The Parisians — Complete
TextCHAPTER V
It was late in the evening that day when a man who had the appearance of a decent bourgeois, in the lower grades of that comprehensive class, entered one of the streets in the Faubourg Montmartre, tenanted chiefly by artisans. He paused at the open doorway of a tall narrow house, and drew back as he heard footsteps descending a very gloomy staircase.
The light from a gas lamp on the street fell full on the face of the person thus quitting the house—the face of a young and handsome man, dressed with the quiet elegance which betokened one of higher rank or fashion than that neighbourhood was habituated to find among its visitors. The first comer retreated promptly into the shade, and, as by sudden impulse, drew his hat low down over his eyes.
The other man did not, however, observe him, went his way with a quick step along the street, and entered another house some yards distant.
“What can that pious Bourbonite do here?” muttered the first comer. “Can he be a conspirator? Diable! ‘tis as dark as Erebus on that staircase.”
Taking cautious hold of the banister, the man now ascended the stairs. On the landing of the first floor there was a gas lamp which threw upward a faint ray that finally died at the third story. But at that third story the man’s journey ended; he pulled a bell at the door to the right, and in another moment or so the door was opened by a young woman of twenty-eight or thirty, dressed very simply, but with a certain neatness not often seen in the wives of artisans in the Faubourg Montmartre. Her face, which, though pale and delicate, retained much of the beauty of youth, became clouded as she recognised the visitor; evidently the visit was not welcome to her.
“Monsieur Lebeau again!” she exclaimed, shrinking back.
“At your service, chere dame. The goodman is of course at home? Ah, I catch sight of him,” and sliding by the woman, M. Lebeau passed the narrow lobby in which she stood, through the open door conducting into the room in which Armand Monnier was seated, his chin propped on his hand, his elbow resting on a table, looking abstractedly into space. In a corner of the room two small children were playing languidly with a set of bone tablets, inscribed with the letters of the alphabet. But whatever the children were doing with the alphabet, they were certainly not learning to read from it.
The room was of fair size and height, and by no means barely or shabbily furnished. There was a pretty clock on the mantelpiece. On the wall were hung designs for the decoration of apartments, and shelves on which were ranged a few books.
The window was open, and on the sill were placed flowerpots; you could scent the odour they wafted into the room. Altogether it was an apartment suited to a skilled artisan earning high wages. From the room we are now in, branched on one side a small but commodious kitchen; on the other side, on which the door was screened by a portiere, with a border prettily worked by female hands—some years ago, for it was faded now—was a bedroom, communicating with one of less size in which the children slept. We do not enter those additional rooms, but it may be well here to mention them as indications of the comfortable state of an intelligent skilled artisan of Paris, who thinks he can better that state by some revolution which may ruin his employer.
Monnier started up at the entrance of Lebeau, and his face showed that he did not share the dislike to the visit which that of the female partner of his life had evinced. On the contrary, his smile was cordial, and there was a hearty ring in the voice which cried out—
“I am glad to see you—something to do? Eh!”
“Always ready to work for liberty, mon brave.”
“I hope so: what’s in the wind now?”
“O Armand, be prudent—be prudent!” cried the woman, piteously. “Do not lead him into further mischief, Monsieur Lebeau;” as she faltered forth the last words, she bowed her head over the two little ones, and her voice died in sobs.
“Monnier,” said Lebeau, gravely, “Madame is right. I ought not to lead you into further mischief; there are three in the room who have better claims on you than—”
“The cause of millions,” interrupted Monnier.
“No.”
He approached the woman and took up one of the children very tenderly, stroking back its curls and kissing the face, which, if before surprised and saddened by the mother’s sob, now smiled gaily under the father’s kiss.
“Canst thou doubt, my Heloise,” said the artisan, mildly, “that whatever I do thou and these are not uppermost in my thoughts? I act for thine interest and theirs—the world as it exists is the foe of you three. The world I would replace it by will be more friendly.”
The poor woman made no reply, but as he drew her towards him, she leant her head upon his breast and wept quietly. Monnier led her thus from the room, whispering words of soothing. The children followed the parents into the adjoining chamber. In a few minutes Monnier returned, shutting the door behind him, and drawing the portiere close.
“You will excuse me, Citizen, and my poor wife—wife she is to me and to all who visit here, though the law says she is not.”
“I respect Madame the more for her dislike to myself,” said Lebeau, with a somewhat melancholy smile.
“Not dislike to you personally, Citizen, but dislike to the business which she connects with your visits, and she is more than usually agitated on that subject this evening, because, just before you came, another visitor had produced a great effect on her feelings—poor dear Heloise!”
“Indeed! how?”
“Well, I was employed in the winter in redecorating the salon, and boudoir, of Madame de Vandemar; her son, M. Raoul, took great interest in superintending the details. He would sometimes talk to me very civilly, not only on my work, but on other matters. It seems that Madame now wants something done to the salle-a-manger, and asked old Gerard—my late master, you know—to send me. Of course he said that was impossible—for, though I was satisfied with my own wages, I had induced his other men to strike, and was one of the ringleaders in the recent strike of artisans in general—a dangerous man, and he would have nothing more to do with me. So M. Raoul came to see and talk to me—scarce gone before you rang at the bell—you might have almost met him on the stairs.”
“I saw a beau monsieur come out of the house. And so his talk has affected Madame.”
“Very much; it was quite brother-like. He is one of the religious set, and they always get at the weak side of the soft sex.”
“Ay,” said Lebeau, thoughtfully; “if religion were banished from the laws of men, it would still find a refuge in the hearts of women. But Raoul de Vandemar did not presume to preach to Madame upon the sin of loving you and your children?”
“I should like to have heard him preach to her,” cried Monnier, fiercely. “No, he only tried to reason with me about matters he could not understand.”
“Strikes?”
“Well, not exactly strikes—he did not contend that we workmen had not full right to combine and to strike for obtaining fairer money’s worth for our work; but he tried to persuade me that where, as in my case, it was not a matter of wages, but of political principle—of war against capitalists—I could but injure myself and mislead others. He wanted to reconcile me to old Gerard, or to let him find me employment elsewhere; and when I told him that my honour forbade me to make terms for myself till those with whom I was joined were satisfied, he said, ‘But if this lasts much longer, your children will not look so rosy;’ then poor Heloise began to wring her hands and cry, and he took me aside and wanted to press money on me—as a loan. He spoke so kindly that I could not be angry; but when he found I would take nothing, he asked me about some families in the street of whom he had a list, and who, he was informed, were in great distress. That is true; I am feeding some of them myself out of my savings. You see, this young Monsieur belongs to a society of men, many as young as he is, which visits the poor and dispenses charity. I did not feel I had a right to refuse aid for others, and I told him where his money would be best spent. I suppose he went there when he left me.”
“I know the society you mean, that of St. Francois de Sales. It comprises some of the most ancient of that old noblesse to which the ouvriers in the great Revolution were so remorseless.”
“We ouvriers are wiser now; we see that in assailing them, we gave ourselves worse tyrants in the new aristocracy of the capitalists. Our quarrel now is that of artisans against employers.”
“Of course, I am aware of that; but to leave general politics, tell me frankly, How has the strike affected you as yet? I mean in purse? Can you stand its pressure? If not, you are above the false pride of not taking help from me, a fellow-conspirator, though you were justified in refusing it when offered by Raoul de Vandemar, the servant of the Church.”
“Pardon, I refuse aid from any one, except for the common cause. But do not fear for me, I am not pinched as yet. I have had high wages for some years, and since I and Heloise came together, I have not wasted a sous out of doors, except in the way of public duty, such as making converts at the Jean Jacques and elsewhere; a glass of beer and a pipe don’t cost much. And Heloise is such a house-wife, so thrifty, scolds me if I buy her a ribbon, poor love! No wonder that I would pull down a society that dares to scoff at her—dares to say she is not my wife, and her children are base born. No, I have some savings left yet. War to society, war to the knife!”
“Monnier,” said Lebeau, in a voice that evinced emotion, “listen to me: I have received injuries from society which, when they were fresh, half-maddened me—that is twenty years ago. I would then have thrown myself into any plot against society that proffered revenge; but society, my friend, is a wall of very strong masonry, as it now stands; it may be sapped in the course of a thousand years, but stormed in a day—no. You dash your head against it—you scatter your brains, and you dislodge a stone. Society smiles in scorn, effaces the stain, and replaces the stone. I no longer war against society. I do war against a system in that society which is hostile to me—systems in France are easily overthrown. I say this because I want to use you, and I do not want to deceive.”
“Deceive me, bah! You are an honest man,” cried Monnier; and he seized Lebeau’s hand, and shook it with warmth and vigour.
“But for you I should have been a mere grumbler. No doubt I should have cried out where the shoe pinched, and railed against laws that vex me; but from the moment you first talked to me I became a new man. You taught me to act, as Rousseau and Madame de Grantmesnil had taught me to think and to feel. There is my brother, a grumbler too, but professes to have a wiser head than mine. He is always warning me against you—against joining a strike—against doing any thing to endanger my skin. I always went by his advice till you taught me that it was well enough for women to talk and complain; men should dare and do.”
“Nevertheless,” said Lebeau, “your brother is a safer counsellor to a pere de famille than I. I repeat what I have so often said before: I desire, and I resolve, that the Empire of M. Bonaparte shall be overthrown. I see many concurrent circumstances to render that desire and resolve of practicable fulfilment. You desire and resolve the same thing. Up to that point we can work together. I have encouraged your action only so far as it served my design; but I separate from you the moment you would ask me to aid your design in the hazard of experiments which the world has never yet favoured, and trust me, Monnier, the world never will favour.”
“That remains to be seen,” said Monnier, with compressed, obstinate lips. “Forgive me, but you are not young; you belong to an old school.”
“Poor young man!” said Lebeau, readjusting his spectacles, “I recognise in you the genius of Paris, be the genius good or evil. Paris is never warned by experience. Be it so. I want you so much, your enthusiasm is so fiery, that I can concede no more to the mere sentiment which makes me say to myself, ‘It is a shame to use this great-hearted, wrong-headed creature for my personal ends.’ I come at once to the point—that is, the matter on which I seek you this evening. At my suggestion, you have been a ringleader in strikes which have terribly shaken the Imperial system, more than its Ministers deem; now I want a man like you to assist in a bold demonstration against the Imperial resort to a rural priest-ridden suffrage, on the part of the enlightened working class of Paris.”
“Good!” said Monnier.
“In a day or two the result of the plebiscite will be known. The result of universal suffrage will be enormously in favour of the desire expressed by one man.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Monnier, stoutly. “France cannot be so hoodwinked by the priests.”
“Take what I say for granted,” resumed Lebeau, calmly. “On the 8th of this month we shall know the amount of the majority—some millions of French votes. I want Paris to separate itself from France, and declare against those blundering millions. I want an emeute, or rather a menacing demonstration—not a premature revolution, mind. You must avoid bloodshed.”
“It is easy to say that beforehand; but when a crowd of men once meets in the streets of Paris—”
“It can do much by meeting, and cherishing resentment if the meeting be dispersed by an armed force, which it would be waste of life to resist.”
“We shall see when the time comes,” said Monnier, with a fierce gleam in his bold eyes.
“I tell you, all that is required at this moment is an evident protest of the artisans of Paris against the votes of the ‘rurals’ of France. Do you comprehend me?”
“I think so; if not, I obey. What we ouvriers want is what we have not got—a head to dictate action to us.”
“See to this, then. Rouse the men you can command. I will take care that you have plentiful aid from foreigners. We may trust to the confreres of our council to enlist Poles and Italians; Gaspard le Noy will turn out the volunteer rioters at his command. Let the emeute be within, say a week, after the vote of the plebiscite is taken. You will need that time to prepare.”
“Be contented—it shall be done.”
“Good night, then.” Lebeau leisurely took up his hat and drew on his gloves—then, as if struck by a sudden thought, he turned briskly on the artisan and said in quick blunt tones:
“Armand Monnier, explain to me why it is that you—a Parisian artisan, the type of a class the most insubordinate, the most self-conceited that exists on the face of earth—take without question, with so docile a submission, the orders of a man who plainly tells you he does not sympathise in your ultimate objects, of whom you really know very little, and whose views you candidly own you think are those of an old and obsolete school of political reasoners.”
“You puzzle me to explain,” said Monnier, with an ingenuous laugh, that brightened up features stern and hard, though comely when in repose. “Partly, because you are so straightforward, and do not talk blague; partly, because I don’t think the class I belong to would stir an inch unless we had a leader of another class—and you give me at least that leader. Again, you go to that first stage which we all agree to take, and—well, do you want me to explain more?”
“Yes.”
“Et bien! you have warned me, like an honest man; like an honest man I warn you. That first step we take together; I want to go a step further; you retreat, you say, ‘No:’ I reply you are committed; that further step you must take, or I cry ‘Traitre!—au la lanterne!’ You talk of ‘superior experience:’ bah! what does experience really tell you? Do you suppose that Philippe Egalite, when he began to plot against Louis XVI., meant to vote for his kinsman’s execution by the guillotine? Do you suppose that Robespierre, when he commenced his career as the foe of capital punishment, foresaw that he should be the Minister of the Reign of Terror? Not a bit of it. Each was committed by his use of those he designed for his tools: so must you be—or you perish.”
Lebeau, leaning against the door, heard the frank avowal he had courted without betraying a change of countenance. But when Armand Monnier had done, a slight movement of his lips showed emotion; was it of fear or disdain?
“Monnier,” he said, gently; “I am so much obliged to you for the manly speech you have made. The scruples which my conscience had before entertained are dispelled. I dreaded lest I, a declared wolf, might seduce into peril an innocent sheep. I see I have to deal with a wolf of younger vigour and sharper fangs than myself, so much the better: obey my orders now; leave it to time to say whether I obey yours later. Au revoir.”
CHAPTER VI
Isaura’s apartment, on the following Thursday evening, was more filled than usual. Besides her habitual devotees in the artistic or literary world, there were diplomatists and deputies commixed with many fair chiefs of la jeunesse doree; amongst the latter the brilliant Enguerrand de Vandemar, who, deeming the acquaintance of every celebrity essential to his own celebrity in either Carthage, the beau monde, or the demi-monde, had, two Thursdays before, made Louvier attend her soiree and present him. Louvier, though gathering to his own salons authors and artists, very rarely favoured their rooms with his presence; he did not adorn Isaura’s party that evening. But Duplessis was there, in compensation. It had chanced that Valerie had met Isaura at some house in the past winter, and conceived an enthusiastic affection for her: since then, Valerie came very often to see her, and made a point of dragging with her to Isaura’s Thursday reunions her obedient father. Soirees, musical or literary, were not much in his line; but he had no pleasure like that of pleasing his spoilt child. Our old friend Frederic Lemercier was also one of Isaura’s guests that night. He had become more and more intimate with Duplessis, and Duplessis had introduced him to the fair Valerie as “un jeune homme plein de moyens, qui ira loin.”
Savarin was there of course, and brought with him an English gentleman of the name of Bevil, as well known at Paris as in London—invited everywhere—popular everywhere,—one of those welcome contributors to the luxuries of civilised society who trade in gossip, sparing no pains to get the pick of it, and exchanging it liberally sometimes for a haunch of venison, sometimes for a cup of tea. His gossip not being adulterated with malice was in high repute for genuine worth.
If Bevil said, “This story is a fact,” you no more thought of doubting him than you would doubt Rothschild if he said, “This is Lafitte of ‘48.”
Mr. Bevil was at present on a very short stay at Paris, and, naturally wishing to make the most of his time, he did not tarry beside Savarin, but, after being introduced to Isaura, flitted here and there through the assembly.
“Apis Matinae—
More modoque—
Grata carpentis thyma”—
The bee proffers honey, but bears a sting.
The room was at its fullest when Gustave Rameau entered, accompanied by Monsieur de Mauleon.
Isaura was agreeably surprised by the impression made on her by the Vicomte’s appearance and manner. His writings, and such as she had heard of his earlier repute, had prepared her to see a man decidedly old, of withered aspect and sardonic smile—aggressive in demeanour—forward or contemptuous in his very politeness—a Mephistopheles engrafted on the stem of a Don Juan. She was startled by the sight of one who, despite his forty-eight years—and at Paris a man is generally older at forty-eight than he is elsewhere—seemed in the zenith of ripened manhood—startled yet more by the singular modesty of a deportment too thoroughly high-bred not to be quietly simple—startled most by a melancholy expression in eyes that could be at times soft, though always so keen, and in the grave pathetic smile which seemed to disarm censure of past faults in saying, “I have known sorrows.”
He did not follow up his introduction to his young hostess by any of the insipid phrases of compliment to which she was accustomed; but, after expressing in grateful terms his thanks for the honour she had permitted Rameau to confer on him, he moved aside, as if he had no right to detain her from other guests more worthy her notice, towards the doorway, taking his place by Enguerrand amidst a group of men of whom Duplessis was the central figure.
At that time—the first week in May, 1870—all who were then in Paris will remember that there were two subjects uppermost in the mouths of men: first, the plebiscite; secondly, the conspiracy to murder the Emperor—which the disaffected considered to be a mere fable, a pretence got up in time to serve the plebiscite and prop the Empire.
Upon this latter subject Duplessis had been expressing himself with unwonted animation. A loyal and earnest Imperialist, it was only with effort that he could repress his scorn of that meanest sort of gossip which is fond of ascribing petty motives to eminent men.
To him nothing could be more clearly evident than the reality of this conspiracy, and he had no tolerance for the malignant absurdity of maintaining that the Emperor or his Ministers could be silly and wicked enough to accuse seventy-two persons of a crime which the police had been instructed to invent.
As De Mauleon approached, the financier brought his speech to an abrupt close. He knew in the Vicomte de Mauleon the writer of articles which had endangered the Government, and aimed no pointless shafts against its Imperial head.
“My cousin,” said Enguerrand, gaily, as he exchanged a cordial shake of the hand with Victor, “I congratulate you on the fame of journalist, into which you have vaulted, armed cap-a pie, like a knight of old into his saddle; but I don’t sympathise with the means you have taken to arrive at that renown. I am not myself an Imperialist—a Vandemar can be scarcely that. But if I am compelled to be on board a ship, I don’t wish to take out its planks and let in an ocean, when all offered to me instead is a crazy tub and a rotten rope.”
“Tres bien,” said Duplessis, in Parliamentary tone and phrase.
“But,” said De Mauleon, with his calm smile, “would you like the captain of the ship, when the sky darkened and the sea rose, to ask the common sailors ‘whether they approved his conduct on altering his course or shortening his sail’? Better trust to a crazy tub and a rotten rope than to a ship in which the captain consults a plebiscite.”
“Monsieur,” said Duplessis, “your metaphor is ill chosen no metaphor indeed is needed. The head of the State was chosen by the voice of the people, and, when required to change the form of administration which the people had sanctioned, and inclined to do so from motives the most patriotic and liberal, he is bound again to consult the people from whom he holds his power. It is not, however, of the plebiscite we were conversing, so much as of the atrocious conspiracy of assassins—so happily discovered in time. I presume that Monsieur de Mauleon must share the indignation which true Frenchmen of every party must feel against a combination united by the purpose of murder.”
The Vicomte bowed as in assent. “But do you believe,” asked a Liberal Depute, “that such a combination existed, except in the visions of the police or the cabinet of a Minister?”
Duplessis looked keenly at De Mauleon while this question was put to him. Belief or disbelief in the conspiracy was with him, and with many, the test by which a sanguinary revolutionist was distinguished from an honest politician.
“Ma foi,” answered De Mauleon, shrugging his shoulders, “I have only one belief left; but that is boundless. I believe in the folly of mankind in general, and of Frenchmen in particular. That seventy-two men should plot the assassination of a sovereign on whose life interests so numerous and so watchful depend, and imagine they could keep a secret which any drunkard amongst them would blab out, any tatterdemalion would sell, is a betise so gross that I think it highly probable. But pardon me if I look upon the politics of Paris much as I do upon its mud—one must pass through it when one walks in the street. One changes one’s shoes before entering the salon. A word with you, Enguerrand,”—and taking his kinsman’s arm he drew him aside from the circle. “What has become of your brother? I see nothing of him now.”
“Oh, Raoul,” answered Enguerrand, throwing himself on a couch in a recess, and making room for De Mauleon beside him—“Raoul is devoting himself to the distressed ouvriers who have chosen to withdraw from work. When he fails to persuade them to return, he forces food and fuel on their wives and children. My good mother encourages him in this costly undertaking, and no one but you who believe in the infinity of human folly would credit me when I tell you that his eloquence has drawn from me all the argent de poche I get from our shop. As for himself, he has sold his horses, and even grudges a cab-fare, saying, ‘That is a meal for a family.’ Ah! if he had but gone into the Church, what a saint would have deserved canonisation!”
“Do not lament—he will probably have what is a better claim than mere saintship on Heaven—martyrdom,” said De Mauleon, with a smile in which sarcasm disappeared in melancholy. “Poor Raoul!—and what of my other cousin, the beau Marquis? Several months ago his Legitimist faith seemed vacillating—he talked to me very fairly about the duties a Frenchman owed to France, and hinted that he should place his sword at the command of Napoleon III. I have not yet heard of him as a soldat de France—I hear a great deal of him as a viveur de Paris.”
“Don’t you know why his desire for a military career was frost-bitten?”
“No! why?”
“Alain came from Bretagne profoundly ignorant of most things known to a gamin of Paris. When he conscientiously overcame the scruples natural to one of his name and told the Duchesse de Tarascon that he was ready to fight under the flag of France whatever its colour, he had a vague reminiscence of ancestral Rochebriants earning early laurels at the head of their regiments. At all events he assumed as a matter of course that he, in the first rank as gentilhomme, would enter the army, if as a sous-lieutenant, still as gentilhomme. But when told that, as he had been at no military college, he could only enter the ranks as a private soldier—herd with private soldiers—for at least two years before, passing through the grade of corporal, his birth, education, habits of life could, with great favour, raise him to the station of a sous-lieutenant, you may conceive that the martial ardour of a Rochebriant was somewhat cooled.”
“If he knew what the dormitory of French privates is, and how difficult a man well educated well brought up, finds it, first, to endure the coarsest ribaldry and the loudest blasphemy, and then, having endured and been compelled to share them, ever enforce obedience and discipline as a superior among those with whom just before he was an equal, his ardour would not have been merely cooled—it would have been changed into despair for the armies of France, if hereafter they are met by those whose officers have been trained to be officers from the outset and have imbibed from their cradle an education not taught to the boy-pedants from school—the two-fold education how with courtesy to command, how with dignity to obey. To return to Rochebriant, such salons as I frequent are somewhat formal—as befits my grave years and my modest income; I may add, now that you know my vocation, befits me also as a man who seeks rather to be instructed than amused. In those salons I did, last year sometimes, however, meet Rochebriant—as I sometimes still meet you; but of late he has deserted such sober reunions, and I hear with pain that he is drifting among those rocks against which my own youth was shipwrecked. Is the report true?”
“I fear,” said Enguerrand, reluctantly, “that at least the report is not unfounded. And my conscience accuses me of having been to blame in the first instance. You see, when Alain made terms with Louvier by which he obtained a very fair income, if prudently managed, I naturally wished that a man of so many claims to social distinction, and who represents the oldest branch of my family, should take his right place in our world of Paris. I gladly therefore presented him to the houses and the men most a la mode—advised him as to the sort of establishment, in apartments, horses, &c., which it appeared to me that he might reasonably afford—I mean such as, with his means, I should have prescribed to myself—”
“Ah! I understand. But you, dear Enguerrand, are a born Parisian, every inch of you: and a born Parisian is, whatever be thought to the contrary, the best manager in the world. He alone achieves the difficult art of uniting thrift with show. It is your Provincial who comes to Paris in the freshness of undimmed youth, who sows his whole life on its barren streets. I guess the rest: Alain is ruined.” Enguerrand, who certainly was so far a born Parisian that with all his shrewdness and savoir faire, he had a wonderfully sympathetic heart, very easily moved, one way or the other—Enguerrand winced at his elder kinsman’s words complimentarily reproachful, and said in unwonted tones of humility: “Cousin, you are cruel, but you are in the right. I did not calculate sufficiently on the chances of Alain’s head being turned. Hear my excuse. He seemed to me so much more thoughtful than most at our age are, so much more stately and proud; well, also so much more pure, so impressed with the responsibilities of station, so bent on retaining the old lands in Bretagne; by habit and rearing so simple and self-denying,—that I took it for granted he was proof against stronger temptations than those which a light nature like my own puts aside with a laugh. And at first I had no reason to think myself deceived, when, some months ago, I heard that he was getting into debt, losing at play, paying court to female vampires, who drain the life-blood of those on whom they fasten their fatal lips. Oh, then I spoke to him earnestly!”