“Still at the bayonet’s point he stood,
And strong to meet the bloom,
He shouted ‘midst his rushing blood,
‘Arm, arm, Auvergne―the foe.’”
OLD Paris was bright with the sunshine of a glorious June morning, and gay with banners, flowers, and tapestry. It was the day of a high festival―the Fête Dieu ―and in the Paris of the Philosophers and of the Encyclopædia―men were making holiday as though they still believed the miracle without evidence which the Romish Church has made a central dogma of her creed.
Mass was over; and a gay crowd swept forth from the stately and beautiful portico of the Church of St. Sulpice, a noble prize for which Jesuits and Jansenists were even then contending fiercely. The pleasure seekers, for such they all were, soon scattered in various directions; many took the streets leading to the river, where packet boats and barges of various kinds awaited them, while others sought the welcome shade of the chestnut alleys in the gardens of the Luxembourg.
Amongst the latter was a youth of about twenty, gaily equipped in a maroon-colored velvet doublet, with deep ruffles of “Point d’Argentan,” perruque in the newest fashion, and useless little hat, or “claque,” carried, not on his head, but under his arm. In his observance of every Parisian mode there was even a shade of exaggeration, which might have suggested to a practiced eye that he was not a Parisian. His features were handsome, his eyes large, dark, and full of fire. The indications of an ardent, sensitive, impressible nature were easily read; but underlying these were others, less obvious. Instead of the restless, wakeful air engendered by the stir and strain of city life, there was a quiet and repose, a look of silent slumbering strength. Such tokens of race, heirlooms from an ancestry more or less remote, are sometimes preserved in the outward aspect, long alter the qualities of which they were the signs have passed away.
Presently he was joined by a friend, who had not come forth from the gates of St. Sulpice or of any other church. As they walked on together they formed a striking contrast in everything, except their frank, careless, good-humored satisfaction with themselves, with each other, and with all that surrounded them. The newcomer―older than his companion, and more soberly, though quite as fashionably dressed―was of middle height, slender, active, alert, and full of observation. Every moment he bowed to some acquaintance, or pointed out a remarkable person or a droll incident to his friend, who saw far less;―but anything really beautiful, such as a fair child’s face in the crowd, or a gleam of sunlight on the roses and lilies in the balconies, seldom failed to attract his attention.
“Well, my dear Gerard,” said the elder, as they entered the broad and shady alleys of the Luxembourg, “and what of the Mass?”
“Ah! Prosper, it was divine!” Gerard answered with enthusiasm. Not the dogma, but the music was under consideration; for Gerard was a musician, while Prosper believed himself a poet, since some verses of his had been pronounced “full of salt and flavor” by the formidable critics of the “salons.” He had come to Paris in search of patrons and a publisher, whilst it was his friend’s ambition to find a dramatic author of established reputation who would allow his piece to receive its musical setting at his hands. Both were strong in heart and high in hope. Gerard intended to rival Pergolèse and Buranelli; Prosper, more audacious, dreamed of being named next after Voltaire, though certainly at a great distance. Yet each would rather have called himself, or been called by others, “philosopher,” than poet or musician; for that was the age in which “every fool who spoiled paper styled himself a philosopher.”
“If I were you, Gerard,” Prosper suggested, “I should begin by composing a mass.”
“That I shall not do, as I am Gerard,” his friend answered with decision.
“Ah! you think it would tell against you in certain circles? Not at all, my friend. Men of enlightened views, men of the world, in fact, understand the difference between art and superstition; and would do justice to the motives of a young man of spirit, who has no prejudices and only seeks to distinguish himself. Has not Grétry made his début by a mass?”
“Yes; the boy Grétry. A fine genius! Yet he shall learn, I hope, that the roble task of naturalizing the music of Italy in France needs more than one workman.”
“You are fortunate,” Prosper resumed, “in being able to identify your genius with the cause of a party. ‘Gerard and the music of Italy!’ will make a good rallying cry for the salons and the parterre. As for me, I too have found a theme which I think ought to be popular and successful. In confidence, my friend, I may tell you that I am writing an ode upon the death of D’Assas. A grand subject, and one which has the merit of being fresh in every man’s mind. Listen now!” Prosper assumed the poet, a character which, with him, could be taken up and laid down at pleasure, and leaning on the marble balustrade of the terrace which overlooked the palace Barden, he told a story, already of course as well known to Gerard as to himself. “Our general, M. le Marquis de Castries, is surprised in his camp at Closter camp. The Chevalier D’Assas is on duty, at an outpost. The enemy steal upon him noiselessly under cover of night. Their bayonets are at his heart. ‘Silence! not a word, or it is thy last!’ ‘Auvergne! Auvergne! the foe is here!’ D’Assas shouts―and dies. And our army is saved. There, M. Gerard, what think you of that for a theme?”
Gerard did not speak. Tears filled his eyes; such tears as the exquisite melody of the chanted mass had called forth an hour before.
“It will do,” Prosper went on, “with a fine conclusion about universal peace, mercy, and humanity.”
Gerard roused himself from a dream of the glory of self-sacrifice, to ask what in the world peace, mercy, and humanity had to do with the devotion of D’Assas.
“With D’Assas little enough―with my poem, and the gentlemen upon whom its success depends, a great deal. Humanity, Beneficence, Philanthropy―these are our three new words, M. Gerard. To sprinkle your page plentifully with these is the secret of success with the philosophers and with the vulgar. But listen I Do you hear those cries? There is something doing outside. Let us come and see; perhaps we, shall find a theme for a song, or at least a hint for an epigram.”
They descended the steps of the terrace, crossed the gardens, and reached the handsome street of Vaugirard; where they found a scene of tumult and confusion.
Not many years had passed since the impressible Parisians, rejoicing in their King’s recovery from a dangerous fever, saluted him with tears and prayers and blessings as Louis the Well-beloved. But those years, with their black record of sin and shame, had changed that love into unutterable scorn and loathing. And now Louis the Hated, Louis the Despised, no longer dared even to enter his capital. Such had been his reception, on his last visit, that he had a new road constructed, by which he could go from Versailles to St. Denys without passing through Paris. It was called expressively “Le Chemin de la Révolte.”
Upon this festival day, however, Mesdames de France desired to perform their devotions in a church of the city. The Parisian populace had no cause to hate these devout and harmless women, who led pure and simple lives amidst the indescribable pollutions of their father’s court. But they were the daughters of Louis XV., and by the necessities of God’s providential orden, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.
When Prosper and Gerard emerged from the gardens of the Luxembourg, the Rue Vaugirard was filled with a noisy, insulting mob, through which the royal carriages forced their way with difficulty. The slender guard strove in vain to keep back the crowd, who pressed even to the carriage windows, shouting every party watchword of the day and hour, mingled with rude jests and imprecations. An instant afterward―no one knew how or why―a sword flashed in the sunshine, stones were thrown, the cries grew louder and fiercer, the curses more bitter. The mob, at first half in jest, was in dangerous earnest now; and the guard, growing exasperated, had recourse to their weapons. “Back, canaille!” cried one of the horsemen, waving his sword towards the spot where Gerard and Prosper stood, idle though interested spectators of the fray.
Gerard instantly recoiled; but Prosper held his ground until forced back by those around him. Even then he contrived to distinguish himself from the “canaille” by retiring with dignified slowness, and taking up an eligible position beside his friend on the steps of a convent gate. “If D’Assas had known when to retreat as well as you, Gerard, I should have no theme for my poem,” he laughed.
“I was a pupil of the Jesuits,” Gerard returned, “and they taught me to obey.”
“Because you must?”
“No; because I owed it to the body of which I was a member. These sons of the old Romans knew how to inspire the esprit de corps, and to teach the dignity of law.”
“What! are you going to defend them? At this hour of the day!”
“No man less inclined. But remember, the Patriarch himself was their pupil, and always speaks of them with gratitude.”
“Ah! when you talk of M. de Voltaire, it is a different matter. A genius so sublime―”
“Look, Prosper!” cried Gerard, unceremoniously cutting short his friend’s tribute of devotion to the monarch of the philosophers, “yonder is a scholar of the Jesuits, scarce likely to do them as much credit as Voltaire. That ugly, misshapen urchin―who is here, there, everywhere in the hottest mêlée―is Gustave Adolphe Bairdon, my landlady’s hopeful son, pupil at the college of Louis le Grand, and plague and terror of a certain luckless musician, whose very harpsichord―not to say his MSS.―is hardly safe from his mischievous fingers.”
“Gustave Adolphe Bairdon! What a name for a mean little bourgeois!”
“Like the heroic Swede in nothing, save his love of fighting. The name has been in his mother’s family since the days of the great Richelieu and the Thirty Years’ War, when the Lutheran king was the idol of Paris. Nor is the surname French. The father is a Scottish Jacobite; but one rarely sees him.”
A shrill cry of pain and terror brought their talk to a sudden close. Looking towards the spot where the crowd was thickest, they saw that someone had fallen, and was lying beneath the hoofs of the horses.
“‘Tis Gustave!” cried Gerard, and instantly he ran down the convent steps and plunged into the midst of the throng. In a few minutes he returned, his lace torn, his velvet stained with blood, and bearing in his arms an apparently lifeless form.
“Prosper, my friend, call a fiacre!” he entreated, but the panegyrist of D’Assas was nowhere to be seen. As the French expressively say, he had “saved himself.” Yet Jules Prosper was a brave man; he would have fought and died on the battlefield like a true Frenchman, though he “did not see the necessity” of involving himself in a street brawl for the rescue of a little bourgeois. It was true that M. de Sartines, the very vigilant lieutenant of police, who “knew what people had for dinner, and said to their wives and children,” did not always notice or punish flagrant breaches of the peace; but even he would scarcely dare to pass over that day’s affair; and the consequences, to one who made himself conspicuous in it, might be unpleasant. A young and rising man of letters could not be too circumspect.
Gerard carried his burden to the Place St. André, where in those days vehicles stood for hire. He entered one, and gave the address, “Número 18, Rue Béthizy.”
By this time the injured lad had recovered consciousness. He was slightly deformed, had a clever, old-looking face, and though nearly fifteen, was no taller than a well-grown boy of twelve. He had been struck, just above the ankle, by the hoof of a horse, and Gerard had no doubt the limb was broken. He held him as tenderly, and made his position as easy as possible, but could not prevent his suffering greatly, as the carriage jolted over the ill-kept streets of old Paris; and the contempt and aversion he had hitherto felt for him changed into a kind of respect when he saw him bravely repress the cries of pain that rose to his lips, and heard him try to say he was not so much hurt, after all
As they drew near their destination, Gerard thought with dismay, “What if, on this fête-day, all is shut up, and no one left in charge?” His fears were groundless. The shop was shut, of course; but the driver had knocked but once when the door was opened by a young girl. Gerard had seen her before; yet her picture as he saw it then, framed in the quaint doorway, left itself forever on his mind. The half-formed, slender figure as yet lacked symmetry, and the dainty charms of a Frenchwoman’s toilet were absent from the simple dress―a plain sacque of linsey, a white camisole, and a blue ribbon which bound the abundant golden hair. But the truthful, trustful eyes were blue like the hairbell, and the fair, pure, childlike features had a grace and finish of their own―such grace as the bloom gives the peach, if not such as the sculptor’s chisel gives the statue.
Gerard desired the driver to wait for further orders, and gently carried the wounded boy into the shop. “Mademoiselle Griselle, do not be alarmed,” he said. “Your brother is hurt; but I hope not seriously. Where shall I lay him?”
The color faded from the young girl’s cheek; but without speaking a word, she led the way through the shop, up the dark, narrow little staircase to the entresol, and pulled off the elaborately embroidered coverlet of the state bed.
Gerard laid his burden down, and said, “Will Mademoiselle favor me with the address of the surgeon whose services she would desire?”
“M. Vauden, Número 2, Rue St. Honoré,” the young girl answered promptly.
“He shall be here immediately.” Gerard went; and returned in ten minutes, accompanied by the surgeon, a plain working man, in a white apron, with a case of instruments under his arm. He did his work well and quickly; whilst Griselle waited on him like a brave, self-forgetting girl, too truly tenderhearted to shrink weakly from the sight of pain. Yet they could have ill dispensed with Gerard’s aid; and the surgeon, as he bowed himself out, complimented him highly on his tact and kindness.
Nor was his work over then. He watched beside the patient, while Griselle kindled a fire, and made tisane and eau sucrée; he fetched medicine, fruit, and ice; making himself not only useful but indispensable, until evening brought the family home from their day’s excursion to St. Cloud. Then, before Madame Bairdon’s exclamations of surprise and horror at her son’s condition were half over, Gerard had withdrawn himself to his solitary attic, and locked himself in.