The threatened village quietly watched this left-handed justice approach: its eleven to twelve hundred inhabitants modestly stood at their doors and windows. Peace and innocence reigned throughout from east to west, from north to south; anyone entering might have thought it the valley of Tempe, when Apollo tended the flocks of King Admetus. The inhabitants of Lèves looked as though they were the actors in that play (I cannot recall which it is), where Odry had sent for the commissary at the wrong moment and, when the commissary arrived, everybody was in unity again; so that everybody asked in profound surprise—
"Who sent for a commissary? Did you? or you? or you?"
"No.... I asked for a commissionaire," replied Odry; "just an ordinary messenger, that is all!" and the agent took himself off abashed and with empty hands.
That happened in the piece, but not exactly in the same way at Lèves. A score of persons were arrested, and these were divided into two categories: the least guilty and the most guilty. The least guilty were handed over to the jurisdiction of the police; the guiltiest were sent before the Court of Assizes. A very curious thing resulted from this separation. At that time, the police correctionelle always sentenced, whilst the jury acquitted only too eagerly. The least guilty men who appeared before the police correctionnelle were found guilty, while the most culpable, who were tried before a jury, were acquitted. The sailor in the green cloth was one of the most guilty, and was produced before the jury as an indisputable piece of evidence. The jury declared that billiard tables had not a monopoly for clothing in green; that if a citizen liked to dress like a billiard table, why! political opinions were free, so a man surely might indulge his individual fancy in his style of dress. The religious question was decided in favour of the French Church, and this decision lasted as long as the Abbé Ledru himself, namely, four or five years; during which period of time the parish of Lèves was separated from the general religion of the kingdom, in France, without producing any great sensation. At the end of that time, the Abbé Ledru committed the stupidity of dying. I am unaware in what tongue and rites he was interred; but I do know that, the day after his death, the Lévois asked the bishop for another priest, and this bishop proved a kind father to his prodigal children and sent them one.
The third was received with as many honours as the two previously appointed had been received with insults on their arrival. The French Church was closed, the Roman Catholic religion re-established, and the new priest returned to the old presbytery; the Grenadier became the most fervent and humble of his penitents, and the tongue of Cicero and Tacitus again became the dominical one of the Lévois, returned to the bosom of Holy Church.
But Barthélemy wrote to me, a little time ago, that there were serious scruples in some weak minds. Were the infants baptised, the adults married, and the old people buried by the Abbé Ledru during his schism with Gregory XVI., really properly baptised and married and buried? It did not matter to the baptised souls, who could return and be baptised by an orthodox hand; nor again to the married ones, who had but to have a second mass said over them and to pass under the canopy once more, but it mattered terribly to the dead; for they could neither be sought for nor recognised one from another. Happily God will recognise those whom the blindness of human eyes prevents from seeing, and I am sure that He will forgive the Lévois their temporary heresy for the sake of their good intention.
This event, and the conversion of Casimir Delavigne to the observances of the French religion, were the culminating points in the fortunes of the Abbé Châtel, primate of the Gauls. Casimir Delavigne, who gave his sanction to all new phases of power; who sanctioned the authority of Louis XVIII. in his play entitled, Du besoin de s'unir après le depart des étrangers; who sanctioned the prerogative of Louis-Philippe in his immortal, or say rather everlasting, Parisienne; Casimir Delavigne sanctioned the authority of the primate of the Gauls by his translation of the Dies irœ, dies ilia, which was chanted by Abbé Châtel's choristers at the mass which the latter said in French at the funeral service of Kosciusko. The Abbé Châtel possessed this good quality, that he openly declared for the people as against kings.
Here is the poem; it is little known and deserves to be better known than it is. It is, therefore, in the hope of increasing its reputation that we bring it to the notice of our readers. It was sung at the French Church on 23 February 1831:—
"Jour de colère, jour de larmes,
Où le sort, qui trahit nos armes,
Arrêta son vol glorieux!
À tes côtés, ombre chérie,
Elle tomba, notre patrie,
Et ta main lui ferma les yeux!
Tu vis, de ses membres livides,
Les rois, comme des loups avides,
S'arracher les lambeaux épars:
Le fer, dégouttant de carnage,
Pour en grossir leur héritage,
De son cadavre fit trois parts.
La Pologne ainsi partagée,
Quel bras humain l'aurait vengée?
Dieu seul pouvait la secourir!
Toi-même tu la crus sans vie;
Mais, son cœur, c'était Varsovie;
Le feu sacré n'y put mourir!
Que ta grande ombre se relève;
Secoue, en reprenant ton glaive,
Le sommeil de l'éternité!
J'entends le signal des batailles,
Et le chant de tes funérailles
Est un hymne de liberté!
Tombez, tombez, boiles funèbres!
La Pologne sort des ténèbres,
Féconde en nouveaux défenseurs!
Par la liberté ranimée,
De sa chaîne elle s'est armée
Pour en frapper ses oppresseurs.
Cette main qu'elle te présente
Sera bientôt libre et sanglante;
Tends-lui la main du haut des deux.
Descends pour venger ses injures,
Ou pour entourer ses blessures
De ton linceul victorieux.
Si cette France qu'elle appelle,
Trop loin—ne pent vaincre avec elle,
Que Dieu, du moins, soit son appui.
Trop haut, si Dieu ne peut l'entendre,
Eh bien! mourons pour la défendre,
Et nous irons nous plaindre à lui!"