since it was of the true poacher's pattern, with a barrel like a stick that one could carry in one's hand, and a butt-end that could be put in one's pocket; so if one saw a bird one could turn it into a gun and become a sportsman—or if anybody was about, it could be transformed into a walking-stick, and one became a pedestrian.
As nobody suspected me of having such a weapon in my possession, nobody distrusted me. When the keeper heard a shot he might come to me and ask me if I knew anything about it. Of course I had heard the firing,—I could not havedone otherwise,—but I had never seen the culprit, or, if I had seen him, he had taken flight when he caught sight of me; and the direction he had taken was always opposite to the way I myself meant to go.
So it came about that I regulated my walks by those of the keeper, and, save for the evil accusation of Bonapartism, all was for the best in the best possible of worlds.
My usual hunting grounds were those which then went by the name ofles grandes allées; four rows of limes, ranged about a quarter of a league in length, running from the castle to the forest. These four rows of trees faced the flat, open country to right and to left; so it was easy to see an enemy approaching from a good distance, and to fly as he came nearer.
In winter these alleys abounded in all kinds of birds, especially with thrushes; and my walking-stick gun, which was of small calibre, was an excellent weapon, and carried to the highest trees.
So, when my composition or my translation was finished, or perhaps left unfinished, I would pursue my way, under cover of going to Montagnon's; Montagnon would hand me the gun ready primed, let me out at his back door, and I was at thegrandes alléesin no time.
There I found Saulnier or Arpin, with a firearm mounted in a block of wood, or a short gun, or a long pistol, and the sport began.
And there, moreover, I discoveredquiot Biche.
Cooper has dedicated five novels to Leather Stocking; therefore I ask my readers to permit me to dedicate some lines to quiot Biche, probably the only man in Europe who might, without disadvantage, be compared to the American hero.
Hanniquet, for I know not what reason, was nicknamed quiot Biche. He was, at the time of which I am speaking, a boy of about twenty years of age, of medium height, perfectly well made, strong as a well-balanced machine, and, more than all things else, a first-rate poacher.
Biche had begun by snaring and decoying birds, as should every true poacher, and in these two exercises he was, beyonddoubt, to Boudoux what Pompey was to Cæsar; perhaps Biche might even have become Cæsar, and Boudoux Pompey, had not ambition led him away in the direction of poaching, a province Boudoux held in lofty and prudent disdain!
Nobody could distinguish a rabbit in its burrow in a spinney, or a hare in fallow land, better than Biche; nobody knew so well as Biche how to steal up carelessly to that hare or that rabbit, and to kill it with a stone or a blow from a stick.
The reader knows what pace a partridge can go when it runs. Well! Biche possessed the art of mesmerising partridges till he could walk up and kill one with a wretched old pistol, without cock or hammer, which he fired by means of a tinder-match.
I need hardly add that he never missed it: for when people are such keen lovers of sport as to shoot with such bad weapons they kill at every shot.
Biche was my professor, for he had taken a fancy to me.
He taught me all the tricks of hunter and animals; and, for every animal's trick he knew, he had one, and sometimes two, to cap it.
Later, his merits became appreciated, and, as he could not be prevented from poaching, he was made one of the keepers.
After a period of fifteen years' absence, not knowing what had become of him, I came across Biche once more as head keeper in the forest of Laigue, where I happened to be shooting by permission from the duc d'Orléans.
It was under his guidance that I had permission to shoot. We recognised one another, I greeted him with delight, and off we set. The great Saint Hubert alone knows what sport we had that day!
When the Revolution of 1848 caused shooting prerogatives in the royal forests to pass into the hands of private individuals, Biche gave up shooting. The privilege allowed to keepers in former days, of killing as many rabbits for their own private consumption as they liked, has now been taken away. Furthermore, they have now been deprived of their guns, and reduced to carrying only a stick by way of weapon.
On my last visit to Compiègne one of my friends, who rented a tenth part of the forest of Laigue, gave me all these particulars.
"Oh! heavens!" I cried, "my poor Biche; surely he has died of grief at being deprived of his gun?"
"Biche!" replied my interlocutor; "don't you be uneasy, he kills more with his stick than the whole lot of us with our rifles."
So I was partially comforted on Biche's behalf.
I profited marvellously under Biche's tuition, but such great happiness could not last long.
Impunity begets confidence, confidence tends to foolhardiness.
One fine day towards the end of February 1815, when the sun was shining brilliantly on a carpet of snow, about a foot in depth, I followed a thrush, which was flitting from tree to tree, with such close attention that I did not notice I was myself being followed. At length it seemed to settle in the middle of a bunch of mistletoe. I made a gun of my stick, adjusted it, and fired.
It had scarcely gone off when I heard these terrible words three steps from my side:—
"Ah! you little rogue, I have caught you!"
I turned round thoroughly scared, and I recognised a head keeper called Creton. His open hand was within half a foot of my coat collar.
I was too well acquainted with the game of prisoner's base to allow myself to be taken like that; I leapt on one side, and was soon ten steps from him.
"You may catch me, but I am not caught yet," I said.
He need not have taken the trouble to run after me, as he had recognised me, for the evidence of a gamekeeper is valid unsupported by other witnesses; but his pride was touched, and he rushed after me in pursuit.
My legs had grown since the day on which Lebègue had given me chase with such humiliating results to myself. Creton saw at the first glance that I was a hard runner, and that hewould not get much change out of me, but he did not give up trying to overtake me. I made for the open plain, which was separated from me by a six-foot wide ditch. A six-foot ditch was nothing to me, and I more than cleared it.
Creton, carried away by his chase, tried to do the same, but his legs were four times older than mine, and years had taken away their elasticity. Instead of alighting on the other side, he fell on the near side; and instead of continuing his chase at top speed, as I was doing, he got out of the ditch on all fours, got up with great difficulty, and went hobbling on his way, leaning on the butt of his rifle.
He had twisted his ankle: this did not improve matters for me, and I returned to Montagnon and told him the whole story.
"Bah!" he said, "we have dealt with many another ogre such as he, and we are not dead yet."
"But, tell me, can't he put me in prison?"
To go to prison was the supreme fear of my childhood. One of my playfellows, Alexandre Tronchet, had been put in prison for twelve hours for pillaging. I had accompanied him to the end of the town, and only one thing had prevented me from being one of the party: I was wearing a long coat; they thought I should not be able to run easily in case of a chase, and that I should therefore be taken and compromise the whole band.
Therefore they hounded me back ignominiously.
I was not an accomplice in the fact, but I was in intention. When I saw Alexandre Tronchet put in prison I thought I should die of fear.
That was why I asked Montagnon so piteously if they would put me in prison.
"If they try to put you in prison, come to me, my boy, and I will prove to them that they have no law or right to imprison you."
"What else could they do?"