a glance at the provinces
on the evening of the 28th of may, 1797, at the moment when, his glorious campaign in italy finished, bonaparte was enthroned with josephine at montebello, surrounded by ministers from foreign courts; when the corinthian horses, having descended from the duomo, and the lion of saint mark, having fallen from its column, were on their way to paris; when pichegru, relieved from service on account of vague suspicions, had just been made president of the five hundred, and barbé-marbois president of the ancients—a horseman, who was travelling, as virgil says, "under the friendly silence of the moon" ("per amica silentia lun?"), and who was trotting upon a powerful horse along the road from macon to bourg, left that road a little above the village of polias. he jumped, or rather made his horse jump, the ditch which separated the road from the plowed fields, and followed the banks of the river veyle for about five hundred yards, where he was not liable to meet either villager or traveller. there, doubtless no longer fearing to be recognized or noticed, he allowed his coat to slip from his shoulders to the saddle, thereby discovering a belt in which he carried two pistols and a hunting-knife. then he lifted his hat and wiped his perspiring forehead. the traveller was a young man of twenty-eight or nine years of age, handsome, distinguished, and well-built; and it was evident that he was prepared to repel force by force if any one should have the temerity to attack him.
[pg 384]
and, by the way, the precaution which had caused him to put a pair of pistols in his belt was by no means an unwarranted one. the thermidorean reaction, suppressed in paris on the 13th vendémiaire, had taken refuge in the provinces, where it had assumed gigantic proportions. lyons was become its headquarters; on one side, by way of n?mes, it stretched out its hand to marseilles, and on the other, by way of bourg in bresse, as far as besan?on. for further information regarding this reaction we might refer our reader to our romance "the companions of jehu," or to charles nodier's "souvenirs de la revolution et de l'empire"; but as the reader will probably not have either of these two works at hand, we will briefly reproduce here what is necessary for our purpose.
it was not to be wondered at that the thermidorean reaction, suppressed in the first capital of france, had taken up its abode in the second, with branches at marseilles and besan?on. what lyons suffered after the revolt is well known. the guillotine was too slow, and collot d'herbois and fouché supplemented it with grape and canister. there were few families at that time, belonging either to the rich commercial classes or the nobility, who had not lost one or more of its members. the time had now come to avenge the lost father, brother or son; and they were avenged openly, publicly, in broad daylight. "you caused the death of my father, my son, or my brother," they would say to the informer, and then they would immediately strike him down.
"speculation in regard to murder," says nodier, "was largely indulged in among the upper classes. there, secrets of murder were recounted in the salons which would have terrified the galleys. men played charlemagne with death for the stakes, without even taking the trouble to lower their voices when they discussed their plans of killing. the women, sweet alleviators of all the passions of men, took part in these dreadful discussions of death. since horrible hags no longer wore guillotines for ear-rings,[pg 385] 'adorable furies,' as corneille would have said, wore daggers for breast-pins. if you objected on sentimental grounds to these frightful excesses, they would take you to the brotteaux and make you tread, in spite of yourself, upon the elastic springy soil, saying: 'our relatives are there.' what a picture do these exceptional times present, whose nameless, indefinable character cannot be expressed by the facts themselves, so inadequate are words to reproduce the unheard of confusion of ideas, so antipathetic in themselves, the union of the most refined methods with implacable fury, the horrifying compact between the doctrines of humanity and deeds worthy of cannibalism. how can we convey an adequate impression of this impossible time when prison-cells did not protect the prisoners, when the executioner, who came in search of his victim, found, to his astonishment, that he had been preceded by the assassin—this never-ending 2d of september, renewed every day by respectable young men who had just left a salon, and who were expected in a boudoir?
"it was, it must be admitted, a localized monomania—a craving for rage and murder which had sprung into life under the wings of revolutionary harpies; an appetite for larceny, sharpened by confiscations; a thirst for blood, inflamed by the sight of blood. it was the frenzy of a generation nourished, like achilles, upon the marrow of wild animals; a generation which had no model or ideal other than schiller's brigands and the free-booters of the middle ages. it was the sharp irresistible desire to renew society by the means which had destroyed it—crime. it was the inevitable result of the immutable tendency of compensation in remarkable times; the titans after chaos; python after the deluge; a flock of vultures after the battle; the unerring law of retaliation for those unaccountable scourges which demand death for death, corpse for corpse, which pays itself with usury, and which holy writ counts among the treasures of providence.
"the unexpected amalgamation of these bands, whose[pg 386] object was at first unknown, exhibited at first in a slight degree the inevitable confusion of ranks, conditions, and persons which is noticeable in all factions and parties which are the outgrowth of a disorganized society; but there was less in this case than had ever been seen before. that portion of the lower classes which participated in the movement did not lack the varnish of manner which is the result of expensive vices; an aristocratic populace which ran from one debauch to another, and from one excess to another, in the wake of the nobility of name and fortune, as if to prove that there is nothing more facile of emulation than a bad example. the remainder concealed beneath a most refined exterior a more odious depravity, because it had to break down the barriers of conventionality and education. never before had so many assassins in silk stockings been seen; and it would have been a great mistake to imagine that luxurious habits existed in an inverse ratio to ferocity of character. pitiless examples of mad fury were no less common among men of the world than among men of the people, and death was found to possess no less cruel refinements when inflicted by the dagger of the dandy than when inflicted by the knife of the butcher.
"the proscribed had at first eagerly sought the shelter of the prisons as a refuge. when this melancholy bulwark was destroyed, like everything else that men had formerly held sacred—like the churches and the tombs—the administration endeavored to provide for the safety of the victims by sending them out of the provinces. to protect them from private vengeance, the authorities sent them sixty or eighty miles away from their wives and children, among men who knew neither their names nor their station. the fatal move only resulted in changing the place of sepulchre. these parties in death exchanges delivered their prey from one department to another with the regularity of commercial transactions. never had business-like habits been thus degraded to horrible traffic. nor were these barbarous drafts, payable in men's heads, protested when they came due.[pg 387] as soon as the letter of advice arrived they would coolly balance debits and credits, and carry forward the balances, and the check drawn in blood would be honored at sight.
"this spectacle, the very idea of which is revolting to the soul, was often renewed. picture to yourself one of those long carts with racks in which animals are taken to the shambles, and hurdled upon them in confusion, men, their hands and feet securely tied with cords, their heads hanging down, swaying with each jolt of the cart, panting for breath, in despair and terror, for crimes of which the greatest was an excited outburst which had spent itself in threatening words. do not imagine for a second that the feast of the martyrs or the expiatory honors of the sacrifice were prepared for them on their return, or that they were even allowed the empty satisfaction of offering for a moment an impossible resistance to an attack without peril, as in the arenas of constantius and gallus. the assassins surprised them as they lay; and they were murdered in their bonds, and the club, reddened with blood, continued to play upon their bodies long after they had ceased to feel."
nodier once saw and described to me a septuagenarian noted for his gentleness of manner and that scrupulous courtesy which is esteemed above all else in provincial salons; one of those men of breeding who are becoming almost extinct, and who used to make one visit to paris to pay their court to the minister, and to be present at the king's card-party and hunting-party, and who owed to this happy memory the privilege of dining from time to time with the intendant, and of giving their opinion on important occasions upon questions of etiquette. nodier saw him—while women looked on calmly holding their children in their arms, and while the latter clapped their little hands—nodier saw him, and i quote his very words, "wearying his withered old arm striking a corpse with his gold-headed cane, in which the assassins had neglected to extinguish[pg 388] the last spark of life, and which had just betrayed its agony by a final convulsion."
and now that we have tried to give some idea of the state of the country through which the traveller was passing, no wonder will be felt at the precautions which he had deemed advisable to take, nor at the attention he paid to every turn of the country, with which he seemed wholly unfamiliar. in fact, he had not followed the banks of the veyle for more than a mile and a half before he reined in his horse, stood up in his stirrups, and, leaning over his saddle, tried to pierce the darkness, which had deepened since a cloud had passed over the face of the moon. he began to despair of finding his way without being forced to secure the services of a guide, either at montech or at saint-denis, when a voice, coming apparently from the depths of the river, startled him, so unexpected was it. it said in the most cordial tone: "can i assist you in any way, citizen?"
"faith, yes," replied the traveller; "and as i cannot come to you, not knowing where you are, perhaps you will be so good as to come to me, since you apparently do know where i am."
and thus speaking he covered his pistols, and the hand which was playing with them, with his cloak.
