“Use!” echoed the Austrian, elevating his eyebrows with a supercilious smile. “In the first place, he might make it a little succursale of Siberia. There is a whole generation of those unmanageable, half-mad Poles safely walking about this side of Europe, plotting and dreaming and rhapsodizing. Only think what a convenience it would be to their father, the czar, if he had a centre of action so near to them! He could catch them like rabbits; and then, instead of hawking them over the world to Nerchintz and Irkoutsk, he could sentence them to perpetual sciatica, or chronic lumbago, or a mild term of ten years’ rheumatism, in the isle of fogs, versus the mines, and the knout, and all the rest of the paternal chastisements administered in Siberia. Then, over and above this immense accommodation, he might have his docks in England; he might make the naughty Poles learn of his English subjects how to build ships, till by-and-by the navy of Holy Russia would be the finest in the world, and big, top-heavy Prussia would shake in her shoes, and hot-headed France would keep still on her knees, and all Europe would bow down before the empire of Peter the Great. Use, indeed! Let Russia catch England, and she’ll find plenty of use for her.”
“Yes,” I said; “just so; let her catch her.”
It was near three when the wedding-party broke up and Berthe and I drove away. We found the excitement abroad still unabated. At many street corners, patriots were perorating to animated crowds; tongues innumerable were running up and down the gamut of noise with the most extraordinary variations. There is always something stirring in the sight of great popular emotion; but this present instance of it was more threatening than exhilarating. You felt that it was dangerous, that there were terrible elements of destruction boiling up under the surface-foam, and that the chattering and shouting and good fellowship might, in a flash of lightning, be changed to murderous hate and a madness beyond control. It was madness already; but it was a harmless madness so far. Was it nothing more? was there no method in it? I wondered, as we beheld the people haranguing or being harangued, rushing and gesticulating, and all showing, in their faces and gestures, the same feverish excitement. Were they all no better than a cityful of apes, chattering and screaming from mere impulse? Was it all quackery and cant, without any redeeming note of sacrifice and truth and valor; and would all this fiery twaddle die out presently in smoke and dumbness?
We had turned down to the Rue de Richelieu, and were coming back, when our attention was arrested by a body of volunteers marching past the Place de la Bourse. They were in spruce new uniforms, and they were singing something that was not the “Marseillaise,” or “La Casquette au Père Bugeaud,” or any other of the many chants we had been listening to; altogether, their appearance and voices roused our curiosity, and Berthe desired the man to follow in their wake, that we might find out what kind of troops they were, and what they were singing. They turned up the Rue de la Baupe to the Place des Petits Pères, and there they entered the church of Notre Dame des Victoires, as many of them as could find room, for they numbered several thousand, and nearly half had to remain outside. The great front doors were thrown up, and remained open, so that those who were in the Place could see all that went on within. The soldiers were upon their knees, bare-headed, and a venerable old priest was speaking to them; but his voice was so feeble that what he said was only audible to those close to the altar-steps where he stood. There was no need to ask now who these men were, or whence they came. None but the men of Brittany, the sons of the men who went out to death against the ruthless soldiers of Robespierre, to the cry of Dieu et le Roi! were likely to traverse Paris, bearing the cross at their head, and make the ex-votos of Notre Dame des Victoires shake on the walls to the stirring old Vendean hymns. None but the descendants of the men “whose strength was as the strength of ten, because their hearts were pure,” would dare in these days of sneaking, shamefaced Christianity to commit such a brazen act of faith. The volunteers were accompanied by a great concourse of people, mostly relatives and friends, but they all remained outside, leaving the church quite to the soldiers. It was a strange and beautiful sight to see all these brave, proud Bretons kneeling down with the simplicity of little children before the shrine of the Virgin Mother, and singing their hymns to the God of Hosts, and asking his blessing on themselves and their arms before they went out to battle. When they came out of the church, with the curé at their head, all the people of a common impulse fell upon their knees in the Place to get his blessing; the men received it with bare heads and in silence; the women weeping, most of them, while some lifted up their hands with the old priest and prayed out loud a blessing on the soldiers. Then he spoke a few words to them, not to the soldiers only or chiefly, but to all, and especially to the women. He bade them remember that they too had their part in the national struggle, and that they might be a noble help or a guilty hindrance, as they chose. Those who had husbands, or sons, or brothers in the ranks would understand this without any explanation from him. But there were very many amongst them who had no near relatives in danger, and who fancied that this would exempt them from sharing the common burthen, and that they could stand aloof from the general anxiety and pain. It was a selfish, pagan feeling, unworthy of a daughter of France, and still more of a Christian. There could be no isolation at a time like this. All should suffer, and all should serve. Those who happily had no kindred of their own at the frontier should adopt in spirit the brave fellows who had left none behind. They should care for them from a distance like true sisters, helping them in the battle-field with their prayers, and in the camp and the hospital by their active and loving ministration; let such among them as were fit and free to do it, go and learn of that other sisterhood of the diviner sort how to serve as they do who serve with the strong, pure love of charity; let those who could not do this give abundantly wherewith the stricken soldier might be healed and comforted on his bed of pain; if they could not give their hands, let them give their hearts and their money; let them help by sacrifice—sacrifice of some sort was within the reach of all. He blessed them again at the close of his little exhortation, and then every one got up. The Bretons fell into rank, and, rending the welkin with one loud cry of Dieu et la France! set out to the Northern Railway. Berthe and I had been kneeling with the crowd.
“Let us follow and see the last of them,” she said, and we got into the brougham and went on at a foot-pace.
The scene at the station was one that will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. The pathos of those rough farewells, the lamentations of some of the women, the Machabean courage of others, the shrill crying of little children, the tears of strong men, who tore out their hearts, feeling it like men, but bearing it with the courage of soldiers and the exulting hope of Christians: it was a sight to make one’s heart glad to rapture or sad to despair. Some of the volunteers were of the noblest families in Brittany, others were workingmen, farmers, and peasants; there was the same mixture of classes in the throng of people that accompanied them; the pure accent of the most cultivated French, crossed here and there with the coarser tones of the Vendean patois; side by side with the suppressed agony of the chatelaine, who strove to hide her tenderness and tears from the gaze of bystanders, you saw the wretched sorrow of the peasant wife, who sobbed on her husband’s neck and clung to him in a last embrace. There was something more heart-rending in these humbler farewells, because one felt the sacrifice was more complete. If this was a last parting, there was nothing for either to fall back upon.
I lost sight of Berthe as soon as we alighted, and indeed I forgot her. My whole thoughts were absorbed in the scene going on around me. It was only when the bell rang, and the soldiers passed out to the platform, leaving the space comparatively empty, that I looked about for her, and saw her in the middle of the sidewalk with her arms round a young girl, who was sobbing as if her heart would break. It appeared that she was just a fortnight married to a Breton lad of her own age, nineteen; they had worked hard and saved all their little earnings these five years past in order to get married; and now, just as they were so happy, he had gone away from her, and she would never see him again; he was certain to be killed, because he was so good and loving and clever. Berthe pressed the poor child to her heart, and committed herself to the wildest pledges for the safe return of the young hero, and finally, after evoking a burst of passionate gratitude from the girl, who half-believed her to be a beneficial fairy sent to comfort her, Berthe exacted a promise that she was to come and see her the next day, and we set our faces towards home.
We drove on for a little while in silence, looking each out of our separate window, our hearts too full for conversation. I saw by Berthe’s eyes that she had been crying. I felt instinctively that there was a great struggle going on within her, but, though my whole heart was vibrating in sympathy with it, I could not say so. Presently she turned towards me, and exclaimed:
“And I was thanking God that I had no brothers! Blind, selfish fool that I was!”
She burst into tears, sobbing passionately, and hid her face in her hands. The change in her bright and volatile spirit seemed to make a change in all the world. I could not accuse the people, as I had done an hour ago, of being mere puppets, dancing to a tune and throwing themselves into attitudes that meant no more than a sick man’s raving. It seemed to me as if the aspect of the city and the sound of its voice had quite altered, and I all at once began to hope wonders of and for the Parisians. One could not but believe that they were striving to be in earnest, that the mother-pulse of patriotism, so long gagged and still, was now waking up, and beating with strong, hot throbs in the hearts of the people, and that, once alive and working, it would break out like a fire and burn away the unreality and the false glitter and the tragic comedy of their lives, and serve to purify them for a free and noble future. No; it was not all cant and tinkle and false echo. There was substance under the symbolizing. There were men amongst them who worshipped God, and were proud to proclaim it. There were hearts that seemed dead, but were only sleeping. Paris was dancing in mad mirth like a harlequin to-day, but to-morrow it would be different—the smoke and the flame would go out, leaving behind them the elements of a great nation burnt pure of the corroding dross that had choked and held them captive so long.