Читать книгу Maurice Tiernay, Soldier of Fortune - Lever Charles James - Страница 11

If the worthy reader would wish to fancy the happiest of all youthful beings, let him imagine what I must have been, as, mounted upon Aleppo, a present from my godfather, with a purse of six shining louis in my pocket, and a letter to my colonel, I set forth for Metz. I had breakfasted with Colonel Mahon, who, amid much good advice for my future guidance, gave me, half slyly, to understand that the days of Jacobinism had almost run their course, and that a reactionary movement had already set in. The Republic, he added, was as strong, perhaps stronger, than ever, but that men had grown weary of mob tyranny, and were, day by day, reverting to the old loyalty, in respect for whatever pretended to culture, good-breeding, and superior intelligence. ‘As, in a shipwreck, the crew instinctively turn for counsel and direction to the officers, you will see that France will, notwithstanding all the libertinism of our age, place her confidence in the men who have been the tried and worthy servants of former governments. So far, then, from suffering on account of your gentle blood, Maurice, the time is not distant when it will do you good service, and when every association that links you with family and fortune will be deemed an additional guarantee of your good conduct. I mention these things,’ continued he, ‘because your colonel is what they call a “Grosbleu “ – that is, a coarse-minded, inveterate republican, detesting aristocracy and all that belongs to it. Take care, therefore, to give him no just cause for discontent, but be just as steady in maintaining your position as the descendant of a noble house, who has not forgotten what were once the privileges of his rank. Write to me frequently and freely, and I’ll take care that you want for nothing, so far as my small means go, to sustain whatever grade you occupy. Your own conduct shall decide whether I ever desire to have any other inheritor than the son of my oldest friend in the world.’

Such were his last words to me as I set forth, in company with a large party, consisting for the most part of under-officers and employés attached to the medical staff of the army. It was a very joyous and merry fraternity, and, consisting of ingredients drawn from different pursuits and arms of the service, infinitely amusing from contrast of character and habits. My chief associate amongst them was a young sous-lieutenant of dragoons, whose age, scarcely much above my own, joined to a joyous, reckless temperament, soon pointed him out as the character to suit me; his name was Eugène Santron. In appearance he was slightly formed, and somewhat undersized, but with handsome features, their animation rendered sparkling by two of the wickedest black eyes that ever glistened and glittered in a human head. I soon saw that, under the mask of affected fraternity and equality, he nourished the most profound contempt for the greater number of associates, who, in truth, were, however braves gens, the very roughest and least-polished specimens of the polite nation. In all his intercourse with them, Eugène affected the easiest tone of camaraderie and equality, never assuming in the slightest, nor making any pretensions to the least superiority on the score of position or acquirements, but on the whole consoling himself, as it were, by ‘playing them off’ in their several eccentricities, and rendering every trait of their vulgarity and ignorance tributary to his own amusement. Partly from seeing that he made me an exception to this practice, and partly from his perceiving the amusement it afforded me, we drew closer towards each other, and before many days elapsed, had become sworn friends.

There is probably no feature of character so very attractive to a young man as frankness. The most artful of all flatteries is that which addresses itself by candour, and seems at once to select, as it were by intuition, the object most suited for a confidence. Santron carried me by a coup de main of this kind, as, taking my arm one evening as I was strolling along the banks of the Moselle, he said —

‘My dear Maurice, it’s very easy to see that the society of our excellent friends yonder is just as distasteful to you as to me. One cannot always be satisfied laughing at their solecisms in breeding and propriety. One grows weary at last of ridiculing their thousand absurdities; and then there comes the terrible retribution in the reflection of what the devil brought me into such company? a question that, however easily answered, grows more and more intolerable the oftener it is asked. To be sure, in my case there was little choice in the matter, for I was not in any way the arbiter of my own fortune. I saw myself converted from a royal page to a printer’s devil by a kind old fellow, who saved my life by smearing my face with ink, and covering my scarlet uniform with a filthy blouse; and since that day I have taken the hint, and often found the lesson a good one – the dirtier the safer!

‘We were of the old nobility of France, but as the name of our family was the cause of its extinction, I took care to change it. I see you don’t clearly comprehend me, and so I’ll explain myself better. My father lived unmolested during the earlier days of the Revolution, and might so have continued to the end, if a detachment of the Garde Républicaine had not been despatched to our neighbourhood of Saarlouis, where it was supposed some lurking regard for royalty yet lingered. These fellows neither knew nor cared for the ancient noblesse of the country, and one evening a patrol of them stopped my father as he was taking his evening walk along the ramparts. He would scarcely deign to notice the insolent ‘Qui va là? of the sentry, a summons he at least thought superfluous in a town which had known his ancestry for eight or nine generations. At the repetition of the cry, accompanied by something that sounded ominous, in the sharp click of a gun-lock, he replied haughtily, “Je suis le Marquis de Saint-Trône.”

‘"There are no more marquises in France!” was the savage answer.

‘My father smiled contemptuously, and briefly said “Saint-Trône.”

‘"We have no saints either,” cried another.

‘"Be it so, my friend,” said he, with mingled pity and disgust. “I suppose some designation may at least be left to me, and that I may call myself Trône.”

‘"We are done with thrones long ago,” shouted they in chorus, “and we ‘ll finish you also.”

‘Ay, and they kept their word, too. They shot him that same evening, on very little other charge than his own name! If I have retained the old sound of my name, I have given it a more plebeian spelling, which is, perhaps, just as much of an alteration as any man need submit to for a period that will pass away so soon.’

‘How so, Eugène? you fancy the Republic will not endure in France. What, then, can replace it?’

‘Anything, everything; for the future all is possible. We have annihilated legitimacy, it is true, just as the Indians destroy a forest, by burning the trees; but the roots remain; and if the soil is incapable of sending up the giant stems as before, it is equally unable to furnish a new and different culture. Monarchy is just as firmly rooted in a Frenchman’s heart, but he will have neither patience for its tedious growth, nor can he submit to restore what has cost him so dearly to destroy. The consequences will, therefore, be a long and continued struggle between parties, each imposing upon the nation the form, of government that pleases it in turn. Meanwhile you and I, and others like us, must serve whatever is uppermost – the cleverest fellow he who sees the coming change, and prepares to take advantage of it.’

‘Then you are a Royalist?’ asked I.

‘A Royalist! What! stand by a monarch who deserted his aristocracy, and forgot his own order; defend a throne that he had reduced to the condition of a fauteuil de Bourgeois?’

‘You are then for the Republic?’

‘For what robbed me of my inheritance – what degraded me from my rank, and reduced me to a state below that of my own vassals! Is this a cause to uphold?’

‘You are satisfied with military glory, perhaps,’ said I, scarcely knowing what form of faith to attribute to him.

‘In an army where my superiors are the very dregs of the people; where the canaille have the command, and the chivalry of France is represented by a sans-culotte!’

‘The cause of the Church – ’

A hurst of ribald laughter cut me short, and laying his hand on my shoulder he looked me full in the face; while with a struggle to recover his gravity, he said —

‘I hope, my dear Maurice, you are not serious, and that you do not mean this for earnest. Why, my dear boy, don’t you talk of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Delphic Oracle of Alchemy, Astrology – of anything, in short, of which the world, having amused itself, has at length grown weary? Can’t you see that the Church has passed away, and these good priests have gone the same road as their predecessors? Is any acuteness wanting to show that there is an end of this superstition that has enthralled men’s minds for a couple of thousand years? No, no, their game is up, and for ever. These pious men, who despised this world, and yet had no other hold upon the minds of others than by the very craft and subtlety that world taught them – these heavenly souls, whose whole machinations revolved about earthy objects and the successes of this grovelling planet! Fight for them! No, parbleu! we owe them but little love or affection. Their whole aim in life has been to disgust one with whatever is enjoyable, and the best boon they have conferred upon humanity, that bright thought of locking up the softest eyes and fairest cheeks of France in cloisters and nunneries! I can forgive our glorious Revolution much of its wrong when I think of the Prêtre; not but that they could have knocked down the church without suffering the ruins to crush the château!’

Such, in brief, were the opinions my companion held, and of which I was accustomed to hear specimens every day; at first, with displeasure and repugnance; later on, with more of toleration; and at last, with a sense of amusement at the singularity of the notions, or the dexterity with which he defended them. The poison of his doctrines was the more insidious, because it was mingled with a certain dash of good-nature, and a reckless, careless easiness of disposition always attractive to very young men. His reputation for courage, of which he had given signal proofs, elevated him in my esteem; and, ere long, all my misgivings about him, in regard of certain blemishes, gave way before my admiration of his heroic bearing and a readiness to confront peril, wherever to be found.

I had made him the confidant of my own history, of which I told him everything, save the passages which related to the Père Michel. These I either entirely glossed over, or touched so lightly as to render unimportant – a dread of ridicule restraining me from any mention of those earlier scenes of my life, which were alone of all those I should have avowed with pride. Perhaps it was from mere accident – perhaps some secret shame to conceal my forlorn and destitute condition may have had its share in the motive; but, for some cause or other, I gave him to understand that my acquaintance with Colonel Mahon had dated back to a much earlier period than a few days before, and, the impression once made, a sense of false shame led me to support it.

‘Mahon can be a good friend to you,’ said Eugène; ‘he stands well with all parties. The Convention trust him, the sans-culottes are afraid of him, and the few men of family whom the guillotine has left look up to him as one of their stanchest adherents. Depend upon it, therefore, your promotion is safe enough, even if there were not a field open for every man who seeks the path to eminence. The great point, however, is to get service with the army of Italy. These campaigns here are as barren and profitless as the soil they are fought over; but, in the south, Maurice, in the land of dark eyes and tresses, under the blue skies, or beneath the trellised vines, there are rewards of victory more glorious than a grateful country, as they call it, ever bestowed. Never forget, my boy, that you or I have no cause! It is to us a matter of indifference what party triumphs, or who is uppermost. The Government may change to-morrow, and the day after, and so on for a month long, and yet we remain just as we were. Monarchy, Commonwealth, Democracy – what you will – may rule the hour, but the sous-lieutenant is but the servant who changes his master. Now, in revenge for all this, we have one compensation, which is, to “live for the day” – to make the most of that brief hour of sunshine granted us, and to taste of every pleasure, to mingle in every dissipation, and enjoy every excitement that we can. This is my philosophy, Maurice, and just try it.’

Such was the companion with whom chance threw me in contact, and I grieve to think how rapidly his influence gained the mastery over me.