The Companions of Jehu, Alexandre Dumas [great books of all time .txt] 📗
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
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“I have already told you, Roland,” replied Lord Tanlay, offering his hand to the young man, “that I consider the Château des Noires-Fontaines a paradise.”
“Agreed; but still in the fear that you may find your paradise monotonous, I shall do my best to entertain you. Are you fond of archeology—Westminster and Canterbury? We have a marvel here, the church of Brou; a wonder of sculptured lace by Colonban. There is a legend about it which I will tell you some evening when you cannot sleep. You will see there the tombs of Marguerite de Bourbon, Philippe le Bel, and Marguerite of Austria. I will puzzle you with the problem of her motto: ‘Fortune, infortune, fort’une,’ which I claim to have solved by a Latinized version: ‘Fortuna, in fortuna, forti una.’ Are you fond of fishing, my dear friend? There’s the Reissouse at your feet, and close at hand a collection of hooks and lines belonging to Edouard, and nets belonging to Michel; as for the fish, they, you know, are the last thing one thinks about. Are you fond of hunting? The forest of Seillon is not a hundred yards off. Hunting to hounds you will have perforce to renounce, but we have good shooting. In the days of my old bogies, the Chartreuse monks, the woods swarmed with wild boars, hares and foxes. No one hunts there now, because it belongs to the government; and the government at present is nobody. In my capacity as General Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp I’ll fill the vacancy, and we’ll see who dares meddle with me, if, after chasing the Austrians on the Adige and the Mamelukes on the Nile, I hunt the boars and deer and the hares and foxes on the Reissouse. One day of archeology, one day of fishing, and one of hunting, that’s three already. You see, my dear fellow, we have only fifteen or sixteen left to worry about.”
“My dear Roland,” said Sir John sadly, and without replying to the young officer’s wordy sally, “won’t you ever tell me about this fever which sears you, this sorrow which undermines you?”
“Ah!” said Roland, with his harsh, doleful laugh. “I have never been gayer than I am this morning; it’s your liver, my lord, that is out of order and makes you see everything black.”
“Some day I hope to be really your friend,” replied Sir John seriously; “then you will confide in me, and I shall help you to bear your burden.”
“And half my aneurism!—Are you hungry, my lord?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I hear Edouard on the stairs, coming up to tell us that breakfast is ready.”
As Roland spoke, the door opened and the boy burst out: “Big brother Roland, mother and sister Amélie are waiting breakfast for Sir John and you.”
Then catching the Englishman’s right hand, he carefully examined the first joint of the thumb and forefinger.
“What are you looking at, my little friend?” asked Sir John.
“I was looking to see if you had any ink on your fingers.”
“And if I had ink on my fingers, what would it mean?”
“That you had written to England, and sent for my pistols and sword.”
“No, I have not yet written,” said Sir John; “but I will to-day.”
“You hear, big brother Roland? I’m to have my sword and my pistols in a fortnight!”
And the boy, full of delight, offered his firm rosy cheek to Sir John, who kissed it as tenderly as a father would have done. Then they went to the dining-room where Madame de Montrevel and Amélie were awaiting them.
That same day Roland put into execution part of his plans for his guest’s amusement. He took Sir John to see the church of Brou.
Those who have seen the charming little chapel of Brou know that it is known as one of the hundred marvels of the Renaissance; those who have not seen it must have often heard it said. Roland, who had counted on doing the honors of this historic gem to Sir John, and who had not seen it for the last seven or eight years, was much disappointed when, on arriving in front of the building, he found the niches of the saints empty and the carved figures of the portal decapitated.
He asked for the sexton; people laughed in his face. There was no longer a sexton. He inquired to whom he should go for the keys. They replied that the captain of the gendarmerie had them. The captain was not far off, for the cloister adjoining the church had been converted into a barrack.
Roland went up to the captain’s room and made himself known as Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp. The captain, with the placid obedience of a subaltern to his superior officer, gave him the keys and followed behind him. Sir John was waiting before the porch, admiring, in spite of the mutilation to which they had been subjected, the admirable details of the frontal.
Roland opened the door and started back in astonishment. The church was literally stuffed with hay like a cannon charged to the muzzle.
“What does this mean?” he asked the captain of the gendarmerie.
“A precaution taken by the municipality.”
“A precaution taken by the municipality?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“To save the church. They were going to demolish it; but the mayor issued a decree declaring that, in expiation of the false worship for which it had served, it should be used to store fodder.”
Roland burst out laughing, and, turning to Sir John, he said: “My dear Sir John, the church was well worth seeing, but I think what this gentleman has just told us is no less curious. You can always find—at Strasburg, Cologne, or Milan—churches or cathedrals to equal the chapel of Brou; but where will you find an administration idiotic enough to destroy such a masterpiece, and a mayor clever enough to turn it into a barn? A thousand thanks, captain. Here are your keys.”
“As I was saying at Avignon, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you, my dear Roland,” replied Sir John, “the French are a most amusing people.”
“This time, my lord, you are too polite,” replied Roland. “Idiotic is the word. Listen. I can understand the political cataclysms which have convulsed society for the last thousand years; I can understand the communes, the pastorals, the Jacquerie, the maillotins, the Saint Bartholomew, the League, the Fronde, the dragonnades, the Revolution; I can understand the 14th of July, the 5th and 6th of October, the 20th of June, the 10th of August, the 2d and 3d of September, the 21st of January, the 31st of May, the 30th of October, and the 9th Thermidor; I can understand the egregious torch of civil wars, which inflames instead of soothing the blood; I can understand the tidal wave of revolution, sweeping on with its flux, that nothing can arrest, and its reflux, which carries with it the ruins of the institution which it has itself shattered. I can understand all that, but lance against lance, sword against sword, men against men, a people against a people! I can understand the deadly rage of the victors, the sanguinary reaction of the vanquished, the political volcanoes which rumble in the bowels of the globe, shake the earth, topple over thrones, upset monarchies, and roll heads and crowns on the scaffold. But what I cannot understand is this mutilation of the granite, this placing of monuments beyond the pale of the law, the destruction of inanimate things, which belong neither to those who destroy them nor to the epoch in which they are destroyed; this pillage of the gigantic library where the antiquarian can read the archeological history of a country. Oh! the vandals, the barbarians! Worse than that, the idiots! who revenge the Borgia crimes and the debauches of Louis XV. on stone. How well those Pharaohs, Menæs, and Cheops knew man as the most perversive, destructive and evil of animals! They who built their pyramids, not with carved traceries, nor lacy spires, but with solid blocks of granite fifty feet square! How they must have laughed in the depths of those sepulchres as they watched Time dull its scythe and pashas wear out their nails in vain against them. Let us build pyramids, my dear Sir John. They are not difficult as architecture, nor beautiful as art, but they are solid; and that enables a general to say four thousand years later: ‘Soldiers, from the apex of these monuments forty centuries are watching you!’ On my honor, my lord, I long to meet a windmill this moment that I might tilt against it.”
And Roland, bursting into his accustomed laugh, dragged Sir John in the direction of the château. But Sir John stopped him and asked: “Is there nothing else to see in the city except the church?”
“Formerly, my lord,” replied Roland, “before they made a hay-loft of it, I should have asked you to come down with me into the vaults of the Dukes of Savoy. We could have hunted for that subterranean passage, nearly three miles long, which is said to exist there, and which, according to these rumors, communicates with the grotto of Ceyzeriat. Please observe, I should never offer such a pleasure trip except to an Englishman; it would have been like a scene from your celebrated Anne Radcliffe in the ‘Mysteries of Udolpho.’ But, as you see, that is impossible, so we will have to be satisfied with our regrets. Come.”
“Where are we going?”
“Faith, I don’t know. Ten years ago I should have taken you to the farms where they fatten pullets. The pullets of Bresse, you must know, have a European reputation. Bourg was an annex to the great coop of Strasburg. But during the Terror, as you can readily imagine, these fatteners of poultry shut up shop. You earned the reputation of being an aristocrat if you ate a pullet, and you know the fraternal refrain: ‘Ah, ça ira, ça ira—the aristocrats to the lantern!’ After Robespierre’s downfall they opened up again; but since the 18th of Fructidor, France has been commanded to fast, from fowls and all. Never mind; come on, anyway. In default of pullets, I can show you one thing, the square where they executed those who ate them. But since I was last in the town the streets have changed their names. I know the way, but I don’t know the names.”
“Look here!” demanded Sir John; “aren’t you a Republican?”
“I not a Republican? Come, come! Quite to the contrary. I consider myself an excellent Republican. I am quite capable of burning off my hand, like Mucius Scævola, or jumping into the gulf like Curtius to save the Republic; but I have, unluckily, a keen sense of the ridiculous. In spite of myself, the absurdity of things catches me in the side and tickles me till I nearly die of laughing. I am willing to accept the Constitution of 1791; but when poor Hérault de Séchelles wrote to the superintendent of the National Library to send him a copy of the laws of Minos, so
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