Part 85 (1/2)
NOTE BY THE AUTHOR'S SON.--[See also Prefatory Note]--The hand that wrote thus far has left unwritten the last scene of the tragedy of poor Fox. In the deep where Prospero has dropped his wand are now irrevocably buried the humour and the pathos of this cynophagous banquet. One detail of it, however, which the author imparted to his son, may here be faintly indicated. Let the sympathising reader recognise all that is dramatic in the conflict between hunger and affection; let him recall to mind the lachrymose loving-kindness of his own post-prandial emotions after blissfully breaking some fast, less mercilessly prolonged, we will hope, than that of these besieged banqueters, and then, though unaided by the fancy which conceived so quaint a situation, he may perhaps imagine what tearful tenderness would fill the eyes of the kind-hearted Frederic, as they contemplate the well-picked bones of his sacrificed favourite on the plate before him; which he pushes away, sighing, ”Ah, poor Fox! how he would have enjoyed those bones!”
The chapter immediately following this one also remains unfinished. It was not intended to close the narrative thus left uncompleted; but of those many and so various works which have not unworthily a.s.sociated with almost every department of literature the name of a single English writer, it is CHAPTER THE LAST. Had the author lived to finish it, he would doubtless have added to his Iliad of the Siege of Paris its most epic episode, by here describing the mighty combat between those two princes of the Parisian Bourse, the magnanimous Duplessis and the redoubtable Louvier. Amongst the few other pages of the book which have been left unwritten, we must also reckon with regret some pages descriptive of the reconciliation between Graham Vane and Isaura Cicogna; but, fortunately for the satisfaction of every reader who may have followed thus far the fortunes of Die Parisians, all that our curiosity is chiefly interested to learn has been recorded in the Envoi, which was written before the completion of the novel.
We know not, indeed, what has become of these two Parisian types of a Beauty not of Holiness, the poor vain Poet of the Pave, and the good-hearted Ondine of the Gutter. It is obvious, from the absence of all allusion to them in Lemercier's letter to Vane, that they had pa.s.sed out of the narrative before that letter was written. We must suppose the catastrophe of their fates to have been described, in some preceding chapter, by the author himself; who would a.s.suredly not have left 141. Gustave Rameau in permanent pos session of his ill-merited and ill-ministered fortune. That French representative of the appropriately popular poetry of modern ideas, which prefers ”the roses and raptures of vice” to ”the lilies and languors of virtue,” cannot have been irredeemably reconciled by the sweet savours of the domestic pot-au jeu, even when spiced with pungent whiffs of repudiated disreputability, to any selfish betrayal of the cause of universal social emanc.i.p.ation from the personal proprieties. If poor Julie Caumartin has perished in the siege of Paris, with all the grace of a self-wrought redemption still upon her, we shall doubtless deem her fate a happier one than any she could have found in prolonged existence as Madame Rameau; and a certain modic.u.m of this world's good things will, in that case, have been rescued for worthier employment by Graham Vane. To that a.s.surance nothing but Lemercier's description of the fate of Victor de Mauleon (which will be found in the Envoi) need be added for the satisfaction of our sense of poetic justice and if on the mimic stage, from which they now disappear, all these puppets have rightly played their parts in the drama of an empire's fall, each will have helped to ”point a moral” as well as to ”adorn a tale.” Valete et plaudite!
CHAPTER THE LAST.
Among the refugees which the convoi from Versailles disgorged on the Paris station were two men, who, in pus.h.i.+ng through the crowd, came suddenly face to face with each other.
”Aha! Bon jour, M. Duplessis,” said a burly voice. ”Bon jour, M.
Louvier,” replied Duplessis.
”How long have you left Bretagne?”
”On the day that the news of the armistice reached it, in order to be able to enter Paris the first day its gates were open. And you--where have you been?”
”In London.”
”Ah! in London!” said Duplessis, paling. ”I knew I had an enemy there.”
”Enemy! I? Bah! my dear Monsieur. What makes you think me your enemy?”
”I remember your threats.”
”A propos of Rochebriant. By the way, when would it be convenient to you and the dear Marquis to let me into prompt possession of that property?
You can no longer pretend to buy it as a dot for Mademoiselle Valerie.”
”I know not that yet. It is true that all the financial operations attempted by my agent in London have failed. But I may recover myself yet, now that I re-enter Paris. In the mean time, we have still six months before us; for, as you will find--if you know it not already--the interest due to you has been lodged with Messrs. ---- of ------, and you cannot foreclose, even if the law did not take into consideration the national calamities as between debtor and creditor.”
”Quite true. But if you cannot buy the property it must pa.s.s into my hands in a very short time. And you and the Marquis had better come to an amicable arrangement with me. Apropos, I read in the Times newspaper that Alain was among the wounded in the sortie of December.”
”Yes; we learnt that through a pigeon-post. We were afraid....”
L'ENVOI.
The intelligent reader will perceive that the story I relate is virtually closed with the preceding chapter; though I rejoice to think that what may be called its plot does not find its denouement amidst the crimes and the frenzy of the Guerre des Communeaux. Fit subjects these, indeed, for the social annalist in times to come. When crimes that outrage humanity have their motive or their excuse in principles that demand the demolition of all upon which the civilisation of Europe has its basis-wors.h.i.+p, property, and marriage--in order to reconstruct a new civilisation adapted to a new humanity, it is scarcely possible for the serenest contemporary to keep his mind in that state of abstract reasoning with which Philosophy deduces from some past evil some existent good. For my part, I believe that throughout the whole known history of mankind, even in epochs when reason is most misled and conscience most perverted, there runs visible, though fine and threadlike, the chain of destiny, which has its roots in the throne of an All-wise and an All-good; that in the wildest illusions by which muit.i.tudes are frenzied, there may be detected gleams of prophetic truths; that in the fiercest crimes which, like the disease of an epidemic, characterise a peculiar epoch under abnormal circ.u.mstances, there might be found instincts or aspirations towards some social virtues to be realised ages afterwards by happier generations, all tending to save man from despair of the future, were the whole society to unite for the joyless hour of his race in the abjuration of soul and the denial of G.o.d, because all irresistibly establis.h.i.+ng that yearning towards an unseen future which is the leading attribute of soul, evincing the government of a divine Thought which evolves out of the discords of one age the harmonies of another, and, in the world within us as in the world without, enforces upon every unclouded reason the distinction between Providence and chance.
The account subjoined may suffice to say all that rests to be said of those individuals in whose fate, apart from the events or personages that belong to graver history, the reader of this work may have conceived an interest. It is translated from the letter of Frederic Lemercier to Graham Vane, dated June ----, a month after the defeat of the Communists.
”Dear and distinguished Englishman, whose name I honour but fail to p.r.o.nounce, accept my cordial thanks for your interests in such remains of Frederic Lemercier as yet survive the ravages of Famine, Equality, Brotherhood, Petroleum, and the Rights of Labour. I did not desert my Paris when M. Thiers, 'parmula non bene relicta,' led his sagacious friends and his valiant troops to the groves of Versailles, and confided to us unarmed citizens the preservation of order and property from the insurgents whom he left in possession of our forts and cannon. I felt spellbound by the interest of the sinistoe melodrame, with its quick succession of scenic effects and the metropolis of the world for its stage. Taught by experience, I did not aspire to be an actor; and even as a spectator, I took care neither to hiss nor applaud. Imitating your happy England, I observed a strict neutrality; and, safe myself from danger, left my best friends to the care of the G.o.ds.
”As to political questions, I dare not commit myself to a conjecture.
At this rouge et noir table, all I can say is, that whichever card turns up, it is either a red or a black one. One gamester gains for the moment by the loss of the other; the table eventually ruins both.
”No one believes that the present form of government can last; every one differs as to that which can. Raoul de Vandemar is immovably convinced of the restoration of the Bourbons. Savarin is meditating a new journal devoted to the cause of the Count of Paris. De Brew and the old Count de Pa.s.sy, having in turn espoused and opposed every previous form of government, naturally go in for a perfectly novel experiment, and are for const.i.tutional dictators.h.i.+p under the Duc d'Aumale, which he is to hold at his own pleasure, and ultimately resign to his nephew the Count, under the mild t.i.tle of a const.i.tutional king;--that is, if it ever suits the pleasure of a dictator to depose himself. To me this seems the wildest of notions. If the Duc's administration were successful, the French would insist on keeping it; and if the uncle were unsuccessful, the nephew would not have a chance. Duplessis retains his faith in the Imperial dynasty; and that Imperialist party is much stronger than it appears on the surface. So many of the bourgeoisie recall with a sigh eighteen years of prosperous trade; so many of the military officers, so many of the civil officials, identify their career with the Napoleonic favour; and so many of the Priesthood, abhorring the Republic, always liable to pa.s.s into the hands of those who a.s.sail religion,--unwilling to admit the claim of the Orleanists, are at heart for the Empire.
”But I will tell you one secret. I and all the quiet folks like me (we are more numerous than any one violent faction) are willing to accept any form of government by which we have the best chance of keeping our coats on our backs. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternity, are gone quite out of fas.h.i.+on; and Mademoiselle--has abandoned her great chant of the Ma.r.s.eillaise, and is drawing tears from enlightened audiences by her pathetic delivery of 'O Richard! O mon roi!'”