第40章 ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS(5)
"Besides dissipation and gallantry, our friend had one other vast and absorbing occupation--politics, namely; in which he was as turbulent and enthusiastic as in pleasure.La Patrie was his idol, his heaven, his nightmare; by day he spouted, by night he dreamed, of his country.I have spoken to you of his coiffure a la Sylla;need I mention his pipe, his meerschaum pipe, of which General Foy's head was the bowl; his handkerchief with the Charte printed thereon; and his celebrated tricolor braces, which kept the rallying sign of his country ever close to his heart? Besides these outward and visible signs of sedition, he had inward and secret plans of revolution: he belonged to clubs, frequented associations, read the Constitutionnel (Liberals, in those days, swore by the Constitutionnel), harangued peers and deputies who had deserved well of their country; and if death happened to fall on such, and the Constitutionnel declared their merit, Harmodius was the very first to attend their obsequies, or to set his shoulder to their coffins.
"Such were his tastes and passions: his antipathies were not less lively.He detested three things: a Jesuit, a gendarme, and a claqueur at a theatre.At this period, missionaries were rife about Paris, and endeavored to re-illume the zeal of the faithful by public preachings in the churches.'Infames jesuites!' would Harmodius exclaim, who, in the excess of his toleration, tolerated nothing; and, at the head of a band of philosophers like himself, would attend with scrupulous exactitude the meetings of the reverend gentlemen.But, instead of a contrite heart, Harmodius only brought the abomination of desolation into their sanctuary.Aperpetual fire of fulminating balls would bang from under the feet of the faithful; odors of impure assafoetida would mingle with the fumes of the incense; and wicked drinking choruses would rise up along with the holy canticles, in hideous dissonance, reminding one of the old orgies under the reign of the Abbot of Unreason.
"His hatred of the gendarmes was equally ferocious: and as for the claqueurs, woe be to them when Harmodius was in the pit! They knew him, and trembled before him, like the earth before Alexander; and his famous war-cry, 'La Carte au chapeau!' was so much dreaded, that the 'entrepreneurs de succes dramatiques' demanded twice as much to do the Odeon Theatre (which we students and Harmodius frequented), as to applaud at any other place of amusement: and, indeed, their double pay was hardly gained; Harmodius taking care that they should earn the most of it under the benches."This passage, with which we have taken some liberties, will give the reader a more lively idea of the reckless, jovial, turbulent Paris student, than any with which a foreigner could furnish him:
the grisette is his heroine; and dear old Beranger, the cynic-epicurean, has celebrated him and her in the most delightful verses in the world.Of these we may have occasion to say a word or two anon.Meanwhile let us follow Monsieur de Bernard in his amusing descriptions of his countrymen somewhat farther; and, having seen how Dambergeac was a ferocious republican, being a bachelor, let us see how age, sense, and a little government pay--the great agent of conversions in France--nay, in England--has reduced him to be a pompous, quiet, loyal supporter of the juste milieu: his former portrait was that of the student, the present will stand for an admirable lively likeness of THE SOUS-PREFET.
"Saying that I would wait for Dambergeac in his own study, I was introduced into that apartment, and saw around me the usual furniture of a man in his station.There was, in the middle of the room, a large bureau, surrounded by orthodox arm-chairs; and there were many shelves with boxes duly ticketed; there were a number of maps, and among them a great one of the department over which Dambergeac ruled; and facing the windows, on a wooden pedestal, stood a plaster-cast of the 'Roi des Francais.' Recollecting my friend's former republicanism, I smiled at this piece of furniture;but before I had time to carry my observations any farther, a heavy rolling sound of carriage-wheels, that caused the windows to rattle and seemed to shake the whole edifice of the sub-prefecture, called my attention to the court without.Its iron gates were flung open, and in rolled, with a great deal of din, a chariot escorted by a brace of gendarmes, sword in hand.A tall gentleman, with a cocked-hat and feathers, wearing a blue and silver uniform coat, descended from the vehicle; and having, with much grave condescension, saluted his escort, mounted the stair.A moment afterwards the door of the study was opened, and I embraced my friend.
"After the first warmth and salutations, we began to examine each other with an equal curiosity, for eight years had elapsed since we had last met.
"'You are grown very thin and pale,' said Harmodius, after a moment.
"'In revenge I find you fat and rosy: if I am a walking satire on celibacy,--you, at least, are a living panegyric on marriage.'
"In fact a great change, and such an one as many people would call a change for the better, had taken place in my friend: he had grown fat, and announced a decided disposition to become what French people call a bel homme: that is, a very fat one.His complexion, bronzed before, was now clear white and red: there were no more political allusions in his hair, which was, on the contrary, neatly frizzed, and brushed over the forehead, shell-shape.This head-dress, joined to a thin pair of whiskers, cut crescent-wise from the ear to the nose, gave my friend a regular bourgeois physiognomy, wax-doll-like: he looked a great deal too well; and, added to this, the solemnity of his prefectural costume, gave his whole appearance a pompous well-fed look that by no means pleased.