Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 by Various

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I listened, without daring to lift my eyes; he rambled on--"Fortunate
fellow, the Marquis--fortunate in every thing but that intolerable
physiognomy of his--Grand Ecuyer, Gold Key, Cross of Saint Louis, and on
the point of being the husband of the finest woman between Calais and
Constantinople. Of course, you intend to leave your card on the marriage?"

"No," was my answer. I suppose that there was something in the sound which
struck him. He stared with palpable wonder.

"What! are you not an old acquaintance? Have you not known her this month?
Have you not walked, and talked, and waltzed, with her?"

"Never spoke a word to her in my life."

"Well, then, you shall not be left in such a forlorn condition long. I
must pay my respects to my colonel. I dare say you may do the same to the
_fiancee_. Mademoiselle will be charmed to have some interruption to his
dreary attentions."

I again refused, but the gay Frenchman was not to be repulsed. He made a
prodigious bow to the box, which was acknowledged by both the ladies.
"There," said he, "the affair is settled. You cannot possibly hesitate
now; that bow is a summons to their box. I can tell you also that you are
highly honoured; for, if it had been in Paris, you could not have got a
sight of the bride except under the surveillance of a pair of chaperons as
grey and watchful as cats, or a couple of provincial uncles as stiff as
their own forefathers armed cap-a-pie."

I could resist no longer; but with sensations perhaps not unlike those of
one ascending the scaffold, I mounted the stairs. As the door opened, and
Lafontaine, tripping forward, announced my name, Clotilde's cheek suffused
with a burning blush, which in the next instant passed away, and left her
pale as marble. The few words of introduction over, she sank into total
silence; and though she made an effort, from time to time, to smile at
Lafontaine's frivolities, it was but a feeble one, and she sat, with
pallid lips and a hectic spot on her statue-like cheek, gazing on the
carpet. I attempted to take some share in the conversation; but all my
powers of speech were gone, my tongue refused to utter, and I remained the
most complete and unfortunate contrast to my lively friend, who was now
engaged in detailing the attempt on the royal life to Madame la Marechal,
whose later arrival had prevented their witnessing it in person. My nearer
view of the Marquis did not improve the sketch which Lafontaine had given
of his commanding-officer. He was a tall, stiff, but soldierly-looking
person, with an expression, which, as we are disposed to approve or the
reverse, might be called strong sense or sullen temper. But he had some
reputation in the service as a bold, if not an able officer. He had saved
the French troops in America by his daring, from the effects of some
blunders committed by the giddiness of their commander-in-chief; and as
his loyalty was not merely known but violent, and his hatred of the new
faction in France not merely determined but furious, he was regarded as
one of the pillars of the royal cause. The Marquis was evidently in
ill-humour, whether with our introduction or with his bride; yet it was
too early for a matrimonial quarrel, and too late for a lover's one.
Clotilde was evidently unhappy, and after a few common-places we took our
leave; the Marquis himself condescending to start from his seat, and shut
the door upon our parting bow. The stage had now lost all interest for
me, and I prevailed on Lafontaine, much against his will, to leave the
house. The lobby was crowded, the rush was tremendous, and after
struggling our way, with some hazard of our limbs, we reached the door
only just in time to see Montrecour escorting the ladies to their
carriage.

All was over for the night; and my companion, who now began to think that
he had tormented me too far, was drawing me slowly, and almost
unconsciously, through the multitude, when a flourish of trumpets and
drums announced that their Majesties were leaving the theatre. The life
guards rode up; and the rushing of the crowd, the crash of the carriages,
the prancing and restiveness of the startled horses, and the quarrelling
of the coachmen and the Bow Street officers, produced a scene of uproar.
My first thought was the hazard of Clotilde, and I hastened to the spot
where I had seen her last, but she was gone.

"All's safe, you see," said Lafontaine, trying to compose his ruffled
costume; "your John Bulls are dangerous, in their loyalty, to coats and
carriages." I agreed with him, and we sprang into one of the wretched
vehicles that held its ground, with English tenacity, in the midst of a
war of coronets. But our adventures were not to close so simply. Our
driver had not remained in the rain for hours, without applying to the
national remedy against all inclemencies of weather. He had no sooner
mounted the box than I found that we were running a race with every
carriage which we approached, sometimes tilting against them, and
sometimes narrowly escaping from being overturned. At last we met with an
antagonist worthy of our prowess. All my efforts to stop our charioteer
had been useless, for he was evidently beyond any kind of appeal but that
of flinging him from his seat; and Lafontaine, with the genuine fondness
of a Gaul for excitement of all kinds, seemed wonderfully amused as we
swept along. But our new rival was evidently in the same condition with
our own Jehu, and after a smart horsewhipping of each other, they rushed
forward at full speed. A sudden scream from within the other carriage
showed the terror of its inmates, as it dashed along; an old woman in full
dress, however, was all that I could discover; for we were fairly
distanced in the race, though it was still kept up, with all the
perseverance of a fool thoroughly intoxicated. In a few minutes more we
heard a tremendous collision in front, and saw by the blaze of half a
hundred flambeaux brandished in all directions, our rival a complete
wreck, plunged into the midst of a crowd of equipages, waiting for their
lordly owners in front of Devonshire house. It had been one of the weekly
balls given by the Duchess, and the fallen vehicle had damaged panels
covered with heraldry as old as the Plantagenets.

Arriving with almost equal rapidity, but with better fortune, I had but
just time to spring into the street, at the instant when the old lady,
writhing herself out of the window, which was now uppermost, was about to
trust her portly person to chance. I caught her as she clung to the
carriage with her many-braceleted arms, and was almost strangled by the
vigour of her involuntary embrace as she rolled down upon me.

There was nothing in the world less romantic than my position in the midst
of a circle of sneering footmen; and, as if to put romance for ever out of
the question, I was relieved from my plumed and mantled encumbrance only
by the assistance of Townshend, then the prince of Bow Street officers;
who, knowing every thing and every body, informed me that the lady was a
person of prodigious rank, and that he should 'feel it his duty,' before
he parted with me, to ascertain whether her ladyship's purse had not
suffered defalcation by my volunteering.

I was indignant, as might be supposed; and my indignation was not at all
decreased by the coming up of half a dozen Bow Street officers, every one
of whom either "believed," or "suspected," or "knew," me to be "an old
offender." But I was relieved from the laughter of the liveried mob round
me, and probably from figuring in the police histories of the morning, by
the extreme terrors of the lady for the fate of her daughter. The carriage
had by this time been raised up, but its other inmate was not to be found.
She now produced the purse, which had been so impudently the cause of
impeaching my honour; "and offered its contents to all who should bring
any tidings of her daughter, her lost child, her Clotilde!" The name
thrilled on my ear. I flew off to renew the search, followed by the
crowd--was unsuccessful, and returned, only to see my _protege_ in strong
hysterics. My situation now became embarrassing; when a way was made
through the crowd by a highly-powdered personage, the chamberlain of the
mansion, who announced himself as sent by "her Grace," to say that the
Countess de Tourville was safe, having been taken into the house; and,
further, conveying "her Grace's compliments to Madame la Marechal de
Tourville, to entreat that she would do her the honour to join her
daughter." This message, delivered with all the pomp of a "gentleman of
the bedchamber," produced its immediate effect upon the circle of cocked
hats and worsted epaulettes. They grew grave at once; and guided by
Townshend, who moved on, hat in hand, and bowing with the obsequiousness
of one escorting a prince of the blood, we reached the door of the
mansion.

But here a new difficulty arose. The duchess was known to La Marechal, for
to whom in misfortune was not that most generous and kind-hearted duchess
known? But _I_ was still a stranger. However, with my old Frenchwoman,
ceremony was not then the prevailing point. _I_ had been her "preserver,"
as she was pleased to term me. _I_ had been "introduced," which was quite
sufficient for knowledge; above all other merits, "I spoke French like a
Parisian;" in short, it was wholly impossible for her to ascend the
crowded staircase, with her numberless dislocations, by the help of any
other arm on earth. The slightest hope of seeing Clotilde would have made
me confront all the etiquette of Spain; and I bore the contrast of my
undress costume with the feathered and silken multitude which filled the
stairs, in the spirit of a philosopher, until, by "many a step and slow,"
we reached the private wing of the mansion.

There, in an apartment fitted up with all the luxury of a boudoir, yet
looking melancholy from the dim lights and the silent attendants, lay
Clotilde on a sofa. But how changed from the being whom I had just seen at
the theatre! She had been in imminent danger, and was literally dragged
from under the horses' feet. A slight wound in her temple was still
bleeding, and her livid lips and half-closed eyes gave me the image of
death. As for Madame, she was in distraction; the volubility of her
sorrows made the well-trained domestics shrink, as from a display at which
they ought not to be present; and at length the only recipients of her
woes were myself and the physician, who, with ominous visage, and drops in
hand, was administering his aid to the passive patient. As Madame's
despair rendered her wholly useless, the doctor called on me to assist him
in raising her from the floor, on which she had flung herself like a
heroine in a tragedy.

While I was engaged in this most reluctant performance, the accents of a
sweet voice, and the rustling of silk, made me raise my eyes, and a vision
floated across the apartment; it was the duchess herself, glittering in
gold and jewels, turbaned and embroidered, as a Semiramis or a queen of
Sheba; she was brilliant enough for either. She had just left the fancy
ball behind, and was come "to make her personal enquiries for the health
of her young friend."

My office was rather startling, even to the habitual presence of mind of
the leader of fashion. I might have figured in her eyes, as the husband,
or the lover, or the doctor's apprentice; she almost uttered a scream. But
the sound, slight as it was, recalled the Marechal to her senses. The
explanation was given with promptitude, and received with politeness. My
family, in all its branches, came into her Grace's quick recollection; and
I was thus indebted to my adventure, not only for an introduction to one
of the most elegant women of her time--to the goddess of fashion in her
temple, the Circe of high life, at the "witching hour," but of being most
"graciously" received; and even hearing a panegyric on my chivalry, from
the Marechal, smilingly echoed by lips which seemed made only for smiles.

A summons from the ball-room soon withdrew the captivating mistress of the
mansion, who retired with the step and glance of the very queen of
courtesy; and I was about to take my leave, when a ceremonial of still
higher interest awaited me. Clotilde, feebly rising from her sofa, and
sustaining herself on the neck of her kneeling mother, murmured her thanks
to me "for the preservation of her dear parent." The sound of her voice,
feeble as it was, fell on my ear like music. I advanced towards her. The
Marechal stood with her handkerchief to her eyes, and venting her
sensibilities in sobs. The fairer object before me shed no tears, but,
with her eyes half-closed, and looking the marble model of paleness and
beauty, she held out her hand. She was, perhaps, unconscious of offering
more than a simple testimony of her gratitude for the services which her
mother had described with such needless eloquence. But in that delicious,
yet unaccountable feeling--that superstition of the heart, which makes
every thing eventful--even that simple pressure of her hand created a
long and living future in my mind.

Yet let me do myself justice; whether wise or weak in the presence of the
only being who had ever mastered my mind, I was determined not "to point a
moral and adorn a tale." I had other duties and other purposes before me
than to degenerate into a slave of sighs. I was to be no Romeo, bathing my
soul in the luxuries of Italian palace-chambers, moonlight speeches, and
the song of nightingales. I felt that I was an Englishman, and had the
rugged steep of fortune to climb, and climb alone. The time, too, in which
I was to begin my struggle for distinction, aroused me to shake off the
spirit of dreams which threatened to steal over my nature. The spot in
which I lived was the metropolis of mankind. I was in the centre of the
machinery which moved the living world. The wheels of the globe were
rushing, rolling, and resounding in my ears. Every interest, necessity,
stimulant, and passion of mankind, came in an incessant current to London,
as to the universal heart, and flowed back, refreshed and invigorated, to
the extremities of civilization. I saw the hourly operations of that
mighty furnace in which the fortunes of all nations were mingled, and
poured forth remolded. And London itself was never more alive. Every
journal which I took up was filled with the signs of this extraordinary
energy; the projects and meetings, the harangues and political
experiments, of bold men, some rising from the mire into notoriety, if not
into fame; some plunging from the highest rank of public life into the
mire, in the hope of rising, if with darkened, yet a freshened wing. The
debates in parliament, never more vivid than at this crisis, with the two
great parties in full force, and throwing out flashes in every movement,
like the collision of two vast thunder clouds, were a perpetual summons to
action in every breast which felt itself above the dust it trod. But the
French journals were the true excitements to political ardour. They were
more than lamps, guiding mankind along the dusky paths of public
regeneration--they were torches, dazzling the multitude who attempted to
profit by their light; and, while they threw a glare round the head of the
march, blinding all who followed. To one born, like myself, in the most
aristocratic system of society on earth, yet excluded from its advantages
by the mere chance of birth, it was new, and undoubtedly not displeasing,
to see the pride of nobility tamed by the new rush of talent and ambition
which had started up from obscurity in France; village attorneys and
physicians, clerks in offices, journalists, men from the plough and the
pen, supplying the places of the noblesse of Clovis and Capet, possessing
themselves of the highest power while their predecessors were flying
through Europe; conducting negotiations, commanding armies, ruling
assemblies, holding the helm of government in the storm which had
scattered the great names of France upon the waters. I anticipated all the
triumph of the "younger sons."

Even the brief interval of my Brighton visit had curiously changed the
aspect of the metropolis. The emigration was in full force, and every spot
was crowded with foreign visages. Sallow cheeks and starting eyes,
scowling brows and fierce mustaches, were the order of the day; the monks
and the military had run off together. The English language was almost
overwhelmed by the perpetual jargon of all the loud-tongued
provincialities of France. But the most singular portion was the
ecclesiastical. The streets and parks were filled with the unlucky sheep
of the Gallican church, scattered before the teeth and howl of the
republican wolf; and England saw, for the first time, the secrets of the
monastery poured out before the light of day. The appearance of some among
this sable multitude, though venerable and dignified, could not prevent
the infinite grotesque of the others from having its effect on the
spectator. The monks and priesthood of France amounted to little less than
a hundred and fifty thousand. All were now thrown up from the darkness of
centuries before a wondering world. I had Milton's vision of Limbo before
my eyes.

"Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars,
A violent cross wind from either coast
Blew them transverse. Then might ye see
Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost,
And flutter'd into rags; their reliques, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,
The sport of winds."

The mire was fully stirred up in which the hierarchy had enjoyed its sleep
and sunshine for a thousand years. The weeds and worms had been fairly
scraped off, which for a thousand years had grown upon the keel of the
national vessel, and of which the true wonder was, that the vessel had
been able to make sail with them clinging to her so long. In fact, I was
thus present at one of the most remarkable phenomena of the whole
Revolution. The flight of a noblesse was nothing to this change. The
glittering peerage of France, created by a court, and living in perpetual
connexion with the court, as naturally followed its fate as a lapdog
follows the fortunes of its mistress; but here was a digging up of the
moles, an extermination of the bats, a general extrusion of the subversive
principle, to a race of existence which, whether above or below ground,
seemed almost to form a part of the soil. Monkery was broken up, like a
ship dashed against the shores of the bay of Biscay. The ship was not only
wrecked, but all its fragments continued to be tossed on the ceaseless
surge. The Gallican church was flung loose over Europe, at a time when all
Europe itself was in commotion. I own, to the discredit of my political
foresight, that I thought its forms and follies extinguished for ever. The
snake was more tenacious of life than I had dreamed. But if I erred, I did
not err alone.

Mordecai, whom I found immersed deeper and deeper in continental politics,
and who scarcely denied his being the accredited agent of the emigrant
princes, gave his opinion of this strange portion of French society with
much more promptitude than he probably would of the probable fall or rise
of stocks.

"Of all the gamblers at the great gambling-table of France," said he, "the
clergy have played their game the worst. By leaving their defence to the
throne, they have only dragged down the throne. By relying on the good
sense of the National Assembly, they have left themselves without a
syllable to say. Like men pleading by counsel, they have been at the mercy
of their counsel, and been ruined at once by their weakness and their
treachery."

On my observing to him that the church of France was necessarily feebler
than either the throne or the nobles, and that, therefore, its natural
course was to depend on both--

"Rely upon it," said the keen Jew "that any one great institution of the
state which suffers itself, in the day of danger, to depend on any other
for existence, will be ruined. When all are pressed, each will be glad to
get rid of the pressure, by sacrificing the most dependent. The church
should have stood on its own defence. The Gallican hierarchy was, beyond
all question, the most powerful in Europe. Rome and her cardinals were
tinsel and toys to the solid strength of the great provincial clergy of
France. They had numbers, wealth, and station. Those things could give
influence among a population of Hottentots. Let other hierarchies take
example. They threw them all away, at the first move of a bloody
handkerchief on the top of a Parisian pike. They had vast power with the
throne; but what had once been energy they turned into encumbrance, and if
the throne is pulled down, it will be by their weight. They had a third of
the land in actual possession, and they allowed themselves to be stripped
of it by a midnight vote of a drunken assembly. If they were caricatured
in Paris, they had three-fourths of the population as fast bound to them
as bigotry and their daily bread could bind. Three months ago, they might
have marched to Paris with their crucifixes in front, and three millions
of stout peasantry in their rear, have captured the capital, and fricaseed
the foolish legislature. And now, they have archbishops learning to live
on a shilling a-day."

From the Horse guards I had yet obtained nothing, but promises of "being
remembered on the first vacancy;" Clotilde was still a sufferer, and my
time, like that of every man without an object, began to be a deplorable
encumbrance. In short, my vision of high life and its happiness was fairly
vanishing hour by hour. I occasionally met Lafontaine; but, congenial as
our tempers might be, our natures had all the national difference, and I
sometimes envied, and as often disdained, his buoyancy. Even he, too, had
his fluctuations; and a letter from Mariamne, a little more or less
petulant, raised and sank him like the spirits in a thermometer.

But one day he rushed into my apartment with a look of that despair which
only foreigners can assume, and which actually gave me the idea that he
was about to commit suicide. Flinging himself into a chair, and plunging
his hand deep into his bosom, from which I almost expected to see him draw
the fatal weapon, he extracted a paper, and held it forth to me. "Read!"
he exclaimed, with the most pathetic tones of Talma in tragedy--"read my
ruin!" I read, and found that it was a letter from his domineering little
Jewess, commanding him to throw up his commission on the spot, and
especially not to go to France, on penalty of her eternal displeasure. My
looks asked an explanation. "There!" cried the hero of the romance,
"there!--see the caprice, the cruelty, the intolerable tyranny of that most
uncertain, intractable, and imperious of all human beings!" I had neither
consolation nor contradiction to offer.

He then let me into his own secret, with an occasional episode of the
secrets of others--the substance of the whole being, that a counter
revolution was preparing in France; that, after conducting the
correspondence in London for some time, he had been ordered to carry a
despatch, of the highest importance, to the secret agency in Paris; and
that the question was now between love and honour--Mariamne having, by
some unlucky hint dropped from her father, received intimation of the
design, and putting her _veto_ on his bearing any part in it in the most
peremptory manner. What was to be done? The unfortunate youth was fairly
on the horns of the dilemma, and he obviously saw no ray of extrication
but the usual Parisian expedient of the pistol.

While he alternately raved and wept, the thought struck me--"Why might I
not go in his place?" I was growing weary of the world, however little I
knew of it. I had no Mariamne either to prohibit or to weep for me. The
only being for whom I wished to live was lost to me already. I offered
myself as the carrier of the despatch without delay.

I never saw ecstasy so visible in a human being; his eloquence exhausted
the whole vocabulary of national rapture. "I was his friend, his brother,
his preserver. I was the best, the ablest, the noblest of men." But when I
attempted to escape from this overflow of gratitude, by observing on the
very simple nature of the service, his recollection returned, and he
generously endeavoured, with equal zeal, to dissuade me from an enterprise
of which the perils were certainly neither few nor trifling. He was now in
despair at my obstinacy. The emigration of the French princes had not
merely weakened their cause in France, but had sharpened the malice of
their enemies. Their agents had been arrested in all quarters, and any man
who ventured to carry on a correspondence with them, was now alike in
danger of assassination and of the law. After debating the matter long,
without producing conviction on either side, it was at length agreed to
refer the question to Mordecai, whom Lafontaine now formally acknowledged
to be master of the secret on both sides of the Channel.

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