AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL IN THE LIMOUSIN.
It is truly a great mistake to measure the interest of a journey by its duration, and that of a country by its remoteness; and one is deceived in supposing that it is necessary to go afar in quest of adventures, and make a voyage two years long in order to see curious sights. There is a certain author who has made "a journey around his room" more fruitful in incidents of all descriptions than the numberless voyages of an infinity of sailors that I know; and one may make, thank heaven! many an interesting trip without passing beyond the "neighboring shores" from which La Fontaine forbids us to wander. The only thing is, that it is less easy to travel after this fashion than the other, and that it requires a lengthened preparation.
In order to observe skilfully, one must be accustomed to look around one. We scarcely become curious except after long habit, and, strange to say, our curiosity seems to increase in proportion as we satisfy it. When we know a great deal we desire to know still more, and it is remarkable that those alone desire to see no sights who have never had any sights to see. Moreover, it is necessary to have contemplated the grandest spectacles of nature in order to understand and love her least conspicuous wonders; for nature does not surrender herself to the first comer. She is a chaste and severe divinity, who admits to her intimacy those alone who have deserved it by long contemplations and a constant worship: and I firmly believe that it is necessary to have travelled round the world in order profitably and agreeably to make the tour of one's garden. If many years of youth spent in wandering by land and sea, can render me an authority in regard to travels, then am I justified in declaring, that in none of my more distant courses have I found more interest and pleasure than in the little trip I am now about to narrate.
There were, then, four of us, all alike young, gay, active, clad in shooting costume, going straight ahead, without fixed plan or preconcerted itinerary, marching at hap-hazard in these desert landes, respiring freely the pungent odor of the broom, roaming from hill to hill without other rallying point than the top of a mountain which pointed out the direction of the low lands. After four hours' walk we discovered that this mountain was still very far distant, and that the sun was sinking below the horizon. We had already left behind us the wildest part of the department of the Correze. To woods of pine and birch succeeded enormous chestnut-trees; the sterile heath gave place to cultivated fields. Here and there some houses displayed their straw-colored roofs, and some scattered laborers beheld us pass by with gaping suspicion. To tell the truth, we had all of us a tolerably gallows look. In this wretched country, where every one lives on from day to day without quitting his little inclosure, without even hearing an echo from afar, four bearded marauders like ourselves, avoiding the beaten road, and marching rapidly across stubble and thicket, presented no ordinary rencontre. All on a sudden the clouds began to gather, and, by way of varying our sensations, a terrific tempest burst over our heads. It was the first incident of our journey. Drenched through in a moment by this diluvian rain, we rushed, with the ardor of soldiers mounting a breach, towards a village perched like a magpie's nest on the summit of the hill we were ascending. A house of capacious size, but of dismal and ruinous appearance, arose before us. We rushed in at a charging pace, and found that it was deserted, except that near the hearth, where smouldered the embers of the most miserable fire in the world, an infant was deposited in, or rather tied to, his cradle, according to the fashion of the country. By the aid of a stout bandage they had swaddled him up like a mummy, and duly sealed him to the planks of the little box, which served him for a bed. In addition, his head was carefully turned toward the fire, so that his cranium was in a state of continual ebullition, such being the appointed regimen of the neighborhood. At the sight of our strange visages, the little one, after staring at us for a moment or two, proceeded to utter the most lamentable outcries. I rocked his cradle with the most paternal solicitude, but could not succeed in quieting him. On the contrary, his screams became positively heart-rending, and we were almost ready to smother him outright in order to put a stop to his roaring. At this summons a woman entered abruptly into the house, and stared at us with an expression of alarm. It was incumbent on us to explain that we were no pilferers, and this was no easy matter. The young mother evidently looked on us with suspicion. She was not altogether a mere peasant,—at least she wore, instead of the little straw hat trimmed with black velvet, which is the ordinary head-dress of the countrywomen, a bonnet, which in the Limousin is a certain indication of pretensions to the rank of the bourgeoise. Her robe, besides, however inelegant it might be, was nevertheless town-made.
These matters I noticed at a glance, whilst one of my companions gave the needful explanations as to our pacific intentions. Our hostess pretended to be satisfied. She removed the cradle, threw some shavings into the fire to revive it, and sat herself down with a cold, constrained manner, in which I could discover at once considerable embarrassment, accompanied by a certain air of dignity. Never had I seen a Limousin peasant take a seat in the presence of gentlemen, and I speedily made another discovery which not a little perplexed me. The fire as it revived had thrown a glow upon the hearthstone, which was of cast-iron, and presented a large armorial escutcheon. This display astonished me. I looked round again at the smoke-dried kitchen in which we sat; it was a miserable place. The ceiling was falling piecemeal; in the pavement, disjointed and worn, were three or four muddy holes but rarely cleared out, the dampness of which was kept up by the continual dripping of a dozen cream cheeses, suspended in a long basket of osiers. Two beds, a large table, and a few dilapidated chairs, composed the furniture of the apartment, which was pervaded by a sour and offensive smell, apparently very attractive to a huge sow whose grunting snout was ever and anon thrust into the entrance of the doorway. Whence, then, this curious hearthstone? I looked more attentively at the young woman, and discovered in her countenance a certain air of distinction. I then inquired of her at what place we were.
"Monsieur is jesting at me, doubtless," she pretty sharply replied.
I assured her I had no such intention, and was really ignorant of the name of the village.
"It is not a village, sir," she resumed, "it is a town. You are at the Puy d'Arnac, in the Canton of Beaulieu."
A native of Marseilles would hardly have named the Canebiere with greater satisfaction. I knew that the Puy d'Arnac gave its name to a celebrated growth of the Correze, and I thought I understood the lofty tone of the reply. All on a sudden, one of my companions, whom we nicknamed the "Broker," because he groped into all sorts of places, and, with amusing perseverance, hunted out objects of art and curiosity even in hovels, touched my elbow, and asked me if I had noticed the picture which was half-hidden under the serge curtains of one of the beds. I had not yet observed it, and got up to look at it. It was the portrait of a general officer of the time of Louis XV. The frame, sculptured and gilt, struck me still more, being really beautiful. "This is a discovery indeed," said my friend to me, while I inquired of the young woman where such a portrait could have come from.
"Where could it have come from, Monsieur?" she haughtily replied; "it is the portrait of my grandfather."
"Aha!" we exclaimed, all four of us, turning ourselves round with surprise. With one hand our hostess stirred the fire, with an indifference evidently affected, while with the other she rocked the little box in which her infant was asleep.
"Might I presume to inquire the name of Monsieur your grandfather?" said I, drawing near to her.
"He was the Count of Anteroches," was her reply.
"What, the Count of Anteroches, who commanded the French guards at the battle of Fontenoy?"[5]
"You have heard him spoken of, then?" resumed the peasant girl, with a smile.
My friend the Broker stood as if stupefied before the picture. All of a sudden he wheeled round, and, gravely removing his cap, repeated with a theatrical air the celebrated saying of M. d'Anteroches,—"Fire first, Messieurs les Anglais; we are Frenchmen, and must do you the honors!"
This anecdote is, to my thinking, the most charming and most thoroughly stamped with the image of the age of any recorded in history. With regard to these celebrated sayings uttered in battles, I must indeed confess that I am very skeptical. Little as I may be of a soldier, I have a notion that it is not in an engagement as at the Olympic Circus, and that in the midst of fire, smoke, and musketry, generals must have other work on their hands than to utter these pretty epigrams, which there is moreover no shorthand writer at hand to take down. I know that Cambronne was annoyed when they recalled to him his splendid exclamation at Waterloo, "La garde meurt et ne se rend pas!" (The guard dies, and does not surrender!) "an invention the more clumsy," said he, "that I am not yet dead, and that I really did surrender." I have even discovered that this saying was invented by a member of the Institute, for the greater satisfaction of the readers of the "Yellow Dwarf," in which he wrote, in 1815, together with Benjamin Constant and many other celebrated malcontents.[6] The speeches of Leonidas find me equally incredulous. But, wheresoever they may come from, I delight in these anecdotes, which personify an entire epoch, and engrave it upon the memory with a single stroke. We may defy the historian who seeks to characterize the end of the last century and the beginning of the present, to find two epigrams more striking than the words attributed to Anteroches and Cambronne—to two French officers—one commanding the French guards, the other the old guard; both fighting for their country, at an interval of seventy years, with the same enemy, and on the same ground: for it is a singular coincidence that Fontenoy and Waterloo are but little distant from each other, and Heaven saw fit to ordain that the game of success and reverse should be played out almost upon the same fields. "Fire first, Messieurs les Anglais!" Is it not the type of that easy and adorable, that ironical and blasé nobility, who pushed the contempt of life even to insanity, and the worship of courtesy and honor even to the sublime?—who endowed their country with such a renown for elegance, high-breeding, and gallantry, that all its demagogic saturnalia never have effaced it, and never will?—a nobility reckless, if you please, but assuredly charming, and perfectly French withal, who gayly passed through life without ever doing the morrow the honor of thinking about it, and who, beholding one day the earth give way beneath their feet, looked into the abyss without a wink, without alarming themselves, without belying themselves, and went down alive and whole into the gulf, disdaining all defence, "without fear," if not "without reproach."
Between the saying of Anteroches and that of Cambronne there is a great gap; we find that the revolution has passed through it. The gentleman, refined even to exaggeration, has disappeared, and we have instead the rude language of democracy—"La garde meurt et ne se rend pas"—this is heroism, no doubt, but heroism of another sort. Never did the chauvinism of this present time light upon a more cornelian device, but do you not see in it the theatrical affectation, the melo-dramatic emphasis of another race? That he had no fear of death, and no idea of surrendering—this is what the gentleman of Fontenoy had no intention of declaring; it ought to have been well known—his followers had already given proof of it for ages past. To be brave alone to him was nothing—he must be as elegant in battle as he was at the ball. What signified death to that incomparable race who afterwards composed madrigals in prison, and ascended the scaffold with a smile, their step elastic, and their hand in the waistcoat pocket, a cocked hat under their arm, and a rose-bud between their lips? This epoch was personified in my eyes by the handsome and gentle countenance of the Count of Anteroches. After more than a hundred years I had discovered by chance, myself, an obscure wayfarer, in an unknown and miserable cabin, where his grand-daughter was living in the midst of her poultry, the portrait of this brilliant officer, to whose name will ever attach an elegant and charming renown; for if, like Cambronne, Anteroches did not really utter the words attributed to him, they have still been lent to him, and if thus lent, assuredly because there were grounds for it.
After these over-lengthy reflections, I turned toward the peasant woman, who now inspired me with profound commiseration. She continued to rock to and fro her bandaged infant, who was in very right and deed the Count of Anteroches. I inquired what was the occupation of her husband.
"He is dead," she replied; "I was better off during his lifetime. He was a gendarme, Monsieur."
"A gendarme!" I repeated with surprise.
"Yes," replied Madame d'Anteroches, who understood not the cause of my astonishment, "he had even passed as a brigadier during his latter years: we managed our little affairs very comfortably."
He was a brigadier of gendarmerie—content to be so—he managed his little affairs very comfortably—and his grandfather, as I find it in the "Military Records of France," had been named Marshal on the 25th of July, 1762; at the same time as the Marquis of Boufflers and the Duke of Mazarine! Would not the rabble of Paris do well to inquire a little before exclaiming so loudly against the privileges of the aristocracy? Moreover, it seems to me that the government of France should not allow the grandchildren of the Count of Anteroches to be sunk—as they are—into deplorable indigence. Apocryphal or otherwise the epigram of Fontenoy should at least be worth subsistence to all who bear this name. Many enjoy pensions and are maintained by France, who would find it very difficult to produce a similar claim, and the new republic would act wisely by repairing, when occasion turns up, the injustices of her eldest sister.
But it was now high time for us to leave. It was evident that we embarrassed our hostess, and since we had discovered her name we were no less embarrassed ourselves. I could not get over her coarse stuff gown, her filthy kitchen, and her familiar sow. It would have been cruel to ask for her hospitality, and how could we offer to pay our score? Besides, we knew that a rich proprietor of our acquaintance resided not far from Puy d'Arnac; we, therefore, took our leave of the high-born peasant with many excuses and thanks. At the moment I passed the threshold, I cast a parting glance upon the portrait. The fire lighted it up at that instant with so singular a brilliancy that it almost appeared animated. It seemed as if the countenance of M. d'Anteroches was alive, and that the handsome officer looked sadly down from the height of his gilded frame upon the utter misery of his descendants. "Oh! decadence! decadence of France!" I exclaimed to myself, and rushed bravely forth with my companions into the pelting rain.