The O'Hoolohan was getting excited. His brow flushed and his eyes flashed. He tapped one foot on the marble floor like a restive charger awaiting the trumpet-call to advance. He scanned the aisles and niches of the sacred building as if he were searching for some lurking foe; he clenched his right hand on an imaginary sword-hilt as if on the point of rushing into some shock of battle. With all his calmness in actual combat, such as we saw him at Clamart, this man was capable of being roused to a flood-tide of passion, when his heart and imagination were touched.
'Glory, grandfather,' urged Berthe; 'is it not very dearly bought, sometimes? Suppose we kneel and pray that France may have a crop of glory that is not so dreadful in the offering or so sad in the fruit for the future.'
'You are right, my child,' acceded the captain, for this time it was not the old soldier, but the old man who spoke, and they all knelt and prayed, though it would be unsafe to pretend that they prayed with equal fervour, or that the object of their petitions was the same.
The next stage in the pilgrimage was the Quai Conti, opposite the statue of Henry IV., on the Pont Neuf. Here, on the fifth story of the house, No. 5, a young officer of artillery, lately commissioned from the school of Brienne, lived in 1785. A struggling painter poked the fire in the garret, haunted by the shadow of the ambitious Bonaparte, the awkwardly built, dwarfish stripling, with high cheek-bones, sallow complexion and deep-sunken orbs, who came to the window at nights and gazed palace-wards and sky-wards so long and earnestly, his hands clasped behind his back, and then broke into a hurried, jerking, sentry-walk to and fro in his circumscribed chamber.
To the Hôtel de Metz in the Rue du Mail next, where Bonaparte lodged, at No. 14 on the third story, in 1792. At that period he dined at a restaurant in the Rue des Petits-Pères. The dishes there were cheap. They cost but six sous each. Cheap as they were, he had once to make a forced march with his watch upon the nearest pawn-office before he could raise means to stay the calls of appetite.
At the corner of the Rue du Mail and the Rue Montmartre is, or was, the Hotel of the Rights of Man. By the time Bonaparte had got thus far, he had made comparatively good progress on the ladder of fortune. He had four windows in a row now in his apartment, and three chambers, two of which were shared with his brothers Louis and Junot.
Three years later, Bonaparte, now a general of artillery, resided in No. 19, Rue de la Michodière, in a small furnished room. He was going up, but he was no wastrel. Not till later on did he choose to change his dwelling to the Hôtel Mirabeau, in the Alley of the Dauphin, near the Tuileries. An episode of his career is laid in this hotel, which the dramatists should seize and turn to their purposes. It might have influenced the fate of nations. Had it come to its natural issue, the maps might be drawn otherwise to-day. Fanchette, the daughter of Père Thouset, the landlord, took a liking to the young general of the Republic. She was not ill-favoured; and he might make a steady husband. The general tried his arms in a field other than his, and, with his usual luck, he made a conquest. Father-in-law, who was rich, consented to a marriage, on two conditions: the first, that Bonaparte should quit the army; the second, that he should become an hotel-keeper! But an accident befell Fanchette which put Cupid's nose out of joint, much to the benefit of his brother Mars.
The time came when Napoleon mounted to the topmost rung, lived in castles and palaces, was guest and host of kings; but our friends were satisfied—indeed, were more pleased with visiting his humble habitations—the cell of the student, the airy garrets of the adventurous soldier. The struggles of greatness to the light awaken emotions more touching than all the magnificence of assured success.
They trended by the Rue St. Honoré to the church of St. Roch. There it was the tide turned—there the hero had his first chance. It was the twelfth Vendémiaire of the year IV., that is to say, the 22nd October, 1795. Thirty-three sections of the population rose in discontent at a decree reserving to the Convention two-thirds of the places in the Council of the Five Hundred. They were thirty thousand strong, and marched on the Tuileries. The Convention had but twelve thousand men to oppose them, and gave the command to Barras, who called in Bonaparte. The captain, obscure till then, notwithstanding his services at Toulon, put forty-two pieces of cannon round the palace, and mowed down the insurgents. Their headquarters was the church of St. Roch. Bonaparte, with correct, remorseless aim, pointed two guns with his own hand on the crowd collected on the steps of the edifice and fired. The sections were defeated; the corner-stone was laid of the reputation that was to mount so high.
'I vote we wind up by paying a visit to the column in the Place Vendôme,' said the O'Hoolohan, who was an admirer of Napoleon, but who was getting hungry and who began to think he had enough of hero-worship for his marriage-day.