THE TWO DREAMS
In 1786 Bodard de Saint-James, treasurer to the Navy, was of all the financiers of Paris the one whose luxury gave rise to most remark and gossip. At that time he was building his famous Folly at Neuilly, and his wife bought, to crown the tester of her bed, a plume of feathers of which the price had dismayed the Queen. It was far easier then than now to make oneself the fashion and be talked of by all Paris; a witticism was often quite enough, or the caprice of a woman.
Bodard lived in the fine house in the Place Vendôme which the farmer-general Dangé had not long since been compelled to quit. This notorious Epicurean was lately dead; and on the day when he was buried, Monsieur de Bièvre, his intimate friend, had found matter for a jest, saying that now one could cross the Place Vendôme without danger (or Dangé). This allusion to the terrific gambling that went on in the deceased man's house was his funeral oration. The house is that opposite to the Chancellerie.
To complete Bodard's history as briefly as possible, he was a poor creature, he failed for fourteen millions of francs after the Prince de Guéménée. His clumsiness in not anticipating that Serene bankruptcy—to use an expression of Lebrun-Pindare's—led to his never even being mentioned. He died in a garret, like Bourvalais, Bouret, and many others.
Madame de Saint-James indulged an ambition of never receiving any but people of quality—a stale absurdity that is ever new. To her the cap of a lawyer in the Parlement was but a small affair; she wanted to see her rooms filled with persons of title who had at least the minor privileges of entrée at Versailles. To say that many blue ribbons were to be seen in the lady's house would be untrue; but it is quite certain that she had succeeded in winning the civility and attention of some members of the Rohan family, as was proved subsequently in the too famous case of the Queen's necklace.
One evening—it was, I believe, in August 1786—I was greatly surprised to see in this millionaire's room, precise as she was in the matter of proofs of rank, two new faces, which struck me as being of decidedly inferior birth.
She came up to me as I stood in a window recess, where I had intentionally ensconced myself.
"Do tell me," said I, with a questioning glance at one of these strangers, "who is that specimen? How did he get into your house?"
"He is a charming man."
"Do you see him through the prism of love, or am I mistaken in him?"
"You are not mistaken," she replied, laughing; "he is as ugly as a toad; but he has done me the greatest service a woman can accept from a man."
As I looked at her with mischievous meaning, she hastened to add: "He has entirely cured me of the ugly red patches which spoiled my complexion and made me look like a peasant woman."
I shrugged my shoulders with disgust.
"A quack!" I exclaimed.
"No," said she, "he is a physician to the Court pages. He is clever and amusing, I assure you; and he has written books too. He is a very learned physicist."
"If his literary style is like his face!—--" said I, smiling.
"And the other?"
"What other?"
"That little prim man, as neat as a doll, and who looks as if he drank verjuice."
"He is a man of good family," said she. "He has come from some province—I forget which.—Ah! yes, from Artois. He is in Paris to wind up some affair that concerns the Cardinal, and His Eminence has just introduced him to Monsieur de Saint-James. They have agreed in choosing Monsieur de Saint-James to be arbitrator. In that the gentleman from the provinces has not shown much wisdom. What are people thinking of when they place a case in that man's hands? He is as gentle as a lamb, and as shy as a girl. His Eminence is most kind to him."
"What is it about?" said I.
"Three hundred thousand livres," said she.
"What! a lawyer?" I asked, with a little start of astonishment.
"Yes," replied she.
And, somewhat disturbed by having to make this humiliating confession, Madame Bodard returned to her game of faro.
Every table was made up. I had nothing to do or to say. I had just lost two thousand crowns to Monsieur de Laval, whom I had met in a courtesan's drawing-room. I went to take a seat in a deep chair near the fire. If ever on this earth there was an astonished man, it certainly was I on discovering that my opposite neighbor was the Controller-General. Monsieur de Calonne seemed to be drowsy, or else he was absorbed in one of those brown studies which come over a statesman. When I pointed out the Minister to Beaumarchais, who came to speak to me, the creator of Figaro explained the mystery without speaking a word. He pointed first to my head and then to Bodard's in an ingeniously significant way, by directing his thumb to one and his little finger to the other, with the rest of the fingers closed. My first impulse was to go and say something sharp to Calonne, but I sat still; in the first place, because I intended to play the favorite a trick, and also because Beaumarchais had somewhat familiarly seized my hand.
"What is it, monsieur?" said I.
With a wink he indicated the Minister.
"Do not wake him," he said in a low tone; "we may be only too thankful when he sleeps."
"But even sleeping is a scheme of finance," said I.
"Certainly it is," replied the statesman, who had read our words by the mere motion of our lips. "And would to God we could sleep a long time; there would not be such an awakening as you will see!"
"Monseigneur," said the play-writer, "I owe you some thanks."
"What for?"
"Monsieur de Mirabeau is gone to Berlin. I do not know whether in this matter of the Waters we may not both be drowned."
"You have too much memory and too little gratitude," replied the Minister drily, vexed at this betrayal of one of his secrets before me.
"Very possibly," said Beaumarchais, greatly nettled. "But I have certain millions which may square many accounts." Calonne affected not to have heard.
It was half-past twelve before the card-tables broke up. Then we sat down to supper—ten of us: Bodard and his wife, the Controller-General, Beaumarchais, the two strangers, two pretty women whose names may not be mentioned, and a farmer-general named, I think, Lavoisier. Of thirty persons whom I had found on entering the drawing-room but these ten remained. And the two "specimens" would only stay to supper on the pressing invitation of the lady of the house, who thought she could discharge her debt to one by giving him a meal, and asked the other perhaps to please her husband, to whom she was doing the civil—wherefore I know not. Monsieur de Calonne was a power, and if any one had cause to be annoyed it would have been I.
The supper was at first deadly dull. The two men and the farmer-general weighed on us. I signed to Beaumarchais to make the son of Esculapius, by whom he was sitting, drink till he was tipsy, giving him to understand that I would deal with the lawyer. As this was the only kind of amusement open to us, and as it gave promise of some blundering impertinence on the part of the two strangers, which amused us by anticipation, Monsieur de Calonne smiled on the scheme. In two seconds the ladies had entered into our Bacchic plot. By significant glances they expressed their readiness to play their part, and the wine of Sillery crowned our glasses again and again with silvery foam. The surgeon was easy enough to deal with; but as I was about to pour out my neighbor's second glass, he told me with the cold politeness of a money-lender that he would drink no more.
At this time, by what chance I know not, Madame de Saint-James had turned the conversation on the wonderful suppers to the Comte de Cagliostro, given by the Cardinal de Rohan. My attention was not too keenly alive to what the mistress of the house was saying; for since her reply I had watched, with invincible curiosity, my neighbor's pinched, thin face, of which the principal feature was a nose at once wide and sharp, which made him at times look very like a ferret. Suddenly his cheeks flushed as he heard Madame de Saint-James disputing with Monsieur de Calonne.
"But I assure you, monsieur," said she in a positive tone, "that I have seen Queen Cleopatra."
"I believe it, madame," said my neighbor. "I have spoken to Catherine de' Medici."
"Oh! oh!" said Monsieur de Calonne.
The words spoken by the little provincial had an indescribably sonorous tone—to use a word borrowed from physical science. This sudden clearness of enunciation, from a man who till now had spoken very little and very low, in the best possible taste, surprised us in the highest degree.
"Why, he is talking!" exclaimed the surgeon, whom Beaumarchais had worked up to a satisfactory condition.
"His neighbor must have touched a spring," replied the satirist.
Our man colored a little as he heard these words, though they were spoken in a murmur.
"And what was the late lamented Queen like?" asked Calonne.
"I will not assert that the person with whom I supped last night was Catherine de' Medici herself; such a miracle must seem as impossible to a Christian as to a philosopher," replied the lawyer, resting his finger-tips lightly on the table, and leaning back in his chair as if preparing to speak at some length. "But, at any rate, I can swear that that woman was as like to Catherine de' Medici as though they had been sisters. The lady I saw wore a black velvet dress, absolutely like that which the Queen is wearing in the portrait belonging to the King; on her head was the characteristic black velvet cap; her complexion was colorless, and her face the face you know. I could not help expressing my surprise to His Eminence. The suddenness of the apparition was all the more wonderful because Monsieur le Comte de Cagliostro could not guess the name of the personage in whose company I wished to be. I was utterly amazed. The magical spectacle of a supper where such illustrious women of the past were the guests robbed me of my presence of mind. When, at about midnight, I got away from this scene of witchcraft, I almost doubted my own identity.
"But all these marvels seemed quite natural by comparison with the strange hallucination under which I was presently to fall. I know not what words I can use to describe the condition of my senses. But I can declare, in all sincerity of heart, that I no longer wonder that there should have been, of old, spirits weak enough—or strong enough—to believe in the mysteries of magic and the power of the Devil. For my part, till I have ampler information, I regard the apparitions of which Cardan and certain other thaumaturgists have spoken as quite possible."
These words, pronounced with incredible eloquence of tone, were of a nature to rouse extreme curiosity in those present. Our looks all centered on the orator, and we sat motionless. Our eyes alone showed life as they reflected the bright wax lights in the candlesticks. By dint of watching the stranger, we fancied we could see an emanation from the pores of his face, and especially from those of his brow, of the inner feelings that wholly possessed him. This man, apparently so cold and strictly reserved, seemed to have within him a hidden fire, of which the flame came forth to us.
"I know not," he went on, "whether the figure I had seen called up made itself invisible to follow me; but as soon as I had laid my head on my pillow, I saw the grand shade of Catherine rise before me. I instinctively felt myself in a luminous sphere; for my eyes, attracted to the Queen with painful fixity, saw her alone. Suddenly she bent over me——"
At these words the ladies with one consent betrayed keener curiosity.
"But," said the lawyer, "I do not know whether I ought to go on; although I am inclined to think that it was but a dream, what remains to be told is serious."
"Does it bear on religion?" asked Beaumarchais.
"Or is it in any way indecent?" asked Calonne. "These ladies will forgive it."
"It bears on government," replied the lawyer.
"Go on," said the Minister. "Voltaire, Diderot, and their like have done much to educate our ears."
The Controller-General was all attention, and his neighbor, Madame de Genlis, became absorbed. The stranger still hesitated. Then Beaumarchais exclaimed impetuously:
"Come, proceed, Maître! Do not you know that when the laws leave folks so little liberty, people revenge themselves by laxity of manners?"
So the lawyer went on:
"Whether it was that certain ideas were fermenting in my soul, or that I was prompted by some unknown power, I said to her:
"'Ah, madame, you committed a very great crime.'
"'Which?' she asked in a deep voice.
"'That for which the signal was given by the Palace clock on the 24th of August.'
"She smiled scornfully, and some deep furrows showed on her pallid cheeks.
"'Do you call that a crime?' replied she; 'it was only an accident. The undertaking was badly managed, and the good result we looked for failed—for France, for all Europe, and for the Catholic Church. How could we help it? Our orders were badly carried out. We could not find so many Montlucs as we needed. Posterity will not give us credit for the defective communications which hindered us from giving our work the unity of impulse which is necessary to any great Coup d'État; that was our misfortune. If by the 25th of August not the shadow of a Huguenot had been left in France, I should have been regarded to the remotest posterity as a noble incarnation of Providence. How often have the clear-seeing spirits of Sixtus V., of Richelieu, of Bossuet, secretly accused me of having failed in my undertaking, after daring to conceive of it! And how many regrets attended my death!
"'The disease was still rife thirty years after that Saint-Bartholomew's night; and it had caused the shedding of ten times more noble blood in France than was left to be shed on August 26, 1572. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, for which you had medals struck, cost more tears, more blood and money, and killed more prosperity in France than three Saint-Bartholomews. Letellier, with a dip of ink, carried into effect the decree which the Crown had secretly desired since my day; but though on August 25, 1572, this tremendous execution was necessary, on August 25, 1685, it was useless. Under Henri de Valois' second son heresy was scarcely pregnant; under Henri de Bourbon's second son the teeming mother had cast her spawn over the whole world.
"'You accuse me of crime, and you raise statues to the son of Anne of Austria! But he and I aimed at the same end. He succeeded; I failed; but Louis XIV. found the Protestants disarmed, while in my day they had powerful armies, statesmen, captains, and Germany to back them.'
"On hearing these words slowly spoken, I felt within me a tremulous thrill. I seemed to scent the blood of I know not what victims. Catherine had grown before me. She stood there like an evil genius, and I felt as if she wanted to get into my conscience to find rest there——"
"He must have dreamed that," said Beaumarchais, in a low voice. "He certainly never invented it."
"'My reason is confounded,' said I to the Queen. 'You pride yourself on an action which three generations have condemned and held accursed, and——'
"'Add,' said she, 'that writers have been more unjust to me than my contemporaries were. No one undertakes my defence. I am accused of ambition—I who was so rich and a Queen. I am taxed with cruelty—I who have but two decapitations on my conscience. And to the most impartial minds I am still, no doubt, a great riddle. Do you really believe that I was governed by feelings of hatred, that I breathed only vengeance and fury?' She smiled scornfully. 'I was as calm and cold as Reason itself. I condemned the Huguenots without pity, but without anger; they were the rotten orange in my basket. If I had been Queen of England, I should have judged the Catholics in the same way, if they had been seditious. To give our power any vitality at that period, only one God could be allowed in the State, only one faith and one master. Happily for me, I left my excuse recorded in one sentence. When Birague brought me a false report of the loss of the battle of Dreux—"Well and good," said I, "then we will go to Sermon."—Hate the leaders of the New Religion? I esteemed them highly, and I did not know them. If I ever felt an aversion for any political personage, it was for that cowardly Cardinal de Lorraine, and for his brother, a wily and brutal soldier, who had me watched by their spies. They were my children's enemies; they wanted to snatch the crown from them; I saw them every day, and they were more than I could bear. If we had not carried out the plan for Saint-Bartholomew's Day, the Guises would have done it with the help of Rome and its monks. The Ligue, which had no power till I had grown old, would have begun in 1573.'
"'But, madame,' said I, 'instead of commanding that horrible butchery—excuse my frankness—why did you not employ the vast resources of your political genius in giving the Reformers the wise institutions which made Henri IV.'s reign so glorious and peaceful?'
"She smiled again, shrugging her shoulders, and her hollow wrinkles gave her pale features an ironical expression full of bitterness.
"'After a furious struggle a nation needs repose,' said she. 'That is the secret of that reign. But Henri IV. committed two irremediable blunders. He ought neither to have abjured Protestantism nor to have left France Catholic after his own conversion. He alone has ever been in a position to change the face of France without a shock. Either not a single stole, or not a single conventicle! That is what he ought to have seen. To leave two hostile principles at work in a government with nothing to balance them is a crime in a King; it is sowing the seed of revolutions. It belongs to God alone to leave good and evil for ever at odds in the work of His hand. But this sentence was perhaps inscribed at the foundations of Henri IV.'s policy, and perhaps it was what led to his death. It is impossible that Sully should not have cast a covetous eye on the immense possessions of the clergy—though the clergy were not their sole masters, for the nobles dissipated at least two-thirds of the Church revenues. Sully the Reformer owned abbeys nevertheless.' She paused, to think, as it seemed.
"'But does it occur to you,' said she, 'that you are asking a Pope's niece her reason for remaining Catholic?'—Again she paused—'And, after all, I would just as soon have been a Calvinist,' she went on, with a gesture of indifference. 'Can the superior men of your age still think that religion had really anything to do with that great trial, the most tremendous of those that Europe has been required to decide—a vast revolution retarded by trivial causes, which will not hinder it from overflowing the whole world, since I failed to stop it.—A revolution,' said she, with a look of deep meaning, 'which is still progressing, and which you may achieve.—Yes, You, who hear me!'
"'What! Has no one yet understood that old interests on one hand, and on the other new interests, had taken Rome and Luther to be their standards of battle! What! When Louis IX., to avoid a somewhat kindred struggle, dragged after him a population a hundred times greater than that I condemned to death, and left them in the sands of Egypt, he earned the title of Saint, while I!—But I,' she added, 'failed.'
"She looked down and stood silent for a minute. It was no longer a Queen that I beheld, but rather one of those Druidesses of old who sacrificed men, and could unroll the pages of the future while exhuming the lore of the past. But she presently raised her royal and majestic face.
"'By directing the attention of the middle classes to the abuses of the Roman Church,' said she, 'Luther and Calvin gave birth in Europe to a spirit of investigation which inevitably led the nations to examine everything. Examination leads to doubt. Instead of the faith indispensable to social existence, they brought in their train, and long after them, an inquisitive philosophy, armed with hammers, and greedy of destruction. Science, with its false lights, sprang glittering from the womb of heresy. Reform in the Church was not so much what was aimed at as the indefinite liberty of man, which is fatal to power. I have seen that. The result of the successes of the Reformers in their contest against the priesthood—even at that time better armed and more formidable than the Crown—was the destruction of the monarchical power raised with so much difficulty by Louis XI. on the ruins of feudality. Their aim was nothing less than the annihilation of Religion and Royalty, and over their wreck the middle classes of all lands were to join in a common compact. Thus this contest was war to the death between these new allies and ancient laws and beliefs. The Catholics were the representative expression of the material interests of the Crown, the Nobility, and the Priesthood.
"'It was a duel to the death between two giants; the night of Saint-Bartholomew was, unfortunately, only a wound. Remember that, to save a few drops of blood at the right moment, a torrent had to be shed at a later day. There is a misfortune which the Intelligence that looks down on a kingdom cannot avert; that, namely, of having no peers by whom to be judged when he succumbs under the burden of events. My peers are few; fools are in the majority; these two propositions account for everything. If my name is held in execration in France, the inferior minds which constitute the mass of every generation are to blame.
"'In such great crises as I have been through, reigning does not mean holding audience, reviewing troops, and signing decrees. I may have made mistakes; I was but a woman. But why was there no man then living who was superior to the age? The Duke of Alva had a soul of iron, Philip II. was stultified by Catholic dogmas, Henri IV. was a gambler and a libertine, the Admiral was systematically pig-headed. Louis XI. had lived too soon; Richelieu came too late. Whether it were virtuous or criminal, whether the Massacre of Saint-Bartholomew is attributed to me or no, I accept the burden. I shall always stand between those two great men as a visible link in an unrecognized chain. Some day paradoxical writers will wonder whether nations have not sometimes given the name of executioner to those who, in fact, were victims. Not once only will mankind be ready to immolate a God rather than accuse itself! You are all ready to shed tears for two hundred louts, when you refuse them for the woes of a generation, of a century, of the whole world! And you also forget that political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!'
"'May the nations never be happy at less cost?' cried I, with tears in my eyes.
"'Great Truths leave their wells only to find fresh vigor in baths of blood. Christianity itself, the essence of all truth, since it proceeds from God, was not established without martyrs. Has not blood flowed in torrents? Must it not forever flow?—You will know—you who are to be one of the builders of the social edifice founded by the apostles. As long as you use your instruments to level heads, you will be applauded; then, when you want to take up the trowel, you will be killed.'
"'Blood! blood!'—the words rang in my brain like the echo of a bell.
"'According to you,' said I, 'Protestantism has the same right as you have to argue thus?'
"But Catherine had vanished as though some draught of air had extinguished the supernatural light which enabled my mind to see the figure which had grown to gigantic proportions. I had suddenly discerned in myself an element which assimilated the horrible doctrines set forth by the Italian Queen.
"I woke in a sweat, and in tears; and at the moment when reason, triumphing within me, assured me in her mild tones that it was not the function of a King, nor even of a nation, to practise these principles, worthy only of a people of atheists——"
"And how are perishing monarchies to be saved?" asked Beaumarchais.
"God is above all, monsieur," replied my neighbor.
"Well, then," said Monsieur de Calonne, with the flippancy which characterized him, "we have always the resource of believing ourselves to be instruments in the hand of God, as the gospel according to Bossuet has it."
As soon as the ladies understood that the whole scene was a conversation between the Queen and the lawyer, they had begun whispering. Indeed, I have spared the reader the exclamations and interruptions with which they broke into the lawyer's narrative. However, such phrases as, "What a deadly bore!" and "My dear, when will he have done?" reached my ear.
When the stranger ceased speaking, the ladies were silent. Monsieur Bodard was asleep. The surgeon being half drunk, Lavoisier, Beaumarchais, and I alone had been listening; Monsieur de Calonne was playing with the lady at his side.
At this moment the silence was almost solemn. The light of the tapers seemed to me to have a magical hue. A common sentiment linked us by mysterious bonds to this man who, to me, suggested the inexplicable effects of fanaticism. It needed nothing less than the deep hollow voice of Beaumarchais' neighbor to rouse us.
"I too dreamed!" he exclaimed.
I then looked more particularly at the surgeon, and felt an indescribable sentiment of horror. His earthy complexion, his features, large but vulgar, were the exact expression of what I must be allowed to call la canaille, the rough mob. A few specks of dull blue and black dotted his skin like spots of mud, and his eyes flashed with sinister fires. The face looked more ominous perhaps than it really was, because a powdered wig à la frimas crowned his head with snow.
"That man must have buried more than one patient," said I to my neighbor.
"I would not trust my dog to his care," he replied.
"I hate him involuntarily," said I.
"I despise him," replied he.
"And yet how unjust!" cried I.
"Oh! bless me, by the day after to-morrow he may be as famous as Volange the actor," replied the stranger.
Monsieur de Calonne pointed to the surgeon with a gesture that seemed to convey, "This fellow might amuse us."
"And did you too dream of a Queen?" asked Beaumarchais.
"No, I dreamed of a people," said he with emphasis, making us laugh. "I was attending a patient whose leg I was to amputate the next day——"
"And you found a people in your patient's thigh?" asked Monsieur de Calonne.
"Exactly so!" replied the surgeon.
"Is not he amusing?" cried Madame de Genlis.
"I was greatly surprised," the speaker went on, never heeding these interruptions, and stuffing his hands into his breeches pockets, "to find some one to talk to in that leg. I had the strange power of entering into my patient. When I first found myself in his skin, I discerned there an amazing number of tiny beings, moving, thinking, and arguing. Some lived in the man's body, and some in his mind. His ideas were creatures that were born, grew, and died; they were sick, gay, healthy, sad—and all had personal individuality. They fought or fondled. A few ideas flew forth and went to dwell in the world of intellect. Suddenly I understood that there are two worlds—the visible and the invisible universe; that the earth, like man, has a body and a soul. A new light was cast on nature, and I perceived its immensity when I saw the ocean of beings everywhere distributed in masses and in species, all of one and the same living matter, from marble rocks up to God. A magnificent sight! In short, there was a universe in my patient. When I inserted my lancet in his gangrened leg, I destroyed a thousand such beings.—You laugh, ladies, at the idea that you are a prey to a thousand creatures——"
"No personalities," said Monsieur de Colonne, "speak for yourself and your patient."
"My man, horrified at the outcry of his animalcules, wanted to stop the operation; but I persisted, telling him that malignant creatures were already gnawing at his bones. He made a motion to resist me, not understanding that what I was doing was for his good, and my lancet pierced me in the side——"
"He is too stupid," said Lavoisier.
"No, he is drunk," replied Beaumarchais.
"But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning," cried the surgeon.
"Oh, oh!" cried Bodard, waking, "my leg is asleep!"
"Your animalcules are dead," said his wife.
"That man has a vocation," said my neighbor, who had imperturbably stared at the surgeon all the time he was talking.
"It is to Monsieur's vocation what action is to speech, or the body to the soul," said the ugly guest.
But his tongue was heavy, and he got confused; he could only utter unintelligible words. Happily, the conversation took another turn. By the end of half an hour we had forgotten the surgeon to the Court pages, and he was asleep.
When we rose from table, the rain was pouring in torrents.
"The lawyer is no fool," said I to Beaumarchais.
"Oh! he is dull and cold. But you see the provinces can still produce good folks who take political theories and the history of France quite seriously. It is a leaven that will spread."
"Have you a carriage?" Madame de Saint-James asked me.
"No," said I shortly. "I did not know that I should want it this evening. You thought, perhaps, that I should take home the Controller-General? Did he come to your house en polisson?" (the fashionable name at the time for a person who drove his own carriage at Marly dressed as a coachman). Madame de Saint-James left me hastily, rang the bell, ordered her husband's carriage, and took the lawyer aside.
"Monsieur de Robespierre, will you do me the favor of seeing Monsieur Marat home, for he is incapable of standing upright?" said she.
"With pleasure, madame," replied Monsieur de Robespierre with an air of gallantry; "I wish you had ordered me to do something more difficult."
Paris, January 1828.