‘I have not thought of that yet,’ said I; ‘but when we reach Verviers we ‘ll see.’
‘Allons, then,’ said the conducteur, while he whispered to the clerk of the office a few words I could not catch.
‘You are mistaken, friend,’ said I; ‘it’s not creditors, they are only chalybeates I ‘m running from’; and so we started.
Before I follow out any further my own ramblings, I should like to acquit a debt I owe my reader—if I dare flatter myself that he cares for its discharge—by returning to the story of the poor shepherd of the mountains, and which I cannot more seasonably do than at this place; although the details I am about to relate were furnished to me a great many years after this, and during a visit I paid to Lyons in 1828.
In the Café de la Coupe d’Or, so conspicuous in the Place des Terreaux, where I usually resorted to pass my evenings, and indulge in the cheap luxuries of my coffee and cheroot, I happened to make a bowing acquaintance with a venerable elderly gentleman, who each night resorted there to read the papers, and amuse himself by looking over the chess-players, with which the room was crowded. Some accidental interchange of newspapers led to a recognition, and that again advanced to a few words each time we met—till one evening, chance placed us at the same table, and we chatted away several hours, and parted in the hope, mutually expressed, of renewing our acquaintance at an early period.
I had no difficulty in interrogating the dame du café about my new acquaintance. He was a striking and remarkable-looking personage, tall and military-looking, with an air of grand seigneur, which in a Frenchman is never deceptive; certainly I never saw it successfully assumed by any who had no right to it. He wore his hair en queue, and in his dress evinced, in several trifling matters, an adherence to the habitudes of the old régime—so, at least, I interpreted his lace ruffles and silk stockings, with his broad buckles of brilliants in his shoes. The ribbon of St. Louis, which he wore unostentatiously on his waistcoat, was his only decoration.
‘This is the Vicomte de Berlemont, ancien colonel-en-chef,’ said she, with an accent of pride at the mention of so distinguished a frequenter of the café; ‘he has not missed an evening here for years past.’
A few more words of inquiry elicited from her the information that the vicomte had served in all the wars of the Empire up to the time of the abdication; that on the restoration of the Bourbons he had received his rank in the service from them, and, faithful to their fortunes, had followed Louis XVIII. in exile to Ghent.
‘He has seen a deal of the world, then, madame, it would appear?’
‘That he has, and loves to speak about it too; time was when they reckoned the vicomte among the pleasantest persons in Lyons; but they say he has grown old now, and contracted a habit of repeating his stories. I can’t tell how that may be, but I think him always amiable.’ A delightful word that same ‘amiable’ is! and so thinking, I wished madame good-night, and departed.