“Let us go, then,” said Lady Dorothea. “Let us look to her and think of nothing till she be cared for.”
CHAPTER IX. SOME CONFESSIONS OF JACK MASSINGBRED
Upon two several occasions have we committed to Jack Massingbred the task of conducting this truthful history; for the third time do we now purpose to make his correspondence the link between the past and what is to follow. We are not quite sure that the course we thus adopt is free from its share of inconvenience, but we take it to avoid the evils of reiteration inseparable from following out the same events from merely different points of view. There is also another advantage to be gained. Jack is before our readers; we are not. Jack is an acquaintance; we cannot aspire to that honor. Jack's opinions, right or wrong as they may be, are part and parcel of a character already awaiting their verdict. What he thought and felt, hoped, feared, or wished, are the materials by which he is to be judged; and so we leave his cause in his own hands.
His letter is addressed to the same correspondent to whom he wrote before. It is written, too, at different intervals, and in different moods of mind. Like the letters of many men who practise concealment with the world at large, it is remarkable for great frankness and sincerity. He throws away his mask with such evident signs of enjoyment that we only wonder if he can ever resume it; but crafty men like to relax into candor, as royalty is said to indulge with pleasure in the chance moments of pretended equality. It is, at all events, a novel sensation; and even that much, in this routine life of ours, is something!
He writes from Spa, and after some replies to matters with which we have no concern, proceeds thus:—
“Of the Revolution, then, and the Three Glorious Days as they are called, I can tell you next to nothing, and for this simple reason, that I was there fighting, shouting, throwing up barricades, singing the 'Marseillaise,' smashing furniture, and shooting my 'Swiss,' like the rest. As to who beat the troops, forced the Tuileries, and drove Marmont back, you must consult the newspapers. Personal adventures I could give you to satiety, hairbreadth 'scapes and acts of heroism by the dozen; but these narratives are never new, and always tiresome. The serious reflectiveness sounds like humbug, and, if one treats them lightly, the flippancy is an offence. Jocular heroism is ever an insult to the reader.
“You say, 'Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?' and I answer, it was all her doing. Yes, Harry, she was there. I was thinking of nothing less in the world than a great 'blow for freedom,' as the 'Globe' has it. I had troubled my head wonderfully little about the whole affair. Any little interest I took was in the notion that if our 'natural enemies,' the French, were to fall to and kill each other, there would be so much the fewer left to fight against us; but as to who was to get the upper hand, or what they were to do when they had it, I gave myself no imaginable concern. I had a vague, shadowy kind of impression that the government was a bad one, but I had a much stronger conviction that the people deserved no better. My leanings—my instincts, if you prefer it—were with the Crown. The mob and its sentiments are always repulsive. Popular enthusiasm is a great ocean, but it is an ocean of dirty water, and you cannot come out clean from the contact; and so I should have wished well to royalty, but for an accident,—a mere trifle in its way, but one quite sufficient, even on historic grounds, to account for a man's change of opinions. The troops shot my cab-horse, sent a bullet through poor 'Beverley,' and seriously damaged a new hat which I wore at the time, accompanying these acts with expressions the reverse of compliment or civility. I was pitched out into the gutter, and, most appropriately you will say, I got up a Radical, a Democrat, a Fourierist,—anything, in short, that shouts 'Down with Kings, and up with the Sovereign People!'
“My principles—don't smile at the word—led me into a stupid altercation with a very pleasant acquaintance, and we parted to meet the next morning in hostility,—at least, such was our understanding; but by the time that our difference should have been settled, I was carried away on a stretcher to the Hôtel Dieu, wounded, and he was flung, a corpse, into the Seine. I intended to have been a most accurate narrator of events, journalizing for you, hour by hour, with all the stirring excitement of the present tense, but I cannot; the crash and the hubbub are still in my brain, and the infernal chaos of the streets is yet over me. Not to speak of my wound,—a very ugly sabre-cut in the neck,—severing I don't know what amount of nerves, arteries, and such-like 'small deer,' every one of which, however, has its own peculiar perils in the shape of aneurisms, tetanus, and so forth, in case I am not a miracle of patience, calmness, and composure.
“The Martins are nursing and comforting and chicken-brothing me to my heart's content, and La Henderson, herself an invalid, with a terrible broken arm, comes and reads to me from time to time. What a girl it is! Wounded in a street encounter, she actually carried Lady Dorothea into a porte-cochère, and when they had lost their heads in terror, could neither issue an order to the servants nor know what way to turn, she took the guidance of the whole party, obtained horses and carriages and an escort, escaped from Paris, and reached Versailles in the midst of flying courtiers and dismayed ministers, and actually was the very first to bring the tidings that the game of monarchy was up,—that the king had nothing left for it but an inglorious flight. To the Duchesse de Mire-court she made this communication, which it seems none of the court-followers had the courage or honesty to do before. The Duchess, in her terror, actually dragged her into the presence of the king, and made her repeat what she had said. The scene, as told me, was quite dramatic; the king took her hand to lead her to a seat, but it was unfortunately of the wounded arm, and she fainted. The sight of the wounded limb so affected the nerves of monarchy that he gave immediate orders to depart, and was off within an hour.