Part 8

I took him in my arms, and not knowing what to say to him, I wept with him.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Redingote is a French corruption of the English word “riding coat” and means generally a long, plain double-breasted street coat.

[2] Charenton Saint Maurice, the lunatic asylum near Paris, commonly designated as Charenton.

[3] The name of a public square in Paris where executions formerly took place.

HOW THE REDOUBT WAS TAKEN BY PROSPER MÉRIMÉE

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_Prosper Mérimée, novelist, historian, dramatist, and critic, was born in Paris in 1803. Rarely gifted and highly educated, he held various offices in the civil service, was an Academician, and in 1853 a Senator of the Empire. He was a great traveler, and through his tact and engaging personality was welcomed among all classes, observing wherever he went, and gathering material for his stories, in which a great variety of types are noticeable. His literary style--clear, simple, artistic--is considered a model of restraint and conciseness. “Carmen,” on which Bizet’s opera is founded, and the novel, “Columba,” are probably the best known of his works. The latter part of his life he devoted to introducing through his own translation the great Russian authors, Poushkin, Gogol, and Turgenev. The famous “Lettres à une Inconnue” were published after his death at Cannes, in 1870, where they have lately erected a monument to him._

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HOW THE REDOUBT WAS TAKEN BY PROSPER MÉRIMÉE

Copyright, 1896, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.

A friend of mine, a soldier, who died in Greece of fever some years since, described to me one day his first engagement. His story so impressed me that I wrote it down from memory. It was as follows:

I joined my regiment on September 4th. It was evening. I found the colonel in the camp. He received me rather bruskly, but having read the general’s introductory letter he changed his manner and addressed me courteously.

By him I was presented to my captain, who had just come in from reconnoitring. This captain, whose acquaintance I had scarcely time to make, was a tall, dark man, of harsh, repelling aspect. He had been a private soldier, and had won his cross and epaulettes upon the field of battle. His voice, which was hoarse and feeble, contrasted strangely with his gigantic stature. This voice of his he owed, as I was told, to a bullet which had passed completely through his body at the battle of Jena.

On learning that I had just come from college at Fontainebleau, he remarked, with a wry face: “My lieutenant died last night.”

I understood what he implied, “It is for you to take his place, and you are good for nothing.”

A sharp retort was on my tongue, but I restrained it.

The moon was rising behind the redoubt of Cheverino, which stood two cannon-shots from our encampment. The moon was large and red, as is common at her rising; but that night she seemed to me of extraordinary size. For an instant the redoubt stood out coal-black against the glittering disk. It resembled the cone of a volcano at the moment of eruption.

An old soldier, at whose side I found myself, observed the color of the moon.

“She is very red,” he said. “It is a sign that it will cost us dear to win this wonderful redoubt.”

I was always superstitious, and this piece of augury, coming at that moment, troubled me. I sought my couch, but could not sleep. I rose, and walked about a while, watching the long line of fires upon the heights beyond the village of Cheverino.

When the sharp night air had thoroughly refreshed my blood I went back to the fire. I rolled my mantle round me, and I shut my eyes, trusting not to open them till daybreak. But sleep refused to visit me. Insensibly my thoughts grew doleful. I told myself that I had not a friend among the hundred thousand men who filled that plain. If I were wounded, I should be placed in hospital, in the hands of ignorant and careless surgeons. I called to mind what I had heard of operations. My heart beat violently, and I mechanically arranged, as a kind of rude cuirass, my handkerchief and pocketbook upon my breast. Then, overpowered with weariness, my eyes closed drowsily, only to open the next instant with a start at some new thought of horror.

Fatigue, however, at last gained the day. When the drums beat at daybreak I was fast asleep. We were drawn up in ranks. The roll was called, then we stacked our arms, and everything announced that we should pass another uneventful day.

But about three o’clock an aide-de-camp arrived with orders. We were commanded to take arms.

Our sharpshooters marched into the plain. We followed slowly, and in twenty minutes we saw the outposts of the Russians falling back and entering the redoubt. We had a battery of artillery on our right, another on our left, but both some distance in advance of us. They opened a sharp fire upon the enemy, who returned it briskly, and the redoubt of Cheverino was soon concealed by volumes of thick smoke. Our regiment was almost covered from the Russians’ fire by a piece of rising ground. Their bullets (which besides were rarely aimed at us, for they preferred to fire upon our cannoneers) whistled over us, or at worst knocked up a shower of earth and stones.

Just as the order to advance was given, the captain looked at me intently. I stroked my sprouting mustache with an air of unconcern; in truth, I was not frightened, and only dreaded lest I might be thought so. These passing bullets aided my heroic coolness, while my self-respect assured me that the danger was a real one, since I was veritably under fire. I was delighted at my self-possession, and already looked forward to the pleasure of describing in Parisian drawing-rooms the capture of the redoubt of Cheverino.

The colonel passed before our company. “Well,” he said to me, “you are going to see warm work in your first action.”

I gave a martial smile, and brushed my cuff, on which a bullet, which had struck the earth at thirty paces distant, had cast a little dust.

It appeared that the Russians had discovered that their bullets did no harm, for they replaced them by a fire of shells, which began to reach us in the hollows where we lay. One of these, in its explosion, knocked off my shako and killed a man beside me.

“I congratulate you,” said the captain, as I picked up my shako. “You are safe now for the day.”

I knew the military superstition which believes that the axiom “_non bis in idem_” is as applicable to the battlefield as to the courts of justice. I replaced my shako with a swagger.

“That’s a rude way to make one raise one’s hat,” I said, as lightly as I could. And this wretched piece of wit was, in the circumstances, received as excellent.

“I compliment you,” said the captain. “You will command a company to-night; for I shall not survive the day. Every time I have been wounded the officer below me has been touched by some spent ball; and,” he added, in a lower tone, “all the names began with P.”

I laughed skeptically; most people would have done the same; but most would also have been struck, as I was, by these prophetic words. But, conscript though I was, I felt that I could trust my thoughts to no one, and that it was my duty to seem always calm and bold.

At the end of half an hour the Russian fire had sensibly diminished. We left our cover to advance on the redoubt.

Our regiment was composed of three battalions. The second had to take the enemy in flank; the two others formed a storming party. I was in the third.

On issuing from behind the cover, we were received by several volleys, which did but little harm. The whistling of the balls amazed me. “But after all,” I thought, “a battle is less terrible than I expected.”

We advanced at a smart run, our musketeers in front.

All at once the Russians uttered three hurrahs--three distinct hurrahs--and then stood silent, without firing.

“I don’t like that silence,” said the captain. “It bodes no good.”

I began to think our people were too eager. I could not help comparing, mentally, their shouts and clamor with the striking silence of the enemy.

We quickly reached the foot of the redoubt. The palisades were broken and the earthworks shattered by our balls. With a roar of “Vive l’Empereur,” our soldiers rushed across the ruins.

I raised my eyes. Never shall I forget the sight which met my view. The smoke had mostly lifted, and remained suspended, like a canopy, at twenty feet above the redoubt. Through a bluish mist could be perceived, behind the shattered parapet, the Russian Grenadiers, with rifles lifted, as motionless as statues. I can see them still--the left eye of every soldier glaring at us, the right hidden by his lifted gun. In an embrasure at a few feet distant, a man with a fuse stood by a cannon.

I shuddered. I believed that my last hour had come.

“Now for the dance to open,” cried the captain. These were the last words I heard him speak.

There came from the redoubts a roll of drums. I saw the muzzles lowered. I shut my eyes; I heard a most appalling crash of sound, to which succeeded groans and cries. Then I looked up, amazed to find myself still living. The redoubt was once more wrapped in smoke. I was surrounded by the dead and wounded. The captain was extended at my feet; a ball had carried off his head, and I was covered with his blood. Of all the company, only six men, except myself, remained erect.

This carnage was succeeded by a kind of stupor. The next instant the colonel, with his hat on his sword’s point, had scaled the parapet with a cry of “Vive l’Empereur.” The survivors followed him. All that succeeded is to me a kind of dream. We rushed into the redoubt, I know not how, we fought hand to hand in the midst of smoke so thick that no man could perceive his enemy. I found my sabre dripping blood; I heard a shout of “Victory”; and, in the clearing smoke, I saw the earthworks piled with dead and dying. The cannons were covered with a heap of corpses. About two hundred men in the French uniform were standing, without order, loading their muskets or wiping their bayonets. Eleven Russian prisoners were with them.

The colonel was lying, bathed in blood, upon a broken cannon. A group of soldiers crowded round him. I approached them.

“Who is the oldest captain?” he was asking of a sergeant.

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders most expressively.

“Who is the oldest lieutenant?”

“This gentleman, who came last night,” replied the sergeant calmly.

The colonel smiled bitterly.

“Come, sir,” he said to me, “you are now in chief command. Fortify the gorge of the redoubt at once with wagons, for the enemy is out in force. But General C---- is coming to support you.”

“Colonel,” I asked him, “are you badly wounded?”

“Pish, my dear fellow. The redoubt is taken.”

THE VENDEAN MARRIAGE BY JULES GABRIEL JANIN

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_Thackeray, writing from Paris to Mrs. Brookfield in 1849, says of Jules Janin: “He has made his weekly feuilleton (the Journal des Débats), famous throughout Europe--he does not know a word of English, but he translated Sterne and I think ‘Clarissa Harlowe.’ He has the most wonderful verve, humor, oddity, honesty, bonhomie ... bounced about the room, gesticulating, joking, gasconading, quoting Latin....” We know that Janin was more concerned in amusing his readers and himself than imparting instruction--though he did both._

_Jules Janin was born at Saint-Étienne in 1804, and died in Paris in 1874. In 1836 he entered on that famous career of forty years as dramatic critic of the “Journal des Débats.” These contributions were afterward collected under the title “History of Dramatic Literature.”_

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THE VENDEAN MARRIAGE BY JULES JANIN

Translated by Jane G. Cooke. Copyright, 1899, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.

So you have never heard the circumstances of Monsieur Baudelot de Dairval’s marriage, the man who died four years ago, and was so mourned by his wife that she died a week later herself, good lady? Yet it is a story worth telling.

It happened in the Vendée, and the hero, a Vendean, brave, young, daring, and of fine family, died tranquilly in his bed without ever suspecting that there would be a second Vendée.

Baudelot de Dairval was the grandson of that César Baudelot who is mentioned in the Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans, own mother of the regent Louis Philippe. This woman, who has thrown such contempt on the greatest names of France, could not help praising César de Baudelot. Saint-Simon, skeptic and mocker, but good fellow withal, also spoke highly of him. So you’ll understand that bearing such a name young Henri was not lost to report in the first Vendée, to protest arms in hand against the excesses of the Revolution. Baudelot was a Vendean simply because a man of his name and nature could be nothing else. He fought like his associates, neither more nor less. He was the friend of Cathelmeau and of all the others. He took part in those battles of giants; he took part fighting stoutly, and then laughing and singing as soon as he no longer heard the cries of the wounded. What wars, what livid tempests were ever like those? But it is not my business to tell again the story so often told.

But I want to tell you that one day, surprised at a farm by a detachment of Blues, Baudelot unexpectedly called together his troop. “My friends,” said he, “this farm is surrounded. You must all escape! Take with you the women and children. Rejoin our chief, Cathelmeau. As for me, I’ll stay and defend the gate. I certainly can hold it alone for ten minutes. Those three thousand out there would massacre us all. Good-by, good-by, my brave fellows! Don’t forget me! It’s my turn to-day. You’ll get yourselves killed to-morrow!”

In those exceptional times and in that exceptional war, nothing seemed astonishing. Men did not even think of those rivalries in heroism so frequent in elegant warfare. In such a struggle of extermination there was no time to pose for sublimity of soul. Heroism was quite unaffected. So Baudelot’s soldiers judged for themselves that their chief spoke sensibly, and obeyed as simply as he had commanded. They withdrew by the roof, taking away the women and children. Baudelot remained at the door making noise enough for forty, haranguing, disputing and discharging his gun. One would have thought a whole regiment ready to fire was stationed there, and the Blues held themselves on the alert. Baudelot remained on the defensive as long as he had any voice. But when that failed and he thought his troop must have reached a place of safety, he tired of the warlike feint. He felt ill at ease at thus commanding the absent; and keeping quiet, he merely propped up the door as it was shaken from outside. This lasted several minutes, then the door cracked, and the Blues began to fire through the fissures. Baudelot was not wounded, and as his meal had been interrupted, he returned to the table and tranquilly ate some bread and cheese, and emptied a pitcher of country wine, thinking meanwhile that this was his last repast!

Finally the Blues forced the door and rushed in. It took them some minutes to clear away obstructions, and to recognize each other in the smoke of their guns. These soldiers of the Republic hunted eagerly with look and sword for the armed troop which had withstood them so long. Judge their surprise at seeing only a tall, very handsome young man, calmly eating black bread moistened with wine. Dumb with astonishment the conquerors stopped and leaned on their guns, and thus gave Henri Baudelot time to swallow his last mouthful.

“To your health, gentlemen!” he said, lifting his glass to his lips. “The garrison thanks you for the respite you have granted.” At the same time he rose, and going straight to the Captain, said: “Monsieur, I am the only person in this house. I am quite ready for death.”

Then he kept quiet, and waited. To his great surprise he was not shot at once. Perhaps he had fallen into the hands of recruits so little exercised as to delay twenty-four hours before killing a man. Perhaps his captors were moved by his coolness and fine bearing, and were ashamed at setting three hundred to kill one. We must remember that in that sad war there were French feelings on both sides.

So they contented themselves with tying his hands and leading him, closely watched, to a manor on the outskirts of Nantes, which, once an attractive country-seat, had now become a kind of fortress. Its master was no other than the chief of the Blues, who had captured Baudelot. This Breton, a gentleman although a Blue, had been one of the first to share revolutionary transports. He was one of those nobles so heroic to their own injury, who renounced in a day fortunes, coats of arms, and their own names, forgetting both what they had promised their fathers and what they owed to their sons, equally oblivious of past and future, and unfortunate victims of the present. But we will not reproach them, for either they died under the stroke of the Revolution, or lived long enough to see that all their sacrifices were vain.

Baudelot de Dairval was confined in the donjon, or, rather, in the pigeon-house of his conqueror. The doves had been expelled to give place to Chouan captives. Still covered with shining slates, still surmounted by its creaking weather-cock, this prison had retained a calm, gracious air, and it had not been thought necessary to bar the openings by which the pigeons came and went. Much as ever, a little straw had been added to the usual furniture.

At first the dovecote of a country manor struck him as a novel prison. He decided that as soon as his hands were free he would compose a romance upon it, with a guitar accompaniment. While thus thinking, he heard a violin and other instruments playing a joyful march. By piling up the straw against the wall and leaning on it with his elbow, Baudelot could look out of one of the openings. He saw a long procession of young men and pretty women in white gowns, preceded by village fiddlers, and all merry and joyous. As it passed at the foot of the dovecote, a pretty girl looked up attentively. She was fair, slender and dreamy-looking. Baudelot felt that she knew of the prisoner, and he began to whistle the air of Richard, “In an Obscure Tower,” or something of the kind. For this young man was versed in all kinds of combats and romances, equally skilful with sword and guitar, an adept at horsemanship, a fine dancer, a true gentleman of wit and sword, such as are manufactured no more.

The wedding procession passed, or, at least, if not a wedding it was a betrothal, and Baudelot stopped singing. He heard a sound at his prison door; some one entered.

It was the master of the house himself. He had been a Marquis under Capet, now he called himself simply Hamelin. He was a Blue, but a good fellow enough. The Republic ruled him body and soul; he lent his sword and his castle. But he had not become cruel or wicked in its service. The morning of this very day, Captain Hamelin, for so he had been appointed by the Republic, learned that some Chouans were at his farm, had headed a detachment of Blues and postponed his betrothal. You know how he had seized Baudelot. As soon as the Chouan was in keeping the Captain had returned to his betrothal feast, and this is the reason why he did not shoot his prisoner at once or take him to Nantes.

Captain Hamelin was not so thorough a Blue as to have quite forgotten the hospitable old customs of Bretagne soil. Therefore, while his friends were sitting down to table, he felt it incumbent to call upon his captive.

“Can I do anything for you, monsieur?” he asked.

“Monsieur,” said Baudelot, bowing, “I should like the use of at least one of my hands.”

“Your hands shall be unbound, monsieur,” answered Hamelin, “if you will promise not to try to escape. But before you promise, remember that at six o’clock to-morrow morning you will surely be taken to Nantes.”

“And shot at eight o’clock just as surely?” asked Baudelot.

Captain Hamelin was silent.

“Very well, monsieur,” said Baudelot. “Unbind my hands and unless I’m delivered, I give my word as a gentleman and a Christian to stay here like a pigeon with clipped wings.”

Captain Hamelin could not help smiling at his prisoner’s allusion, and untied his hands.

“Now,” said Baudelot, stretching his arms like a man stiff from sleep, “now, monsieur, I thank you, and am truly your servant until to-morrow. It will not be my fault if my gratitude does not last longer!”

Captain Hamelin said: “If you have any last arrangements--a will to make, for instance--I will send you writing materials.” He was touched, for he was not a Breton for nothing.

Seeing this, Baudelot took his hand. “Do you know,” he said sadly, “that simple word ‘will’ wounds me more than the words ‘death at Nantes!’ It recalls that all my friends are dead. There is no one to whom I can bequeath my name, my sword, my love and my hate, and these are all I have left. Yet, it must be sweet to dispose of a fortune, to be generous even beyond the tomb; and while writing last benefits, to imagine the tears of joys and sorrow they will cause. That is sweet and honorable, isn’t it, Captain? I must not think of it.”

“I will send you some dinner,” said Hamelin. “This is my day of betrothal, and my table is better provided than usual. My fiancée herself shall serve you, monsieur.”

In one of the highest apertures of his cage, Baudelot saw a daisy which had been sown there by one of the first occupants of the dovecote. The pretty flower swayed joyously in the wind, and he gathered it and offered it to the Captain.

“It is our custom at home, Captain, to offer the bride a gift. Be so good as to give yours this little flower, which has blossomed in my domain. And now, good night. I have kept you from your loves long enough. May God remember your kindness toward me! Good-by. Best wishes! Send me some supper, for I’m hungry and need rest.”

And they separated with friendly looks.

Dinner was brought the young Vendean by a pretty Breton girl with white teeth, rosy lips and the pensive air which befitted a shy country maiden, who had already seen so many proscripts. She served him zealously, and gave him no peace if he did not eat of this or that dish, drink this or that wine. It was a magnificent repast. The dovecote grew fragrant. It was almost like the time when the winged occupants of the tower gathered crumbs from the feast. As the girl was pouring champagne, Baudelot said to her:

“What is your name, my child?”