“The good woman of the house,” he said, “waylaid me on the stairs, to ask if you were likely to die, my good friend, and to suggest that in that case it would be as well to send you to the hospital. I have spared you that journey, however, by assuring her that in a week or ten days you will be well enough to go to the opera, if by that time they have left any singers with their heads on. They guillotined poor Benoit this morning. I ventured to suggest that they would not get such another tenor in a hurry; and so they made him sing before they put him into the cart, to try, I suppose, how they liked it. Whether he sang too well or too ill to please them, I don’t know, but they drove him off to the guillotine, while I was seeing another prisoner.”
Father Bonneville gave a shudder; but sickness is always more or less selfish, and though naturally one of the most unselfish men in the world, his thoughts speedily reverted to himself. “I trust,” he said, “that there will be no necessity for sending me to the hospital. Did you quite satisfy the good woman?”
“Quite,” replied Doctor L——. “I told her that I would be answerable for your not giving occasion to a funeral from her house, which is what all these good aubergiste fear. I told her, moreover, that when your daughter and your granddaughter arrived from the country, you would very speedily rally.”
“My daughter,” said Father Bonneville, with a faint smile. “I have no daughter but spiritual daughters, my friend.”
“Perhaps we may find you one for the occasion,” said Doctor L——, laughing. “But I will tell you more about it to-morrow; for although you must be, of course, consulted whether you will have a child or not, yet in this case, out of the ordinary course of nature, the child must first be asked whether she likes to be born. In short, I have a scheme in my head, my good friend; but it requires maturing, and the pivot upon which it all turns is your rapid recovery. So take care of yourself; cast care from your mind for the present, and you will speedily be both well and strong again.”
Thus saying, he left him, and for two or three days no event of any importance occurred, except the gradual improvement of Father Bonneville, under the kind and zealous treatment of the good physician.
——
A PERIOD OF CHANGES.
At the period I speak of there were changes in Paris every day. True, one horror was only succeeded by another, and one fierce tyranny but made place for a tyranny more fierce and barbarous. The condemnation of the king, and his death, which followed shortly after, occupied for a time all thoughts, and filled many a bosom which had previously felt the strongest, nay, even the wildest aspirations for liberty, with gloom, and doubt, and dread. The moment, however, the head of the good king fell upon the scaffold the death-struggle began between the Mountain and the Gironde, and in the many heaves and throes of the contending factions, many persons found opportunity to escape from perils which had previously surrounded them. Although a mere boy at the time, I was quite familiar with the daily history of these events; for they were in every body’s mouth, and I might even greatly swell this little memoir, by narrating minutely the various scenes, some terrible, some ludicrous, which I myself beheld. The most terrible was the death of the king, of which, jammed in by the multitude, without a possibility of escape, I was myself present, and within a few yards of the instrument of death. But it is my object to pass as lightly as possible over these young recollections, though many of them were too deeply graven on memory ever to be effaced. I shall never forget, as long as I live, the face of a tall, gaunt man, who was close to me at the moment when the king attempted to speak to the people, and the drums were ordered to beat, to drown the voice of the royal martyr. Rage and indignation and shame were written in every line, and I heard him mutter between his teeth, “Oh, were there but an hundred men in Paris true to France and to themselves!”
My own belief is, that a very few acting at that moment in concert, and fearless of their own safety, might not only have saved the effusion of the king’s blood, but might have given a different direction to the revolution, and saved the lives of thousands. However that might be, I went away from the scene with horror, and shut myself up for the rest of the day with good Father Bonneville, who was now able to rise. The physician saw him twice during the day, and once I was sent out of the room for a short time. Doctor L—— spoke jokingly more than once in my presence, of the good priest’s daughter and granddaughter, and though I did not see the point of the jest, I imagined it was one way he had of amusing himself.