"One of these fellows," he exclaimed, "was the Marquis's cook, another his perruquier! I was his tailor. Every man of taste and talent knows the superiority of my profession; for what is the first of noblemen without elegance of costume, or what indeed would man himself be without my art, the noblest and the earliest art of mankind? And yet he made these two 'brigands' mayor and deputy—peste! I did my duty. I denounced him on the spot. I did more. The aristocrat had a faction in the town. It was filled with his dependents. In fact, it had been built on his grounds, and tenanted by the old hangers-on of the family. So, to make a clear stage, I denounced the town." He clapped his hands with exultation at this civic triumph.
My recollection of the miseries which his malice had caused roused me into wrath, and, rash as the act was, I grasped him by the collar, with the full intent of throwing the little writhing wretch out of the window; but, while I was lifting him from the seat to which he clung screaming for help, and had already forced him halfway outside, a shot whistled close by the head of the postilion, which brought him to a full stop. "Mon Dieu!—Brigands!" exclaimed Monsieur Gilet; and, dropping back into the carriage, attempted to make a screen of my body by slipping his adroitly behind me. Two or three more discharges rattled through the trees, followed by a rush of peasants, who unceremoniously knocked down the two officials in front, and began a general scuffle with the gendarmes. The night was so dark, that I could discover nothing of the mêlée but by the blaze of the fusils. All, however, was quiet in a few moments, by the disappearance of the gendarmes, and the complete capture of the convoy—M. Gilet, mayors, and all. Whether we had fallen into the hands of highwaymen, or of stragglers from the French army, was doubtful for a while, as not a syllable was spoken, nor a sound uttered, except by the unhappy functionaries, who grumbled prodigiously as they were dragged along through "rough and smooth, moss and mire," and whose pace was evidently quickened by many a kick and blow of the fusil. This was a rude march for me, too, with my unhealed wound, and my week's sojourn in bed; but I was treated, if not with tenderness, without incivility, while my compagnons de voyage were insulted with every contemptuous phrase in a vocabulary at least as rich in those matters as any other in Europe. At length, after about an hour's rapid movement, we reached an open ground, and the door of one of the wide, old, staring, yet not uncomfortable farmhouses which are to be found in the northern provinces of France.
Signs of comfort within were visible even at a distance, and the light of a huge wood fire had been seen for the last quarter of an hour gleaming through the woods, and leaving us in doubt whether we were approaching a horde of gipsies, or about to realize the classic scenes of Gil Blas.
But it was only a farm-house after all. The good dame of the house, with an enormous cap, enormous petticoats, enormous earrings, and all the glaring good-humour of a countenance of domestic plenty and power, came to meet us on the threshold; and her reception of me was ardent, to the very verge of stranglulation. Nothing could exceed her rapture at the sight of me, or the fierceness of her embraces, except her indignation at the sight of my traveling companions. Her disgust at the mayor and his deputy—and certainly after their night trip they were not figures to charm the eye—was pitched in the highest key of scorn, so as to be surpassed only by the torrent of contempt which her well-practised elocution poured upon the "traître tailleur." I really believe, that, if she could have boiled him in the huge soup-kettle which bubbled upon the fire, without spoiling our supper, she would have flung him in upon the spot. The peasants who had captured us—bold, tall fellows, well dressed and well armed with cutlass and fusil, in the style of the gardes-de-chasse—could scarcely be kept from taking them out to the next tree, to make marks of them; and it was probably by my intercession alone that they were consigned to an outer house for the night. How the scene was to end with me, I knew not; though the jovial visage of my protectress showed me that I was secure. But the prisoners had no sooner been flung out of the door than I was ushered into an inner room, prepared with somewhat more of attention; where, to my great surprise and delight, the Marquis Lanfranc came forward to shake my hand, and, with a thousand expressions of gratitude, made me known to his daughter. The adventure was of the simplest order. The arrest of the Marquis was, of course, known in an instant, and a party of his foresters had immediately determined to take the law into their own hands—had posted themselves on the road by which his carriage was to pass, and had released him without difficulty. My release was merely a sequel to the drama. I had been left in the hunting-lodge by its owner, under the impression that an individual who could not be moved without hazard to life, would escape the vengeance of village patriotism. But the nurse, whom he had placed in charge of me, had no sooner ascertained that I was arrested, than she sent an express to the farm-house. The consequence naturally followed in my liberty; and the night which I expected to have spent freezing on my way to the dungeon, presented me with the pleasant exchange of hospitable shelter, the society of a most accomplished man, and his graceful handsome daughter; and last, not least, a couple of kisses from my late nurse, according to the custom of the country, as glowing and remorseless as those of my portly landlady herself.
We sat for some hours, and scarcely felt them pass in the anxious topics which engrossed us; the perils of France, the prospects of the Allies, and the captivity of the unhappy Bourbons. Now and then the conversation turned on their own hair-breadth escapes, and those of their relatives and friends. Among the rest, the hazards of the De Tourville family were mentioned, and I heard the name of Clotilde pronounced with a sensation indescribable. The name was connected with such displays of fortitude, nobleness of spirit, and deep devotion to the royal cause, that, if I had loved before, I now honoured her. She had saved the lives of her household; she had, by an act of extraordinary, but most perilous affection, saved the life of her mother, at the moment when the first insurgency broke out; and, young as she was, she had exhibited so noble a union of generosity and strength of mind, that the Marquis's eyes filled with tears as he told it, and Amalia buried her forehead in her hands to conceal her convulsive emotions: what must have been mine!
Our conversation was not unfrequently interrupted by bursts of merriment from the outer room, where the peasants were at supper provided by the Marquis for his bold rescuers—an indulgence which they seemed to enjoy with the highest zest imaginable. Songs were sung with very various kinds of merit in the performer, but all well received. Healths were proposed, in which the existing Government was certainly not much honoured; and, if the good wishes of the party could have sent the "Committee of Public Safety," the butcher cabinet of France, to the darkest spot on earth, or under it, its time would have been brief. But even this died away; the laugh subsided, the mirth grew silent, and at length the gardes-de-chasse went away, making the forest ring with their professional whoops and holloas, the remnants of their honest revel. At length the Marquis and his daughter, who were to be on the wing at daybreak for the German frontier, and who had generously offered to take charge of my invalid frame in the same direction, retired; and wrapping myself up in a dark cloak, furnished by my mistress and formed to her showy proportions, I threw myself on the sofa, and was in the land of dreams.
But though I slept, I did not rest. My fever, or my lassitude, or probably some presentiment of the troubled career into which I was to be plunged, made "tired nature's sweet restorer" a stepmother to me. I can never endure hearing the dreams of others, and thus I cannot suffer myself to inflict them on my hearers; but on that night, Queen Mab, like Jehu, drove her horses furiously. Every possible kind of disappointment, vexation, and difficulty; every conceivable shape of things, past and present, rushed through my brain; and all pale, fierce, disastrous, and melancholy. I was beckoned along dim shades by shapeless phantoms; I was trampled in battle; I was brought before a tribunal; I was on board a ship which blew up, and was flung strangling down an infinite depth in a midnight ocean. But this exceeded the privilege even of dreams. I made one desperate effort to rise, and awoke with a bound on the floor. There I found a real obstacle—a ruffian in a red cap. One strong hand was on my throat; and by the glimmer of the dying lantern, which hung from the roof, I saw the glitter of a pistol-barrel in the other. "Surrender in the name of the Republic!" were the words which told me my fate. Four or five wearers of the same ominous emblem, with sabres and pistols, were round me at the moment, and after a brief struggle I was secured. Cries were now heard outside the door, and a wounded gendarme was carried in, borne in the arms of his comrades. From their confused clamour, I could merely ascertain that the gendarmes who had escaped in the original mêlée, had obtained assistance, and returned on their steps. The farm-house had been surrounded, and the Marquis was indebted only to the vigilance of his peasantry for a second escape with his daughter. The gardes-de-chasse had kept the gendarmes at bay until their retreat was secure; and the post-chaise which had brought M. Gilet and his coadjutors, was, by this time, some leagues off, at full speed, beyond the fangs of Republicanism.
This at least was comfort, though I was left behind. But it was clear that the gallant old noble was blameless in the matter, and that nothing was to be blamed but my habitual ill luck. "En route for Paris," was the last order which I heard; and with a gendarme, in the strange kind of post-waggon which was rolled out from the farmer's stable, I was dispatched, before daybreak, on my startling journey.
I found my gendarme a facetious fellow; though his merriment might not be well adapted to cheer his prisoner. He whistled, he sang, he screamed, he stamped, to get rid of the ennui of travelling with so silent a companion. He told stories of his own prowess; libeled M. Gilet, who had got him beaten on this service in the first instance, and who seemed to be in the worst possible odour with man and woman; and abused all, mayors, deputy-mayors, and authorities, with the tongue of a leveler. But my facetious friend had his especial chagrins.
"I have all my life," said he, "been longing to see Paris, and have never been able to stir a step beyond this stupid province. Yet I have had my chances too. I was once valet to a German count, and we were on the way to Paris together when the post-chaise was stopped, the baron was arrested as a swindler, and I was charged as his accomplice. He was sent to the galleys; I got off. I then had a second chance. I enlisted in a regiment of dragoons which was to be quartered in Versailles. But such was my fate, I had no sooner passed the first drill, when we were ordered off to Lorraine to watch old King Stanislaus, the Pole, who lived there like one of his own bears, frozen and fat. Still I was determined to see Paris. I asked leave of absence; the adjutant laughed at me, the colonel turned on his heel, and the provost-marshal gave me a week of the black-hole. But a week is but seven days after all, and on my seeing the parade again—I—"