This anecdote is, to my thinking, the most charming and most thoroughly stamped with the image of the age of any recorded in history. With regard to these celebrated sayings uttered in battles, I must indeed confess that I am very skeptical. Little as I may be of a soldier, I have a notion that it is not in an engagement as at the Olympic Circus, and that in the midst of fire, smoke, and musketry, generals must have other work on their hands than to utter these pretty epigrams, which there is moreover no shorthand writer at hand to take down. I know that Cambronne was annoyed when they recalled to him his splendid exclamation at Waterloo, "La garde meurt et ne se rend pas!" (The guard dies, and does not surrender!) "an invention the more clumsy," said he, "that I am not yet dead, and that I really did surrender." I have even discovered that this saying was invented by a member of the Institute, for the greater satisfaction of the readers of the "Yellow Dwarf," in which he wrote, in 1815, together with Benjamin Constant and many other celebrated malcontents.[6] The speeches of Leonidas find me equally incredulous. But, wheresoever they may come from, I delight in these anecdotes, which personify an entire epoch, and engrave it upon the memory with a single stroke. We may defy the historian who seeks to characterize the end of the last century and the beginning of the present, to find two epigrams more striking than the words attributed to Anteroches and Cambronne—to two French officers—one commanding the French guards, the other the old guard; both fighting for their country, at an interval of seventy years, with the same enemy, and on the same ground: for it is a singular coincidence that Fontenoy and Waterloo are but little distant from each other, and Heaven saw fit to ordain that the game of success and reverse should be played out almost upon the same fields. "Fire first, Messieurs les Anglais!" Is it not the type of that easy and adorable, that ironical and blasé nobility, who pushed the contempt of life even to insanity, and the worship of courtesy and honor even to the sublime?—who endowed their country with such a renown for elegance, high-breeding, and gallantry, that all its demagogic saturnalia never have effaced it, and never will?—a nobility reckless, if you please, but assuredly charming, and perfectly French withal, who gayly passed through life without ever doing the morrow the honor of thinking about it, and who, beholding one day the earth give way beneath their feet, looked into the abyss without a wink, without alarming themselves, without belying themselves, and went down alive and whole into the gulf, disdaining all defence, "without fear," if not "without reproach."
Between the saying of Anteroches and that of Cambronne there is a great gap; we find that the revolution has passed through it. The gentleman, refined even to exaggeration, has disappeared, and we have instead the rude language of democracy—"La garde meurt et ne se rend pas"—this is heroism, no doubt, but heroism of another sort. Never did the chauvinism of this present time light upon a more cornelian device, but do you not see in it the theatrical affectation, the melo-dramatic emphasis of another race? That he had no fear of death, and no idea of surrendering—this is what the gentleman of Fontenoy had no intention of declaring; it ought to have been well known—his followers had already given proof of it for ages past. To be brave alone to him was nothing—he must be as elegant in battle as he was at the ball. What signified death to that incomparable race who afterwards composed madrigals in prison, and ascended the scaffold with a smile, their step elastic, and their hand in the waistcoat pocket, a cocked hat under their arm, and a rose-bud between their lips? This epoch was personified in my eyes by the handsome and gentle countenance of the Count of Anteroches. After more than a hundred years I had discovered by chance, myself, an obscure wayfarer, in an unknown and miserable cabin, where his grand-daughter was living in the midst of her poultry, the portrait of this brilliant officer, to whose name will ever attach an elegant and charming renown; for if, like Cambronne, Anteroches did not really utter the words attributed to him, they have still been lent to him, and if thus lent, assuredly because there were grounds for it.
After these over-lengthy reflections, I turned toward the peasant woman, who now inspired me with profound commiseration. She continued to rock to and fro her bandaged infant, who was in very right and deed the Count of Anteroches. I inquired what was the occupation of her husband.
"He is dead," she replied; "I was better off during his lifetime. He was a gendarme, Monsieur."
"A gendarme!" I repeated with surprise.
"Yes," replied Madame d'Anteroches, who understood not the cause of my astonishment, "he had even passed as a brigadier during his latter years: we managed our little affairs very comfortably."
He was a brigadier of gendarmerie—content to be so—he managed his little affairs very comfortably—and his grandfather, as I find it in the "Military Records of France," had been named Marshal on the 25th of July, 1762; at the same time as the Marquis of Boufflers and the Duke of Mazarine! Would not the rabble of Paris do well to inquire a little before exclaiming so loudly against the privileges of the aristocracy? Moreover, it seems to me that the government of France should not allow the grandchildren of the Count of Anteroches to be sunk—as they are—into deplorable indigence. Apocryphal or otherwise the epigram of Fontenoy should at least be worth subsistence to all who bear this name. Many enjoy pensions and are maintained by France, who would find it very difficult to produce a similar claim, and the new republic would act wisely by repairing, when occasion turns up, the injustices of her eldest sister.
But it was now high time for us to leave. It was evident that we embarrassed our hostess, and since we had discovered her name we were no less embarrassed ourselves. I could not get over her coarse stuff gown, her filthy kitchen, and her familiar sow. It would have been cruel to ask for her hospitality, and how could we offer to pay our score? Besides, we knew that a rich proprietor of our acquaintance resided not far from Puy d'Arnac; we, therefore, took our leave of the high-born peasant with many excuses and thanks. At the moment I passed the threshold, I cast a parting glance upon the portrait. The fire lighted it up at that instant with so singular a brilliancy that it almost appeared animated. It seemed as if the countenance of M. d'Anteroches was alive, and that the handsome officer looked sadly down from the height of his gilded frame upon the utter misery of his descendants. "Oh! decadence! decadence of France!" I exclaimed to myself, and rushed bravely forth with my companions into the pelting rain.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Fontenoy, we should here observe, is, we believe, the only battle in which the English were defeated by the French, and it is, of course, a subject of no little glorification with our neighbors.