Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843

"It is, I own, not perfectly intelligible," said he; "but some allowance must be made for a man deeply injured, and inflamed by a sense of wrong."

I read the signature—Lafontaine, Capitaine des Chasseurs legers. I had never heard the name before. I begged to know "the nature of his business with me, as it was altogether beyond my conjecture."

"It is perfectly probable, sir," was the reply; "for I understand that you had never seen each other till last night, at the house of your friend. The case is simply this:—Lafontaine, who is one of the finest fellows breathing, has been for some time deeply smitten by the various charms of your host's very pretty daughter, and, so far as I comprehend, the lady has acknowledged his merits. But your arrival here has a good deal deranged the matter. He conceives your attentions to his fair one to be of so marked a nature, that it is impossible for him to overlook them."

I laughed, and answered,

"Sir, you may make your friend quite at his ease on the subject, for I have not known her existence till within these twenty-four hours."

"You danced with her half the evening—you sat beside her at supper. She listened to you with evident attention—of this last I myself was witness; and the report in the neighbourhood is, that you have come to this place by an express arrangement with her father," gravely retorted the guardsman.

All this exactness of requisition appeared to me to be going rather too far; and I exhibited my feeling on the subject, in the tone in which I replied, that I had stated every thing that was necessary for the satisfaction of a "man of sense, but that I had neither the faculty nor the inclination to indulge the captiousness of any man."

His colour mounted, and I seemed as if I was likely to have a couple of heroes on my hands. But he compressed his lip, evidently strangled a chivalric speech, and, after a pause to recover his calmness, said—

"Sir, I have not come here to decide punctilios on either side. I heartily wish that this affair had not occurred, or could be reconciled; my countrymen here, I know, stand on a delicate footing, and I am perfectly aware of the character that will be fastened on them by the occurrence of such rencontres. Can you suggest any means by which this difference may be settled at once?"

"None in the world, sir," was my answer. "I have told you the fact, that I have no pretension whatever to the lady—that I am wholly unacquainted even with the person of your friend—that the idea of intentional injury on my part, therefore, is ridiculous; and let me add, for the benefit of your friend, that to expect an apology for imaginary injuries, would be the most ridiculous part of the entire transaction."

"What, then, am I to do?" asked the gallant captain, evidently perplexed. "I really wish that the affair could be got over without fracas. In fact, though the Jewess is pretty, Lafontaine's choice does not much gratify any of us."

"What you ought to do, sir, is sufficiently plain," said I. "Go to your friend; if he has brains enough remaining to comprehend the nature of the case, he will send you back with his apology. If he has not, I shall remain half an hour on the sands until he has made up his mind."

The captain made me a low bow, and slowly paced back to the lodging of his fiery compatriot.

When I was left alone, I, for the first time, felt the whole ill-luck of my situation. So long as I was heated by our little dialogue, I thought only of retorting the impertinent interference of a stranger with my motives or actions. But, now, the whole truth flashed on me with the force of a new faculty. I saw myself involved in a contest with a fool or a lunatic, in which either of our lives, or both, might be sacrificed—and for nothing. Hope, fortune, reputation, perhaps renown, all the prospects of life were opening before me, and I was about to shut the gate with my own hand. In these thoughts I was still too young for what is called personal peril to intervene. The graver precaution of more advanced years was entirely out of the question. I was a soldier, or about to be one; and I would have rejoiced, if the opportunity had been given to me, in heading a forlorn hope, or doing any other of those showy things which make a name. The war, too, was beginning—my future regiment was ordered for foreign service—every heart in England was beating with hope or fear—every eye of Europe was fixed upon England and Englishmen; and, in the midst of all this high excitement, to fall in a pitiful private quarrel, struck me with a sudden sense of self-contempt and wilful absurdity, that made me almost loathe my being. I acknowledge that the higher thoughts, which place those rencontres in their most criminal point of view, had then but little influence with me. But to think that, within the next hour, or the next five minutes, I might be but like the sleepers in the rude resting-place of the fishermen; with my name unknown, and all the associations of life extinguished—

"This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod"—

was an absolute pang. I could have died a martyr, and despised the flame, or rather rejoiced in it, as a security that I should not perish forgotten. But a fancied wrong, an obscure dispute, the whole future of an existence flung away for the jealous dreams of a mad Frenchman, or the Sport of a coquette, of whom I knew as little as of her fantastic lover, threw me into a fever of scorn for the solemn follies of mankind.

The captain returned. I had not stirred from the spot.

"I regret," said he, "that my friend is wholly intractable. He has convinced himself, if he can convince no one else, that he has wholly lost the good opinion of his fair one, and that you are the cause. Some communication which he had from London, informed him of your frequent intercourse with her father. This rendered him suspicious, and the peculiar attention with which you were treated last night, produced a demand for an explanation; which, of course, heightened the quarrel. The inamorata, probably not displeased to have more suitors than one, whether in amusement or triumph, appears to have assisted his error, if such it be; and he returned home, stung to madness by what he terms her infidelity. He now demands your formal abandonment of the pursuit."

All my former feelings of offence recurred at the words, and I hotly asked—"Well, sir, to whom must I kneel—to the lady or the gentleman? Take my answer back—that I shall do neither. Where is your friend to be found?"

He pointed to a clump of frees within a few hundred yards, and I followed him. I there saw my antagonist; a tall, handsome young man, but with a countenance of such dejection that he might have sat for the picture of despair. It was clear that his case was one for which there was no tonic, but what the wits of the day called a course of steel. Beside him stood a greyhaired old figure, of a remarkably intelligent countenance, though stooped slightly with age. He was introduced to me as General Deschamps; and in a few well-expressed words, he mentioned that he attended, from respect to the British, to offer his services to me on an occasion "which he deeply regretted, but which circumstances unfortunately rendered necessary, and which all parties were doubtless anxious to conclude before it should produce any irritation in the neighbourhood."

To the offer of choice of weapons, I returned an answer of perfect indifference. It had happened, that as my father had destined me for diplomacy, and had conceived the science to have but two essentials, French and fencing, I was tolerably expert in both. Swords were chosen. We were placed on the ground, and the conflict began. My antagonist was evidently a master of his art; but there is no weapon whose use depends so much upon the mind of the moment as the sword. He was evidently resolved to kill or be killed; and the desperation with which he rushed on me exposed him to my very inferior skill. At the third pass I ran him through the sword arm. He staggered back with the twinge; but at the instant when he was about to bound on me, and perhaps take his revenge, a scream stopped us all; a female, wrapped in cloak and veil, rushed forward, and threw herself into Lafontaine's arms in a passion of sobs. An attendant, who soon came up, explained the circumstance; and it finally turned out, that the fair Mariamne, whatever her coquetry might have intended at night, repented at morn; recollected some of the ominous expressions of her lover; and on hearing that he had been seen with a group entering the grove, and that I, too, was absent, had conjectured the truth at once, and flown, with her femme de chambre, to the rendezvous. She had come just in time.

The reconciliation was complete. I was now not only forgiven by the lover, but was the "very best friend he had in the world;—a man of honour, a paragon, a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche." The wound of the gallant chasseur was bound up, like an ancient knight's, with his mistress's scarf. She upbraided me, with her glistening eyes, for having had the audacity to quarrel with her hero; and then, with the same eyes, thanked me for the opportunity of proving her faith to cher et malheureux Charles. Her little heart poured out its full abundance in her voluble tongue; and for a quarter of an hour, and it is a long life for happiness, we were the happiest half dozen in Christendom.

How Mordecai would admire all this, was yet to be told; but my casual mention of his name broke up the rapture at once. Mariamne suddenly became sensible of the irregularity of alternately fainting and smiling in the arms of a handsome young soldier; and in the presence, too, of so many spectators, all admirers of her black eyes and blooming sensibilities. She certainly looked to me much prettier than in her full-dress charms of the evening before, and I almost began to think that the prize was worth contending for; but the guardsman and the old general had felt the effects of the morning air, and were unsentimentally hungry. Mariamne and her attendant were escorted to the edge of the plantation by her restored knight; and I accepted the general's invitation to breakfast, instead of drowning myself in the next pond.

The general was lodged in the first floor of a fisherman's dwelling, which, in more polished parts of the land, would have been pronounced a hovel; but in Brighton, as it then was, bore the name of a house. We entered it through an apartment filled with matters of the fisherman's trade,—nets, barrels, and grapnels; and in a corner a musket or two, which had evidently seen service, though probably not in his Majesty's pay. The walls were covered with engravings of British sea-fights and favourite admirals, from the days of Elizabeth; patriotic in the highest degree, and most intolerable specimens of the arts; the floor, too, had its covering, but it was of nearly a dozen children of all sizes, from the bluff companion of his father down to the crier in the cradle; yet all fine bold specimens of the brood of sea and fresh air, British bull-dogs, that were yet to pin down the game all round the world; or rather cubs of the British lion, whose roar was to be the future terror of the foreigner.

The general welcomed us to his little domicile with as much grace as if he had been ushering us into the throne-room of the Tuileries. I afterwards understood that he had been governor of the "Invalides;" and the change from the stately halls of that military palace must have severely taxed the philosophy of any man; yet it had no appearance of having even ruffled the temperament of the gallant veteran. He smiled, talked, and did the honours of his apartment with as much urbanity as if he had been surrounded by all the glittering furniture, and all the liveried attendance, of his governorship. I have always delighted in an old Frenchman, especially if he has served. Experience has made me a cosmopolite, and yet to this hour a young Frenchman is my instinctive aversion. He is born in coxcombry, cradled in coxcombry, and educated in coxcombry. It is only after his coxcombry is rubbed off by the changes and chances of the world, that the really valuable material of the national character is to be seen. He always reminds me of the mother-of-pearl shell, rude and unpromising on the outside, but by friction exhibiting a fine interior. However it may be thought a paradox to pronounce the Frenchman unpolished, I hold to my assertion. If the whole of "jeune France" sprang on their feet and clapped their hands to the hilts of their swords, or more probably to their daggers, to avenge the desecration of the only shrine at which nine-tenths of them worship, I should still pronounce the Frenchman the most unpolished of Europeans. What is his look of conscious superiority to all that exist besides in this round world? The toss of his nostril, the glare of his eye, the contempt of his gathered lip? Give me the homeliest manners of the homeliest corner of Europe—nay, give me the honest rudeness of the American savage, in preference to this arrogant assumption of an empty superiority. Why, the very tone in which every Frenchman, from fifteen to five-and-forty, utters the words "la France," is enough to raise the laugh, or make the blood boil, of all mankind.

Nearly twenty years after this, I happened to be sitting one day with Gentz, the most memorable practical philosopher of his age and country. Germany was then in the most deplorable depression, overrun with French armies; and with Napoleon at Erfurth, in the pride of that "bad eminence" on which he stood in such Titanic grandeur, and from which he was so soon to be flung with such Titanic ruin. Our conversation naturally turned on the melancholy state of things.

"I think," said the great politician, "that this supremacy must fall. I might not think so if any other nation were the masters of Europe; but France, though often a conqueror, has never been a possessor. The insolence of the individual Frenchman has been the grand obstacle to the solidity of her empire."

To my remark, that her central position, her vast population, the undaunted bravery of her troops, and the military propensities of her people, fitted her to be the disturber of Europe.

"Yes," was the sage's answer; "but to be no more than the disturber. Her power is the whirlwind; for purposes which man may never be able fully to define, suffered, or sent forth, to sweep the Continent; perhaps, like the tempest, to punish, nay, perhaps in the end to purify; but the tempest is scarcely more transitory, or more different from the dew that invisibly descends and silently refreshes the land."

"But Napoleon," said I, "with an army of a million recruited from thirty millions, opposed to the worn-down force and exhausted treasures of the Continent! What an iron wedge driven in among their dilapidated combinations! What a mountain of granite, with the cloud and the thunder for its crown, domineering over the plain!"

"True—perfectly true," he replied, throwing back the long locks from a broad forehead which reminded me of a bust of Plato. "True. Man may be as little able to decide on the means by which the power of France will fall, as on the purposes for which that tremendous fabric of splendid iniquity first rose. But, look into that street."

It happened that a French regiment of cuirassiers, with the fine clangour of its drums and trumpets, was passing under the window at the moment.

"You see there," said he, "the kind of feeling which that really striking show produces; not a window is open but our own. The blinds of every window have been let down, not an eye looks at these troops. Yet the public of Vienna are extravagantly fond of display in all its shapes; and punchinello, or a dance of dogs, would bring a head to every pane of glass, from the roof to the ground. The French are individually shrunk from, hated, abhorred.

"Naturally enough, as conquerors," I observed; chiefly from a desire to hear more of the sentiments of the celebrated German.

"No—no!" said he, almost in a tone of vexation. "The Germans are as much alive to the merits of their enemies in the field, as any other nation in the world. They acknowledge the soldiership of the French. I even believe that the talents of their extraordinary emperor are more sincerely acknowledged in Vienna than in Paris. But it is the intolerable insolence of the national character, that makes its bravery, its gaiety, and even its genius detested. Trust me; this feeling will not be unfruitful. Out of the hut of the peasant will come the avengers, whom the cabinet has never been able to find in the camp. Out of the swamp and the thicket will rise the tree that will at once overshadow the fallen fortunes of Germany, and bring down the lightning on her aggressors. In this hope alone I live."

I once more asked him, "From what quarter is the restoration to come?"

"I know not—I care not—I ask not," said he, starting from his chair, and traversing the room with huge strides. "The topic feels to me as if a sword was now griding its way through my frame. But France will never keep Austria, nor Prussia, nor the Rhenish Provinces, nor Holland, nor any spot on earth beyond the land inhabited by Frenchmen. It is true," said he, with a stern smile, "that she may keep her West India islands, if your ships will let her. The negroes are her natural subjects. They have backs accustomed to the lash, and black cheeks that will not redden at her insolence."

"Are the German sovereigns of your opinion?"

"To a man. It is but this morning that I was honoured with a reception by our good emperor. His conviction was complete. But you will not see Austria stir a single step, until war is the outcry, not of her court, but of her people. The trumpet that leads the march will be blown not from the parade of Vienna or Berlin, but from the village, the pasture, the forest, and the mountain. The army will be the peasant, the weaver, the trader, the student, the whole of the pacific multitude of life turned into the materials of war; the ten thousand rills that silently water the plain of society suddenly united into one inundation; the eyes of every man looking only for the enemy; the feet of every man pursuing him; the hands of every man slaying him. The insolence of the Frenchman has contrived to convey a sting of the bitterness of conquest into every heart of our millions, and our millions will return it with resistless retribution."

"You have cheered and convinced me," said I, as I rose to take my leave. "It certainly is rather strange, that France, always mad with the love of seizure, has been able to acquire nothing during the last hundred years."

"You will find my theory true," said Gentz. "The individual insolence of her people has been the real impediment to the increase of her dominions. She is not the only ambitious power on the face of the earth. Russia has doubled her empire within those hundred years, yet she has kept possession of every league. Prussia has doubled her territory within the same time, yet she has added the new solidly to the old. I am not an advocate for the principle or the means by which those conquests have been accomplished; but they have been retained. Austria has been for the same time nearly mistress of Italy, and though the French arms have partially shaken her authority, it was never shaken by popular revolt. And why is all this contradistinction to the flighty conquest and ephemeral possession of France? The obvious reason is, that however the governments might be disliked, neither the Austrian soldier, nor the Prussian, nor even the Russian, made himself abhorred, employed his study in vexing the feelings of the people, had a perpetual sneer on his visage, or exhibited in his habits a perpetual affectation of that coxcomb superiority to all other human beings, that pert supremacy, that grotesque and yet irritating caricature, which makes the Moi, je suis Français, a demand for universal adoration, the concentrated essence of absurdity, the poison-drop of scorn.

"When will this great consummation arrive?"

"When the tyranny can be endured no longer; when the people find that they must depend upon themselves for its redress; when a just Providence finds the vindication of its laws required by the necessities of man."

"From what quarter will the grand effort first come?"

"From the nation most aggrieved."

"What will be its result?"

To this moment I remember the sudden light which flashed into his cold grey eye, the gasping lip, and the elevation which even his stooped form assumed; as he answered with a tone and gesture which might have been imagined for one of the prophets of the Sistine Chapel—

"The result," said he, "will be the fall of the French empire, for it is a house built on the sand;—the extinction of Napoleon, for it is his creation, and the one cannot survive the other;—the liberation of Europe, for its united strength can be chained no longer;—perhaps the liberty of man, for the next step for nations which have crushed foreign dominion is to extinguish domestic despotism. Europe once free, what is to come? A new era, a new shape of society, a new discovery of the mighty faculties of nations, of the wonders of mind, of matter, and of man; a vast shaking of the earth and its institutions; and out of this chaos, a new moral creation, fiat lux et fugient tenebræ."

The prediction has been partly realized. Much is yet to be fulfilled. But, like Gentz, I live in hope, and think that I see an approach to the consummation.

But the party to whom I was now introduced were of a different order from the generality of their country. Originally of the first education and first society of France, the strictness of the military service had produced on the the most valuable effect of years. The natural vividness of their temperament was smoothed down, their experience of English kindness had diminished their prejudices; and adversity—and no men bear the frowns of fortune better than their nation—gave them almost the manly calmness of the English gentleman. I found the old general all courtesy, and his friends all good-humour. My conduct in the affair of the morning was after their own hearts; I had, by common consent, earned their good graces; and they gave me on the spot half a dozen invitations to the regiments and chateaus of themselves and their friends, with as much hospitable sincerity as if they had only to recross the Channel to take possession of them again. Lafontaine was still moody, but he was in love; and, by this fact, unlike every body else, and unlike himself, from one half hour to another.

The conversation soon turned on a topic, on which the emigrants every where were peculiarly anxious to be set right with English feeling, namely, their acquittance from the charge of having fled unnecessarily.

"Men of honour," observed the general, "understand each other in all countries. I therefore always think it due, to both Englishmen and Frenchmen, to explain, that we are not here in the light of fugitives; that we have not given up the cause of our country; and that we are on English ground in express obedience to the commands of our sovereign. I am at this moment, in this spot, on the king's duty, waiting, like my gallant friends here, merely the order to join the first expedition which can be formed for the release of our monarch, and the rescue of France from the horde of villains who have filled it with rebellion." All fully accorded with the sentiment. "The captivity of the king," said he, "is the result of errors which none could have anticipated ten days since. The plan decided on by the council of officers, of which I was one, was the formation of a camp on the frontier, to which his majesty and the princes should repair, summon the chief authorities of the kingdom, and there provide for the general safety with a deliberation which was impossible in Paris. I was sent off at midnight to take the command of the District of the Loire. I found myself there at the head of ten regiments, in the highest order, and, as I thought, of the highest loyalty. I addressed them and was received with shouts of Vive le Roi! I gave an addition of pay to the troops, and a banquet to the officers. A note was handed to me, as I took my seats at the head of the table. It simply contained the words, 'You are betrayed.' I read it aloud in contempt, and was again answered by shouts of Vive le Roi! While we were in the midst of our conviviality, a volley was fired in at the windows, and the streets of Nantz were in uproar—the whole garrison had mutinied. The officers were still loyal: but what was to be done? We rushed out with drawn swords. On our first appearance in the porch of the hotel, a platoon posted in front, evidently for our massacre, levelled by word of command, and fired deliberately into the midst of us. Several were killed on the spot, and many wounded. Some rushed forward, and some retreated into the house. I was among those who forced their way through the crowd, and before I had struggled to the end of the long street, the cry of 'fire' made me look round—the hotel was in a blaze. The rabble had set it on flame. It was this, probably that saved me, by distracting their attention. I made my way to the chateau of the Count de Travancour, whose son had been on my staff at the Invalides. But the family were in Paris, and the only inhabitants were servants. I had received a musket-ball in my arm, and was faint with loss of blood. Still, I was determined to remain at my post, and not quit my district as long as any thing could be done. But I had scarcely thrown myself, in weariness and vexation, on a sofa, when a servant rushed into the room with the intelligence, that a band of men with torches were approaching the chateau. To defend it with a garrison of screaming women was hopeless; and while I stood considering what to do next, we heard the crash of the gates. The whole circle instantly fell on their knees before me, and implored that I should save their lives and my own, by making my escape. A courageous Breton girl undertook to be my guide to the stables, and we set out under a shower of prayers for our safety. But, as we wound our way along the last corridor, I saw the crowd of soldiers and populace rushing up the staircase at the opposite side of the court, and calling out my name joined to a hundred atrocious epithets. My situation now obviously became difficult; for our advance would be met at the next minute by the assassins. The girl's presence of mind saved me; she flew back to the end of the gallery, threw open a small door which led to the roof; and I was in the open air, with the stars bright above me, and a prodigious extent of the country, including Nantz, beneath.