Oh! what profound reflections I made as I returned home! How well I realised that it would have been far better to laugh at the joke, no matter how grim it was, than to cry as I had done! I placed Heraclitus a thousand times higher than Democritus!
My mother was much struck by my sadness, and she questioned me closely upon the causes of my melancholy, but I had been too ready to tell tales, and I preserved profound silence.
At one o'clock I returned to the college: all the lads had had their dinner sent in to them from their homes; the greater number of these dinners, let it be said, to the parents' honour, consisted of a simple slice of dry bread.
The complaints and groans had stopped, but the threatenings had increased, the clouds were lowering and full of lightnings. I could not raise my nose from the paper upon which I was decliningrosabut I caught sight of a fist which had nothing in common with the declension I was writing out.
I realised that, when I went out, I was going to be beaten to pulp. The bigger boys were too conscious of their superior strength to threaten the most, for they felt they could not take revenge on a child: the worst were those of about my own age, specially a lad called Bligny, the son of a draper, living inthe place de la Fontaine, who was so angry with me that by common consent the task of taking a general vengeance on me was consigned to him. Bligny was two years older than I, so that I had been used to look upon him as a big lad, although I was really as tall as he.
I was therefore not too well at ease at the prospect of a duel with him.
Still, I had so often heard the story of the three duels my father had fought when he first entered the army, on behalf of the honour of the king and the queen, that I knew I must not shirk my first fight.
I was so preoccupied that I made quite a dozen mistakes in the three or four declensions I had to do during school hours.
I do not know how long the time may have seemed to my companions, but I know that never before had it seemed to me to fly so fast. Four o'clock struck, and the Abbé Grégoire said his prayer before I thought half the class was over.
There was nothing to be done but to leave, and I decided upon my line of action. I tied up my books in as leisurely a fashion as possible, hoping that, if I went down the staircase last, the torrent would have flown by and I should find a free passage; yet I knew in my inmost heart that I had brought too great a punishment down on my head by my denunciation to get off so cheaply.
I could have spoken to the Abbé Grégoire, and he would himself have taken me home or sent his sister Alexandrine with me; but I felt that that would be cowardly, and would only defer matters. M. Grégoire or his sister could not always conduct me home; there would come a day when I should be obliged to go by myself, and then I should be certain to have a brush with one or other of my schoolfellows.
I resolved, therefore, to face the danger and to take the bull by the horns.
Remember, all these thoughts were whirling in the head of a lad only ten years old.
I took my stand, I said good-bye to the Abbé Grégoire, I heaved a big sigh, and then I went downstairs.
I was not mistaken: the whole school was seated in a semi circle, like Roman spectators, on the raised seats of their amphitheatre; and, standing at the bottom of the stairs, with his coat off and his shirt sleeves tucked up, Bligny awaited me.
Ah! I confess that when I reached the turn of the stair case and saw all these preparations taken for the inevitable battle, my heart failed me, and I nearly ran up again; but although I had tried to repress my momentary hesitation it had not escaped my comrades; there was a general outcry and the most scurrilous epithets were yelled at me from the courtyard below. I felt myself turn pale and tremble all over, and a cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I took measure of the two extremities to which I was reduced,—either to receive a few blows in the eye or on the teeth and all would be settled, or ever afterwards to be the sport of my schoolfellows and to have to go through it afresh each day. I gripped hold of my courage, which was fast ebbing away; I pulled myself together by an act of the will, till I felt myself completely master of the situation. There was a brief struggle, at the end of which I felt my moral courage getting the better of my physical; reason conquered instinct.
All the same, I felt that I wanted an incentive to goad me forward, that that goad was within my own control, and that, if I would use it, I must stimulate my courage with lashing words.
"Ah!" I said, looking at Bligny—"Ah! is this the game?"
"Yes, this is the game," he replied.
"You want to fight, then, do you?"
"Yes, rather."
"Ah! you are longing for it?"
"Yes."
"Ah! really?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, come on!"
I had now goaded myself to action; I put my books on the ground, I threw off my jacket, and I hurled myself upon my antagonist, shouting:
"Ah! you want to fight!... ah! you want to fight!... take that! and that! and that!"
Marshal de Saxe, that great military philosopher, said very truly that the whole art of war consists in pretending not to be afraid and in inspiring fear in the enemy.
I appeared quite fearless, and Bligny was beaten.
I do not wish to imply he was beaten without a contest, not so; but it would have been better for him if he had not fought: he received a blow in the eye, another blow on his mouth, and made a hasty retreat after this double attack, which he only opposed by a feeble hit at my nose. The whole affair was over in less than a minute, and the victory was mine.
I ought to do my comrades the justice of saying that this victory was followed by unanimous applause.
I then put my jacket on again, and collected my books, murmuring:
"You see! you see! you see!" which seemed to mean, "Look at me, see what I am! a coward at bottom, but when driven to desperation, an Alexander, a Hannibal, or a Cæsar; you see!"
This seemed also to be the opinion of the spectators, for they opened their ranks to let me pass through, and I went out through the great porch, recently the scene of my humiliation and now my triumphal arch. I found a book which had dropped out of Bligny's waistcoat when he staggered from my blow; and, as I considered that the spoils of the conquered belonged by right to the conqueror, I picked it up and carried it off.
I opened it as I took it away, and saw it was M. Tissot's well-known work.
I did not know what the title meant, and I allowed my mother to take the book away from me and to hide it.
Two years afterwards I discovered it and read it.
Had I read it the day of my victory it would have been fruitless, because I should not have understood it.
Two years later it was providential.
The Abbé Fortier—The jealous husband and the viaticum—A pleasant visit—Victor Letellier—The pocket-pistol—I terrify the population—Tournemolle is requisitioned—He disarms me.
The Abbé Fortier—The jealous husband and the viaticum—A pleasant visit—Victor Letellier—The pocket-pistol—I terrify the population—Tournemolle is requisitioned—He disarms me.
School life is not remarkable for variety of incident; a country school certainly is not, and ours was no exception to the rule! I have recounted my entry because of this trait in my character that was developed thereby, but if it were to describe that life in all its details I should have nothing to relate beyond a few childish naughtinesses, followed by penitence and impositions, not even worth putting into M. Bouilly'sJeunes Écoliers.
A terrible accident happened to the Seminary at Soissons My mother was already reconciled to my conduct in refusing to go there, and this accident made her thank God afresh that I had not entered.
The powder-store of the town, which was situated about fifty mètres from the Seminary, blew up; the college was completely ruined, and eight or ten seminarists were, killed or wounded.
Meanwhile, another of our relatives died: the one who tool me in the night I lost my father. Her daughter Marianne my sister's cousin and mine then left Villers-Cotterets to go and live near her uncle, the Abbé Fortier, who was priest at the little village of Béthisy, five leagues from us and three leagues from Compiègne.
This abbé was supposed to be very rich, and it looked a good thing for my cousin to become his housekeeper; but he was rather a troublesome character.
Had the word been in use at that time, we should have said he was eccentric.
I cannot say what deviation from the path every man ought to follow in deciding upon his vocation had driven the Abbé Fortier into the Church. He was born to make a first-rate captain of dragoons, whilst as it was he made a somewhat odd priest. God forbid I should say he made a bad one!
He was a man of five feet eight inches, built like a Hercules, with an erect carriage, his head held high, and he stepped right foot foremost at each stride like a fencing-master in a fencing school; he was, too, one of the finest billiard players, one of the best huntsmen, and one of the greatest eaters I ever saw.
I do not, of course, even dream of comparing the Abbé Fortier with Boudoux in this last respect. The abbé could eat for a long time and a considerable quantity at once: Boudoux's desire to be always eating was a disease.
One day the Abbé Fortier bet a curé of the neighbourhood that he would eat a hundred eggs at his dinner. The hundred eggs were served up according to recipes in theCuisinière bourgeoise, in twenty different ways.
When they were eaten, he said:
"Good, one ought to play fair and give four extra to the hundred: boil four more eggs—hard."
And he ate the four hard-boiled eggs, after having eaten a hundred cooked in all kinds of ways.
A very curious story is told of his early days. He would be thirty at the time I am referring to, and, as he was sixty-two at the time I am writing about, it must have happened thirty-two years before. He was then only a curate, and one evening he was taking the viaticum to a dying person in the next village.
A certain husband had conceived violent jealousy against him, doubtless without cause, and waited for him in a deep lane down which he was obliged to go from Béthisy in order to reach the village where he was wanted.
When the Abbé Fortier saw this man standing in the middle of the road, with his face drawn with anger and his first clenched, he quickly guessed what was going to happen;but, being a minister of the God of peace and averse to all scandal, he begged him as politely as possible to allow him to pass.
"Oh yes, let you pass, M. le vicaire," said the man in the jeering tones peculiar to our peasants; "you'll not get by so easily!"
"Why should I not pass?" asked the curate.
"Because you have a little account to settle with this poor Bastien."
"I owe you nothing," said the abbé; "allow me to pass; you know well I am being waited for and by one who has not time to wait long."
"He will just have to wait, then," said Bastien, throwing off his jacket and spitting on his hands; "he will just have to wait: if he is in too great a hurry, he must go before."
"Why must he wait?" the abbé demanded, now getting vexed.
"Because I have to give you a drubbing, M. le vicaire."
"Ah! that is it! Is that why you came here, Bastien?"
"Rather."
"It would not take much trouble to remove you, my friend."
"Do you think so?"
"I am certain of it."
The abbé put the viaticum down on the edge of a ditch and said in very reverent accents, "O Lord, O Lord, take neither side, and Thou shalt see a rogue well thrashed."
The abbé kept his word, and the good Lord saw what had been promised.
Then he picked up the viaticum, continued his walk, administered to the sick man and returned quietly home again.
Both Bastien and the abbé were interested in keeping the matter to themselves, and they did so, but a choir-boy had seen the fight, and it became known.
Let it be said to the honour of the abbé that nobody was surprised at the affair.
One day he intended to shoot at Lamotte, but, before beginning his sporting expedition, he had to say mass in the château chapel; he had taken with him his dog Finaud and his choir-boyquiotPierre (which meanslittlePierre), to assist him in his operations.
The church was on the borders of the warren on which they were going to begin.
Now Finaud was a splendid retriever, and the Abbé Fortier, who never cared to shoot without him, had told the servants to shut him up carefully.
After the Gospel the abbé stopped and listened as he heard a well-known bark in the warren.
He listened for a minute; then he turned, and saw that the choir-boy was also listening, with a smile on his lips.
"Tell me, quiot Pierre," said the abbé, "isn't that Finaud's bark I hear over there?"
"Yes, M. l'abbé; they have let him loose, and he is after a rabbit."
"Ah! well!" replied the abbé, "the rabbit can be quite easy; we shall get him in any case."
And he went on saying mass.
Mass over, Finaud led the way.
The abbé took his gun, followed the trail and killed the rabbit.
This was the same choir-boy who told the story about Bastien. He told the second, as he had told the first, and there were many more, but some of them would not even bear relating by a choir-boy.
So Marianne went to live with her uncle Fortier, who, at the age of sixty-two, was reputed to be simply a great sportsman and a great eater; maybe this opinion of him was not quite right.
He gave her a wonderfully good reception, installed her at the parsonage, and, as my cousin Marianne was very fond of me, he allowed her to bring me back with her the next visit she paid to Villers-Cotterets, which was during my holidays in 1812.
When the holidays began, my cousin and I both perched on the back of one donkey. Picard, the fellow who used to tell me such fine stories at the forge, took a stick to beat the ass with, and we set off.
This journey, like all childish journeyings, was full of surprises for me. I remember seeing for a long time on our left a mountain with a ruin on the top of it, which seemed to me like an Alp or one of the Cordilleras; I have seen it since, and it did not look any higher than Montmartre.
I remember also seeing a tower on my right, which seemed so high to me that I asked if it were not the tower of Babel.
The mountain was the knoll of Montigny.
The tower was the tower of Vez.
We reached our destination after a journey that had seemed to me inordinately long, but had only lasted seven or eight hours; we went at the pace of Joseph and the Virgin Mary on their flight into Egypt.
However, we arrived at last. It was the right season to stop with Uncle Fortier, for it was early in September, and there was a splendid arbour of vines, from which hung bunches of grapes rivalling those of the Promised Land. There was also a wild plum tree laden with plums in a small courtyard; and, finally, an immense garden full of peaches, apricots and pears.
Moreover, shooting was just about to begin.
The Abbé Fortier gave me a very kind welcome, although he uttered several grunts which showed I was not in every respect satisfactory to him.
The abbé was a very learned man; he had Greek and Latin at his finger ends; he greeted me in the tongue of Cicero; I attempted to reply, and made three errors in five words.
He was transfixed.
That was my first intellectual humiliation. I will give the second in its right place.
I tried to recover my ground in natural history and mythology, but the abbé was proficient in both, and I sighed, crestfallen.
I was vanquished.
Directly I was beaten and avowed my error like Porus, the victor became as clement as Alexander.
The abbé began his fascination over me by the excellence of his dinner. If he ate well, he drank still better.
I was lost in admiration before this man—I had never imagined such curés: the Abbé Fortier came near to reconciling me to the Seminary.
Next day after mass the Abbé Fortier began his first day's shooting. Mass was not over before half-past eight; but not a soul was allowed to shoot a partridge upon the preserves until the Abbé Fortier had been seen to go by, his cassock tucked up, the game-bag on his back, a gun on shoulder, preceded by Finaud and followed by Diane.
He had a third acolyte this time, for I was with him. My recollections of hunting were lost in the obscurity of my early infancy; they went back to the days of my father and Mocquet. As in Racine's tragedies, all that happened to me at that period of my existence consisted of the hunting stories that were told me.
This time, I took some part in the action.
The abbé was an excellent shot, and there was abundance of game: he killed a dozen partridges and two or three hares.
I covered as much ground as Diane, and as each head of game fell, I rushed to pick it up, in emulation of the dogs.
No one shoots without swearing a bit at his dogs; the Abbé Fortier swore a good deal; and all these characteristics made up an entirely different picture of an abbé in my mind: he had nothing in common with the Abbé Grégoire.
From that day I was convinced there were two kinds of priests.
Since I have lived in Italy, and, above all, in Rome, I have discovered a third.
Oh! what a happy day that opening day of the shooting season was! How well I remember it! It made me the indefatigable sportsman I have since been, the despair of gamekeepers!
The abbé, on his side, was well pleased with my power of walking, which he found greatly superior to my brains; he made me some jeering compliments upon it, and I felt the full value of them; but he had given me so much pleasure that I had not the courage to be angry with him.
I remained a fortnight with the Abbé Fortier, and I would fain have stayed with him all my life; but my mother wanted me home: it was my first long absence. And she, poor woman, had wanted to send me to a Seminary! She wrote that she should die of ennui if they did not send me back soon.
The abbé shrugged his shoulders and said:
"Very well, let him be sent back!"
Sensitiveness was not a weakness the abbé suffered from.
They put me on a donkey and took me to Crépy, where, twice a week, there was a connection with Villers-Cotterets by means of an old woman, called mother Sabot, and her ass.
I passed from my ass to mother Sabot's, and the same evening I was back at Villers-Cotterets.
I found a fresh person installed at home—my future brother-in-law.
He was a young man of about twenty-six or twenty-seven, who, although not good-looking, had such a refined and intellectual type of face, it might easily have been taken for beauty. He was, besides, remarkably skilful at all physical exercises, clever at fencing, able to hit a cork out of a bottle with a bullet from his pistol at twenty-five paces off, without touching the bottle, a perfect horseman and, although not in the front rank as a sportsman, was considered a good shot.
He had been to our house already several times before I went away, and I was great chums with his dog, Figaro, whose reputation for cleverness was as great among dogs as his master's was among men.
I had the warmest of welcomes from everybody, and specially from this young man, whose name was Victor Letellier. He was very much in love with my sister, and wanted to make allies of all who surrounded her, even of me.
"My dear Alexandre," he said, when he caught sight of me,"something has been lying on my chimney-piece for you for a fortnight. I do not want to tell you what it is—go and fetch it for yourself."
I rushed off at full speed, Victor lived with M. Picot at l'Épée, the house wherein my father had died.
"Open M. Letellier's door for me," I cried, as I ran into the kitchen; "he has sent me to fetch something he has left on the mantelshelf."
They opened the door. I ran to the chimney-piece, and there, in the middle of two or three piles of money, spurs, riding-whips, bootjacks, and other objects, I saw a small pocket-pistol, quite a tiny one, upon which I pounced unhesitatingly, for I knew it was the thing intended for me.
That present was one of the first I ever received, and it gave me great joy.
But it was not enough to have the pistol, I must also have the means wherewith to enjoy it. I looked all round me: it was not difficult to find what I wanted in a sportsman's room: I was hunting for powder. I found a powder-horn, and poured half its contents into another horn; then I bolted off to a part of the park which was called the "parterre," that is to say, a stretch before the forest began.
Then began a fusillade which only ended with my last grain of powder, and which collected all the street urchins of the town. At the end of half an hour my mother was warned that I was devoting myself to a most terrific fire practice.
My mother always feared some accident would happen to me, for she loved me much. Once, one of our friends, whose name, M. Danré de Vouty, I have already mentioned, came to our house pale and bleeding. He had been shooting near Villers-Cotterets; it was winter, and in jumping over a ditch some snow got down his gun-barrel; the gun had burst, and the explosion had carried off part of his left hand.
Doctor Lécosse was called in, and at once amputated the thumb. M. Danré recovered, after a fearful attack of fever, but he was maimed for life.
Thus, every time the question of guns or pistols or anysort of firearms was brought up, my mother pictured me being brought home pale and bleeding like M. Danré de Vouty; she was so frightened that I took pity on her, and nearly gave up the idea of ever becoming a Hippolytus or a Nimrod.
Then I would return to my bow and arrows, but here was a fresh subject of alarm for my mother. One of our neighbours, a man called Bruyant (please remember this name, for we shall come across it again in an important event), had had, like Philip of Macedon, his right eye destroyed by an arrow.
My mother's terror, therefore, was great when she learnt that I had been supplied with a pistol and that I had munitions wherewith to practise; but it was very hard work to run after me, for my legs had grown since the adventure of Lebègue; moreover, the forest was my friend; as Bas-de-Cuir knew every nook and corner of his woods, so did I know all the turns and by-ways in ours. I could have hidden there three days without returning. Therefore, they decided to make use of the law.
There lived at the town hall a sort of deputy police agent, who almost fulfilled the office of a commissary: he cried the news of the day to the beating of a drum, as is still done in some country places; in summer, he killed stray dogs, not by shooting, but with a great hunting-knife; in winter, he broke the ice off the streams, and swept the snow from our doors.
His name was Tournemolle.
They told him, and he lay in wait for my return to my mother; then he appeared behind me.
When I saw Tournemolle, I foresaw something dreadful was going to happen.
He had come, in the name of all the inhabitants, who were disturbed by the noise of the pistol-shots, to ask, nay, if needs be to insist on, the disarmament of the culprit.
There was a struggle; but strength was on the side of authority, and the culprit was disarmed.
My joy was, therefore, short-lived; it had not even lasted as long as do the roses. Within the space of one hour, I had become the happy owner of a pistol, I had used up my powder, I had returned home and I had been disarmed by Tournemolle.
That disarmament was a terrible disgrace for me, such an ignominy that not even the grave news which reached us next day was able to cause me to forget it.
The next day was the 23rd of September 1812, when Paris saw the conspiracy of Mallet, whilst Napoleon from Moscow was dating his decree upon the Constitution of the Théâtre-Français, and upon the good men of Cambrai.
God had begun to withdraw His hand from this man. He had forced the battle of Moskova in the teeth of a weakened army and increasing distrust in his ability; he had left eleven of his generals dead on the field; he wrote to the bishops to singTe Deums, for it was necessary to reassure Paris and to reassure himself; then he entered Moscow, believing that it was like any other capital, and that evening Moscow revealed itself by its first conflagrations.
Then, instead of taking a decisive course of action, such as to march on St. Petersburg or to return to Paris; instead of establishing his winter quarters in the heart of Russia, as Cæsar did in the heart of Gaul, he hesitated, he became worried, he felt he had adventured too far, and was, maybe, lost.
By a strange coincidence it was at this moment that, at Paris, before even present embarrassment and reverses to come had made themselves felt, Mallet's conspiracy burst out, seized hold of the Colossus in the full tide of his power, bound him, shook him to his foundations, and if it did not overthrow him, at any rate proved he could be overthrown.
On the 29th, Mallet, Lahorie, and Guidai were shot on the plain of Grenelle.
At length Napoleon made up his mind. For the first time he had taken a capital to no purpose; for the first time he beat a retreat after victories. The snow which fell on the 13th October settled the conqueror's vacillations, and the Almighty saved his pride by allowing him one last consolation—he could say he had been beaten by climate and not by man.
On the 19th of October Napoleon left Moscow, deputing the duc de Treviso to seize the Kremlin and to carry off thecross of the great Ivan, which he intended for the dome of the Invalides, and which he had to leave behind on his journey, lacking arms to carry it farther.
At last, on November the 18th, Napoleon reached the Tuileries at eleven o'clock at night, went close to a large fire, warmed himself, rubbed his hands, and said: "Decidedly it is better here than at Moscow."
That was the funeral oration over the finest army ever raised!
O Varus!... Varus!...
A political chronology—Trouble follows trouble—The fire at the farm at Noue—Death of Stanislas Picot—The hiding-place for the louis d'or—The Cossacks—The haricot mutton.
A political chronology—Trouble follows trouble—The fire at the farm at Noue—Death of Stanislas Picot—The hiding-place for the louis d'or—The Cossacks—The haricot mutton.
It would be indeed too preposterous of me to take up public attention with the feats and performances of an urchin of twelve, when, for two years, we were to pass through such grave events.
The decline of the Man of Destiny was rapid: he was sustained for a brief while by the victories of Lutzen, Bautzen, and Wurschen, but he left behind him two of his most faithful lieutenants—the dukes of Istria and Duroc. There was no danger of bullets striking down those who intended to betray him.
He was doomed—England had bought his ruin.
Will you learn at what price? On 14th June, 1813, she paid Prussia 660,660 livres sterling; on the 15th, 1,333,334 livres sterling to Russia; and finally, on 12th August, 500,000 livres sterling to Austria.
We see how scrupulous in this matter was his father-in-law, François; he refrained from selling his son-in-law until two months after the others, and for 160,000 livres sterling less than Prussia.
But what did that matter? Bonaparte could note down in his red-letter book that he became the son-in-law of a Cæsar and the nephew of King Louis XVI.
That was the height of his ambition. What was there to be sorry for when that ambition was once satisfied?
On the 16th and 18th of October, 117,000 rounds of cannon were fired off at Leipzig, 111,000 more at Malplaquet.
Each round cost two louis.
They celebrated the death service of the Empire in right regal style!
It was in this way that Napoleon lost another of his faithful followers, Poniatowski, who had been made a marshal on the 16th and who was drowned on the 19th, in the river Elster.
On the 1st of November the emperor sent twenty standards to Paris.
On the 8th the battle of Mochest took place, the last of the campaign.
On the 9th the emperor returned to Saint-Cloud.
On the 12th the allied armies entered Dusseldorf.
On the 13th the kings of Prussia and of Bavaria reached Frankfort.
On the 15th, 300,000 conscripts were mobilised.
On the 16th the emperor went hunting on foot on the plains of Satory.
On the 22nd he was present at a representation at the Opera, while the Russians were entering Amsterdam.
On the 2nd December the emperor witnessed a performance at the Odéon, while the allied armies were crossing the Rhine at Dusseldorf.
On the 6th the Prince of Orange, who had landed in Holland on the 30th November, issued a proclamation to the Dutch.
On the 17th the Allies crossed the Rhine at different points in Alsace.
On the 23rd they occupied Neuchâtel.
On the 31st they entered Geneva.
And with this news closed the year 1813.
The year 1814 was to see a continuation of these reverses and the beginning of defections.
On the 3rd January the Allies took Colmar.
On the 6th they invested Besançon; and Murat, who had re-conquered Naples, signed an armistice with England.
On the 7 h the Allies entered Dôle.
On the 8th Murat concluded a treaty of alliance with Austria.
On the 10th the Allies invested Landau and took Forbach.
On the 12th Murat signed a treaty of alliance with England.
On the 16th the Allies seized Langres.
On the 17th Murat declared war against France.
On the 21st the Allies took Châlons-sur-Saône.
On the 22nd Murat entered Rome.
Finally, on the 24th, the emperor left Paris to return to his army, on the 27th he took up the offensive again, and began that wonderful campaign of 1814, which lasted sixty-seven days, and during which, the end being the abdication at Fontainebleau, he showed his marvellous genius to greater effect than in taking Milan or Cairo, Berlin, Vienna, or Moscow.
None the less his hour had come; in vain had the Titan heaped Pelion upon Ossa, Champaubert on Montmirail—his hour had come, and he was to fall overwhelmed....
The sound of cannon boomed in my hearing for the first time.
I heard it in the foldyard of a farm belonging to M. Picot of Noue—a quarter of a league off Villers-Cotterets.
"Misfortunes come in flocks," says a Russian proverb; and a host of misfortunes had flown over and beaten against the head of that good man. The farm at Noue had been one of the finest in Villers-Cotterets, and M. Picot one of the most prosperous farmers.
But in 1812, I think it was, they stacked a damp crop in his barns, and one night the straw kindled, and we were awakened by the tocsin and by cries of "Fire!"
Everybody realises the dreadfulness of that cry in the middle of the night and in a little town: all Villers-Cotterets got up instantly and rushed to the burning farm.
I do not know a more splendid sight than a tremendous fire, such as that one. The farm blazed the whole length of its barns and stables, presenting a curtain three or four hundred paces in extent, from behind which came the lowing of cattle, the whinnying of horses, the bleating of sheep.
Everything was burnt, buildings and live-stock; for animals will not stir when they smell fire.
That fire was the first serious catastrophe I was ever present at, and it left a deep impression on my memory.
They did not get the mastery over the fire till next day, and the loss was enormous. Fortunately, as we have said, M. Picot was very rich.
The following year came another misfortune. M. Picot had two sons and a daughter. The eldest of his sons was eight or ten years, the younger only two or three, my senior.
Consequently I had scarcely anything to do with the eldest, who treated me like a little boy, but I was extremely friendly with the younger, whose name was Stanislas.
One day, my mother came into my room, in a great state of mind.
"There, now," she said, "never ask me to let you play with firearms again."
"Why not, mother?"
"Stanislas has just wounded himself, perhaps mortally."
"Oh! my goodness, where is he?"
"At his father's. Go and see him."
I set off running, and covered the quarter of a league in six or seven minutes. When I reached the farm, I saw a long trail of blood.
Everybody was in such a state of consternation that no one asked me where I was going. I crossed the yards, I went through the kitchen and I slipped into the room where Stanislas was. They were just putting the first bandage on the wound; the surgeon was there, with his surgical case open, his hands covered with blood. The poor sufferer was leaning back, clasping his mother's neck with both his arms as she bent over him.
They saw me, and told me to approach the bed. Stanislas kissed me, and thanked me for coming to see him. He was horribly pale.
He was ordered quiet before everything, so everybody, myself among the number, was told to go away.
This is how the accident happened: Stanislas was out shooting with his father, and had nearly done; he was nearingthe farm, which he was just going to enter, when he heard a gun-shot.
The better to see who had fired it, and whether the shooter had killed anything, Stanislas climbed a post at the corner of a wall; but he forgot to unload his gun first, and unconsciously he leant his thigh against the barrel. His dog seeing him on the post, tried to reach him, standing on his hind legs, and with his fore paws leant on the gun-lock. The gun went off, and Stanislas received the full charge of partridge-shot in the neck of the femur.
It was this ghastly wound which the surgeon had just dressed when I arrived. For two days they were hopeful, but lockjaw set in on the third day, and Stanislas died.
The manner in which he met his death was an unending source of exhortation on my mother's part: she declared she should never be easy until I gave up hunting altogether. But, in spite of the impression which this death made upon me, I would not give up anything.
Whenever I met Madame Picot, after the death of Stanislas, she showed great kindness to me, no doubt on account of my boyish friendship with her son.
Her daughter, too, who was very friendly with my sister, was most cordial to me, and was the only one among grown-up people who never made fun of my absurdities.
This excellent and good-looking lady was called Éléonore Picot, or, more often,Picote.
Now to return to account for my being in the farmyard at Noue when I heard the firing of cannon for the first time. I have been sent far afield in what I have just related, and I must return.
Since the battle of Leipzig, one idea had been in everybody's mind, namely, that what had not happened in 1792 or in 1793 was now about to take place—there would be an invasion of France.
Those who did not live through that period can have no idea to what a pitch of execration the name of Napoleon had reached in the hearts of the mothers of France.
During 1813 and 1814 the old enthusiasm died down; for it was not for the sake of France, our common mother, nor for Liberty, the goddess of us all, that the mothers were sacrificing their children: it was to the ambition, the selfishness, the pride of one man.
Thanks to the successive levies, made in 1811 to 1814, thanks to the million of men squandered in the valleys and on the mountains of Spain, in the snows and in the rivers of Russia, in the swamps of Saxony and on the sands of Poland, the generation of men between twenty and twenty-two years of age had disappeared.
The very wealthiest people had fruitlessly purchased one, two, or even three substitutes, for which they had paid as much as 10,000, 12,000, or 15,000 francs. But Napoleon had invented his Guard of Honour, a relentless and fatal organisation for recruiting his army, which allowed of no substitutes, so that the wealthiest and therefore the most privileged classes were compelled to go to war with the rest.
Conscription began at sixteen, and men remained liable to service to the age of forty.
Mothers counted up the ages of their boys with alarm, and most gladly would they have wrestled with time to stop the days which were flying by all too quickly for them.
More than once my mother pressed me to her breast suddenly, with a suppressed sigh, and tears came into her eyes.
"What is the matter, mother?" I would ask.
"Oh! when I think," she exclaimed, "that in four years you will have to be a soldier, that that man will snatch you from me, he who has always taken away and never given anything in return, and that he will send you to be killed on a field of battle like Moskova or Leipzig!... Oh, my child! my poor child!"
My mother only expressed a general feeling, but the hatred of her fellows was expressed in different ways, according to their different temperaments and characters; with my mother, as we have seen, it was in sighs and tears; with other mothers, it would be in fierce threats; with others, insulting epithets.
I remember, there lived on the place de la Fontaine the wife of a gunsmith, whose son was at the Abbé Grégoire's school with me; her name was Madame Montagnon. During the heat of summer afternoons, when the greatest heat of the day had declined, she sat at her threshold with her spinning-wheel, and all the time she was spinning she sang a song against Bonaparte.
I only remember the first four lines of it, which begun thus:—
"Le Corse de Madame AngoN'est pas le Corse de la Corse,Car le Corse de MarengoEst d'une bien plus dure écorce."
And—as Mademoiselle Pivert re-read the famous volume ofThe Thousand and One Nights, which contained the story ofThe Wonderful Lamp, every day in the week—so Madame Montagnon had scarcely finished the last couplet against the Corsican of Marengo when she began the first over again.
Now it will be readily understood that this hatred, which began to show itself after the Russian disasters, was aggravated by terror in proportion as the enemy drew nearer, step by step, town by town, narrowing the circle being drawn round France.
Finally, at the beginning of 1814, it suddenly became known that the enemy had set foot on French soil.
By that time all confidence in Napoleon's genius had disappeared. That stupendous adventurer's genius was his good fortune.
Now, God, in His inscrutable purposes, had designed his fall and had deserted him.
People not merely ceased to believe in him, but they ceased to hope.
Those who had anything to fear or to expect from a political movement, all those skin-changing serpents that live on different Governments as they come and go, already began to lay their plans—some to lessen their fears, others to augment their expectations. They began to feel, moreover, that Napoleon was not France; but that they had, so to speak,taken the heroic tenant on a lease, and the lease was up—France was prepared to bear the damages, but not to renew the lease.
You could still hear people saying: "Napoleon has beaten the enemy at Brienne; the Prussians are retreating to Bar"—but at the same time they said: "The Russians are marching on Troyes." We certainly read in theMoniteurthat we had beaten them at Rosnay and on the road to Vitry; but at the same time that this bulletin was published appeared the first Royalist manifesto. We were routing the Allies at Champaubert and at Montmirail, but the duc d'Angoulême was issuing a proclamation dated from Saint Jean-de-Luz.
At each victory, Napoleon was using up his men, and losing ten leagues of ground. Wherever he fought personally, the enemy was beaten, but he could not be in every place at once.
Every moment was bringing the roar of cannons nearer to us, though we had not actually heard them yet.
There had been fighting at Château-Thierry; and at Nogent; and Laon was occupied.
Everyone began hiding his valuables, burying what he considered most precious.
We had a cellar which was reached through a trap-door; my mother filled it with linen, furniture, mattresses, she had the trap-door taken away and the whole room re-floored; so no treasure-seekers could see the exact spot to fasten upon.
Then she put thirty old louis in a box, she put this box in a small leather bag, she drove a stake in the garden and in the hole made by the stake she slipped the box.
Who on earth would find a box planted vertically in the very middle of a garden? It would have required a wizard to find it there.
We could not have found it again ourselves if I had not made a guiding mark on the wall.
One fine day we saw some soldiers come past, flying at full speed. Soissons had just been taken; they had leapt their horses over the ramparts, and six or eight had been killed or badly injured; three or four had escaped.
My poor mother began now to be frightened in real earnest, and her fear took the form of cooking an enormous haricot of mutton. The reader may well ask why her fear took that peculiar form.
Fearful pictures had been spread over the country of Cossacks from the Don, the Volga and the Borysthenes: making them look as hideous as possible. They were depicted mounted on hideous scarecrows, wearing caps made of wild beasts' skins, armed with lances, bows and arrows. A combination of utter impossibilities, one would have said.
Yet there were optimists who, in spite of these awful pictures, said that the Cossacks were brave men at heart, much less wicked than they looked to be, and that, provided we fed them well enough and gave them plenty to drink, they would do us no manner of harm.
Hence my mother's huge stew of mutton—it was for them to eat.
In the matter of drink, we did not give them our cellar (for we have seen to what use my mother had put it), but we set them aside our wine-bin, and they could then draw what Soissons' wine they liked.
Then, finally, if, in spite of the haricot mutton and the Soissons' wine, they still proved too objectionable, we were to escape by way of the quarry.
We will now describe what this was.
The quarry—Frenchmen eat the haricot cooked for the Cossacks—The Duc de Treviso—He allows himself to be surprised—Ducoudray the hosier—Terrors.
The quarry—Frenchmen eat the haricot cooked for the Cossacks—The Duc de Treviso—He allows himself to be surprised—Ducoudray the hosier—Terrors.
Five or six hundred steps from the farmhouse at home, in the middle of open country, scattered over with dwarf juniper trees, where the rocks jutted out of the earth all round, as the bones of a consumptive patient stick out through his skin, an excavation suddenly opens similar to those one meets at every turn in the Campagna of Rome. This excavation looks like a cave of Cumæ or an air-hole of Avernus. When you bend over its opening you can hear the roar which astonishes one on holding a shell to the ear—only this roar is on a greater and more frightful and more gigantic scale; then, if you try for a moment to pierce through the darkness, which increases as the cavern deepens, you can make out a rock, sticking up perpendicularly, about twenty-five or thirty feet below you, and burying its base in the bowels of the earth at a steep angle.
This is the entrance to the quarry.
You ask to what quarry?
Tothequarry, doubtless, since it was always called "The Quarry"—just as Rome was calledThe City—Urbs.
When, by the help of a ladder, you descend the twenty-five or thirty feet, you reach a platform from which you slide down the steep slope for five or six feet, and then you find yourself at the entrance of an immense labyrinth—compared with which that of the Cretan Dædalus was but a child's garden in a toy box.
Who had hewn out these great catacombs? What townhad being in these unknown depths? It would indeed be difficult to tell.
Its subterranean passages had certainly communicated with some larger opening pointing to further undermining. The opening by which one entered was, as we have said, merely a crack, too narrow to have ever disgorged the quantity of stones missing from the bare sides of the mountain.
It was in this quarry, then, that half the people of Villers-Cotterets had taken refuge under stress of terror.
A large encampment had been set up; a regular village, inhabited by five or six hundred people, in the midst of the square hall of granite, under a granite vault upheld by granite pillars; nearly a quarter of a league from the opening, at a depth of a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet.
My mother was one of the first who had chosen and secured and marked out her allotment in it; and there we carried mattresses, blankets, a table and some books.
So, when the first alarm came, we had but to leave Villers-Cotterets and to hide in the quarry.
Before resorting to this extremity, my mother meant to try every means of conciliation, and one of her means of conciliation, the one she set most store by, was her haricot mutton and her Soissons wines.
But man proposes and God disposes. After three days of hanging over the fire, after three days of lying in the cellar, the haricot mutton was eaten and the wine was drunk by Frenchmen.
Marshal Mortier's Corps, with the remnant of the Young Guard, and a dozen of cannon, came; they were commissioned to defend the entrance to the forest.
Great was our joy! It was glorious to see these fine young fellows, full of hope and courage, instead of the hideous-looking Cossacks we had been expecting.
Youth never despairs, for it is still in harmony with the divine. It was not so with the old generals, above all with the duc de Treviso.
There was a strange lassitude in all the men who had followed the fortunes of the emperor. Their worldly positionwas secured; they had reached the zenith of their fortunes by becoming marshals; while Napoleon—that hankerer after the unattainable—still went on coveting something more!
Therefore, those who were not left sleeping dead and bleeding on the battle-fields, stopped, harassed, upon the road of his retreat; shaking their heads at his never-resting, feverish course; and saying: "It is right enough for that man of iron, but we—we are not able to follow him any further."
Villers-Cotterets was one of these halting-places where the duc de Treviso stopped, overpowered by fatigue. We saw him pass by on horseback in the morning and reconnoitre the forest, guided by the inspector, M. Deviolaine.
My mother took the old tricoloured cockade out of my father's hat, which had remained there since the Egyptian Campaign, and carried it to M. Deviolaine, with a blunderbuss.
M. Deviolaine put the cockade in his hat, and the blunderbuss at his saddle-bow.
I can still remember the marshal, that veteran of our earliest battles, who escaped, throughout all our wars, the grapeshot of Prussia, of England, of Russia and of Austria, only to fall at last on the boulevard du Temple by Fieschi's infernal machine.
The giant passed by, doubled up on his horse; one would have said then that a child would have been strong enough to defeat that invincible warrior.
So long as Hercules crowned carried the world on his own shoulders, all went well; but, when he shifted the least portion upon the shoulders of his lieutenants, they gave way beneath the weight.
When evening came there was a grand dinner-party at M. Deviolaine's, to which I was taken; and the marshal took me up on his knees and fondled me: for he had known my father.
I asked him for news of my godfather Brune; he was in disgrace, or on the verge of it.
The dinner was a sad affair, the evening depressing. The marshal retired early, went to bed and slept. We were awakened at midnight by the sound of firing. Fighting was going on in the parterre. The marshal had been careless abouthis sentries; the enemy had seized his park, and he only saved himself by escaping, half-dressed, by a back-door, from M. Deviolaine's house.
In the morning the enemy had disappeared, taking away our dozen pieces of artillery.
The same day the marshal retired, I think, to Compiègne, and the town was deserted.
The enemy would surely not be long in appearing after this; so my mother set to work on a second haricot mutton.
Our days passed in constant alarms. When a couple of horsemen were seen on the highroad, the cry would go forth, "The Cossacks! the Cossacks!" Then a great crowd of people would run along the streets, children crying, shutters and doors banging as they fled, and the town would assume the funereal aspect of a city of the dead.
In spite of my mother's haricot mutton, which boiled unceasingly in the copper, and her Soissonais wine, ready for the corkscrew, she grew frightened with the rest, shut our door, and, pressing me to her breast, agitated and trembling, she would retire into a far corner.
Of course there were no more classes amid all these alarms; no more college; no more Abbé Grégoire.
I am wrong: the Abbé Grégoire was, on the contrary, more than ever present.
The Abbé Grégoire was calmness itself, and accordingly a great comfort all round. He went from house to house reassuring everybody, pointing out that evil comes from evil, and that if no ill was done to these much dreaded Cossacks, they, on their side, would do none to us.
Moreover, it would be to their interest not to behave too outrageously. When at Villers-Cotterets, they would find themselves in the midst of a vast forest, occupied by thirty or forty foresters, who knew every turning and winding better than Osman knew those of the Seraglio, and who were all of them more or less capable of putting a bullet into a crown-piece at a hundred paces distance. These were considerations which even Cossacks could appreciate highly.
Meanwhile, time was passing by; there was fighting at Mormant, at Montmirail, at Montereau. We were assured that at this latter battle Bonaparte (to use his own expression), by turning back into an artillery-man, had saved Napoleon.
We had retaken Soissons on the 19th February, and the haricot had been on the fire for five days. No one expected any more Cossacks to come, at least for some time, so we ate the haricot mutton. We received more reassuring news; and there was even talk of an armistice to be concluded with the Emperor of Austria, through the intervention of the Prince of Lichtenstein. Napoleon had re-entered Troyes on the 24th, and had dismissed the prefect; finally, conferences had taken place at Largny for suspension of hostilities.
But soon the fire burst out again, rekindled by some spark or other, and we learnt, in quick succession, of fighting at Bar-sur-Aube, at Meaux, and of the surrender of la Fère.
The enemy was coming nearer and nearer to us.
My mother set to work on a third haricot mutton.
Suddenly, in the middle of a foggy February morning, again the cry of "The Cossacks!" sounded, we heard the galloping of several horses, and we saw about fifteen long-bearded cavaliers, with tall lances, ride through the rue de Soissons; they seemed, indeed, to be more like desperate runaways than threatening conquerors.
As they advanced, doors and windows were shut. Their horses, urged at full gallop, traversed the whole length of the rue de Largny; then they retraced their steps, galloping still, and plunged again into the rue de Soissons, whence they departed, disappearing like a misty and hideous dream.
They were scarcely out of sight before firing was heard.
The sound made my mother tremble; but powder had its usual effect on me; I slipped out of her hands, I escaped from her and ran off to the beginning of the rue de Soissons in spite of her cries. The Cossacks had entirely disappeared.
A woman stood on the threshold of an open door wringing her hands.
She was the wife of a retail hosier named Ducoudray.
The neighbours gradually undid their doors at the sound of her cries, and at her gestures of despair ran up and collected round the door.
I was one of the first to arrive, and I learnt the reason for her cries and her despair.
At the approach of the Cossacks, the hosier had closed his door in fear and trembling, having opened it out of curiosity after their first passage. As they passed, one of the riders discharged his pistol at the shut door, just as though it had been a target. The bullet pierced the door and hit M. Ducoudray in the throat, breaking his spine.
He was lying on the ground, with his head resting on his daughter's knees, torrents of blood flowing from his wound, which had severed an artery.
Death had been instantaneous; he had already ceased to breathe.
Hence the cries, hence the despair of his wife.
As for the Cossacks, they had disappeared as they had come, and, if they had not left this bloody testimony in their wake, the town would have imagined their visit had been a bad dream.
Half from fear, and half in order to bear this important news, I ran back home full speed, and at the corner of the street I met my mother; she had already heard the news.
This time neither the haricot mutton nor the Soissonais wine appeared to her a safe shield against our impending dangers. She pictured the Cossacks passing in front of our door, instead of passing before that of M. Ducoudray; she saw the bullet flying through the door, and myself stretched, bleeding and dying from the pistol-shot before her eyes. We had a sort of housekeeper whom we called "the Queen." My mother left her third haricot mutton and her wine of Soissons to the Queen, bade her watch over the house, took me by the hand and dragged me at a frantic pace towards the quarry.
We turned as we left the town, and we saw the troop of Cossacks climbing a long hill at a gallop, the hill of Dampleux. They were a little detachment that had lost its way, and keptstraying even further afield. I afterwards heard it said that not one of those twelve or fifteen men ever left the forest.
My mother and I fled on; running as only people can run under the influence of terror, hot and breathless. We told whom we met not only of the presence of the Cossacks, but also of the assassination they had perpetrated ten minutes previously.
Everyone who was not already in the quarry at once retreated to it; the last man who descended removed the ladder, and, for twenty-four hours, not one of the colony had the courage to go near the opening.
By degrees this first terror subsided, and people ventured to put their noses outside. The bravest ascended to the earth's surface, went to learn what was happening, and found that the Cossacks had completely disappeared, and that, except for the misfortune that had occurred the day before, the town was quiet.
My mother then decided to accept the offer made her by Madame Picot; to take me to spend the day at the farm, and only to return to the quarry to sleep there at night.
If anything fresh happened we were to be warned of it instantly by one of the many labourers employed on M. Picot's estate, who were to unyoke a horse from plough or harrow and to ride off in hot haste to give the alarm at the farm.
Five or six days passed in this fashion, during which we learnt in succession of the battles of Lizy, of St Julien, and of Bar-sur-Seine.
At length one day, as I have said, we heard from the farmyard the roaring of cannon.
There was fighting going on at Neuilly-Saint-Front.
The night after the battle, I went to sleep with my head filled with the noise of battle, and I dreamt that the Cossacks came down into the quarry.
When morning came, I repeated this dream to my mother, and it terrified her to such an extent that she made up her mind we should set off next day.
Where were we to go? She had absolutely no idea; but she fancied by changing places she might perhaps exorcise the danger.
The return to Villers-Cotterets, and what we met on the way—The box with the thirty louis in it—The leather-bag—The mole—Our departure—The journey—The arrival at Mesnil and our sojourn there—King Joseph—The King of Rome—We leave Mesnil—Our visit to Crespy in Valois—The dead and wounded—The surrender of Paris—The isle of Elba.
The return to Villers-Cotterets, and what we met on the way—The box with the thirty louis in it—The leather-bag—The mole—Our departure—The journey—The arrival at Mesnil and our sojourn there—King Joseph—The King of Rome—We leave Mesnil—Our visit to Crespy in Valois—The dead and wounded—The surrender of Paris—The isle of Elba.
When the resolution was made, it was carried into execution that very day. My mother and I climbed to the highest elevation about the farm, we explored all round, and, when we could not discover any appearance of Cossacks, we ventured to return to the town.
We had hardly gone a hundred steps before we met a clerk called Crétet on horseback. He was a good sort of lad, who had been in my brother-in-law's employment.
He was going from house to house.
"What are you looking for?" my mother asked.
"I am hunting for a carriage, a cab, a wagon, a berlin, or any sort of conveyance to harness my horse to and set off in," he said; "Mademoiselle Adélaïde does not want to stay in Villers-Cotterets any longer."
Mademoiselle Adélaïde was an old, humpbacked spinster, possessing several thousand francs of income, towards which I suspect Crétet had leanings.
"Ah! now that is lucky!" exclaimed my mother; "it is exactly what we are looking out for too. May we leave with you? You are two in number, and we two; we shall travel at half the cost."
It is always cheaper to travel four, rather than two; so the offer was accepted.
A spring cart was found possessing a minimum of springs, and it was settled that we should leave the same evening.
My mother returned to Villers-Cotterets to collect some clothing necessary for our journey, and, first and foremost, to extract the famous treasure of thirty louis from its hole.
We entered the house, still guarded by "the Queen"; then we went into the garden; we recognised the spot where we had buried our treasure, and I took a spade and set to work to dig.
At the third or fourth shovelful of earth I began to be uneasy. I looked at my mother, and I saw that she shared my anxiety.
There was no more sign of the box than if it had never existed. I returned to the guiding mark, I measured the steps; no—I had not made any mistake.
Then I set to work to dig all round my first hole,—all in vain; it was lost labour.
I returned to the middle hole, and continued digging deeper and deeper.
Suddenly I uttered a cry of delight. I had caught sight of the strings of the leather bag.
I pulled the strings, and the leather bag came up—but ... it was empty!
A hole had been made in the bottom of it.
Affairs were growing mysterious. Why in the world, if they had stolen the box, had they troubled to make a hole in the leather bag to take the money out? It would have been much easier to have carried off the whole lot; receptacle and its contents together.
A brilliant idea occurred to me. I zealously continued my digging, and a foot and a half deeper down my spade hit at last against an obstacle.
"Here is the box!" I cried.
And the box it was indeed.
A mole, attracted by the smell of the leather enclosed, had burrowed to get at it. It had disturbed the soil, and the box, dragged down by its own weight, had fallen into the pit made by the blind miner.
My mother quickly opened the box, and found that not one louis was missing.
The cart was loaded that evening, the horse put into the shafts, and we set off along the road to Paris.
I was enchanted: we were about to pay a second visit to the capital of the civilised world, and, although it was in a deplorable condition, I was no less anxious to see it.
Unfortunately we were not rich enough, with our few louis, to stay in Paris. This was a matter that had not occurred to me.
It was decided to stop in a village where living would be cheap.
The first night we got as far as Nanteuil, and put up at an inn which my father used to frequent when we went to Paris. Then, next morning, very early, we resumed our journey.
About one o'clock we reached the steep ascent of Dammartin, and got down from our conveyance to ease the horse a little.
Fighting was going on somewhere; we could hear the firing distinctly, like the thunder of a distant storm.
We even seemed to be travelling in the direction of the roar of the cannon; but, so blind is fear, that if the enemy had been in front of us my mother would rather have continued her course than turn back.
We passed through Dammartin without stopping, except to ask the news. No one knew anything very definite. The Count d'Artois was at Nancy; the allied sovereigns at Nogent-sur-Seine. The enemy was advancing upon Paris from all sides—that was all they could tell us.
We baited our horse at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges; then, when we had dined, we continued on our way, and reached Mesnil about eight in the evening.
We stopped at a hotel whose name I have forgotten—but it was situated on the left, at the corner of a street opposite the posting-house.