Chapter VII: Part 7

[Footnote 52: From Book XLIV of the "History of the Consulate and Empire." Napoleon's army entered Moscow on September 15, 1812, or seven days after the battle of Borodino, "the bloodiest battle of the century," the losses on each side having been about 40,000. Napoleon had crossed the river Niemen in June of this year with an invading army of 400,000 men. When he crossed it again in December, after the burning of Moscow, the French numbered only 20,000, The "Consulate and Empire" has been translated by D. F. Campbell, F. N. Redhead and N. Stapleton.]

The imagination, and the idea of glory, being both excited by this magical spectacle, the soldiers raised one shout of "Moscow! Moscow!" Those who had remained at the foot of the hill hastened to reach the top; for a moment all ranks mingled, and everybody wished to contemplate the great capital, toward which we had made such an adventurous march. One could not have enough of this dazzling spectacle, calculated to awaken so many different feelings. Napoleon arrived in his turn, and, struck with what he saw, he--who, like the oldest soldiers in the army, had successively visited Cairo, Memphis, the Jordan, Milan, Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid--could not help experiencing deep emotion.

Arrived at this summit of his glory, from which he was to descend with such a rapid step toward the abyss, he experienced a sort of intoxication, forgot all the reproaches that his good sense, the only conscience of conquerors, had addrest to him for two months, and for a moment believed still that his enterprise was a great and marvelous one--that to have dared to march from Paris to Smolensk, from Smolensk to Moscow, was a great and happy rashness, justified by the event. Certain of his glory, he still believed in his good fortune, and his lieutenants, as amazed as he, remembering no more their frequent discontents during this campaign, gave vent to those victorious demonstrations in which they had not indulged at the termination of the bloody day of Borodino. This moment of satisfaction, lively and short, was one of the most deeply felt in his life. Alas! it was to be the last!

Murat received the injunction to march quickly, to avoid all disorder. General Durosnel was sent forward to hold communication with the authorities, and lead them to the conqueror's feet, who desired to receive their homage and calm their fears. M. Denniée was charged to go and prepare food and lodging for the army, Murat, galloping at the head of the light cavalry, arrived, at length, across the faubourg of Drogomilow, at the bridge of the Moskowa. There he found a Russian rear-guard, who were retreating, and inquired if there was no officer there who knew French. A young Russian, who spoke our language correctly, presented himself immediately before this king, whom hostile nations knew so well, and asked what he wanted. Murat having exprest a wish to know which was the commander of this rear-guard, the young Russian pointed out an officer with white hair, clothed in a bivouac cloak of long fur. Murat, with his accustomed grace, held out his hand to the old officer, who took it eagerly. Thus national hatred was silenced before valor.

Murat asked the commander of the enemy's rear-guard if they knew him. "Yes," replied the latter, "we have seen enough of you under fire to know you." Murat seeming struck with, the long fur mantle, which looked as if it would be very comfortable for a bivouac, the old officer unfastened it from his shoulders to make him a present of it. Murat, receiving it with as much courtesy as it was offered, took a beautiful watch and presented it to the enemy's officer, who received this present in the same way as his had been accepted. After these acts of courtesy, the Russian rear-guard filed off rapidly to give ground to our vanguard. The King of Naples, followed by his staff and a detachment of cavalry, went down into the streets of Moscow, traversed alternately the poorest and the richest quarters, rows of wooden houses crowded together, and a succession of splendid palaces rising from amidst vast gardens: he found everywhere the most profound silence. It seemed as if they were penetrating into a dead city, whose inhabitants had suddenly disappeared.

The first sight of it, surprizing as it was, did not remind us of our entry into Berlin or Vienna, Nevertheless, the first feeling of terror experienced by the inhabitants might explain this solitude. Suddenly some distracted individuals appeared; they were some French people, belonging to the foreign families settled at Moscow, and asked us in the name of heaven to save them from the robbers who had become masters of the town. They were well received, but we tried in vain to remove their fears. We were conducted to the Kremlin,[53] and had hardly arrived in sight of these old walls than we were exposed to a discharge of shot. It came from bandits let loose on Moscow by the ferocious patriotism of the Count of Rostopchin. These wretched beings had invaded the sacred citadel, had seized the guns in the arsenal, and were firing on the French who came to disturb them after their few hours' reign of anarchy. Several were sabered, and the Kremlin was relieved of their presence. But on making inquiry we learned that the whole population had fled, except a small number of strangers, or of Russians acquainted with the ways of the French and not fearing their presence. This news vexed the leaders of our vanguard, who were flattering themselves that they would see a whole population coming before them, whom they would take pleasure in comforting and filling with surprize and gratitude. They made haste to restore some order to the different quarters of the town, and to pursue the thieves, who thought they should much longer enjoy the prey that the Count of Rostopchin had given up to them.

[Footnote 53: The Kremlin is a fortified enclosure within the city and containing the imperial palace, three cathedrals, a monastery, convent and arsenal. It is surrounded by battlemented walls that date from 1492. Within the palace are rooms of great size, one of them being 68 by 200 feet, with a height of more than 60 feet. Many historic events in the times of Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great, are associated with the Kremlin. Among its treasures are the Great Bell, coronation robes and the thrones of the old Persian Shah and toe last emperor of Constantinople.]

The next morning, September 15, Napoleon made his entry into Moscow, at the head of his invincible legions, but he crossed a deserted town, and for the first time his soldiers, on entering a capital, found none but themselves to be witnesses of their glory. The impression that they experienced was sad. Napoleon, arrived at the Kremlin, hastened to mount the high tower of the great Ivan, and to contemplate from that height his magnificent conquest, across which the Moskowa was slowly pursuing its winding course. Thousands of blackbirds, ravens and crows, as numerous here as the pigeons at Venice, flying around the tops of the palaces and churches, gave a singular aspect to this great city, which contrasted strangely with the brightness of its brilliant colors. A mournful silence, disturbed only by the tramp of cavalry, had taken the place of life in this city, which till the evening before had been one of the most busy in the world. In spite of the sadness of this solitude, Napoleon, on finding Moscow abandoned like the other Russian towns, thought himself happy nevertheless in not finding it burned up, and did not despair of softening little by little the hatred which the presence of his flags had inspired since Vitebsk.

The army hoped, then, to enjoy Moscow, to find peace there, and, in any case, good winter cantonments if the war was prolonged. However, on the morrow after the day on which the entry had been made, columns of flame arose from a very large building which contained the spirits that the government sold on its own account to the people of the capital. People ran there, without astonishment or terror, for they attributed the cause of this partial fire to the nature of the materials contained in this building, or to some imprudence committed by our soldiers. In fact, the fire was mastered, and we had time to reassure ourselves.

But all at once the fire burst out at almost the same instant with extreme violence in a collection of buildings that was called the Bazaar. This bazaar, situated to the northeast of the Kremlin comprized the richest shops, those in which were sold the beautiful stuffs of India and Persia, the rarities of Europe, the colonial commodities, sugar, coffee, tea, and, lastly, precious wines. In a few minutes the fire had spread through the bazaar, and the soldiers of the guard ran in crowds and made the greatest efforts to arrest its progress. Unhappily, they could not succeed, and soon the immense riches of this establishment fell a prey to the flames. Eager to dispute with the fire the possession of these riches, belonging to no one at this time, and to secure them for themselves, our soldiers, not having been able to save them, tried to drag out some fragments.

They might be seen coming out of the bazaar, carrying furs, silks, wines of great value, without any one dreaming of reproaching them for so doing, for they wronged no one but the fire, the sole master of these treasures. One might regret it on the score of discipline, but could not cast a reproach on their honor on that account. Besides, those who remained of the people set them an example, and took their large share of these spoils of the commerce of Moscow. Yet it was only one large building--an extremely rich one, it is true--that was attacked by the fire, and there was no fear for the town itself. These first disasters, of little consequence so far, were attributed to a very natural and very ordinary accident, which might be more easily explained still, in the bustle of evacuating the town.

During the night of the 15th of September the scene suddenly changed. As if every misfortune was to fall at once on the old Muscovite capital, the equinoctial wind arose all at once with the double violence natural to the season and to level countries where nothing stops the storm. This wind, blowing at first from the east, carried the fire westward, along the streets situated between the roads from Tver and Smolensk, and which are known as the richest and most beautiful in Moscow, those of Tverskaia, Nikitskaia, and Povorskaia. In a few hours the fire, having spread fiercely among the wooden buildings, communicated itself from one to another with frightful rapidity. Shooting forth in long tongues of flame, it was seen invading other quarters situated to the west.

Rockets were noticed in the air, and soon wretches were seized carrying combustibles at the end of long poles. They were taken up; they were questioned with threats of death, and they revealed the frightful secret, the order given by the Count of Rostopchin to set fire to the city of Moscow, as if it had been the smallest village on the road from Smolensk. This news spread consternation through the army in an instant. To doubt was no longer possible, after the arrests made, and the depositions collected from different parts of the town. Napoleon ordered that in each quarter the corps fixt there should form military commissions to try, shoot, and hang on gibbets the incendiaries taken in the act. He ordered likewise that they should employ all the troops there were in the town to extinguish the fire. They ran to the pumps, but there were none to be found. This last circumstance would have left no doubt, if there had remained any, of the frightful design that delivered Moscow to the flames....

Napoleon, followed by some of his lieutenants, went out of that Kremlin which the Russian army had not been able to prevent him from entering, but from which the fire expelled him after four-and-twenty hours of possession, descended to the quay of Moskowa, found his horses ready there, and had much difficulty in crossing the town, which toward the northwest, whither he directed his course, was already in flames. The wind, which constantly increased in violence, sometimes caused columns of fire to bend to the ground, and drove before it torrents of sparks, smoke, and stifling cinders. The horrible appearance of the sky answered to the no less horrible spectacle of the earth. The terrified army went out of Moscow. The divisions of Prince Eugene and Marshal Ney, which had entered the evening before, turned back again on the roads of Zwenigorod and Saint Petersburg; those of Marshal Davoust returned by the road of Smolensk, and, except the guard left around the Kremlin to dispute its possession with the flames, our troops retired in haste, struck with horror, before this fire, which, after darting up toward the sky, seemed to bend down again over them as if it wished to devour them. A small number of the inhabitants who had remained in Moscow, and had hidden at first in their houses without daring to come out, now escaped from them, carrying away what was most dear to them--women their children, men their infirm parents.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Born in France in 1799, died in 1850; educated at Tours and
Paris; became a lawyer's clerk; wrote short stories and
novels anonymously and became seriously involved in a
publishing venture; his first novel of merit, "Le Dernier
Chonan ou la Bretagne," published in 1829, "Eugénie Grandet"
in 1833, "Père Goriot" in 1835, "César Birotteau" in 1838;
married in 1850 Madame Hanska of a noble Polish family.

I

THE DEATH OF PÉRE GORIOT[54]

There was something awful and appalling in the sudden apparition of the Countess. She saw the bed of death by the dim light of the single candle, and her tears flowed at the sight of her father's passive features, from which the life has almost ebbed. Bianchon with thoughtful tact left the room.

[Footnote 54: From the concluding chapter of "Old Goriot," as translated by Ellen Marriàge.]

"I could not escape soon enough," she said to Rastignac.

The student bowed sadly in reply. Mme. de Restaud took her father's hand and kissed it.

"Forgive me, father! You used to say that my voice would call you back from the grave; ah! come back for one moment to bless your penitent daughter. Do you hear me? Oh! this is fearful! No one on earth will ever bless me henceforth; every one hates me; no one loves me but you in all the world. My own children will hate me. Take me with you, father; I will love you, I will take care of you. He does not hear me--I am mad--"

She fell on her knees, and gazed wildly at the human wreck before her.

"My cup of misery is full," she said, turning her eyes upon Eugene. "M. de Trailles has fled, leaving enormous debts behind him, and I have found out that he was deceiving me. My husband will never forgive me, and I have left my fortune in his hands. I have lost all my illusions. Alas! I have forsaken the one heart that loved me (she pointed to her father as she spoke), and for whom? I have held his kindness cheap, and slighted his affection; many and many a time I have given him pain, ungrateful wretch that I am!"

"He knew it," said Rastignac.

Just then Goriot's eyelids unclosed; it was only a muscular contraction, but the Countess's sudden start of reviving hope was no less dreadful than the dying eyes.

"Is it possible that he can hear me?" cried the Countess. "No," she answered herself, and sat down beside the bed. As Mme. De Restaud seemed to wish to sit by her father, Eugene went down to take a little food. The boarders were already assembled.

"Well," remarked the painter, as he joined them, "it seems that there is to be a death-drama up-stairs."

"Charles, I think you might find something less painful to joke about," said Eugene.

"So we may not laugh here?" returned the painter. "What harm does it do? Bianchon said that the old man was quite insensible."

"Well, then," said the employé from the Museum, "he will die as he has lived."

"My father is dead!" shrieked the Countess.

The terrible cry brought Sylvie, Rastignac, and Bianchon; Mme. de Restaud had fainted away, When she recovered they carried her down-stairs, and put her into the cab that stood waiting at the door. Eugene sent Therese with her, and bade the maid take the Countess to Mme. de Nucingen.

Bianchon came down to them.

"Yes, he is dead," he said.

"Come, sit down to dinner, gentlemen," said Mme. Vauquer, "or the soup will be cold."

The two students sat down together.

"What is the next thing to be done?" Eugene asked of Bianchon.

"I have closed his eyes and composed his limbs," said Bianchon. "When the certificate has been officially registered at the Mayor's office, we will sew him in his winding-sheet and bury him somewhere. What do you think we ought to do?"

"He will not smell at his bread like this any more," said the painter, mimicking the old man's little trick.

"Oh, hang it all!" cried the tutor, "let old Goriot drop, and let us have something else for a change. He is a standing dish, and we have had him with every sauce this hour or more. It is one of the privileges of the good city of Paris that anybody may be born, or live, or die there without attracting any attention whatsoever. Let us profit by the advantages of civilization. There are fifty or sixty deaths every day; if you have a mind to do it, you can sit down at any time and wail over whole hecatombs of dead in Paris. Old Goriot has gone off the hooks, has he? So much the better for him. If you venerate his memory, keep it to yourselves, and let the rest of us feed in peace."

"Oh, to be sure," said the widow, "it is all the better for him that he is dead. It looks as tho he had had trouble enough, poor soul, while he was alive."

And this was all the funeral oration delivered over him who had been for Eugene the type and embodiment of fatherhood.

When the hearse came, Eugene had the coffin carried into the house again, unscrewed the lid, and reverently laid on the old man's breast the token that recalled the days when Delphine and Anastasie were innocent little maidens, before they began "to think for themselves," as he had moaned out in his agony.

Rastignac and Christophe and the two undertaker's men were the only followers of the funeral. The Church of Saint-Etienne du Mont was only a little distance from the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve. When the coffin had been deposited in a low, dark, little chapel, the law student looked around in vain for Goriot's two daughters or their husbands. Christophe was his only fellow mourner: Christophe, who appeared to think it was his duty to attend the funeral of the man who had put him in the way of such handsome tips. As they waited there in the chapel for the two priests, the chorister, and the beadle, Rastignac grasped Christophe's hand. He could not utter a word just then.

"Yes, Monsieur Eugene," said Christophe, "he was a good and worthy man who never said one word louder than another; he never did any one any harm, and gave nobody any trouble."

The two priests, the chorister, and the beadle came, and said and did as much as could be expected for seventy francs in an age when religion can not afford to say prayers for nothing.

The ecclesiastics chanted a psalm, the _Libera nos_ and the _De profundis_. The whole service lasted about twenty minutes. There was but one mourning coach, which the priest and chorister agreed to share with Eugene and Christophe.

"There is no one else to follow us," remarked the priest, "so we may as well go quickly, and so save time; it is half-past five."

But just as the coffin was put in the hearse, two empty carriages, with the armorial bearings of the Comte de Restaud and the Baron de Nucingen, arrived and followed in the procession to Pere-Lachaise. At six o'clock Goriot's coffin was lowered into the grave, his daughters' servants standing round the while. The ecclesiastic recited the short prayer that the students could afford to pay for, and then both priest and lackeys disappeared at once. The two grave-diggers flung in several spadefuls of earth, and then stopt and asked Rastignac for their fee. Eugene felt in vain in his pocket, and was obliged to borrow five francs of Christophe.

II

BIROTTEAU'S EARLY MARRIED LIFE[55]

"You will have a good husband, my little girl," said M, Pillerault. "He has a warm heart and sentiments of honor. He is as straight as a line, and as good as the child Jesus; he is a king of men, in short."

[Footnote 55: From "The Rise and Fall of César Birotteau," as translated by Ellen Marriàge.]

Constance put away once and for all the dreams of a brilliant future, which, like most shop-girls, she had sometimes indulged. She meant to be a faithful wife and a good mother, and took up this life in accordance with the religious program of the middle classes. After all, her new ideas were much better than the dangerous vanities tempting to a youthful Parisian imagination. Constance's intelligence was a narrow one; she was the typical small tradesman's wife, who always grumbles a little over her work, who refuses a thing at the outset, and is vexed when she is taken at her word; whose restless activity takes all things, from cash-box to kitchen, as its province, and supervises everything, from the weightiest business transaction down to almost invisible darns in the household linen. Such a woman scolds while she loves, and can only conceive ideas of the very simplest; only the small change, as it were; of thought passes current with her; she argues about everything, lives in chronic fear of the unknown, makes constant forecasts, and is always thinking of the future. Her statuesque yet girlish beauty, her engaging looks, her freshness, prevented César from thinking of her shortcomings; and moreover, she made up for them by a woman's sensitive conscientiousness, an excessive thrift, by her fanatical love of work, and genius as a saleswoman.

Constance was just eighteen years old, and the possessor of eleven thousand francs. César, in whom love had developed the most unbounded ambition, bought the perfumery business, and transplanted the Queen of Roses to a handsome shop near the Place Vêndome. He was only twenty-one years of age, married to a beautiful and adored wife, and almost the owner of his establishment, for he had paid three-fourths of the amount. He saw (how should he have seen otherwise?) the future in fair colors, which seemed fairer still as he measured his career from its starting-point.

Roguin (Ragon's notary) drew up the marriage-contract, and gave sage counsels to the young perfumer; he it was who interfered when the latter was about to complete the purchase of the business with the wife's money. "Just keep the money by you, my boy; ready money is sometimes a handy thing in a business," he had said....

During the first year César instructed his wife in all the ins and outs of the perfumery business, which she was admirably quick to grasp; she might have been brought into the world for that sole purpose, so well did she adapt herself to her customers. The result of the stock-taking at the end of the year alarmed the ambitious perfumer. After deducting all expenses, he might perhaps hope, in twenty years' time, to make the modest sum of a hundred thousand francs, the price of his felicity. He determined then and there to find some speedier road to fortune, and by way of a beginning, to be a manufacturer as well as a retailer.

Acting against his wife's counsel, he took the lease of a shed on some building land in the Faubourg du Temple, and painted up thereon, in huge letters, CÉSAR BIROTTEAU'S FACTORY. He enticed a workman from Grasse, and with him began to manufacture several kinds of soap, essences, and eau-de-cologne, on the system of half profits. The partnership only lasted six months, and ended in a loss, which he had to sustain alone; but Birotteau did not lose heart. He meant to obtain a result at any price, if it were only to escape a scolding from his wife; and, indeed, he confest to her afterward that, in those days of despair, his head used to boil like a pot on the fire, and that many a time but for his religious principles he would have thrown himself into the Seine.

One day, deprest by several unsuccessful experiments, he was sauntering home to dinner along the boulevards (the lounger in Paris is a man in despair quite as often as a genuine idler), when a book among a hamperful at six sous apiece caught his attention; his eyes were attracted by the yellow dusty title-page, Abdeker, so it ran, or the Art of Preserving Beauty.

Birotteau took up the work. It claimed to be a translation from the Arabic, but in reality it was a sort of romance written by a physician in the previous century. César happened to stumble upon a passage there which treated of perfumes, and with his back against a tree in the boulevard, he turned the pages over till he reached a foot-note, wherein the learned author discoursed of the nature of the dermis and epidermis. The writer showed conclusively that such and such an unguent or soap often produced an effect exactly opposite to that intended, and the ointment, or the soap, acted as a tonic upon a skin that required a lenitive treatment, or vice versa.

Birotteau saw a fortune in the book, and bought it. Yet, feeling little confidence in his unaided lights, he went to Vauquelin, the celebrated chemist, and in all simplicity asked him how to compose a double cosmetic which should produce the required effect upon the human epidermis in either case. The really learned--men so truly great in this sense that they can never receive in their lifetime all the fame that should reward vast labors like theirs--are almost always helpful and kindly to the poor in intellect. So it was with Vauquelin. He came to the assistance of the perfumer, gave him a formula for a paste to whiten the hands, and allowed him to style himself its inventor. It was this cosmetic that Birotteau called the Superfine Pate des Sultanes. The more thoroughly to accomplish his purpose, he used the recipe for the paste for a wash for the complexion, which he called the Carminative Toilet Lotion....

César Birotteau might be a Royalist, but public opinion at that time was in his favor; and tho he had scarcely a hundred thousand francs beside his business, was looked upon as a very wealthy man. His steady-going ways, his punctuality, his habit of paying ready money for everything, of never discounting bills, while he would take paper to oblige a customer of whom he was sure--all these things, together with his readiness to oblige, had brought him a great reputation. And not only so; he had really made a good deal of money, but the building of his factories had absorbed most of it, and he paid nearly twenty thousand francs a year in rent. The education of their only daughter, whom Constance and César both idolized, had been a heavy expense. Neither the husband nor the wife thought of money where Cesarine's pleasure was concerned, and they had never brought themselves to part with her.

Imagine the delight of the poor peasant parvenu when he heard his charming Cesarine play a sonata by Steibelt or sing a ballad; when he saw her writing French correctly, or making sepia drawings of landscapes, or listened while she read aloud from the Racines, father and son, and explained the beauties of the poetry. What happiness it was for him to live again in this fair, innocent flower, not yet plucked from the parent stem; this angel, over whose growing graces and earliest development they had watched with such passionate tenderness; this only child, incapable of despising her father or of laughing at his want of education, so much was she his little daughter.

When César came to Paris, he had known how to read, write, and cipher, and at that point his education had been arrested. There had been no opportunity in his hard-working life of acquiring new ideas and information beyond the perfumery trade. He had spent his time among folk to whom science and literature were matters of indifference, and whose knowledge was of a limited and special kind; he himself, having no time to spare for loftier studies, became perforce a practical man. He adopted (how should he have done otherwise?) the language, errors, and opinions of the Parisian tradesman who admires Molière, Voltaire, and Rousseau on hearsay, and buys their works, but never opens them; who will have it that the proper way to pronounce "armoire" is "ormoire"; "or" means gold, and "moire" means silk, and women's dresses used almost always to be made of silk, and in their cupboards they locked up silk and gold--therefore, "ormoire" is right and "armoire" is an innovation. Potier, Talma, Mlle. Mars, and other actors and actresses were millionaires ten times over, and did not live like ordinary mortals: the great tragedian lived on raw meat, and Mlle. Mars would have a fricassee of pearls now and then--an idea she had taken from some celebrated Egyptian actress. As to the Emperor, his waistcoat pockets were lined with leather, so that he could take a handful of snuff at a time; he used to ride at full gallop up the staircase of the orangery at Versailles. Authors and artists ended in the workhouse, the natural close to their eccentric careers; they were, every one of them, atheists into the bargain, so that you had to be very careful not to admit anybody of that sort into your house, Joseph Lebas used to advert with horror to the story of his sister-in-law Augustine, who married the artist Sommervieux. Astronomers lived on spiders. These bright examples of the attitude of the bourgeois mind toward philology, the drama, politics, and science will throw light upon its breadth of view and powers of comprehension....

César's wife, who had learned to know her husband's character during the early years of their marriage, led a life of perpetual terror; she represented sound sense and foresight in the partnership; she was doubt, opposition, and fear, while César represented boldness, ambition, activity, the element of chance and undreamed-of good luck. In spite of appearances, the merchant was the weaker vessel, and it was the wife who really had the patience and courage. So it had come to pass that a timid mediocrity, without education, knowledge, or strength of character, a being who could in nowise have succeeded in the world's most slippery places, was taken for a remarkable man, a man of spirit and resolution, thanks to his instinctive uprightness and sense of justice, to the goodness of a truly Christian soul, and love for the one woman who had been his.

ALFRED DE VIGNY

Born in 1799, died in 1863; entered the army in 1815,
becoming a captain in 1823; published a volume of verse in
1822; "Cinq-Mars," his famous historical novel, published in
1826; made translations from Shakespeare and wrote original
historical dramas; admitted to the French Academy in 1845.

RICHELIEU'S WAY WITH HIS MASTER[56]

The latter [Cardinal de Richelieu], attired in all the pomp of a cardinal, leaning upon two young pages, and followed by his captain of the guards and more than five hundred gentlemen attached to his house, advanced toward the King slowly and stopping at each step, as if forcibly arrested by his sufferings, but in reality to observe the faces before him. A glance sufficed.

[Footnote 56: From "Cinq-Mars; or the Conspiracy Under Louis XIII." Translated by William C. Hazlitt. The Marquis de Cinq-Mars was a favorite of Louis XIII, grand-master of the wardrobe and the horse, and aspired to a seat in the royal council and to the hand of Maria de Gonzaga, Princess of Mantua. Having been refused by Richelieu a place in the council, he formed a conspiracy against the cardinal and entered into a treasonable correspondence with Spain. The conspiracy being discovered, he was beheaded at Lyons in 1642. Bulwer's popular play "Richelieu," tho founded on this episode, diverges radically in several details.]

His suite remained at the entrance of the royal tent; of all those within it not one was bold enough to salute him, or to look toward him. Even La Vallette feigned to be deeply occupied in a conversation with Montresor; and the King, who desired to give him an unfavorable reception, greeted him lightly and continued a conversation aside in a low voice with the Duc de Beaufort.

The cardinal was therefore forced, after the first salute, to stop and pass to the side of the crowd of courtiers, as tho he wished to mix with them, but in reality to test them more closely; they all recoiled as at the sight of a leper. Fabert alone advanced toward him with the frank and blunt air habitual with him, and making use of the terms belonging to his profession, said:

"Well, my Lord, you make a breach in the midst of them like a cannon-ball; I ask pardon in their name."

"And you stand firm before me as before the enemy," said the cardinal; "you will have no cause to regret it in the end, my dear Fabert."

Mazarin also approached the cardinal, but with caution, and giving to his flexible features an expression of profound sadness, made him five or six very low bows, turning his back to the group gathered round the King, so that in the latter quarter they might be taken for those cold and hasty salutations which are made to a person one desires to be rid of, and, on the part of the Duc, for tokens of respect blended with a discreet and silent sorrow.

The minister, ever calm, smiled in disdain; and assuming that firm look and that air of grandeur which he wore so perfectly in the hour of danger, he again leaned upon his pages, and without waiting for a word or glance from his sovereign, he suddenly resolved upon his line of conduct, and walked directly toward him, traversing the whole length of the tent. No one had lost sight of him, altho affecting not to observe him. Every one now became silent, even those who were talking to the King; all the courtiers bent forward to see and to hear.

Louis XIII turned round in astonishment, and all presence of mind totally failing him, remained motionless, and waited with an icy glance--his sole force, but a _vis inertiæ_ very effectual in a prince.

The cardinal, on coming close to the prince, did not bow; and without changing his position, his eyes lowered and his hands placed on the shoulders of the two boys half-bending, he said:

"Sire, I come to implore your Majesty at length to grant me the retirement for which I have long sighed. My health is failing; I feel that my life will soon be ended. Eternity approaches me, and before rendering an account to the eternal King, I would render one to my temporal sovereign. It is eighteen years, Sire, since you placed in my hands a weak and divided kingdom; I return it to you united and powerful. Your enemies are overthrown and humiliated. My work is accomplished. I ask your Majesty's permission to retire to Citeaux, of which I am abbot, and where I may end my days in prayer and meditation."

The King, irritated with some haughty expressions in this address, showed none of the signs of weakness which the cardinal had expected, and which he had always seen in him when he had threatened to resign the management of affairs. On the contrary, feeling that he had the eyes of the whole court upon him, Louis looked upon him with the air of a king, and coldly replied:

"We thank you, then, for your services, M. le Cardinal, and wish you the repose you desire."

Richelieu was deeply angered, but no indication of his rage appeared upon his countenance. "Such was the coldness with which you left Montmorency to die," he said to himself; "but you shall not escape me thus." He then continued aloud, bowing at the same time:

"The only recompense I ask for my services is that your Majesty will deign to accept from me, as a gift, the Palais-Cardinal I have already erected at my own cost in Paris."

The King, astonished, bowed in token of assent. A murmur of surprize for a moment agitated the attentive court.

"I also petition your Majesty to grant me the revocation of an act of rigor, which I solicited (I publicly confess it), and which I perhaps regarded as too beneficial to the repose of the state. Yes, when I was of this world, I was too forgetful of my old sentiments of personal respect and attachment, in my eagerness for the public welfare; now that I already enjoy the enlightenment of solitude, I see that I have been wrong, and I repent."

The attention of the spectators was redoubled, and the uneasiness of the King became visible.

"Yes, there is one person, Sire, whom I have always loved, despite her wrongs toward you, and the banishment which the affairs of the kingdom forced me to procure for her; a person to whom I have owed much, and who should be very dear to you, notwithstanding her armed attempts against you; a person, in a word, whom I implore you to recall from exile--the Queen Marie de Medicis, your mother."

The King sent forth an involuntary exclamation, so far was he from expecting to hear that name. A represt agitation suddenly appeared upon every face. All awaited in silence the King's reply. Louis XIII looked for a long time at his old minister without speaking, and this look decided the fate of France; in that instant he called to mind all the indefatigable services of Richelieu, his unbounded devotion, his wonderful capacity, and was surprized at himself for having wished to part with him. He felt deeply affected at this request, which hunted out, as it were, the exact cause of his anger at the bottom of his heart, rooted it up, and took from his hands the only weapon he had against his old servant; filial love brought the words of pardon to his lips and tears into his eyes. Delighted to grant what he desired most of all things in the world, he extended his hand to the Duc with all the nobleness and kindliness of a Bourbon. The cardinal bowed, and respectfully kissed it; and his heart, which should have burst with remorse, only swelled in the joy of a haughty triumph.

The prince, much moved, abandoning his hand to him, turned gracefully toward his court and said with a tremulous voice:

"We often deceive ourselves, gentlemen, and especially in our knowledge of so great a politician as this; I hope he will never leave us, since his heart is as good as his head."

Cardinal de la Vallette on the instant seized the arm of the King's mantle, and kissed it with all the ardor of a lover, and the young Mazarin did much the same with Richelieu himself, assuming with admirable Italian suppleness an expression radiant with joyful emotion. Two streams of flatterers hastened, one toward the King, the other toward the minister; the former group, not less adroit than the second, altho less direct, addrest to the prince thanks which could be heard by the minister, and burned at the feet of the one incense which was destined for the other. As for Richelieu, bestowing a bow on the right and a smile on the left, he stept forward, and stood on the right hand of the King, as his natural place.

VICTOR HUGO

Born in 1802, died in 1885; his childhood spent partly in
Corsica, Italy and Spain, his father an officer in
Napoleon's army; educated at home by a priest and at a
school in Paris; published in 1816 his first tragedy,
"Irtamème," followed by other plays and poems; his most
notable work down to 1859 being "La Legende"; his writings
extremely numerous, other titles being "L'Art d'être
Grand-Père" 1877, "Notre Dame de Paris" 1831, "Napoleon le
Petit" 1852, "Les Misérables" 1862, "Les Travailleurs de la
Mer" 1866, "L'Homme Qui Rit" 1869, "Quatrevingt-treize"
1874, "History of a Crime" 1877; elected to the French
Academy in 1841; exiled from France in 1851, living first in
Belgium, then in Jersey and Guernsey; returned to France
after the fall of the Empire in 1870; elected a life member
of the Senate in 1876.

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO[57]

The battle of Waterloo is an enigma as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports: the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius contending with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from a certain bedazzlement in which they grope about. It was a flashing day, in truth the overthrow of the military monarchy which, to the great stupor of the kings, has dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall of strength and the rout of war.

[Footnote 57: Chapter XV of "Cosette," in "Les Misérables." Translation of Lascelles Wraxall.]

In this event, which bears the stamp of superhuman necessity, men play but a small part; but if we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blucher, does that deprive England and Germany of anything? No. Neither illustrious England nor august Germany is in question in the problem of Waterloo, for, thank heaven! nations are great without the mournful achievements of the sword. Neither Germany, nor England, nor France is held in a scabbard; at this day when Waterloo is only a clash of sabers, Germany has Goethe above Blucher, and England Byron above Wellington. A mighty dawn of ideas is peculiar to our age; and in this dawn England and Germany have their own magnificent flash. They are majestic because they think; the high level they bring to civilization is intrinsic to them; it comes from themselves, and not from an accident. Any aggrandizement the nineteenth century may have can not boast of Waterloo as its fountainhead; for only barbarous nations grow suddenly after a victory--it is the transient vanity of torrents swollen by a storm. Civilized nations, especially at the present day, are not elevated or debased by the good or evil fortune of a captain, and their specific weight in the human family results from something more than a battle. Their honor, dignity, enlightenment, and genius are not numbers which those gamblers, heroes, and conquerors can stake in the lottery of battles. Very often a battle lost is progress gained, and less of glory, more of liberty. The drummer is silent and reason speaks; it is the game of who loses wins. Let us, then, speak of Waterloo coldly from both sides, and render to chance the things that belong to chance, and to God what is God's. What is Waterloo--a victory? No; a quine in the lottery, won by Europe, and paid by France; it was hardly worth while erecting a lion for it.

Waterloo, by the way, is the strangest encounter recorded in history; Napoleon and Wellington are not enemies, but contraries. Never did God, who delights in antitheses, produce a more striking contrast, or a more extraordinary confrontation. On one side precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, a retreat assured, reserves prepared, an obstinate coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy profiting by the ground, tactics balancing battalions, carnage measured by a plumb-line, war regulated watch in hand, nothing left voluntarily to accident, old classic courage and absolute correctness. On the other side we have intuition, divination, military strangeness, superhuman instinct, a flashing glance; something that gazes like the eagle and strikes like lightning, all the mysteries of a profound mind, association with destiny; the river, the plain, the forest, and the hill summoned, and, to some extent, compelled to obey, the despot going so far as even to tyrannize over the battle-field; faith in a star, blended with strategic science, heightening, but troubling it. Wellington was the Barême of war, Napoleon was its Michelangelo, and this true genius was conquered by calculation. On both sides somebody was expected; and it was the exact calculator who succeeded. Napoleon waited for Grouchy, who did not come; Wellington waited for Blucher, and he came.

Wellington is the classical war taking its revenge; Bonaparte, in his dawn, had met it in Italy, and superbly defeated it--the old owl fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only overthrown, but scandalized. Who was this Corsican of six-and-twenty years of age? What meant this splendid ignoramus, who, having everything against him, nothing for him, without provisions, ammunition, guns, shoes, almost without an army, with a handful of men against masses, dashed at allied Europe, and absurdly gained impossible victories? Who was this new comet of war who possest the effrontery of a planet? The academic military school excommunicated him, while bolting, and hence arose an implacable rancor of the old Cæsarism against the new, of the old saber against the flashing sword, and of the chessboard against genius. On June 18th, 1815, this rancor got the best; and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Marengo, and Arcola, it wrote--Waterloo. It was a triumph of mediocrity, sweet to majorities, and destiny consented to this irony. In his decline, Napoleon found a young Suvarov before him--in fact, it is only necessary to blanch Wellington's hair in order to have a Suvarov. Waterloo is a battle of the first class, gained by a captain of the second.

What must be admired in the battle of Waterloo is England, the English firmness, the English resolution, the English blood, and what England had really superb in it, is (without offense) herself; it is not her captain, but her army. Wellington, strangely ungrateful, declares in his dispatch to Lord Bathurst that his army, the one which fought on June 18th, 1815, was a "detestable army." What does the gloomy pile of bones buried in the trenches of Waterloo think of this? England has been too modest to herself in her treatment of Wellington, for making him so great is making herself small. Wellington is merely a hero, like any other man. The Scotch Grays, the Life Guards, Maitland and Mitchell's regiments, Pack and Kempt's infantry, Ponsonby and Somerset's cavalry, the Highlanders playing the bagpipes under the shower of canister, Ryland's battalions, the fresh recruits who could hardly manage a musket, and yet held their ground against the old bands of Essling and Rivoli--all this is grand. Wellington was tenacious; that was his merit, and we do not deny it to him, but the lowest of his privates and his troopers was quite as solid as he, and the iron soldier is as good as the iron duke. For our part, all our glorification is offered to the English soldier, the English army, the English nation; and if there must be a trophy, it is to England that this trophy is owing. The Waterloo column would be more just, if, instead of the figure of a man, it raised to the clouds the statue of a people.

But this great England will be irritated by what we are writing here; for she still has feudal illusions, after her 1688 and the French 1789. This people believes in inheritance and hierarchy, and while no other excels it in power and glory, it esteems itself as a nation and not as a people. As a people, it readily subordinates itself, and takes a lord as its head; the workman lets himself be despised; the soldier puts up with flogging, It will be remembered that, at the battle of Inkerman, a sergeant who, as it appears, saved the British army, could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, because the military hierarchy does not allow any hero below the rank of officer to be mentioned in dispatches. What we admire before all, in an encounter like Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of chance. The night raid, the wall of Hougomont, the hollow way of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bulow's guide enlightening him--all this cataclysm is marvelously managed.

Altogether, we will assert, there is more of a massacre than of a battle in Waterloo. Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one which had the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon's three-quarters of a league. Wellington's half a league, and seventy-two thousand combatants on either side. From this density came the carnage. The following calculation has been made and proportion established: loss of men, at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent.; Russian, thirty per cent.; Austrian, forty-four per cent.: at Wagram, French, thirteen per cent.; Austrian, fourteen per cent.: at Moscow, French, thirty-seven per cent.; Russian, forty-four per cent.: at Bautzen, French, thirteen per cent.; Russian and Prussian, fourteen per cent.: at Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent.; allies, thirty-one per cent.--total for Waterloo, forty-one per cent., or out of one hundred and forty-four thousand fighting men, sixty thousand killed.

The field of Waterloo has at the present day that calmness which belongs to the earth, and resembles all plains; but at night, a sort of visionary mist rises from it, and if any traveler walk about it, and listen and dream, like Virgil on the mournful plain of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe seizes upon him. The frightful June 18th lives again, the false monumental hill is leveled, the wondrous lion is dissipated, the battle-field resumes its reality, lines of infantry undulate on the plain; furious galloping crosses the horizon; the startled dreamer sees the flash of sabers, the sparkle of bayonets, the red light of shells, the monstrous collision of thunderbolts; he hears, like a death groan from the tomb, the vague clamor of the fantom battle. These shadows are grenadiers; these flashes are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon; this skeleton is Wellington; all this is nonexistent, and yet still combats, and the ravines are stained purple, and the trees rustle, and there is fury even in the clouds and in the darkness, while all the stern heights, Mont St. Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit, seem confusedly crowned by hosts of specters exterminating one another.

II

THE BEGINNINGS AND EXPANSIONS OF PARIS[58]

The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago, the Paris of the fifteenth century, was already a gigantic city. We modern Parisians in general are much mistaken in regard to the ground which we imagine it has gained. Since the time of Louis XI Paris has not increased above one-third; and certes it has lost much more in beauty than it has acquired in magnitude.

[Footnote 58: From Book III, Chapter II, of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." From an anonymous, non-copyright translation published by A. L. Burt Company.]

The infant Paris was born, as everybody knows, in that ancient island in the shape of a cradle, which is now called the City. The banks of that island were its first enclosure; the Seine was its first ditch. For several centuries Paris was confined to the island, having two bridges, the one on the north, the other on the south, the two _têtes-de-ponts_, which were at once its gates and its fortresses--the Grand Chatelet on the right bank and the Petit Chatelet on the left. In process of time, under the kings of the first dynasty, finding herself straitened in her island and unable to turn herself about, she crossed the water. A first enclosure of walls and towers then began to encroach upon either bank of the Seine beyond the two Chatelets. Of this ancient enclosure some vestiges were still remaining in the past century; nothing is now left of it but the memory and here and there a tradition. By degrees the flood of houses, always propelled from the heart to the extremities, wore away and overflowed this enclosure.