CHAPTER VII

The Abbé Fortier--The jealous husband and the viaticum--A pleasant visit--Victor Letellier--The pocket-pistol--I terrify the population--Tournemolle is requisitioned--He disarms me.

School life is not remarkable for variety of incident; a country school certainly is not, and ours was no exception to the rule! I have recounted my entry because of this trait in my character that was developed thereby, but if it were to describe that life in all its details I should have nothing to relate beyond a few childish naughtinesses, followed by penitence and impositions, not even worth putting into M. Bouilly's _Jeunes Écoliers._

A terrible accident happened to the Seminary at Soissons My mother was already reconciled to my conduct in refusing to go there, and this accident made her thank God afresh that I had not entered.

The powder-store of the town, which was situated about fifty mètres from the Seminary, blew up; the college was completely ruined, and eight or ten seminarists were, killed or wounded.

Meanwhile, another of our relatives died: the one who tool me in the night I lost my father. Her daughter Marianne my sister's cousin and mine then left Villers-Cotterets to go and live near her uncle, the Abbé Fortier, who was priest at the little village of Béthisy, five leagues from us and three leagues from Compiègne.

This abbé was supposed to be very rich, and it looked a good thing for my cousin to become his housekeeper; but he was rather a troublesome character.

Had the word been in use at that time, we should have said he was eccentric.

I cannot say what deviation from the path every man ought to follow in deciding upon his vocation had driven the Abbé Fortier into the Church. He was born to make a first-rate captain of dragoons, whilst as it was he made a somewhat odd priest. God forbid I should say he made a bad one!

He was a man of five feet eight inches, built like a Hercules, with an erect carriage, his head held high, and he stepped right foot foremost at each stride like a fencing-master in a fencing school; he was, too, one of the finest billiard players, one of the best huntsmen, and one of the greatest eaters I ever saw.

I do not, of course, even dream of comparing the Abbé Fortier with Boudoux in this last respect. The abbé could eat for a long time and a considerable quantity at once: Boudoux's desire to be always eating was a disease.

One day the Abbé Fortier bet a curé of the neighbourhood that he would eat a hundred eggs at his dinner. The hundred eggs were served up according to recipes in the _Cuisinière bourgeoise_, in twenty different ways.

When they were eaten, he said:

"Good, one ought to play fair and give four extra to the hundred: boil four more eggs--hard."

And he ate the four hard-boiled eggs, after having eaten a hundred cooked in all kinds of ways.

A very curious story is told of his early days. He would be thirty at the time I am referring to, and, as he was sixty-two at the time I am writing about, it must have happened thirty-two years before. He was then only a curate, and one evening he was taking the viaticum to a dying person in the next village.

A certain husband had conceived violent jealousy against him, doubtless without cause, and waited for him in a deep lane down which he was obliged to go from Béthisy in order to reach the village where he was wanted.

When the Abbé Fortier saw this man standing in the middle of the road, with his face drawn with anger and his first clenched, he quickly guessed what was going to happen; but, being a minister of the God of peace and averse to all scandal, he begged him as politely as possible to allow him to pass.

"Oh yes, let you pass, M. le vicaire," said the man in the jeering tones peculiar to our peasants; "you'll not get by so easily!"

"Why should I not pass?" asked the curate.

"Because you have a little account to settle with this poor Bastien."

"I owe you nothing," said the abbé; "allow me to pass; you know well I am being waited for and by one who has not time to wait long."

"He will just have to wait, then," said Bastien, throwing off his jacket and spitting on his hands; "he will just have to wait: if he is in too great a hurry, he must go before."

"Why must he wait?" the abbé demanded, now getting vexed.

"Because I have to give you a drubbing, M. le vicaire."

"Ah! that is it! Is that why you came here, Bastien?"

"Rather."

"It would not take much trouble to remove you, my friend."

"Do you think so?"

"I am certain of it."

The abbé put the viaticum down on the edge of a ditch and said in very reverent accents, "O Lord, O Lord, take neither side, and Thou shalt see a rogue well thrashed."

The abbé kept his word, and the good Lord saw what had been promised.

Then he picked up the viaticum, continued his walk, administered to the sick man and returned quietly home again.

Both Bastien and the abbé were interested in keeping the matter to themselves, and they did so, but a choir-boy had seen the fight, and it became known.

Let it be said to the honour of the abbé that nobody was surprised at the affair.

One day he intended to shoot at Lamotte, but, before beginning his sporting expedition, he had to say mass in the château chapel; he had taken with him his dog Finaud and his choir-boy _quiot_ Pierre (which means _little_ Pierre), to assist him in his operations.

The church was on the borders of the warren on which they were going to begin.

Now Finaud was a splendid retriever, and the Abbé Fortier, who never cared to shoot without him, had told the servants to shut him up carefully.

After the Gospel the abbé stopped and listened as he heard a well-known bark in the warren.

He listened for a minute; then he turned, and saw that the choir-boy was also listening, with a smile on his lips.

"Tell me, quiot Pierre," said the abbé, "isn't that Finaud's bark I hear over there?"

"Yes, M. l'abbé; they have let him loose, and he is after a rabbit."

"Ah! well!" replied the abbé, "the rabbit can be quite easy; we shall get him in any case."

And he went on saying mass.

Mass over, Finaud led the way.

The abbé took his gun, followed the trail and killed the rabbit.

This was the same choir-boy who told the story about Bastien. He told the second, as he had told the first, and there were many more, but some of them would not even bear relating by a choir-boy.

So Marianne went to live with her uncle Fortier, who, at the age of sixty-two, was reputed to be simply a great sportsman and a great eater; maybe this opinion of him was not quite right.

He gave her a wonderfully good reception, installed her at the parsonage, and, as my cousin Marianne was very fond of me, he allowed her to bring me back with her the next visit she paid to Villers-Cotterets, which was during my holidays in 1812.

When the holidays began, my cousin and I both perched on the back of one donkey. Picard, the fellow who used to tell me such fine stories at the forge, took a stick to beat the ass with, and we set off.

This journey, like all childish journeyings, was full of surprises for me. I remember seeing for a long time on our left a mountain with a ruin on the top of it, which seemed to me like an Alp or one of the Cordilleras; I have seen it since, and it did not look any higher than Montmartre.

I remember also seeing a tower on my right, which seemed so high to me that I asked if it were not the tower of Babel.

The mountain was the knoll of Montigny.

The tower was the tower of Vez.

We reached our destination after a journey that had seemed to me inordinately long, but had only lasted seven or eight hours; we went at the pace of Joseph and the Virgin Mary on their flight into Egypt.

However, we arrived at last. It was the right season to stop with Uncle Fortier, for it was early in September, and there was a splendid arbour of vines, from which hung bunches of grapes rivalling those of the Promised Land. There was also a wild plum tree laden with plums in a small courtyard; and, finally, an immense garden full of peaches, apricots and pears.

Moreover, shooting was just about to begin.

The Abbé Fortier gave me a very kind welcome, although he uttered several grunts which showed I was not in every respect satisfactory to him.

The abbé was a very learned man; he had Greek and Latin at his finger ends; he greeted me in the tongue of Cicero; I attempted to reply, and made three errors in five words.

He was transfixed.

That was my first intellectual humiliation. I will give the second in its right place.

I tried to recover my ground in natural history and mythology, but the abbé was proficient in both, and I sighed, crestfallen.

I was vanquished.

Directly I was beaten and avowed my error like Porus, the victor became as clement as Alexander.

The abbé began his fascination over me by the excellence of his dinner. If he ate well, he drank still better.

I was lost in admiration before this man--I had never imagined such curés: the Abbé Fortier came near to reconciling me to the Seminary.

Next day after mass the Abbé Fortier began his first day's shooting. Mass was not over before half-past eight; but not a soul was allowed to shoot a partridge upon the preserves until the Abbé Fortier had been seen to go by, his cassock tucked up, the game-bag on his back, a gun on shoulder, preceded by Finaud and followed by Diane.

He had a third acolyte this time, for I was with him. My recollections of hunting were lost in the obscurity of my early infancy; they went back to the days of my father and Mocquet. As in Racine's tragedies, all that happened to me at that period of my existence consisted of the hunting stories that were told me.

This time, I took some part in the action.

The abbé was an excellent shot, and there was abundance of game: he killed a dozen partridges and two or three hares.

I covered as much ground as Diane, and as each head of game fell, I rushed to pick it up, in emulation of the dogs.

No one shoots without swearing a bit at his dogs; the Abbé Fortier swore a good deal; and all these characteristics made up an entirely different picture of an abbé in my mind: he had nothing in common with the Abbé Grégoire.

From that day I was convinced there were two kinds of priests.

Since I have lived in Italy, and, above all, in Rome, I have discovered a third.

Oh! what a happy day that opening day of the shooting season was! How well I remember it! It made me the indefatigable sportsman I have since been, the despair of gamekeepers!

The abbé, on his side, was well pleased with my power of walking, which he found greatly superior to my brains; he made me some jeering compliments upon it, and I felt the full value of them; but he had given me so much pleasure that I had not the courage to be angry with him.

I remained a fortnight with the Abbé Fortier, and I would fain have stayed with him all my life; but my mother wanted me home: it was my first long absence. And she, poor woman, had wanted to send me to a Seminary! She wrote that she should die of ennui if they did not send me back soon.

The abbé shrugged his shoulders and said:

"Very well, let him be sent back!"

Sensitiveness was not a weakness the abbé suffered from.

They put me on a donkey and took me to Crépy, where, twice a week, there was a connection with Villers-Cotterets by means of an old woman, called mother Sabot, and her ass.

I passed from my ass to mother Sabot's, and the same evening I was back at Villers-Cotterets.

I found a fresh person installed at home--my future brother-in-law.

He was a young man of about twenty-six or twenty-seven, who, although not good-looking, had such a refined and intellectual type of face, it might easily have been taken for beauty. He was, besides, remarkably skilful at all physical exercises, clever at fencing, able to hit a cork out of a bottle with a bullet from his pistol at twenty-five paces off, without touching the bottle, a perfect horseman and, although not in the front rank as a sportsman, was considered a good shot.

He had been to our house already several times before I went away, and I was great chums with his dog, Figaro, whose reputation for cleverness was as great among dogs as his master's was among men.

I had the warmest of welcomes from everybody, and specially from this young man, whose name was Victor Letellier. He was very much in love with my sister, and wanted to make allies of all who surrounded her, even of me.

"My dear Alexandre," he said, when he caught sight of me, "something has been lying on my chimney-piece for you for a fortnight. I do not want to tell you what it is--go and fetch it for yourself."

I rushed off at full speed, Victor lived with M. Picot at l'Épée, the house wherein my father had died.

"Open M. Letellier's door for me," I cried, as I ran into the kitchen; "he has sent me to fetch something he has left on the mantelshelf."

They opened the door. I ran to the chimney-piece, and there, in the middle of two or three piles of money, spurs, riding-whips, bootjacks, and other objects, I saw a small pocket-pistol, quite a tiny one, upon which I pounced unhesitatingly, for I knew it was the thing intended for me.

That present was one of the first I ever received, and it gave me great joy.

But it was not enough to have the pistol, I must also have the means wherewith to enjoy it. I looked all round me: it was not difficult to find what I wanted in a sportsman's room: I was hunting for powder. I found a powder-horn, and poured half its contents into another horn; then I bolted off to a part of the park which was called the "parterre," that is to say, a stretch before the forest began.

Then began a fusillade which only ended with my last grain of powder, and which collected all the street urchins of the town. At the end of half an hour my mother was warned that I was devoting myself to a most terrific fire practice.

My mother always feared some accident would happen to me, for she loved me much. Once, one of our friends, whose name, M. Danré de Vouty, I have already mentioned, came to our house pale and bleeding. He had been shooting near Villers-Cotterets; it was winter, and in jumping over a ditch some snow got down his gun-barrel; the gun had burst, and the explosion had carried off part of his left hand.

Doctor Lécosse was called in, and at once amputated the thumb. M. Danré recovered, after a fearful attack of fever, but he was maimed for life.

Thus, every time the question of guns or pistols or any sort of firearms was brought up, my mother pictured me being brought home pale and bleeding like M. Danré de Vouty; she was so frightened that I took pity on her, and nearly gave up the idea of ever becoming a Hippolytus or a Nimrod.

Then I would return to my bow and arrows, but here was a fresh subject of alarm for my mother. One of our neighbours, a man called Bruyant (please remember this name, for we shall come across it again in an important event), had had, like Philip of Macedon, his right eye destroyed by an arrow.

My mother's terror, therefore, was great when she learnt that I had been supplied with a pistol and that I had munitions wherewith to practise; but it was very hard work to run after me, for my legs had grown since the adventure of Lebègue; moreover, the forest was my friend; as Bas-de-Cuir knew every nook and corner of his woods, so did I know all the turns and by-ways in ours. I could have hidden there three days without returning. Therefore, they decided to make use of the law.

There lived at the town hall a sort of deputy police agent, who almost fulfilled the office of a commissary: he cried the news of the day to the beating of a drum, as is still done in some country places; in summer, he killed stray dogs, not by shooting, but with a great hunting-knife; in winter, he broke the ice off the streams, and swept the snow from our doors.

His name was Tournemolle.

They told him, and he lay in wait for my return to my mother; then he appeared behind me.

When I saw Tournemolle, I foresaw something dreadful was going to happen.

He had come, in the name of all the inhabitants, who were disturbed by the noise of the pistol-shots, to ask, nay, if needs be to insist on, the disarmament of the culprit.

There was a struggle; but strength was on the side of authority, and the culprit was disarmed.

My joy was, therefore, short-lived; it had not even lasted as long as do the roses. Within the space of one hour, I had become the happy owner of a pistol, I had used up my powder, I had returned home and I had been disarmed by Tournemolle.

That disarmament was a terrible disgrace for me, such an ignominy that not even the grave news which reached us next day was able to cause me to forget it.

The next day was the 23rd of September 1812, when Paris saw the conspiracy of Mallet, whilst Napoleon from Moscow was dating his decree upon the Constitution of the Théâtre-Français, and upon the good men of Cambrai.

God had begun to withdraw His hand from this man. He had forced the battle of Moskova in the teeth of a weakened army and increasing distrust in his ability; he had left eleven of his generals dead on the field; he wrote to the bishops to sing _Te Deums_, for it was necessary to reassure Paris and to reassure himself; then he entered Moscow, believing that it was like any other capital, and that evening Moscow revealed itself by its first conflagrations.

Then, instead of taking a decisive course of action, such as to march on St. Petersburg or to return to Paris; instead of establishing his winter quarters in the heart of Russia, as Cæsar did in the heart of Gaul, he hesitated, he became worried, he felt he had adventured too far, and was, maybe, lost.

By a strange coincidence it was at this moment that, at Paris, before even present embarrassment and reverses to come had made themselves felt, Mallet's conspiracy burst out, seized hold of the Colossus in the full tide of his power, bound him, shook him to his foundations, and if it did not overthrow him, at any rate proved he could be overthrown.

On the 29th, Mallet, Lahorie, and Guidai were shot on the plain of Grenelle.

At length Napoleon made up his mind. For the first time he had taken a capital to no purpose; for the first time he beat a retreat after victories. The snow which fell on the 13th October settled the conqueror's vacillations, and the Almighty saved his pride by allowing him one last consolation--he could say he had been beaten by climate and not by man.

On the 19th of October Napoleon left Moscow, deputing the duc de Treviso to seize the Kremlin and to carry off the cross of the great Ivan, which he intended for the dome of the Invalides, and which he had to leave behind on his journey, lacking arms to carry it farther.

At last, on November the 18th, Napoleon reached the Tuileries at eleven o'clock at night, went close to a large fire, warmed himself, rubbed his hands, and said: "Decidedly it is better here than at Moscow."

That was the funeral oration over the finest army ever raised!

O Varus!... Varus!...