CHAPTER XI

Am I to be called Davy de la Pailleterie or Alexandre Dumas?--_Deus dedit, Deus dabit_--The tobacco-shop--The cause of the Emperor Napoleon's fall, as it appeared to my writing-master--My first communion--How I prepared for it.

Two or three days after our return to Villers-Cotterets, M. Collard came to see us, and my mother had a long talk with him; after which he left us, inviting her to join him that evening at M. Deviolaine's house.

My mother went to M. Deviolaine's and took me with her. There was a large company of officers with their sabres and epaulettes at table, as on the last occasion I had been in the house: only, this time they were Russian sabres and epaulettes: the same language and manners, perhaps rather more polished manners--that was the only difference.

I could not understand that these were they whom the people spoke of as "the enemy"--the enemy represents a principle, not actual men themselves.

My mother and M. Collard continued their conversation. Next day M. Collard was to leave for Paris, but he promised to look in at our house again before going.

That night, when we returned home, my mother took me aside, and, looking at me more seriously than usual, but with as loving a face, she said:--

"My dear one, the Count d'Artois, who has been appointed Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and Louis XVII., who is just about to be made King of France, are both brothers of King Louis XVI. Your grandfather, the Marquis de la Pailleterie, served under Louis XVI. as your father served under the Republic. Listen now, and attend carefully to what I say, for probably your whole future will depend on the resolution we are about to take. Would you rather be called Davy de la Pailleterie, like your grandfather, for you are the grandson of the Marquis Davy de la Pailleteril, who was Groom of the Bed-chamber to the Prince of Conti, and Commissary-General of Artillery; in which case we could obtain a commission for you, or you could become one of the pages; and in either case you would have a position made for you in the new reigning family? Or would you like to be called simply and briefly Alexandre Dumas, like your father? If you bear the name of the republican General Alexandre Dumas, no career will be open to you, for, instead of serving those who now reign, as your grandfather did, your father served against them!... M. Collard is going to Paris to-day; he knows M. de Talleyrand, who was in the _Corps Législatif_ when he was; he knows the duc d'Orléans; in fact, he knows many people belonging to the new Court, and he will do his best for you according to your own decision. Think carefully before you reply."

"Oh! I don't need to think, mother!" I cried--"I will be called Alexandre Dumas, and nothing else. I remember my father; I never knew my grandfather. What would my father think, who came to bid me farewell at the moment of his death, if I should disown him in order to call myself by my grandfather's name?"

My mother's face brightened.

"Is that your opinion?" she said.

"Yes; and yours too, is it not, mother?"

"Alas! yes; but what is to become of us?"

"Nonsense!" I replied; "you forget that I can construe the _De viris_, and therefore I understand my father's motto: _'Deus dedit, Deus dabit_--God has given, God will give.'"

"Well then, my child, go off to bed after that: you aggravate me very much sometimes, but I am sure your heart is in the right place."

I went to bed without realising quite the importance of the decision my filial instinct had just prompted me to make, and that, as my mother had warned me, it might very probably mean the shaping of my whole future life.

Next day M. Collard came again, and it was settled he should ask nothing whatever on my behalf, but only apply for a tobacco-shop for my mother.

A strange anomaly this--the widow of the Horatius Codes of the Tyrol selling tobacco!

And my education was to be continued at the Abbé Grégoire's.

I say _at_ the Abbé Grégoire's, but I should have said under the Abbé Grégoire. For, whilst all these things had been happening, the abbé had lost his certificate as master of the school.

Some decision of the University had forbade him to keep a school at his own house--although he was allowed to teach pupils in the town.

For the consideration of six francs a month, which my mother agreed to pay him, I became one of his town pupils.

I was, besides, to take lessons in arithmetic with Oblet--the town schoolmaster, and to continue my fencing lessons with old Mounier.

And as for riding, I had taught myself, as the Roman soldiers did, by mounting bare-backed any horses I could get hold of. My sole education then was limited to as much Latin as the Abbé Grégoire could teach me; to studying the four rules of arithmetic with M. Oblet; and to executing counter-stroke, feint and parry with old Mounier.

Oblet, I must say, had the least enviable task, for I have always had such a profound aversion towards arithmetic that I never have been able to get beyond multiplication.

And even to-day I am incapable of doing the slightest sum in division.

But if I did not learn how to calculate under Oblet--God, who watched over me, providentially saw that I learnt something else.

Besides a perfect knowledge of his _Barême_, Oblet wrote a splendid hand; he could make all the letters of the alphabet, like M. Prudhomme, with one flourish of his pen; and, furthermore, he could draw the most marvellous designs, ornaments, hearts, rosettes, _lacs d'amour_, Adam and Eve, the portrait of Louis XVIII., and I know not what else.

Now, handwriting was quite a different matter,--here I was gifted! When Oblet had given me my arithmetic lessons, and, to acquit his conscience, had dunned the three rules into me--(for, as I have said, I never got beyond multiplication)--we got out fine pieces of white paper, pared three or four quill pens in advance, to coarse or fine or medium points, and then began writing round-hand, flourishes and up-strokes galore.

In three months I had attained to Oblet's standard, and if I were not afraid of offending his pride, I should say that, in some points, I had even surpassed him.

My progress in writing gave my mother some pleasure, though she would much rather it had been in arithmetic.

"Writing, writing!" she would say; "it is something to be proud of, I must say, to write well. Why, any duffer can write well. But look at Bonaparte, you have a score of his letters addressed to your father; can you make out a single one of them?"

"But, madame, M. Bonaparté is now at the island of Elba," Oblet would reply gravely.

Oblet was a hot Royalist, so he always pronounced the name Bonaparté, and gave the ex-Emperor the title of _monsieur._

The same honour or the same insult that Oblet offered to Bonaparte was offered me in the Chamber of 1847.

"Do you mean to say," my mother replied, "that he is at Elba because he didn't know how to write?"

"Why should I not say so? It is an argument that may be maintained, madame. They say that M. Bonaparté was betrayed by his marshals; but I say 'Providence willed this usurper should not be able to write clearly so that his orders should be illegible, and therefore they were not able to be carried out.' 'His marshals betrayed him! 'Nothing of the kind, madame; they read his orders wrongly, so they acted contrary to what he had ordered them. Hence have arisen our reverses and our defeats, and the taking of Paris and the exile to the isle of Elba."

"Well, we will drop Bonaparte now, M. Oblet."

"Madame, you yourself introduced the man into the conversation and not I; I never speak of the man."

"But suppose if Alexandre..."

"If your son, madame, one day becomes emperor of the French, since he will have, or rather as he already has, a splendid hand, his orders will be literally carried out, unless his marshals do not know how to read."

But my mother was not comforted for my lack of mathematical ability by this contingency, she sighed a deep sigh, and gave expression to the final word let fall by weary consciences, and exhausted intellects, and faith that has reached the doubting point--

"If only!..."

So I continued my five sorts of writing, my down-strokes and my up-strokes, my flourishes, my hearts, my rosettes and _lacs d'amour_, with Oblet.

Oblet, be it understood, was not the worst of those who treated the dethroned emperor badly: it was bad enough to call him M. Bonaparté, but many even contested his very name, saying that it never was Napoleon, but Nicolas, thus depriving him of his title of _The Lion of the Desert_,--fools that they were,--in order to call him _Conqueror of the Nations._

While all these things were happening I attained my thirteenth year, and it became time to think of making my First Communion--a serious event in the life of every child, but specially so in mine.

For, young as I was, I had always felt deeply religious, apart from external observances. That sentiment is always ready to vibrate in my heart like a mysterious, hidden chord, but it never really thrills save under the influence of a vivid emotion of joy or sorrow. In both circumstances, my first impulse, whether of gratitude or of affliction, is always towards the Saviour. Churches I hardly ever enter, for directly I cross the threshold I feel, like Habakkuk, as though an angel were pulling me back by the hair. Yet churches are such sacred places to me that I feel it sacrilege to go there as others do, merely out of curiosity or from a religious freak.

No, it takes a deep access of joy, or some profound grief, to make me go into our northern churches, and then I always choose the loneliest comer or the darkest place--(though with God no dark places exist)--there I often prostrate myself, near a pillar against which I can lean my head; there, with eyes riveted, my being isolated from all others, I can bury myself in the one thought, that of a God, good, all powerful, eternal and infinite. I cannot find a word to say to Him, not a prayer to address to Him. What can one say to God, and what use is it to pray to Him, when He can see the face behind the mask, impiety behind hypocrisy? No, I prostrate my body, my heart, my soul, before His mercy-seat, I humble myself at the feet of His greatness. I bless Him for past mercies, I praise Him for the present, and I hope in Him for the future.

But all this is not very orthodox; all this may be Christian enough but hardly Catholic; it was therefore feared that I should not turn out a very edifying example of piety.

Those who thought so could not grasp the fact that my apparent want of religious feeling was really from my excess of religious emotion.

It was just the same with prayers as with the rules of arithmetic; I never could learn more than three: "Our Father," "Hail Mary," and "I believe in God." Moreover, I only knew these in French, and not word for word: they tried to teach me them in Latin, but, as I had not yet become at that time a pupil of the Abbé Grégoire, I declined to learn them, saying that I wanted to understand what I was asking God for, to which they replied that God understood all languages.

"Never mind!" I insisted; "it isn't enough for me that God understands, I must understand too."

And I obtained leave to learn my prayers in French.

But, in spite of my Gallican prayers and my imperfect attention to the instruction of the Catechism, there were two persons, my mother and the Abbé Grégoire, who never doubted my religious tendencies.

And, more than that, the Abbé Grégoire, who was only a curate, obtained for me, in spite of the strictness of the Abbé Remy, the priest of the church at Villers-Cotterets, the supreme honour of being allowed to renew my baptismal vows.

The matter had long been talked of, and the Abbé Grégoire had to make himself personally responsible for his pupil.

A week beforehand I was given the vows of baptism, copied in Oblet's very finest handwriting; the next day I knew them by heart.

The day before the ceremony, my mother found me absorbed in reading a book which seemed to cast a spell over all my faculties. She never doubted for an instant that the book I was thus so taken up with was the _Imitation of Christ_, or the _Pratique du Chretien_: she approached me gently and read over my shoulder.

I was reading the _Lettres d'Héloïse et d'Abeilard_, a poetical version by Colardeau.

My mother snatched the book out of my hands.

"That is a nice book to read," said she, "to aid you in your first communion!"

I tried to defend the book; I said that Abelard's exhortations were highly moral, and the lamentations of Heloise extremely religious. I wished to know how either the one or the other could mar my sincere contrition for the sins I had committed, for which I was to receive absolution on the morrow. My mother did not think it meet to give me any explanation on the subject, but as the Abbé Grégoire happened to pass by, she called him in. The Abbé Grégoire, constituted judge, took the book, read half a page, shook his head and said--

"Really, the verses are very poor."

And he handed the book back to my mother.

I need hardly say I differed in my opinion from the abbé, and thought Colardeau's lines splendid. Who was in the right, the abbé or I? I strongly incline to think my mother was.

That night the Abbé Remy took me aside, after preparation, and explained to me that it was because of the name I bore, my mother's social position in the town, and specially because of the Abbé Grégoire's recommendation, that he had consented to allow me to repeat my baptismal vows. He hoped then that I should realise the importance of the responsibility with which I was to be invested, and that I should prove myself worthy of it.

I confess I did not quite understand his admonitions. If, among all the candidates, there was one child ready for this solemn rite, by reason of his own convictions, it was myself. I bitterly resented this injustice, the first that had ever been offered me.

I have since become more accustomed to false conceptions of my feelings, my conduct, my character. I hardly slept the whole of that night: the idea that I was going to place myself in communion with the sacred body of our Lord moved me profoundly; the greatness of the act weighed heavily on me, and tears were very near. I felt utterly unworthy of the grace that was to be vouchsafed to me.

They dressed me in a new suit for this solemn occasion; I wore Nankeen trousers, a white quilted waistcoat, and a blue coat with metal buttons,--all made by Dulauroy, the first tailor of Villers-Cotterets.

A white necktie, a cambric shirt, and a wax candle weighing two pounds, completed my toilet.

A previous ceremony had helped to deepen the impression of this one. The day before it was discovered that one of our companions, whose real name was, doubtless, Ismaël, but who was called Maël for short, whom I strongly suspected of being a Jew, had not been baptized; so he was baptized conditionally, and I and a young girl, who repeated the Vows for him, were chosen to be his godfather and godmother.

My fellow-sponsor was a very pretty girl with fair hair, slightly inclined to be reddish in tone, which did not at all spoil the general effect of her prettiness.

Her baptismal name was Laura, even that of Petrarch's illustrious mistress; but I have totally forgotten anything about her family.

It was arranged that I was to communicate next day between my two godsons--Ismaël and Roussy.

I had been godfather to Roussy for ten months, with Augustine Deviolaine, who was nine months younger than I; and Ismaël was nine months older.

At last the hour arrived. We know what a festival was made of the communion of children formerly, in small towns: it was the counterpart of that grand festival of Corpus Christi, since suppressed. Popular instinct thought of the two together with almost equal reverence: extreme weakness and Supreme Power. All faces were radiant, every house was decked with flowers. At least, that seemingly was how it looked to me, through the eyes of a child of thirteen, my heart full of life and faith.

Hiraux performed marvellous things on his organ that day: he was, indeed, a great artist; his melodious chords seemed to represent that everything which was youthful, loving, and poetic in life, was poured forth at the feet of our Saviour.

I remember nothing of the details of the ceremony. I was wrapped in the deepest contemplation. I remember that everything around me seemed filled with light and hope. Whatsoever is granted to the eye of faith in contemplation of heavenly things, was granted that day to me. The feeling was so overwhelming, and so real, that, when the Host touched my lips, I burst into weeping and fainted away.

The Abbé Remy could not understand it at all.

Ever since that day I have felt a deep reverence for all that is holy, a religious worship for everything high and noble; each heavenly spark has kindled within me an inward fire, which has had its outward effect, like the lava in a volcano when the crater is full to bursting.

It took me two or three days to recover from this excitement; and, when the Abbé Grégoire came to see me, I flung myself, crying, into his arms.

"My dear boy," he said, "I would far rather your feelings were less intense, and that they would last longer."

The Abbé Grégoire was full of common-sense.

No, my dear abbé, it did not last. No; for, as I have said, I was not the type of man to practise religion. As a matter of fact, that first communion was the only one I ever made. But--I can say it to the dead as to the living--when the last communion shall come to me, as the pendant of the first, when the hand of the Lord shall have closed the two horizons of my life, and drawn the veil of His love between the nothingness that precedes and the nothingness that follows man's life, He can search every atom of the intermediate space with the most rigorous eye and He will not find in it one evil thought, or one action with which I can reproach myself.