CHAPTER IV

Interview between MM. Berryer and de Bourmont--The messenger's guides--The movable column--M. Charles--Madame's hiding-place--Madame refuses to leave la Vendée--She rallies her followers to arms--Death of General Lamarque--The deputies of the Opposition meet together at Laffitte's house--They decide to publish a statement to the nation--MM. Odilon Barrot and de Cormenin are commissioned to draw up this report--One hundred and thirty-three deputies sign it

Hardly had M. Berryer reached Nantes, before he learnt that M. de Bourmont had been there a couple of days. He went to see him immediately. M. de Bourmont had received the order of 15 May, relative to the taking up of arms, fixed for the 24th, but he agreed with M. Berryer, after what he had seen and heard during his short stay at Nantes, that there was no hope to be placed on that insurrection, which he regarded as a _deplorable affray._ It was so much his own opinion, that he had taken upon himself to send _almost_ a counter-order to the Vendéen chiefs, hoping that when he saw Madame he should succeed in inducing her to give up her plans. The counter-order had been transmitted by M. Guibourg to M. de Coislin _père,_ who, in his turn, was to tell those whom it concerned. This is the letter from M. Guibourg, and the copy of the order of M. de Bourmont--

"MONSIEUR LE MARQUIS,--I have the honour to send you a copy of the order that I am deputed to hand you on behalf of M. le Maréchal:--

'Delay the execution of the orders you have received for the 24th May for a few days, and do not let anything visible be seen until you have fresh news, but continue your preparations.

"'LE MARÉCHAL COMTE DE BOURMONT

"'22 _May, noon'"_

M. de Bourmont, therefore, approved of M. Berryer's reason for going to Madame, and all was prepared the same day for his departure. At two o'clock in the afternoon, M. Berryer got into a little hired trap, and, as he did so, he asked the confidential person whom the duchesse had at Nantes what route he should take, and where Madame was living, whereupon the man pointed with his finger to a peasant hanging about at the end of the street on a dapple-grey horse, and said merely, "You see that man? You only have to follow him."

Indeed, hardly had the man on the grey horse seen M. Berryer's carriage start before he put his mount to a trot, which allowed the former to follow him without losing sight of him. In this way they crossed the bridges and entered the country. The peasant did not even turn his head, and seemed to trouble so very little about the carriage to which he served as guide, that there were moments when M. Berryer thought himself the dupe of some mystification or other. As for the driver, who was not in his confidence, he could give no other directions when he asked: "Where are we going, master?" than, "Follow that man." The driver obeyed this injunction strictly, not busying himself henceforth any more over the guide, than the guide troubled himself over him.

After a journey of two and a half hours, which were not without disquiet for M. Berryer, they reached a little hamlet. The man on the grey horse stopped before the inn: M. Berryer did the same; one got down from his horse, the other from his carriage, to continue the road on foot. M. Berryer told his driver to wait until 6 o'clock in the evening of the next day, and then he followed his strange guide. After going a hundred yards, he entered a house, and as, during the journey, M. Berryer had gained upon him, the former entered it almost at the same time. The man opened the door of the kitchen, where the mistress of the house was alone, and pointing to M. Berryer, who walked behind him, he only said the words--

"Here is a gentleman who must be guided."

"He shall be guided," replied the mistress of the house.

Scarcely had she uttered these words before the guide opened the door and left, without giving M. Berryer time to thank him, or to exchange a word or to pay him. The mistress of the house signed to the traveller to be seated, and, without addressing a single word to him, continued to apply herself to her household affairs as though no stranger was present.

A silence of three-quarters of an hour went by after the strict politeness of M. Berryer's reception, and it was only broken by the arrival of the master of the house. He bowed to the stranger without displaying either surprise or curiosity; only, he looked at his wife, who repeated to him from where she stood, and without interrupting what she was doing, the same words that the guide had used, "Here is a gentleman who must be guided."

Whereupon, the master of the house threw at his guest one of those uneasy, sharp, quick glances, which are characteristic of the Vendéen peasantry; then his face resumed the expression of good nature and simplicity which was native to it. He advanced towards M. Berryer, hat in hand.

"Monsieur desires to travel in our country?" he said to him.

"Yes, I want to go further."

"Monsieur no doubt has his papers?"

"Yes."

"In order?"

"Perfectly."

"And in his own name, I presume?"

"In my own name."

"If monsieur will show them to me, I will tell him if he can travel quietly in our country."

"Here they are."

The peasant took them and ran his eye over them; he had no sooner caught the name of M. Berryer than he folded them up again, saying--

"Oh, that is all right! Monsieur can go anywhere with those papers."

'You will take upon you to provide me with a guide?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"I want one as soon as possible."

"I will go and saddle the horses."

At these words, the master of the house went out and, ten minutes later, re-entered.

"The horses are ready."

"And the guide?"

"He waits for monsieur."

And, as a matter of fact, M. Berryer found a farm lad at the door already mounted, and holding a horse by the hand; scarcely had he put his foot into the stirrups before his new conductor started as silently as his predecessor had done. After two hours' riding, during which no word was exchanged between M. Berryer and his guide, they arrived towards nightfall at the door of one of the farmsteads which are honoured with the name of a château. It was half-past eight in the evening; M. Berryer and his guide got down from their horses, and both went inside. The farm lad addressed a servant, and said to him--

"This gentleman wishes to speak to monsieur."

The master was asleep; he had spent the previous night at a rendezvous, and the day on horseback; he was too tired to get up: one of his relatives came down in his stead. He welcomed M. Berryer and, directly he had learnt his name and the object of his journey, he gave orders for departure. He himself undertook to serve as guide to the traveller, and, ten minutes later, both left on horseback: in a quarter of an hour's time, a cry sounded a hundred yards in front of them; M. Berryer trembled, and asked what it was.

"It is our scout," replied the Vendéen chief; "he is asking in his own fashion if the way is clear. Listen, and you will hear the reply." At these words, he stretched out his hand, and put it on M. Berryer's arm to make him pull his horse up. A second cry then went up, coming from a greater distance off; it seemed like the echo of the first, so like was it.

"We can go forward, the road is free," replied the chief, putting his horse to the spur.

"Then we are preceded by a scout?"

"Yes, we have one man two hundred yards ahead of us and another the same distance behind."

"But who are the people who answer?"

"The peasants whose cottages lie along the road. Pay attention when you pass by one of them, and you will see a little dormer-window open and a man's head slip out, stay motionless for an instant as if he were a stone, and only disappear when we are out of sight. If we were soldiers from some neighbouring cantonment, the man who will only look at us as we pass would immediately come out by a back door; then, if there were any gathering in the district, he would soon warn it of the approach of the column which believed it was about to take it by surprise."

At this moment, the Vendéen chief interrupted himself.

"Listen," he whispered, stopping his horse.

"What is it?" said M. Berryer. "I only heard the usual cry of our scout."

"Yes, but no other cry has replied to it; there are soldiers in the neighbourhood."

He put his horse into a trot upon these words, and M. Berryer did the same; almost at the same instant, the man who formed the rear-guard caught them up at a gallop. They found their guide motionless and undecided at the forking of the two roads. The path desected and, as no one had answered his cry from either side, he did not know which of the footpaths he must take; both would lead the travellers to their destination. After a minute's deliberation in low tones between the chief and the guide, the latter plunged out of sight into the dark alley to the right; five minutes afterwards, M. Berryer and the chief started at a walk along the same path, leaving their fourth companion motionless at the place they left, and five minutes later he also followed them. Three hundred yards further on, M. Berryer and the chief found that their scout had stopped; he signed to them to command silence, and said in a whisper--"A patrol!" They could, indeed, hear the regular step of a troop on the march; it was a moving column which was making its nightly round. The noise soon came nearer to them, and they saw against the sky the outline of the soldiers' bayonets, who, in order to avoid the water which collected in the deep paths, had followed neither of the two roads, the bifurcation of which had caused the guide a momentary hesitation, but had climbed the slope, and were walking between the two hedges, on the ground which overlooked the two sunk footpaths by which it was enclosed. Had a single one of the four horses neighed, the little troop would have been taken prisoners; but they seemed to understand the position of their masters, and kept silence like them, so the soldiers went on unsuspecting whom they had closely passed by. When the sound of their steps was lost in the distance, the travellers resumed their march. At half-past ten o'clock, they turned off the road and entered a wood. The little band got down and left the horses under the care of the two peasants, while M. Berryer and the chief went on their way alone. They were not very far distant from the farmhouse where Madame was; but, as they wanted to enter by a back door, they had to make a détour, and to cross through some marshes where they sank almost up to their knees; at last the dark little mass of buildings which formed the farmstead, surrounded with trees, appeared, and soon they reached the door. The chief knocked in a particular way. Steps approached, and a voice asked, "Who is there?" The chief replied with the agreed-upon word, and the door was opened. An old woman performed the office of concierge; but she was accompanied, for greater security, by a tall, robust fellow, armed with a stick, which, in such hands as his, would have proved as formidable as any other weapon.

"We want M. Charles," said the chief.

"He is asleep," replied the old woman; "but he told us to inform him if any one came. Go into the kitchen while I wake him."

"Tell him it is M. Berryer who has come from Paris," added the latter.

The old woman left them in the kitchen and went away. The travellers went close up to the huge fireplace, where a few embers left of the day's fire still remained. One end of a beam was fixed into the chimney place, whilst the other end was held tight in a kind of claw made by a crack--it was one of those pieces of inflammable firwood, used in Vendéen cottages instead of a lamp or candle. In ten minutes' time, the old woman came in and told M. Berryer that M. Charles was ready to receive him, and that she had come to lead him to him. He thereupon followed her, and ascended behind her a wretched staircase, which was outside the house, and seemed to be fixed along the wall, till he reached a small room on the first floor, the only one, indeed, which was at all habitable in the miserable farmhouse. This room was occupied by the Duchesse de Berry. The old woman opened the door, and, remaining outside, shut it after M. Berryer. His attention was at first entirely taken up by Madame. She was lying on a poor, coarsely carved, worm-eaten wooden bedstead, in very fine linen sheets, covered with a Scotch shawl of red and green plaid; she had on one of those muslin nightcaps worn by the women of the country, with lappets, falling on the shoulders. The walls were bare; a miserable white-washed fireplace warmed the room, which, in the way of furniture, only contained a table covered with papers, upon which rested two brace of pistols: in one corner of the apartment there was a chair on which had been flung the complete dress of a young peasant, and a black wig.

We have said that the object of the interview between M. Berryer and the duchesse was to persuade the latter to leave France; but, as we cannot report the details of that conversation concerning general interests without compromising private interests, we will pass it over in silence; as we have made our readers well acquainted with the men and things of this period, they will easily fill them in for themselves. Only by three o'clock in the morning did Madame give in to the arguments which M. Berryer had taken upon his own responsibility to convey to her. Although the duchesse could see for herself that there was but little chance of success attending an armed insurrection, it was not without crying and despair that she yielded.

"Very well, it is settled," she said, "I am to quit France; but I shall not come back to it again, take heed, for I do not wish to return with foreigners; they are but waiting for a chance, as you well know, and the moment will come: they will come and ask for my son--not that they will trouble themselves much more over him than they did over Louis XVIII. in 1813, but it will be a means for them to have a share in Paris. Very well, then, they shall not have my son! for nothing in this world shall they have him; I will rather carry him away into the mountains of Calabria! Look here, Monsieur Berryer, if it is necessary to buy the throne of France by the cession of a province, a town, a fortress or a cottage, like that in which I am, I give you my word, as regent and as mother, he shall never be king."

Finally, Madame made up her mind. M. Berryer took leave of her at four in the morning, taking with him her promise to rejoin him at noon in the second house he had put up at, which was situated four country leagues from the place where he had left his coachman. When the duchesse arrived there, she was to get into the little hired conveyance, and to return to Nantes in the company of M. Berryer, there to take coach with her fictitious passport, and, travelling right through France, to go out of it by the Mont Cenis route. M. Berryer stopped at the place agreed upon, and waited there for Madame from noon until six o'clock. Only then did he receive a message from her; the duchesse had changed her decision. She wrote to him that she had linked too many interests to hers, drawn too many lives to her own lot, to escape alone from the consequences of her descent into France, and to leave them pressing upon others; that, therefore, she had decided to share to the end the fate of those whom she had implicated; only, the taking up of arms, at first fixed for 24 May, was put off till the night of the 3rd to the 4th of June.

M. Berryer returned to Nantes in consternation. On the 25th, M. de Bourmont received a letter from the duchesse confirming what she had written to M. Berryer; as follows:--

"Having resolutely determined not to leave the Western provinces, and to entrust myself to fidelity of long standing, I count on you, my good friend, to take all the necessary measures for the taking up of arms, which will take place during the night of 3rd to 4th June. I call to my aid all courageous people; God will help us to save our country! No danger, no fatigue will dishearten me; I shall put in my appearance at the first rallying.

"MARIE-CAROLINE, _Regent of France_ "VENDÉE, 25 _May_ 1832"

Immediately upon receipt of this letter, M. de Bourmont wrote a note to M. de Coislin in the following terms:--

"As Madame has courageously resolved not to abandon the country, and is rallying round her all who wish to preserve France from the misfortunes which threaten her, make known to all that they are to hold themselves ready on Sunday, 3 June, and that they arrange throughout the following night to act together, according to the directions we have given. Make very certain your orders are conveyed to everybody and to all points.

"MARÉCHAL COMTE DE BOURMONT"

This, then, was how things were in la Vendée when the report of the death of General Lamarque ran through Paris. It followed that of Casimir Périer by only a few days: the two strong athletes were rudely strangled during their struggles in the Tribune, which seem to have killed them both. But the soldier survived the tribune by a few days. The impression produced by these two deaths was very different: nothing could be compared with the unpopularity of the one, and the popularity of the other. This death coincided with the famous affair of the _compte rendu._ We live so fast, and the gravest events pass over so quickly, that oblivion comes as rapidly as nightfall. Not one young man of thirty knows definitely to-day what the affair of the _compte rendu_ was that we indicate was of so grave a nature.

After M. Laffitte gave up the seals of power, he returned to the Opposition; this was simple enough, since it was in order to bring about an easy reaction that Louis-Philippe had banished his prime minister and his old friend. M. Laffitte's Opposition was the most Conservative imaginable from the standpoint of enlightened politics. If anything could add to the duration of the reign, condemned in advance, it was the plan expounded by him to his co-religionists on the Left: this theory, of which M. Laffitte was the High Priest, and M. Odilon Barrot the Apostle, consisted in recovering possession of power by the help of a parliamentary majority, to make the infusion of political clemency triumphant, and to make the monarchy _definitively_--the word is Louis Blanc's--guardian over liberty; a narrow but honest dream, which, compelled to tread between reaction and insurrection, could never become a reality.

As for the Radical deputies, they were divided into two representative shades of opinion, the most advanced led by Garnier-Pagès, the other by M. Maugnin; their object was to renew a sort of league after the type of those of the Guises, with the object of leading the Bourbon monarchy unconsciously, in 1836 or 1837, to be what the Valois monarchy of 1585 or 1586 had been.

To sum up, with the exception of those who have since been called the _centriers,_ the _ventrus_ and the _satisfaits,_ that is to say, that ruminant kind of being which looks in all times towards the trough of the Budget and the rack of the Civil List, everybody was dissatisfied. All the malcontents, desirous of a change, whether of system or of persons, but who only desired to reach such changes by constitutional means, gathered together during the month of May at M. Laffitte's to attempt a last supreme effort. Pure Republicans who, on the contrary, only admitted insurrectionist methods, and marched separately in their strength and liberty, sleeping on their arms, took no part whatever in this meeting, the leaders of which were MM. Laffitte, Odilon Barrot, Cormenin, Charles Comte, Mauguin, Lamarque, Garnier-Pagès and La Fayette. The last three sailed by the limits of Constitutional and Republican opposition, quite closely, not indeed so near as to belong to our camp, that of militant Republicanism, but near enough to let themselves be drawn along with it. The meeting at Laffitte's was composed of upwards of forty deputies. M. Laffitte spoke and summed up the situation with the threefold clearness of the orator, the financier and man of honour, and he suggested an address to the king. It was the old method, always repulsed, but always returning to the charge, under the name of _parliamentary remonstrances_ in the time of absolute monarchy, and by the title of an _address_ in the time of constitutional monarchy.

Garnier-Pagès, a just, incisive character, had but two words to say with which to fight the proposition victoriously. Could any one not mad conceive the illusion that royalty would consent to admit itself guilty, to recognise its errors and to make honourable amends to the nation? No, the monarchy and the nation were in a complete state of rupture. The nation must be appealed to concerning the errors of the monarchy. Garnier-Pagès would go so far as to term those errors treasons, and this sent a shudder down the spines of certain deputies of the Opposition. The upshot of the meeting was that the Opposition put its grievances before the nation under the form of a report. A commission was appointed, consisting of MM. La Fayette, Laffitte, Cormenin, Odilon Barrot, Charles Comte and Mauguin. MM. de Cormenin and Odilon Barrot were given the task of each drawing up the report separately; they would decide finally whether to choose either report or to destroy both reports. The work of each of the two editors bore signs of his own individual characteristics: M. de Cormenin too much recalled the bold pamphleteer who signed himself _Timon le Misanthrope._ M. Odilon Barrot, on the contrary, seemed too exclusively to bind up the future of France with the monarchical form of government. Neither of the two plans was adopted. It was decided to unite MM. de Cormenin and Barrot's two reports into one, or, rather, to draw up the manifesto in common, and it strongly resembled a declaration of war. Both left for Saint-Cloud in the morning and returned with the manifesto in the evening. It was in M. de Cormenin's handwriting; but it was easily seen that Odilon Barrot had had a great deal to do in the drawing up. However, whatever the share M. Barrot had in this work, the report assumed the character, if not exactly of a threat, at least of a severe and solemn warning. It appeared on 28 May 1832. One hundred and thirty-three deputies had signed it. It made a profound impression, and the death of General Lamarque, one of the principal signatories to the manifesto, threw a dark and almost mysterious shade upon the situation, such as the hand of death seems to cast over certain fatal days.