Four Years in France

It is easy to call this arrangement superstitious: there was good sense, and a sense of decorum in thus declaring, by external signs, our participation in the office in which we had so dear a concern. Whatever man loves or esteems highly, he endeavours to represent to himself by symbols. Friends set a great value on those tokens of friendship which they may have received as presents; even to become accidentally possessed of any object, however trifling, that belonged to a friend, is a cause of pleasure. Portraits are precious, not merely as works of art, but as reminding us of those whom we delight to remember; and none refuse to venerate the images of saints, but those who make no account of the saints themselves. In Italy, in the salons of ambassadors, I have seen the thrones of their several sovereigns, to connect by these emblems the representatives with the represented, – ceremonial so necessary to the maintenance of authority, that the Spanish minister told his king, "Your Majesty's self is nothing but a ceremonial;" – etiquette so essential to the good order of society, that not even the most unpolished réunion subsists without it: these are but modes of expressing meaning by signs. In war, in politics, in civil contracts, in common life, men universally thus express themselves; and why not in religion? Those who quarrel with the shadow are angry with the substance that throws it.

I said to M. Breugne, "Have compassion on me. It is not my fault that I did not know you sooner, but a great misfortune it has proved to me: you might have saved my elder son. You would not have allowed the younger to perish under your eyes." Breugne said, "What you have suffered is horrible. On the second day of my visit to your younger son, I met at the door the coffin of the elder. Do not let us despair as long as your dear boy has life. I will not deceive you; you shall know of his state all I know myself." He gave me to understand that he wished me to determine the number of his visits each day, being unwilling, as I supposed, to appear desirous of making up by their frequency for the smallness of the fee usually given to French physicians. I said, "Save my son; spare no pains that may be necessary to that end: come as often as your visits may be of use to him." He said, "From the first I have fixed on a plan in regard to him, which I shall not have occasion to change: that plan will succeed, or nothing will. So many days have been lost, that he must have as much both of nourishment and medicine as he can take with advantage; but I must watch him very attentively to find out the quantity of both, that he may be able in his weak state to bear and to profit by."

Never was greater zeal, activity, and judgment exerted than by this worthy man: all was not more than enough; for never had human being such a struggle for life as had this youth. His delirium inclined to stupor. Fomentations of aromatic herbs were applied to the head; sinapism was applied to the soles of the feet and kept on for eight and forty hours; blisters were laid on the back and on the legs; yet it was with difficulty that he could be awakened or excited to take nourishment or medicines. In truth they were, for the most part, especially towards the conclusion of his illness, poured into his mouth and swallowed instinctively, without an effort of the will. In this manner he took, by dessert-spoonfuls, more than a bottle of Malaga wine a day, and this for several days following. On the last three days of his illness, the quantity of musk administered was, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five grains. I mention these particulars for the purpose of showing how perilous was his state. I have not medical knowledge enough to do justice to M. Breugne's treatment by any detail I could give of it.

During these last three days the anxiety of Breugne was extreme. "I suspect by her uncertain answers to my questions, that the old garde malade sleeps in the night: let Antoine sit up and watch the nurse. We do not know precisely when the fever began, but it must soon end: the least negligence may be fatal." At his first visits, early in the morning, he used to ask the servants, "Où en sommes nous?"83 before he would enter the chamber of the patient. Every thing portended his death. His mother afterwards said to me, "I had taken out the sheet to bury him in; it was as well for it to be ready." Breugne, though he could neither feel nor give hope, would not despair, nor relax his efforts. An unfavourable symptom occurred, – the breaking out of red spots on the skin. "It is all over," said I to Breugne; "the little girl, whom I lost fifteen years ago, had the same appearance the day before she died." – "Il ne mourra pas pour cela;"84 and he did not die. On the sixteenth of October, in the evening, the fever left him. At this time, Breugne, after a careful examination, said, "Il n'a rien – there is nothing the matter with him: but wait till to-morrow morning; it is too soon yet for me to assure you of his safety."

On the morrow, Breugne pronounced him out of danger. It was pleasant to see with what delight, with what affectionate exaltation, he contemplated his patient, standing by his bed-side, taking snuff, and hardly refraining from tears. The patient, who had been too weak to say any thing the evening before, had now recovered a little strength and a little spirit of fun. "Why does he not go away? He has made his visit." This was said to me in English. Breugne asked the meaning: I told him, and then said in French, "Let Mr. Breugne enjoy the view of the good he has done." He did enjoy it most cordially and disinterestedly.

Now came the difficulty to conceal from my restored and surviving son the death of his brother. Our mourning dress was accounted for, by telling him that an aunt of his mother's had died and left her a large legacy; and he was amused by discussing and settling how the legacy should be spent in Italy. Often has his mother turned aside to hide her tears while answering his inquiries after his brother, and while entering into details to make her accounts more credible. Such traits of heroism have been admired in a Roman matron: but heroism is more common than is usually supposed. I said to him, "Really we are very much obliged to you; but for our waiting for your recovery, we should now be on our road to Italy." – "And my brother? is he well enough for the journey?" I was stupified, and unable so far to recover myself as to tell a falsehood. "He will be no hindrance."

A new alarm succeeded. Convalescence after such a malady, uncured for during more than the first third of its period, was no easy matter. "He will die after all," said Breugne, "of what the English physicians call phthisis in toto corpore. I order for him exactly the quantity of food that may nourish him; for it is not by what we eat, but by what we can turn into nutriment, that the body is supported. The nurse has given him more than enough, and the organs of nutrition cannot do their office with what surcharges them. We must have him down stairs: that old witch must not be left alone with him." He had in fact asked Goody Grope, as he called her, to give him to eat; and she, after discharging her conscience by refusing, ended by complying. Breugne made me observe that his pulse intermitted. I counted thirty-nine pulsations; the fortieth failed. "If he were descending into a malady," – I cannot well translate his French, as he hesitated in the choice of his words, – "I should call the symptom fatal; but as he is rising from one, it may not be of such evil omen – mauvais augure."

An inference may hence be drawn of no small import in the conduct of life. How pernicious it must be, even in health, to eat too much; since, a case of debility supposed, a little quantity more than enough hindered the nutritive effect of the food, and in truth very nearly proved fatal!

My son was now about to become again one of the family. Two days before this took place, I told him that his brother was gone into the country, for change of air, to the house of a friend whom I named. I anticipated by two days, lest the story should seem invented for the occasion. On the first of November, he was carried down stairs on a mattress, and laid on a sofa, while his bed was prepared in the cabinet by the side of the salon. "I will have him again put into bed as soon as possible," said Breugne; "le lit est la force du malade."85 His sisters were shocked at his appearance; terror overcame their joy; they seemed to doubt whether he too had not died and come forth again from the grave: for myself, I wondered where his muscles, veins, and arteries had retired, so complete seemed the adhesion of the skin to the bones. Three days afterwards, asses milk was ordered and found to agree with him; and Breugne cried out exultingly, "J'ai cinq sur sept pour moi."86 This was, however, but little more than two to one in his favour.

Many awkward circumstances might have led him to suspect the death of his brother. The secret was now to be kept by six or seven persons whose looks betrayed it, although their tongues were silent: nay, silence was itself of all circumstances the most suspicious. I dictated a message to Antoine as from the Marquis de – , with whom Kenelm was supposed to be living in the country. This message was to convey a favourable account of his health, and Antoine was ordered to deliver it in the salon. He had not courage to speak loud enough, and I made a sign to him to talk so as to be heard by him in the cabinet: this gave him the air of one acting a part. The Marquis and Marquise entered soon after. This was unlucky: they could not have sent a message from their country-house while they were in the town. They approached the door of the cabinet. I said, "Madame, you bring us good news from your campagne?" Through pity or astonishment at my resolution, she had not the force to give any answer.

I said to M. Breugne, "What am I to do? He suspects his brother's death: he asked me yesterday, 'Why does he not write? is he not well enough to write?' The suspicion will irritate his feelings, and do him more harm than the certainty." Breugne said, "I will not take on myself the responsibility of advising you; you must judge for yourself: you know his character better than I do."

On the tenth of November I said to him, "You have had the same illness as your brother, and have recovered from it. Your present illness is excessive weakness owing to your having been so long neglected; there is no reason to fear the same – " Incautiously in my perturbation I had gone further than I had intended to do at first. This was enough: the secret was revealed, and we were relieved from this cruel embarrassment.

Four weeks after the fever had left him, he was able to walk a few steps. A month is sufficient for complete convalescence after the typhus in ordinary cases. On the twelfth of December he went out in a carriage. On the twentieth I left my house for the purpose of selling my furniture by auction, and went to the Hôtel d'Europe for better air, and to be near the promenade. At this inn we staid ten days, till the strength of the convalescent should be sufficiently restored to enable us to set out on our long-delayed journey. At length I engaged a voiture, having most happily found one, as if made on purpose for my service, new, well-built and warm, with stout horses, and a respectable coachman.

To obtain a passport to quit France is a matter, not of difficulty, but of many formalities. The demandant must first make his application to the municipality, stating his reasons for leaving the kingdom, the country to which he is going, and the point at which he means to quit France. The municipality notifies these particulars to the prefect, who addresses himself to the minister for foreign affairs, who, after due perquisition at the legation of the country of the demandant, if a foreigner, (for the same formalities, this inquiry excepted only, are observed in regard to the French themselves,) authorizes the prefect to grant the passport required. I stated that I was going to Nice to restore the health of my son and of my afflicted family. All that family had made frequent visits to the tomb of Henry Kenelm, except his brother, whose visit was to be one of farewell on the day before our departure from Avignon, which was now fixed for the last of the year. On the 30th of December, a funeral was to take place at two in the afternoon: the hour suited, and we were willing, as requested, to take that opportunity of finding the gate of the cemetery open. We went to the cemetery at the appointed hour; the funeral was delayed till after sunset: it would have been dangerous, for one whose health was so imperfectly established, to wait longer, and expose himself to the cold of the evening; and he quitted this city of death without being able to pay his last duties at the tomb of a beloved brother.

CHAP. XX

I have mentioned the strong emotion which I felt in passing through the village of St. Clair betwixt Rouen and Pontoise, as also the surprise excited by the view of the features of an infant Jesus drawn by my departed son immediately after his return from England. It is now the proper time to explain to what I then referred. In saying that I alluded to a dream, I know that I expose myself to ridicule: to pay regard to dreams is justly considered as a sign of imbecillity of mind, and generally condemned as superstitious: how far I may be exempted from these censures by the prophetic nature of my dream, I leave to be determined by those who shall compare it with the events lately narrated, which seem to me to form a striking and full interpretation of it. I no more affect the character of a dreamer, than that of a visionary: but I am not deterred, by the fear of being laughed at, from believing, in the case of the vision, the evidence of my senses, and that a dream, portraying things future, ought to be distinguished from the ordinary phenomena of that inexplicable faculty, (if that which is involuntarily exercised may be called a faculty,) of our fearful and wonderful nature.

On Thursday, the 27th of November, 1817, being then at Lincoln, I dreamed that I was in a large, lofty room, which was entirely unknown to me.

In the month of October, 1818, I hired a house at Avignon in which was a salon, exactly resembling that of the dream; the situation of the doors, windows, and chimney, and the appearance of them just the same.

A person came out of the cabinet by the side of this salon, with whom I was unacquainted, but whom I supposed to be an English catholic priest: he wore a black coat, and had boots on: I did not observe that he had with him any hat: he was of rather less than the middle age of life.

This person resembled in features and expression of countenance the infant Jesus drawn, three years afterwards, by my elder son: my recollection did not serve me to recognise the likeness till after I had seen my son's drawing from the engraving: in the cabinet, before-mentioned, was usually hung a small crucifix.

This priest approached me in a serious, but civil and friendly manner: two chairs were near us, not far from one of the windows: I invited him to be seated.

The chairs were like those I had at Avignon; they were placed near the window: had this scene been represented as in the winter season, they would have been near the fire: it was in the summer season that the events occurred, which I suppose to have been now presignified. As it was I who invited the other to sit down, it seems that I thought myself to be in my own house.

The priest then said to me, in a slow and distinct voice, "You are to found a new order in the church, to be called 'The Society of the Penitents of St. Clair;' you know under what rule; but not sub peccato;" he repeated "not sub peccato," and, rising from his seat, took out his watch, an ordinary silver watch with small seals, looked at it, and returned it to its place: then taking leave of me, he passed, not through the door of the stairs, but into the second salon.

When the priest said, "You know the rule," I understood to what he referred, without further explanation oh his part. When much younger than I was at this epoch, I had thought of a rule of life, on the observance of which it might be useful and desirable to form a society: but I never had the presumption to conceive the idea of founding a new order in the church. I will confess, so little were my dispositions at this time penitential, that when the word "penitents" was pronounced, it was to me displeasing and repulsive. I had regarded the rule which the priest said, "you know," with a view to bodily health and temporal convenience, not with any reference to religious mortification. I had not thought of the rule for many years past, and had always considered the formation of a society on the rule as an impracticable project. St. Clair's name was unknown to me till I referred to "Butler's Lives of the Saints." I had read of Sta. Clara, but was perfectly sure it was not she that was intended.

When the priest had left the room, I saw, seated and eating at a large round table, placed, not in the centre, but towards one side of the room, a young man, whom I went up to, and conversed with: he talked to me of his sins, and his penitential dispositions, and wept much: I asked him if he would observe the rule of the society, not telling him what it was, but supposing him to know it: he answered in the affirmative, but hesitatingly, as if he knew he should be prevented. His dress perplexed me; it was white, loose over his shoulders and before him; without coat, vest, or waistcoat; he seemed to have nothing on but this shapeless white mantle, and his shirt. He rose suddenly from the table at which he had continued to sit while talking with me: his long white robe flowed behind him: he gathered it up round his knees as he went away, and passed through the door, and hastily down stairs.

I had no such table in England as this here described, but I had such an one at Avignon. I have remarked in my narrative, that, on the day of my son's death, this table was pushed aside to make room for the sofa turned from the light by desire of my younger son. I have spoken of the scruples of my elder son, and of the distress and uneasiness they caused both to him and to me. The dress of the young man with whom I conversed in my dream, was, in truth, (though then I knew it not, and had been accustomed to see another sort of mortuary clothing,) the habiliments of the dead in France.

I followed this young man to the top of the stairs: my family, or persons whom I considered as such, were behind me: the staircase was winding in such a manner that we could not see to the bottom of the stairs; where we stood was a staircase to the second floor on the left hand; a window to the right: all this as at Avignon.

As I stood looking down the stairs, my younger son said to me, "I'll go after him: " accordingly he went quickly down the stairs. At this interval, looking through the window, I saw a most beautiful garden, with fruit-trees, and a light as of the reflection of the brightest sunshine: it was reflected sunshine; the window is to the north. My younger son came up stairs again, and standing by me, but turning to look down stairs, and then turning to look at me, said, "He is gone."

I have related that, on the day of the death of my elder son, the younger took to his bed, ill of the same typhus fever; and that, during his illness, that supernatural light was seen which assured us of the happy state of the elder. The face of my younger, when he spoke to me in the dream, was nearly on a level with mine: at the age at which he was at the time of the dream in 1817, he was not higher than my shoulder; soon after his illness, he grew to be taller than me, but in 1821 his stature was such as it appeared in my dream.

We returned into the room: those who had followed me to the top of the stairs were in deep mourning, and it was understood we were about to undertake a long journey. We set off for Italy at the end of the year, the eventful year 1821.

I awoke, and found it was near eight o'clock in the morning.

The scenes exhibited in this dream, and the events prefigured by it, according to my interpretation, are here set in juxtaposition: the impression it made on my apprehension was lively and distinct as reality itself. I relate it, because it is immediately connected with the subject of my narrative. In the rule referred to by my imaginary interlocutor there is nothing that I desire to keep secret, but to explain it at this time might be foreign to my purpose: besides, quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis; and I should be loth to intrude on any what they may not be willing to read. Dr. Johnson said, "There is often more in the title than in all the rest of the book;" but it may be unfair to put into a book what cannot in any wise be augured from the title. Yet, as the rule was enjoined in a dream which had relation to my story, as the knowledge of the rule may help to form an opinion of the nature and character of the dream itself, and as moreover it may be told in very few words, I will here declare it.

The three great enemies of youth and of mankind, – the three chief sources of moral evil, of intellectual debility and derangement, and of corporal sufferance – are, sins against chastity, drunkenness, and gaming. Early in life, I made this observation; let any one, who doubts the truth of it, cast his eyes on the world. Dr. Cheyne's works "on health" and "on regimen," had persuaded me that animal food was pernicious to health and to all the faculties and dispositions which depend on health: it excites and gratifies the appetite to such a degree, that few, very few, feed upon it without gluttony. Let any one then observe chastity – abstain from animal food, and from wine and vinous spirits, renounce all play for money, or engaging stakes on hazard, and he will conform to the rule "of the penitents of St. Clair."

When the priest said, and repeated, "not sub peccato," I of course understood him to mean, not that chastity was not of precept and obligatory on all as a Christian and moral virtue, but that sins against it should not be aggravated by being an infraction of the rule. The other parts of the rule regard things in themselves indifferent: among the several persons whom I have known that abstained from animal food, some there were who did so as believing it unlawful to take away life: I admired their practice, but disapproved their reasoning; the Author of Life has himself permitted it: on that ground it is justifiable; though it might be an amusing question, whence they who disbelieve all revelation derive authority to put to death these creatures except in case of self-defence, as when attacked by a bear or a tiger. The moderate use of alcohol is lawful, medicinal even; to interest and amuse ourselves by engaging a moderate stake on hazard is perfectly innocent; but he who renounces vinous spirits and gaming, strikes at the root of many mischiefs and many perturbations.

What I have related, I have related as it happened: the dream and the reference in the dream to my opinions, could neither be sought for, nor procured, nor prepared by any act of mine: my opinions here recorded have this merit, that, according to our Lincolnshire phraseology, "they won't do nobody no harm," and this is merit enough; merit, not negative, but positive; for the phrase always implies the expectation of a great benefit. In the hope that they may do somebody some good, I leave the matter to favourable or unfavourable acceptation; and prepare to narrate my journey to Nice, – that delicious climate, where is,

– ver perpetuum atque alienis mensibus æstas.

CHAP. XXI

We drove out of the western gate of Avignon, and immediately turned to the left hand. I said mentally, "Adieu, my dear son! may I and all this family be reunited to thee in a better world." During the last six weeks we had in some degree recovered from the terror and affliction of the preceding period; but a final separation from him we so tenderly and deservedly loved struck us with a feeling of depression, which we endeavoured to surmount and disguise from each other lest the grief of one should be the grief of all. "Are you well seated? do you feel any cold?" and soon after, "How far is it to the bridge of the Durance?" by such questions we tried in vain to conceal what the looks of all betrayed. It was a relief to us to arrive at a country we had not yet seen.