I agreed with him on the philosophy of the case, and in return he introduced me to some of the Vendéan nobles, who had hitherto exhibited their general scorn of Parisian contact by confining themselves to the circle of their followers. I was received with the distinction due to my introducer, and was invited to join their supper that night. The prison had once been the chapel of the convent; and though the desecration had taken place a hundred years before, and the revolutionary spoil had spared but little of the remaining ornaments, the original massiveness of the building, and the nobleness of the architecture, had withstood the assaults of both time and plunder. The roofs of the aisles could not be reached except by flame, and the monuments of the ancient priors and prelates, when they had once been stripped of their crosses, were too solid for the passing fury of the mob. And thus, in the midst of emblems of mortality, and the recollections of old solemnity, were set some hundreds of people, who knew as little of each other as if they had met in a caravansery, and who, perhaps, expected to part as soon. The scene was curious, but by no means uncheerful. The national spirit is inextinguishable; and, however my countrymen may bear up against the extremes of ill-fortune, no man meets its beginnings with so easy an air as the man of France. Our supper was laid out in one of the side chapels; and, coarse and scanty as it was, I seldom recollect an evening which I passed with a lighter sense of the burden of a prisoner's time. I found the Vendéan nobles a manlier race than their more courtly countrymen. Yet they had courtliness of their own; but it was more the manner of our own country gentlemen of the last century, than the polish of Versailles. Their habits of living on their domains, of country sports, of intercourse with their peasantry, and of the general simplicity of country life, had drawn a strong line of distinction between them and the dukes and marquises of the royal saloons. Like all Frenchmen of the day, they conversed largely upon the politics of France; but there was a striking reserve in their style. The existing royal family were but little mentioned, or mentioned only with a certain kind of sacred respect. Their misfortunes prohibited the slightest severity of language. Yet still it was not difficult to see, that those straightforward and honest lords of the soil, who were yet to prove themselves the true chevaliers of France, could feel as acutely, and express as strongly, the injuries inflicted by the absurdities and vices of the successive administrations of their reign, as if they had figured in the clubs of the capital. But the profligacies of the preceding monarch, and the tribe of fools and knaves whom those profligacies as naturally gathered round him as the plague propagates its own contagion, met with no mercy. And, though they were spoken of with the gravity which became the character and rank of the speakers, they were denounced with a sternness which seemed beyond the morals or the mind of their country. Louis XV., Du Barri, and the whole long succession of corrupting and corrupted cabinets, which had at length rendered the monarchy odious, were denounced in terms worthy of gallant men; who, though resolved to sink or swim with the throne, experienced all the bitterness of generous indignation at the crimes which had raised the storm.
We had our songs too, and some of them were as contemptuous as ever came from the pen of Parisian satire. Among my recollections of the night was one of those songs, of which the refrain was—
"Le Bien-Aimé—de l'Almanac."
A burlesque on the title—Le Bien-Aimé, &c., which the court calendar, and the court calendar alone, had annually given to the late king. I can offer only a paraphrase.
"Louis Quinze, our burning shame,
Hear our song, 'old well-beloved,'
What if courts and camps are tame,
Pension'd beggars laced and gloved,
France's love grows rather slack,
Idol of—the Almanac.