The fellow scanned my impassive face.
“Ah, Madame! of nothing! One never thinks at such a moment. Ma foi! why should he? He will be out of being—rien—in ten seconds. He has no more use for thought. Why think?”
We declined to inspect the stone on which the suicide’s head had struck. Indeed, assented our cocher, where was the use? The body had been removed immediately, and the pavement washed. The police would look to that. Monsieur would see only a wet spot. The wind would soon dry it. Ah! they were skilful (habile) in such accident at the monument. If a man were weary of life, there was no better place for him—and no noise made about it afterward.
“Somehow,” said Prima, presently, “I cannot feel that a Frenchman’s soul is as valuable as ours. They make so light of life and death, and as for Eternity, they resolve it into, as that man said—‘nothing.’”
“‘He giveth to all life and breath and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men,’” I quoted, gravely.
I would not admit, unless to myself, that the coachman’s talk of the wet spot upon the pavement and the significant gesture of blowing away a gas, or scent, that had accompanied his “Nothing,” brought to my imagination the figure of a broken phial of spirits of hartshorn—pungent, volatile—rien!
On another windy morning we made one of our favorite “Variety Excursions.” We had spent the previous day at the Louvre, and eyes and minds needed rest. I have seen people who could visit this mine of richest art for seven and eight consecutive days, without suffering from exhaustion or plethora. Three hours at a time insured for me a sleepless night, or dreams thronged with travesties of the beauty in which I had reveled in my waking hours. Instead then, of entering the Louvre on the second day, we checked the carriage on the opposite side of the street before the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois.
Dionysius the Areopagite, converted by Paul’s sermon on Mars’ Hill, went on a mission to Paris, suffered death for his faith upon Montmartre—probably a corruption of Mons Martyrum,—and was interred upon the site of St. Germain l’Auxerrois. His tomb and chapel are there, in support of the legend. Another chapel is dedicated to “Notre Dame de la Compassion.” The name reads like a sorrowful satire. For we had not come thither out of respect for St Dionysius—alias St. Denis—nor to gaze upon frescoes and paintings—all fine of their kind,—nor to talk of the battle between Bourbons and populace in 1831, when upon the eleventh anniversary of the Duc de Berry’s assassination, as a memorial mass was in progress, the church was stormed by a mob—that canaille-deep that was ever boiling like a pot—the priests violently ejected, the friends of the deceased Duc forced to fly for their lives, and the old church itself closed against priests and worshippers for seven years. It was the royal parish church, for a long time. Catherine de Medicis must have attended it, being a good daughter of the Church. Hence there was especial propriety in her order that from the belfry of this sanctuary should be given the signal for the massacre of her dear son’s heretic subjects on St. Bartholomew’s Night, 1572. From a window in his palace of the Louvre, Charles fired as fast as his guards could load carbines, upon the flying crowds in the streets. In obedience to tradition, a certain window was, up to the beginning of this century, designated as that in which he was stationed on that occasion, and an inscription to this effect was engraved beneath it:
“C’est de cette fenêtre que l’infâme Charles 9 d’exécrable mémoire a tiré sur le peuple avec une carabine.”
“Upon the people!” It was not safe even in 1796 to write that the murdered were Huguenots and that they perished for that cause and none other. The cautious inscription was removed upon the belated discovery that the part of the palace containing this window was not built until the execrable Charles was in his grave. The balcony from which he “drew” upon all who did not wear the white badge of Romanism, was in the front of the palace where the deep boom of the bell must have jarred him to his feet, pealing from midnight to dawn. The government suffered no other knell to sound for the untimely taking-off of nearly one hundred thousand of the best citizens of France.