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The Mill on the Floss Silas Marner Scenes of Clerical Life Felix Holt r* Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/memberforparista01murr &c, I LIBRAHY OF THE UN IVLR.SITY Of ILLINOIS 823 M96m v.l THE MEMBER FOR PARIS A TALE OF THE SECOND EMPIRE. BY TROIS-ETOILES. A force de marcher l'homme erre, l : e=prit doate. Tons laissent quelquechose aux buissons de la route, Les troupeaux leur toison et l'homme sa vertn. ; '— Victor Hugi IN THREE VOLUMES. YOL. I. L N D N : SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE, 1871. THE RIGHT OF TJ. '.XSLATIuX IS RESEP.^Kl Y.I CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. Ce fut un Deuil dans le Pats 1 II. Honest Gerold 36 III. Vox Populi Vox Dei 93 IV. Anno,Domini m.dccc.liv 108 V. Bourgeois Politics 124 VI. A First Brief 177 VII. A First Speech 204 VIII. Sweets and Bitters of Popularity 239 IX. Horace starts in Journalism 257 X. New Friends. New Habits 284 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. CHAPTER I. CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. Hautbourg on the Loire is a venerable old town, which played an important part in French history some six or seven hundred years ago, when gentle- men wore plate-armour and cut each other's throats by way of pastime. If we may trust the legend, it originally formed part of the fief of a mighty Count Alaric, who, being a disloyal sub- ject and in league with the devil, thrashed his king, Louis le Gros, in a field adjoining the town, which Providence and the municipal council be- tween them have since appointed for a brick-kiln. If you turn to Froissart you will find that a Count vol. i. +■ 1 2 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. de Hautbourg fought behind John II. at Poictiers, and was in the train of that ill-starred monarch when he rode through London on a tall horse, having his vanquisher, the Black Prince, beside him on a small one. Three centuries and a half later another Count de Hautbourg turned up in the Bastille, where he had been put for being a Jansenist ; and in 1793 a certain Raoul-Aime, Marquis of Hautbourg and Clairefontaine, was heard of on the guillotine, where he perished, it seems, with remarkable good grace and equa- nimity. I am not going to weary you with a long account of what the Hautbourgs did in exile during the Republic and the reign of Napoleon ; but if you are versed in contemporary history you must have read all about that Marquis of H. and C, who accompanied Louis XVIII. to Hartwell, married in England Mary- Anne Sophia, daughter of Ezekiel . Guineaman, Esquire, and died, under the Restoration, a duke, a peer of France, and a secretary of state. To him suc- ceeded his eldest son, who was also a peer of France, but never a minister, and who figured as CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 3 one of the leaders of that " anti-dynastic " oppo- sition, which made the life of poor Louis Philippe so extremely unpleasant to him. This nohleman being in Paris, in 1851, at the time when Monsieur Bonaparte, as he called him, effected his coup-cVetat, was so unfortunate as to take a walk in the afternoon of the 3rd December, at the precise moment when the emissaries of the said Monsieur B. were most intent upon their work. Finding himself suddenly face to face with a troop of M. de Goyon's horse, whose mission it was to clear the streets, he made an attempt to fly — the first attempt of the kind, be it said incidentally, that he had ever made in his life. But well-mounted dragoons are not always so easy to fly from. You will remember that on this occasion the brave defenders of order had been liberally plied with wine, and had received instructions not to spare anybody who stood in their way. These instructions they obeyed ; and so it befell that the noble scion of the Hautbourgs, who entertained about the same feelings towards democracy as he did towards 4 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. pitch, came, thanks to the grim irony of fate, by the death of a democrat. For, when the slain were picked up on the evening of that glorious day which slew a republic and founded a dynasty, the Legitimist duke was found lying side by side with a subversive sweep, a costermonger of socialist tendencies, and a small boy, three foot high, who must have been wicked beyond his years, seeing that out of his bleeding, perverse little hand was snatched a red toy-flag emblazoned with the heinous words, Vive la Libertef Some three years after this, that is, in the year 1854, the time at which this narrative commences, the domain and castle of Clairefontaine, about two miles distant from Hautbourg, had not yet been visited by their new master. The estate, which during five-and-thirty years had teemed with splen- dour, animation, and festivity, now looked as if a sudden blight had fallen upon it. Grass had begun to sprout over the stately avenue, a good mile long, which led from the lodge-gates of the manor-house to its principal entrance. The shut- ters of the castle were all closed and barred. The CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PATS. O stables, in which the last Duke of Hautbourg had stalled six-and-twenty horses, were deserted. The handsome little Gothic chapel, one of the sights of the country, in which it was reported that Fenelon had once preached, and in which it was a certified fact that his Majesty King Charles X. had been several times to mass during the visit he paid to the first Duke in 1827, was become a home for spiders ; and — worse sign than all — the monu- mental fountain standing in the centre of the state court-yard — fountain built on the designs of the famous sculptor Pierre Puget, and covering a spring from which the manor drew its name of Clairefontaine — was overgrown with moss, thus revealing that its dolphins and naiads had long ceased to dash spray out of their open mouths and horned conchs into the porphyry basin under them. Had it not been for the unsightly ruins of an un- finished summer-house, which had evidently been begun in the late Duke's time, and abandoned to the mercies of wind and rain at his death, one would have fancied it was full a hundred years since anybody had trod those leaf-strewn alleys 6 THE MEMBER FOE PAEIS. and silent chambers. Now and then in the very early morning, or in the evening towards sunset, an old crone was to be seen painfully mowing with a hand-sickle the long grass on the lawn, or gathering peaches, apricots, and cherries in the orchard, or picking lapfuls of roses and pinks from what had once been the flower-garden ; but she partook more of the phantom than of the human being. If questioned, she would tell you that she was the lodge-keeper, and that she gathered the fruit and flowers to prevent them being wasted. She was a rather dismal old woman, with a queru- lous intonation of voice, but — like all French people of either sex — she was ready enough to talk, and would spin her quavering yarns by the hour when interrogated civilly. " She had no idea," she said, " when the new Duke was coming ; she believed he lived in foreign parts. Somebody had told her that he was an odd gentleman — not mad, Monsieur, she didn't mean that, but queer- like in his ways. No one had ever seen him at Clairefontaine since he was a little bit of a boy just so high ; no, he hadn't even come to M. le Due's CE PUT UN DEUEL DANS LE PAYS. 7 funeral, which was thought strange and had made folks about the country talk a little, though our Holy Virgin forbid that she should find anything to say concerning a gentleman who was a Haut- bourg and certainly had good reasons for all he did. But you see, sir, despite her being an old woman, she couldn't help hearing what people said, and them as talked said that Monsieur the new Duke had not been very well off before, and that it was peculiar he shouldn't have come to the burial of a relation whose death had brought him a million francs a year. Ay, Monsieur, it was full a million, if not more. All the land from Hautbourg to Clairefontaine, from Clairefontaine to Boisfroment and Clairebourg, and from Claire - bourg to Sainte- Sophie, belonged to the estate. To judge of the size one should have seen all the tenants assembled, some three or four hundred, on horseback, as she had seen them when Monseigneur the late Duke came of age, and when ' Monsieur le Roi Charles Dix ' arrived on a visit with Mon- sieur le Due d'Angouleme and Monseigneur le Due de Quelen, Archbishop of Paris. Ah, that 8 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. was a sight to see, that was ! but, mon Dieu, those times were far gone, and men were no longer now what they were then. In those days she was a young woman, and her husband, who was head gamekeeper, had loaded his Majesty's own gun when there was a battue in the preserves. He was paralyzed now, her husband, but he had been ' a brave ; ' he had served as sergeant in the Prince of Conde's army at Coblentz along with the first Duke, who was Marquis then ; and he had lived in Monseigneur's household upwards of forty years. There was no head gamekeeper now, in fact no gamekeeper at all, and the estate was managed by a new agent, M. Claude." Was he a kind man, this Monsieur Claude ? — " Oh, yes, sir ; she couldn't but say he was kind enough ; he was a quiet-spoken gentleman from Paris, and never hard to the tenants. But, after all, Monsieur — " and here the old woman's voice would wax more querulous and whimpering — " it wasn't the same as having M. le Due here. The country had been all dead like for the last three years, and she had heard tell that if this went on much longer half CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 9 the folks up at the town yonder would be ruined. You see, sir, they used to live on Monseigneur, they did, and the new Duke's keeping away was no more nor less than taking the bread out of their mouths." This account, gloomy and piteous as it might sound, was yet cheerful in comparison to what one heard in the town itself. There the closing of the Chateau of Clairefontaine and the protracted absence of the new Duke were viewed as public calamities ; and one had only to walk along the tortuous old streets and mark the dejected faces of the shopkeepers, to guess that unless M. le Due put in an appearance very shortly the old woman's prediction about the gazette was not unlikely to be realized. As we said at starting, Hautbourg was a venerable town, but it had had its day, and it could no longer afford to do without patronage. On each side of the main- street, which w r as called La Rue de Clairefontaine, the sign- boards and devices over the shops (for sign-boards are as much in vogue in French provincial towns as they were in England 150 years ago) testified abundantly that, spite of revolutions and noble 10 THE MEMBER FOB PARIS. principles of equality, the relations between borough and manor-house were as feudal as they had ever been at the best of times. Over the crockery- dealer's was the picture of a young person standing beside a bubbling fountain and handing* a mugful of water to a knight in plate-armour, with under- neath the words: Au Chevalier de la Claire fon- taine. Over the ironmonger's was another knight in plate-armour, dispensing what appeared to be shovels and tongs to his menials, and exhorting them to be " toujour s prets" which was the motto of the Hautbourgs. Over the pork-butcher's was a Hautbourg slaying a wild-boar ; over the gun- smith's a fourth Hautbourg firing off a culverin, and so on. Of course the chief inn was the Hotel de Clairefontaine, and its rival over the way the Hotel Monseigneur ; and equally of course there was in the midst of the market-place an equestrian statue of the Hautbourg of Crecy, with a long homage in Latin to the valour of that warrior.* * This statue was erected at the Restoration, the original one standing before 1789 having been melted down under the Republic, one and indivisible, to coin pence with. CE PUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 11 The Dukes of Hautbourg had always done their very best to foster in the borough a spirit of dependency, and with the greater success as the town, having no manufactures to support it, and being situated neither on a river, nor in the vicinity of a lar^e canal, nor on the trunk line of an important railway, possessed none of the elements of modern vitality, and would probably have dwindled away into a village had it not been for the great family at Clairefontaine. It was to this family the town owed everything. Its schools, its free library, its museum of stuffed birds, its restored church, filled with furbished brasses and stained-glass windows ; its restored gate, out of which the Count Alaric had proceeded when he went to beat Louis TIL, and on which still bristled a spike, where it was assured this same Count used to spit the heads of his subjects who were behind-hand with their taxes ; * its quaint fountain and horse-trough in the street near the * I ought to mention that there were some who insisted this was only the remnant of an ancient weather-cock, but there are unbelieving people everywhere. 12 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. cattle-market, its-red brick almshouses and free dispensary, — all these institutions had been built, founded, or renovated with Clairefontaine money. Furthermore, the late Duke, with a view to keep- ing up his territorial influence, had spent annually some four hundred thousand francs in the town. All the necessaries of life in the way of furniture, food, and clothing, both for himself and servants, and many luxuries also, which a less politic noble- man might have bought in Paris, this far-sighted landlord purchased at Hautbourg. He even went the length of wearing in Paris coats cut by the Hautbourg tailor, and of suffering none but the Hautbourg doctor to attend him in illness — acts of courage these which entailed their reward, for I honestly believe the two facts combined did more for the popularity of the Duke, and for the self- esteem of the borough, than if Monseigneur had caused Hautbourg to be raised to the rank of a first-class prefecture, and had brought a cardinal- archbishop to reside there. But this was not all. The establishment at Clairefontaine was not only an ever-flowing source of profit in itself; it also CE PUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 13 acted as a great central planet around which gravitated a number of satellites, in the shape of smaller country-houses, occupied by the lesser nobility and gentry of the department. So long as the hospitable doors of the castle remained open these lesser gentry abounded. Harvest fes- tivals, archery-meetings, hunting-parties, masked balls, and charity fairs, followed each other in unbroken, eddying succession. Not a small purse but endeavoured to vie with the big purse ; hall played the suit of castle, and villa returned the lead of hall : the whole summer and autumn season was a carnival, and the direct result appeared in this, that the trading men of Haut- bourg grew fat, their wives and children waxed ruddy, and the borough in general wore a sleek and prosperous look, such as speaks of plenty, and savings in the funds. All this, however, was a thing of the past now. The eclipse of the great planet had involved that of the satellites, and Hautbourg was fallen of a sudden from its snug position of ease into penury, the more hard to bear as it had been 14 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. unexpected. The Hautbourg of 1854 was but the ghost of the Hautbourg of 1851. Can you fancy Capua ravaged by a pestilence, Pompeii become bankrupt, or Herculaneum abandoned just pre- vious to its interment ? There was not a carriage to be seen in that neatly-paved serpentine Rue de Clairefontaine, in which, of a fine autumn after- noon in the good times of the late Duke, the local quidnuncs had often counted as many as a couple of dozen vehicles, come in for shopping, and drawn up in a long queue outside MM. Blanche- melle and Camisole's, the linen - drapers, or Madame Bavolet's, the modiste from Paris. MM. Blanchemelle and Camisole and Madame Bavolet had always prided themselves upon keeping pace step for step with the fashions of the capital, and it was certainly to their credit that their bills were, if anything, rather heavier than those of the Rue de la Paix ; but, alas ! where were they and the fashions now ? MM. B. and C. were advertising cotton-checks cheap, and a humble placard in Madame Bavolet's window informed you that bonnets were to be had within " first CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 15 style " for fifteen francs ! It is curious what a single blow with a dragoon's sword can do. The unsuspecting pimple-nosed trooper who cut down Monsieur le Due, had at the same stroke ripped open the money-bags of a whole borough, dis- persed the denizens of some score of mansions, and mowed away the prosperity of twenty square miles as completely as if it had been so much grass. I need not tell you how popular he was, this pimple-nosed trooper, in Hautbourg ; but I think he would have spent a pleasant quarter of an hour if the municipal council could have had the dealing with him for fifteen minutes in private. Nevertheless, I am bound to say there was some one against whom public opinion was yet more incensed than against him, and that was the new landlord — the new Duke of Hautbourg. After all, the dragoon had acted in ignorance ; he was a brute, who was paid to do his work ; and as for the Monsieur Bonaparte who had paid him, why, you see, he had become Emperor since, and so the less discussion about him the better. But what was to be said for a man who had come into 16 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. a million francs a year, a colossal estate, a magni- ficent name, and who yet hid away in some hole- and-corner foreign town, and never condescended to show himself ? I ask you, what was the good of being a Duke, if one did not stand forth and show oneself ? The law ought to put a stop to dukes who did not show themselves. Their being suffered to hold land was a nonsense ; it was immoral, and the sooner they were compelled by statute either to relinquish their money or to spend it like gentlemen, the better it would be for everybody. Such were the discourses that were uttered in Hautbourg ; and if you would like to hear what else was said about the new and mys- terious owner of Clairefontaine, you have only to step in and listen to the conversation held one evening after a very sorry market-day at the table- d'hote of the chief hotel in the place. It was at that critical moment in the repast when the boiled beef has been removed, and when the company are waiting, silent, to see what is coming next. Farmer Toulmouche, wizen and small — a fine CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 17 specimen of a French farmer nourished on lean pork and red wine — poured himself out half a tumbler of ordinaire, diluted it with water, and mournfully ventured upon an observa- tion. " I never see such a market-day in all my life," he said. " This very day three years ago I sold twenty beeves — no more nor less. To-day I sold never a one." " Nor I," dismally echoed Farmer Truche- poule, an agriculturist of rather bigger calibre. " Never a one." " Oh ! don't let's talk of past times," pro- tested M. Scarpin, the local bootmaker, dejectedly. He had come to dine at table-cllwte to raise his spirits a little, for trade had not been very brisk at home that day, and Madame Scarpin, according to the wont of lovely woman, had made him bear the penalty of it. " No, don't let's talk of past times," assented M. Ballanchu, the seedsman, with a sigh ; but he instantly added, "When I think of that Duke skulking away like this, and allowing everything vol. i. 2 18 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. here to go to rack and ruin, par tons les cinq cent mille diables, it makes rny blood boil." M. Ballanchu was a fat man, and when his blood boiled, after an invocation to the five hundred thousand devils, his countenance reddened and was ferocious to behold. "Of what duke are you speaking?" asked young M. Filoselle, the commercial traveller, whetting his knife against his fork with a view to the roast veal which Madelon, the servant wench, was just then bringing in. This was only M. Filoselle's second visit to Hautbourg. On both occasions he had found a prodigious diffi- culty in screwing orders out of the " beggarly " town, and he saw no reason whatever for standing on ceremony. " Why, the Duke of Hautbourg, to be sure," answered M. Ballanchu, in astonishment ; " whom else should I mean ? " " Ah, yes, I remember," proceeded M. Filo- selle, trying the edge of his knife on his thumb. " You did nothing but talk about him last time I was here. Well, hasn't he turned up yet ? " CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 19 This levity disgusted M. Scarpin, the boot- maker, who communicated to his neighbour, M. Hochepain, the tax-gatherer, that those Pari- sians were growing more and more bumptious every year. Unfortunately, this remark was lost upon M. Hochepain, for, besides being deaf, he was at that moment immersed in profound speculation as to who would get the veal kidney. It was Farmer Follavoine, the replica picture of Farmer Toulmouche, who undertook to answer the traveller. " Turned up ! " he rejoined bitterly. "No, and never likely to. Why should- he turn up ? His agent collects his rents for him regular ; and so long as them's all right, I don't suppose he's going to care much whether us here goes to the deuce or not." " I know I shouldn't — not two pins," remarked M. Filoselle, pleasantly. " Do you take stuffing ? " called out M. Duval, the landlord, from his end of the table. " I should think he did — he takes every thing," 20 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. ejaculated the stout Maclelon : the person alluded to being M. Hochepain, the tax-gatherer. " If I were you," said M. Filoselle, shaking the pepper-pot over his plate, which was by this time full of roast, and grinning approval at Madelon's sally — " If I were you, I shouldn't sit down and pull faces all the year round, as you seem to be doing. If you want to see your Dake back again, why don't you — Madelon, my angel, the bread — why don't you draw up a petition and have it off to him with a deputation ? " "What good would that do?" asked M. Scar- pin contemptuously. "Not much, I am afraid, mon pauvre M. Scar- pin, if it was you who headed the deputation : for your Duke might think the jaundice had broken out here, and people who are rich don't like the jaundice. But if you sent somebody with a more cheerful face on his shoulders, some- thing might come of it. After all, though," pursued the collected M. Filoselle, "it depends on what sort of a man your Duke is. In my experience there are dukes and dukes. I once CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 21 knew a duke who was no higher than Madelon's waist there, par exemple ; he wasn't so stout. We travelled together on hoard a steamboat going down the Rhine — you don't know the Rhine, M. Scarpin ? it's a splendid river, couleur cafe au la'it, with a bordering of sugar-loaves on each side. The duke was standing abaft blowing awav at a cigar. Said I to him, ' Monsieur le Due, it is the mission of great men to patronize the arts and manufactures. I am travelling for three world-famed houses : one in the drapery way, another in the musical instrument line, and the third in the wine business. I also take subscrip- tions and advertisements for two newspapers, one democratic, the other conservative. If you will honour me with an order for a flute, and put down your name as subscriber to one of the papers, you will encourage native industry and promote the development of journalism.' "'Monsieur,' he replied drily, 'I am not a great man. I don't play the flute, and I think that journalism is a great deal too much developed as it is ' and with this he turned on his heel. 22 THE MEMBEE FOE PAEIS. Ah cliahle ! that's what I call a sharp duke ; and if yours is like him, I agree with you, it wouldn't be much use petitioning. But . . . " " Go to, saucy farceur from Paris ! " inter- rupted M. Ballanchu wrathfully. " You're all of you alike with that cursed habit of sniggering at everything. I tell you it's not a matter to laugh at, that a whole town should be going on to ruin, because a crotchety old man, who has had all the good Wood in him poisoned by that infernal city of yours, chooses to hide away and hoard up the gold he ought never to have in- herited. I tell you, we country-folk whom j^ou Parisians turn up your snub-noses at, are a pre- cious sight better than you ; do you hear that, young whippersnapper ? Bad luck to you, one and all ! " " Hear, hear," chorussed Farmers Toulmouche, Truchepoule, and Follavoine, who had an un- mitigated contempt for Parisians. They had never seen Paris, either of them, and didn't wish to. M. Filoselle was not the least abashed. He CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 23 had just finished his veal, and was occupied in mopping up the gravy in his plate with some hread-crumb. This operation completed to his satisfaction, he raised his eyes towards his inter- locutor, and said, " Monsieur the Seedsman, my birthplace is not Paris but Dijon ; I first saw the light in the city renowned for its mustard, and I beg you to observe that my nose is of the aqui- line order of architecture. As for the old gentle- man with the crotchets, who had his good blood poisoned in Paris, I should like to hear something more about him, for he must be an interesting phenomenon to study." M. Ballanchu growled. " Come, come," interposed M. Duval, the host, in a spirit of conciliation, for he had tact enough to see that his fellow-townsman, finding himself unequal to a wordy war, might have recourse to some other means of asserting rustic supremacy — " Come, come, gentlemen, don't let us have M. le Due interfering with our dinner. He's done us enough harm without that." " I should think he had, confounded radical ! " 24 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. grumbled M. Ballanchu, still eying M. Filoselle threateningly. "Kadical?" echoed the commercial traveller, catching up the word, and laughing from ear to ear. " There, my good Monsieur Seedsman, didn't I tell you he must be a phenomenon, this old man. Peste ! you don't suppose it's every province in France that begets radical dukes." "No, and a good job too," roared M. Bal- lanchu. " And this one would never have been what he is if his nephew had had five minutes' time before dying to disinherit him. Clairefon- taine wasn't made for such as he — a wrong- headed, obstinate, canting Jacobin." There was a stiff old half-pay officer of the name of Duroseau dining at the table-cVhote. He had been too much absorbed as yet by the process of mastication, to take any part in the conversa- tion. (His teeth were false, and he was obliged to eat slowly to prevent them coming out.) But now, having laid down his knife and fork, and noticing the puzzled look on the commercial traveller's face, he said gruffly, — "Young man, CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PATS. 25 you must have heard of the ex- deputy, Manuel Gerold ? " " Of course I have, captain ; he was one of the first speakers in the old Assembly under the Republic and poor King Pear." I heard him speak once in the House of Representatives. Thunder ! Monsieur Ballanchu, your voice was nothing to his. But what of him, captain ? " " Well, young man, it's he who is now Duke of Hautbourg." M. Filoselle, who had not been brought up at court, and ignored a good many maxims of dinner- table etiquette, gave a prolonged whistle. M. Duroseau went on, not sorry to have taken the " forward j'oung jackanapes " aback. " At the time when you saw Monsieur Manuel Gerold, under the late King's reign " (Captain Du- roseau laid an emphasis on the words late King. He was not a Bonapartist ; he had fought under * Le Roi Poire, literally, King Pear — his Majesty King Louis Philippe. The sobriquet was much in vogue between 1830 and 1848 ; it was an allusion to the shape of his Majesty's head. Happy the king whose enemies can find no worse nick- name for him than King Pear. 26 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. the Dukes of Orleans, Nemours, and Aumale in Africa, and would have been glad to cut off M. Filoselle's ears for calling Louis Philippe King Pear) — "At the time, I say, when you saw M. Gerold his proper title was Count de Claire - bourg ; but he has always been a Kepublican, and never called himself otherwise than by the family name — Gerold. He is the uncle of the Duke who was killed by — by — ahem! — in 1851. He was locked up at the coup-cV etat , but let out as soon as it was found that he was his nephew's heir. At present he is living in Brussels." Captain Duroseau, having delivered himself of this concise biographical summary, deemed he had contributed his ample share towards the general fund of conversation, and turned his attention towards a piece of Gruyere cheese. " Tiens, tiens," muttered the commercial tra- veller, who had become a little pensive, "that tall man with the grey hair and the eyes like lanterns, who set me all aglow when he let fall those words about liberty and justice — that man is Duke of Hautbourg ! And you call him a canting Jacobin, CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PATS. 27 M. Ballanchu. Do you know what we called him in Paris ? We had surnamed him Vhonnete Gerold." "He was a Kepubliean, sir," said Captain Du- roseau, looking up from his cheese. The captain admired honesty as much as any man, but he would not allow that it could exist amongst Repub- licans. " I don't care that — what you called him in Paris," retorted the seedsman, snapping his fingers energetically. " I only know this much, that it was a bad day for us all down here in Hautbourg when the property up at Clairefontaine yonder fell into the hands of a man who had such cursed mean notions as to how a landlord should spend his money. Let a man be what he likes, say I, so long as he's poor ; but when he's rich, and a duke, why then let him show people what a nobleman is, and throw radicalism and all that pack of nonsense to them as have need of it." This sentiment seemed so perfectly in accord- ance with the spirit of practical wisdom, that the three farmers, the bootmaker, the host, and the 28 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. tax-gatherer, burst into a cordial " Ay, ay, well said." Of course, the tax-gatherer had not heard a word, but his idea was that somebody's health had been proposed, and as the seedsman followed up his remarks by draining his glass diy, he, the tax-gatherer, did likewise. The only two who did not join in the applause, were the half-pay captain and the commercial traveller. The former mut- tered drily that he did not see what change of fortune had got to do with change of politics, and the latter simply asked : — " Does this M. Gerold, this new Duke of Hautbourg, do nothing for the poor of your town ? " " Poor, sir! who cares two figs for the poor?" replied M. Ballanchu, always foremost in the van. " Who ever said a word about the poor, I should like to know ? Do you suppose because a man sends ostentatiously twenty thousand francs a year to be distributed amongst a parcel of cripples and old women, I and my fellow-tradesmen are any the better for it ? Perhaps you think I can pay for my dinner by telling our host there that M. le Due has put a thousand napoleons into the CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 29 poor-box ? Ask M. Duval." This sarcasm, emitted in a tone of derisive scorn, obtained an immense success. M. Duval thought it was one of the most delicate flights of wit he had heard for many a long day, and inwardly blamed himself for the unjust estimate he had formed of M. Ballanchu's mental powers. As for the three farmers, Toul- mouche, Truchepoule, and Follavoine, they re- flected that this seedsman was assuredly a strong head, who would one of these days do something in politics. A little jealous of his compeer's triumph, M. Scarpin, the bootmaker, felt the moment had come for reaping some glory in his turn. " Now-a-days," said he, "the poor are a great deal too rich ; they take the bread off the plate of their betters . . . ."| " Alas ! and only leave one the veal ! " ex- claimed M. Filoselle. " You see," he added, pathetically, " we have lighted upon degenerate times. What with radical dukes and wealthy paupers, there is no knowing where we should all go, were it not for the honest sentiments of such 30 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. men as M. the Seedsman. M. Ballanchn, I admire your theories ; M. Scarpin — paragon of bootmakers ! — I shall make a note of your obser- vation. But tell me — for I have yet to learn — why your depraved Jacobin lives at Brussels. That part of the mystery has not been explained yet." And the commercial traveller turned towards Captain Duroseau. " I don't know, sir," replied the old officer, curtly; "M. de Hautbourg's business doesn't con- cern me." The fact is, in spite of himself, the worthy captain looked upon a duke rather in the light of a superior officer ; and he was not best pleased to hear him discussed with so much familiarity by a company of "clod-hoppers" and " counter-jumpers." " When a man lives at Brussels," exclaimed M. Ballanchu, in a sapient tone, "I say there must be something in it. I know more of Brussels than M. le Due thinks for. People don't go and live at Brussels unless they have a reason." "No, that they don't," assented M. Scarpin, mysteriously. CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 31 " Then you mean to say ? " insinuated M. Filoselle. " I mean to say nothing, sir," responded M. Ballanchu, sternly. " Only, I'm a man of business, I am ; and, unless I have proof positive that a man has a good motive for doing any- thing, I make it my rule to believe the contrary. This M. le Due is not exiled by the Government, he has plenty of money and a house waiting here for him. Why doesn't he come to it ? If you can tell me that, I shall be ready to listen to you; but, until you do, you will allow me to have my own opinion." And saying this, M. Ballanchu folded his napkin and pushed his chair from the table. " Yes, yes," muttered M. Scarpin, likewise laying down his napkin, and shaking his head. " There's something not clear in all this. Why was the Duke kept at such distance by his nephew and brother in past days ? Why was he never asked to Clairefontaine ? Why did nobody never hear nothing of him until, when it was found that Monsieur the late Duke having 32 THE MEMBEK FOR PAEIS. left no will, it was he who was to come into the property ? Why does he hide away now without daring to show himself?" The seedsman, the bootmaker, the three farmers, and the host exchanged meaning glances. To tell the truth, they were a little alarmed at their own perspicacity. Without having the least idea what it was they suspected, each yet felt as though his preternatural acuteness had put him on the scent of a tragic state secret. The most solemn-looking, however, was the tax-gatherer. As he had not caught a single syllable of what was said, his countenance was more mysteriously profound than that of any of the others. The captain, who disliked tattling, and who, besides, had finished his cheese, rose and took up his hat to go ; M. Filoselle followed his example ; and this was the signal for a general break-up of the party. But the commercial traveller, who, perhaps, was used to having the last word, had not the good sense to retire ; maintaining that silence which is known to be of gold. Picking up his carpet-bag in a corner CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PAYS. 33 of the room, lie exclaimed with enthusiasm : " charming town ! remarkable alike for its boiled beef and for the genial instincts of its inhabitants, it pains my heart to leave thee. But say, Ballanchu, we shall meet again ; and, perchance, next time I come thou wilt purchase of me an instrument of music whereon to pipe the praises of that duke whom now thou abusest ; for should he put in an appearance here, friend ! and shouldst thou have the luck to make his acquaintance, I think thou wilt soon discover that, spite of his living at Brussels " (here M. Filoselle judged well to put a prudent distance betwixt him and the seedsman) " he outweighs in honesty both thee and me — ay, and the lot of us, not to speak of the tax-gatherer." "Talk for yourself, you parrot-voiced puppy," spluttered the red-faced M. Ballanchu. "And the day I buy anything of thee, write it down in a book that I've got more money than I want, and have ceased to care about being swindled." "Vive V esprit!" retorted the undaunted M. Filoselle. " There is but one Duke, and Ballanchu vol. i. 3 34 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. shall be his seedsman. M. Duval, I charge 3 r ou take care of that man ; he is so sharp that I fore- see he will cut himself." AdcI with this Parthian shot, M. Filoselle chucked Madelon, the serving- maid, under the chin, threw her a twenty-sou piece, made his obeisance to the company, and vanished. " Que le diable Vemporte ! " shouted the seeds- man, shaking his fist after him. "And as for that ' honest Gerold ' of thine, I fancy thou and he would make a pretty pair." To which obser- vation the whole company for the third time cried assent, M. Hochepain this once joining like the rest ; for, having caught the two words " pretty pair," he concluded they must refer to a couple of cauliflowers which had figured at the board, and so remarked in confidence to the irate seedsman : "Yes, a pretty pair truly, but not quite boiled enough." ***** This dinner and this conversation took place at the Hotel de Clairefontaine towards the end CE FUT UN DEUIL DANS LE PATS. 35 of September in the year 1854. A week after- wards, day for day, some stir was caused in the hotel by what was no longer a diurnal occurrence, the arrival of three travellers. They had come by the mid-day train, purposed dining, and would, perhaps, stay a night. One of them was an old man of about seventy, the other two looked like his sons. 36 THE MEM BEE FOE PAEIS. CHAPTER n. HONEST GEEOLD. Un sacrifice fier charme une ame hautaine : La gloire en est presente et la douleur lointaine. As stood to reason, they were given the best rooms in the hotel ; indeed, there was good choice, and to spare, for the house was empty. Mdlle. Madelon showed them into the yellow drawing- room on the first floor overlooking the market- place, and lost no time in telling them that the two pictures on the wall facing them as they went in were portraits of Monseigneur the late Duke of Hautbourg and his father — " the owners of this house, if you please, gentlemen." That, over the fireplace, with the periwig, was Monsieur HONEST GEROLD. 37 le Marquis, who had been beheaded by Monsieur Robespierre; and that in the corner there, with the frame in brown holland, was another member of the Hautbourg family, Monseigneur Jean de Clairebourg, Bishop of Marvault, a holy man, who had done a great deal of good by burning some Protestants. Mdlle. Madelon had recited all this so often that she knew it by heart. She used at one time to turn a pretty penny by point- ing out to travellers the identical bed in which Monseigneur the first Duke of Hautbourg had slept on the night of his return from emigration in 1814, before they had had time to prepare his room for him at the castle. Unfortunately, she had rather overdone this, for, finding it paid, and that people liked to sleep in Monseigneur's bed, she had ended by pointing out every couch in the house as having been occupied by his Grace, and had even unwarily put a gentleman of the Filoselle type, who came thrice to the hotel, each time in a different bed, warranted slept in by the great noble. On going away the third time the gentleman had inquired drily 38 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. whether emigration had not imparted somewhat erratic habits to Monseigneur, since he spent his nights going about from bed to bed. The oldest of the three strangers listened very kindly to the girl's prattle, and the two younger ones seemed amused by it. They were three as handsome faces as any admirer of manly beauty could have hoped to meet. The veteran carried himself erect, and had something in his gait that revealed the old soldier. His hair and beard were both long, however — longer than old soldiers generally allow themselves ; for the hair, which was of dazzling white, fell to the shoulders, and the beard half covered the chest. What chiefly attracted one in this old man was the ex- pression of his eyes, which was singularly eloquent and gentle. They beamed upon one, those eyes ; and one felt, under their quiet, steady gaze, that they could never have quailed before anybody. The voice, too, had a rare accent of benevolence ; it was the voice of a man who thought well of human nature and had met on his path more good characters than bad ones. HONEST GEROLD. 39 The two younger men were sufficiently alike to make it discernible at a glance that they were brothers. The elder looked three or four and twenty ; the other was probably a couple of years his junior. Both had the same eyes — at least very nearly the same- -as the old man, and their faces were like his, bright, open, and intelligent. Of the two, it was, perhaps, the younger who was the strongest, and he also looked the graver ; the elder was slighter of build, more graceful, and certainly more inclined to laugh, for scarcely a minute passed but saw his pleasant features lighted up by a smile. Both were very well dressed — not a common merit in France, where young men are the worst dressers in Christendom : — but as traits of character can be gathered from little facts, it may as well be mentioned that, whilst the younger wore a plain black silk cravat tied in a knot, the elder had a black satin scarf, with a cameo pin in it, and, moreover, wore a gold ring. Between the three men seemed to exist that cordial, trustful familiarity bred of deepest love 40 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. on the one hand, and of fullest affection, respect and confidence on the other. Mdlle. Madelon, though not given to enthusiasm, thought within herself that they were three as nice gentlemen as she had seen for a long while ; and proceeded to testify this sentiment by dusting some of the chairs — an operation which she often neglected where less comely strangers were con- cerned. Having done this, and opened the windows to show " Messieurs " the market-place and the statue of the Poictiers hero prancing in the middle, she announced that Monsieur Duval would doubtless be up presently to offer his respects ; and, sure enough, the words were scarcely out of her mouth, before that gentleman appeared in person. He was very obsequious, carried a napkin on his arm as if his house were chock full and he had done nothing but wait at table all day ; and expressed a hope that the gentlemen were lodged to their liking. "Perfectly, M. Duval, thank you," said the old man, politely. "But we shall not have HONEST GEROLD. 41 occasion to make much use of your comfortable rooms, for my sons and I will be out all day. It is one o'clock now; I think we shall hardly be home before seven ; may we rely upon you to get us dinner for that hour?" " Monsieur may place his entire confidence in me," replied M. Duval, bowing. (Allow me to notice here how fond Frenchmen are of phrases with the word confidence. An English inn- keeper would have answered, " Dinner will be on the table punctually at seven, sir.") The travellers having seen their rooms and entrusted their bags to Mdlle. Madelon, had no further reason for staying in-doors, and so followed M. Duval downstairs. The worthy host enter- tained them with warm praises of himself and his house all the way, and was once more renewing to them his assurance about the confidence and the dinner, when he remembered, just as the strangers were crossing the entrance-hall, that he had forgotten to ask for their names. The French police are always very anxious to know the names of strangers who stop at hotels, and the 42 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. instructions given to inn -keepers on this subject are peremptory. No name, no lodging. Besides, M. Duval was curious on his own account to know whom he was harbouring. Everything about these well-looking, gentlemanlike travellers pointed to the presumption that they were not haphazard folk. "I beg your pardon, Messieurs," he cried, " would you have any objection to put your names on the register ? " The old man appeared a little annoyed, but he said nothing to show it, and followed M. Duval into the parlour, where the host began bustling about to find a new quill pen, and then laid out on the table that imposing folio register, which has to be inspected by M. le Commissaire every three days. The pages were marked out in columns, and the traveller was requested by printed queries at the top to supply information as to the few following particulars : — Name and Christian Name, Age, Birthplace, Profession or Trade, Motives of present Journey, Name of place last visited, Name of place to he visited next, Nature HONEST GEROLD. 43 of the Certificates of Identity in the Traveller's possession ; and lest the traveller should after this feel that he had not said enough and be disposed to communicate more about himself and his intentions, there was a ninth column headed Obseii'ations. The white-haired stranger took the pen from M. Duval, and in a clear large hand silently filled up the blank spaces both for himself and his two sons ; the host keeping at a discreet distance apart the while. "When the formality had been gone through, however, M. Duval made a point of deploring the troublesome inquisitive- ness of the police, who put gentlemen to so much trouble ; and so followed the strangers to the door, very hearty in his apologies as he was in every- thing. As soon as they had left the house he returned to the parlour. " Now," said he, "let us see ; " but he had hardly cast his eyes on the register and the bold handwriting, still wet, than he gave a scarefied start, crying : " Hon Dieu ! it's not possible — no — yet, by heavens ! it is though." And with one bound he was at the street-door again, his face all aglow with excite- 44 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. ment, trying if he could perceive the travellers. But they were already out of sight. They had turned the corner of the market-place and were gone down the street towards the high-road leading to Clairefontaine. M. Duval was fain to come in again, but he did not remain indoors long ; and before an hour was over, the whole town of Hautbourg was in as great a state of excitement as he was. The road to Clairefontaine was a fine one, and must have borne an animated appearance during the reign of that irrepressible late Duke who was so continually cropping up in the conversa- tions of the Hautbourgeois. An enterprising builder had, however, done his best to spoil it by converting a part of it into a suburb of the borough. He had erected on each side of it a number of lath - and - plaster trifles decorated with the pretentious name of chalets and even of chdtelets, but which looked about as much like the real thing as a child's house of toy-bricks looks like Windsor Castle. There are few things so ghastly as new ruins, and these HONEST GEROLD. 45 chalets, castlets, villas, or whatever else they may be called, were all in ruins, not from age, but from want of care. Imagine a band of school-girls decked out smart for a holiday in pink and white, but caught in a good drenching deluge of rain at the day's outset and standing piteously in the sun an hour after- wards to dry themselves — such was pretty much the idea suggested by the excoriated white plaster on the walls, the washed-out red tiles, and the shutters denuded of almost every vestige of paint. In point of fact, the houses had never been inhabited, and the builder had gone where many other good builders go — into the Bankruptcy Court. The three men walked along, chatting pleasantly, or, to speak with more accuracy, the two younger ones chatted whilst the elder listened. He seemed to have grown a little grave and preoccupied, and this gravity rather increased than diminished every minute ; but he smiled at the bright humour of the eldest of his sons, who, teeming with wit and spirits, found something to say of every 46 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. object, animate and inanimate, on the road ; and he nodded kindly whenever the youngest, less brilliant but more thoughtful, capped his brother's witticisms by some quaint remark, arguing gentleness of mood and quiet, scholarly percep- tion. " Where are you taking us to, father ? " asked the eldest, smiling ; "I begin to think this mys- terious pilgrimage of ours is to end on a ruin : everything we pass is dilapidated. Look at that public-house." "Oar pilgrimage is drawing to its close, Horace," answered the old man, returning the smile; but he added with some anxiety in his tone, " Do you really think the country looks dilapidated? We have met no beggars yet, and I generally make that my test. As to ruined public-houses, why, you know, I do not feel much sympathy for them." Horace looked around a moment, as if trying to detect a beggar, and, not succeeding, answered, " I really think one only sees beggars in free lands. I have met plenty in Belgium, and when HONEST GEROLD. 47 we went to England last year I saw nothing else ; but here " " Here one has gendarmes instead," broke in the younger brother, quietly; and he pointed to a booted representative of Law and Order, who was, in truth, the fifth or sixth they had met that afternoon. They had walked about a mile and a half, and, at this juncture, reached a point where four roads met. A young girl was coming towards them with a basket of eggs on her arm. The old man, who appeared doubtful as to which road to take, raised his hat and said, " Will you kindly tell us the way to Claire- fontaine, Mademoiselle ? " " There to the left, Monsieur," she answered ; " it's not above ten minutes' walk. See the sign-post." They had not noticed the sign-post. It said : Clair efontaine , \ kilometre; Clairebourg, 2 kilo- metres ; Boisgency, 3 \ kilometres ; Sainte Sophie, 5 kilometres. " Clairefontaine ! " muttered the elder brother, 48 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. and he proceeded to quote what seemed to him appropriate : — " Fons Banclusice, splendidior vitro, eras donaberis hceclo. Are we bent on sacrifice, father?" he added, laughing. The old man laid a hand on his shoulder. "You shall answer that question for me your- self, my dear boy, when we come back this evening," he replied, with a gravity which sur- prised his two sons. " Perhaps, indeed, Claire- fontaine is to be our Bandusian Fount," he continued, gently, " and maybe there will be a sacrifice there. I accept your omen." The party walked on in silence for the next few minutes — the father still grave, the sons both wondering — until a turning in the road brought them abruptly in view of the lodge- gates of Clairefontaine, with the princely avenue of elms beyond, and the turreted mansion, half palace, half castle, closing the prospect grandly in the distance. The old man's face seemed to light up with quick emotion, and the two young men gave a murmur of admiration. Certes, it was a splendid sight. Clairefontaine House in HONEST GEROLD. 49 its lonely majesty, bathed in the purple rays of the autumn sun, and surrounded by its cortege of stately trees, still looked like a queen in the midst of her court, " What a thing is wealth," sighed Horace. " And to think that the owner of this paradise is perhaps some Croesus who finds the country slow, and spends three-fourths of his time in Paris cooped up in a set of rooms scarcely bigger than that lodge yonder." " You will have the opportunity of inspecting your paradise at leisure," answered his father, " for this is the end of our journey." And the gate being now reached, he pulled the bell- chain hanging on one side of it. Out hobbled the old crone whose acquaintance we have already made. She was used to the applications of visitors desirous of seeing the grounds, and the more of such came the better she liked it; for a visitor generally represented at least a forty-sou piece. These, however, were not ordinary applicants, as she soon found. When the three strangers had been admitted within vol. i. 4 50 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. the massive bronze gates, forged all over with scutcheons and ducal coronets, the elder drew a letter from his pocket and handed it to her. " It's from Monsieur Claude, the agent," he said. The old woman fumbled in her apron for a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, put them on with a shaking hand, broke the seal of the letter, and read these lines : — " Madame Maboule, — " You will please to show the bearer of this all over the castle, the rooms, stables, picture-gallery, or, should he prefer visiting the house alone, you will give him the keys. "J. Claude." " Oh, Monsieur, then, is the gentleman whom Monsieur Claude was speaking about the other day?" exclaimed Madame Maboule, throwing a searching, but respectful glance at the strangers. " He said a gentleman was coming as would HONEST GEEOLD. 51 want to see the castle — a friend of Monseigneur the new Duke's, I believe?" The old man bent his head affirmatively ; his sons opened their eyes ; they appeared not to know in the least whither their father was tending, nor what was his motive in bringing them there. Madame Maboule, dismal at her best, but more than usually so when she stood in the presence of the great, whimpered a hope that Monseigneur was quite well, and inquired whether the Messieurs would go up to the house alone, or whether she should accompany them. There was a moment's deliberation on this point; the stranger evidently wished to save the worthy old soul the mile's walk up the avenue, but Madame Maboule protested with wheezy for- titude that the walk was nothing to her, and that the Messieurs would lose their way in the apartments if she was not there to guide them. " But perhaps," added she, with an inquiring glance at them all, " the Messieurs have been here before ?" a OF ILL. LIB. 52 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. " I was here once," answered the old man, in a hurried tone, " but it was a long time ago ; things have changed since then. I might not know my way now." And to compensate the honest crone for the trouble she was going to take, he slipped a napoleon into her hand. "I am sure Monsieur is very generous," was the grateful and somewhat bewildered acknow- ledgment ; and the next minute the four set off in company, the old woman leading the way, and the three gentlemen walking slowly, not to tire her. As nothing so much resembles one old mansion as another old mansion ; and as, moreover, the description of abandoned drawing-rooms and bed- rooms, silent libraries and picture-galleries, old- fashioned furniture muffled up in chintz coverings, and old-fashioned beds overhung with imposing dusty canopies, can scarcely be expected to interest any save very enthusiastic admirers of bric-a-brac, we will not follow the strangers in their inspection of the Castle of Clairefontaine, but, leaving them to the care of Madame Maboule, HONEST GEROLD. 53 wait for them outside on the open terrace, over- looking what had a few years before been one of the finest gardens in the province. The walk up the avenue had taken about three-quarters of an hour, protracted as it was by constant halts on the part of Madame Maboule to point out this or that feature of interest in the landscape. Here was a bench on which Monsieur the late Duke would often sit to read his paper. There, on that rising plot of ground, a belvedere erected by Monsieur the Marquis, who was very fond of looking at the stars with a telescope, eighty years ago ; there, again, in that by-path, if the Messieurs would step out of their way and see, was a marble urn erected over the burying-place of a pet dog by Madame la Marquise, wife of Monseigneur who was imprisoned in the Bastille by Louis XIV. — a very beautiful lady, gentlemen, and much respected by the King. But of all the objects, that which had most fascination for the old woman was a beech-tree that had been used to hang a Jacobin on. The man had led the sacking of Clairefontaine in 1793, and had re- 54 THE MEMBER FOE PARIS. tired to live in peace for the next twenty years. But in 1814, when the exiled family returned, the peasantry had dragged him out and strung him up in the night opposite the new Duke's windows — a delicate piece of attention that had greatly touched Monseigneur, and seemed both natural and proper to Madame Maboule. In the castle itself the party stayed more than a couple of hours. The old man appeared desirous that his sons should see every nook and corner of the house and miss none of its accumulated splen- dours. Madame Maboule lent herself readily enough to his whim. She took them from floor to floor, from room to lobby, lobby to hall, hall to chapel ; turning creaking locks with her jingling keys, and explaining everything as if she was speaking about a city of the dead, and showing things that had long ceased to be under- stood by a modern generation. What more garrulous than an old woman who has lived five- and-sixty years on an estate, and has room for nothing else but the memory of its past glories in her venerable head? Every foot of carpet HONEST GEROLD. 55 within the doors of Clairefontaine House was so much consecrated ground to Madame Maboule. She talked about her departed masters with a plaintive, wobegone, motherly sort of affection ; and, throughout all her utterances, rang like the burden of a dirge — a lamentation over that new- Duke whom she had never seen and whose absence she could not understand. The young men listened to her with much the same kind of silent attention which one bestows upon an aged monk showing one over a cathedral. Their father spoke very little during the whole two hours. Only once, when they were in an upper room — which, in old times, had been a nursery — he smiled a rather sad smile, and, pointing to a picture of a very young child hanging in a corner, asked who that was. " That, sir, is the present Duke of Hautbourg," answered the old woman ; " it was taken nigh upon seventy years ago." At last the inspection was over ; the desolate castle had been visited from roof to basement, and the three strangers with their guide stood together on the terrace. 56 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. " Well, Emile," asked the old man of his youngest son, " what do you think of all we have just seen?" And he looked with a rather curious expression into the lad's grave, hlue eyes. " I think there is a skeleton in that house like in many poorer ones, father," replied the young man, pensively. "What skeleton, dear boy?" " The skeleton that prevents the new Lord of Clairefontaine from coming and living here. Do you not think, father," added he, with concern, " that there must be very bitter memories attached to some of that splendour if the new Duke of Hautbourg persists in keeping away like this ? " The father made no immediate answer, but a few moments afterwards he turned to the old lodge-keeper and said softly, " We will not trouble you to stay with us any longer, Madame Maboule. I and my sons are going to sit down for a little under yonder oak, and perhaps we shall walk about in the park for a short while afterwards." Madame Maboule dropped a curtsey. " Very well, sir," she answered, in her usual dolorous HONEST GEROLD. 57 tone. " When you want to return you have only to follow the avenue straight and I shall be down at the lodge to open the gate for you." She curtseyed for a second time and hobbled away slowly. The three men walked towards the oak which stood in the centre of a grass-plot just beyond the outskirts of the garden and commanded a view of almost the entire park. Was it an undefined presentiment of something strange about to be told them or merely hazard that kept the young men silent as they went ? anyhow, silent they were ; and save but for the chirping of the birds overhead, and the muffled sound of their own footsteps in the long grass, there would have been a complete stillness all around them as far as the eye could reach. There was a wooden form running round the rough trunk of the oak, and all three sat down on it. " Can you guess why I have brought you here?" inquired the father, addressing both his sons. They shook their heads. 58 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. " Why, father ? " they asked. " I wish to tell you a story," he said, affection- ately taking a hand of theirs in each of his as they sat on either side of him. " Should you like to be told what is the skeleton in Claire - fontaine, Emile ? And you, Horace, are you curious to learn how people may live cooped up in rooms no bigger than the park-lodge, and yet be more at ease than in a fine palace like this ? " Emile smiled slightly. " Then there is a skeleton," he rejoined; and Horace added, grimly, " I was complaining that one met nothing but beggars in free countries. One may remark, also, that there seem to be a deplorable number of skeletons in rich houses. I have never been over a castle but somebody had poisoned somebody else in it, or put him down a well, or thrown him out of the window." " Yes ; but there is nothing of that kind in my story," interrupted the old man, good- naturedly. "It is not a legend of murder or HONEST GEROLD. 59 mystery. It is Well, I can hardly call it an every-day story, but you shall hear and judge." And, seeing both young men attentive, with their eyes fixed on him, he began his recital in a quiet, simple tone — much as he would have told a fairy tale to young children. "Once upon a time," he said, "there was a very rich nobleman, who lived in a house such as this, we will say. He was a kind-hearted, well-meaning man ; but he came in troublous times, when people's minds were excited by the remembrance of many centuries of oppression, and, when at last there was a rising of the down- trodden against their masters, he paid, as we must often do here below, for the sins of some of his ancestors. Let it be recorded that he perished nobly. In dying, he left two orphan sons (their mother was dead some years before) — the elder seventeen years old, the younger nine. In the ordinary course of things, the elder must have succeeded his father, and become his brother's guardian ; but there was so much exasperation against the nobility throughout the 60 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. whole country, that the boys would not have been safe had they remained in France. So both of them went into exile. The eldest, who had assumed the family title of marquis, became an officer in the Prince of Conde's army at Coblentz ; the younger, who was a viscount, was taken as page of honour into the household of a royal princess, the Countess of Provence — the same whoj a few years later, died in London, calling herself, and called by the Pioyalists, Queen of France. I have no need to remind you what came eventually of the Prince of Conde's army. The officers and soldiers who composed it were brave men, but they were bearing arms against their country, and somehow experience shows that victory does not remain long on the side of those w r ho are not in the right. After a series of reverses they got dispersed. Some went and accepted service in foreign armies ; others — and, probably, the wisest there — started for America, to try and build up their fortunes once more in a new world ; and others, again, emigrated to England, where they formed a large, HONEST &EBOLD. 61 but not very united, nor always very reasonable, colony of titled refugees. Amongst those who went to England were the young Marquis and his brother. They had been completely ruined by the Revolution, for it had been decreed by the Convention that those who emigrated should for- feit their estates : so that all the two boys had to live upon was the money raised by means of some of the family plate and jewels, which a dey< servant had been able to rescue from the wreck of the property, and had contrived to smuggle out of France. Those were hard times for lads brought up in purple ; but the two brothers would have been ungrateful to complain, for many were twenty times worse olY than they. There were plenty of dukes and counts who became music, fencing, language, or drawing- masters. One or two set up as small shop- keepers. There was one (,he became a peer oi France afterwards) who took to carpentering, and very successfully, too. Unfortunately, however, this adversity, which should have read a lesson to inanv of those whose lack of wisdom had 62 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. been the cause of the Kevolution, seemed not to profit them much, and there was little else in the refugee colony but bickerings and disputes, teacup storms and intrigues, plans for invading France and restoring the old regime, and anathemas of all sorts against the Liberal principles of the Eevolution. It was this that first pained the younger of the two brothers, and, by degrees, estranged him from the Royalist cause. As he grew old enough to think for himself he could not see that the Revolution had been such a crying wrong as those of his own caste would have had him believe. Of course, the excesses of the Revolution, the blood-orgies of '93, were a wrong — a cruel wrong, and they have been dearly expiated by Republicans. But one should sepa- rate the good from the bad in pronouncing judgment ; — one should draw a difference between the Revolutionists who asked only for freedom and fair laws, and who fell victims of their moderation, from the few sorry villains who But let us speak mercifully of them, too," exclaimed the old man, humbly. " Who shall HONEST GEROLD. 63 presume to judge motives : Death has passed over good and bad alike now ! " He paused for a moment, and then resumed : " The boy, the young viscount I mean, had struggled a good while with himself before daring to admit even to his own conscience that he was disposed to think differently from those who formed his habitual society. You see, his father had been put to death unjustly, and it required some time before he could perceive that it was no more just to hold the Eepublicans as a body responsible for this crime than it would have been to make his father responsible for the misdoings of those brother noblemen of his whose follies had driven the country into rebellion. Perhaps if the language of the exiles in whose company he lived had been more tolerant than it was, their conduct more dignified, and their apparent aims more patriotic, he would never have been brought to reason in this way, and would have remained a royalist to the end, like his elder brother. But, with few exceptions, the conduct of the refugees was not dignified ; and if they felt any patriotism, 64 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS, they seldom showed it in their schemes. To a boy of seventeen they seemed a feeble, prejudiced, selfish body of men, whom misfortune had neither chastened nor instructed; and it was impossible not to reflect, after hearing them talk, that should they ever recover their power they would inevitably lose it again before long through sheer force of obstinacy and wrongheadedness. In youth we quickly fly from one extreme to the other, for when we lose our faith in one set of principles we conclude that those most diametrically opposite to them must be the right ones. The young exile, feeling his confidence in and his admiration for the Royalist party growing less and less every day, began gradually to take up with Republican views. This was at the period when Bonaparte was shaking all Europe with his Italian victories, and when the military glory of France shone with a lustre it had never possessed before. It was difficult not to feel one's heart thrill at the report of battles in which Frenchmen fought and won against treble odds ; and though the refugees and the English papers with them sneered at these HONEST GEROLD. 65 victories and declared they were not true, yet such denials were so evidently prompted hy jealousy that they rather added to than diminished the enthusiasm with which every fresh success was received by those who really loved their country. One day — this was in the year 1801 — the young Viscount took a resolution. He was grown tired of an exile's life, and saw nothing to tempt him in the prospect of dangling indefinitely about the mock court of the Prince who styled himself Louis XVIII. Summoning up all his courage — and I can assure you it needed courage — he informed his brother of his intention of returning to France and enlisting in General Bonaparte's army. The Marquis had never bated a jot from his royalism, and the thought that any one of his family could ever turn Republican had not crossed his mind even in dream. He started at his brother's communication as if he had been shot. The thing seemed to him like blasphemy. A brother of his to turn renegade and serve in the ranks with those who had murdered his father ! Why this was as bad as being accomplice to a parricide ! vol. i. 5 66 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. He became white with dismay, seized his brother's hand, and entreated him to declare that it was all a hoax, a joke, or anything save the truth. But the younger brother held good. He had been prepared for some consternation, but he felt so sure of his own motives, he knew so well that hatred against his father's murderers burned within him as strongly as ever, that he attached little importance to the horrified expressions of his brother, and even hoped to convert him. He pleaded his case with all the boldness he could muster. There could be no offence to their father's memory, he showed, in serving their common country. It was not Kobespierre or Marat he was going to fight for — those men were dead — he was simply going to be a French soldier; and, in short, he adduced all the arguments which he had uppermost in his heart, and which his conscience has ever since — yes, ever since — assured him were right. The Marquis, however, refused to be convinced. Chivalrous and unbending in all points of loyalty, he considered desertion of one's party a crime too heinous for excuse. He was HONEST GEROLD. C7 shocked : lie cast his brother away from him like a viper ; and from that day up to his death he would never consent to see him nor speak to him again." The old man became silent a moment. He was a little pale ; but he proceeded in an unbroken voice : " Party spirit ran high in those days ; I believe men could hate each other more intensely than they do now. It was a time when the words Royalist or Republican put barriers between men which no strength of family ties could break down ; and once a man had left one camp for the other, the feud between himself and his former friends was something deep, lasting, and absurdly violent. In this case the younger brother did not hate the elder, God knows ! but the elder bore an eternal grudge against the younger, and But let bygones be bygones, and may those with whom pardon lies forgive as fully as the younger brother has forgiven. I don't want to make my story too long," continued the old man ; "so shall only say that Fortune dealt kindly with the boy who enlisted in Bonaparte's army. He soon rose to be an officer, was at the end of three years a 68 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. captain, and might have gone much higher had he chosen to remain in the service. But in becoming a soldier under Bonaparte he had sworn allegiance to the Eepublic which then existed, and had not foreseen that an Empire was going to be established. When the First Consul converted himself into an Emperor, he tendered his resigna- tion, which was not immediately accepted — for officers and men were wanted just then for the Austerlitz campaign; — but on the declaration of peace, when it was seen that he would neither accept promotion nor the legion of honour, he was allowed to retire ; and so went to settle in Paris, where, by the help of pen instead of sword, he cut out for himself a new career, which was blessed, perhaps, beyond his deserts — certainly beyond his expectations. The elder brother, meanwhile, prospered in a different way. Whilst still in exile he contracted a wealthy marriage — in fact, he married the daughter of an English slave-trader — and, in course of time, came back to France with the Bourbons, was made a duke, bought back with his wife's money the family estates, which had HONEST GEEOLD. 69 been sold after confiscation as ' national property,' and died with many honours upon him, unwaver- ing to the end in his allegiance to the dynasty whose ups and downs he had shared. Now what should you say," asked the old man, looking at both his sons alternately, and consulting their eyes with some signs of emotion, — " What should you say if, by a turn of fate, the elder brother's only son, having died childless, the younger brother — the Eepublican — had one day unex- pectedly become inheritor both of the dukedom and the redeemed estates ? . . . . Try and con- sider," he went on in a voice that, to his sons, sounded almost pleading, so modestly appealing was it, and so earnest, — " Try and consider what was the position of this younger brother. He had never looked for this inheritance and never desired it. It came upon him through a calamity, which was itself the result of a political crime, and this alone might have afforded an honest man excuse enough for refusing the fortune, seeing that it is difficult to hate crime as we should when it has helped to make us rich. But there were other 70 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. reasons. From the moment when he had parted from his brother, the Kepublican had, boy and man, pinned his faith to one code of principles. Kightly or wrongly, these principles did not allow of his wearing a title, and so he had discarded that of viscount, which he originally wore, for his own plain family name. It was under this name that he was generally known, and had conquered such small reputation as he possessed ; and it was under this name that, by the confidence of a Eadical constituency, he had been elected three or four times over to the legislature as an advocate of liberal opinions — that is, of freedom at home and of slave-abolition in the colonies ; for, remember, we are speaking of a few years ago, and the abolition of slavery was one of the chief party- cries of French liberals before '48. Now, under all these circumstances," concluded the speaker slowly, " could this man who refused to wear a viscount's title with consistency assume a dukedom ? or could this man, who was an opponent of slavery, accept an estate that had been bought with the money of a slave-trader? HONEST GEROLD. 71 There was a moment's silence — it was only a single instant — and then both sons rose together, their heads uncovered and their eyes glistening. " No, father," faltered the youngest proudly, but he was too much moved to say more : and the eldest added, his voice gushing with admiration and enthusiasm, "But you had no need of dukedom or estate, father, to make your name illustrious." The three men shook hands ; and in that warm, silent grasp, and the few words just recorded, was the father's act of self-denial — his refusal of wealth and rank for conscience' sake — ratified by his children. This, by the way, was the first the two young men had ever heard of their family history. They had known their father only as Manuel Gerold, a Republican, who was one of the most esteemed leaders of his party, and whose unaffected integrity and simple undeviating fidelity to principle had earned for him, at the hand of friends and foes alike, the enviable surname of " the honest Gerold." — There are certain Frenchmen who have 72 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. the knack of making Kepublicanisni peculiarly hideous, but Manuel Gerold was not one of them. The Republic, such as he dreamed it, would have been a very fine thing ; unfortunately, it had this drawback, that before it could be established every man must have put away the leaven of unrighteous- ness and become transformed into an enlightened philanthropist devoted to schemes of intelligent benevolence. I do not think that in the worthy gentleman's projects of commonwealth any pro- vision at all had been made for Houses of Correction — much less for such functionaries as a hangman, gendarmes, or turnkeys. He had a way of talking about schools which gave one to understand that crime was but the result of ignorance, and that if men only knew how to read, write, and count, the necessity for coercive establishments would disappear. I suppose it would have been hardly fair to remind him of the remarkable number of individuals who turn their knowledge of the three rules to account by subtracting funds from their neighbours' pockets in order to add them to their own. With all his HONEST GEROLD. 73 naiveness, however, and his humane belief in the innate virtues of mankind, Manuel Gerold was no mere dreamer. He could be shrewd when he chose, and he had such a hearty scorn for all that was mean or false that he had more than once taken adversaries aback by the crude, energetic way in which he assailed abuses. There was something in him both of the soldier and of the priest. Very mild in his habitual moods, very indulgent also, and chivalrously amiable, he could light up at the recital of a wrong, and pour out words with the same startling vehemence which the hermits of old must have used when they preached the crusades. Having, as he thought, nothing to expect of his family, he had brought up both his sons to the notion that they were humble bourgeois who would^have to fight their way through life as he had had to fight his ; and it had been one of his most constant lessons to them that if a man only remain honest he must end by being prosperous. This was a deep-rooted belief with him : it was not an empty maxim. Had he been well read in his Bible — which I am sorry to 74 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. say he wasn't — he would have quoted the noble lines : "I was young and now I am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging their bread." But being a republican Frenchman (and one who held himself for a free- thinker, though he invoked God's blessing twenty times in a day) he simply quoted from his own experience, and said that he had known many men, honest and otherwise, but that he had never met with an honest man who had had cause to repent of his integrity. Educated in this precept, the boys had grown up to be, above all, manly and straightforward ; they shared their father's loathing for everything that was not true and frank, and both bade fair, if nothing came amiss, to follow him step for step in his Republican opinions. France is not one of those countries where every right-minded person has a peerage on his table, so that it had been easy enough to keep them in ignorance of their father's family connections. A good many of Manuel Gerold's friends did not so much as suspect that he had any relationship to a ducal house ; and as for the general public, HONEST GEEOLD. 75 the tendency towards self-depreciation is a failing of such decidedly limited growth amongst French- men, that a man who dubs himself plain bourgeois is taken at his own valuation without either difficulty or questions. It should be added, now, that their father's communication did not much bewilder the young men. A few days before, Manuel Gerold, who had been living with them at Brussels ever since the conp-d'dtat, had informed them quietly that he intended taking them to France "on a business visit," and once at Clairefontaine, he had told them his secret in the abrupt and simple way just .shown. But the -feeling brought uppermost in their minds by the recital was not one of very great surprise or excitement. At twenty-four and twenty-one rent-rolls and dukedoms have not the same peculiar significance in our eyes which they acquire in after life. Somehow the young men thought it quite natural that their father should turn out to be a duke ; just as natural that he should refuse to wear his title ; and the most matter-of-course thing possible that, having inherited an estate with a 76 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. slur of ill-gained money on it, lie should put it away from bim without hesitation. But this did not prevent their admiring and feeling proud of his disinterestedness; for noble traits have the faculty of moving us, even when we are best prepared for them. There w T as a long pause, after which the father, who had been looking at his sons with great joy and tenderness, said : "And what should be done with an estate which everybody refuses ? " Emile was the first to speak. " It has been bought with the price of human beings," he answered gravely ; "let it be sold and the money employed in redeeming slaves, or in helping to abolish slavery in America." " Yes, yes," assented his brother eagerly. Manuel Gerold had produced a piece of folded parchment of unmistakeably legal appearance. " For the last three years," he observed, " the estate has been masterless, that is, an agent has collected the revenues and paid them into different charities ; but here is a deed I have had prepared which makes over the whole property to both of HONEST GEROLD. 77 you jointly ; so that now the disposal of it is in your hands." Horace took the parchment and was for tearing it up instantly: "This shall he the sacrifice of which we spoke this morning," he exclaimed, laughing, and his brother approved, adding : " Yes, let us tear it up, it can do no good with us." " Stay one moment," interposed Manuel Gerold, and he quoted the two lines that have been placed at the head of this chapter. They were from a new play of Ponsard's, very popular at that time. " Let me advise you to wait and not act under impulse, dear boys," he continued; " the merit of your sacrifice will be greater if it is accomplished after reflection. I did not like to speak to you of this before you were of an age to pronounce whether you thought as I did about this unlucky heritage ; but I would not have you pronounce too quickly. Think whilst you may, in order that there shall never be any regret at having acted too hastily." " But what should we think about ? " asked the 78 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. elder brother in a tone of surprise, and looking almost reproachfully at his father. " Can Eniile or I ever think differently about this matter to what we do now?" "Heaven grant not! my brave boy," replied the old man, smiling to reassure him ; " but I was considering the satisfaction you yourselves might feel in after-life, when, looking back upon these times, you could remember that you had given up a fortune, not on the spur of a generous moment, but calmly and deliberately, like men. This is what I was going to propose to you : let the title- deed remain in your hands for a stated period — say four or five years. During that time the revenues of Clairefontaine shall be devoted to whatever charities you wish ; and if at the end of the term you have kept steadfast to your resolution, then let Emile's proposal be adopted, and the whole heritage return to its true owners, the unfortunate slaves with whose freedom it was bought." It required some little time before either of the brothers could be brought to see the advantages HONEST GEROLD. 79 of this scheme ; indeed it is doubtful whether they ever did see the advantage of it at all ; hut the younger, to please his father, whose real motives he divined, pretended conversion. Emile per- ceived that the true wish in Manuel Gerold's heart was that his sons should not be influenced by his presence in the decision they took; he desired that they should act for themselves when he was not there to see them, so that the merit of the sacrifice should be entirely with them: — "Very well, father," said the young man placidly, "let us wait for a while; it can make no difference." The elder brother, however, did not give in so soon. He had opened the parchment and cast his eye mechanically over it : the deed was as formal as possible; it had been prepared before witnesses and signed, so as to be unimpeachable in a court of justice ; it divided the estate into two equal parts, Clairefontaine Castle, with the domain of the same name and all the land situated in the town of Hautbourg, being the share of Horace ; and the freeholds of Claire- 80 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. bourg, Boisgency, and Sainte Sophie, together with the family mansion in the Faubourg Saint Germain in Paris, being that of Emile. To satisfy the requirements of the law the Kepublican had been obliged for once in his life to sign with all his titles, and his name figured as Manuel Armand Gerolcl cle Clair efontaine, Duke of Hautbourg and of Clair efontaine, Marquis of Clairebourg and of Sainte Sophie, Count of Boisgency, and Baron Gerold of Hautbourg. Horace Gerold, after look- ing at all this, folded up the document again and said in a tone of seriousness rather unusual to him : "I think we shall do better not to wait : our duty in this case is so plain that delay seems almost a wrong. Besides, five years ! Who knows what may happen in that time ? " " But there is no absolute necessity for your making the term five years," replied Manuel Gerold cheerfully. " Make it what you like ; say two years, or three years. All I want is that you should put yourselves through an ordeal sufficient to show that you are not afraid of the temptation. For, believe me, if you remain firm HONEST GEROLD. 81 in your purpose for some reasonable time, it will be an encouragement to you in many and many trials to come ; it will convince you that those sacrifices which seem hardest to the world are not hard to those who have a little common patience to help them." This settled the matter. The moment it became a question of proving that he felt no fear of wavering, Horace Gerold would have agreed to wait twenty years. He looked about him at the park, with its desolate expanses of untrimmed lawn and wild-growing trees ; at the old mansion opposite him, sad and untenanted; and this prospect, the lonely beauty of which had charmed him but a few hours before, now seemed to him chill and repelling : later he felt as though he could have refused a thousand such castles one after the other, and so, putting the parchment in his pocket, he said quietly : " Let it be five years, father. This is the 20th September, 1854 ; on the 20th September, 1859, we will destroy this deed and make a new one. I shall remember the date." vol. i. 6 82 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. "Amen," answered Manuel Gerold fervently. It was now about five o'clock ; and the great resolution being taken, the father and his two sons walked leisurely in the direction of the lodge-gates, where Madame Maboule had promised to be in waiting for them. On their way they talked on the subject which naturally engrossed the young men most for the moment, the history of the Hautbourgs past and gone. Manuel Gerold spoke of the time when he had last seen that park, some sixty years before, on the night when his father was arrested as a Royalist, and he himself and his brother were spirited away through a side-door, whilst five or six hundred peasants, led on by a local ragamuffin, attacked the castle and plundered all they could find in it. He remembered the dismal coach that had come to fetch the Marquis away, the gloomy flashing of the gendarmes' swords in the torch- light, the exulting yells of the rabble at seeing the nobleman manacled like a felon, and the desperate, heroic attempt made by a few of the tenants, who loved their master, to rescue him HONEST GEROLD. 83 from the hands of his captors. It was by the efforts of these tenants that the Marquis's two sons had been saved from being arrested like him. The tenants had used force, for the boys wished to go with their father, and Manuel Gerold recollected a rough, devoted farmer who had gagged him with his hand to prevent him screaming. Then there was talk of the bloody assize that had been held in the old town-hall at Hautbourg by one of Robespierre's judges : of the destruction of all the monuments and memorials that could in any way recall the great family of Clairefontaine, of the pillage of the church, and its conversion into a granary, and of the sale of Clairefontaine by the Republican Government to a Radical attorney for a few thousand francs. When the family returned at the Restoration this attorney, who had already made a colossal fortune, asked for five million francs to surrender the estate, and it was generally credited that he would have insisted upon double had he not had strong reasons for apprehending that the Duke would have him out and shoot him. 84 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. " See there," continued Manuel Gerold, stopping and pointing with his stick to a moss-covered grotto, of the sort without which no great park was complete a hundred years ago. " I remember as if it was yesterday my poor father sitting there in powdered wig and ruffles, and teaching me to spell words out of the Gazette de France on his knee ; the Gazette was the great paper then ; it used to reach us twice a week with news from Paris, and was about the size of a pocket-handker- chief." These reminiscences of past times, called up tenderly by the father, listened to religiously by the sons, occupied the party until they reached the end of the avenue, where Madame Maboule, civil and melancholy, was standing with the gate wide open to let them pass. " Good afternoon, gentlemen," she cried, tremu- lously, " and maybe, sir, if you see Monseigneur, you will tell him how glad we should all be to see him. The place looks like a church-yard now there's nobody there; it does indeed." Manuel Gerold muttered a few kind words in returning her salutation; and, once outside the HONEST GEROLD. 85 gate, turned round to take a last look at the old house and park. His face was perfectly cairn, but he said in a low voice, and with an affectionate wave of the hand towards the place where he and his fathers had been born, " Good-by to CI aire - fontaine ; it came honourably into our hands eight centuries ago ; our ancestors will not reproach us for having surrendered it honourably." With these words, the father and his sons walked away, going back, by the same road as they had come, to Hautbourg. On the way, Horace and Emile, by tacit agreement, refrained from speaking any more about Clairefontaine or the past, and their talk was entirely about the immediate future. Both brothers had graduated as licentiates of law, the elder at Paris in 1851, the younger at Liege in 1854, and it had been decided that they should go to Paris at the opening of term in October, to enter themselves at the Bar. Their visit to Claire- fontaine and the things they had heard there did not in any way modify these arrangements ; but the young men were anxious to induce their father to accompany them, and he had hitherto refused, 86 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. alleging his intention of returning to Brussels, where most of his old Republican friends were living. They now tried again to shake his determination, but to little purpose. " No, let me return into my voluntary exile," he said, gently. " My time is over now ; if I could do any good I would come; but the Liberals of to-day have need of younger and stronger soldiers than I." Emile and Horace both protested against this view, and the discussion was carried on until the three had reached those remarbable lath-and- plaster villas of which mention has been already made. At this point they noticed that for the last couple of hundred yards or so the people they met had eyed them curiously, and been peculiarly sedulous in the matter of hat-raising. The lath- and-plaster dwellings extended about three- quarters of a mile out of the town, and the nearer they drew to Hautbourg so much the more did the number of the passers-by increase. Every one of them without exception stared, stood aside, and uncovered his head. HONEST GEROLD. 87 " It s evident we are not incognito" observed Horace Gerold ; " this comes of putting down one's name in hotel books." A gendarme was coming towards them at that moment ; he stared, too, and . . . made a military salute. "Ah," said the Republican, that settles the point. " It is not Manuel Gerold they are bowing lo, but the Duke of Hautbourg." He stopped a moment. "I had not counted upon this," he muttered. " I had hoped most of the people here were ignorant that Gerold and the Duke were one. It would not do to have a triumphal entry into the town ; suppose we retrace our steps and walk about till it gets dark." But it was too late. On looking round it was perceived a throng of people to the number of some twenty or thirty had gathered in the rear and were following at a respectful distance — not demonstrative but attentive. Simultaneously another throng, three times as big, loomed on the horizon in front. The fact is, Monsieur Duval of the Hotel de Clairefontaine, startled out of all reticence and composure by the dis- 88 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. covery that he was giving hospitality to none other than the famous Duke, who was both the despair and the stock subject of conversation of everybody in the borough, had spent his afternoon going about from house to house and proclaiming the stupefying piece of news that " He, yes He, had at last come ; and was going to dine at the hotel at seven ! " The intelligence in so far as regarded the dinner was not deemed of vast purport, but the other fact about " his having come " flew through the town like wildfire, and was speedily exaggerated into the most positive assertion that " he had come in company with his entire household," the footmen and butlers composing the aforesaid household being most circumstantially described. There were of course people in the crowd who soon declared themselves in a position to give particulars as to the way in which he had come. One had seen the open barouche and four drive up whilst everybody was at luncheon ; another had especially noticed the two omnibuses behind containing the family ; a third, declining to keep so important a secret to HONEST GEROLD. 89 himself, avowed that he had talked with Monsieur le Due half an hour, and that Monsieur had told him he was coming to live at Clairefontaine forth- with. Please imagine the sensation ! . . . Immediately, and as though by magic, Haut- bourg had became transformed. Silk dresses, buried in lower drawers ever since the fatal " three years ago," were drawn out in hot haste ; windows were thrown open and decked with glazed-calico tricolour flags, showy tablecloths, or any other artistic thing that came first to hand ; children had their faces washed, much to their disgust, and were hastily sheathed in Sunday clothes ; Monsieur le Cure, abruptly apprised of the news whilst he was taking his afternoon nap, rushed with the inspiration of wisdom to the cupboard where his best cassock hung, and speedily appeared in the market-place, clean- shaven, brushed, with a missal under his arm and with gloves on ; as for Monsieur le Maire, Messieurs of the Municipal Council, and Monsieur the Beadle, they might have been descried, towards six o'clock, standing three deep round the door of 90 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. the Hotel de Clairefontaine, silent, august, and pre- pared to distinguish themselves. But what shall be said of Monsieur Ballanchu the seedsman, Monsieur Scarpin the boot-maker, and Monsieur Hochepain the tax-gatherer ? These three, like honest tradesmen as they were, announced themselves ready to forgive and for- get. Monsieur Ballanchu had bought, on credit, a new pair of double-soles from M. Scarpin, and was giving them an airing in honour of the auspicious occasion ; Madame Scarpin in scarlet cap -strings was standing at her door, and had supplied herself with two pocket-handkerchiefs, one utile, the other dulce, i.e. fragrant with Eau - de - Cologne, to be waved when the He and family should pass. As Madame Scarpin was not the only matron, by a hundred or so, who was standing at her door, with cap -strings hoisted and pocket-handkerchief in reserve, you may readily conceive what a fine spectacle the town presented at about the time when He was expected. At last (it was about 6.30 p.m., and expectation HONEST GEROLD. 91 had begun to assume that spasmodic form which reveals itself in treading on one another's toes and kicking each other's shins) — at last the report flew : " He comes ! He comes ! " It was quite true : there he came, a little astonished, but perfectly dignified, and walking between his two sons. All three were bareheaded, for everybody was shouting as if he or she had only live minutes more in which to shout on earth. And the hats and the handkerchiefs,— how they shook and fluttered ! And the shrill piping of the children, how it rent the air, with cries of vive Monsieur le Due ; whilst, with a mighty thunder like that of a bull of Bashan, Monsieur Ballanchu, purple in the face, was roaring vive le Due de Hautbourg et Monsieur le Marquis. Monsieur le Cure, meek and benign, stood up on tip-toe to obtain a better sight, and raised his shovel-hat high above him as if in apostolic benediction ; Monsieur le Maire, Messieurs of the Municipal Council, and Monsieur the Parish Beadle, yelled as nobody had ever heard them yell before ; Monsieur Duval, the hotel- keeper, had dressed himself as if for a state-ball, 92 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. and was smirking radiantly on his door-step, with Mademoiselle Madelon behind, effulgent in a clean gown, a piece of ribbon round her throat and a brooch somewhere on her bosom. To crown all, and complete the tableau, the local force of six policemen and twelve gendarmes were drawn up in a symmetrical semicircle, and seemed disposed to salute. You see, they had not yet received advices from Paris that this Monsieur le Due was a " Socialist." They simply took their cue from Monsieur le Maire, and, seeing him en- thusiastic, were enthusiastic, too, as became good officials, ( 93 ) CHAPTER III. "VOX POPULI VOX DEI." The cheering, saluting, and pocket-handkerchief- waving would have been all very well but for this fact — that they could have no influence whatever on the resolution of the three gentlemen whom they were intended to honour. The eldest of the three bowed very coldly and gravely ; the elder of the two brothers, hailed, for the first time in his life, as " Monsieur le Marquis," appeared disposed to treat the matter as a joke : the younger brother kept as serious as his father, and, if anything, looked contempt for men who could make such servile fuss about people who were perfect strangers to them. It never struck this ingenuous youth that M. Ballanchu, whilst he bellowed with veins distended and bloodshot eyes, had five-and-twenty 94 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. unpaid bills ornamenting the inside of his desk at home ; and that poor M. Scarpin, for all his zeal in screaming himself hoarse, was sick at heart in fear of approaching bankruptcy. The noise and excitement continued long after the Gerolds had entered the hotel, and had been ushered by the obsequious M. Duval into the yellow drawing-room, now blazing with wax- candles and extemporized floral decoration. In the middle of the room stood the table, spread with snowy cloth and decked with all the available silver plate in the establishment. M. Duval had even gone the length of borrowing an epergne from the local jeweller ; and the local jeweller, in consenting to the loan, had merely stipulated that one of his shop -boys should be allowed to serve at table disguised as waiter, so as not to lose sight of the precious piece. It was not that he mistrusted Monsieur Duval, but in a town where everybody has become poor, you know, it is best to take one's precautions. Monsieur Duval had flattered himself upon creating a favourable impression. He had spent ten minutes over the bow of his white tie, twenty "VOX POPULI VOX DEI/' 95 in the hands of his neighbour the barber, who had put his hair into curl, fifteen in superintending the toilets of his subordinates, to see that they were as splendid as himself, and forty in planning and arranging with his own deft hands the adorn- ment of the yellow drawing-room as above. It should be added that he had also invested two twenty-franc pieces in the purchase of the flowers which made such a fine show, and that the menu he had devised for M. le Due's dinner was a thing unique in provincial experience. The first words of Manuel Gerold — or of M. le Due if you like it better — fell upon him, however, like a bucket of iced water upon a glowing fire ; for, whilst the crowd were still shouting below, and whilst he, M. Duval, smiling from ear to ear, was assuring his guests that the dinner would be served up in an instant — but that meanwhile, if " Monseigneur " * would allow it, M. le Maire of * Monseigneur simply means " my lord," and was used before 1789 in addressing all very great noblemen. Nowadays it is reserved for princes of the blood, and church dignitaries, arch- bishops, bishops, &c. Loyal tenants, however, like M. Duval, will still call their noble masters " Monseigneur. ' 96 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. the town and M. le Cure, together with several other of the officials, would feel honoured by being allowed to pay their respects — the Duke, after a moment's whispering with his sons, drew out his watch, and asked a little stiffly : " Monsieur Duval, at what time does the last train start for Paris to-night ? " Poor M. Duval, utterly disconcerted at this surprising question, stood stock still and looked blankly at his interlocutor. " The last train for .... for Paris ? " he stammered. " Why, surely Monseigneur does not think of going away to-night ? " At any other time Manuel Gerold would have answered kindly, and stated his intentions with- out reserve ; but the stupid acclamations of the crowd, and the cringing, almost dog-like attitude of the persons whom he had seen during the last half-hour, had put him out of humour, so that he replied with a curtness altogether out of keeping with his usual manner. " I cannot say what my plans are ; but I beg, Monsieur Duval, that you will not call me " VOX POPULI VOX DEL" 97 Monseigneur any more. If you have ever heard anything about me, you must be aware that I am a Republican, and that consequently I admit no differences of rank but such as exist between men who are honest and those who are not." As a Frenchman, M. Duval understood this speech at once. He bowed silently and staggered out of the room — professedly to fetch a time- table, virtually to hide the confusion and chagrin which were overwhelming him with a sense that all was lost and that the new Duke was indeed a Radical ! As soon as he was gone the Gerolds held a rapid conference and decided that they must go that night and not risk any interviews with mayors or vicars. There was nothing in Manuel G-erold of the charlatanry of Republicanism, and he felt not the slightest ambition to pro- claim aloud to the world why it was that he forsook Clairefontaine. His sons thought as he did ; the demonstrative homage of the worthy Hciutburgeois had too pecuniary a ring in it to cause them any elation. They had seen in their vol. i. 7 98 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. father, a few years before, carried in triumph by several thousand electors, who cheered lustily, not the name or the purse, but the man ; and the present exhibition seemed to them humiliat- ingly mean in comparison. M. Duval re-entered in a few minutes, woe- stricken in demeanour and freighted with a time- table. Behind him he left the door open, and on handing the table to Manuel Gerold, appeared to hesitate timidly as though he had something to ask but dared not. Outside on the landing there was a sound of whispering with slight shuffling of feet, and down below in the street, the cries vive Monsieur le Due I vive Monsieur le Marquis ! &c. were being uttered enthusiastically and perseveringly as ever. Manuel Gerold took the time-table, marked the look of trepidation on the host's rueful face, and was about to ask the reason, when he was spared the trouble ; for, before M. Duval had said a word, the door left ajar was thrown wide open and in sailed Monsieur le Maire, M. le Cure, as many of the Municipal Council as could squeeze in after " VOX POPULI VOX DEI." 99 him, M. Ballancliu the seedsman, M. Scarpin the bootmaker, M. Hochepain the tax-gatherer, and some half-dozen more ejusdem farince , inquisi- tive, awe-stricken, and respectful. To prevent all chances of rebuff M. le Maire had brought with him his daughter, a damsel of fifteen summers, attired in white as if for confirmation, and armed with a bouquet about a yard in circumference The whole procession advanced a couple of steps into the room and bowed like a single councillor. Then the damsel, being nudged forward by her father, stepped out reddening, and presented the bouquet. It was to the old man she offered it. He had risen, together with Horace and Emile, and, as the child came to him, he laid a hand kindly on her head. " To whom is it you are giving these flowers, my child ? " he asked : " to Manuel Gerold, or to the Duke of Hautbourg ? " This question had not been foreseen in the full- dress rehearsal of the performance which Monsieur le Maire had gone through down below with his 100 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. daughter, so the excellent magistrate immediately hastened to the rescue. He had mentally pre- pared a short but effective speech, treating of the importance of the nobility in the social scale, the dangers of anarchy, the Imperial djmasty, the salutary blending of liberty and order, and the price of wheat — topics all bearing more or less on the return of the new Duke. Losing his presence of mind, however, at the critical moment, he began his remarks by an allusion to the Crusades, addressing Manuel Gerold as " Monsieur le Due, fils illustre cVune race de Croises." The Republican at once cut him short. " Mr. Mayor," he said gently but firmly, " I am sincerely thankful, both to yourself and your fellow-townsmen, for the friendly greeting you have given my sons and me to-day ; but I should be glad to learn that this welcome of yours has not been offered under a misapprehension. If you have greeted me simply as the descendant of a family long connected with your town, then thank you most gratefully again and again ; but if you VOX POPULI VOX DEI." 101 have welcomed me under the belief that I was coming to assume any new character, I think it right to tell you that certain private arrange- ments which I am compelled to make will prevent my ever standing towards you in the same relation as did my late nephew." Here were all the new-born hopes of Hautbourg nipped in the bud. There was a long murmur, with whispers and sighs from everybody, except M. Hochepain, the tax - gatherer, who, to the indignation of his brethren, cried energetically : " Hear, hear," under a wrong impression. He was sternly called to order by M. Ballanchu, and, whilst this little episode was being enacted in the hindmost ranks of the assemblage, near the door, M. le Cure, brushing his shovel hat nervously with the sleeve of his cassock, and beaming un- utterable entreaty through the glasses of his honest spectacles, trotted forward and undertook to plead the cause of his sorrowing parishioners. He was a worthy ecclesiastic, and made the most of his point. The sense of diminished church- dues was so strong within him that he would 102 THE MEMBER FOE PARIS. have been eloquent in the face of a king, how much more then in the presence of the man with whom it lay to restore prosperity to the borough, and so, indirectly, to replenish the coffers of the parish church. He quoted Maccabees, the Book of Ezekiel, and the parable of the man who buried his talents in a napkin. He marshalled in array St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine of Hippo, and St. John Chrysostom. He adduced the sufferings of St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar, St. Laurence on his gridiron, and St. Andrew of Utica, who perished by fish-hooks. And all this he did with so much unction and zeal as to excite the secret envy of the Mayor, the wonder of the Municipal Council, the admiration of M. Ballanchu, and, indeed, of everybody save that unlucky M. Hochepain, who, being always out of his reckoning, and having still present to his mind the angry rebuke of the seedsman, took it upon himself to exclaim, "No, no," just when such an expression of opinion on his part was most unfelicitous. Happily, M. le Cure was too deep in his own harangue to hear, for he was "VOX POPULI VOX DEL- 103 just then closing with a masterly peroration, depicting the horrors of famine and the remorse which must necessarily overtake the rich man who allowed his poor brethren to die of hunger. This last form of appeal was only ventured on as an extreme resort, for, as a general rule, M. le Care had much greater faith in the salvation of rich brethren than of poor ones. He had had occasion to notice that it was the rich who went oftenest to church and put most into the plate. A great pity that so much eloquence should have missed its effect, but it did. Manuel Gerold's words in answer were few, but they sounded to the good priest like so many thwacks with a cane. The Eepublican observed that he had never contemplated letting anybody die of hunger ; that his annual subscription of 20,000 francs for the poor of Hautbourg would be continued, and even added to if it were insufficient ; that he would instruct the agent not to press for rent those who really could not afford to pay, and that if any person in Hautbourg had met 104 THE MEMBER FOE PARIS. with misfortune which it was possible to relieve by extra donations, he would do his best to help him." This said, however, he made one of those coldly polite inclinations of the head by which kings, cabinet ministers, and people who are bored, intimate their wish to end an interview. The hint was taken with dismay by the cure, with consternation by the mayor and council, with suppressed mutterings by MM. Bal- lanchu, Scarpin and Co., and with imilosophical indifference by M. Hochepain, who, having never understood from the first why he had come up- stairs, was not much surprised to find himself going down again. Everybody bowed on backing out as on coming in, and it was the crest-fallen M. Duval who held the door open. Three-quarters of an hour after the desponding deputation had made its exit, the strangers themselves were gone. Finding that a train left for Paris soon after eight, they had galloped through M. Duval's munificent dinner, or, rather, through a quarter of it, and so stabbed the professional self-esteem of "VOX POPULI VOX DEI." 105 that honest innkeeper, as well as dashed down his hopes. Not even the 500-franc note with which the Republican generously paid him his bill was enough to make him forget the accu- mulation of so much bitterness in a single day. Manuel Gerold and his sons set out on foot to go to the station, but though the market- place and the streets were still crowded, they were not cheered this time as they had been an hour or two before. The ill news brought down from the yellow drawing-room by M. le Maize, M. le Cure and authorities, had spread pretty fast, and as the three gentlemen appeared at the door of the hotel, first one individual, then another who had caught sight of them, proffered a cat-call or derisive whistle — (remember, dark- ness had set in, and it was easy to whistle without being seen). These isolated marks of disfavour were like the single squibs that are fired off at the commencement of a firework entertainment. Gradually, they increased in number, in strength, and in noise, just as the sky-rockets that come after the squibs. " A has 106 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. les Republicains ! " " A la fosse les Socialistes ! " "A la lanteme les Rouges!" Such were the amenities which this lively moh delivered. In a minute or two, the cries, cat-calls, whistles, and kind wishes had become general. Every- body — man, woman, and child — contributed his or her objurgation to the cheerful total, and the three Gerolds were eventually escorted to the station by a closely-packed rabble, screaming, yelping, hooting, and barking, " A la fosse ! " " A la lanteme I " " A la potence ! (gibbet) " &c. One gentleman, thinking probably that this ex- hibition of feeling was scarcely forcible enough for a practical age, snatched up a stone close to the station and threw it at the group (it struck Manuel Gerold's shoulder), exclaiming, "Sales Proscrits, pouah!" " Ignoble dogs ! " cried Horace Gerold, facing round, with his fists clenched in indignant scorn. But his father gently withheld his arm. " Must we take angry men at their word ? " he said. " These don't mean what they say." "VOX POPULI VOX DEI." 107 " C'est egal" muttered the young man between his teeth ; " this is my first lesson in democracy, and if all crowds are like this " " But they're not," put in his father, earnestly. 108 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. CHAPTER IV. ANNO DOMINI M.DCCC.LIV. Whilst the three Gerolds are being whirled along towards Paris, each musing in the strain peculiar to him on the ups and downs of popular favour, it will not be amiss if we take a bird's- eye survey of the year 1854, which was to be a starting-point in the lives of the two young men. In 1854, France had already been rather more than two j r ears in the enjoyment of its Second Empire, and people who had sworn eternal fidelity to past dynasties, had had abundant time to forget that such had ever existed, that here there were three great topics of interest in the Parisian papers : the Crimean war, the sensation drama Les Cosaques, by MM. Arnault and Judicis ; and the Cholera. Lord Raglan and ANNO DOMINI M.DCCC.LIV. 109 Marshal St. Arnaud, Admiral Harnelin and Rear- Admiral Dundas, MM. Arnault and Judicis (afore- mentioned) and Dr. Trousseau (on account of the cholera), were seven popular men. Monsieur Jullien — who had organized some promenade concerts in London, and composed a quadrille called the Allied Armies, during the performance of which some warriors in red and some others in blue were to be seen emerging from behind a curtain playing a medley of Rule Britannia and Partant pour la Syrie — was also a popular man. For the first time since the invention of printing the term braves allies was being advantageously substituted for that of Milords Godam in the current literature which treated of Englishmen, and there were pictures of French Zouaves warmly embracing Scotch Highlanders in most of the engraving-shops of the capital. The nick- name for his Majesty the Emperor Nicholas was in London " Old Nick," and in Paris le Gros Colas ; there was likewise a sobriquet for Prince Menschikoff, who was styled le Prince Thermometre — a somewhat mysterious joke, but which was 110 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. generally understood to mean that the Kussian captain's chance of thrashing les braves Frangais depended much more upon Generals Frost and Snow than upon any proficiency of his own in the science of warfare. In order to diffuse a healthy patriotism amongst the lower orders, the Imperial Government had taken care that there should be no lack of seasonable reading, and husky gentlemen patrolled the Boulevards selling songs and pamphlets in which one found many unpleasant things about Ivan the Terrible, who cut off the ears of his courtiers, and about Alex- ander, who sent French prisoners of war to work in the mines of Ural, and fed them on tallow-candles. For the more intellectual portion of the community who might have been sceptic about the candles, the publishers of the late M. de Custine had brought out a new edition of his famous Kussian book ; and for clubs and cafes, where the frivolous abound, M. Gustave Dore, then budding into fame, had prepared a comic and pictorial Histoire de la Salute Russie, in which the death of every alternate Czar by ANNO DOMINI M.DCCC.LIV. Ill poison was most graphically and instructively pourtrayed. To tell the truth, this war was a godsend, for, had there been no dead and wounded to harangue about, no Czar to cut jokes at, and no Muscovites to pummel, who knows but that the French might have turned their ever-lively attention to that new Constitution which had just been elaborated, and devoted some of their super- fluous energy to knocking it to pieces ? But one thing at a time is enough for Frenchmen — happily. They only pull Constitutions to bits when they have nothing else to do ; and in 1854, being fully employed with other talk, they let the Constitution alone. Besides, most of the workmen who were good at knocking to pieces were out of the way. MM. Bianqui and Barbes, the heroes of the 15th May insurrection in 1848, were under lock and key. MM. Ledru Rollin and Louis Blanc were across the channel. M. Victor Hugo, majestuous and gloomy, was inspect- ing the ocean from the top of his Belvedere at Guernsey, and defiantly muttering verses from his Noj^oleon le Petit. MM. Thiers and Guizot, 112 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. possibly not over-satisfied with the pretty day's work they had accomplished when they smashed the Orleans throne into splinters in fighting between them for the keeping of it, were in- dulging in solitary reflections — the one in his own home at Yal Richer, the other in Germany. M. Eugene Sue, the Socialist in kid-gloves, great at depicting virtue in corduroys, was fretting away the last years of his life at Annecy; and Dr. Raspail, another revolutionary hero, who eschewed kid-gloves but believed in the panaceal properties of camphor, was smoking cigarettes of that compound in retirement at Brussels ; M. Pierre Leroux, the bogey of French mass-going matrons, had disappeared, no one knew whither, taking his materialist doctrines with him ; and Generals Cavaignac, Lamoriciere, and Chan- garnier — those modern Curiatii, outwitted and conquered by the Imperial Horatius — were chew- ing the cud of bitter meditation — very bitter — and shooting partridges to console themselves. As for the minor operatives in the knocking-to- pieces trade, there were eleven thousand of them ANNO DOMINI M.DCCC.LIY. 113 at Cayenne, two thousand at Lambessa, and five thousand in Africa. M. Frederic Cournet, who had commanded the barricade of the Faubourg du Temple in June '48, had lately been killed in a duel near Windsor by his brother revolu- tionist Barthelemy, who had commanded the barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine ; and Barthelemy himself was giving fencing-lessons in London, pending the time when he should be hanged at Newgate for murdering his landlord and a policeman. Thus opposition, liberalism, and all unpleasantness of that sort, had been happily removed. Such Eadicals as remained in Paris held their tongues, and it was only at the Bar (where amongst others a young barrister of twenty-eight, named M. Emile Ollivier, was remarkable for the vehemence of his Bepublicanism) that one could ever hear anything like a sub- versive speech, delivered generally in defence of some miserable journalist brought up for punish- ment. To give a civilized look to the new Empire and make everything regular, there was a Corps Legislatif, composed of two hundred and vol. i. 8 114 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. sixty members, and a Senate, composed of a hundred and twenty ; who wore, the Deputies, blue swallow-tails with silver braiding, and the Senators, black swallow-tails w T ith gold ditto. The cost of them to the nation for salaries, refreshments, &c. was about half a million sterling : they debated on an average sixty hours a session with closed doors, not a single reporter being suffered to disturb them ; and as they were all invariably of one mind, their deliberations were characterized by that blessed harmony which should always prevail in Christian assemblies. The daily press, in 1854, was no longer — heaven be praised ! — the turbulent, unmanageable thing it had been a few years previously. There were three journals — Patrie, Constitutionnel, and Pays — which sang the praises of the Imperial dynasty every evening, and though it is true there were three or four more that declined to join in this concert, yet these were ill-conditioned papers, which were perpetually getting into trouble, and which M. de Persigny, the Home Minister, doctored with whip and thong, like a liberal and wise ANNO DOMINI M.DCCC.LIY. 115 statesman as he was. As for the Charivari and kindred prints, they cut their capers under diffi- culties. Imagine a quadrille where each of the dancers has a piece of chain and a ten-pound shot riven to the ankle of his right leg. Archi- tecturally speaking, Paris was not yet the vast Haussruannville it has hecome since ; hut the trowel-wielding Baron was just come into office, and pickaxe, hod, and brick-cart were already on the move. Every willing citizen who was not required for exterminating Eussians found employ- ment to his fill in demolishing dwelling-places. It was known amongst tax-payers that the Rue de Rivoli was going to be prolonged, so that there might be one straight line from the Place de la Concorde to that of the Bastille ; that a new Tribunal of Commerce was to be built in the heart of the once pestilential Cite, where policemen of old had never ventured without quaking : that the old Theatre Lyrique and Theatre du Chatelet were coming down, and that new ones would soon be erected in their stead, furnished with all modern appliances of luxury and with actually 116 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. room enough in the stalls for people to sit in ; that M. Alphand, the new Prefect's chief engineer &ndfidiis Achates, had taken the Bois de Boulogne in hand, and was bent upon transforming it into a fairy garden, which it should need only five- and-twenty million francs a year to keep in order ; that the plans of five new barracks, three new boulevards, seven new mairies, four new squares, and seventeen new churches, were being prepared on a right royal scale, regardless of expense ; and that to pay for all these things there would in all probability be more taxes next year. And yet such is the admirable effect of the whip and thong in subduing the human mind and making it supple, that nobody grumbled much ; though M. de Rambuteau, who had been Prefect of the Seine under Louis Philippe, remembered the time when the whole city had uttered piercing cries, and groaned aloud and predicted national ruin, because he, M. de Rambuteau, had insisted upon building the wretched meagre street which bears his name. Truly a great change had come over men in the course of three years, and one could ANNO DOMINI M.DCCC.LIV. 117 notice the effects of it everywhere. If you entered a cafe in the year 1854, you were no longer deafened, as in 1848, '49, and '50, by the astound- ing clamour of citizens discussing across a table whether Cavaignac was a greater man than Lamartine, or Lamartine a greater man than Cavaignac, or M. Odillon Barrot a greater man than either. From prudential motives the investi- gation of these interesting problems had been momentarily shelved. There were gentlemen to be seen in the cafes, who walked very erect, and had small eyes, and were particularly affable in conver- sation. Unfortunately, it had been remarked that those who confided their political impressions to these engaging strangers were seldom long before they were summoned to explain them at greater length to M. le Juge d'Instruction at the Palais de Justice, and this had no doubt something to do with the extremely taciturn, not to say un- brotherly demeanour, which men evinced towards each other in Parisian cafes duriug the year '54. There was a good deal of the same sort of danger in clubs- It was not the most agreeable thing 118 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. in the world to be suddenly interrupted in a mantelshelf conversation by a gentleman with a firm beak-nose and a red rosette in his button- hole, who would suddenly spring up from an opposite end of the room and say, with grim courtesy, hat in hand, " I think I heard Monsieur express an opinion adverse to the coup-cVctat, in which I had the honour to participate. Will Monsieur be so obliging as to name a friend?" In nine cases out of ten, your adversary was one of his Majesty's officers, grateful for past favours, and hopeful by display of zeal to merit a continuance of the same. He would take you out at six o'clock a.m. to the Bois de Vincennes, and there run you through with amazing adroit- ness and satisfaction. Under the circumstances it was as well to avoid political topics, and to talk in a lyrical strain, either about the glories of war or the ravages of the cholera — taking care to add, however, if one selected this last subject, that the cholera was not half so fatal under the present as under preceding reigns, as was triumphantly proved by the fact that M. Casimir ANNO DOMINI M.DCCC.LIV. 119 Pereire, Prime Minister of Louis Philippe, had died of cholera, whereas no such catastrophe had ever befallen a minister of Napoleon, nor was likely to. But let us not be unjust towards, the Imperial regime. One was not entirely confined for conversation to the war and the cholera ; there were other topics upon which one might venture with more or less safety. For instance, one could speak of the monster Hotel du Louvre, which was being completed, much to the dismay of surround- ing hostelries ; of the barn-like building in the Champs-Elysees, which was destined for the International Exhibition of 1855, and which (this in a whisper, for fear of beak-noses) con- trasted unfavourably with Sir Joseph Paxton's edifice that adorned Hyde Park in '51 ; of the beauty of the new Empress, Mdlle. Eugenie de Teba, and of the intention attributed to her of importing the mantilla at Court ; of the fashions of the year — to wit, frogged coats, striped trowsers, and curly-brimmed hats for gentlemen ; three- flounced dresses, hair a VImperatrice, and spoon- bill bonnets for ladies ; of the thin face of M. 120 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. Magne, Minister of Finance, and the plump face of M. Baroche, Minister of Justice ; of the beard movement raging like an epidemic in England, and the consequent depression in the razor-trade ; of Mdlle. Anna Thillon, the star of the Opera Coniique, of whom the critics unanimously wrote that she looked like an angel and sang like a peacock; of Dr. Yeron, deputy for Paris and editor of the Constitutionnel, his renowned cordon bleu Sophie, and his legendary shirt-collars, more stiff and formidable than the shirt-collars of any other man of letters from Dunkirk to Bayonne ; of M. de Tocqueville, the witty and thoughtful, who was writing his book, V Ancien Regime et la Revolution, and M. Augustin Thierry, the scholarly, who was busy at his Histoire clu Tiers Etat ; of the Academie Franchise, grave and learned body, which professed to ignore Beranger, and which, in the course of the year, mourned five of its members — Tissot, the savant; Antonin Jay, the founder of the Constitutionnel ; Ancelot, the author of Louis XI. ; Baour Lormian, the translator of Tasso ; and the polished Marquis ANNO DOMINI M.DCCC.LIV. 121 de Saint Aulaire, historian of the Fronde ; of the price of oysters, which cost ten centimes the dozen more than in '53, and of the scarcity of truffles on the markets of Perigord ; of M. Scribe the playwright, whose eternal young widows and colonels were decidedly beginning to be found stale ; and of Mdnie. Emile de Girardin's new comedies, La Joie fait Pair and Le Chapeau fVun Horloger (the last two she ever wrote), which all Paris was flocking to see ; of Alfred de Musset, whose once brilliant genius was almost extinguished, and of Alexandre Dumas, who was as prolific in novels as ever ; of Dumas the younger, whose recent success with La Dame aux Cornelias was still in everybody's mouth, and of Mdme. Doche, who played the part of Marguerite Gautier in that drama so touchingly, that the ladies in the boxes used to sob, whilst the gentle- men in the stalls would cough, and — when nobody was looking — dash their hands across their eyes ; of Italy and Italians, notably of Silvio Pellico, who was dying at Turin, broken down by his imprisonment in the Spielberg, and of Daniel 122 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. Manin, ex-dictator of Venice, who was giving music- lessons in Paris ; of a new sort of glove lately- imported from England, called dogskin, generally voted hideous, but worn nevertheless because it was British; and of the exorbitant price of articles in Kussian leather, owing to the cessa- tion of trade with the Czar's dominions ; of M. de Villele, the celebrated Prime Minister of Louis XVIII., who died during the year, un- remembered and almost unknown, from having spent a quarter of a century in retirement (sic transit gloria mundi !) ; of M. le Comte d'Aber- deen, who was Premier in England, and Monsieur Franklin Pierce, the orator, who was President of the United States ; of certain English words which were making their way bravely into the French language, such as steejrte-chass, lonch, ponch, and high-life, the latter of which was pronounced as if it rhymed with fig-leaf ; of the vintage of the year, which was good, and the crops, which were less so ; of Alma and Balaclava, Inkermann and Sebastopol, with dis- cussions as to whether one should say Seftas- or ANNO DOMINI M.DCCC.LIY. 123 Seras-topol ; of M. de Moray's dinners and Mdme. de Persigny's suppers ; of Ravel and Grassot, Bressant and Bachel ; of the end of the world, which some French Dr. Cumming had announced as irrevocably fixed for the 13th of June, 1857 ; and of a new establishment of Turkish baths, which had been inaugurated as a novelty on the Boulevard du Temple, and which a popular journalist, M. Nestor Roqueplan, re- commended as a sovereign cure to nephews who wished to get rid of their uncles. Such, amongst others, were the topics of current talk in Paris in the year 1854, at the time when Horace and Emile Gerold came there to try their fortunes. 124 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. CHAPTER V. BOURGEOIS POLITICS. " Well, I think we've about done our furnish- ing," said Horace to his brother, as he stepped back to look at a long row of law volumes which he had been ranging on a book-shelf. " Yes," answered Emile ; " both our studies are in order : the man has finished nailing down the carpets in the bedrooms ; I don't see what else remains to be done." "Where have you put the tin box?" asked Horace. " Here it is," said Emile, picking up a small tin case from out of a litter of torn newspapers, bits of string, empty boxes and wood- shavings that encumbered the floor. " What's in it?" BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 125 " Don't you know ? " exclaimed the elder, looking at him. " It's that title-deed ; I put it there when we came from Clairefontaine six weeks ago." " Oh ! " rejoined Eruile, becoming serious, and he added after a moment : " What are you going to do with it ? " " We must find a place for the thing some- where where we shan't be seeing it every day," returned Horace, perplexed. " I heartily wish it were off our hands ; I dream about it at nights. It is inconceivable that father should have wished us to keep such a thing five years." " There's an empty drawer in your bureau," remarked Emile, not answering the latter half of his brother's observation. Horace was holding the case in his two hands and eying it rather absently. " H'm, no," he said, at the end of a moment's reflection : " suppose you keep it ? I shall feel quieter if it's in your charge." The younger brother took the case without making any remark, and carried it into the next 126 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. room, which was his own study. Horace heard the opening of a drawer, and the double clicking of a lock. Then Emile reappeared with a key in his hand. " If that can make you any easier," he said, " the thing's done. I've put it in my lowest drawer, left-hand side, and we need never look at it again unless you like." Horace drew a short sigh of relief and gave a nod of thanks to Emile. After which, as the brothers wanted to set their rooms to rights, they fell to picking up the rubbish, wood-shavings, bits of string, shreds of paper, &c, and piled them into the empty deal boxes, preparatory to having these removed to a lumber-room. It was during a November afternoon, and the two Gerolds were just installed in the lodgings they had taken, Rue St. Genevieve, in the " Latin Quarter," close to the Pantheon. Their father had some weeks since returned to Brussels ; in fact he had done no more than pass through Paris, for, as he said with truth enough, the France of '54 was not a place for men who thought as he did. Manuel Gerold had no BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 127 private fortune save that which had come to him at his nephew's death ; but in the course of a long and laborious career as a political writer he had amassed sufficient to end his own days in ease and to start his sons in life comfortably. He could afford to give them three thousand francs a year apiece, which is a competence in Paris for young barristers who have not extra- vagant tastes ; and, as the Council of the French Bar requires that a man shall have " a decently furnished lodging and a library of books ' ' before he can be admitted to plead, he had spent twelve thousand francs in fitting up the chambers of Horace and Emile, so that Monsieur le Batonnier and his colleagues should have no fault to find. The brothers rented a set of rooms on the third floor — one of those good old sets of rooms built a hundred and fifty years ago, with thick walls, deep cupboards and roomy passages ; not like those wretched card-board dwellings which M. Hauss- mann's architects have contrived — houses where, if the first-floor lodger plays the piano at midnight, he is heard on the sixth story, and keeps some 128 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. ten or twelve batches of fellow-tenants awake. Horace and Emile had each a study and a bed- room to themselves ; and for their joint use there was a kitchen and dining-room, the latter of which, however, as they seldom dined at home, they had converted into a smoking saloon. There was also a cellar for wine, wood, and coal; and if it would interest you to know what all this cost, I may tell you that their combined rent amounted to eight hundred francs, that is, double what they would have had to pay before 1848, and a third less than they would be obliged to pay in 1870. Clubs being as yet confined in France to men who are rich and can afford to do without them, the brothers dined and breakfasted at one of those tables-dlwte so numerous in the Latin Quarter, where young barristers, journalists, doctors, pro- fessors, and the better class of students resort. The board cost eighty-five francs a month, vin ordinaire included ; and for that sum one had a very fair beefsteak or chop, an omelette, fried potatoes, and cheese at eleven, and soup, boiled BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 129 beef, roast, vegetables, and dessert at six. Certainly the French are adepts in the art of giving midtum pro parvo. It is impossible to surmise without chagrin what dinner would be given in Great Britain to any individual who expected his six courses per diem for sixty-eight shillings a month. One thousand and twenty francs paid for board and 400 francs for lodging, left each brother 1,580 francs annually for firing and lighting, washing, clothes, and pocket-money. Set down the first two of these items at 100 francs (for between two coal can be eked out), the second at 150 francs. the third at 400 francs, and there remained 930 francs for the last. A young French barrister who has 37?. a year for pocket-money may consider himself favoured by Providence. There is no reason why he should deny himself the diurnal demi-tasse at his cafe ; he can smoke cigarettes at the rate of one pound of tobacco per month (total 60 francs per annum) ; on festive occasions he may wear gloves and venture upon a cigar (X.B. a Londres, price 25 centimes, as good as a London regalia if carefully selected) ; he may vol. i. 9 130 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. also indulge without fear in a cab, if not over- addicted to parties ; and he will still have a reserve-fund for the exhilaration of beggars, the remuneration of the concierge who blackens his boots, makes his bed, and sweeps his room, and for an occasional summer's day excursion to Enghien or Montmorency should his fancy so lead him. Of course, theatre-going should cost him nothing. Every barrister contrives to know a few journalists, dramatic authors and actors upon whom he may depend for play-orders — especially during the dog-days. The house in which Horace and Emile had taken up their abode was the property of a worthy draper named Pochemolle, who kept a shop on the ground floor, and was accounted somewhat a curiosity in the parish. The curi- osity lay in this, that the Pochemolles, from father to son, had occupied the house where they then lived for upwards of a hundred and seventy years — a fact so rare, so phenomenal indeed, in the annals of Parisian trade, that certain of M. Pochemolle's customers, unable to grasp the BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 131 notion in its entirety, had a sort of confused beiief that it was M. Achille Pocheniolle himself — the Pocheniolle of 1854 — who had flourished a hundred and seventy years on the same premises. Yet M. Achille Pocheniolle was not more than fifty; and he looked by no means older than his age. He was a small, smug-faced, gooseberry-eyed man, quick in his movements, glib with his tongue, and full of the quaint shop- courtesy of eighty years ago, which he had in- herited from his sire and his sire's sire along with their profound veneration for all that con- cerned the crown, the nobility, and the higher clergy. It was worth going a visit to the Rue Ste. Genevieve if only to see M. Pocheniolle bow when he ushered out a customer or showed one in. He still kept to all the musk- scented tradi- tions of the grand siecle. For him a lady, no matter how old and wrinkled, was always a belle dame ; and heaven forbid that he should ever have driven a hard bargain with one of the gentle sex. He used to say, " Voyez, belle dame, cette etofe est faite pour vous embellir" or "Belle 132 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. dame, ce ruban ne pent qu'aj outer a vos graces.'" Ladies liked it, and M. Pochemolle had a fine business connection amongst ancient dowagers and spinsters of the neighbourhood ; not to men- tion two or three nunneries, the sisters of which, pleased to be addressed occasionally in pretty old-world compliments, came to Monsieur P.'s for all that was wanted in the way of linen and drapery for their convents. In politics M. Pochemolle was a valiant con- servative of existing institutions, whatever they were, and, under the circumstances, it might have seemed odd that he should have consented to lodge the sons of a notorious Republican, had it not been for this, that he was under obligations to Manuel Gerold, and frequently acknowledged it with gratitude. As a private first, then as a corporal, and finally as a sergeant in the National Guard, Monsieur P had fired his shot in the three insurrections of July, 1830 ; February, '48 ; and June, '48; fighting each time on the side of order — that is, on the side of Government ; and it was in the last of these battles that, find- BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 133 ing himself under the same flag as Manuel Gerold — who was for a moderate Republic, opposed to a " Red " one — he had been saved from certain death by the latter, who, at the risk of his own life, had caught up Monsieur Poche- molle from under a barricade where he was lying stunned, and carried him away to a place of safety. The honest draper, who set a high price on his own life, thought with wonder and admi- ration of this achievement. He had sworn a lasting gratitude to his preserver, and seemed likely not to forget his oath ; for, when Horace and Emile Gerold came with their father to see whether M. Pochemolle had any lodgings to let, he had gladly given them the best he had, with- out troubling himself about their political opinions. He even went further, for he spread it amongst his own purveyors, grocer, coal-man, and others, that his two new lodgers were young gentlemen " who might be trusted ; " and, on the November after- noon, when the brothers were setting their rooms to rights, he came up to see with his own e}~es whether they had everything they wanted, taking 134 THE MEMBER FOE PARIS. with him as his pretext a letter which the post- man had just brought for Horace Gerold. " Come in," cried the brothers, in answer to the good man's knock, and M. Pochemolle with his letter, his gooseberry eyes, and his excellent tongue ready for half-an-hour's chat, appeared in the doorway. " A letter, gentlemen," he said ; " and I've come to see whether I can be of use to you. Deary me ! but these are fine rooms and improved vastly since you're in them. This is a Brussels carpet, five francs twenty-five centimes the metre : I know it by the tread. Nothing can be better than those crimson curtains, solid cloth of Elbtenf, cost a hundred and fifty francs the pair, I'll warrant me. And that's a portrait of your most respected father over the mantelpiece ? " "Yes," smiled Horace, taking the letter and laying it on the table. " Our father has a great esteem for you, Monsieur Pochemolle." " Not more than I have for him, sir," answered the draper heartily, and, peering into the next room, which was Emile's, he continued : " And BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 135 that, no doubt, is Madame your most venerated mother ? " The picture was one of a fair-haired lady, with tender expressive eyes. The brothers had scarcely known their mother; she had died when they were both children. They nodded and kept silent. " Ha," went on Monsieur Achille, changing the subject with ready tact. " These pictures remind me of two of mine own which I must show you downstairs. One is a print made in 1710 (a hundred and forty-four years ago), the other is more recent — 1780 ; both represent a part of the Rue Ste. Genevieve, and you can see my shop in them, not altered a bit from what it is now, with the name Pochemolle over the doorway and the sign of The Three Crowns. These three crowns, you must know, were the making of our house. Ah, Messieurs, it's a fine story, and you should have heard my grandfather tell it as he had it from his own grandfather, the hero of the tale. Just about as old as you, Monsieur Horace, he was. Then my great-great-grandfather — one day he was walking along the streets, when he sees 136 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. a poor woman, worn away with hunger, and two little children on her arms, make a snatch at the purse of a fine gentleman who was stepping out of a coach, and try to run off with it. The two were so near together — he and the woman — that the servants of the gentleman laid hold of him, thinking it was he that had made the snatch ; the more so as the crazy thing, in her hurry to get away, had tripped up and let go the purse, which was lying at my ancestor's feet. Of course this took him breathless like, and he was just going to say what was what, when, looking at the poor creature who was crouching on the ground shaking all over, and clasping her two babies close to her, he couldn't bear giving her up, and so says he : 'Yes, gentlemen, it's I that took the purse.' " It seems the woman gave him such a look as he never forgot to the day when he was laid in his coffin, and he used to say that it was worth going ten times to the gallows to have eyes look at one as hers did. You see, thieving was no joke then : it meant the gibbet : and it wasn't BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 137 everybody that would have run their necks into a noose for a beggar-woman they didn't know. Well, they dragged him off to prison, locked him up with chains to his legs, they did ; and my grandsire made up his mind that before long they'd have him out on the Place de Greve, and do by him as I daresay he'd seen done by a many a thief and cut-throat. But the gentleman whose purse had been snatched had seen the whole thing and wasn't going to let evil come of it. He allowed the young man to lie in prison a little while, just to see, probably, how long he would hold out; but when he saw that my grandsire wouldn't budge an inch from his story, but stuck firm to it that it was he that had taken the purse, then he spoke out, and one day came to the jail with a King's order for letting the prisoner loose. He was a great nobleman was this gentleman — one of the greatest about Louis the Fourteenth's court ; and when my grandsire came out of prison — it was the Chiitelet ; they're building a theatre over the spot now — he saw this great nobleman, who didn't bare his head to manv, standing hat 188 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. in hand, beside his coach-door. ' Will you do me the honour of riding to Versailles, sir, icith me ? ' he said — ay, he said, ' do me the honour,'' he did — ' I wish to present you to the King.'' And sure enough to Versailles they went both together, side by side, he and the nobleman in the same coach ; and at court the King gave my ancestor his hand to kiss, and the nobles between them subscribed five hundred louis, with which this house and- the shop below were bought. And the purse which was the cause of the whole business, and which contained three crowns when • it was snatched, was presented to my grandsire by the nobleman, along with a diamond ring. They're both under a glass-case in our back parlour now, and I can tell you, gentlemen, we're proud of 'em." "Well you may be," exclaimed Emile Gerold, warmly. " There is not a nobleman could show a more splendid patent of nobility than that purse and the three crowns." " And what became of the woman ? " asked Horace Gerold. BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 139 " Our benefactor took care of her, too. He set her up in a cottage on his country estate, and I believe her sons grew up to be honest peasants. But I don't feel much for her, though;" added M. Pochemolle, sagaciously ; " for, after all, if the nobleman hadn't had his eyes about him when the thing happened, she'd have let my grandsire swing, which would have been a pretty end for a man that had never fingered a penny that wasn't his own, and would as soon have thought of thieving as of committing murder." Whilst speaking M. Pochemolle strode about the rooms, continuing to inspect everything, feel- ing the coverings of chairs and sofas with a professional touch, digging his fists into mattresses and pillows to test their elasticity, and closely scrutinizing the wood of which tables and bureaus were made. " I don't want to be talking only about myself, gentlemen," he said bluffly; "let's talk a little about yourselves : the goings on of an old family a hundred and seventy years ago can't interest you much, though it's civil of you to listen. Hullo, what's this ? " 140 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. In ferreting about, M. Pocheroolle bad come upon some framed pictures standing on tbe floor witb tbeir faces to tbe wall, waiting to be bung up. He took one and turned it to tbe ligbt. It was a print of David's celebrated picture, Le Servient du Jeu de Paume* Poor M. Pocbemolle became suddenly grave. " No, no," said be, shaking bis forefinger before his face and looking reproachfully from one brother to the other. "No, no, no — don't have anything to do with 'em." " With whom?" asked Horace, amused. " With them there," and M. Pocbemolle pointed ruefully to the grand figure of the revo- lutionist, Bailly, standing with hand uplifted in the foreground of the picture. " They're not fit company for gentlemen like you to associate * In 1789, Louis XVI. wishing to throw impediments in the way of the sittings of the States General, who appeared to him to be voting reforms too fast, ordered the Debate Room at Versailles to be closed, under pretence of repairs. The members thereupon adjourned to the Tennis Court, and there swore a solemn oath not to cease from their work until they had drawn up a new Constitution. David's pencil has immortalized this episode. BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 141 with," he went on : "no, they ain't, indeed. And if you'd seen as much of 'em as I have, you'd wash your hands of 'em now and for alto- gether." "Are you speaking of the revolutionists ? " inquired Emile. "Ay, sir, lam." " But come, M. Pochemolle, you were a Republican yourself not so long ago," observed Horace, laughing. " It was in fighting for the Provisional Government that you received the blow on the head which gave our father the opportunity of picking up and making your acquaintance." "Ay, Monsieur, but the blow on the head doesn't prove I was a Republican. When I was a little chap ten years old, no higher than that pair of tongs yonder, I went to the Barriere de Clichy to throw stones at the Cossacks, who were marching into Paris. Throwing stones was the most we could do, for we were too small to fire guns. Sixteen years later, when M. Lafayette and that set were overthrowing Charles X., I went 142 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. out and did my best to prevent them. The National Guard was dissolved then, but I put on my uniform all the same and went to join the Regulars. I stuck to it three days, July 27, 28 and 29, along with the Royal Guards at the Tuileries ; and if the Bourbons were expelled it wasn't for want of fighting on my part. In 1848 came our King Louis Philippe's turn, and I was out again, February 23, 24, 25, never closing an eye once during the three days, and seeing six- and-thirty men of my company shot down by the Faubourgiens. Well, we were beat, as you know ; your respected father and his friends came to power, and there was nothing for it but to rally round them to prevent their being swept away in their turn by the ' Reds.' That's why I fought for them in the three days of June, but it doesn't prove I'm a Republican, for I should do just as much for the Emperor Napoleon if any one were to try and get rid of him." " H'm, then you can boast with your hand on your heart that you have consistently opposed progress of every sort and kind, and are pre- BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 143 pared to do so again," remarked Horace, good- huruouredly, but with a small point of irony. "Ay, sir, I can," answered M. Pochemolle simply, though not without a counter point of irony. " I can, if you think that progress and revo- lution mean the same thing ; but I don't. Let's have order first, say I ; then we'll see about the rest afterwards." " Yet you must have some preference for one form of government over the other," ejaculated Emile, not a little scandalized at this — to him — new way of talking. " Yes, I like anything better than a Republic," responded M. Pochemolle with deliberation. "See, gentlemen, what is it that we tradesmen most want, — peace, isn't it ? — and a good strong govern- ment that '11 let us sell our wares quietly, and keep the ragamuffins from breaking our windows. Well, when your honoured father and his friends were in office, what did we have ? I know they were honest men and meant well ; but honesty's not enough : it's like butter without the bread : the bread's strength, and we want strength too. 144 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. M. Lamartine, M. Louis Blanc, and M. Gerold made us handsome promises, and, I know, did their best to keep them ; but what did it all come to ? Why, in '48, we paid twice more taxes than we'd ever paid before : we were out four days a week quelling riots, and there was no more busi- ness doing than if we'd all been living in famine time. Now under the Emperor I don't say but that the taxes are high ; only we can afford to pay them. Trade's been brisker these three years past, spite of the war and that, than I ever remember it before ; and we don't have any rioting." " Oh, if you look at these questions from the counter point of view," interrupted Emile Gerold, a little contemptuously. " Well, sir, don't we all look at things through our particular set of glasses ? " rejoined the honest draper roundly. "Here are you two gentlemen come to Paris to start as lawyers, and I am bound I shall hear you both make many a fine speech before I've done with you ; but don't you think that what some of you gentlemen are most eager after when BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 145 you stand up to preach for freedom and all that, is the making yourselves popular names, in order that people may flock round you, and pay you well for taking their cases in hand. Leastways that's my experience of a good many hamsters." " There's no harm in wishing to hecome popular," remarked EmiJe energetically. "No, sir; nor in wishing to sell one's goods," replied the draper with a laugh. " Only I'll tell you what's the mistake many of the popular gentlemen make : they ask for a great deal more than we want, and a great deal more than's good for us to have ; then they've another trick, which is to promise a good bit more than they can ever give." " I believe you're trying to paint yourself much blacker than you really are," interposed Horace, smiling. "You can't care for freedom so little as you say, M. Pochemolle. That you should like selling your goods is natural enough, but you are a Frenchman, and must see something else in good government but a mere question of trade profits. Isn't there any satisfaction in being a vol. i. 10 146 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. free man in a free land ? Is there no humiliation in living under a Government which treats us like children, not old enough to think for our- selves ? Why, now, to go no further than your own case, do you find you have lost nothing hy this new state of things ? Formerly you had a parliament which debated and voted freely under public control ; you could hold meetings when- ever you wished to discuss political concerns ; you had a free press ; you elected your own mayors and your own officers in the National Guard ; in a word, you were accounted somebody, and played your part in the State. But now what has become of all your rights ? " " Well, there you put the question in plain terms, and I'll answer you in the same way," replied M. Pochemolle, digging both hands into his pockets, and looking cheerily at the brothers. " A few years ago, as you say, we had all those rights, and what did they profit us? Why, during eighteen mortal years, we had nothing but M. Guizot trying to turn out M. Thiers, and M. Thiers trying to turn out M. Guizot. What BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 147 do you think I cared whether it was M. Guizot or the other who was in ? There wasn't a pin's head to choose between them, so far as real opinions went ; only for this, perhaps, that it was M. Thiers, who talked the fastest about good govern- ment, that gave us the least of it : for 'twas in his time that w T e almost had the war with England, and were taxed seventy millions to pay for Paris fortifications. Then there was the press. Ah ! to be sure, that was free enough : there were a couple of hundred gentlemen who abused each other in the papers every evening, and ran each other through in the Bois de Boulogne of a morning. Very pleasant for those who were journalists, but as I wasn't one, that freedom didn't help me. Next, we had the right to elect our own officers in the National Guard, and do you know what was the result ? why, there wasn't a ten sous' worth of discipline among the whole lot of us. At election-time it used to be a dis- graceful sight to see the officers fawning to the privates, and if one of them was above doing it, or was at all sharp in commanding, why, twenty to 148 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. one voted against him ; so that he had to carry the musket again, after having worn the epaulet. I know what it is : for I don't want to make myself out better than I am : I once voted against my captain, simply because he'd blown me up before company about my rifle, which wasn't pro- perly cleaned; only I'm hanged if I didn't feel a pang when I saw him, after the election, come and take up his stand in the ranks, whilst I had become a corporal. Then there used to be eternal fallings- out between the members of the Guard who were tradesmen and those who were profes- sional, such as doctors, lawyers, retired officers from the army, and the like. These last were for having all the officers elected out of their set ; and we tradesmen, who were in a majority, used to spite them, by electing nothing but our own party. I've seen a grocer, a tailor, and a baker, all officers in one company. I don't say a grocer can't be as brave as another man ; only selling candles behind a counter doesn't prepare one for commanding troops, as we found out fast enough when the Revolution came. Shall I tell you now BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 149 about our free parliament? There were four hundred of 'em in it, and the amount of talking they did was prodigious. They were at it six days a week during seven months out of the year, but I'm blessed if they ever did that for us" (M. Poche- molle snapped his fingers) " besides talking. We wanted new drains for Paris ; they wouldn't give 'em us — said it cost too much. We wanted new streets — same story. We had in the Cite yonder a whole lump of courts and alleys where people could punch one another's heads out of their windows from opposite sides of the street. They bred filth and fever they did, and so swarmed with rascals, that if the police wanted to lay hold of anybody there, they had to go twenty and thirty together. You'd have thought it would have been a mercy to burn the whole place ; but when it came to be a matter of knocking it down and building something new and clean instead, every- body cried, ' Oh, no,' and ' Where's the money to come from ? ' And, I tell you, I was as bad as the rest of 'em, for though I wasn't a member of the House of Deputies, yet when me and a lot 150 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. more of us, who had votes, used to get talking together about municipal business and other things we didn't understand, we were always saying ' No ' to everything. I remember I used to come straight slap out with the ' No ' before I knew what the question was about; it was a habit I'd got into. But at present all that's changed. Our Emperor he says, ' I'm here to rule,' and he does what's good for us : builds new streets and the like without taking counsel of anybody. And quite right too ; for you see, gentlemen, let each man keep to his own walk, say I : I'm a famous good hand at selling cloth, calico, and ribbons, but I understand next to nothing about governing a country, and I don't see what any of you 'ud have to gain by letting me try." Emile gave a shrug, Horace laughed. " Well, that's candid and modest enough, anyhow, M. Pochemolle," he said. " I can't say you've quite convinced me. In any case, I daresay we shan't be the less good friends from thinking differently. " " No, no, that we shan't, sir : we shan't, BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 151 indeed," answered M. Pochemolle. "Only"— and here M. P., relapsing into a serious vein, cast another deprecating look towards the picture of the Revolutionists which he had abandoned on the table during his last harangue — " Only, trust me, gentlemen, and don't have anything to do with them, I've never known it lead to anything but fighting in the streets and imprisonment after- wards. If they were all cut out of the same cloth as j^our respected father, it might be another matter; but they're not. I knew a Eepublican who talked very handsome about the rights of man, and went away without paying my bill." M. Pochemolle was very exhaustive when he got on the subject of his antipathy for revolutionists, and might have adduced numerous other instances of Republican shortcomings, had not a knock at the door interrupted him at this juncture, whilst a feminine voice from without cried — " Papa, you're wanted in the shop." "Ah, that's my little girl, gentlemen," said M. Pochemolle ; and opening the door, he revealed a bright young lady, who looked some seventeen 152 THE MEMBER FOE PARIS. springs old, and was as pretty as clear hazel eyes, thick chestnut curls (young ladies wore curls in '54), red lips, and neat dressing could make her. She reddened slightly at finding herself before two strange messieurs, but was not otherwise shy, for she repeated to her sire what she had already said, and added that it was " maman " who had sent her up to say that Monsieur Macrohe and his daughter were downstairs. She begged the mes- sieurs' pardon for disturbing them. " Come here, Georgette, and let me introduce you to these gentlemen," said M. Pochemolle, with a not unpardonable look of fatherly pride. " Gentlemen, you only saw my wife and my son when you came to take your rooms the other day. Here is my daughter, who was away staying with her aunt then. Georgette, these are the MM. Gerold, sons of Monsieur Gerold, who faced the fire of revolutionary rifles to save your father's life.* Make your best curtsey to them. Gentle- * N.B. — This was not quite historically correct, for the firing had ceased when M. G. picked up M. P., and it is not so sure that the latter would have died even if he had not been picked up at all. But gratitude may be pardoned for exaggerating. BOUEGEOIS POLITICS. 153 men, this is my little Georgette — my pet child." And the worthy man led the young lady forward by the hand. There was the most graceful of bows on the part of Horace Gerold, a not less civil but graver salutation on the part of Emile, and a demure curtsey with more blushing from Mdlle. Georgette. As Frenchmen are never at a loss for compliments, M. Horace, who was always collected in the face of the adverse sex, added a few pretty words, which seemed to please M. Pochemolle. Mdlle. Georgette herself cast her eyes on the ground with an almost imperceptible smile, as if the young man's compli- ments were not the first she had heard in her life. "And now to business," exclaimed the draper. " Monsieur Macrobe and his young lady shan't be kept waiting long, my dear. Ah, gentlemen, you should see Mademoiselle Macrobe — a pearl, as we should have said in my young days, though I wouldn't exchange her for my Georgette ; but she'll marry a duke or a king before she's done, I'd stake twenty bales of cloth on it. Then there's her father, too. Lord bless my soul, what 154 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. a long head ! That's the kind of man to make a deputy of if you like. When he started in life he'd not two brass farthings to rub together, and no profession either, nor trade, nor teaching, so far as I could see ; and yet now — why, he rolls his carriage, and I guess he won't live much longer in this quarter ; he'll be emigrating towards the Champs Elysees or the Chaussee d'Antin : worse luck, for I shall lose a first-rate customer. A rising man, gentlemen, and thinks like me about politics ; ay, it's not in his mouth you'd ever hear a word against the Emperor." Mdlle. Georgette pulled her father's sleeve. " M. Macrobe was in a hurry, father." " Yes, my dear, coming ; it won't do to offend M. Macrobe. Gentlemen, your servant ; and if ever I can serve you, pray do me the honour to command me. Georgette, my pet, make another curtsey to the Messieurs Gerold." And Mademoiselle Georgette did. " Queer card ! " laughed Horace, when the good M. Pochemolle had retreated. " I hope we shall see as little as possible of BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 155 him for the future," answered the younger brother, drily. " I don't like such cynicism." " Oh ! cynicism is a big word," observed Horace. " I don't see anything cynic in the matter. We can't all think alike, you know." Emile, for all his gentleness, was much less tolerant of hostile opinions than his brother. His was the nature out of which enthusiasts are moulded. He answered bitterly, " It's those sort of men who've helped to bring France to her present humiliation, and to send our father into exile. What wonder that there should be despots to treat us Frenchmen like slaves, when they are encouraged to it by such people as this — fellows who are ready to stand up for anybody in power, and to truckle to any government that will fill their tills." " Whew— w— w ! " whistled Horace. " Why look at things so gloomily, brother ? Let's have freedom all round in the community. Think what it would be if everybody professed the same opinions — half the fun of life would be gone. Besides, it seems to me that a man who goes out 156 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. three or four times over, and risks his life for his opinions, however absurd these may be, has a right to be respected. It isn't the same as sticking to one's convictions only so long as they pay you." Emile shook his head, unconvinced ; but the discussion was not prolonged further, for Horace remembered the letter which the draper had brought, and which was lying unopened on the table. He had not looked at the address, but, on taking it, saw that it was in Manuel Gerold's handwriting. " It's from our father," he said, breaking the seal ; and Emile having asked him to read aloud, he read as follows : — " My DEAR BOYS — "Brussels, November, 1854. " I have just received your letters, in- forming me that you were almost installed; and by same post a copy of the Moniteur, with your names amongst those of the new barristers admitted at the opening of the courts. It is a great satis- faction to me to feel that you are now fairly launched, both of you, in a profession where merit and hard work are more surely and liberally BOURGEOIS POLITICS. 157 rewarded than in any other calling you could, have chosen. The Bar will lead you to anything, though your progress must he at first slow; hut you can afford to wait, and you are too sensible not to he aware that the only stable reputations are those which are acquired laboriously, by dint of patience and energy. Had I stayed longer in Paris, I should have introduced you to such few of my friends as still remain there. The number of them is terribly dwindled down, for most of us men of '48 have been scattered to the four winds ; but there is Claude Febvre, one of the leaders of your profession, who Jias always been my firm ally — you icill do well to call upon him. He ivill be sure to receive you kindly, and may be able to help you forward. In the press, Nestor Roche, the Editor of La Sentinelle, is my old and valued friend. You might find him a little rough at first, but there is a heart of gold tender his shagginess. He lives at the office of his paper, Rue Montmartre. I should think it not impro- bable that my bankers, MM. Lecoq and Roder- heim, would wish to show you some civility, and 158 THE MEMBER FOR PARIS. ask you to their parties ; in which case you icoidd perhaps do well to go, for my relations with the firm have always been friendly. I hear that they have just taken a new partner, a man named l\[acrobe. If it is the same Macrobe I knew in 1848, he will he likely to invite you too. He was a curious fellow, idiom I could never quite under- stand. I believe he was a very warm Republican, acted once or twice on my electoral committees, and during the Provisioned Government asked me several times to assist him in getting army and navy contracts. I mention this, because somehow he knew all about our family history, ivho I ivas, and the rest of it. I used to have some trouble in preventing him from trumping up my affairs in public, and paying me compliments. His object seemed to be to make friends with me ; for though I never helped him in his contract-hunting, he always professed to be a great supporter of mine " " Macrobe ! " muttered Horace, breaking off. " Why, that's the name of M. Pochemolle's cus- BOUKGEOIS POLITICS. 159 tomer downstairs. I wonder whether the two are the same." " M. Pocheniolle said his M. Macrobe was a Bonapartist." " H'm, to-day — yes; but he said nothing about six years ago." " If they be the same," remarked Emile, quietly, " M. Macrobe may spare himself the trouble of showing any civilities to me" Horace said nothing, but took up the read- ing where he had left off, and finished the letter : — " . . . . Amongst my other quondam friends, I need not remind you of one whom you fre- quently saw come and visit me in old times: I mean M. Gribaud, ivlw is now Minister of State. You remember the letter he wrote on the morrow of the cowp