CHAPTER XII

My love for my father--His love for me--I am taken away to my cousin Marianne's--Plan of the house--The forge--The apparition--I learn the death of my father--I wish to go to heaven to kill God--Our situation at the death of my father--Hatred of Bonaparte.

The night my father died I had been carried out of the house by Maman Zine and deposited with my other cousin, Marianne, who lived with her father in the rue de Soissons.

They did not want me to be acquainted with death at my early age, and foreseeing its near approach and dreading the disturbance I should be sure to make, they took the precaution of taking me away at five o'clock in the afternoon. Maman Zine returned to the house after leaving me, as my poor mother needed help during the coming night.

I worshipped my father. Maybe, at so early an age, the feeling which now I should call love was nothing but an innocent and wondering admiration for the herculean stature and giant strength which I had seen my father exercise on various occasions. Perhaps it was only a childish pride in his braided coat, his tricoloured cockade, and his big sword, which I could scarcely lift. But, whatever it may have been, the recollection of my father, in every detail of his figure, in every feature of his face, is as present with me as though I had but lost him yesterday. No matter from what reasons, I love him still with as tender and deep and true a love as though he had watched over my youth and I had had the blessing of leaning on his strong arm throughout my childhood and early manhood.

On his side, too, my father worshipped me. I have said it, and I cannot repeat the fact too often, especially if the dead hear what is said of them; and, although during the last period of his life his great sufferings had got on his nerves to such an extent that he could not bear any noise or movement in his room, he made an exception for me.

I do not remember whether they took me to kiss my father before I was taken away; what happened during the night the events of which I am about to relate, whether or not it be put down to my youthful imagination, makes me think that they had forgotten that pious care. As I have said, my only notions of death were taken from the death of my big black dog and the fainting bather. It would, besides, have been extremely difficult for me to realise the death of my father, whom I had seen on his horse only three days previously. So I did not approve of being taken from home, and, once away, I was ignorant as to whether my father spoke of me or asked for me. A veil is drawn over my eyes in connection with that last day of his life. I only remember the following incident I am about to relate, the details of which are perfectly clear to my mind.

They had taken me to my uncle's house.

This worthy individual was a locksmith, named Fortier; and he had a brother who was a village priest. I shall speak of this brother later, for he was a very curious type of person.

I remained, therefore, under the care of my cousin Marianne.

Allow me to give an exact plan of the house, in order to make the situation clear. It is forty years or more since I entered the house and yet I can see it as though I had just left it.

As can be seen, the house was in reality one long passage, composed of the forge, which opened upon the rue de Soissons; an inner court just behind the forge; the dwelling-house, consisting of a bedroom furnished in the usual style, with a great walnut chest of drawers, a large four-post bed with green serge hangings, a table and several chairs, and, in addition, a little bed that had been improvised for me, on two chairs, for that night, which they had put opposite the big bed. Next after this bedroom came the kitchen, the accustomed home of a big cat called the _Doctor,_ by whose claws I one day nearly lost the sight of one of my eyes. Then after the kitchen was a little garden shaded by some trees and littered with many stones, a garden which never grew anything but nettles, as no one seemed ever to have thought of putting anything else in it--this looked out on the place du Château. It will be seen that the dwelling-house was shut off completely from the rest of the world when the door of the forge, opening on the rue de Soissons and the garden gate, leading into the place du Château were closed; unless, indeed, the walls of the garden were scaled.

I stayed then with my cousin Marianne without raising any objection to doing so. I loved going to the forge, where a lad named Picard was very partial to me. I used to make fireworks there with iron filings, and the workmen, Picard in particular, would tell me thrilling stories.

I stayed in the forge till quite late in the evening; the forge gave me infinite delight that night, with its fantastic reflections and dancing play of light and shadow. About eight o'clock my cousin Marianne fetched me away and put me to bed in the little bed opposite the large one; and I slept the sound sleep that God gives to little children as He gives refreshing dew in spring-tide.

At midnight I was waked up, or rather we were waked up, my cousin and I, by a loud knocking at our door. A night lamp glimmered on a table near the bedside, and by the light of this lamp I could see my cousin sitting up in bed, silent, terrified.

Nobody could knock at that inner door, as the two other doors were shut.

But I, who to-day almost shudder with fear as I write these lines, I, on the contrary, felt no fear: I got out of my cot and approached the door.

"Where are you going, Alexandre?" cried my cousin. "Where are you going, child?"

"You will soon see," I calmly replied. "I am going to open the door for papa, who has come to say good-bye to us."

The poor girl leapt from her bed, terrified, seized hold of me just as I was putting my hand on the lock, and forced me back into bed.

I struggled in her arms, crying out with all my might: "Good-bye, papa! Good-bye, papa!"

Something like a dying breath passed over my face and quietened me. But I fell asleep sobbing, with tears on my cheeks.

Next day they woke us at dawn, my father had died precisely at the time we heard the knocking at the door! Then it was that I heard these words, but without taking in their significance: "_My poor child, the papa who loved you so much is dead!_"

I cannot tell what lips uttered those words over me, the little orphan of three and a half years, nor who it was that announced the greatest misfortune of my life.

"My father is dead?" said I. "What does that mean?"

"It means that you will never see him again."

"What! I shall never see my papa again?"

"No."

"Why shall I not see him?"

"Because the good God has taken him from you."

"For ever?"

"For ever."

"And you say I shall never see him any more?"

"Never again."

"Never, never at all?"

"Nevermore!"

"Where does the good God live?"

"He lives in heaven."

I remained in thought for a moment; unreasoning baby though I was, I quite understood that something dreadful had happened in my life. Then I took advantage of the first moment when attention was diverted from me to escape from my uncle's house and run straight home to my mother.

All the doors were open, and everybody looked scared; one could tell that death was in the house.

I got in without being noticed at all, and reached a little room where arms were kept; I took up one of my father's single-barrelled guns, which he had often promised to give me when I should be grown up.

Then, armed with this gun, I climbed the stairs.

I met my mother on the first landing; she was coming out of the death-chamber, weeping bitterly.

"Where are you going?" she asked, surprised to see me there, when she thought I was at my uncle's.

"I am going to heaven," I replied.

"What! you are going to heaven?"

"Yes, let me go."

"What are you going to do in heaven, my poor child?"

"I am going to kill the good God for killing papa."

My mother seized me in her arms and pressed me closely to her.

"Oh! my child," she cried, "do not say such things; we are quite unhappy enough already."

Indeed, the death of my father, who had only received a retiring salary of 4000 francs, left us with no other fortune than about 30 roods of land in the village of Soucy, which had belonged to my maternal grandfather, who was still living at that time. There were arrears of salary due to my father, as I have said, arrears of 28,500 francs, for the years VII and VIII, but since our journey to Paris a law had been passed which declared that no arrears before the year IX should be paid.

As for the indemnity of 500,000 francs, due from the King of Naples for the French prisoners, which Bonaparte had exacted, nothing was heard of it, and it was for this reason, no doubt, that the French seized the kingdom of Naples.

It is true that some day a house and a fine garden, situated in the place de la Fontaine, would revert to us; but in the meantime the rent of it went to a certain M. Harlay, who had already been in receipt of it for twenty years. That good man, in fact, exemplified the truth of the proverb that a life interest is a certificate of long life for the payee: he died in 1817, at the age of ninety-two or ninety-three, and by that time we had paid the value of the house and garden nearly four times over. Thus, besides the irreparable loss of father and husband, my mother and I were losing also, she her whole income and I that future benefit which only the presence of a father can give to a son.

Murat and Brune then tried--Brune zealously, Murat half-heartedly--to keep the promise they had made to my father on our behalf. But it was quite useless. Napoleon never forgot the meeting held in my father's tent during the third day of the march between Alexandria and Cairo, and my mother, the innocent victim of my father's Republican sentiments, could not obtain from the man who had offered to stand godfather to me before my birth the very smallest pension, although she was the widow of a general officer who had been chief-in-command of three armies.

Nor was this all. Napoleon's hatred, not content with wreaking itself on my father's fortune, aimed at his reputation too. A painting had been ordered, representing my father's entry into the Grand Mosque, the day of the insurrection at Cairo, during the revolt which he had quelled "_in the absence of everyone else_," as Bonaparte had himself expressed it. They substituted a tall fair hussar for my father, the portrait of no one in particular, thus causing the picture to be devoid of meaning alike to contemporaries and to posterity.

We shall see later how this hatred extended even to me, for in spite of the applications which were made on my behalf by my father's old comrades, I could never obtain entrance to any military school or civil college.

Finally, my father died without even having been made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur--he who had been the hero of the day at Maulde, at la Madeleine, at Mont Cenis, at the siege of Mantua, at the bridge of Brixen, at the revolt of Cairo, the man whom Bonaparte had made governor of the Trévisan, and whom he presented to the Directory as the Horatius Codes of the Tyrol.

Small wonder then if the spirit of my father, on its way heavenwards, hovered for a moment over his poor child, whom he was leaving so destitute of all hope on earth.

What did I divine of it all in the midst of the storm of grief which raged around me? What part I played at this time, my young life just beginning, his ended, I have not the faintest remembrance; I recollect nothing after my mother took me in her arms, as I have related, and carried me away.

A letter from M. Deviolaine announcing my father's death to his friend, General Pille, is my sole guide in this darkness: it informs me that we took shelter at Antilly.

This is the letter:--

"VILLERS-COTTERETS,

"_27th February 1806._

"MY DEAR COUSIN,--I little thought I should so soon have to inform you of the death of our brave and unfortunate General Dumas. He finished his course at eleven o'clock last night, at Villers-Cotterets, where he had returned to carry out his doctor's orders. The malady of which he died was the result of the shocking treatment he experienced at Naples, on his return from Egypt. He had the consolation of learning, on the very day of his death, that that country was conquered by the French; but this satisfaction did not at all comfort him for the privation of not being able to end his days on the field of battle. Ever since his retirement from active service--all through his illness--he never ceased offering prayers for the success of the French arms. It was most touching to hear him say, only a few hours before his death, that, for his wife and children's sake, he would like to be buried on the field of Austerlitz.

"As a matter of fact, my dear cousin, he has left them without any means of existence; his illness consumed his small remaining capital.

"My wife is going to take Madame Dumas--her relative--to Antilly, where she will remain a few days, whilst we do all we possibly can to give the general the funeral honours to which his rank, his brave deeds, and the love of his citizens entitle him.

"In charging myself with conveying to you this melancholy and distressing news I told Madame Dumas that I would invite you to join her husband's comrades-in-arms; their share in this melancholy affair will soften in some small degree the bitterness of her sorrows.

"I thank you, my dear cousin, for the certificate of death in the case of Lasne, _maréchal des logis._ If it is not quite in form, I will inform you.

"Believe me, my dear cousin, your attached friend, "DEVIOLAINE."

M. Deviolaine had not at all exaggerated our state of distress. My father's only income had been his half-pay pension of 4000 francs; my sister's boarding-school expenses took about 1200 francs of this, so there only remained 2800 francs to provide for the expenses of illness, for the constant changes of place which the restlessness of a dying man craved, and for our usual wants; it was very little, as the reader can see for himself.

Accordingly, my poor mother asked all my father's old friends, Brune, Murat, Augereau, Lannes, Jourdan, to endeavour to obtain a pension from the emperor. It was all in vain. The most urgent entreaties were of no avail against that extraordinary hatred, and, tired of hearing a name repeated so often which was already merely a dim recollection in his career, Napoleon angrily exclaimed to Brune, our warmest partisan:

"I forbid you ever to mention that fellow to me again."

My mother could not believe that the widow of a man who had been chief commander of three armies, and had served under his country's flag for twenty years, whose various campaigns were equivalent to forty-four years of service, although he was only forty-one years of age, had not the right to beg a pension from France, some little help, a morsel of bread. A letter from Jourdan came to destroy her last hope and to teach her that she must depend on God alone for help.

Here is the letter. No one would believe me if I simply related its contents, no one would believe that, at this period of supreme triumph, Napoleon, installed in the palace of the kings of France, handling more millions than Louis XIV. ever touched, regarded as the conqueror, victor, Cæsar, _Augustus,_ who had placed his foot on the neck of Europe and had stretched out his hands over the whole world, would knowingly refuse to save from starvation the wife and children of him who had taken Mont Cenis, reduced Mantua to capitulation, forced the passes of the Tyrol, and quelled the insurrection of Cairo.

But, sire, as it is right that people should believe these things, I will quote Jourdan's letter, even though it cast a stain on your Majesty's imperial robes.

"NAPLES, _28th April 1806._

"MADAME,--I have the honour to inform you that I have just received from His Excellency the Minister of War an answer to the letter I wrote him on your behalf. He regrets to inform me that you cannot obtain any pension, as the law of 8 Floréal, year XI, only allows pensions to be granted to the widows of soldiers killed on the field of battle, or of those who die of their wounds within six months after receiving them; and as General Dumas was not in active service when he died, there remains, madame, but one other means of hope, namely, for you to go personally to His Majesty the Emperor, and throw yourself upon his generosity.

"I have the honour to remain, madame, your most obedient servant, JOURDAN (Marshal)."

There was thus one hope still left. My mother went to Paris in order to present herself to His Majesty the Emperor, to beg him for help. But His Majesty the Emperor declined the audience she craved, and she returned to Villers-Cotterets the poorer by the money she had spent on her journey.

Sire, you may be a Hannibal, you may be a Cæsar, you may be an Octavius, posterity may not yet have had time to decide this question, or maybe the question is already settled; but I am very sure you are no Augustus! Augustus pleaded in person for the old soldier who had served under him at Actium; while you, you condemn to misery the widow of the man who served not only under you, but with you!

I have said, sire, that if you failed us, there remained but God to help us. We will see what God did for this poor forsaken family.