During the period of the first representations of the English actors (which coincided with my evening attendance at the offices of the Secretariat) I made the acquaintance of a young fellow named Cordelier-Delanoue. It came about very naturally. We were publishing Psyché at that time and Delanoue had sent us a poem which he called Hamlet; this we inserted in our journal, he came to thank us and Adolphe and I became friendly with him, I especially. Delanoue was the son of one of the generals of the Revolution, who had formerly known my father; this circumstance had drawn us together and our dramatic and political sympathies did the rest. One night Delanoue came to see me at the office and suggested taking me to the Athénée while the courier from the Palais-Royal went to Neuilly and back. I was ignorant about many things, so it will not be any cause for astonishment, I hope, if I admit that I had never heard of the Athénée. M. Villenave was giving a literary soirée there that evening. I did not know who M. Villenave was; and my ignorance in this respect was a little more excusable than my not knowing what the Athénée was. However, I accepted. At that time, I had not the horror of making fresh acquaintances which beset me later. I was promised something connected with literature and literary people, and a promise such as this would have urged me on to cross the razor edge which serves as a bridge between the Mohammadan Paradise and this earth. I could cross such an edge now, prone though I am to giddiness, but it would be in order to fly from the very thing I then went to seek. So far as I can recollect, the meetings of the Athénée were held in a lower hall of the Palais-Royal, which had its entrance from the rue de Valois. They discussed all sorts of topics that would have been insufferable in drawing-rooms, but which at the Athénée were simply tedious. The people who discussed these tedious subjects had the right to a certain number of tickets to distribute among the members of their families, their friends and their acquaintances. They could have discussed these subjects quite well alone, but, for some inexplicable reason, they preferred to have an audience. On this particular evening the hall was full. M. Villenave was very popular in society, and, besides, these meetings had a certain celebrity. If I were condemned to be hung, I could not to save my life say what they talked of that night. It was probably some treatise on a second-rate deceased author, who served as an excuse to the writer to deliver a few raps to the living. M. Villenave conducted the meeting: he addressed it standing, by the aid of a couple of candelabras and a glass of eau sucrée near him. He was a fine-looking old man of, perhaps, at that time, some sixty-six or sixty-eight years of age. He had splendid white hair, daintily curled about his temples; black eyes that flashed with quite Southern fire; he was very tall but stooped a little from much bending over a desk; there was something distinguished-looking and graceful in his movements and manners. I had stopped modestly by the door for two reasons: first, because I was yet too unknown to imagine I had the right to put the speaker himself or anybody else out for my sake; secondly, as I had to return to my office by half-past nine, it was more convenient to be near the door than elsewhere, in order to escape incognito, as I had entered. Delanoue, who was more familiar with the company than I, left me to go and joke with them, during the short intervals when the sitting broke up to give M. Villenave time to take breath.
The usual hour for the courier having come, I was quietly escaping to return and receive him at my office, when Delanoue ran after me and caught me up under the peristyle. He had been deputed by the Villenave family to invite me to go and take tea with them at their house, after the meeting. I owed this favour to the kind things my friend Delanoue had said about me. I then had to inquire where the Villenaves lived. No. 82 rue de Vaugirard. Oh! but 53 faubourg Saint-Denis was a fair distance from my home. Fortunately, during my five years' residence in Paris, I had learnt to know its streets pretty thoroughly, so I did not feel obliged, as on my first visit, to hire a conveyance to take me from the place du Palais-Royal to the rue des Vieux-Augustins. The invitation conveyed by Delanoue had been so courteously and warmly pressed that the least I could do was to accept it. I ran off to the office, attended to the courier and returned. During the half-hour of my absence the sitting had been concluded, and I returned to find M. Villenave in a small drawing-room that opened out of the large hall, receiving the congratulations of his friends. Delanoue introduced me to M. Villenave and to his family. The Villenave family consisted first of Madame Villenave, a very gracious little old lady, very intellectual and an experienced society entertainer, but very fond of grumbling in her home-life, for she suffered, like Anne of Austria, from a cancer which ultimately killed her; Théodore Villenave, a tall, energetic young fellow, an author, at that time, of various fugitive poems, and translator of Wallenstein, which was destined to make a great commotion behind the scenes of the Odéon for three or four years before it was put on the stage, where it had a fairly successful reception; Madame Mélanie Waldor, the wife of a captain in the infantry on service and in garrison, who only put in short and rare appearances at Paris, where those who knew him spoke of him as a brave and loyal soldier. Madame Waldor composed fugitive verses, like her brother, which she published in the daily paper; like her brother, too, she afterwards wrote a play which had a successful run under the title of the École des Jeunes Filles. Last came Élisa Waldor, who at that period was only a charming little child with the head of a chérubin surrounded by lovely golden curly hair; she afterwards grew into a tall, beautiful woman, and was twice married—and happily each time, I trust.[1]
The family returned home on foot, in patriarchal fashion, accompanied by five or six friends, who, like myself, were on their way to the rue de Vaugirard, to take tea and nibble cake together there. As I was the stranger, I was allotted the position of honour—namely, to give my arm to Madame Waldor. As the distance was very long, it was a good opportunity of becoming acquainted. But, as we had never seen each other or spoken together before, the long walk would have been embarrassing to us both, had not Delanoue joined us and made a third in the conversation between the place du Palais-Royal and the rue de Vaugirard. He thereby rendered us both a great service, for which both of us were profoundly grateful to him.
What a strange thing these chance meetings are! How astonished I should have been had anyone told me that this family, whose very existence I had not known a couple of hours before, and who were complete strangers to me, would become for the next two or three years almost as close to me as my own, and that I should traverse the road that then seemed to me so long between the rue du faubourg-Saint-Denis and the rue de Vaugirard twice every day in future!
But I was in haste to reach our destination, to have a talk with M. Villenave. I do not remember how it was, or on what occasion, but a pamphlet he had written fell into my hands—a little work he had published in 1794, entitled Relation des noyades de cent trente-deux Nantais (Story of the drowning of a hundred and thirty-two people of Nantes). Directly I saw M. Villenave I remembered this pamphlet, and as soon as I thought of the pamphlet I resolved to lead the conversation to Carrier, and Nantes and the hundred and thirty-two Nantais. It was not a difficult matter to set M. Villenave talking; only, his conversation was very much like a sermon. When he talked, one had to let him go on, not interrupt him, and listen to him with reverent attention. He had, indeed, happened to be at Nantes in 1793, at the same time as Jean-Baptiste Carrier, of bloody memory. God forbid we should make the faintest excuses for that terrible proconsul and the horrors he perpetrated! But it must be admitted that the Vendeans had themselves set him an abominable example. Wars conducted by priests are apt to be barbarous wars, and it is known—or rather, it is not known, that at the beginning the insurrection was entirely in the hands of priests; the nobles did not involve themselves in it until later, and, when they did take part in it, the method of butchery became rather more humane: it changed to shooting. The first person to play a part in that bloody squabble was a sacristan named Cathelineau. Machiavelli says that, "When it was decided to. assassinate Julian de Medicis in the church of Sainte-Marie-des-Fleurs, they chose ecclesiastics to do the work of assassination, because they were less likely to be impressed by the sanctity of the place."
It is a strange but indisputable fact that when men of peace and love and charity turn into executioners, they become the most refined in cruelty of all; witness the in-pace (dungeons) of convents, witness the cells of the Inquisition, witness the massacres of Alby, witness the auto-da-fés of Madrid, witness Joan of Arc, witness Urbain Grandier.
This Cathelineau was what the country people between Angers and Saint-Laurent would term a sturdy lad (gars). Only three months elapsed between the day of his first shot and the day when he was killed, but these three months sufficed to make his name renowned in history. He was neither tall, nor had he refined manners; he was but five feet four inches high; but he had well-set shoulders and the hips were splendidly poised, and he possessed the fine cool prudent courage of the men of the West. We have mentioned that he was a sacristan, but he was many other things beside; he was mason, carrier, linen-merchant, a married man and the father of twelve or fourteen children. He had hardly gained a hearing before he set up a superior council comprised chiefly of priests: they troubled themselves but little over the nobles. The head of this council was the famous Bernier, curé d'Angers. Cathelineau was the man for him; the simple peasant discovered a quicker method of starting an insurrection than the pope with his bulls or the priests with their sermons. He advised the curés to shroud the crucifixes in black crèpe and to carry them thus in their processions. At the sight of their Christ in mourning, the peasants could no longer contain themselves; women tore their hair, men beat their breasts and all swore to kill the Republicans, root and branch, since they had grieved the Saviour. It should be added that nothing could be less knightly and less patriotic than the proclamations of these brave folk:—
"Down with conscription! Down with the militia! Let us dwell in our own countryside. People tell us the enemy may descend on us and threaten our homes. Well and good, let them first trespass on our soil, we shall be ready to meet them there!"
And those who talked thus were well aware that the enemy would have devastated, pillaged and burned all France and demolished Paris before it ventured between their hedges and among their furze bushes and in their sunken pathways.