Read Ebook: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54 No. 333 July 1843 by Various

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"It is perfectly probable, sir," was the reply; "for I understand that you had never seen each other till last night, at the house of your friend. The case is simply this:--Lafontaine, who is one of the finest fellows breathing, has been for some time deeply smitten by the various charms of your host's very pretty daughter, and, so far as I comprehend, the lady has acknowledged his merits. But your arrival here has a good deal deranged the matter. He conceives your attentions to his fair one to be of so marked a nature, that it is impossible for him to overlook them."

I laughed, and answered,

"Sir, you may make your friend quite at his ease on the subject, for I have not known her existence till within these twenty-four hours."

"You danced with her half the evening--you sat beside her at supper. She listened to you with evident attention--of this last I myself was witness; and the report in the neighbourhood is, that you have come to this place by an express arrangement with her father," gravely retorted the guardsman.

All this exactness of requisition appeared to me to be going rather too far; and I exhibited my feeling on the subject, in the tone in which I replied, that I had stated every thing that was necessary for the satisfaction of a "man of sense, but that I had neither the faculty nor the inclination to indulge the captiousness of any man."

His colour mounted, and I seemed as if I was likely to have a couple of heroes on my hands. But he compressed his lip, evidently strangled a chivalric speech, and, after a pause to recover his calmness, said--

"Sir, I have not come here to decide punctilios on either side. I heartily wish that this affair had not occurred, or could be reconciled; my countrymen here, I know, stand on a delicate footing, and I am perfectly aware of the character that will be fastened on them by the occurrence of such rencontres. Can you suggest any means by which this difference may be settled at once?"

"None in the world, sir," was my answer. "I have told you the fact, that I have no pretension whatever to the lady--that I am wholly unacquainted even with the person of your friend--that the idea of intentional injury on my part, therefore, is ridiculous; and let me add, for the benefit of your friend, that to expect an apology for imaginary injuries, would be the most ridiculous part of the entire transaction."

The captain made me a low bow, and slowly paced back to the lodging of his fiery compatriot.

When I was left alone, I, for the first time, felt the whole ill-luck of my situation. So long as I was heated by our little dialogue, I thought only of retorting the impertinent interference of a stranger with my motives or actions. But, now, the whole truth flashed on me with the force of a new faculty. I saw myself involved in a contest with a fool or a lunatic, in which either of our lives, or both, might be sacrificed--and for nothing. Hope, fortune, reputation, perhaps renown, all the prospects of life were opening before me, and I was about to shut the gate with my own hand. In these thoughts I was still too young for what is called personal peril to intervene. The graver precaution of more advanced years was entirely out of the question. I was a soldier, or about to be one; and I would have rejoiced, if the opportunity had been given to me, in heading a forlorn hope, or doing any other of those showy things which make a name. The war, too, was beginning--my future regiment was ordered for foreign service--every heart in England was beating with hope or fear--every eye of Europe was fixed upon England and Englishmen; and, in the midst of all this high excitement, to fall in a pitiful private quarrel, struck me with a sudden sense of self-contempt and wilful absurdity, that made me almost loathe my being. I acknowledge that the higher thoughts, which place those rencontres in their most criminal point of view, had then but little influence with me. But to think that, within the next hour, or the next five minutes, I might be but like the sleepers in the rude resting-place of the fishermen; with my name unknown, and all the associations of life extinguished--

"This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod"--

was an absolute pang. I could have died a martyr, and despised the flame, or rather rejoiced in it, as a security that I should not perish forgotten. But a fancied wrong, an obscure dispute, the whole future of an existence flung away for the jealous dreams of a mad Frenchman, or the Sport of a coquette, of whom I knew as little as of her fantastic lover, threw me into a fever of scorn for the solemn follies of mankind.

The captain returned. I had not stirred from the spot.

"I regret," said he, "that my friend is wholly intractable. He has convinced himself, if he can convince no one else, that he has wholly lost the good opinion of his fair one, and that you are the cause. Some communication which he had from London, informed him of your frequent intercourse with her father. This rendered him suspicious, and the peculiar attention with which you were treated last night, produced a demand for an explanation; which, of course, heightened the quarrel. The inamorata, probably not displeased to have more suitors than one, whether in amusement or triumph, appears to have assisted his error, if such it be; and he returned home, stung to madness by what he terms her infidelity. He now demands your formal abandonment of the pursuit."

All my former feelings of offence recurred at the words, and I hotly asked--"Well, sir, to whom must I kneel--to the lady or the gentleman? Take my answer back--that I shall do neither. Where is your friend to be found?"

He pointed to a clump of frees within a few hundred yards, and I followed him. I there saw my antagonist; a tall, handsome young man, but with a countenance of such dejection that he might have sat for the picture of despair. It was clear that his case was one for which there was no tonic, but what the wits of the day called a course of steel. Beside him stood a greyhaired old figure, of a remarkably intelligent countenance, though stooped slightly with age. He was introduced to me as General Deschamps; and in a few well-expressed words, he mentioned that he attended, from respect to the British, to offer his services to me on an occasion "which he deeply regretted, but which circumstances unfortunately rendered necessary, and which all parties were doubtless anxious to conclude before it should produce any irritation in the neighbourhood."

How Mordecai would admire all this, was yet to be told; but my casual mention of his name broke up the rapture at once. Mariamne suddenly became sensible of the irregularity of alternately fainting and smiling in the arms of a handsome young soldier; and in the presence, too, of so many spectators, all admirers of her black eyes and blooming sensibilities. She certainly looked to me much prettier than in her full-dress charms of the evening before, and I almost began to think that the prize was worth contending for; but the guardsman and the old general had felt the effects of the morning air, and were unsentimentally hungry. Mariamne and her attendant were escorted to the edge of the plantation by her restored knight; and I accepted the general's invitation to breakfast, instead of drowning myself in the next pond.

The general welcomed us to his little domicile with as much grace as if he had been ushering us into the throne-room of the Tuileries. I afterwards understood that he had been governor of the "Invalides;" and the change from the stately halls of that military palace must have severely taxed the philosophy of any man; yet it had no appearance of having even ruffled the temperament of the gallant veteran. He smiled, talked, and did the honours of his apartment with as much urbanity as if he had been surrounded by all the glittering furniture, and all the liveried attendance, of his governorship. I have always delighted in an old Frenchman, especially if he has served. Experience has made me a cosmopolite, and yet to this hour a young Frenchman is my instinctive aversion. He is born in coxcombry, cradled in coxcombry, and educated in coxcombry. It is only after his coxcombry is rubbed off by the changes and chances of the world, that the really valuable material of the national character is to be seen. He always reminds me of the mother-of-pearl shell, rude and unpromising on the outside, but by friction exhibiting a fine interior. However it may be thought a paradox to pronounce the Frenchman unpolished, I hold to my assertion. If the whole of "jeune France" sprang on their feet and clapped their hands to the hilts of their swords, or more probably to their daggers, to avenge the desecration of the only shrine at which nine-tenths of them worship, I should still pronounce the Frenchman the most unpolished of Europeans. What is his look of conscious superiority to all that exist besides in this round world? The toss of his nostril, the glare of his eye, the contempt of his gathered lip? Give me the homeliest manners of the homeliest corner of Europe--nay, give me the honest rudeness of the American savage, in preference to this arrogant assumption of an empty superiority. Why, the very tone in which every Frenchman, from fifteen to five-and-forty, utters the words "la France," is enough to raise the laugh, or make the blood boil, of all mankind.

Nearly twenty years after this, I happened to be sitting one day with Gentz, the most memorable practical philosopher of his age and country. Germany was then in the most deplorable depression, overrun with French armies; and with Napoleon at Erfurth, in the pride of that "bad eminence" on which he stood in such Titanic grandeur, and from which he was so soon to be flung with such Titanic ruin. Our conversation naturally turned on the melancholy state of things.

"I think," said the great politician, "that this supremacy must fall. I might not think so if any other nation were the masters of Europe; but France, though often a conqueror, has never been a possessor. The insolence of the individual Frenchman has been the grand obstacle to the solidity of her empire."

To my remark, that her central position, her vast population, the undaunted bravery of her troops, and the military propensities of her people, fitted her to be the disturber of Europe.

"Yes," was the sage's answer; "but to be no more than the disturber. Her power is the whirlwind; for purposes which man may never be able fully to define, suffered, or sent forth, to sweep the Continent; perhaps, like the tempest, to punish, nay, perhaps in the end to purify; but the tempest is scarcely more transitory, or more different from the dew that invisibly descends and silently refreshes the land."

"But Napoleon," said I, "with an army of a million recruited from thirty millions, opposed to the worn-down force and exhausted treasures of the Continent! What an iron wedge driven in among their dilapidated combinations! What a mountain of granite, with the cloud and the thunder for its crown, domineering over the plain!"

"True--perfectly true," he replied, throwing back the long locks from a broad forehead which reminded me of a bust of Plato. "True. Man may be as little able to decide on the means by which the power of France will fall, as on the purposes for which that tremendous fabric of splendid iniquity first rose. But, look into that street."

It happened that a French regiment of cuirassiers, with the fine clangour of its drums and trumpets, was passing under the window at the moment.

"You see there," said he, "the kind of feeling which that really striking show produces; not a window is open but our own. The blinds of every window have been let down, not an eye looks at these troops. Yet the public of Vienna are extravagantly fond of display in all its shapes; and punchinello, or a dance of dogs, would bring a head to every pane of glass, from the roof to the ground. The French are individually shrunk from, hated, abhorred.

"Naturally enough, as conquerors," I observed; chiefly from a desire to hear more of the sentiments of the celebrated German.

"No--no!" said he, almost in a tone of vexation. "The Germans are as much alive to the merits of their enemies in the field, as any other nation in the world. They acknowledge the soldiership of the French. I even believe that the talents of their extraordinary emperor are more sincerely acknowledged in Vienna than in Paris. But it is the intolerable insolence of the national character, that makes its bravery, its gaiety, and even its genius detested. Trust me; this feeling will not be unfruitful. Out of the hut of the peasant will come the avengers, whom the cabinet has never been able to find in the camp. Out of the swamp and the thicket will rise the tree that will at once overshadow the fallen fortunes of Germany, and bring down the lightning on her aggressors. In this hope alone I live."

I once more asked him, "From what quarter is the restoration to come?"

"I know not--I care not--I ask not," said he, starting from his chair, and traversing the room with huge strides. "The topic feels to me as if a sword was now griding its way through my frame. But France will never keep Austria, nor Prussia, nor the Rhenish Provinces, nor Holland, nor any spot on earth beyond the land inhabited by Frenchmen. It is true," said he, with a stern smile, "that she may keep her West India islands, if your ships will let her. The negroes are her natural subjects. They have backs accustomed to the lash, and black cheeks that will not redden at her insolence."

"Are the German sovereigns of your opinion?"

"To a man. It is but this morning that I was honoured with a reception by our good emperor. His conviction was complete. But you will not see Austria stir a single step, until war is the outcry, not of her court, but of her people. The trumpet that leads the march will be blown not from the parade of Vienna or Berlin, but from the village, the pasture, the forest, and the mountain. The army will be the peasant, the weaver, the trader, the student, the whole of the pacific multitude of life turned into the materials of war; the ten thousand rills that silently water the plain of society suddenly united into one inundation; the eyes of every man looking only for the enemy; the feet of every man pursuing him; the hands of every man slaying him. The insolence of the Frenchman has contrived to convey a sting of the bitterness of conquest into every heart of our millions, and our millions will return it with resistless retribution."

"You have cheered and convinced me," said I, as I rose to take my leave. "It certainly is rather strange, that France, always mad with the love of seizure, has been able to acquire nothing during the last hundred years."

"When will this great consummation arrive?"

"When the tyranny can be endured no longer; when the people find that they must depend upon themselves for its redress; when a just Providence finds the vindication of its laws required by the necessities of man."

"From what quarter will the grand effort first come?"

"From the nation most aggrieved."

"What will be its result?"

To this moment I remember the sudden light which flashed into his cold grey eye, the gasping lip, and the elevation which even his stooped form assumed; as he answered with a tone and gesture which might have been imagined for one of the prophets of the Sistine Chapel--

The prediction has been partly realized. Much is yet to be fulfilled. But, like Gentz, I live in hope, and think that I see an approach to the consummation.

But the party to whom I was now introduced were of a different order from the generality of their country. Originally of the first education and first society of France, the strictness of the military service had produced on the the most valuable effect of years. The natural vividness of their temperament was smoothed down, their experience of English kindness had diminished their prejudices; and adversity--and no men bear the frowns of fortune better than their nation--gave them almost the manly calmness of the English gentleman. I found the old general all courtesy, and his friends all good-humour. My conduct in the affair of the morning was after their own hearts; I had, by common consent, earned their good graces; and they gave me on the spot half a dozen invitations to the regiments and chateaus of themselves and their friends, with as much hospitable sincerity as if they had only to recross the Channel to take possession of them again. Lafontaine was still moody, but he was in love; and, by this fact, unlike every body else, and unlike himself, from one half hour to another.

The conversation soon turned on a topic, on which the emigrants every where were peculiarly anxious to be set right with English feeling, namely, their acquittance from the charge of having fled unnecessarily.

"Yet you may believe that the landscape was not among my principal contemplations at the moment, though my eyes involuntarily turned on the town; where, from the blazes springing up in various quarters, I concluded that a general pillage had begun. That pillage was the order of the day much nearer to me, I could fully conceive, from the opening and shutting of doors, and the general tumult immediately under the leads where I stood. "Situation, gentlemen," said the old general, smiling, "is something, but circumstances are necessary to make it valuable. There never was a finer night for an investigation of the stars, if I had been an astronomer; and I dare say that the spot which formed my position would have been capital for an observatory; but the torches which danced up and down through the old and very dingy casements of the mansion, were a matter of much more curious remark to me than if I had discovered a new constellation.

"At length I was chased even out of this spot--my door had been found out. I have too much gallantry left to suppose that my Breton had betrayed me; though a dagger at her heart and a purse in her hand might be powerful arguments against saving the life of an old soldier who had reached his grand climacteric. At all events, as I saw torch after torch rising along the roofs, I moved into the darkness.

"I had here a new adventure. I saw a feeble light gleaming through the roof. An incautious step brought me upon a skylight, and I went through; my fall, however, being deadened by bursting my way through the canopy of a bed. I had fallen into the hospital of the chateau. A old Beguine was reading her breviary in an adjoining room. She rushed in with a scream. But those women are so much accustomed to casualties that I had no sooner acquainted her with the reasons of my flight, than she offered to assist my escape. She had been for some days in attendance on a sick servant. She led me down to the entrance of a subterranean communication between the mansion and the river, one of the old works which had probably been of serious service in the days when every chateau in the West was a fortress. The boat which had brought her from the convent was at the mouth of the subterranean; there, the Loire was open. If you ask, why I did not prefer throwing myself before the pursuers, and dying like a soldier, my reason was, that I should have been numbered merely among those who had fallen obscurely in the various skirmishes of the country; and besides, that if I escaped, I should have one chance more of preserving the province.

"But, at the moment when I thought myself most secure, I was in reality in the greatest peril. The Loire had long since broken into the work, which had probably never seen a mason since the wars of the League. I had made no calculation for this, and I had descended but a few steps, when I found my feet in water. I went on, however, till it reached my sword-belt. I then thought it time to pause; but just then, I heard a shout at the top of the passage--on the other hand I felt that the tide was rushing in, and to stay where I was would be impossible. The perplexity of that quarter of an hour would satisfy me for my whole life. I pretend to no philosophy, and have never desired to die before my time. But it was absolutely not so much the dread of finishing my career, as of the manner in which it must be finished there, which made the desperate anxiety of a struggle which I would not undergo again for the throne of the Mogul. Still, even with the roar of the water on one side, and of the rabble on the other, I had some presentiment that I should yet live to hang some of my pursuers. At all events I determined not to give my body to be torn to pieces by savages, and my name to be branded as a runaway and a poltron."

A strong suffusion overspread the veteran's face as he pronounced the words; he was evidently overcome by the possibility of the stigma.

"I have never spoken of this night before," said he, "and I allude to it even now, merely to tell this English gentleman and his friends how groundless would be the conception that the soldiers and nobles of an unfortunate country made their escape, before they had both suffered and done a good deal. My condition was probably not more trying than that of thousands less accustomed to meet difficulties than the officers of France: and I can assure him, that no country is more capable of a bold endurance of evils, or a chivalric attachment to a cause."

I gave my full belief to a proposition in which I had already full faith, and of which the brave and intelligent old man before me was so stately an example.

"But I must not detain you," said he, "any longer with an adventure which had not the common merit of a Boulevard spectacle; for it ended in neither the blowing up of a castle, nor, as you may perceive, the fall of the principal performer. As the tide rushed up through the works, I, of course receded, until at length I was caught sight of by the rabble. They poured down, and were now within a hundred yards of me, while I could not move. At that moment a strong light flashed along the cavern from the river, and I discovered for the first time that it too was not above a hundred yards from me. I had been a good swimmer in early life: I plunged in, soon reached the stream, and found that the light came from one of the boats that fish the Loire at night, and which had accidentally moored in front of my den. I got on board; the fisherman carried me to the other side; I made my way across the country, reached one of my garrisons, found the troops, fortunately, indignant at the treatment which the king's colours had received; marched at the head of two thousand men by daybreak, and by noon was in the Grande Place of Nantz; proceeded to try a dozen of the ringleaders of the riot, who had not been merely rebels, but robbers and murderers; and amid the acclamations of the honest citizens, gave them over to the fate which villains in every country deserve, and which is the only remedy for rebellion in any. But my example was not followed; its style did not please the ministers whom our king had been compelled to choose by the voice of the Palais Royal; and as his majesty would not consent to bring me to the scaffold for doing my duty, he compromised the matter, by an order to travel for a year, and a passport for England."

"Toutes les belles dames sont, plus ou moins, coquettes," says that gayest of all old gentlemen, the Prince de Ligne, who loved every body, amused every body, and laughed at every body. It is not for me to dispute the authority of one who contrived to charm, at once, the imperial severity of Maria Theresa and the imperial pride of Catharine; to baffle the keen investigation of the keenest of mankind, the eccentric Kaunitz; and rival the profusion of the most magnifique and oriental of all prime ministers, Potemkin.

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