The Drums of War

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Franzius was not a man to forget his friends. He had many in the Latin Quarter, and he was a peasant born, with a peasant's instincts. Birth, marriage, and death, those three supreme events in the life of man, are more insistent in their ceremonial amidst the poor than the rich. To Franzius it would have been a strange thing to marry without inviting to the ceremony the people who were his friends; and the journey to Etiolles would be too far for some of these.

Then, it was impossible for the marriage to be solemnised in a church, for the simple reason that he was a Lutheran and Eloise had been born a Catholic. So it was arranged to take place on the 1st of October at the Mairie of the quarter which includes the Rue Dijon.

It was to be quite a simple affair, a wedding such as takes place every day amongst the bourgeoisie, with the additional lustre that the presence of the Vicomte Armand de Chatellan would lend to the proceedings.

It was a lovely day. It had rained during the night, but the morning broke nearly cloudless, and there was that feeling of spring in the air, that freshness which comes sometimes in autumn like the reminiscence of May.

Franzius had slept the night at the Place Vendôme; and I must say, dressed in a brand-new suit of clothes and with a flower in his buttonhole, he never looked worse in his life. Dressed in his old clothes, with his violin under his arm, he was picturesque, but now he looked like a tailor out for a holiday, and I told him so, to keep up his spirits, as we breakfasted hurriedly and without appetite, but with a good deal of gaiety.

Eloise was to come from Saluce in one of the Vicomte's carriages, and he was to accompany her to the Mairie, where we were to wait for them. Noon was the hour of the ceremony; and when we arrived at the Mairie the place was crowded: four other couples, it seemed, were to be united that day, and we were third on the list.

The people whom Franzius had invited were there already: not many, scarcely a dozen, and mostly men, musicians with long hair and German accents; his landlady of the Rue Dijon and her daughter, a cripple dressed for the occasion in a newly starched white frock and blue sash; and a young lady of the sempstress type, pale-faced and modest, and seeming dazed with the grandeur of the officials in their chains and all the paraphernalia of the law.

For a moment a pang went to my heart to think that a daughter of the Felicianis was to be married here amidst these folks like one of them. But it soon passed. The Archbishop of Paris, the choir of Notre Dame, the congregated aristocracy of France, could not have added one whit to the beauty of the marriage or to its sanctity.

I had dreaded that in the fulness of his heart and his simplicity Franzius might have invited undesirable guests. The vision of Changarnier appearing like an evil beast had horrified me. But my fears were set at rest. Leave the simple-hearted alone, and they rarely make mistakes. Franzius' guests, humble though they might be, were of the aristocracy of the poor, good, kind-hearted, and honest people.