CHAPTER X

The return to Villers-Cotterets, and what we met on the way--The box with the thirty louis in it--The leather-bag--The mole--Our departure--The journey--The arrival at Mesnil and our sojourn there--King Joseph--The King of Rome--We leave Mesnil--Our visit to Crespy in Valois--The dead and wounded--The surrender of Paris--The isle of Elba.

When the resolution was made, it was carried into execution that very day. My mother and I climbed to the highest elevation about the farm, we explored all round, and, when we could not discover any appearance of Cossacks, we ventured to return to the town.

We had hardly gone a hundred steps before we met a clerk called Crétet on horseback. He was a good sort of lad, who had been in my brother-in-law's employment.

He was going from house to house.

"What are you looking for?" my mother asked.

"I am hunting for a carriage, a cab, a wagon, a berlin, or any sort of conveyance to harness my horse to and set off in," he said; "Mademoiselle Adélaïde does not want to stay in Villers-Cotterets any longer."

Mademoiselle Adélaïde was an old, humpbacked spinster, possessing several thousand francs of income, towards which I suspect Crétet had leanings.

"Ah! now that is lucky!" exclaimed my mother; "it is exactly what we are looking out for too. May we leave with you? You are two in number, and we two; we shall travel at half the cost."

It is always cheaper to travel four, rather than two; so the offer was accepted.

A spring cart was found possessing a minimum of springs, and it was settled that we should leave the same evening.

My mother returned to Villers-Cotterets to collect some clothing necessary for our journey, and, first and foremost, to extract the famous treasure of thirty louis from its hole.

We entered the house, still guarded by "the Queen"; then we went into the garden; we recognised the spot where we had buried our treasure, and I took a spade and set to work to dig.

At the third or fourth shovelful of earth I began to be uneasy. I looked at my mother, and I saw that she shared my anxiety.

There was no more sign of the box than if it had never existed. I returned to the guiding mark, I measured the steps; no--I had not made any mistake.

Then I set to work to dig all round my first hole,--all in vain; it was lost labour.

I returned to the middle hole, and continued digging deeper and deeper.

Suddenly I uttered a cry of delight. I had caught sight of the strings of the leather bag.

I pulled the strings, and the leather bag came up--but ... it was empty!

A hole had been made in the bottom of it.

Affairs were growing mysterious. Why in the world, if they had stolen the box, had they troubled to make a hole in the leather bag to take the money out? It would have been much easier to have carried off the whole lot; receptacle and its contents together.

A brilliant idea occurred to me. I zealously continued my digging, and a foot and a half deeper down my spade hit at last against an obstacle.

"Here is the box!" I cried.

And the box it was indeed.

A mole, attracted by the smell of the leather enclosed, had burrowed to get at it. It had disturbed the soil, and the box, dragged down by its own weight, had fallen into the pit made by the blind miner.

My mother quickly opened the box, and found that not one louis was missing.

The cart was loaded that evening, the horse put into the shafts, and we set off along the road to Paris.

I was enchanted: we were about to pay a second visit to the capital of the civilised world, and, although it was in a deplorable condition, I was no less anxious to see it.

Unfortunately we were not rich enough, with our few louis, to stay in Paris. This was a matter that had not occurred to me.

It was decided to stop in a village where living would be cheap.

The first night we got as far as Nanteuil, and put up at an inn which my father used to frequent when we went to Paris. Then, next morning, very early, we resumed our journey.

About one o'clock we reached the steep ascent of Dammartin, and got down from our conveyance to ease the horse a little.

Fighting was going on somewhere; we could hear the firing distinctly, like the thunder of a distant storm.

We even seemed to be travelling in the direction of the roar of the cannon; but, so blind is fear, that if the enemy had been in front of us my mother would rather have continued her course than turn back.

We passed through Dammartin without stopping, except to ask the news. No one knew anything very definite. The Count d'Artois was at Nancy; the allied sovereigns at Nogent-sur-Seine. The enemy was advancing upon Paris from all sides--that was all they could tell us.

We baited our horse at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges; then, when we had dined, we continued on our way, and reached Mesnil about eight in the evening.

We stopped at a hotel whose name I have forgotten--but it was situated on the left, at the corner of a street opposite the posting-house.

Next day, to my great regret, nothing was said about continuing our journey; it seemed to be almost settled that we should not go any further.

How were we better off at Mesnil than at Villers-Cotterets, a dozen leagues from our starting-point and upon the same road? Neither my mother nor Mademoiselle Adélaïde could say with certainty.

However, it was settled that, unless some serious event occurred, we had reached our journey's end.

We arrived at Mesnil on the 22nd of March.

On the 25th everybody was talking of a grand review of the National Guard, which was to be held by King Joseph in the court of the Tuileries.

This function roused Mademoiselle Adélaïde's curiosity, for she had never seen Paris, and it was decided to put the horse to our cart, to start on the afternoon of the 26th, to sleep in Paris, to see the review on the 27th, and to return on the 28th.

My mother did not care to take this little trip; for Paris recalled memories that my thoughtless childhood had forgotten. She entrusted me to Crétet and to Mademoiselle Adélaïde, who took me with them.

I have but two clear recollections of this journey--although it was eight years later than the last one.

One, radiant and poetic: and the other impure and stained.

The first was when, at the flourish of brazen trumpets and the waving of welcoming flags, they lifted up above the heads of 50,000 of the National Guard, the rosy, fair, curly head of a child of three, amid cries of _Vive le roi de Rome? Vive la régence!_

He was that poor child who was born a king, but who was destined by fate not only to be disinherited of both his kingdoms, but soon to lose both his parents.

A painting of this child was sent to the emperor at Moscow, and another followed Napoleon to Saint-Helena.

The father of this little martyr-innocent had scarcely time to realise his existence, except as a heavenly vision appearing for a brief space in this world. He saw him after the Russian campaign, after the Dresden campaign, and never again save in the dreams and hallucinations of his solitude and his despair.

His mother,--as disastrous an influence on the fortunes of France as all other daughters of the Cæsars: Anne of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and now Marie Louise--stood behind him, but her face left an indistinct and insipid impression on my mind, and her features are lost in the mists of time; I can only remember her fair hair fastened up on the top of her head by a diamond comb.

They swore fealty to this poor child, and, if the flourish of trumpets and the shouting had ceased for a moment, if the murmur of Paris with her million peoples had been stilled, the booming of the enemy's guns could have been heard thundering only two leagues away from the place where they were making all that futile cheering, and swearing those hollow vows!

In his name it was promised that he should never quit Paris; that he, Marie Louise his mother, and King Joseph his uncle, should die among the French people. And the carriages that were to bear them away next day were standing ready with the horses harnessed, in the courtyards of the Tuileries!

So it fell out that the King of Rome left the château of Catherine of Médicis the following morning--that castle which survived days like the 20th June, the 10th August, the 29th July, and the 24th February. On the morrow he left to his successors, the Duke of Bordeaux and the Count of Paris, the royal cradle presented by the Hôtel-de-Ville; they too--both great-nephews of Louis XVI.--were destined not to rest in it any longer than he had done.

This, then, was the flash of light and poetry still present to my memory.

The second recollection was of the number of girls of the town who, at that period, called out from the windows of their apartments to passers-by their licentious invitations with gestures obscene.

Every few moments I would turn round and say to Crétet and Mademoiselle Adélaïde, "They are calling to us." Both laughed, and I wondered why they laughed.

We left Paris quite early next day, but not too early, however, to learn the ill-starred news.

During the night the King of Rome, the Empress, and King Joseph had left Paris and were speeding towards the Loire.

On learning this news, which meant the abandonment of the capital, my mother felt that the place where we were--a little village on the great highway, six leagues from the barriers--was the place of all places where we should be least safe, even though we might not be in any danger at all.

Paris, we heard, was preparing to defend herself, so if we remained at Mesnil we should be right in the line of attack.

Moreover, the enemy was at Meaux--their advance-guard had been seen as far as Bondy.

My mother determined to turn back, and we started on our return journey to Villers-Cotterets the next day.

I have completely forgotten what we did with Crétet and Mademoiselle Adélaïde, I only know they were not with us during the subsequent events.

When we reached Nanteuil, we learnt that the enemy had turned the position at Soissons, and were at Villers-Cotterets, marching upon Nanteuil. The Cossacks had discovered the quarry, had gone down into it and, according to rumour, had committed abominations in its dark depths such as the sun itself would have blushed to see had they been done in the light of day.

We heard behind us, from the direction of Paris, the sound of firing, and we were informed that the Prussian advance-guard was at Levignan, two leagues from where we then were. Therefore, if we wished to escape entirely from the enemy, there was only the road to Crespy available.

Crespy, being situated two leagues north of the road from Laon to Paris, leads nowhere, and might be overlooked.

So we made for Crespy.

My mother knew an old lady there, named Madame de Longpré--the widow of an old valet de chambre of Louis XV.

Concerning her I only remember that she was addicted to the terrible habit of brandy-drinking, and that in order to procure her brandy she sold every single article of a collection of magnificent china such as I have never seen since.

And at what price do you think she sold them? Thirty or forty _sous_ the piece!

True, at that time Chinese porcelain was not so highly valued as is the fashion to-day.

We drew up at her house, but she had not enough room to take us in; and the sight of her perpetual drinking would have been repulsive.

She took us to a lady--Madame Millet--who had, she said, a spare room quite ready that she could let us have.

It was soon settled;--Crespy is so near Villers-Cotterets that my mother was perfectly well known there, and we installed ourselves that same day.

Madame Millet had two sons and two daughters:--one of these two daughters, Amélie, would have been very pretty had she not lost one eye, through an accident--it was always closed, and she hid it by a great mass of beautiful black hair.

I remember nothing at all about the youngest girl, not even her name.

The two sons were army surgeons like their father.

The eldest had already left the service some two or three years before, and practised medicine in Crespy.

The other was with his regiment, no one knew where. In the midst of this general _débâcle_ nothing had been heard of him for six or eight weeks past, and the poor mother and his two sisters were very uneasy about him.

As we crossed the main square of Crespy, we came upon a kind of bivouac; we inquired about this garrison--a source of danger rather than a means of help, in a town which was as open as a market-place, and we learnt that it was composed of 100 infantry and 200 cavalry. This little corps was completely cut off from all communication with the main army, and was stationed there, under inferior officers, without any orders: there they awaited the tide of events.

The enemy lay all round Crespy: at Compiègne, at Villers-Cotterets, at Levignan. But by some curious chance, for which we were most grateful, Crespy had remained, like Péronne, if not quite inviolable, at least inviolate.

Our two or three hundred men kept splendid guard; they had pickets all round, their muskets were kept ever ready piled, and their horses were only unbridled when they had to be fed.

The activity of this handful of men was a remarkable contrast to the negligence of the duc de Treviso and of his army corps, who, as we have related, allowed themselves to be surprised one night at Villers-Cotterets.

One day, in spite of this vigilance, or rather because of it, an alarm was spread; the enemy had been seen filing out of the wood of Tillet, at the foot of the rise of Montigny.

This was the same hillock I thought so high, when I travelled to Béthisy with Picard and my cousin Marianne.

However that might be, the enemy was approaching, and the little troop resolved to defend vigorously.

Madame Millet's house was the second or third on the right as you came into the town from Villers-Cotterets--the same road that the enemy was taking.

The windows looked up that road.

We went up into the attics, which we turned into a general camping ground,--for Madame Millet, my mother, and the two daughters had settled not to stir out. From the windows of these attics we could see the approach of a little corps of about a hundred men.

Was it, we questioned, an isolated corps like ours at Crespy? or the advance-guard of a more considerable force? We were unable to tell, or rather to see, from our attic windows, as the road turned a few paces outside the town, was lost behind the houses that stood on our right, and completely cut off from sight a quarter of a league further by the wood of Tillet, which was large enough to conceal a much larger force than the one that had just passed through it.

It was Prussian cavalry. The men were clothed in short blue coats, tight-fitting round the chest, loose below and fastened at the waist by belts.

They wore grey trousers, with a blue stripe like their coats, and had small vizored helmets on their heads, fastened by a leather chin-strap.

Each man carried a sabre and two pistols.

I can still see the first rank, preceded by two trumpeters, holding their trumpets in their hands but not blowing them.

An officer marched behind the trumpeters.

They were fine-looking young fellows, fair, and of a more distinguished bearing than the ordinary soldier; no doubt they were of the voluntary levies of 1813, who came to Leipzig to try their prentice hands on us; officers of the _Tugendbund_, which had produced Staps and was to produce Sand.

They passed under our windows, and disappeared out of our sight; a moment later we heard a perfect hurricane of sound, and the house shook to the gallop of horses. At the end of the street the Prussians had been charged by our cavalry, and, as they were unaware of the size of our forces, they retreated at full gallop, hotly pursued by our hussars.

They all rushed past together pell-mell--a hurricane of smoke and noise. Our soldiers were slashing and firing, sabre in one hand and pistol in the other.

The Prussians fired back as they fled. Two or three bullets struck our house; and one of them broke the bar of the shutter through which I was watching.

Great was the terror of the women, who rushed downstairs at a break-neck pace to hide themselves in the cellar. My mother tried to drag me with her, but I held fast to the window-sash, and rather than leave me she stopped by me.

It was a terrible and yet a magnificent sight to witness.

When pressed hard the Prussians faced about, and there, only twenty paces from us, under our very eyes, as near as the first row of boxes at the circus is to the stage, a battle was taking place in deadly earnest--a hand-to-hand fight.

I saw five or six of the Prussians fall, and two or three of the French.

The first man who fell was a Prussian, who was flying with his head and body bent low over his horse's neck; one slashing stroke cut open his back, from his right shoulder to his left flank, and left a ribbon-like band of red across him.

The wound must have been twelve or fifteen inches long.

Of the others whom I saw fall, one fell from a slash which cut his head open; the rest were stabbed or shot.

Then, after ten minutes' struggle, the Prussians were beaten; they trusted afresh to the speed of their horses to save them, and set off at full gallop.

The pursuit began again.

The hurricane resumed its course, strewing three or four men on the pavement before it disappeared out of sight.

One of these men was certainly killed, for he never moved; the others got up, or dragged themselves away to the other side of the road. One of them sat up and leant with his back against the wall; the other two, who were probably more seriously wounded, remained lying.

Suddenly a drum was heard summoning to the charge--it was our hundred infantry coming up to take their share of the fight: they marched with fixed bayonets, and disappeared round the bend of the road.

Five minutes later we heard sharp firing, then our hussars reappeared, driven back by five or six hundred cavalry.

The pursuers were now the pursued: but it was quite impossible to see or to distinguish any details in this second flurry of fighting--we only saw three or four more corpses stretched on the road when all was over.

A deep silence succeeded this turmoil. French and Prussians had plunged forward into the town: and, though we waited, we neither saw nor heard anything more.

What had become of our hundred infantry men? Probably they had rushed out into the open country, and had been either killed or taken.

And as for our cavalry men, who knew the district round about the town, they had escaped, it would seem, by way of the mountain of Sery, in the valley of Gillocourt.

We saw no more of their pursuers; no doubt they left the town by some other route than the one by which they had entered, and had gone to rejoin their comrades, who were drawn up in the plain of Tillet to the number of about two or three thousand.

We were emboldened by the solitude and silence; moreover, our host, the military surgeon, came forward to attend to the wounded men.

I hung to his coat-tails, in spite of my mother's entreaties, and we opened the street door. A Prussian sergeant, who was leaning against this door, fell backwards when his means of support suddenly failed him.

He was wounded through the right breast by a sword thrust. Directly the women saw they could be useful to a poor wounded man their fears vanished. They rushed to the rescue, raised the young man (who would be somewhere between twenty-six or twenty-eight years of age) and carried him into the sitting-room, which they speedily turned into a hospital.

Millet continued his rounds, and, with the assistance of the neighbours, who began to appear at their doors, he brought back four or five of the wounded, one of whom was a Frenchman. The remainder were either dead or at their last gasp.

And now the bandaging began.

Here the women played the divine part heaven intended should fall to their portion. My mother, Madame Millet and her two daughters turned into true Sisters of Mercy, comforting and tending at the same time.

I held the basin full of water, while Millet washed the wounds and the servants prepared lint.

We then learnt from one of the Prussians who was least seriously wounded (he had received a sabre cut on his head), that he and his comrades belonged to a detachment of three thousand men, which had refrained from entering the town for fear of being surprised; they were following their instructions, which were to camp out as much as possible, their commanders always fearing a nocturnal massacre if they ventured to stay in the towns.

"However, it will all be over soon," added the wounded man, "since Paris surrendered the day before yesterday."

This was the first intimation we had received of that important event.

We were just on the point of crying out at the news, when a voice in the doorway said suddenly--

"That is not true, Paris will not surrender like that."

We turned round, and there we saw, leaning against the door, pale, one of the officers of our small detachment of infantry. He had one of the finest and most soldierly heads imaginable, gashed, now, with a deep wound over the left eye-brow--hence his pallor and the blood that covered him.

He had received a pistol-shot in his face, which had felled him; but, the fresh air soon reviving him, he had managed to get up, and, seeing the town a hundred steps in front of him, he had reached it, leaning against its walls for support.

The kind neighbours who had assisted our host had directed this officer to our house, and, mortally wounded, he had arrived just in time to give that truly patriotic denial to the news announced by his enemy.

The bullet was still in the wound; it was extracted very skilfully by Millet, but, as we have said, the wound was mortal, and the officer died during the night, about two o'clock in the morning, just when a dog began to bark.

Millet went into the yard and listened. Someone was knocking at the garden gate which led into the open country, and knocking so cautiously that it was plain whoever it was had to be wary.

Our host opened the gate himself, and he who knocked thus at a private door in the dead of the night was the second son of the house, about whom they had been so terribly anxious.

Our host came back into the house alone, went into one of the rooms, and bent over the bed where his mother and his two sisters were sleeping for a little while, after their good offices as sisters of charity. It was indeed good news God had sent them as a reward for their devotion.

They smuggled in the new-comer by a landing window, so that he could reach our attics without being seen.

For ten minutes the three women sobbed for joy, then he told them that Paris had indeed practically surrendered on March 30th.

Georges Millet--so far as I can recollect I believe Georges was his name--Georges Millet realised then that all was over. He left his regiment, and, at the risk of being taken a score of times, he managed to return to Crespy, walking by night and across country.

It had only taken him a night and a half, for Crespy was but fifteen leagues from Paris.

His brother gave him a razor to shave off his moustache, and for clothing they sent to Madame de Longpré, whose eldest son was the same size, and borrowed a coat, a waistcoat, and a pair of trousers, as the clothes of his elder brother (who was twice as stout as he was) would not have fitted him.

Next day the news came.

The Allies entered Paris on the 31st March.

On the 1st April the Senate appointed a Provisional Government.

On the 2nd, a decree of the Senate declared Napoleon to have forfeited his throne.

A fortnight later we returned to Villers-Cotterets, and settled down again in our home.

What a host of events had happened during that fortnight! The face of Europe had been changed.

On the 4th, Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son.

On the 6th he made his plans for retiring south of the Loire.

On the 10th a _Te Deum_ was chanted in the place Louis XV. by the Allies.

On the 11th Napoleon signed the decree of abdication.

On the 12th he attempted to poison himself.

The same day, whilst he was struggling with the poison, which had been adulterated by Cabanis, the Count d'Artois entered Paris.

On the 13th the Senate nominated that prince Lieutenant-General of the kingdom.

On the 14th the Emperor of Austria entered Paris.

On the 19th the Emperor Napoleon, deserted by everyone, was left alone with only a single valet de chambre.

Finally, on the 20th, he said adieu to the Eagles of the Imperial Guard, and set out for the isle of Elba; on the same day, and almost at the same hour, Louis XVIII. reached Compiègne.

All this had passed during that fortnight; thus had history been made, and the noise of these exploits had been bruited abroad for all the world to hear, whilst I, in my careless and happy ignorance, was untouched by the sound thereof.

Who would have said then that one day I should visit the isle of Elba, whose very existence was unknown to me till I heard its name pronounced, and whose geographical position I forgot as soon as it was told me? Who would have said that one day I should visit this isle of Elba with the Emperor's nephew?