Read the book: «The Companions of Jehu»

AN INTRODUCTORY WORD TO THE READER

Just about a year ago my old friend, Jules Simon, author of “Devoir,” came to me with a request that I write a novel for the “Journal pour Tous.” I gave him the outline of a novel which I had in mind. The subject pleased him, and the contract was signed on the spot.

The action occurred between 1791 and 1793, and the first chapter opened at Varennes the evening of the king’s arrest.

Only, impatient as was the “Journal pour Tous,” I demanded a fortnight of Jules Simon before beginning my novel. I wished to go to Varennes; I was not acquainted with the locality, and I confess there is one thing I cannot do; I am unable to write a novel or a drama about localities with which I am not familiar.

In order to write “Christine” I went to Fontainebleau; in writing “Henri III.” I went to Blois; for “Les Trois Mousquetaires” I went to Boulogne and Béthune; for “Monte-Cristo” I returned to the Catalans and the Château d’If; for “Isaac Laquedem” I revisited Rome; and I certainly spent more time studying Jerusalem and Corinth from a distance than if I had gone there.

This gives such a character of veracity to all that I write, that the personages whom I create become eventually such integral parts of the places in which I planted them that, as a consequence, many end by believing in their actual existence. There are even some people who claim to have known them.

In this connection, dear readers, I am going to tell you something in confidence – only do not repeat it. I do not wish to injure honest fathers of families who live by this little industry, but if you go to Marseilles you will be shown there the house of Morel on the Cours, the house of Mercédès at the Catalans, and the dungeons of Dantès and Faria at the Château d’If.

When I staged “Monte-Cristo” at the Theâtre-Historique, I wrote to Marseilles for a plan of the Château d’If, which was sent to me. This drawing was for the use of the scene painter. The artist to whom I had recourse forwarded me the desired plan. He even did better than I would have dared ask of him; he wrote beneath it: “View of the Château d’If, from the side where Dantès was thrown into the sea.”

I have learned since that a worthy man, a guide attached to the Château d’If, sells pens made of fish-bone by the Abbé Faria himself.

There is but one unfortunate circumstance concerning this; the fact is, Dantès and the Abbé Faria have never existed save in my imagination; consequently, Dantès could not have been precipitated from the top to the bottom of the Château d’If, nor could the Abbé Faria have made pens. But that is what comes from visiting these localities in person.

Therefore, I wished to visit Varennes before commencing my novel, because the first chapter was to open in that city. Besides, historically, Varennes worried me considerably; the more I perused the historical accounts of Varennes, the less I was able to understand, topographically, the king’s arrest.

I therefore proposed to my young friend, Paul Bocage, that he accompany me to Varennes. I was sure in advance that he would accept. To merely propose such a trip to his picturesque and charming mind was to make him bound from his chair to the tram. We took the railroad to Châlons. There we bargained with a livery-stable keeper, who agreed, for a consideration of ten francs a day, to furnish us with a horse and carriage. We were seven days on the trip, three days to go from Châlons to Varennes, one day to make the requisite local researches in the city, and three days to return from Varennes to Châlons.

I recognized with a degree of satisfaction which you will easily comprehend, that not a single historian had been historical, and with still greater satisfaction that M. Thiers had been the least accurate of all these historians. I had already suspected this, but was not certain. The only one who had been accurate, with absolute accuracy, was Victor Hugo in his book called “The Rhine.” It is true that Victor Hugo is a poet and not a historian. What historians these poets would make, if they would but consent to become historians!

One day Lamartine asked me to what I attributed the immense success of his “Histoire des Girondins.”

“To this, because in it you rose to the level of a novel,” I answered him. He reflected for a while and ended, I believe, by agreeing with me.

I spent a day, therefore, at Varennes and visited all the localities necessary for my novel, which was to be called “René d’Argonne.” Then I returned. My son was staying in the country at Sainte-Assise, near Melun; my room awaited me, and I resolved to go there to write my novel.

I am acquainted with no two characters more dissimilar than Alexandre’s and mine, which nevertheless harmonize so well. It is true we pass many enjoyable hours during our separations; but none I think pleasanter than those we spend together.

I had been installed there for three or four days endeavoring to begin my “René d’Argonne,” taking up my pen, then laying it aside almost immediately. The thing would not go. I consoled myself by telling stories. Chance willed that I should relate one which Nodier had told me of four young men affiliated with the Company of Jehu, who had been executed at Bourg in Bresse amid the most dramatic circumstances. One of these four young men, he who had found the greatest difficulty in dying, or rather he whom they had the greatest difficulty in killing, was but nineteen and a half years old.

Alexandre listened to my story with much interest. When I had finished: “Do you know,” said he, “what I should do in your place?”

“What?”

“I should lay aside ‘René d’Argonne,’ which refuses to materialize, and in its stead I should write ‘The Companions of Jehu.’”

“But just think, I have had that other novel in mind for a year or two, and it is almost finished.”

“It never will be since it is not finished now.”

“Perhaps you are right, but I shall lose six months regaining my present vantage-ground.”

“Good! In three days you will have written half a volume.”

“Then you will help me.”

“Yes, for I shall give you two characters.”

“Is that all?”

“You are too exacting! The rest is your affair; I am busy with my ‘Question d’Argent.’”

“Well, who are your two characters, then?”

“An English gentleman and a French captain.”

“Introduce the Englishman first.”

“Very well.” And Alexandre drew Lord Tanlay’s portrait for me.

“Your English gentleman pleases me,” said I; “now let us see your French captain.”

“My French captain is a mysterious character, who courts death with all his might, without being able to accomplish his desire; so that each time he rushes into mortal danger he performs some brilliant feat which secures him promotion.”

“But why does he wish to get himself killed?”

“Because he is disgusted with life.”

“Why is he disgusted with life?”

“Ah! That will be the secret of the book.”

“It must be told in the end.”

“On the contrary, I, in your place, would not tell it.”

“The readers will demand it.”

“You will reply that they have only to search for it; you must leave them something to do, these readers of yours.”

“Dear friend, I shall be overwhelmed with letters.”

“You need not answer them.”

“Yes, but for my personal gratification I, at least, must know why my hero longs to die.”

“Oh, I do not refuse to tell you.”

“Let me hear, then.”

“Well, suppose, instead of being professor of dialectics, Abelard had been a soldier.”

“Well?”

“Well, let us suppose that a bullet – ”

“Excellent!”

“You understand? Instead of withdrawing to Paraclet, he would have courted death at every possible opportunity.”

“Hum! That will be difficult.”

“Difficult! In what way?”

“To make the public swallow that.”

“But since you are not going to tell the public.”

“That is true. By my faith, I believe you are right. Wait.”

“I am waiting.”

“Have you Nodier’s ‘Souvenirs de la Révolution’? I believe he wrote one or two pages about Guyon, Leprêtre, Amiet and Hyvert.”

“They will say, then, that you have plagiarized from Nodier.”

“Oh! He loved me well enough during his life not to refuse me whatever I shall take from him after his death. Go fetch me the ‘Souvenirs de la Révolution.’”

Alexandre brought me the book. I opened it, turned over two or three pages, and at last discovered what I was looking for. A little of Nodier, dear readers, you will lose nothing by it. It is he who is speaking:

The highwaymen who attacked the diligences, as mentioned in the article on Amiet, which I quoted just now, were called Leprêtre, Hyvert, Guyon and Amiet.

Leprêtre was forty-eight years old. He was formerly a captain of dragoons, a knight of St. Louis, of a noble countenance, prepossessing carriage and much elegance of manner. Guyon and Amiet have never been known by their real names. They owe that to the accommodating spirit prevailing among the vendors of passports of those days. Let the reader picture to himself two dare-devils between twenty and thirty years of age, allied by some common responsibility, the sequence, perhaps of some misdeed, or, by a more delicate and generous interest, the fear of compromising their family name. Then you will know of Guyon and Amiet all that I can recall. The latter had a sinister countenance, to which, perhaps, he owes the bad reputation with which all his biographers have credited him. Hyvert was the son of a rich merchant of Lyons, who had offered the sub-officer charged with his deportation sixty thousand francs to permit his escape. He was at once the Achilles and the Paris of the band. He was of medium height but well formed, lithe, and of graceful and pleasing address. His eyes were never without animation nor his lips without a smile. His was one of those countenances which are never forgotten, and which present an inexpressible blending of sweetness and strength, tenderness and energy. When he yielded to the eloquent petulance of his inspirations he soared to enthusiasm. His conversation revealed the rudiments of an excellent early education and much natural intelligence. That which was so terrifying in him was his tone of heedless gayety, which contrasted so horribly with his position. For the rest, he was unanimously conceded to be kind, generous, humane, lenient toward the weak, while with the strong he loved to display a vigor truly athletic which his somewhat effeminate features were far from indicating. He boasted that he had never been without money, and had no enemies. That was his sole reply to the charges of theft and assassination. He was twenty-two years old.

To these four men was intrusted the attack upon a diligence conveying forty thousand francs of government money. This deed was transacted in broad daylight, with an exchange of mutual courtesy almost; and the travellers, who were not disturbed by the attack, gave little heed to it. But a child of only ten years of age, with reckless bravado, seized the pistol of the conductor and fired it into the midst of the assailants. As this peaceful weapon, according to the custom, was only charged with powder, no one was injured; but the occupants of the coach quite naturally experienced a lively fear of reprisals. The little boy’s mother fell into violent hysterics. This new disturbance created a general diversion which dominated all the preceding events and particularly attracted the attention of the robbers. One of them flew to the woman’s side, reassuring her in the most affectionate manner, while complimenting her upon her son’s precocious courage, and courteously pressed upon her the salts and perfumes with which these gentlemen were ordinarily provided for their own use. She regained consciousness. In the excitement of the moment her travelling companions noticed that the highwayman’s mask had fallen off, but they did not see his face.

The police of those days, restricted to mere impotent supervision, were unable to cope with the depredations of these banditti, although they did not lack the means to follow them up. Appointments were made at the cafés, and narratives relating to deeds carrying with them the penalty of death circulated freely through all the billiard-halls in the land. Such was the importance which the culprits and the public attached to the police.

These men of blood and terror assembled in society in the evening, and discussed their nocturnal expeditions as if they had been mere pleasure-parties.

Leprêtre, Hyvert, Amiet and Guyon were arraigned before the tribunal of a neighboring department. No one save the Treasury had suffered from their attack, and there was no one to identify them save the lady who took very good care not to do so. They were therefore acquitted unanimously.

Nevertheless, the evidence against them so obviously called for conviction, that the Ministry was forced to appeal from this decision. The verdict was set aside; but such was the government’s vacillation, that it hesitated to punish excesses that might on the morrow be regarded as virtues. The accused were cited before the tribunal of Ain, in the city of Bourg, where dwelt a majority of their friends, relatives, abettors and accomplices. The Ministry sought to propitiate the one party by the return of its victims, and the other by the almost inviolate safeguards with which it surrounded the prisoners. The return to prison indeed resembled nothing less than a triumph.

The trial recommenced. It was at first attended by the same results as the preceding one. The four accused were protected by an alibi, patently false, but attested by a hundred signatures, and for which they could easily have obtained ten thousand. All moral convictions must fail in the presence of such authoritative testimony. An acquittal seemed certain, when a question, perhaps involuntarily insidious, from the president, changed the aspect of the trial.

“Madam,” said he to the lady who had been so kindly assisted by one of the highwaymen, “which of these men was it who tendered you such thoughtful attention?”

This unexpected form of interrogation confused her ideas. It is probable that she believed the facts to be known, and saw in this a means of modifying the fate of the man who interested her.

“It was that gentleman,” said she, pointing to Leprêtre. The four accused, who were included in a common alibi, fell by this one admission under the executioner’s axe. They rose and bowed to her with a smile.

“Faith!” said Hyvert, falling back upon his bench with a burst of laughter, “that, Captain, will teach you to play the gallant.”

I have heard it said that the unhappy lady died shortly after of chagrin.

The customary appeal followed; but, this time, there was little hope. The Republican party, which Napoleon annihilated a month later, was in the ascendency. That of the Counter-Revolution was compromised by its odious excesses. The people demanded examples, and matters were arranged accordingly, as is ordinarily the custom in strenuous times; for it is with governments as with men, the weakest are always the most cruel. Nor had the Companies of Jehu longer an organized existence. The heroes of these ferocious bands, Debeauce, Hastier, Bary, Le Coq, Dabri, Delbourbe and Storkenfeld, had either fallen on the scaffold or elsewhere. The condemned could look for no further assistance from the daring courage of these exhausted devotees, who, no longer capable of protecting their own lives, coolly sacrificed them, as did Piard, after a merry supper. Our brigands were doomed to die.

Their appeal was rejected, but the municipal authorities were not the first to learn of this. The condemned men were warned by three shots fired beneath the walls of their dungeon. The Commissioner of the Executive Directory, who had assumed the rôle of Public Prosecutor at the trial, alarmed at this obvious sign of connivance, requisitioned a squad of armed men of whom my uncle was then commander. At six o’clock in the morning sixty horsemen were drawn up before the iron gratings of the prison yard.

Although the jailers had observed all possible precautions in entering the dungeon where these four unfortunate men were confined, and whom they had left the preceding day tightly pinioned and heavily loaded with chains, they were unable to offer them a prolonged resistance. The prisoners were free and armed to the teeth. They came forth without difficulty, leaving their guardians under bolts and bars, and, supplied with the keys, they quickly traversed the space that separated them from the prison yard. Their appearance must have been terrifying to the populace awaiting them before the iron gates.

To assure perfect freedom of action, or perhaps to affect an appearance of security more menacing even than the renown for strength and intrepidity with which their names were associated, or possibly even to conceal the flow of blood which reveals itself so readily beneath white linen, and betrays the last agonies of a mortally wounded man, their breasts were bared. Their braces crossed upon the chest – their wide red belts bristling with arms – their cry of attack and rage, all that must have given a decidedly fantastic touch to the scene. Arrived in the square, they perceived the gendarmerie drawn up in motionless ranks, through which it would have been impossible to force a passage. They halted an instant and seemed to consult together. Leprêtre, who was, as I have said, their senior and their chief, saluted the guard with his hand, saying with that noble grace of manner peculiar to him:

“Very well, gentlemen of the gendarmerie!”

Then after a brief, energetic farewell to his comrades, he stepped in front of them and blew out his brains. Guyon, Amiet and Hyvert assumed a defensive position, their double-barrelled pistols levelled upon their armed opponents. They did not fire; but the latter, considering this demonstration as a sign of open hostility, fired upon them. Guyon fell dead upon Leprêtre’s body, which had not moved. Amiet’s hip was broken near the groin. The “Biographie des Contemporains” says that he was executed. I have often heard it said that he died at the foot of the scaffold. Hyvert was left alone, his determined brow, his terrible eye, the pistol in each practiced and vigorous hand threatening death to the spectators. Perhaps it was involuntary admiration, in his desperate plight, for this handsome young man with his waving locks, who was known never to have shed blood, and from whom the law now demanded the expiation of blood; or perhaps it was the sight of those three corpses over which he sprang like a wolf overtaken by his hunters, and the frightful novelty of the spectacle, which for an instant restrained the fury of the troop. He perceived this and temporized with them for a compromise.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “I go to my death! I die with all my heart! But let no one approach me or I shall shoot him – except this gentleman,” he continued, pointing to the executioner. “This is an affair that concerns us alone and merely needs a certain understanding between us.”

This concession was readily accorded, for there was no one present who was not suffering from the prolongation of this horrible tragedy, and anxious to see it finished. Perceiving their assent, he placed one of his pistols between his teeth, and drawing a dagger from his belt, plunged it in his breast up to the hilt. He still remained standing and seemed greatly surprised. There was a movement toward him.

“Very well, gentlemen!” cried he, covering the men who sought to surround him with his pistols, which he had seized again, while the blood spurted freely from the wound in which he had left his poniard. “You know our agreement; either I die alone or three of us will die together. Forward, march!” He walked straight to the guillotine, turning the knife in his breast as he did so.

“Faith,” said he, “my soul must be centred in my belly! I cannot die. See if you can fetch it out.”

This last was addressed to his executioner. An instant later his head fell. Be it accident or some peculiar phenomenon of the vitality, it rebounded and rolled beyond the circle of the scaffolding, and they will still tell you at Bourg, that Hyvert’s head spoke.

Before I had finished reading I had decided to abandon René d’Argonne for the Companions of Jehu. On the morrow I came down with my travelling bag under my arm.

“You are leaving?” said Alexandre to me.

“Yes.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Bourg, in Bresse.”

“What are you going to do there?”

“Study the neighborhood and consult with the inhabitants who saw Leprêtre, Amiet, Guyon and Hyvert executed.”

There are two roads to Bourg – from Paris, of course; one may leave the train at Mâcon, and take stage from Mâcon to Bourg, or, continuing as far as Lyons, take train again from Lyons to Bourg.

I was hesitating between these two roads when one of the travellers who was temporarily occupying my compartment decided me. He was going to Bourg, where he frequently had business. He was going by way of Lyons; therefore, Lyons was the better way.

I resolved to travel by the same route. I slept at Lyons, and on the morrow by ten in the morning I was at Bourg.

A paper published in the second capital of the kingdom met my eye. It contained a spiteful article about me. Lyons has never forgiven me since 1833, I believe, some twenty-four years ago, for asserting that it was not a literary city. Alas! I have in 1857 the same opinion of Lyons as I had in 1833. I do not easily change my opinion. There is another city in France that is almost as bitter against me as Lyons, that is Rouen. Rouen has hissed all my plays, including Count Hermann.

One day a Neapolitan boasted to me that he had hissed Rossini and Malibran, “The Barbiere” and “Desdemona.”

“That must be true,” I answered him, “for Rossini and Malibran on their side boast of having been hissed by Neapolitans.”

So I boast that the Rouenese have hissed me. Nevertheless, meeting a full-blooded Rouenese one day I resolved to discover why I had been hissed at Rouen. I like to understand these little things.

My Rouenese informed me: “We hiss you because we are down on you.”

Why not? Rouen was down on Joan of Arc. Nevertheless it could not be for the same reason. I asked my Rouenese why he and his compatriots were ill-disposed to me; I had never said anything evil of apple sugar, I had treated M. Barbet with respect during his entire term as mayor, and, when a delegate from the Society of Letters at the unveiling of the statue of the great Corneille, I was the only one who thought to bow to him before beginning my speech. There was nothing in that which could have reasonably incurred the hatred of the Rouenese.

Therefore to this haughty reply, “We hiss you because we have a grudge against you,” I asked humbly:

“But, great Heavens! why are you down on me?”

“Oh, you know very well,” replied my Rouenese.

“I?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, you.”

“Well, never mind; pretend I do not know.”

“You remember the dinner the city gave you, in connection with that statue of Corneille?”

“Perfectly. Were they annoyed because I did not return it?”

“No, it is not that.”

“What is it then?”

“Well, at that dinner they said to you: ‘M. Dumas, you ought to write a play for Rouen based upon some subject taken from its own history.’”

“To which I replied: ‘Nothing easier; I will come at your first summons and spend a fortnight in Rouen. You can suggest the subject, and during that fortnight I will write the play, the royalties of which I shall devote to the poor.’”

“That is true, you said that.”

“I see nothing sufficiently insulting in that to incur the hatred of the Rouenese.”

“Yes, but they added: ‘Will you write it in prose?’ To which you replied – Do you remember what you answered?”

“My faith! no.”

“You replied: ‘I will write it in verse; it is soonest done.’”

“That sounds like me. Well, what then?”

“Then! That was an insult to Corneille, M. Dumas; that is why the Rouenese are down on you, and will be for a long time.”

Verbatim!

Oh, worthy Rouenese! I trust that you will never serve me so ill as to forgive and applaud me.

The aforesaid paper observed that M. Dumas had doubtless spent but one night in Lyons because a city of such slight literary standing was not worthy of his longer sojourn. M. Dumas had not thought about this at all. He had spent but one night at Lyons because he was in a hurry to reach Bourg. And no sooner had M. Dumas arrived at Bourg than he asked to be directed to the office of its leading newspaper.

I knew that it was under the management of a distinguished archeologist, who was also the editor of my friend Baux’s work on the church of Brou.

I asked for M. Milliet. M. Milliet appeared. We shook hands and I explained the object of my visit.

“I can fix you perfectly,” said he to me. “I will take you to one of our magistrates, who is at present engaged upon a history of the department.”

“How far has he got in this history?”

“1822.”

“Then that’s all right. As the events I want to relate occurred in 1799, and my heroes were executed in 1800, he will have covered that epoch, and can furnish me with the desired information. Let us go to your magistrate.”

On the road, M. Milliet told me that this same magisterial historian was also a noted gourmet. Since Brillat-Savarin it has been the fashion for magistrates to be epicures. Unfortunately, many are content to be gourmands, which is not at all the same thing.

We were ushered into the magistrate’s study. I found a man with a shiny face and a sneering smile. He greeted me with that protecting air which historians deign to assume toward poets.

“Well, sir,” he said to me, “so you have come to our poor country in search of material for your novel?”

“No, sir; I have my material already. I have come simply to consult your historical documents.”

“Good! I did not know that it was necessary to give one’s self so much trouble in order to write novels.”

“There you are in error, sir; at least in my instance. I am in the habit of making exhaustive researches upon all the historical events of which I treat.”

“You might at least have sent some one else.”

“Any person whom I might send, sir, not being so completely absorbed in my subject, might have overlooked many important facts. Then, too, I make use of many localities which I cannot describe unless I see them.”

“Oh, then this is a novel which you intend writing yourself?”

“Yes, certainly, sir. I allowed my valet to write my last; but he had such immense success that the rogue asked so exorbitant an increase of wages that, to my great regret, I was unable to keep him.”

The magistrate bit his lips. Then, after a moment’s silence, he said:

“Will you kindly tell me, sir, how I can assist you in this important work?”

“You can direct my researches, sir. As you have compiled the history of the department, none of the important event which have occurred in its capital can be unknown to you.”

“Truly, sir, I believe that in this respect I am tolerably well informed.”

“Then, sir, in the first place, your department was the centre of the operations of the Company of Jehu.”

“Sir, I have heard speak of the Companions of Jesus,” replied the magistrate with his jeering smile.

“The Jesuits, you mean? That is not what I am seeking, sir.”

“Nor is it of them that I am speaking. I refer to the stage robbers who infested the highroads from 1797 to 1800.”

“Then, sir, permit me to tell you they are precisely the ones I have come to Bourg about, and that they were called the Companions of Jehu, and not the Companions of Jesus.”

“What is the meaning of this title ‘Companions of Jehu’? I like to get at the bottom of everything.”

“So do I, sir; that is why I did not wish to confound these highwaymen with the Apostles.”

“Truly, that would not have been very orthodox.”

“But it is what you would have done, nevertheless, sir, if I, a poet, had not come here expressly to correct the mistake you, as historian, have made.”

“I await your explanation, sir,” resumed the magistrate, pursing his lips.

“It is short and simple. Elisha consecrated Jehu, King of Israel, on condition that he exterminate the house of Ahab; Elisha was Louis XVIII.; Jehu was Cadoudal; the house of Ahab, the Revolution. That is why these pillagers of diligences, who filched the government money to support the war in the Vendée, were called the Companions of Jehu.”

“Sir, I am happy to learn something at my age.”

“Oh, sir! One can always learn, at all times and at all ages; during life one learns man; in death one learns God.”

“But, after all,” my interlocutor said to me with a gesture of impatience, “may I know in what I can assist you?”

“Thus, sir. Four of these young men, leaders of the Companions of Jehu, were executed at Bourg, on the Place du Bastion.”

“In the first place, sir, in Bourg executions do not take place at the Bastion; they execute on the Fair grounds.”

“Now, sir – these last fifteen or twenty years, it is true – since Peytel. But before, especially during the Revolution, they executed on the Place du Bastion.”

“That is possible.”

“It is so. These four young men were called Guyon, Leprêtre, Amiet, and Hyvert.”

“This is the first time I have heard those names.”

“Yet their names made a certain noise at Bourg.”

“Are you sure, sir, that these men were executed here?”

“I am positive.”

“From whom have you derived your information?”

“From a man whose uncle, then in command of the gendarmerie, was present at the execution.”

“Will you tell me this man’s name?”

“Charles Nodier.”

“Charles Nodier, the novelist, the poet?”

“If he were a historian I would not be so insistent, sir. Recently, during a trip to Varennes, I learned what dependence to place upon historians. But precisely because he is a poet, a novelist, I do insist.”

“You are at liberty to do so; but I know nothing of what you desire to learn, and I dare even assert that, if you have come to Bourg solely to obtain information concerning the execution of – what did you call them?”

“Guyon, Leprêtre, Amiet, and Hyvert.”

“You have undertaken a futile voyage. For these last twenty years, sir, I have been searching the town archives, and I have never seen anything relating to what you have just told me.”