CHAPTER III

Attack of the barricade--A sequel to Malplaquet--The Grenadier--The Chartrian philanthropists--Sack of the bishop's palace--A fancy dress--How order was restored--The culprits both small and great--Death of the Abbé Ledru--Scruples of conscience of the former schismatics--The _Dies iræ_ of Kosciusko

At this period it was still usual to summon the insurgents to withdraw, and this the préfet did. They responded by a hailstorm of stones, one of them hitting the general. This time, he lost all patience and shouted--

"Forward!" and the men charged the barricade sword in hand. The Lévois made a splendid resistance, but a dozen or more riflemen managed to clear the obstacle; however, when they reached the other side of the barricade, they were overwhelmed with stones, thrown down and disarmed. Blood had flowed on both sides; and temper was roused to boiling point; it would have gone badly with the dozen prisoners if some men, who were either less heated or more prudent than the rest, had not carried them off and thus saved their lives. Let us confess, with no desire whatever of casting a slur on the army, which we would uphold at all times, and, nowadays, more than ever, that, from that moment, every attempt of the riflemen to take the barricade failed! But what else can be said? It is a matter of history; as are Poitiers, Agincourt and Malplaquet! A shower of stones fell, compared with which the one that annihilated the Amalekites was but an April shower.

The préfet and the general finally decided to give up the enterprise; they sounded the retreat and took their road back to Chartres. As the insurgents did not know what to do with their prisoners, and being afraid of a siege, and not having any desire to burden themselves with useless mouths, the riflemen were released on parole. They could not believe in the retreat of the troops; it was in vain the watchmen in the tower shouted, "Victory!" The conviction did not really take hold of the minds of the Lévois until their look-out declared that the last soldier had entered Chartres. Such being the case, it was but one step to turn from doubt to boldness: they began by giving aid to the wounded; then, as no signs of any uniforms reappeared upon the high road, by degrees they grew bolder, until they arrived at such a pitch of enthusiasm that one of the insurgents, having ventured the suggestion that they should march the Abbé Dallier round the walls of Chartres, as Achilles had led Hector round the walls of Pergamus, the proposition was received with acclamation. But, as the vanquished man was alive and not dead, they put a rope round his neck instead of round his ankles and the other end was placed in the hands of one of the Abbé Ledru's most excited penitents, who went by the name of the _Grenadier._ I need hardly add that the penitent's name was, like that of the Abbé Ledru, conspicuous for the physical and moral qualities of a virago. Every man filled his pockets with stones in readiness for attack or defence, and the folk set out for Chartres, escorting the condemned man, who marched towards martyrdom with visible distaste. It is half a league between Lèves and Chartres; and that half league was a real Via Dolorosa to the poor priest. The Lévois had calculated to perfection what they were doing when they gave the rope's end to the care of the Grenadier. When the savages of Florida wish to inflict extreme punishment on any of their prisoners they hand the criminals over to the women and children. When the victors reached Chartres, they did not find the opposition they had looked for; but they found something else equally unexpected: they saw neither préfet, nor general, nor chief of the gendarmerie, nor king's attorney, neither deputies nor judges; but several philanthropists approached them and made them listen to what was styled, at the end of last century, the language of reason--

It was not the poor priest's fault that he had been selected by the bishop to replace the Abbé Ledru; he did not know in what esteem his parishioners held him, he was neither more nor less blameworthy than his predecessor, the Abbé Duval; and when the one had come to a flock of sheep, why should another priest fall among a band of tigers? It was the fault of the bishop, who had instantly and brutally deposed the Abbé Ledru, and then had the audacity to appoint first one and then another successor!

Upon this very reasonable discourse, the scales fell from the eyes of the inhabitants of Lèves, as from Saint Paul's, and they began to see things in their true light. The effect of their enlightenment was to make them untie the rope and to let the Abbé Dallier go free with many apologies. But, at the same time, it was unanimously agreed that, since there was a rope all ready, the bishop should be hanged with it.

When people conceive such brilliant ideas, they lose no time in putting them into execution. So they directed their steps rapidly in the direction of M. Clausel de Montal's sumptuous dwelling-place. But although these avenging spirits had made all diligence, M. Clausel de Montais had made still greater; to such an extent that, when the hangmen arrived at the bishop's palace, they could nowhere find him whom they had come to hang: Monseigneur the bishop had departed, and with very good reason too! We know what happens under such circumstances; things pay for men, and the bishop's palace had to pay instead of the bishop. This was the era of sacrilege; the sacking of the palace of the Archbishop of Paris had set the fashion of the destruction of religious houses. They broke the window panes and the mirrors over the mantelpieces, they tore down the curtains, and transformed them into banners. Finally, they reached the billiard room, where they fenced with the cues, and threw the balls at each other's heads, whilst a sailor neatly cut off the cloth from the billiard table, which he rolled into a ball and tucked under his arm. Three or four days later, he had made a coat, waistcoat and trousers out of it, and promenaded the streets of Lèves, amidst the enthusiastic applause of his fellow-citizens, clad entirely in green cloth, like one of the Earl of Lincoln's archers! But the life the Lévois led in the palace was too delightful to last for long; authority bestirred itself; they brought the riflemen out of their barracks once more, and beat the rappel, and, a certain number of the National Guard having taken up arms, they directed their combined forces upon the palace. The attack was too completely unexpected for the spoilers to dream of offering resistance. They went further than that, and, instead of the wise retreat one would have expected from men who had vanquished the troops which one is accustomed to call the best in the world, they took to flight as rapidly as possible: leaping out of the windows into the garden and scaling the walls, they ran across the fields and regained Lèves in complete disorder. That same night every trace of barricading disappeared. Next day, each inhabitant of Lèves attended to his work or play or business. They were thinking nothing about the recent events, when, suddenly, they saw quite an army arriving at Chartres from Paris, Versailles and Orléans. This army was carrying twenty pieces of artillery with it. It was commanded by General Schramm, and was coming to restore order. Order had been re-established for the last fortnight, unassisted! That did not matter, however; seeing there had been disorder, they were marching on Lèves to carry out a razzia.

The threatened village quietly watched this left-handed justice approach: its eleven to twelve hundred inhabitants modestly stood at their doors and windows. Peace and innocence reigned throughout from east to west, from north to south; anyone entering might have thought it the valley of Tempe, when Apollo tended the flocks of King Admetus. The inhabitants of Lèves looked as though they were the actors in that play (I cannot recall which it is), where Odry had sent for the commissary at the wrong moment and, when the commissary arrived, everybody was in unity again; so that everybody asked in profound surprise--

"Who sent for a commissary? Did you? or you? or you?"

"No.... I asked for a commissionaire," replied Odry; "just an ordinary messenger, that is all!" and the agent took himself off abashed and with empty hands.

That happened in the piece, but not exactly in the same way at Lèves. A score of persons were arrested, and these were divided into two categories: the least guilty and the most guilty. The least guilty were handed over to the jurisdiction of the police; the guiltiest were sent before the Court of Assizes. A very curious thing resulted from this separation. At that time, the _police correctionelle_ always sentenced, whilst the jury acquitted only too eagerly. The least guilty men who appeared before the _police correctionnelle_ were found guilty, while the most culpable, who were tried before a jury, were acquitted. The sailor in the green cloth was one of the most guilty, and was produced before the jury as an indisputable piece of evidence. The jury declared that billiard tables had not a monopoly for clothing in green; that if a citizen liked to dress like a billiard table, why! political opinions were free, so a man surely might indulge his individual fancy in his style of dress. The religious question was decided in favour of the French Church, and this decision lasted as long as the Abbé Ledru himself, namely, four or five years; during which period of time the parish of Lèves was separated from the general religion of the kingdom, in France, without producing any great sensation. At the end of that time, the Abbé Ledru committed the stupidity of dying. I am unaware in what tongue and rites he was interred; but I do know that, the day after his death, the Lévois asked the bishop for another priest, and this bishop proved a kind father to his prodigal children and sent them one.

The third was received with as many honours as the two previously appointed had been received with insults on their arrival. The French Church was closed, the Roman Catholic religion re-established, and the new priest returned to the old presbytery; the Grenadier became the most fervent and humble of his penitents, and the tongue of Cicero and Tacitus again became the dominical one of the Lévois, returned to the bosom of Holy Church.

But Barthélemy wrote to me, a little time ago, that there were serious scruples in some weak minds. Were the infants baptised, the adults married, and the old people buried by the Abbé Ledru during his schism with Gregory XVI., really properly baptised and married and buried? It did not matter to the baptised souls, who could return and be baptised by an orthodox hand; nor again to the married ones, who had but to have a second mass said over them and to pass under the canopy once more, but it mattered terribly to the dead; for they could neither be sought for nor recognised one from another. Happily God will recognise those whom the blindness of human eyes prevents from seeing, and I am sure that He will forgive the Lévois their temporary heresy for the sake of their good intention.

This event, and the conversion of Casimir Delavigne to the observances of the French religion, were the culminating points in the fortunes of the Abbé Châtel, primate of the Gauls. Casimir Delavigne, who gave his sanction to all new phases of power; who sanctioned the authority of Louis XVIII. in his play entitled, _Du besoin de s'unir après le depart des étrangers_; who sanctioned the prerogative of Louis-Philippe in his immortal, or say rather everlasting, _Parisienne_; Casimir Delavigne sanctioned the authority of the primate of the Gauls by his translation of the _Dies irœ, dies ilia_, which was chanted by Abbé Châtel's choristers at the mass which the latter said in French at the funeral service of Kosciusko. The Abbé Châtel possessed this good quality, that he openly declared for the people as against kings.

Here is the poem; it is little known and deserves to be better known than it is. It is, therefore, in the hope of increasing its reputation that we bring it to the notice of our readers. It was sung at the French Church on 23 February 1831:--

"Jour de colère, jour de larmes, Où le sort, qui trahit nos armes, Arrêta son vol glorieux!

À tes côtés, ombre chérie, Elle tomba, notre patrie, Et ta main lui ferma les yeux!

Tu vis, de ses membres livides, Les rois, comme des loups avides, S'arracher les lambeaux épars:

Le fer, dégouttant de carnage, Pour en grossir leur héritage, De son cadavre fit trois parts.

La Pologne ainsi partagée, Quel bras humain l'aurait vengée? Dieu seul pouvait la secourir!

Toi-même tu la crus sans vie; Mais, son cœur, c'était Varsovie; Le feu sacré n'y put mourir!

Que ta grande ombre se relève; Secoue, en reprenant ton glaive, Le sommeil de l'éternité!

J'entends le signal des batailles, Et le chant de tes funérailles Est un hymne de liberté!

Tombez, tombez, boiles funèbres! La Pologne sort des ténèbres, Féconde en nouveaux défenseurs!

Par la liberté ranimée, De sa chaîne elle s'est armée Pour en frapper ses oppresseurs.

Cette main qu'elle te présente Sera bientôt libre et sanglante; Tends-lui la main du haut des deux.

Descends pour venger ses injures, Ou pour entourer ses blessures De ton linceul victorieux.

Si cette France qu'elle appelle, Trop loin--ne pent vaincre avec elle, Que Dieu, du moins, soit son appui.

Trop haut, si Dieu ne peut l'entendre, Eh bien! mourons pour la défendre, Et nous irons nous plaindre à lui!"

We do not believe to-day that the Abbé Châtel is dead; but, if we judge of his health by the cobwebs which adorn the hinges and bolts of the French Church, we shall not be afraid to assert that he is very ill indeed.