CHAPTER III

Adolphe de Leuven--His family--Unpublished details concerning the death of Gustavus III.--The Count de Ribbing--The shoemakers of the château de Villers-Hellon

I first met Leuven at a fête in the beautiful village of Corey, a league's distance from Villers-Cotterets--a village buried in the centre of great woods, like a nest among high branches. I had left my companions for an instant in the course of the dance, and I had gone to some distance to pay a visit to an old friend of my father, a farmer, whose farm was nearly a quarter of a league from the village. I took a pretty path at the foot of a hill to get there, hedged on both sides by hawthorn in full blossom, and studded with daisies, their golden centres fringed by pink-tipped petals.

Suddenly, at a bend in the path, I saw three people coming towards me, in a ray of sunlight which bathed them in light; two were well known to me, but the third was a complete stranger. The two I knew were Caroline Collard, who, as previously related, had become Baroness Capelle. The other was her daughter, Marie Capelle, then only three years old, who to her misfortune was to become Madame Lafarge. The third person, the stranger, looked at first sight like a German student; he was a youth of between sixteen and seventeen, and was dressed in a grey jacket, an oilskin cap, a waistcoat of chamois leather and bright blue trousers, almost as tight-fitting as mine, but with this difference, that while my topboots covered up my breeches, his, on the contrary, were covered up by his trousers. This young man was tall, dark and gaunt, his black hair cut as short as bristles; he had good eyes and a strikingly defined nose; his teeth were as white as pearls, and he had a carelessly aristocratic bearing; he was the Viscount Adolphe Ribbing de Leuven, future author of _Vert-Vert_ and of _Postilion de Long-jumeau_ son of Count Adolphe-Louis Ribbing de Leuven, one of the three Swedish noblemen who were inculpated in the murder of Gustavus III., King of Sweden.

These Counts Ribbing de Leuven were of an old and noble family, used to carrying on royal intrigues and to treat on equal terms with the powerful ones of earth. It was a Ribbing who rose in 1520 against the tyrant Christiern who had caused his two children to be murdered. There was a sad and melancholy legend in the family, connected with the beheading of these two children, the one aged twelve and the other only three. The executioner had cut off the head of the eldest and had seized hold of the second to execute him too, when the poor mite said in childish accents, "Oh, please do not soil my collar as you have soiled my brother Axel's, for mamma would scold me." The executioner had two children of his own just the same ages as these. Moved by the words, he flung down his sword and ran off, overwhelmed with remorse. Christiern sent soldiers after him and he was killed.

Adolphe's father, with whom I have since become very friendly and who loves me like a father, was then a man of fifty; extremely distinguished in appearance, with a charming nature, although perhaps a little too sarcastic, and of indomitable courage. He had been educated at the Military School in Berlin, and had come to France when quite young as a captain in one of Louis XVI.'s foreign mercenary regiments--those regiments which did him far more harm than any good their loyal services rendered him. He had been presented to Marie-Antoinette by the Count de Fersen and, under the patronage of that illustrious favourite, the queen gave him a most favourable reception. He remembered poor. Marie-Antoinette with most respectful veneration, and thirty years after her death I often heard him speak of her with a voice full of tears. He was recalled to Sweden towards the close of the year 1791. He was betrothed to one of his cousins, whom he worshipped, and, intending to marry her on his return, he learnt on his arrival at Stockholm that, by the order of King Gustave III., her hand had been disposed of and she was the wife of the Count d'Essen. In his first transport of despair, Count Ribbing provoked a quarrel with her husband. A duel ensued, and the Count d'Essen fell with a sword-wound through his chest which kept him chained for six months to his bed.

Sweden was greatly disturbed at this period: the king insisted upon enforcing his Diet to accept the deed of union and of security, and at Geft the _coup d'état_ took place which invested the king with sole power in the making of peace and war. A tremendous strife had been waged for a long period between the regal power and the nobility. Though the king was married in 1766 to Sophie-Madeleine of Denmark, he had no heir to his crown even in 1776. And the Swedish nobility attributed the queen's sterility to the same cause as that of Louise de Vaudemont, Henri III.'s wife. As in the case of the last of the house of Valois, Gustavus had his favourites, and their familiarity with him led to their making the most extraordinary suggestions to their prince. After a time, the courtiers made up their minds to remonstrate with the king about the queen's barrenness and to tell him he ought to try to remedy this deficiency by every means in his power. Gustavus promised to see what could be done in the matter. Then, so folks said, a curious thing happened. The evening of the day on which he had pledged his word to the Swedish lords, he took his equerry Monck to the queen's chamber and, in the presence of the confused and blushing queen, he explained to the equerry the service he required of him; then he withdrew and shut the door of the royal chamber upon the pair. Some time later the queen's pregnancy was proclaimed, and she gave birth to a prince, who after his father's death reigned under the title of Gustavus IV., until the Swedish Parliament proclaimed his deposition in 1809. I knew his son very well in Italy, where he travelled under the name of the Count de Wasa.

In 1770, Gustavus III., then twenty-four years of age, came to France as the Count de Haga. He had an interview with a kind of sorceress who predicted future events in her hypnotic trances; she had scarcely touched his hand before she told him to beware of the year 1792, as he would incur danger of death from firearms during the course of it. Gustavus was a brave man; he had often exposed himself to danger. He several times repeated the prediction laughingly, but it never troubled him.

Inconsequence of the Diet of 1792, by which the nobles had lost the rest of their privileges, there arose a conspiracy. The principal ringleaders were Ankarström, Count de Ribbing, Count de Horn, Baron d'Erenswaerd and Colonel Lilienhorn. Ankarström and Ribbing had private reasons for hatred against the king, besides the general grievances which embittered the aristocracy against the sovereign. Through the king's intervention Ankarström had lost a lawsuit which had deprived him of half his fortune. Count de Ribbing, as we have seen, owed a grudge against the king for a far more grievous loss than that of a lawsuit, namely, the loss of his lady-love. In the case of the other nobles the projected murder of Gustavus was simply an incident in the life of a clan. They decided to perpetrate the murder at a masked ball, which was to take place in the Opera House, on the night of 15 and 16 March 1792. On the night before, the king received an anonymous letter, warning him of the plot and telling him that he was to be assassinated on the following night.

"Ah yes," said Gustavus, "the very same thing was predicted twenty-two years ago to the Count de Haga; but he put no more faith in the prophecy than the King of Sweden does to-day;" and, shrugging his shoulders, he crumpled the note between his hands and threw it into the fireplace. Nevertheless, people averred that Gustavus went disguised on the night of the 14-15 to consult the famous sibyl Arfredson, who confirmed the French somnambulist's prediction and the warning contained in the anonymous letter, telling him he would be murdered before three days had gone by. Whether from actual courage or from incredulity, Gustavus would not change any of his previously arranged plans nor take any precaution: at eleven o'clock that night he went to the masked ball. Lots had been drawn the night before to settle which of the conspirators should kill the king, and Gustavus was so greatly detested by his nobles that each one was eager to have the dangerous honour of firing the fatal shot. The lot was drawn by Ankarström.

It is said that one of the conspirators offered to give him all the wealth he then possessed, as well as all that which he was to inherit at a future date, if he would change places with him; but Ankarström refused. When the time came, Ankarström suddenly bethought him that he might mistake one of the nobles for the king, as several of them were dressed in similar costumes. But the Count de Horn reassured him. "Fire boldly," said he, "at the one to whom I shall say, '_Good-day, handsome masquerader_.' He will be the king."

At two in the morning Gustavus was strolling about, leaning on the arm of the Count d'Essen, whom he had married to de Ribbing's _fiancée_, when the Count de Horn approached him and said, "_Good-day, handsome masquerader_."

The next moment a dull report was heard, and Gustavus tottered, crying out--

"I am killed!"

Except those who were round about the king no one had perceived what had happened. The pistol was concealed in a muff; the report had been drowned amidst the buzz of conversation and the strains of the orchestra, and the smoke remained buried in the muff. But at the king's exclamation, and on seeing him fall back fainting in the arms of d'Essen, everyone ran up; in the commotion that followed it was quite easy for Ankarström to put himself at a distance from the king and even to leave the hall; but in his flight he dropped one of his pistols. The pistol was picked up, hot and still smoking. Next day every gun-seller in Stockholm was questioned, and one of them recognised the pistol as one he had sold to Ankarström. An hour later, Ankarström was arrested at his own house, and a special commission was appointed to try him. He confessed to, but gloried in, his crime. As to his accomplices, he declined under any conditions whatever to reveal their names. The trial dragged on slowly; it was hoped against hope that Ankarström would give away the conspirators; finally, on 29 April 1792, forty-four days after the murder, he was condemned. The sentence was that he was to be beaten with rods for three days, then beheaded. In spite of the length and the ignominy of the punishment, Ankarström remained firm to the very end. While being taken in the cart to his execution, he looked with perfect equanimity upon the thousands of spectators who thronged round the scaffold. When he mounted the scaffold he asked for a few minutes in which to make his peace with God. It was granted him. He knelt down, prayed and then gave himself up to the executioners. He was not quite thirty-three years of age.

Ribbing, who had been arrested at the same time as Ankarström, was but twenty-one: it was intended to condemn him to death like Ankarström, and the Duke of Sudermania, regent over the kingdom during the minority of Gustavus IV., was urging forward the trial, when a mystic, a disciple of Swedenborg, sought him out and told him that the _master_ had appeared to him, and had declared that not only was Ribbing innocent, but that every hair which fell from his head would cost a day of the life of the Duke of Sudermania. The duke, a Swedenborgian himself, was terrified at this warning, and Ribbing, instead of sharing Ankarström's fate, was condemned to perpetual exile. And as less could not be done for the Count de Horn and for Lilienhorn than was done in the case of Ribbing, they both obtained the same favour. The confiscation of their property followed upon the sentence of exile. Fortunately, in the case of the Count de Ribbing, the confiscation of property could not be put into execution until after the death of his mother: she enjoyed the property in her own right, during her lifetime, and she was still quite young.

The count left for France, where the Revolution was then at its height, and he arrived in time to witness the events of 2 and 3 September and 21 January. His adoration for the queen made him loud in his denunciation of the events of those dreadful days. He was arrested and, although already a regicide, was on the point of being delivered up to the revolutionary tribunal as too sympathetic with royal misfortunes, when Chaumette set him free, gave him a passport and helped him to escape from Paris. The count then went to Switzerland; he was so young and so good-looking that he went by the name of "the beautiful regicide." He was introduced to Madame de Staël, who took him much into her confidence. The letters (some two or three hundred) which the Count de Ribbing received from Madame de Staël during the lifetime of the illustrious authoress of _Corinne_, proved that this friendship was not of a temporary nature. Madame de Staël was surrounded by a circle of friends, several of whom already knew the Count de Ribbing. This little court was half political and half literary; its chief purpose at that time was to rescue, hide and protect emigrants against the persecutions of the magistrates in the Swiss cantons whose hands were continually being forced by the demands of the Revolutionary Government of Paris.

After 9 thermidor, the Count de Ribbing could return to France, where he bought three or four châteaux and two or three abbeys at a very low price. Among these châteaux were Villers-Hellon, Brunoy and Quincy. The count had acquired all these properties simply on the recommendations either of friends or of his solicitor. Villers-Hellon was, among others, quite unknown to him. One day he made up his mind to pay a visit to the lovely estate people had praised so much. Unluckily, the time was ill-chosen for seeing all its charms: the communal authorities of Villers-Hellon had handed over the château to an association of shoemakers who made shoes for the army, consequently the worthy disciples of St. Crépin had taken possession of the domain, had set up their workrooms in the salons and in the bedrooms and, the better to communicate with one another, they had made openings through the ceilings. When they had any oral communication to make, they made it by means of these peep-holes without having to leave their seats; if they had to come up or downstairs to see one another, they put ladders through these holes and so saved the turns and twists of the proper staircase. One can imagine how greatly such tenants would detract from the appearance of the château the count had just bought. The sights, and above all the smells, about the place so disgusted him that he fled precipitately back to Paris. Some days later he recounted his misadventure in his own witty way to M. Collard, then connected with the commissariat department of the army. M. Collard was more accustomed to the value of material goods than the noble exile, and he then and there offered to take over his purchase. M. de Ribbing consented, and Villers-Hellon became from that moment the property of M. Collard. Happily, the Count de Ribbing had still two or three other châteaux where he could reside instead of in the one he had just sold. He chose Brunoy, which later he gave up to his friend Talma, as he had Villers-Hellon to his friend Collard, and then he established himself in the château of Quincy.

During the whole of Napoleon's reign the Count de Ribbing lived very quietly, spending his winters in Paris and his summers in the country, devoting himself to agriculture and to fishing in his ponds, in which, once, he caught such an enormous pike that when it was put in the scales with Adolphe at the other end, the pike was actually the heavier. Napoleon offered M. de Ribbing military positions more than once--offers which he I declined, on account of the Conqueror's love of invasion, fearing he might one day be compelled to carry arms against Sweden.

On the second return of the Bourbons to power, their revenge for past political events pursued M. de Ribbing to his private retreat. He was obliged to exile himself again, crossed the frontier, and under an assumed name went to live in Brussels with his wife and son. But the incognito of the Count de Ribbing was soon to betray him under circumstances that will give some idea of his character. In Brussels, the count found himself at the same table with some foreign officers who, inflated with pride at the victory of Waterloo, abused France and Frenchmen right and left. One colonel, who was covered with decorations, especially distinguished himself by his exaggerated attacks. The conversation was carried on in German, but as the Count de Ribbing had been brought up in Berlin, German was almost like his mother tongue; he did not therefore lose a single word of the conversation, although he pretended he was not taking any notice. Suddenly he rose, and, advancing with his usual coolness to the colonel, he slapped him right and left across the face, accompanying the blows with a statement of his name and titles, and then he quietly returned to his seat. Cauchois-Lemaire, then only a young man, was at the same table, so was the poet Arnault, who was already an old man; both, at great risk to themselves, offered their services to the Count de Ribbing as seconds. Happily these services were not required: the colonel would not fight.

The roll of _the Thirty Eight_ enriched Brussels at the expense of France,--Arnault, Excelmans, Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angély, Cambacérès, Harel, Cauchois-Lemaire were all exiled. M. de Ribbing attached himself to them, and, with them, founded _le Nain Jaune_--a journal that soon earned itself a European reputation.

Following upon an article published by the count in this journal, the Prussian Government demanded that the author of it should be handed over to them. This meant nothing less than imprisonment for life in a castle--Prussia is still, as one knows, the land of castles, and it has long been the land of imprisonments. However, King William left the Count de Ribbing the choice of being delivered over to Prussia or to France--somewhat after the fashion of the cook who gives a fowl its choice between being boiled or roasted. M. de Ribbing chose France. He was taken prisoner, flung into a post-chaise with his son, and driven to the borders of Condé. There he looked about him, to discover from which of his old friends he could ask hospitality. The nearest happened to be M. Collard, so he took his way towards Villers-Hellon.

It need hardly be said that he was received with open arms. He had been living but three days in that lovely place--changed so greatly since the days of the bootmakers that it was almost beyond recognition--when I met his son, Adolphe de Leuven, with Madame Capelle on his arm, and holding little Marie by the hand.