Chapter 108
"I ask your pardon, my son, for a question I had no right to ask; and even there, again, I but showed my soldier education. I am returning to France; and in seeking a short path from Eisenach, found myself where you see; as night was falling, well content to be so well lodged,--all the more, if I am to have your companions.h.i.+p."
Few and simple as these words were, there was a tone of frankness in them, not less than the evidence of a certain good breeding, by which he apologized for his own curiosity in speaking thus freely of himself, that satisfied me at once; and I hastened to inform him that circ.u.mstances had induced me to leave the service, in which I had been a captain, and that I was now, like himself, returning to France.
"You must not think, Father," added I, with some eagerness, "you must not think that other reasons than my own free will have made me cease to be a soldier."
"It would ill become me to have borne such a suspicion," interrupted he, quickly. "When one so young and full of life as you are leaves the path where lie honor and rank and fame, he must have cause to make the sacrifice; for I can scarce think, that at your age, these things seem nought to your eyes."
"You are right, Father, they are not so. They have been my guiding stars for many a day; alas, that they can be such no longer!"
"There are higher hopes to cherish than these," said he, solemnly,--"higher than the loftiest longings of ambition; but we all of us cling to the things of life, till in their perishable nature they wean us off with disappointment and sorrow. From such a trial am I now suffering," added he, in a low voice, while the tears rose to his eyes and slowly coursed along his pale cheeks.
There was a pause neither of us felt inclined to break, when at length the priest said,--
"What was your corps in the service?"
"The Eighth Hussars of the Guard," said I, trembling at every word.
"Ah, _he_ was in the Guides," repeated he, mournfully, to himself; "you knew the regiment?"
"Yes, they belonged to the Guard also; they wore no epaulettes, but a small gold arrow on the collar."
"Like this," said he, unfastening the breast of his ca.s.sock, and taking out a small package, which, among other things, contained the designation of the _Corps des Guides_ in an arrow of gold embroidery.
"Had he not beautiful hair, long and silky as a girl's?" said he, as he produced a lock of light and sunny brown. "Poor Alphonse! thou wouldst have been twenty hadst thou lived till yesterday. If I shed tears, young man, it is because I have lost the great earthly solace of my solitary life. Others have kindred and friends, have happy homes, which, even when bereavements come, with time will heal up the wound; I had but him!"
"He was your nephew, perhaps?" said I, half fearing to interfere with his sorrow.
The old man shook his head in token of dissent, while he muttered to himself,--
"Auerstadt may be a proud memory to some; to me it is a word of sorrow and mourning. The story is but a short one; alas! it has but one color throughout:--
"Count Louis de Meringues--of whom you have doubtless heard that he rode as postilion to the carriage of his sovereign in the celebrated flight to Varennes--fell by the guillotine the week after the king's trial; the countess was executed on the same scaffold as her husband. I was the priest who accompanied her at the moment; and in my arms she placed her only child,--an infant boy of two years. There was a cry among the crowd to have the child executed also, and many called out that the sp.a.w.n would be a serpent one day, and it were better to crush it while it was time; but the little fellow
"As I forced my way through the dense array, a rude arm was stretched out from the ma.s.s, and a finger dripping with the gore of the scaffold was drawn across the boy's face, while a ruffian voice exclaimed, 'The Meringues were ever proud of their blood; let us see if it be redder than other people's.' The child laughed; and the mob, with horrid mockery, laughed too.
"I took him home with me to my _presbytere_ at Sevres,--for that was my parish,--and we lived together in peace until the terrible decree was issued which proclaimed all France atheist. Then we wandered southwards, towards that good land which, through every vicissitude, was true to its faith and its king,--La Vendee. At Lyons we were met by a party of the revolutionary soldiers, who, with a commissary of the Government, were engaged in raising young men for the conscription. Alphonse, who was twelve years old, felt all a boy's enthusiasm at the warlike display before him, and persuaded me to follow the crowd into the _Place des Terreaux_, where the numbers were read out.
"'Paul Ducos,' cried a voice aloud, as we approached the stage on which the commissary and his staff were standing; 'where is this Paul Ducos?'
"'I am here,' replied a fine, frank-looking youth, of some fifteen years; 'but my father is blind, and I cannot leave him.'
"'We shall soon see that,' called out the commissary. 'Clerk, read out his _signalement_.'
"'Paul Ducos, son of Eugene Ducos, formerly calling himself Count Ducos de la Breche--'
"'Down with the Royalists! _a bas_ the tyrants!' screamed the mob, not suffering the remainder to be heard.
"'Approach, Paul Ducos!' said the commissary.
"'Wait here, Father,' whispered the youth; 'I will come back presently.'
"But the old man, a fine and venerable figure, the remnant of a n.o.ble race, held him fast, and, as his lips trembled, said, 'Do not leave me, Paul; my child, my comforter, stay near me.'
"The boy looked round him for one face of kindly pity in this emergency, when, turning towards me, he said rapidly, 'Stand near him!' He broke from the old man's embrace, and rus.h.i.+ng through the crowd, mounted the scaffold.
"'You are drawn for the conscription, young man,' said the commissary; 'but in consideration of your father's infirmity, a subst.i.tute will be accepted. Have you such?'
"The boy shook his head mournfully and in silence.
"'Have you any friend who would a.s.sist you here? Bethink you awhile,'
rejoined the commissary, who, for his station and duties, was a kind and benevolent man.
"'I have none. They have left us nothing, neither home nor friends,'
said the youth, bitterly; 'and if it were not for his sake, I care not what they do with me.'
"'Down with the tyrants!' yelled the mob, as they heard these haughty words.
"'Then your fate is decreed,' resumed the commissary.
"'No, not yet!' cried out Alphonse, as, breaking from my side, he gained the steps and mounted the platform; 'I will be his subst.i.tute!'
"Oh! how shall I tell the bitter anguish of that moment, which at once dispelled the last remaining hope I cherished, and left me dest.i.tute forever. As I dashed the tears from my eyes and looked up, the two boys were locked in each other's arms. It was a sight to have melted any heart, save those around them; but bloodshed and crime had choked up every avenue of feeling, and left them, not men, but tigers.
"'Alphonse de Meringues,' cried out the boy, in answer to a question regarding his name.
"There is no such designation in France,' said a grim-looking, hard-featured man, who, wearing the tri-colored scarf, sat at the table beside the clerk.
"'I was never called by any other,' rejoined the youth, proudly.
"'Citizen Meringues,' interposed the commissary, mildly, 'what is your age?'
"'I know not the years,' replied he; 'but I have heard that I was but an infant when they slew my father.'
"A fierce roar of pa.s.sion broke from the mob below the scaffold as they heard this; and again the cry broke forth, 'Down with the tyrants!'
"'Art thou, then, the son of that base sycophant who rode courier to the Capet to Varennes?' said the hard-featured man at the table.
"'Of the truest gentleman of France,' called out a loud voice from below the platform; 'Vive le roi!' It was the blind man who spoke, and waved his cap above his head.
"'To the guillotine! to the guillotine!' screamed a hundred voices, in tones wilde than the cries of famished wolves, as, seizing the aged man, they tore his clothes to very rags.
"In an instant all attention was turned from the platform to the scene below it, where, with shouts and screams of fury, the terrible mob yelled aloud for blood. In vain the guards endeavored to keep back the people, who twice rescued their victim from the hands of the soldiery; and already a confused murmur arose that the commissary himself was a traitor to the public, and favored the tyrants, when a dull, clanking sound rose above the tumult, and a cheer of triumph proclaimed the approach of the instrument of torture.
"In their impetuous torrent of vengeance they had dragged the guillotine from the distant end of the 'Place,' where it usually stood; and there now still knelt the figure of a condemned man, lashed with his arms behind him, on the platform, awaiting the moment of his doom. Oh, that terrible face, whereon death had already set its seal! With glazed, lack-l.u.s.tre eye, and cheek leaden and quivering, he gazed around on the fiendish countenances like one awakening from a dream, his lips parted as though to speak; but no sound came forth.
"'Place! place for Monsieur le Marquis!' shouted a ruffian, as he a.s.sisted to raise the figure of the blind man up the steps; and a ribald yell of fiendish laughter followed the brutal jest.
"'Thou art to make thy journey in most n.o.ble company,' said another to the culprit on the platform.
"'An he see not his way in the next world better than in this, thou must lend him a hand, friend,' said a third. And with many a ruffian joke they taunted their victims, who stood on the last threshold of life.