CHAPTER XIV

Citizen-general Barras--Doctor Cabarrus introduces me to him--Barras's only two regrets--His dinners--The Princess de Chimay's footman--Fauche-Borel--The Duc de Bordeaux makes a mess--History lesson given to an ambassador--Walter Scott and Barras--The last happiness of the old _directeur_--His death

I have related how my successful play _Henri III._ had launched me in the world and the curiosity there was excited over its author. Barras was among the number of those who wanted to be introduced to me. The name which I inherited from my father was of special historic significance to the Man of the Convention, the Directoire, 9 thermidor and 13 vendémiaire.

The history of Barras is known by heart. He was the son of an ancient Provençal family, and he had entered the army early; he had been sent to the isle of France and to India, where he had valiantly taken part in the defence of Pondicherry. He left the service with the rank of captain, and had come to Paris, where he had led an extremely dissipated life. Taken from this life of pleasure by his fellow-citizens of Var, who made him their député, in 1792, he had been a member of the Convention amongst the Montagnards; was charged with a mission, the following year, to suppress both the Federalist and Royalist movement which was agitating the South; had assisted at the recapture of Toulon from the English; and here had become acquainted with Major Bonaparte, thus being able to judge the advantage such a man would be to any party. On 9 thermidor, he was made commander of the armed forces of Paris: he it was who seized Robespierre and gave him up to the scaffold. Some days later, he was himself attacked by the Sections (called by the Convention instead of my father, who could not, as we have seen, respond to the appeal because of his absence); he pushed Bonaparte forward, who was on his side on 13 vendémiaire and against him on 18 brumaire. It was said at that time (but this, I think, is one of the calumniating statements that conquerors are only too willing to make, concerning the vanquished, with respect to their victories, when not fairly won) that Barras was carrying on negotiations for the return of the Bourbons and twelve millions were promised to this new General Monk as the price of their restoration.

The events on 18 brumaire having squashed the Bourbon counter-revolution, Barras, being proscribed by his former protector, retired to Brussels and then to Rome. He only returned to France in 1816; settling down at Chaillot, where he had since dwelt, and where, thanks to an income of 200,000 livres which he had saved out of the various shipwrecks of his political career, he kept a charming and very luxurious household, waited on by a large retinue of servants. I specially refer to the number of servants, because Barras always had at his sumptuous table as many servants as guests, and several times I have dined there when there were twenty to twenty-five guests.

I was introduced to the old dictator by one of my oldest and best friends, a man whom I was always delighted to see when I was well and still more pleased to see if I were ill, namely, Doctor Cabarrus, son of the handsome Madame Tallien. Cabarrus was then, and indeed still is, a fine strongly built man, with a sympathetic face and a character to accord. Endowed with a charming nature, sound learning and untiring observation, Cabarrus had, less by his social position than by his own personal work, been thrown into the midst of all the aristocratic circles--the aristocracies of birth, talent and science. No one could tell a story better than he, or, rarer gift still, be a better listener than he: he had a fine, delicate smiling mouth, and showed a lovely set of teeth when he laughed, which lit up his face. Barras was very fond of him, which was not astonishing, because everybody who knew Cabarrus liked him.

So it was Cabarrus who took me, one Wednesday morning, to Barras's house. I had been warned that the old dictator was always addressed as _Citizen-general_; there was no compulsion in the matter, of course, but that was the title which pleased him best.

Barras received us seated in a great arm-chair, which he vacated as rarely during the last years of his life as Louis XVIII. left his. He remembered my father perfectly well and the accident that had prevented his taking command of the armed forces on 13 vendémiaire, and I recollect that several times that day he repeated over to me this sentence which I give word for word:--

"Young man, do not forget what an old Republican says to you: I have but two regrets, I ought rather to call them remorses, which will be the only ones present at my bedside when I come to die. I have the two-edged remorse of having, overthrown Robespierre by the 9 thermidor, and of having raised Bonaparte to power by the 13 vendémiaire."

It will be observed that I have not forgotten what Barras said to me, although on one of the two points (I will leave my reader to guess which) I am not entirely of his opinion.

Wednesday was Barras's reception day. Cabarrus had chosen it hoping that the "Citizen-general" would keep me to dinner, where I should meet with various representatives of the end of the last century and of the early days of the present one--representatives who, by the way, whatever they might be, when inside Barras's house, became subdued to the Republican spirit, and were simply citizens, whether male or female. Cabarrus was not disappointed: the old dictator invited us to stay dinner and, if we did not wish to return to Paris, offered us the use of a carriage to take us a drive in the woods until the dinner-hour came. Cabarrus had his business to attend to, and I had mine; so we accepted the invitation to dinner, but declined the carriage, and took leave of Barras.

In 1829, Barras was an extremely fine-looking old man of seventy-four. I can see him now in his arm-chair on wheels, his head and hands seeming to be the only portions of him which were still alive, but these appeared to contain vitality enough for his whole body: he wore a cap which never left his head and which he never took off for anybody. From time to time, this moral life, if one may use such a phrase, this artificial life, replete with will-power, deserted him and then he looked like a dying person.

We returned to dinner. I have dined with Barras three times, and at each dinner I witnessed an unusually odd incident. On the first occasion--the one of which I am speaking--we were between twenty and twenty-five in number. Among the guests was Madame Tallien, who became the Princess of Chimay. She came accompanied by a footman whose marvellous plumes were the admiration of the whole company. We had been introduced into the salon, where the first comers did the honours of the house to those who arrived later. Barras never appeared except at the dinner-table. When the dinner-hour arrived, the folding doors were flung open into the dining-room and each guest found the place that had been put for him; the bedroom door was then opened and Barras was wheeled to the centre of the table; then the guests sat down and attacked the delicate repast with good appetite. Barras's own meal was very odd: a huge leg of mutton was brought to him and carved in such a fashion as to bring out all the gravy; the joint was then carried back to the kitchen, and the gravy was left in Barras's deep plate. He sopped bread in the gravy and this concoction formed his meal. I never saw him eat anything else on the three occasions I dined with him.

On this particular day, in the middle of dinner, a great noise was heard in the kitchen as though a fight were going on, and we could hear shouts mingled with bursts of laughter. Barras was accustomed to be admirably waited on and in an unusually silent manner. Not a single one of the servants who waited behind the guests ever breathed a word or rattled a plate or jingled the silver. Apart from the luxuriousness of the food with which the table was loaded, one could have imagined oneself in a pythagorean school. Only one man was allowed to speak when he wished and that was the valet-de-chambre, the steward, and, better still, the friend of Barras. His name was Courtand.

"Courtand!" Barras asked, frowning, "what is all that noise?"

"I do not know, citizen-general," Courtand replied, himself as greatly astonished at this infraction of the rules of the house; "I will go and see."

Courtand went out and, five seconds later, re-entered, every face turning to the door to look at him.

"Well?" asked Barras.

"Oh! it is nothing, citizen-general," Courtand replied, laughing.

"But what was it about?"

"The servants belonging to the citizens present"--and Courtand pointed towards the guests, who, it should be said, mostly belonged to Republican opinion--"are plucking feathers from citizen Tallien's footman and the poor devil shrieks because they pinch his skin a bit while they are doing it."

"And what has he done to deserve to be plucked alive by the other servants?" asked Barras.

"He called his mistress _Madame la Princesse de Chimay!_"

"Then he deserves his punishment: his mistress is not called the Princesse de Chimay, she is called citizen Tallien."

On another occasion--this, too, happened at table--one place remained empty. The guest who was late was the famous Royalist agent with whom you are acquainted, Fauche-Borel, who, six months later, was reduced to misery by the ingratitude of the Bourbons, and committed suicide by throwing himself from a window at Neuchâtel. He was very intimate at Barras's house and it was said that it was through his mediation that the abortive negotiations were entered into in 1792 between the Bourbons and the old dictator. Well! Fauche-Borel was late: he arrived at the roast course, with tear-stained face, holding his handkerchief in his hands.

"Ah! here you are, my dear Fauche-Borel," Barras exclaimed. "Why are you so late as this?"

"Ah! citizen-general, rather ask why I am so upset."

"Well, my dear fellow, what is the matter?"

"Oh, general, I have seen the most touching, the most moving, the most instructive spectacle ... I have just come from the Tuileries ..."

"Ah! ah!--and was it there you saw this touching, moving, instructive scene? You were very lucky, my friend, to have managed to fall on your feet! Come, tell us what you saw, so that we too may be moved and softened and edified."

"Well, citizen-general, M. le Duc de Bordeaux spilt some water on the floor of the great salon where he was playing."

"Really!"

"And the Duc de Damas said to him, 'Monseigneur, you have made a mess on the floor; I am much distressed about it, but you must wipe it up.' 'What! I must wipe it up!' the young prince exclaimed. 'Why are there no servants here?' 'There are, but, as the mess was made this time by your Highness, your Highness must wipe it up.... Go and fetch a mop!' said the duke to a footman; and, when the man hesitated, he added, 'Do as I command you!' The lackey arrived with a mop five minutes later, and His Highness shed many tears; but M. de Damas was firm and Monseigneur was himself obliged to mop up the mess he had made! What do you say to that, citizen-general?"

"I should say," Barras replied, in the sarcastic tones that were habitual to him, "that the tutor of the Duc de Bordeaux did quite right to teach his pupil a trade; so that when his noble parents depart he will have something in his hands to take to."

Another time--again it happened at table--a famous general, who was an eminent soldier and a man of striking abilities, then ambassador at Constantinople, related, with bitter feeling, a scene that took place during the Revolution.

By chance, Courtand, Barras's valet and steward and a free-spoken friend, stood behind the general's chair. He touched the general on the shoulder in the very middle of his story.

"General," he said, "I must stop you--it did not happen at all as you are telling it: you are slandering the Revolution!"

The general turned indignantly to Barras to call his attention to this familiarity on the part of his lackey. But Barras broke out--

"Messieurs, Courtand is right! Tell the episode as it happened, Courtand; re-establish the facts and give a lesson in history to Monsieur the ambassador."

And Courtand related the facts as they had occurred, to the great satisfaction of Barras and the amazed astonishment of the company.

When Walter Scott came to Paris to hunt up documents connected with the reign of Napoleon, whose life he was proposing to write, Barras, who had some precious papers to show him, desired to see him and begged Cabarrus--who knew the history of the Revolution as intimately as did Courtand, but could tell it better than he (we mean no offence to the memory of Citizen-general Barras)--to invite the celebrated romance-writer to come and dine with him. Cabarrus began by having a long conversation with Walter Scott, who, knowing that he was in the society of the son of Madame Tallien, talked much of all the events in which Cabarrus's mother had played a part: finally, the messenger approached the real object of his visit and transmitted Barras's invitation to the Scottish poet. But Walter Scott shook his head.

"I cannot dine with that man," he replied. "I shall write against him, and it would be said, as we say in Scotland, 'that _I have flung his own dinner-plates at his head!_'"

One afternoon, Cabarrus invited me to spend an hour with him in the afternoon, and I put in my appearance punctual to the time appointed.

"Barras will die to-day," he said to me; "would you like to see him for the last time before his death?"

"Certainly," I replied; for I was anxious to be able to say later to people, who had only known him by name, "I saw Barras on the day of his death."

"Very well, come with me: I am going literally for the purpose of saying good-bye to him."

We got into a carriage and went to Chaillot. We found Courtand looking very melancholy, and, when Cabarrus asked him how his master was, he only shook his head. He showed Cabarrus into the room of the dying man all the same, and, as I was with Cabarrus, let me go in too. We expected to find Barras sad and pale and weak and depressed, but he was merry and smiling and almost rosy-looking, though this colour was but the flush of fever. We began by apologising for my presence: I had met Cabarrus in the Champs-Élysées and, learning that he was going to inquire after Barras, I wished to accompany him. Barras made me a little friendly inclination with his head to indicate that I was welcome.

"But," Cabarrus exclaimed, "what did that pessimist of a Courtand tell me, general? He made out that you were worse; on the contrary, you look ever so much better!"

"Ah yes!" said Barras, "because you find me alone and cheerful ... that does not alter the fact that I shall be dead to-night, my dear Cabarrus! Do you hear that, Dumas? I am like Leonidas and shall sup to-night with Pluto! I shall be able to tell your father, who would be happy enough to see you, that I have seen you to-day."

"But what were you laughing at when we came in?" Cabarrus inquired, trying to turn the conversation from talk of death to matters of life.

"What made me laugh?" Barras replied. "I will tell you. Because I have just played a capital trick on our rulers.... As I have been a man of power, they have had their eyes on me; they know I am dying, and they have been watching for the moment of my death to seize hold of my papers. I have therefore, since the morning, been busy attaching my seal to these thirty or forty boxes. After my death, they will be seized; but I have given directions for counsel to be called in and the matter will be publicly tried before a court of justice.... This may last for four or six months or a year ... after which my heirs will lose, my papers being State property. They will then solemnly open these forty boxes which you see there, before a council of ministers ... and, instead of the precious papers, which are in a place of safety, do you know what they will find?"

"No, I confess I have not the slightest idea."

"My laundress's bills for thirty-five years ... and they will take a lot of adding up, for I have sent plenty of dirty linen to the laundries since 9 thermidor...."

Barras burst into such a frank and merry peal of laughter that he fell back exhausted, and that evening he died, as he predicted, shortly before the Revolution of 1830.

END OF VOL. III

End of Project Gutenberg's My Memoirs, Volume 3 (of 6), by Alexandre Dumas