Table of Contents

Title Page

TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE «NATIONAL»

OBLIGATORY DIGRESSION JOURNEY TO VERSAILLES THE TALKING SEAL. — VISIT TO THE ...

THE STORY OF A SEAL

ANOTHER OBLIGATORY DIGRESSION LITERARY CONGENIALITY REPLY TO THE «CORSAIRE» ...

HARLEQUIN MASKS. — HAMLET THE YELLOW DWARF. — THEATER LICENSES

DEPARTURE FOR COMPIÈGNE THE ARCHIVES AND THE LIBRARY THE LIFE OF ANGÉLIQUE DE ...

HISTORY OF THE GREAT AUNT OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

INTERRUPTION. — RESPONSE TO M. AUGUSTE BERNARD, OF THE NATIONAL PRINTING HOUSE, ...

CONTINTUATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT AUNT OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

COMMENTARY

COMMENTARY. — FRENCH LEGEND CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF ANGÉLIQUE LONGUEVAL

THE DEPARTURE. — THE SILVER CHEST ARRIVAL AT CHARENTON. — DESCENT OF THE RHÔNE. ...

REFLECTIONS. — MEMORIES OF THE LEAGUE. — THE SYLVANECTS AND THE FRANKS. — THE LEAGUE

CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT AUNT OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

THE MONK GOUSSENCOURT. — DEATH OF LA CORBINIÈRE. — WALTER SCOTT DIALOGUE. — A ...

LETTER WRITTEN TO HER COUSIN THE CELESTINE MONK, FOUR YEARS AFTER HER RETURN ...

CORRESPONDENCE

POST-SCRIPTUM. — THE RUINS COUNTRY WALKS. — THE ABBEY OF CHÂALIS ERMENONVILLE. ...

THE CASTLE OF ERMENONVILLE THE ILLUMINATI. — THE KING OF PRUSSIA GABRIELLE AND ...

To the Director of the National

CONTINUATION AND CONCLUSION OF THE FOREWORD. — SAINT-MÉDARD THE ARCHIVES. — THE ...

REFLECTIONS

THE HISTORY OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

LIVING HELL

IV. THE TOWER OF THE CORNER

V. FURTHER ESCAPE PLANS

VI. THE FINAL ESCAPE ATTEMPTS OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

VII. CONCLUSION

NOTES

TRANSLATOR’S POSTSCRIPT

Copyright Page

Frontispiece of Événement des plus rares, ou L’histoire du Sr abbé Cte de Buquoy : singulièrement son évasion du Fort-l’Évêque et de la Bastille, l’allemand à côté, revue et augmentée (Deuxième éd. avec plusieurs de ses ouvrages, vers et proses, et particulièrement la Game des femmes) - Et se vend chez Jean de la Franchise, rue de la Réforme, à l’Espérance (Bonnefoy) - 1719

TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE «NATIONAL»

I fear it was quite foolhardy on my part to have promised you a few details concerning a curious figure who lived toward the end of the reign of Louis XIV.

I know that contributors to the National are required to observe a virtually military precision, and I am accordingly determined to honor my commitment to the fullest of my capabilities; — but unfortunately my resolve has been somewhat sidetracked by unforeseen circumstances.

Only a month ago, I happened to be passing through Frankfurt. — I had two days to kill, but being already acquainted with the place, — there was little for me to do but wander through its principal streets which, as so happened, were cluttered with the stalls of merchants who had come to town for the fair. The Roemerplatz in particular boasted a lavish array of merchandise; and nearby, the fur market flaunted its endless procession of pelts from outer Siberia or the banks of the Caspian Sea, — an extraordinary display whose more familiar curiosities included polar bear, blue fox, and ermine. Somewhat further along, Bohemian glassware was set out on cedar planks in a dazzling rainbow of colors, — all bejeweled, festooned, and inlaid with gold, like bouquets of flowers plucked from an unimaginable paradise.

In one of the backwaters of this bazaar, a more modest series of stalls had been set up in front of a row of dimly lit shops, — specialized in haberdashery, shoe repair, or miscellaneous items of clothing. These stalls belonged to the booksellers who had traveled here from various parts of Germany and whose best-selling items seemed to be almanacs, illustrated broadsheets, and lithographs: the Volks-Kalender (People’s Almanac) with its woodcuts, — picturing the popular uprisings in Frankfurt and Baden, Hecker the revolutionary, the principal members of the German National Assembly, political ditties, lithographs of Robert Blum and of the heroes of the Hungarian War, — these are what seized the eyes and kreutzers of the crowd. Beneath all this freshly printed merchandise lay rows of old tomes primarily notable for their low prices, — and I was astonished by the number of French books I came across.

The reason is simple: being a sovereign city-state, Frankfurt for many years provided a place of asylum for Protestant refugees, — and, like its sister cities in the Netherlands, it housed many printing establishments set up in order to publish the daring works of French philosophers and other malcontents of Europe, — and to this day, some of these firms still do a more or less thriving business as publishers of pirated editions which continue to flout the law.

It is virtually impossible for a Parisian to resist the urge to leaf through the ancient tomes arrayed in the bookseller’s stalls. This part of the Frankfurt fair reminded me of the Paris quais, — memories charged with emotion and enchantment. I bought a few old books, — thus purchasing the right to browse through the others at my leisure. As I sifted through the piles, I came across a volume, printed half in French, half in German, and bearing the following title which I have since verified in Brunet’s Bookseller’s Manual:

« Incident of the rarest sort, or History of the abbé count de Bucquoy, Esq., specifically his escapes from Fort-l’Évêque and from the Bastille, with several works in verse and prose, most notably the whole gamut of women, Jean de la France, Bookseller, rue de la Réforme, à l’Espérance, à Bonnefoy. — 1719. »

The book dealer wanted to charge me one florin and six kreutzers (pronounced crushes). The price struck me as a bit steep for this kind of fair, so I contented myself with browsing through the volume, — which I was allowed to do for free, given my previous purchases. The narrative of the abbé de Bucquoy’s escapes from prison was quite riveting, but I said to myself: I’ll be able to find the book in Paris, either in some library or in one of the thousands of collections containing every imaginable memoir relating to the history of France. All I did was take down the exact title of the volume, and then proceeded on to the Meinlust on the banks of the Mein, leafing though the Volks-Kalender as I strolled along.

When I returned to Paris, I found the literary scene prey to a state of indescribable terror. As a result of the Riancey amendment that had been introduced into the laws regulating the press, newspapers were henceforth prohibited from publishing what the Assembly referred to as the feuilleton-roman, or serial novel. I came across many writers of no political persuasion whatsoever who were in utter despair over this legal turn of events which had so cruelly robbed them of their livelihoods.

I myself, who am no novelist at all, was alarmed at the vagueness of interpretation invited by these two oddly coupled words: serial novel. I had agreed some time ago to deliver to you a piece of literary work similar to those I had previously managed to place in various magazines and newspapers; and when you held me to my promise, I therefore came up with the title The Abbé de Bucquoy, convinced I would easily find the necessary documents in Paris which would allow me to speak of this character in an historical rather than in a novelistic fashion, — for let’s at least get our terms clear.

The twin scientific and literary appeal of this account of the life and writings of the abbé de Bucquoy decided you to accept this project of mine, — which is part of a larger series of studies, some of which I have already published.

But this is what happened after the National announced the imminent publication of my abbé de Bucquoy. — I had ascertained that the book indeed existed in France, for I had seen it listed not only in Brunet’s manual but also in Quérard’s La France littéraire. — I was positive I would easily be able to locate this volume (admittedly described as rare) either in some public library, or in some private collection, or via some rare book dealer.

Besides, having browsed through the book, — having even come across another narrative of the adventures of the abbé de Bucquoy in the witty and eccentric letters of Madame Dunoyer, — I was confident I would be able to paint his portrait and write his biography in a manner that would be beyond all legal reproach.

But these days I’m beginning to get somewhat frightened about the penalties that threaten to befall any newspaper in violation of the slightest letter of the new law. A fine of fifty francs per copy seized, — this is enough to drive even the most stalwart into retreat. For newspapers with a circulation of a mere twenty-five thousand, — and there are several of these, — the fines would amount to over a million francs. One can therefore understand how a broad interpretation of the law might enable the government to squash any opposition by entirely legal means. Out-and-out censorship would be far preferable. Back in the days of the Ancien Régime, the approbation of a censor, — a censor, moreover, whom one was allowed to hand pick, — was all that was needed to ensure the safe publication of one’s ideas, and the liberty one enjoyed was at times astonishing. I have read books officially approved by Louis and Phélippeaux which would without the slightest doubt be banned today.

As chance would have it, I had occasion to experience government censorship first-hand in Vienna. Finding myself in somewhat straitened circumstances after a series of unanticipated travel expenditures, and unable to surmount the difficulties involved in having money transferred to me from France, I hit upon the simple expedient of writing for the local newspapers. They paid one hundred fifty francs per page (which came out to sixteen short columns). I wrote two series of articles; but first they had to be submitted to the censor for approval.

I let a few days go by. There was no word of anything. — So I had no choice but to go pay a private visit to M. Pilat, the director of the bureau of censorship, and to explain that I had been kept waiting far too long for the visa of approval. He was extremely courteous toward me, — unlike his virtual homonym, M. Pilat was certainly not going to wash his hands of the injustice to which I had alerted him. I mentioned that I was furthermore being deprived of access to French newspapers, seeing as how the local coffee houses only received the Journal des Débats and La Quotidienne. M. Pilat said to me: « You happen to be standing in the freest spot of the Empire (i.e. the bureau of censorship); you can come here every day and read whatsoever you please, including Le National or Le Charivari. »

It is only among Germanic functionaries that one encounters this degree of decorous wit and magnanimity; the only drawback is that their very mannerliness makes one all the more willing to endure the arbitrariness of their decisions.

I have never had the same luck with the French system of censorship, — at least as it is applied to the theater, — and I doubt that if book or newspaper censorship were reintroduced we would have anything to boast about. Given our national character, there is always the tendency to exert force simply because one possesses it, or to abuse power simply because one happens to exercise it. — What to expect of a situation that so seriously endangers the interests and even the security of non-political writers?

I was recently mentioning my plight to a scholar whom it would be fruitless to designate as anything other than a bibliophile. He said to me: « Don’t base your history of the abbé de Bucquoy on the incidents recounted in Madame Dunoyer’s Lettres galantes. The title of this book alone is enough to disqualify it from serious consideration; wait until the Bibliothèque Nationale reopens (it was currently in recess), and you’re sure to find the book you read in Frankfurt. »

I paid no attention to the malicious smile that was no doubt playing on the bibliophile’s pinched lips, — and when the first of October came around, I was among the first in line to get into the Bibliothèque Nationale.

M. D*** is a gentleman of immense erudition and courtesy. He had his assistants undertake a search, but they came back empty-handed after half an hour. He consulted Brunet and Quérard, discovered that both in fact listed the book, and asked me to come back in three days; — they had not been able to locate it. « Perhaps, said M. D*** to me with his legendary patience, — perhaps the book has been catalogued among the novels. »

I trembled: « Among the novels? ... but it’s a work of history! ... it should be in the collection of Memoirs relating to the century of Louis XIV. The book specifically deals with the history of the Bastille; it provides details about the Camisard uprising, the expulsion of the Protestants, and the famous league of Salt Smugglers in the Lorraine, whom Mandrin later recruited into the rebel troops who managed to fight off the regular army and to capture such towns as Beaune and Dijon! ...

— I know, said M. D***, but given the vagaries of classification over time, errors often creep into our catalogue system. The mistakes can only be mended if and when a reader happens to request a particular work. The only person here who could solve your problem is M. R***... Unfortunately, this is not his week. »

I waited for M. R***’s week. — The following Monday I was lucky enough to meet an acquaintance of his in the reading room who offered to introduce me. M. R*** gave me a very polite welcome and said to me: « I am delighted to have had the chance to make your acquaintance; all I ask is that you grant me several more days. You see, this week I belong to the general reading public. Next week I shall be entirely at your service. »

Since I had been formally introduced to M. R***, I was no longer a member of the general reading public! I had become a private acquaintance, — and therefore had no right to impinge on his official time.

This was entirely as things should be, — but you have to admire my stroke of bad luck! ... There was really nothing or nobody else I could blame.

The bunglings of the Bibliothèque Nationale have often been commented upon. They derive in part from the shortage of personnel and in part from ancient traditions that continue to exercise their hold. The most accurate criticism that has been leveled at the place is that too much of the time and energy of its highly qualified and underpaid staff is devoted to dealing with the six hundred readers who come there every day in search of books they could just as easily find on the open shelves of any private lending library, — a state of affairs that does considerable harm not just to the aforesaid lending libraries, but to publishers and authors as well, for it would seem that nobody wants to pay for their reading matter anymore.

It has also been quite rightly observed that this establishment, which is without equal in the world, should not function as a place where people come just to keep warm, — and whose patrons, for the most, pose a very real threat to the existence and conservation of its collections. All the idlers, retirees, widowers, unemployed job-seekers, schoolchildren copying their homework, ancient eccentrics, — like poor old Carnaval who used to turn up wearing flowers in his hat and sporting red, pale blue or apple green suits, — all these certainly deserve consideration, but wouldn’t it make more sense to open other libraries especially for them? ...

There used to be nineteen editions of Don Quixote in the department of printed books. Not a single edition has remained intact. Now that libraries no longer lend out novels, the general reading public invariably requests travel literature, comedies, humorous stories in the vein of M. Thiers and M. Capefigue, and the Registry of Addresses.

Gradually, over the course of time, an edition loses one of its volumes, a bibliographical curiosity disappears, thanks to the all-too-liberal policy by which readers are not even required to give their names.

The Republic of Letters, unlike other institutions, needs to be imbued with certain standards of aristocracy, — for no one would ever call into question the membership of the republics of science or talent.

The celebrated library of Alexandria was open to established scholars or to poets whose work had been recognized for its merits ... But the hospitality extended by the library was total, and its readers received free board and lodging for the entire duration of their stay.

And while we are on the subject, — allow a traveler who has walked among its ruins and listened to the whisper of the past to defend the memory of the illustrious caliph Omar against the widely held assumption that it was he who burned down the library of Alexandria. Omar never set foot in Alexandria, — despite the claims of many scholars. He never even issued orders concerning the library to his lieutenant Amrou. — The library of Alexandria and the Serapeon or almshouse attached to it were burned to the ground in the fourth century by Christians, — who also went on to slaughter the renowned Pythagorean philosopher Hypatia as she was making her way down the street. — To be sure, these excesses can not be solely imputed to the Christian religion, — but at least the unfortunate Arabs should no longer have to stand accused of ignorance, for the wonders of Greek philosophy, medicine, and science were preserved thanks to their translations and thanks to their own scholarship, — all of which directed a continuous beam of light through the obstinate fog of the feudal era.

Pardon these digressions, — I shall keep you abreast of my travels in search of the abbé de Bucquoy. — This eccentric and ever-so-slippery figure cannot hope to elude my painstaking investigation for very long.

The staff at the Bibliothèque Nationale couldn’t be more helpful. No serious scholar could complain about its current modus operandi; — but should a novelist or serial writer show his face, « all hell breaks loose in the stacks». A bibliographer, a man dealing in a standard field of knowledge, knows exactly what books to request. A fantaisiste writer, a writer who runs the risk of perpetrating a serial novel, upsets the natural course of things and bothers everybody in sight for the sake of some half-baked idea that has happened to pop into his mind.

It is in circumstances like these that one should admire the patience of the senior librarian, — the lower-level staff are often too young to have mastered this degree of paternal self-abnegation. Occasionally the people who turn up at the library are extraordinarily rude. Convinced that the mere fact of belonging to the reading public endows them with a privileged status, they address the librarians in the same peremptory tone one might use to get a waiter’s attention in a café. — And faced with this kind of treatment, the famous scholar or academician will respond with the benign resignation of a monk, suffering no end of indignities from the reading public from ten till two thirty sharp.

Having taken pity on my plight, the staff had scoured the catalogues and had even gone so far as to explore the reserve collection and rummage through the unappetizing garbage heap of novels, — where the abbé de Bucquoy might have found himself classified by mistake; suddenly one of the assistant librarians shouted out: « We have it! In Dutch! » He read me the title out loud: « Jacques de Bucquoy, Incidents of the most remarkable sort ...”

— Excuse me, I interrupted, but the book I was looking for is entitled “Incident of the rarest sort ...”

— Let’s have another look then, perhaps there was a translation error: “... drawn from a sixteen-year voyage to the Indies, Harlem, 1744.”

— That’s not it ... and yet the book dates from exactly the same period as the abbé de Bucquoy, whose first name was indeed Jacques. But what on earth could this fantastic abbé have been doing in the Indies? »

Another assistant librarian appears on the scene: the name has been misspelled; it is not de Bucquoy, but rather Du Bucquoy, and since this may have also been spelled Dubucquoy, the search has to be started all over again, this time under the letter D.

Damn these names with nobiliary particles! Dubucquoy, I said, would be a mere commoner ... whereas the title of the book refers to him as the count de Bucquoy.

A paleographer who was working at a nearby table raised his head and said to me: « A particule in a name has never been proof of nobility; on the contrary, it often indicates that the name belongs to the landed gentry, that is, to those people who were originally known as franc-alleu folk. They took the name of their property and the various branches of a given family were often designated by the different endings of their names. The great families of French history are called Bouchard (Montmorency), Bozon (Périgord), Beaupoil (Saint-Aulaire), Capet (Bourbon), etc. The resultant de and du are often the product of sheer irregularity or outright usurpation. But this is not all: in Flanders and in Belgium, the de is the same article as the German der, meaning the. — Thus, de Muller means the miller, etc. — With the result that a good quarter of France is filled with bogus aristocrats. Béranger used to make light of the de in his name which merely indicated his Flemish origins. »

One does not argue with a paleographer; one just lets him rattle on.

All this not with standing, the various catalogues had yielded up absolutely nothing under the letter D.

« What makes you so sure that his name is Du Bucquoy? I asked the assistant librarian who had been the last to arrive on the scene.

— Because I located his name among the manuscripts catalogued in the police archives: 1709, that would be his period, wouldn’t it?

— Absolutely; it’s the year that the count de Bucquoy made his third escape from prison.

— Du Bucquoy! ... That’s the name he’s listed under in the catalogue of manuscripts. Just follow me upstairs, and you’ll be able to consult the material for yourself. »

I soon saw myself in possession of large folio bound in red morocco and containing the files of various police reports of the year 1709. The second file in the volume bore the following names: « Le Pileur, François Bouchard, lady de Boulanvilliers, Jeanne Massé, — Count du Buquoy. »

Now we’ve got the fox by the tail, — for indeed there’s something here about an escape from the Bastille, and here is what M. d’Argenson of the police writes in his report to the minister M. de Pontchartrain:

« I have continued to search for the alleged count of Buquoy in all the locations you have been so kind as to indicate to me, but nothing has been learned of his whereabouts and I doubt he is in Paris. »

The information contained in these few lines struck me as at once most reassuring and most depressing. — On the one hand, the count de Buquoy or de Bucquoy, about whom I previously possessed only vague or questionable evidence, takes on an incontrovertible historical existence thanks to this item. No court of law could now justifiably classify him as a hero of a serial novel.

On the other hand, why does M. d’Argenson refer to him as the alleged count de Bucquoy?

Are we dealing with a fake Bucquoy here, — who is trying to pass himself off for the real thing ... for reasons we have no way of fathoming today?

Or are we dealing with the actual Bucquoy who may have hidden his real name behind a pseudonym?

With only this piece of evidence to go on, the truth escapes me, — and I imagine the material existence of this individual could easily be challenged by any lawyer worth his salt!

How to defend oneself against the prosecutor who would declare before the court that: « The count of Bucquoy is a fictional character, a figment of the novelistic imagination of his author! ... » and who would then go on to request a legal settlement involving, say, a million francs in fines! — with the sum going up every day a new installment was seized?

Although he can hardly pretend to wear the noble mantle of the scholar, every writer occasionally finds himself having to resort the scientific method; I therefore proceeded to scrutinize in detail the yellowed writing on the Holland paper of the report signed by d’Argenson. At the same level as the line that read: « I have continued to search for the alleged count ... » there were two words penciled into the margin, written in a swift and decisive hand: « Carry on. » Carry on what? — Carry on the search for the abbé de Bucquoi, no doubt ...

I was entirely of the same opinion.

All the same, when it comes to analyzing handwriting, there can be no certainty without comparison. On another page of the same report there was the following note:

« The lanterns have been hung in the passageways of the Louvre in accordance with your instructions, and I shall see to it that they are lit every evening. »

This is how the sentence ended in the handwriting of the secretary who had copied the report. Following the words « lit every evening », a less professional hand had added: « quite so. »

And in the margin, evidently in the hand of the minister Pontchartrain, these same words again: « Carry on. »

The same comment here as for the abbé de Bucquoy.

But in all likelihood M. de Pontchartrain occasionally varied his pet phrases. Here is another example:

« I have informed the merchants of the Saint-Germain fair that they must obey the orders of the King, namely, that it is forbidden to serve food during those hours which, according to the rules of the Church, are reserved for fasting. »

In the margin next to this, there is but a single word in pencil: « Good. »

Further on, there is something about an individual who was arrested for having murdered a nun from Évreux. A silver seal, some bloody underclothing, and a glove were found on his person. — The individual turns out to be an abbé (yet another abbé!); but the charges against him were dropped, according to M. d’Argenson, because the abbé had apparently merely come to Versailles to look after some business affairs that were doing rather poorly, the proof being that he was still quite indigent. «Thus, he concludes, I think he can safely be regarded as a mere visionary who should be sent back to his province rather than being allowed to stay on in Paris where he is certain to become a ward of the city.»

The minister had penciled in the following comment : « Have a few words with him first. » A terrible phrase which may very well have changed the entire legal situation of the poor abbé.

And what if this were the abbé de Bucquoy himself! — No name, just the designation: An individual. — Further on, there is something about a certain Lebeau woman, wife of a certain Cardinal and a known prostitute ... His Excellency Pasquier is interested in her case ...

Penciled in the margin: « House of Detention. Give her six months. »

I don’t know whether everybody would be as engrossed as I was by these horrific pages entitled Miscellaneous Police Files. This handful of facts paints the precise historical moment at which the elusive abbé walked the earth. And I who know this unlucky abbé, — perhaps better than any of my readers could, — I trembled as I turned the pages containing the merciless reports that changed hands between these two men, — d’Argenson and Pontchartrain.

At one point, after having assured the latter of his eternal loyalty, the former had added:

« I shall not waver in my devotion, no matter what rebukes and reprimands you care to honor me with ... »

The minister replies in the third person, this time using a pen. « He shall not be so honored whensoever he pleases; and I would be most unhappy to have to put his loyalties into question, since I cannot do the same with his abilities. »

There was another item in this file: « The Le Pileur Affair. » A dreadful drama unfolded under my eyes.

Have no fear, — this is not a novel.

The drama involves one of those terrible family scenes that take place at the bedside of someone who has just expired. At this very moment, so nicely seized by the popular stage of yore, — when the chief heir, now casting aside his mournful mask of sorrow and contrition, proudly pulls himself up to his full height and says to the members of the household: « The keys? »

Here we have two heirs in the wake of the death of Binet de Villiers: the brother of the deceased and sole legatee, Binet de Basse-Maison, and the brother-in-law of the deceased, Le Pileur.

Two attorneys, one representing the deceased, the other Le Pileur, were drawing up the inventory with the help of a notary and a clerk. Le Pileur complained that they had not inventoried a certain number of papers that Binet de Basse-Maison claimed were of no importance. The latter warned Le Pileur not to provoke an incident and said he should just abide by the opinion of his attorney Châtelain.

But Le Pileur replied that he had absolutely no intention of consulting his attorney, that he knew what was afoot, and that as far as provoking an incident was concerned, he certainly was a great enough gentleman to know how to take things into his own hands.

Basse-Maison, irritated by these comments, went up to Le Pileur and, taking hold of him by the two buttonholes of his jerkin, said to him that he would thwart any attempt of his to do so; — Le Pileur put his hand to his sword, Basse-Maison did likewise ...

Observing a safe distance from each other, Basse-Maison and Le Pileur waved their swords around a bit. Le Pileur’s wife threw herself between her husband and her brother; then the others came to her assistance and managed to drag each of the combatants into separate rooms, which were then locked.

A moment later there was the sound of a window opening; it was Le Pileur bellowing to his servants down in the courtyard: « Go fetch my nephews! »

The attorneys were in the process of writing up a legal report about the scuffle when the two nephews burst into the room, sabers in hand. — They were both officers of the Royal Guard; — pushing the servants aside and presenting the points of their swords to the two attorneys and the notary, they asked where Basse-Maison was.

Nobody would tell them, whereupon Le Pileur shouted from his room: « Over here, my boys! »

But the nephews had already battered down the door to the room at the left and were beating the hapless Binet de Basse-Maison, — who, according to the police file, was « hasthmatic », — with the flats of their sabers.

The notary, whose name was Dionis, thinking that Le Pileur’s anger would have been appeased by this point and hoping that he would call off his nephews, decided to unlock him from his room while admonishing him to remain calm. Le Pileur lunged through the door, shouting: « Now you’ll see some fireworks! » He rushed over to where his nephews were still beating Basse-Maison and planted his sword in the latter’s belly.

The police file relating these events is followed by a more detailed dossier containing the depositions of thirteen witnesses, — the most eminent of whom were the two attorneys and the notary.

It should be observed that each of these thirteen witnesses seems to have flinched at the crucial moment. As a result, none is absolutely certain that Le Pileur stabbed Basse-Maison to death with his sword.

The first attorney swears that he can only be sure of having heard the sound of saber blows in the distance.

The second attorney agrees with his colleague.

A manservant by the name of Barry is somewhat more forthcoming: — he saw the murder from a distant window; but he does not know whether it was Le Pileur or someone dressed in light gray who actually delivered the fatal blow to Basse-Maison’s belly. Louis Calot, another servant, more or less corroborates this deposition.

The last of this courageous band and the least eminent of the thirteen, namely, the notary’s clerk, claims to have seen Le Pileur’s wife make off with some of the papers of the deceased. According to him, after the crime Le Pileur calmly went to the room where his wife was and « then went off in his carriage with her and the two men who had caused the ruckus. »

The moral of this instructive tale, at least as concerns the mores of the period, seems to be lacking, — that is, until one comes across the following remarkable conclusion at the end of the report: « There are few examples of an act of violence so odious and so criminal ... But given the fact that the heirs of the two dead brothers are at the same time the brothers-in-law of the murderer, it is safe to assume that this murder shall go unpunished and shall have no consequence other than to render his lordship Le Pileur more agreeable to the various propositions emanating from his co-legatees in those matters touching upon their mutual interests. »

It has been observed that during the grand siècle even the most minor clerk wrote in a style as florid as Bossuet’s. It is impossible not to admire the marvelous detachment of this police report which evinces the hope that the murderer will become more amenable to the resolution of his affairs ... As for the murder, the theft of the papers, the saber blows (some of which were probably also directed at the attorneys), they will all go unpunished because nobody inside or outside the family will ever press charges: — M. Le Pileur being too great a gentleman not to get away with this incident ...

This is a noble remnant of those feudal manners which lingers on well into the final years of grand siècle under Mme de Maintenon’s reign.

There is no further mention of this affair, — which has allowed me to forget my poor abbé for a moment; — but even though it lacks the embellishments of a novel, this police report nonetheless provides a number of historical silhouettes that could be cut out and used as background figures. Already everything is coming to life for me, reconstructed by my mind’s eye. I see d’Argenson in his office, Pontchartrain in his ministry, the Pontchartrain who (according to Saint-Simon) became an object of ridicule by calling himself de Pontchartrain and who, like many others, took his revenge against ridicule by inspiring terror.

But to what avail is all this background preparation? Will they only allow me to set the scene for the events in the fashion of Froissart or Monstrelet? — They will probably claim that this is how Walter Scott goes about things, — and he is after all a novelist. I should probably just restrict myself to giving a straightforward synopsis of the history of the abbé de Bucquoy ... if and when I find it.

I had reason to hope: M. R*** was going to take matters into his hands; — there were merely eight more days to wait. Besides, in the interim I still might be able to locate the book in some other public library.

Unfortunately they were all closed, — except for the Mazarine. I therefore went off to disturb the silence of its magnificent and chilly halls. The library has a catalogue which is quite complete and which you are allowed to consult on your own; in ten minutes, it can help you solve any question whatsoever. But the staff on duty is so competent there is no need to bother the reference librarians or even to consult the catalogue. I addressed myself to one of them: somewhat taken aback, he turned my request over in his mind and replied, « We don’t have the book ... but I have a vague idea...»

The curator is man well-known for his wit and encyclopedic erudition. He recognized me. « What do you need the abbé de Bucquoy for? For an opera libretto? I remember that charming opera you wrote ten years ago; the music was delightful. The second one was even more admirable. What a marvelous actress you had there ... But these days the censors would never allow you to do a play involving an abbé.

— I need the book for something historical I’m working on. »

He gave me a long, hard look, of the sort one might cast at someone requesting books on alchemy. « Oh I see, he said at last, it’s for an historical novel à la Dumas.

— I have never written an historical novel, nor do I intend to: I have absolutely no desire to cost the newspapers for which I write four or five hundred francs a day in fines ... If I find I am incapable of writing straight history, I’ll just print the book as is. »

He nodded his head and said, « We have it.

— Oh?

— I know where it is. It’s part of the collection of books that came to us from Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Which is why it is not yet catalogued ... It must be somewhere in the basement.

— Ah, if you would be kind enough to ...

— I’ll try to locate it for you; just give me a few days.

— I’m starting in on my project the day after tomorrow.

— It won’t be easy: there are piles and piles of books down there and we’ll probably have to turn the place upside down. But the book is here: I have seen it with my own eyes.

— Just be careful about the books in the Saint-German-des-Prés collection, — on account of the rats ... A number of new species have been sighted, including the gray Russian rat which arrived in the wake of the Cossacks. True, this Russian rat managed to destroy the English rat, but now they are talking about a new rodent that has recently appeared on the scene. It’s called the Athens mouse and has apparently been multiplying like mad ever since it arrived here in the crates that were shipped from the university France has recently established in Athens ... »

The curator dismissed my fears with a smile and took his leave, promising me his full attention to my request.

Another idea came to mind: the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal is closed for the month, but I know the curator. — He is in town; he has the keys. He has been most helpful to me in the past; I’m sure he would make an exception for me and allow me to see the book which is after all only a minor item in his library’s vast holdings.

I was on my way to see him. But a dreadful thought stopped me dead in my tracks. It was the memory of a fantastic tale I had heard ages ago.

The predecessor of the current curator had been a celebrated old man who was passionate about books; it was with great regret that he was finally forced to give up his cherished seventeenth-century editions late in life, but death carried him off in the end and the new curator took possession of his lodgings.

The latter had just gotten married and was sleeping in peace next to his young wife when he was suddenly woken up, at one o’clock in the morning, by the violent ringing of the doorbell. The maid’s quarters were on another floor of the house. The curator gets up and goes to open the door.

Nobody.

He tries to figure out who it was: everybody is asleep in the house; — the concierge has seen nothing.

The next night, at the very same hour, the bell again goes off with a repeated series of rings.

Again, nobody at the door. The curator, who had been a teacher shortly before this, concludes that it is probably some aggrieved schoolboy who has hidden himself in the house, — or who has tied a cat to the bell by means of a slip knot attached to its tail ...

On the third night, the curator instructs his concierge to remain on the landing with a candle until the fatal hour has passed; he promises him a reward if the bell does not ring.

At one in the morning, the concierge is horrified to see that the cord of the bell is jerking up and down on its own and that its red tassel is crazily dancing across the wall. The curator in turn opens his bedroom door only to witness the concierge making signs of the cross in front of him.

« It is the soul of your predecessor who has returned to haunt you.

— Did you see him?

— No, but you can’t see ghosts in candlelight.

— Well, let’s try again tomorrow without candlelight.

— Sir, you can go ahead and try on your own ... »

After having given the matter further consideration, the curator decided not to try to get a glimpse of the ghost. They probably had a mass said for the ancient bibliophile, for the phenomenon never repeated itself again.

And I was about to go ring this same bell! ... Who knows whether the ancient ghost himself might not greet me at the door?

Besides, this library brings back many sad memories. I have known three of its curators over time, — the first of these was the original of the supposed ghost; the second, ever so brilliant, ever so generous, was one of my literary mentors; the last one was so helpful in allowing me access to his fine collections of engravings that I presented him with an edition of Faust illustrated with German engravings!

No, it would be most difficult for me to return to the Arsenal.

Besides, there are still several rare book dealers to visit: there’s France, then Merlin, then Techener ...

M. France said to me: « I know the book well ; it must have crossed my hands at least ten times ... With luck, you’re sure to find it on the quais: that’s where I picked it up myself for ten sous. »

The idea of combing the bookstalls on the quais for days on end in search of an item officially classified as rare ... I decided it made more sense to try Merlin’s bookshop. « The Bucquoi? I was informed by his successor, of course I’m familiar with it, I even have a copy of it on hand ... »

My joy may easily be imagined. The book dealer brought me a volume whose format was the appropriate duodecimo; except that it was far too fat (949 pages). Upon opening the book, I discovered it bore the title, In Praise of the Count de Bucquoy. Around the portrait facing the title page, there was the Latin inscription: COMES. A. BVCQVOY.

My illusions were soon dashed. It was a history of the Bohemian uprising, with a portrait of a Bucquoy whose armor and beard clearly dated from the Louis XIII period. He was probably an ancestor of the poor abbé. — Still, it was a book worth owning: family features often reproduce themselves over time. Here is a Bucquoy born in the Artois who goes off to Bohemia to fight; — imagination and energy are written all over his face, as is a certain tendency toward whimsy. The abbé de Bucquoy no doubt followed after him as dreamers follow after men of action.

As I was on my way to Techener’s to try my luck one last time, I stopped in front of a bird-seller’s shop. A woman of a certain age, decked out in a hat and dressed with a threadbare elegance indicative of better days, was trying to sell her canary and its cage to the shop-owner.

He replied that he was already having a hard time just trying to feed the birds he had on hand. The woman pleaded with him. He told her that her canary was worthless. — The old lady heaved a sigh and trudged off.

I had spent all my money on the Bohemian exploits of the count of Bucquoy; otherwise I would have said to the bird-seller: « Call that woman back and tell her that you will buy her canary after all ... »

The fact that I was unable to do this filled me with remorse, — but when it comes to the Bucquoys, I am obviously pursued by the Fates.

M. Techener said to me: « I no longer have the book you’re looking for, but I know a copy of it is soon going to be auctioned off in a lot of items from the library of a book collector.

— What is his name? ...

— He prefers to be known as X; his name will not be listed in the auction catalogue.

— But if I wanted to buy the book now? ...

— Books that have already been catalogued and sorted out into lots are never sold in advance. The auction will take place on November 11th. »

November 11th!

Yesterday I received a note from M. R***, the librarian to whom I had been introduced at the Bibliothèque Nationale. He had not forgotten about me and was writing to inform me of the same auction. Except that according to him, the auction had been moved back to November 20th.

What to do between now and then? — Who knows, the way things are going, the price of the book may well go sky-high ...

OBLIGATORY DIGRESSION JOURNEY TO VERSAILLES THE TALKING SEAL. — VISIT TO THE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

I’m afraid I’m really imposing on my audience’s patience with all my futile peregrinations in search of the abbé de Bucquoy. Still, readers of newspaper serials should no longer expect their attention to be grabbed as it once was by romantic adventures; back then, we were at full liberty to paint love scenes as we saw fit.

I have learned that at this very moment a newspaper is under investigation because it printed the description of a passion, — a very genuine passion for that matter, — that was evoked in the course of the narrative of a journey to Greenland.

This might well prevent me from entertaining you with a very curious episode which I have just observed at Versailles, — where I had traveled in order to see whether the library of this city contained the work I am in search of.

The library is situated in one of the buildings of the castle. And I was able to verify the fact that, — like many of the Parisian libraries, — it was still closed for the summer holidays.

As I made my way back from the castle along the allée de Saint-Cloud, I found myself in the midst of a fair which is annually held here during this month.

My eyes were automatically drawn to an immense billboard advertising the performance of an educated seal.

I had seen this same seal in Paris the previous year, — and I had admired the eloquence with which he said pappa-mamma and had nuzzled up to his young trainer, — all of whose commands he faithfully followed.

I have always had a tender spot for seals, ever since I heard the following anecdote recounted in Holland:

This is not a novel, — if one is to believe the Dutch. — These animals act as guide dogs to fishermen; their heads are canine, their eyes bovine, and their whiskers feline. — During fishing season, they follow alongside the boats and herd in the fish when the fishermen are having a hard time catching them.

These mammals are quite sensitive to the winter cold and every fisherman has his own seal whom he allows to flop around in his house and who, more often than not, curls up by the hearth, waiting for a morsel bubbling in the pot.

THE STORY OF A SEAL

Once there was a fisherman and his wife. They were very poor, — it had been a bad year and there was not enough food to go around for their family. The fisherman said to his wife: « This seal is eating all the food of our children. I think I’ll take him out to the sea and throw him back in. He’ll join up with his companions; during the winter, they all retire to into their sea-caves on beds of algae and manage to find fish to eat in feeding-grounds known only to them. »

The fisherman’s wife pleaded with her husband to have mercy on the seal. — But soon the thought that her children might die of hunger caused her to desist.

At the break of dawn the fisherman placed the seal in the bottom of his boat and, having sailed several leagues out to sea, deposited it on an island. The seal started gamboling about with his fellow creatures without realizing that the boat was leaving him in the lurch.

Upon returning to his house, the fisherman sighed at the loss of his companion. — But the seal had beaten him back home and lay there waiting for him, drying out in front of the hearth. — The family put up with their hunger for another few days, but unable to stand his children’s cries of distress, the fisherman grew stronger in his resolve.

This time he sailed far further out to sea and tossed the seal into the waves, far from the shore.

With his fins, shaped almost like hands, the seal repeatedly tried to grasp hold of the gunwales of the boat. Exasperated, the fisherman lifted up one of his oars and slammed it down, smashing one of the fins. The seal let out a plaintive cry that was almost human and disappeared into the waves, stained red with his blood.

The fisherman returned home heart-broken. — This time there was no seal to greet him at the hearth.

But that same night, the fisherman heard cries in the street. He thought that someone was being murdered and rushed out to help.

There was the seal on his doorstep. It had dragged itself to his house and was whimpering piteously, — holding the bloodied stump of its fin skyward.

They took the seal in, dressed its wound, and never again did they think of exiling it from the family hearth; — for from that moment on, the catch had gotten much better.

There is no way that this legend could seem dangerous to you. — It contains not a single mention of the word love.

Yet I feel quite ambivalent about disclosing what it was I overheard at the seal exhibit at the Versailles fair. I’ll leave it up to you to evaluate the dangers that a narrative of this sort might represent.

I was, for openers, rather surprised not to discover the seal whom I had seen the previous year. The one currently on display is of another color altogether and far plumper.

There were two soldiers there from camp Sabory, — a sergeant and a fusilier, both of whom were admiring the seal in the idiom of their regiment, in this case a blend of Alsatian and military slang.

Expertly following the baton movements of his trainer, the seal had already executed a number of tricks in the water. The sergeant had cast into the pool one of those disdainful glances that are proof that a man has seen many educated seals in his time:

THE SERGEANT: I bet you couldn’t leap around like that in the waterrrs of the sea.

THE FUSILIER: Well that would probably depend. I reckon I could if the water wasn’t too cold and I was wearing a fur jacket like this seal.

THE SERGEANT: What do you mean by a furrr jacket?

THE FUSILIER: Go ahead sir and just touch it.

(The sergeant prepares to feel the seal.)

THE TRAINER: No you don’t! This seal is ferocious when he’s not fed ...

THE SERGEANT, disdainfully: I’ve seen seals in Algierrrs that were three or four times longer; true, they didn’t have furrr, but they did have scales ... In fact I don’t think this kind of seal exists in Afrrikerr!

THE TRAINER: My apologies, Sarge; this here seal was caught in Cape Verde.

THE SERGEANT: Oh, so he was captured in Cape Verrrde , was he? ... well, that changes everything ... I guess the men who pulled this fish out of the waterrr . . . must have had a tough time of it! ...

THE TRAINER: As a matter of fact, Sarge, it was me and my brother ... And yes, he was not pleasant to the touch.

THE SERGEANT, to the fusilier: You see what I told you.[1]

THE FUSILIER, nonplussed by his line of argument, yet nonetheless resigned: You’re right, Sarge, all the way.

His vanity flattered, the sergeant offered a few coins to see the seal having lunch, for his midday meal depended on the liberality of the visitors.

Soon, the other spectators also having chipped in, a suitable number of herrings had been collected so that the seal was now ready to show off his tricks in the green-painted pool.

« He’s approaching the edge of the pool, said the trainer. He’s sniffing out the herrings to see if they are fresh ... If they are not, he’ll refuse to put on a good show. »

The seal seemed to be satisfied and proceeded to say Pappa and Mamma with a Northern accent whose intonations nonetheless did not interfere with intelligibility of the syllables.

« He’s talking Dutch, said the sergeant. I thought you said he had been caught in Cape Verrrde!

— True enough. But even when they swim south they don’t lose their accent ... These are trips they take during the summer, for health reasons, then they return back north, — unless, that is, they are caught, as was the case with this one, so they can get to visit Versailles. »

After the lessons in phonetics, each of which was rewarded by the ingurgitation of a herring, it was time for a display of gymnastics; — the seal stood up on his tail, whose symmetrical flanges almost resemble human feet; then executed a number of flips and pivots through the water, guided by his trainer’s baton and by the promise of further herrings.

I admired how much the spirit of the North was at work in these creatures, hybrid though they were. They will only bow to authority if provided with certain guarantees.

Once the exhibition was over, the trainer showed us the wall where he had stretched out the sealskin which had been on display in Paris last year. The fusilier at this point enjoyed his moment of triumph over his sergeant, whose vision had perhaps been somewhat clouded by the Sabory champagne.

What the fusilier had called the seal’s jacket was in fact a thick skin covered with speckled fur, the hairs of which were about as long as those of a young calf. The sergeant at this point had given up all claims to superior authority.

As I was leaving the exhibit, I heard the following dialogue between its owner and a lady from Versailles:

« So do these creatures eat a lot of herrings?

— Don’t even mention it, Madame, this seal costs us a good twenty-five francs a day (as much as a representative to the National Assembly). Each herring costs three sous, you know.

— How true, the lady said with a sigh, fish is so expensive these days in Versailles! »

I inquired about the cause of the death of the preceding seal.

« I married off my daughter, said the owner. This was the cause. The seal grew very depressed, and died of a broken heart. And yet we had wrapped him up in blankets and taken care of him just like a human ... but he was too attached to my daughter. So I said to my son: “Go find another one ... but this time make sure it’s not a male, — females are far more independent.” This new cow can be headstrong, — but give seals plenty of fresh herring and they’ll do whatever you want them to! »

How instructive it is to observe the behavior of animals! And how closely all this is related to the various hypotheses put forth by thousands of books during the last century! — While browsing among the stalls of the booksellers at Versailles, I came across a duodecimo volume entitled The Difference between Man and Beast. This book claims that during the winter the Greenlanders used to bury seals under the snow « so that they could subsequently unearth them and eat their frozen flesh raw. »

It occurs to me that seal here shows himself to be superior to man: he prefers his fish fresh.

On page 93 I find this delicate observation: « In love we know each other only because we love each other; in friendship we love each other only because we know each other. »

And then this one: « Two lovers hide their faults from each other and betray each other; two friends, by contrast, admit their faults to each other and forgive each other. »

I put this book back on the shelf: it was written by a moralist who loves animals, — but who does not love love!

Yet we have just seen that seals are fully capable of love and friendship!

What would happen if this serial feuilleton were to be seized by the police because it had mentioned the love of a seal for its mistress. Thank God, I have merely grazed the surface of this subject.

But the case involving the newspaper that was indicted for having spoken of love during a journey among the Eskimos remains quite serious, — at least if one believes the reply of the assistant prosecutor who was asked what it was that distinguished newspaper articles devoted to criticism, travel, or historical matters from serial novels, and who was reported to have replied:

« Serial novels have to do with the depiction of love. The word for novel, roman, derives from the word romance. Draw your own conclusion. »

This conclusion strikes me as false. If it were generally accepted then everybody would be citing the following lines from the Renewed Reveries of the Greeks:

Without an itty bitty taste of love

There would be an end to tragedy

Ah! When it comes to little old me,

Just give me a good old taste of love!

I’m ashamed to waste my readers’ time with all this twaddle. After having finished writing this letter, I will request an audience with the Attorney General of the Republic. Justice is severe in our land, — often as harsh as Roman law (dura lex sed lex), but at least it is French justice, that is, more capable than any other of understanding matters of the mind ...

Please admire, if you will, my steadfastness of purpose; — I have just made my way to the Palace of Justice.

One often fears, — in cases like this, — that should one enter the offices of the Attorney General one will only exit from them having been guillotined. — But truth be told, I was greeted by nothing but charming manners and smiling faces.

I was completely wrong when I reported the reply of the assistant prosecutor to the question concerning serial novels. He was no doubt an assistant prosecutor on vacation from the provinces and was merely offering his private opinion of the matter in some drawing room, — where he obviously would never have been able to convince any of the ladies present.

Luckily I was able to address myself to the official prosecutor who had been assigned to cases specifically involving newspapers and he informed me that « the pursuit of crimes committed by serial novels was of no concern to the office of the Attorney General. »

This office only moves into action once it has been informed of violations by the The Stamp Office, — which has special agents whose job it is to decide whether a newspaper serial should be categorized as a novel and hence be assessed the fine of a stamp tax.

Up to the present the only case that has come to the attention of the Attorney General’s office is that of Alexandre Dumas’ God Disposes, which was a novel published by L’Événement — though to be sure, only as a supplement. — This does not constitute a serious case.

The same holds true of the seizure of the periodical called City and Country which had featured a serial novel by M. Marie Aycard. The newspaper Le Droit was similarly warned when it published a series by the same author: its issues were seized in the mail but were allowed to pass once the stamp tax levied on them had been paid in full.

These are cases that shall wend their way through administrative channels.

So we can breathe easier for the moment, — without however forgetting that we shall probably have to go drop in on the Stamp Office, which is a division of the Department of Registration and State Property.

ANOTHER OBLIGATORY DIGRESSION LITERARY CONGENIALITY REPLY TO THE «CORSAIRE» CENSORSHIP. — THE THEATER HARLEQUIN MASKS

I am obliged to ramble on about myself without getting to the abbé de Bucquoy. Small consolation indeed. But our audience will have to admit that given the impossibility of our writing a novel, we shall have to become the hero of those adventures that befall us every day, as they do every man, — and whose interest is admittedly often quite limited.

So we are embarked on a rather slipperypath, — do not hesitate to offer us guidance or advance warnings ...

In addition, one can make certain observations about personal matters that have broader implications for a number of concerns that might be more or less shared by the public at large, — observations that might possibly even be of some use.

Polemics are key to the power and public service of the press. A newspaper for which I used to write when it was still under the editorship of M. Lepage, — to wit, Le Corsaire, — has now accused me of changing my political colors. I know that newspapers often seem to change their politics according to the winds of their ownership or editorship. — But to accuse a writer of doing so is a far graver matter.

Changes of conviction sometimes have to be justified: men of the cloth or monarchs often cite the Bible or historical precedent in order to explain theirs. But the author of these lines finds himself, perhaps by sheer chance, in another situation altogether.

Whoever wrote the piece in the Corsaire accusing me of being a turncoat got his information wrong and moreover confused my name with someone else’s. I am not the same M. Gérard who was a member of the secret Bureau of the Public Interest associated with the Ministry of the Interior. I have always kept my distance from party politics, although I do have to admit that I was acquainted with this particular homonym of mine: I suppose my name could have hurt him in his party affiliations, just as his seems to be affecting me today, — that is, if I indeed belonged to a political party.

I was never sent on any fact-finding mission by any ministry. Had I solicited or even accepted such a mission, I would not be embarrassed to admit it, for the money that is earmarked for these often very useful assignments is voted by our legislative bodies and does not therefore come directly from the head of state.

There are those who loudly protest that they would never sell themselves; — perhaps because no one would ever want to buy them.

For any writer who has achieved the kind of reputation that (even without great talent) one acquires by dint of hard work and study, there is sometimes merit in refusing to solicit funds from kings, even if these monies in the end belong to the nation at large. The problem is that one has been granted a favor; — whereas this should more appropriately be considered a right.

I have never engaged in politics, except for several articles I recently wrote as a foreign correspondent. The literary works that I have published over the years are characterized by a liberal point of view which predates the establishment of the Republic and which has not changed since. I believe that, unless he is possessed of very strong political beliefs concerning certain questions, it is a writer’s job to remind those in power when they are acting like fools, — and to remind the public when it is being fooled.

In 1839, having just returned from Germany, I wrote a play for the Porte-Saint-Martin theater. Up to that point I had had no prior contact with any ministry. My play, which had been accepted for production by Harel, the director of the theater, had already been in rehearsal for a month when, as was the custom, we had to send two manuscript copies of it to the Office of the Censor. It cost six francs to make copies of five acts and a prologue. True, one of the two manuscripts would be eventually returned, but what needs underscoring here is that writers are dunned far more for their work than other producers, — viz., copies of their books to be deposited at the national library, duplicate manuscripts to be submitted to the censor.

Forgive me, — I’m amusing myself while replying to Le Corsaire, — whom I must also thank for offering me one more excuse not to continue on my quest for the abbé de Bucquoy today. — As I was saying, writers are burdened by all sorts of hidden costs: when it comes to the publication of our works, our profession has to pay a kind of tax to the printers (called les étoffes and representing about a third of the labor costs) in order to offset the caution money required for their official licensing. Then we have to deal with the cost of theater licenses, which are often handed out to people who are well-meaning but completely ignorant of theater matters, — and who skim off funds meant for authors and actors. Finally we are hit up for the monies that go to pay the security bonds and stamp taxes that newspapers are required to pay, not to mention having to accommodate ourselves to newspaper directors or editors-in-chief who are totally illiterate. — This may be less the case these days, but still ...

So here I am, having to put up (like so many other writers) with all the indignities of this profession that is not strictly a profession, and dealing with the product of my own labors which, as Alphonse Karr has pointed out, has never even been recognized as actual property. Here I am, spending six months chasing after a piece of paper from the Ministry of the Interior that would allow my play to be performed. I had no choice but to make the rounds.

The ministry contained a number of career officials who were good-humored enough to be amused by sending a non-serious writer such as myself on a wild goose chase. M. Véron, whose acquaintance I had made in a restaurant, said to me one day: « You’re going about things all wrong. I’ll give you a personal letter over my signature for the censor »; and he handed me a sheet of paper that said: « I recommend to your attention this young author who has worked for us as a contributor to the newspapers of our constitutional party of the opposition and who is requesting a visa from the censor », etc. M. Véron, — an associate of this newspaper where I indeed did publish a few articles dealing with the great philosophers of the 18th century, — will surely not hold it against me if I make public his kind and honorable gesture.

From that day onward, all the doors were open for me: I was even informed of the reason that they wanted to delay my play and hence rob me of its profits for an entire winter season.

They considered my play to be dangerous especially because its fourth act featured a scene deemed too realistic and too concretely historical in its coloring because it depicted a “charcoal burning” after the fashion of the Italian carbonari. They had hoped I would heap ridicule upon these young conspirators and remained critical of the fact that I had presented things from the impartial point of view that I had learned from my study of Shakespeare and Goethe, — however weak my imitation of them may have been in the end.

My play, it should be pointed out, did not reach a favorable conclusion as to the advisability of political assassination, yet it demonstrated just how difficult it might be for a man of feeling to support the reactionary politics of a small German court.

M. de Montalivet was the minister back then. I was unable to get access to him. And yet it was he who was responsible for all the decisions, — as I was informed by the various bureaucrats at the ministry (all of whom, it should be noted, treated me in the most polite and benevolent terms).

The rehearsals continued to be cancelled; — Bocage, who was engaged to perform in the provinces, quit the production, — which would have benefited tremendously from his talents and made a fortune for poor old Harel and me. The spring season, — not the best for theaters, — was creeping to a close. I mentioned my plight to a political journalist while visiting one of those newspaper offices where the line separating editorialists from feature writers is often forgotten in favor of simple comradeship based on years of acquaintance.

« You’re wasting your time with all this. They’re not enforcing censorship for the moment.

— I have good reason to believe the contrary.

— Censorship may exist in theory, but not in practice. Do you understand?

— Go on ...

— Three years ago, the minister managed to get a provisional vote from the assembly that reestablished censorship, but this vote came with the stipulation that a definitive law on this matter be presented for ratification within two years.

— And so?

— And so ... It’s been three years now and nothing has been done. »

Though I am not litigious in nature, I nonetheless felt that I should defend my interests, — if not my personal interests (writers rarely think of these), at least those of my literary offspring.

I went to look up M. Lefèvre, the official (and certified ) defense attorney for the association of dramatic authors. M. Lefèvre very politely said to me: « You may be entirely right ... But our association is careful to avoid anything that might smack of politics. Besides, my personal views would force me to recuse myself from this case. You will certainly find other lawyers only too happy to take it on. »

I went to look up M. Schayé who told me: « You’re right. They don’t have a leg to stand on. We’ll send them a summons. »

The next day I received a letter granting me an audience with the Minister of the Interior ... at five that afternoon.

The minister received me on the run, saying, « I’ve not yet had time to read your manuscript; I’ll take it with me to the country. Please drop back in to see me the day after tomorrow at the same time. »

I had to cool my heels to see the minister. I waited for a long time and it was quite late when I was finally ushered in. — But what would a dramatic author not do to save his play and extract it from the talons of a minister?

The minister received me with a gruff hello and shuffled through his papers in search of my manuscript. Never having had the privilege of seeing a minister up close, I examined M. Montalivet’s handsome if somewhat overworked brow. — He belonged to that school of high functionaries of which our former king was quite fond, — one might call it the Party of the Portly. Left to his own devices, Louis-Philippe would have sacrificed everything to these men whose physiques flattered his vision of the prosperity of the body politic. Like Caesar, who could not abide anybody thin, he was suspicious of nervous types such as M. Thiers or bilious temperaments such as M. Guizot. These were men who had been imposed upon him, — and who ended up costing him his reign ... deliberately or not. M. de Montalivet had fished out the enormous manuscript upon which my future as a playwright rested. He handed it back to me over his desk and, wisely eschewing those banal niceties so often inflicted upon writers, he said; « Here’s your play back. Go ahead and have it performed. If it causes any problems, we’ll just shut down the production. » I thanked him and took my leave.

If I had not been informed by a number of people that M. de Montalivet cut a most affable figure on the social scene, I would have sworn that I had just had an interview with the very M. de Pontchartrain who will make an appearance in my Life of the abbé de Bucquoy.

The problem now was how to get the play back on its feet after a number of its initial actors had quit the production. We had to wait for the closing of a play that was finishing up a successful run. It was now well into the summer season. Harel informed me that he had booked an elephant act for the following autumn so that my play would therefore only have a limited engagement.

We nonetheless managed to get it up and running with the best actors in the troupe: Mme Mélingue, Raucourt, Mélingue, Tournan, and good old Moessard. They were all full of kindness to me and turned in fine performances, even if my play was a bit eccentric for this sort of boulevard theater.

Meanwhile the rehearsals dragged on. A theater director is not in the best of financial health when expecting an elephant. Nor would the dog days of summer guarantee him the kind of box office success he might have expected had the play been scheduled for early winter. There was a new piece of scenery that was absolutely crucial to the production, — a backdrop representing ruins illuminated by the moon, at Eisenach, near the castle of Wartburg.

I had dreamed of this stage set, — having seen it in reality just the previous month upon leaving the electorate of Hesse-Cassel on my way to Leipzig.

Harel kept on reassuring me: « I’ve had the thing ordered from Cicéri. We’ll set it up when we go into our dress rehearsals. »

It was finally set up the day before the show opened.

The set represented a subterranean hall surmounted by statues of knights, similar to the one they used to play The Secret Tribunal at the Amibigu.

In fact it might well have been the very same set, merely repainted.

I had gotten it into my head that my play should include a number of songs with lyrics by Koerner and set to music by Weber. — I had heard these firsthand during my travels and had sung them to myself while crossing the Black Forest on foot in the company of German students and journeymen. The song entitled the Lutzow Hunt had originally been directed against France; but in my translation it lost its nationalist character and simply became the chant of a people fighting for its independence against the foreigner. The song entitled The Sword turned into something on the order of:

O Liberty, beloved by every noble soul,

Flood us with your fire, lead us to our goal:

In the name of this living God to whom we pray,

Let us swear! Let us swear! Let us swear!

That one day we shall dare! we shall dare!

Dare die for Liberty! For Liberty! We swear!

I had contacted August Morel to see whether he couldn’t arrange the music for these songs. He agreed to come up with a score suitable for theatrical performance, but for which we would need a chorus of sixteen.

We thought of the singers who worked with Mainzer or those at the Orphéon. I went to visit the choirmasters in their studios and in their impoverished mansards and they generously offered to help me, asking only to be paid the price of the days’ work they would lose by coming to our rehearsals. — In the end, they lost a whole month.

Harel, who was having difficulties finding the money to pay for extras, reduced the cast to the bare minimum; the stagehands found themselves having to fill in during the crowd scenes. Since they were playing students who did little but mill around, it was no great sweat off their brow. Still, their inexperience often threatened to spoil the effect of the scene.

Everybody was wild about two of the popular songs, — which subsequently entered into the repertoire of various workers’ glee clubs.

On the eve of the first performance I was quite nervous about the props which, — like chef Vatel’s famous fish course, — were nowhere in sight ...

HARLEQUIN MASKS. — HAMLET THE YELLOW DWARF. — THEATER LICENSES

If the props were late to arrive, it is because this is always the case; — theaters tend to deal with details at the very last minute. Theater directors are often unable to pay the costume designer, the painter, or the decorator ahead of time. And the latter therefore often refuse to deliver their goods until they are assured that they will receive their cut of the take, — which is of course impossible to predict until opening night.

It was at these moments that poor Harel, — who was a remarkable fellow after all, for he had directed the Yellow Dwarf and been honored by the Academy for a poem in praise of Voltaire, — found himself crushed by the financial burden of having to run a theater as ill-starred as the Porte-Saint-Martin.

The theater license for the place came to fifteen thousand a year, which he had to fork over to the director of the place, — a humorous old fellow who had managed to have two theaters bestowed upon him; — one of which he owned outright and the other of which was a mere fiefdom whose paltry profits caused a smile to play across his face while slowly driving its occupant into rack and ruin.

All this feels so very Ancien Régime. But the fact of the matter remains that if Harel had had in his coffers the 150 thousand francs that he paid out to his suzerain over a period of ten years, he would not have been as financially strapped as he was back during that summer while awaiting his elephant.

Harel often had to spring for extremely expensive costumes. So one had to be careful when mentioning plays to him set during the Middle Ages or under the reign of Louis XV, — not to mention those set back in the luxuriant days of the Greeks, the Bible, or the Orientals.

One day he was offered a play set during the Regency whose success was virtually guaranteed, given the spectacular outfits of the period. Harel called up his wardrobe manager M. Dumas and asked him: « How are we doing with Regency outfits?

— Not well at all, sir! We’re out of jackets! We have a few vests and some trousses (the breeches of that era).

— Well, with a few vests and breeches, we’ll just have to add some serge jackets in eye-popping colors. If the vests are bright enough in the footlights, the audience will go home happy. »

It was thus that that La Duchesse de La Vaubelière was staged; the theater aficionados were bowled over by the Regency vests and queued up in endless lines for the show, — whose tickets cost between 50 and 65 centimes.

Harel later confessed to me: « This success was my undoing. »

And he proceeded to show me the books: an average of eight hundred francs a night for the first twenty performances.

Then the box office earnings fell off precipitously. — I said to myself: « Beware of believing that you’ll ever make a killing in the theater. »

But I was still quite worried about the props. The props in question were: sixteen student caps and sixteen masks for the scene of the Saint Wehme, — obviously black velvet masks, — such as the ones worn in the productions of Bravo, of Lucretia Borgia and a host of other dramas.

The caps finally arrived during the first intermission, but I was told: « the masks are still on their way. »

It’s quite difficult to get one’s bearings from the wings of a theater; — statesmen suffer from the same blindness. — The audience was all ears: rapt, utterly silent. The third act had just ended, and here I was, a nervous wreck because of the masks needed for the fourth act.

I climbed up to the dressing rooms in the attic. Some extras were putting on the uniforms of the German honor guard, blue with epaulettes of yellow braid. Others were slipping into the uniforms of the sicaires and trabans, — which they found most humiliating.

As for the students, they were getting outfitted with nary a care in the world, seeing as how they had been assured that their caps were about to arrive, — and blissfully oblivious to the fact that they would have to wear masks for the conspiracy scene in the fourth act.

« Where are the masks? I asked.

— The props manager has not yet distributed them. »

I went to locate Harel.

« The masks?

— They’re on their way. »

The audience was growing restless during the intermission. The theater staff had exhausted all of Harel’s standard bag of tricks in these situations, — which involved distracting the public from a late curtain by showering it with a rain of confetti during the first intermission. During the second, they would toss down a cap from the upper gallery, which would be passed around from hand to hand in the orchestra seat section. During the third intermission, they would stage a scene in one of the private boxes which would inevitably provoke heated arguments in the pit: « He’s going to kiss her! No he won’t! »

When the delay between the third and fourth act grew too protracted, they used to set a dog to barking, — or have a child start screaming. Then they’d have a bunch of kids (especially paid for the purpose) yell out: « Get that crybaby outta here. » At least the point was thereby made. If necessary, the orchestra would then strike up La Parisienne, — which was still permitted back in those days.

After ten minutes of intermission, Harel came up to me and said: « The students have their caps ... But do they absolutely need masks at this point?

— How could you dare ask me such a thing? It’s for the scene of the Secret Trial!

— Well, a mistake has been made. All they sent over were some harlequin masks. They thought it was for a masked ball scene, — these days there’s always some sort of ball scene in the fourth acts of modern dramas.

— Where are the masks? I asked Harel, heaving a great moan.

— The dresser has them. »

I entered the dressing room. All the student-stagehands were furious because I had promised them they would be playing serious parts.

« Harlequin masks! ... they complained, — What do they have to do with our roles? »

Mélingue and Raucourt, who been supplied with proper black velvet masks, were taking it easy in the green room, confident that they would not be exposed to ridicule. But the horrid harlequin masks with their pug noses and bushy moustaches caused me no end of concern. — Raucourt opined: « The solution is to cut off the moustaches. The noses may be a bit stubby, but that won’t make much of a difference. These are student conspirators, after all; — people will just say they have no nose for politics. »

In the end, in order to save the day (and the act), Mme Mélingue, Raucourt, Mélingue, Tournan and I all pitched in to snip the moustaches off the masks, — all this hair would have otherwise picked up the sheen of the footlights and entirely robbed the scene of the Night of Saint-Wehme of all its drama.

Someone called me aside and said: — « Harel has set you up. » — I have always refused to believe this.

As for the stage set which Cicéri had supposedly designed, it forced us to cut out a third of the act. — It turned out that, given the miniature dimensions of this underground cellar, it was just too difficult to move the cast around as originally blocked.

Thus reduced to these tiny proportions, the fourth act hardly justified the fears it had inspired among the government censors.

Luckily the talents of the lead actors were such that the fifth act (a difficult one, at that) proved to be a smashing success. The line in the play that was the most applauded ran as follows, spoken by one of the students: « Kings are on their way out ... Let’s give them a shove. » The thunderous applause that greeted this sequence of simple words caused Harel to comment: « They’ll shut down the play tomorrow ... but at least we will have had a splendid evening of it. » The flop of the fourth act threw cold water on his enthusiasm. He hoped that the play might be prosecuted, but no such luck.

He nonetheless demanded that the ministry pay him an indemnity, — to cover the delays that the whole censorship process had occasioned and the resultant poor showing at the box office, all of which was hardly offset by the glowing future promised by the arrival of the elephant.

After thirty performances late that summer, it was with great interest that I observed the pachyderm honorably follow in the footsteps of my drama. The sixteen stagehands, who were quite expensive, were laid off, — and I decided to return to Germany and drown in the vineyards of the Danube all the troubles stirred up by vineyards of the Rhine.

The Rhine is treacherous: — it contains too many loreleis singing to mariners from the ruins of ancient castles at night. — The Danube, by contrast, is a dear old river, rolling sausages (wurchell) and salty pretzels in its gentle waves.

But this is a memory of Vienna. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

Harel had been compensated for the losses caused by the delay in the play’s production. According to the complaint he had officially lodged, I was to receive equal compensation.

There had been a changing of the guard at the ministry; a member of the opposition had replaced the minister of the king’s party whom I have previously mentioned. I insisted on my right to indemnification. But I didn’t want the money to be disbursed to me without any return favor on my part. I promised I would churn out six hundred francs worth of newspaper copy for the sum of the same amount that was due tome.

Here is what I had to say in answer to the accusations of Le Corsaire. — Let’s return to the abbé de Bucquoy. The National Archives passed his genealogy onto me. — His patronymic is Longueval. And for particular reasons that continue to puzzle people of simple minds, this name does not occur once in the various accounts or documents that call his existence to our attention.

As concerns the Longueval family, however, the Archives contain a charming love story that I can convey to you without fear, — given that this love story is completely historical.

Angélique de Longueval was the daughter of one of the greatest nobles of Picardy. Her father, Jacques de Longueval, count d’Haraucourt, privy councilor of the King, marshal of the royal armies, was also the governor of the Châtelet and of Clermont-en-Beauvoisis. It was on the outskirts of the latter town, in the castle of Saint-Rimault, that he used to leave his wife and daughter whenever his duties called him away to court or to the army.

From the age of thirteen onward, Angélique de Longueval, whose temperament was at once dreamy and despondent, claimed that she took no interest in lovely jewels or beautiful carpets or elegant clothing and thought only of death to cure her spirits. A gentleman in the service of her father fell in love with her. He could not take his eyes off her, he attended to her slightest need, and even though Angélique had not the faintest idea what Love might be, she was pleasantly surprised to find herself the object of such assiduous attention.

When this gentleman finally declared his love to her, his words so impressed themselves on her memory that six years later, after having gone through the trials and tribulations of another love and having suffered misfortunes of every sort, she could still remember this first letter and recite it to herself word by word. Allow me to quote this curious illustration of the period style of a provincial lover in the age of Louis XIII.

DEPARTURE FOR COMPIÈGNE THE ARCHIVES AND THE LIBRARY THE LIFE OF ANGÉLIQUE DE LONGUEVAL, OF THE DE BUCQUOY FAMILY

Here is the letter written by Mlle Angélique de Longueval’s first lover:

« I am not surprised that the simples should have lost their medicinal powers in the absence of the sun’s warming rays, for I too have been unlucky enough to leave this abode without having been graced by the light of your dawn, a light which has always illuminated me and the absence of which invariably plunges me into the deepest of glooms from which my need to escape, as well as my need to see you again, has impelled me to return to your side so that I might humbly bask in the radiance of all your brilliant attributes and accomplishments, the lure of which has entirely stolen both my soul and my heart; and yet I am honored to be the victim of such larceny, for it has raised me to heights at once sacred and terrifying and has elicited from me a zeal and a fidelity in your regard equaled only by your perfection. »

This letter proved fatal to its young author. As he was trying to slip the missive to Angélique, he was caught red-handed by her father, — and died four days later, the victim of a mysterious murder.

Angélique was devastated by this death, — and discovered the meaning of Love. For two years she went on weeping. At the end of this period of mourning, claiming that she saw no other remedy for her sorrow than death or another romance, she begged her father to introduce her to society. Among all of the fine gentleman she was certain to meet, she said to herself, there would no doubt be someone who would be able to drive this dead man from her thoughts.

Judging from the evidence, the count d’Haraucourt did not respond to the request of his daughter, for among the various men who fell in love with her we only come across members of her father’s household staff. Two of these men, M. de Saint-Georges, the count’s personal assistant, and Fargue, the count’s valet de chambre, developed a shared passion for the young girl which created a rivalry whose resolution proved to be tragic. Fargue, jealous of his rival’s superior standing, had made a number of disparaging remarks. Having gotten wind of these, M. de Saint-Georges summons Fargue to his chambers, reprimands him for his insolence, and ends up striking him so many times with the flat of his sword that his weapon is entirely bent out of shape. In a blind rage, Fargue rushes about the house in search of a sword. He runs into the baron d’Haraucourt, Angélique’s brother, and rips his sword away from him which he then proceeds to plunge into the throat of his rival, wounding him mortally. The doctor arrives only in time to advise Saint-Georges: « Ask God for mercy, for you are dead. » Fargue in the meantime has fled.

Such were the tragic preambles to the great passion that was to plunge poor Angélique into a series of misfortunes.

Compiègne. — All Saints’ Day.

I have interrupted my reading of the life of that lovely adventuress, Angélique de Longueval, — while realizing that a number of other documents pertinent to her story were housed in the libraries of Compiègne. — For Compiègne is the literary center of the province where this venerable family lived, — a family whose past history it would be most interesting to recreate in the manner of Walter Scott, — if the thing were at all possible!

People tend to know very little about traditional provincial France, — particularly that area which lies just beyond the outskirts of Paris. Divided by the slow peaceful course of the Oise and Aisne, the Île-de-France, the Valois, and Picardy all flow together into a region where you can still imagine the most beautiful pastoral adventures in the world.

Even the peasants in this region speak the purest French, — except that in their local pronunciation the ends of words trail off into the sky like the songs of nightingales ... In the mouths of children, this French virtually sounds like birds warbling. The local turns of phrase also have something Italianate to them, — no doubt due to the protracted residence of the Medici and their Florentine retinue in this region of former royal and princely estates.

I arrived in Compiègne last night, pursuing the various incarnations of the Bucquoys with that dull obstinacy that comes so naturally to me. At any rate, the National Archives, where I had only been able to take a few notes so far, would be closed today for All Saints’ Day.

At the Hôtel de la Cloche, celebrated by Alexandre Dumas, there was quite a commotion this morning. The dogs were barking and the hunters were preparing their weapons; I heard a whip say to his master: « Monsieur le marquis, here is your gun. »

So marquis still exist!

But my mind was on an altogether different kind of hunt ... I inquired at what hour the local library opened.

« It’s All Saints’ Day, I was informed, so the library will obviously not open today.

— What are its regular hours?

— Evenings, from seven to eleven. »

I wouldn’t want to make myself out to be unluckier than I in fact was. I had a letter recommending me to one of the librarians, a bibliophile of great renown. Not only was he willing to show me the books in the town library, but he also let me see his own private collection, — whose valuable autographs included a series of unpublished letters by Voltaire and a collection of songs set to music by Rousseau under the title New Tunes for Old Songs. The sight of these songs written out in Rousseau’s beautifully clear hand moved me no end. — The first of these songs, composed in the style of Marot, went as follows:

I am not the man I once was

I shall never be myself again

My sweet summer and spring

Have now come to their end, etc.

These Rousseau manuscripts prompted me to return to Paris via Ermenonville, — which is the shortest route as the crow flies but which takes the lengthiest amount of time to cover on ground, — even though the railroad makes an enormous loop before reaching Compiègne.

One cannot get to Ermenonville, — or for that matter, leave Ermenonville, — without traveling some five miles on foot. — There is no direct coach. But tomorrow being All Souls’ Day, this is a pilgrimage I’ll gladly and respectfully undertake, — thinking of lovely Angélique de Longueval all the while.

I am sending you whatever it was I managed to dig up about her at the National Archives and at Compiègne. I have tossed the thing together on the basis of the primary documents I consulted and above all on the basis of that yellowed manuscript, composed entirely in her hand, which is perhaps even more daring (written as it is by a young woman of noble birth) than Rousseau’s own Confessions. This will at least give your readers something to do while they await the adventures of her nephew the abbé, to whom she seems to have communicated something of her own spirit of independence and adventure.

HISTORY OF THE GREAT AUNT OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

Here then are the first lines of the manuscript:

« I continued to be hounded by ill fortune, and this time it was in the person of a man I had known for over seven years and had frequented for two full years without really caring for him. One night at Saint-Rimault, this fellow entered my room on the pretext of paying court to my mother’s chambermaid Beauregard. He approached my bed and said to me: “I beg your pardon.” Then, drawing even closer, he said these words to me: “Oh, it’s been so long that I have loved you.” To which I replied: “I do not love you in the least, nor do I hate you in the least. But you must leave at once, lest my father find out that you have been here at this hour.”

« The following morning, I made so bold as to try to get a glimpse of the man who had declared his love to me the night before. As I looked him over, the only thing I found disagreeable about him was his low station, which was causing him to act in a very reserved manner, even though he did not take his eyes off me. Over the following days, he made considerable efforts to make his outward appearance as pleasing as possible to my sight. And indeed, I found him worthy of love, for he conducted himself in a fashion that made one forget his origins, and he was most brave and noble of heart. »

This young man, as we learn from the narrative of a Celestine monk who was a cousin of Angélique’s, was called La Corbinière and he was none other than the son of a pork butcher from Clermont-sur-Oise who worked for the count d’Haraucourt. It is true that the count, being a marshal of the royal armies, ran his household along military lines and his domestic staff, sporting moustaches and spurs, therefore wore uniforms rather than livery. This may partially explain Angélique’s illusion.

She was very sorry to see La Corbinière leave; he was off to Charleville with her father to visit the duke de Longueville who was suffering from dysentery. — What a terrible illness, the young girl reflected naïvely, for it was preventing her from seeing the man « whose affection did not displease her. » She subsequently met up with him again at Verneuil. Their reunion took place in church. The young man had acquired considerable polish at the court of the duke de Longueville. He was dressed in pearl-gray Spanish cloth and was wearing a lace collar and a gray hat decorated with pearl-gray and yellow plumes. He drew close to her without anybody noticing and said: « Madame, please accept these scented bracelets which I have brought back from Charleville where I was most despondent. »

Senlis. — The evening of All Saints’ Day[2] . — (Continued.)

La Corbinière resumed his duties at the castle. He continued to pretend he was infatuated with Beauregard the chambermaid and he convinced her he was visiting her mistress only for her sake. « This simple girl, — Angélique said, — actually took him at his word ... Every evening the three of us would spend two or three jolly hours in the white room of the dungeon of Verneuil. »

The suspicions of a valet by the name of Dourdillie who had been spying on them brought these trysts to an end. The lovers were reduced to corresponding by letters. One night however, Angélique’s father having gone off to Rouen to join up with the duke de Longueville, La Corbinière managed to climb up a crack in the wall and, upon approaching Angélique’s window, threw a pebble at the pane.

The young lady recognized him and, still engaging in her usual deception, said to her chambermaid Beauregard : « I think your lover is out of his mind. He’s in the garden; quick, go down and open up the terrace door. Meanwhile I’ll get dressed and light a candle. »

They saw to it that the young man got some supper « which consisted primarily of liquid viands. The three of us, — the young lady adds, — spent the entire night laughing. »

But, alas, as far as poor gullible Beauregard was concerned, she remained utterly unaware that La Corbinière and the young lady were above all secretly laughing at her for believing he indeed loved her.

When morning came, they hid the young man in the so-called King’s chambers where no one ever set foot; — and from which they would again fetch him once night had fallen. « Over the course of these three days, Angélique notes, his meals consisted of fresh chicken which I brought to him hidden between my chemise and my petticoats. »

In the end La Corbinière was forced to rejoin the count in Paris. One year went by, a melancholy year for Angélique, — whose only distraction was provided by the letters she would write her lover. « I had no other diversions, she observes, for in the absence of his conversation, neither fine jewelry nor beautiful carpets nor elegant clothing could please me ... Only those who have truly loved could fully imagine the bliss of our reunion at Saint-Rimault. I found him even more attractive in the scarlet outfit he was wearing ... »

The nightly trysts resumed. Doudillie the valet had left the castle and his room was now occupied by a falconer by the name of Lavigne who pretended to notice nothing.

Their relations (which remained chaste) continued on in this manner, interrupted only by the La Corbinière’s periodic absences whenever he was called away to accompany the count on his tours of military duty. « It would be impossible, writes Angélique, to describe our bliss during those three years in France. »[3]

One day, La Corbinière became more brazen. Perhaps he had been somewhat spoiled by the female companionship available to him in Paris. — He came to Angélique’s room very late one night. Her chambermaid was asleep on the floor, she was in her bed. Following their standard charade, he started off by kissing the maid. Then he said: « Let me give your mistress a scare. »

« It was at this point, Angélique adds, that he slipped into my bed while I was asleep, wearing only his under-things. More frightened than delighted, I told him that if he truly loved me he would immediately leave, for it was impossible to take a single step or say a single word in my room without my father hearing. I had great difficulty convincing him to leave. »

Somewhat perplexed, the lover returned to Paris. But by the next time they saw each other, their mutual affection had clearly increased, — as had the suspicions of her parents. — One day when the young lady was sleeping in the so-called King’s chamber, La Corbinière hid himself under a large Turkish rug that covered a table and « went to place himself by her side». Fifty times she begged him to leave, fearing that her father might burst in on them. But even asleep in each other’s arms, their caresses remained pure ...

Such chastity was in the air, — the vogue for Italian poets had ushered a Platonism worthy of Petrarch into fashion, especially in the provinces. The traces of this particular outlook can been observed in the style of the lovely penitent who is the author of these confessions.

The following morning, La Corbinière left the large hall somewhat late. The count, who had gotten up early, noticed him leaving; although he couldn’t be sure whether he had just left his daughter’s quarters or not, he had his suspicions.

« This is why, the young lady adds, my sweet father fell into such a deep melancholy that day and spent all his time talking with my mother; nothing, however, was said to me. »

Three days later the count had to go attend the funeral of his brother-in-law Manicamp. He asked La Corbinière to come along with him, — joined by one of his sons, a groom, and two lackeys. When they had gotten to the middle of the forest of Compiègne, the count went up to the young lover, disarmed him by pulling his sword out of its hilt and placed his pistol to his throat, saying to one of the lackeys: « Take this traitor’s spurs off and frisk him ... »

I don’t know whether this simple story of a young lady and a pork butcher’s son will prove to be entertaining for my readers. It at least has one thing going for it: it is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, entirely true. Everything that I have summarized for you today can be verified in the National Archives. — I have in my possession other documents, no less authentic, that will flesh out this tale.

I am at this very moment traveling through the region where all this took place; you can therefore not cast my exactitude into doubt ...

INTERRUPTION. — RESPONSE TO M. AUGUSTE BERNARD, OF THE NATIONAL PRINTING HOUSE, MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRENCH ANTIQUARIANS. — A FABLE. — COMPIÈGNE SENLIS. — CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT AUNT OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

In La Presse I come across another well-meaning attack on me to which I am happy to be able to reply en passant, — to use one of the phrases of its author.

I have been accused, in an article of mine deemed quite witty (not much of consolation, this: here in France, everybody is a wit), accused, I say, of having told some tall tales some two months ago, — while discussing the invention of printing. The article is signed by someone whom I must consider my master, — having myself once been, for a while, an apprentice typesetter. But clearly I am still navigating through dangerous waters. — I stand accused of turning vague hearsay into history, of indulging in fables or, worse, of perpetrating novels! — Well, why not just go all the way! Go ahead, denounce me to the commissioners whose business it is, — faithful to the stipulations of the Riancey amendment, — to read through our feuilletons in order to sift the true from the false. This would not be kind on the part of a typographer who is my superior by two hierarchical degrees; — and indeed, perhaps you are unaware of the pickle these sorts of allegations could get me into.

You speak of Gutenberg, Faust, and Schoeffer, making of the first an inventor, of the second a simple capitalist, and of the third the assistant of the second, — who supposedly discovered the idea of movable type all on his own. Let me try to explain to you, historically, that is, what exactly movable type is.

At Upsala there exists a Bible in Latin from the fourth century, entirely printed in movable type. Here is how:

Punches were fabricated to represent all the letters of the alphabet. One would heat them up until they were red-hot and then stamp them one by one in painstaking succession onto sheets of parchment so that they would leave black imprints. It was an abbé from the south of France who, with the help of his monks, managed to carry out this hare-brained scheme. — Except that the idea was not exactly new.

The Romans had long been familiar with this technique of printing names and legends onto the painted frescoes of temple cupolas. The heated punch would mark the letters on the painted surface. Fragments of these inscriptions have been conserved.

While I was recently visiting the museum of Naples, I recognized the bronze punches that had been found in the ruins of Pompeii, — and which contained in relief inscriptions of several lines intended to mark pieces of textile. — And you want to speak about the invention of xylographic printing!

Nobody has ever invented anything: — one simply rediscovers. — If you pass through Harlem, the land of tulips, you will see in its central square a statue of Laurent Coster, before whom I stopped in order to pay my respects and to write a sonnet, which I certainly don’t want to inflict on my readers but which contains a line alluding to the three inventors whose medallion portraits grace the title pages of our stereotype editions:

Laurent Coster! Their master ... or rival.

I salute thee!

All the Dutch believe that the image-maker and print-seller Laurent Coster is the true inventor of xylographic printing — to the extent that he came up with a technique to carve into relief on wood the names of Alexander, Caesar, Pallas, and Hector — these blocks of wood in turn being used to print up maps.

But the Dutch are deluding themselves, — and I have no compunctions whatsoever about making this claim, even if they were to attend Techener’s auction on November 20th with the express purpose of hiking up to an impossible price the edition of the History of the escapes from prison of the abbé de Bucquoy which is scheduled to be put up for sale!

A certain tyrant of Sparta by the name of Agis was in the habit of consulting the entrails of victims before launching into battle. He himself was only half-convinced about the validity of these practices, but one had to go with the spirit of the times.

The auguries had been quite discouraging on a number of occasions, perhaps on account of some hocuspocus on the part of the priests ... The tyrant came up with an idea: he would write the word NIKH (victory) on his left palm with a greasy, black substance. He would even write it backwards. — Here, it seems to me, we have an early conception of typography.

In his role as sovereign, it was his duty to rip open the skin of the victims in order to reveal the whitish membrane covering their entrails. Carefully placing his greased left palm on this surface, he printed the word NIKH on it. The Spartans, encouraged by this message from the gods, went on to victoriously wage their battle.

This was a very astute tyrant, — and without rereading his history, I imagine that he probably remained on the throne of Sparta for quite a long time, — a city that was republican only in name, a republic governed by kings! ...

As you see, there is nothing new under the sun.

I have deliberately avoided mentioning the Chinese: a nation that locates the antiquity of its race some seventy-two thousand years in the past clearly has no real value for us as historians. I have seen examples of their typography that only predate our era by one thousand years. It is perhaps correct to maintain that they don’t seem to have invented movable type: — their printing involved strips of wood which were pressed on paper, just as in engraving.

Let’s return via an obvious transition to the abbé de Bucquoy, — whose elusive book might well have been produced by a phantom printing press. Nonetheless Techener will be selling it the 20th. — Until then, let’s try to fill up this feuilleton which is being published under his auspices.

In the neighborhood of Sparta there was another town described by La Fontaine in “The Power of Fables” as a city fickle. A certain orator was haranguing its denizens about the dangers threatening the Republic. No one listened. What did the orator do?

A new resource the speaker found.

« Ceres, in a lower tone said he,

Went forth her harvest fields to see.

An eel, as a such might be,

And swallow were her company. »

Having depicted the eel swimming and the swallow flying in order to cross a river, he paused for a moment.

The crowd cried out as one:

«And Ceres what did she?

— Why, what she pleased; but first

Yourselves she justly cursed —

A people puzzling up your brains

With children’s tales and children’s play

While Greece puts on her steel array,

To save her limbs from tyrant chains!

Why ask you not what Philip does? »

And the gentleman (a rather false gentleman) then concludes:

This feather stuck in Fable’s cap:

We’re all Athenians mayhap

This fable, so true, reminds me of a scene I once witnessed in a public square.

A snake-oil salesman used to set up shop every day on the square of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois; — I imagine this would be prohibited these days. First he would set up his table on a pair of sawhorses, then he would pull three birds out of a crate, taking great care to caress them gently one after the other with his hands, — pretending to lull them asleep.

When the birds appeared to have reached a state of utter immobility, he would call his audience around him by making little tweeting sounds that he produced by means of a tiny bird whistle hidden in his cheeks: « Now, ladies and gentlemen, as you can all see I have just put these birds to sleep. They have been trained to remain completely motionless for several hours. So that the audience can fully appreciate the serenity they have achieved, I will leave them in this state until I have managed to sell twenty bottles of this patent medicine which will not only destroy all insects but cure all illnesses. »

This patter, though familiar to most, nonetheless always impressed a certain number of gawkers.

The sale of twenty vials at fifty centimes a piece was pretty much the maximum the quack could hope for. As a result, after a few vials had been sold, the crowd usually thinned out and all that remained were the usual hangers-on, — curious to see what might happen next, — but worldly enough not to allow themselves to be separated from a half a franc. The salesman, unable to unload a decent number of vials, would snatch up his three sleeping birds in a fit of pique and shut them back into their crate, complaining about how bad business was these days.

The people who had gathered around said: « They’re not asleep: they’re dead!»

Or: « They’re just stuffed birds!»

Or: « He’s probably slipped them a potion! ... »

One day, the crowd was finally reduced to a single spectator, — one of those Parisian street urchins who won’t take no for an answer and always wants to get to the bottom of things. — The birds were just being put back into their crate when some out-of-towners chanced by and bought up far more than the requisite twenty vials.

Since they had not heard the first portion of the patter, they left the scene without demanding to see the birds wake up again and go back to work in front of the public.

But the urchin hadn’t missed a trick: having carefully counted up the number of bottles that had been sold, he sauntered up to the table and said:

« So what about the birds? »

The salesman looked at him with a mixture of contempt and compassion, proceeded to close up the crate, and addressed the child with a well-known phrase in argot, which I won’t quote here out of respect for the ladies, — but which more or less meant: « Get a life! »

Please don’t accuse me of regaling you with mere frivolities: this little story can be read as an allegory of the workings of political parties. How often has the gullible public been swindled by dead, — or stuffed, — birds!

I would not want to play a similar role vis-à-vis my readers. I am not even trying to here imitate those story-tellers of Constantinople or Cairo who, falling back on a time-honored stratagem, interrupt their tale just as the suspense is reaching its height so that the crowd will return to the same café the following day. — The history of the abbé de Bucquoy indeed exists; I shall locate it in due course.

Still, I continue to be amazed that in a city such as Paris, a center of learning whose public libraries house some two million volumes, it has proved impossible to lay my hands on a French book I happened to read in Frankfurt, — but alas did not purchase.

Books tend to be vanishing into thin air these days, given the liberal lending policies of libraries, — and also given the gradual extinction of the tribe of art and book collectors ever since the Revolution. Whether by hook or by crook, all the bibliographical rarities are ending up in Holland, Germany, or Russia. — It’s too late in the season to set off on a long journey, so I shall simply limit my research to the forty-kilometer radius around Paris.

I have just discovered that it took the Senlis post office seventeen days to deliver you the letter that could have easily made the journey to Paris in three hours. I don’t think that this delay can in any way be imputed to the fact that the locals may have viewed me with suspicion (after all, I grew up in the place), but here is a curious detail:

Several weeks ago, I was sketching out the piece you have agreed to publish and was pursuing preparatory research into the Bucquoys, — whose name has always echoed through my thoughts like some childhood memory. I happened to be passing through Senlis with a friend of mind, a very tall Breton with a black beard. We had caught an early train to Saint-Maixent, then had taken the coach that crosses the woods along the ancient route to Flanders. When we got to Senlis, we were foolhardy enough to stop off for a drink at the busiest café in town.

The place was filled with gendarmes lounging around with that particular ease characteristic of off-duty soldiers. Some were playing dominos, others were playing billiards.

If they were somewhat taken aback by our Parisian beards and behavior, they certainly gave no sign of it that evening.

The following day we were having lunch at the excellent hotel of the Sow on the Run (I swear I am not making this up) when a brigadier came up to us and politely asked for our passports.

Excuse these minor details, — but they may be of interest to readers ...

We answered him in the same fashion that, according to a local song, a certain soldier was said to have answered the constabulary ... (I grew up with this song):

They asked the soldier

«Where is your furlough?

He replied, My furlough?

On the ground below

My boots ... »

A nicely turned reply. But the refrain is frightening:

Spiritus sanctus,

Quoniam bonus

Which would seem to indicate that things did not turn out well for the soldier in the end ... In our case, the denouement was somewhat happier. Having been asked for our passports, we courteously replied that they were normally not required when visiting the outskirts of Paris. The brigadier saluted and withdrew without a word.

Over lunch we had vaguely discussed the idea of proceeding on to Ermenonville. When the weather took a turn for the worse, we changed our minds and went to reserve our seats on the Chantilly coach that would get us back toward Paris.

As we were about to leave, a police officer flanked by two gendarmes came up to us and said: « Your papers please! »

We repeated the line we had already used.

« In that case, gentlemen, said the policeman, you are under arrest. »

My Breton friend was seething, which was not helping the situation.

I said to him, « Calm down. Let me handle this, I virtually qualify as a member of the diplomatic corps ... Over the course of my travels I have come face to face with kings, pashas, and even padishahs. I know how to deal with authorities.

« Monsieur le commissaire, I said to the police officer (one should always address people by their rightful titles), I have traveled to England on three occasions and was never asked to show my passport except upon leaving France ... I have just come back from Germany, where I traveled through ten sovereign states, — including Hesse: — even the Prussians never asked me for my passport.

— Well, I’m asking you for it here in France.

— You’re aware that criminals always have their papers in order ...

— Not always ... »

He had me there.

« I have lived in these parts for seven years; I even own some property around here ...

— But you have no papers?

— Correct ... Do you think that a potential suspect would just saunter in for a drink in a café filled with off-duty gendarmes?

— It might be just another ruse to escape detection. »

I saw I was dealing with a mastermind here.

« Monsieur le commissaire, I am in fact a writer; I am in the area to do research into the Bucquoy de Longueval family; I’m trying to locate their ancestral seat and the ruins of their former castles. »

The police officer’s face lit up:

« Ah, Monsieur is a writer? Well so am I! I wrote poetry as a young man ... I composed a tragedy ... »

We were clearly not yet out of the woods; — the police officer was threatening to invite us home to dinner in order to read us his tragedy. I had to plead urgent business in Paris before they allowed us to get on the Chantilly coach, the departure of which had been delayed by our arrest.

I have no need to assure you that I am continuing to supply you with absolutely factual details about my experiences as a painstaking researcher.

P.S. Would you be afraid to insert the continuation of the tale of the great aunt of the abbé de Bucquoy in tomorrow’s installment? I have been informed that given the present state of affairs this might be a dangerous course of action. — And yet, it’s straight history.

Those who do not care for hunting will never fully understand the beauty of autumn landscapes. — At this very moment, despite the morning mist, we are looking at vistas worthy of the Old Dutch Masters. In castles and in museums one still recaptures the spirit of the painters of the North, — a pink or bluish tint to the skies, a few leaves here and there on the trees, fields in the distance, the odd rural scene in the foreground.

Watteau’s Voyage à Cythère was conceived among the thin variegated mists of this region. His Cythera was modeled on one of the islets created by the flooding of the Oise and Aisne, — these rivers which are so calm and so peaceful in the summer.

The lyrical tone of these observations should not astonish you; — tired of all the senseless arguments and sterile hubbub of Paris, I am resting up amid these green and fertile fields; — I regather strength here in my motherland.

Regardless of our philosophical convictions, we are all somehow rooted in our ancestral ground. You cannot carry along the ashes of your fathers on the soles of your shoes, — and even the poorest of mortals retains some sort of blessed memory of those who once loved him. All the world’s religions or philosophies enjoin mankind to worship its memories.

I am writing you on All Souls’ Day; — please excuse the melancholy overtones. I arrived in Senlis yesterday, having crossed through some of the loveliest and saddest country one can see at this time of the year. The reds of the oaks and poplars against the dark greens of the grass, the white trunks of the birches rising out of the briar and bramble, the majestic sweep of this road that reaches all the way to Flanders and that now and then climbs to a vantage point from which you can glimpse a wide vista of misty forests, — all this plunged me into a reverie. When I got to Senlis, the town was in the midst of festivities. The bells, — the very bells which Rousseau used to love hearing in the distance, — were ringing out on all sides. Groups of young girls were promenading down the streets or were gathered in front of doorways giggling and chattering away. Perhaps I am the victim of an illusion, but I have yet to come across an ugly girl in Senlis ... or maybe it’s just that the ugly ones never show their faces!

No; — the blood tends to be very good here, no doubt on account of the purity of the air, the quality of the water, and the quantity of food. Senlis has been protected from the great rush of the Northern Line, whose rails are sweeping the local populations toward Germany. — I have never been able to figure out why the Northern Line avoids this region, — and instead makes a huge loop around the area that includes Montmorency, Luzarches, Gonesse, and a number of other towns that might have profited by the direct rail link. The reason may be that the people with influence over the railroad wanted it to pass through their own properties. — A quick glance at any map will bear out the accuracy of this observation.

It is only fitting to pay a visit to the cathedral of Senlis on a feast day such as this. It has recently been restored and its fine escutcheon with the town’s coat of arms on a field of fleur-de-lis has been remounted on the lateral portal. The bishop himself was officiating, — and the nave was crowded with the local nobles and gentry who still live in the region.

Upon leaving the cathedral, I admired the last rays of the setting sun upon the crumbling, ivy-covered towers of the Roman fortifications. — As I passed by the priory, I noticed a group of young girls sitting on its doorsteps.

They were all singing; the oldest one among them was acting as the conductor, standing in front of them, clapping her hands to indicate the beat.

« Come on, young ladies, let’s start at the top; the littlest girls are not following! ... I want to hear that little girl over there on the left, the first one over on the second step: — come on, let’s hear you sing it alone. »

In a soft yet resonant voice the little girl sang:

The ducks in the stream ... etc.

Yet another tune I had grown up with! Childhood memories surge back more vividly midway through life, — like some palimpsest whose original text suddenly reappears after the manuscript has been chemically treated.

The little girls then launched into another song, — one more memory:

Three girls in the grass ...

How my heart beats!

How my heart beats!

For my pretty little lass!

« Oh you little devils, said a solid old peasant who was standing next to me all ears, you’re just too adorable for words! ... What about dancing for us now? »

The little girls got up from the steps and proceeded to perform an unusual dance that reminded me of the dances I had seen girls doing in the Greek isles.

They all lined up, — as we say in the region, — à la queue leleu, that is, Indian file. Then a boy takes the hands of the girl who is first in line and leads her backwards, while the other girls all hold on to each other’s arms from behind. This creates a snake which first uncoils in a spiral and then turns into a circle, before recoiling itself ever more tightly around the spectator who stands there in the middle listening to the singing and who, as the round dance draws ever closer to him, then kisses the various children who have offered this kindly gift to the passing stranger.

I was no stranger, but I was moved to tears upon hearing these tiny voices sing with the same intonations, the same trills, the same accentuations that I remembered from my earliest youth, — and that had been passed down unchanged from mother to daughter over the ages ...

The music of this region has not been spoiled by the influx of the Parisian opera or by the popular songs sung in parlors or by the melodies cranked out by barrel organs. In Senlis, they are still playing the music introduced here by the Medecis in the sixteenth century. The age of Louis XIV has also left its traces. Some of the country girls can still remember some of the old complaints, — which are delightfully mawkish. One occasionally comes across remnants of what seem to be sixteenth-century operas, — or seventeenth-century oratorios.

Long ago, I went to a performance given by a boarding school for young ladies at Senlis.

They were performing a mystery play, — as in days of yore. — The play showed the life of Christ in all its details; the scene that sticks in my mind involved Christ’s descent into the underworld.

An extremely beautiful fair-haired girl appeared wearing a white gown, a crown of pearls, a halo, a golden sword; she was standing on a hemisphere that represented an extinguished star.

She was singing:

Angels! Make haste to descend

To the depths of purgatory! ...

And she spoke of the glory of the Messiah who was about to grace these dark nether regions. — She added:

You shall see him clear as day

Wearing his crown ...

Seated on his throne!

These memories date back to the days of the monarchy. The fair-haired young lady, a descendent of one of the greatest families of the region, was called Delphine. — I shall never forget her name.

CONTINTUATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT AUNT OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

... The count de Longueval said to his servants: « Frisk this traitor; he has letters from my daughter on him. » Then turning to him, he said: « Tell me, you scoundrel, where were you coming from when you left the great hall so early in the morning? »

« I was coming from M. de la Porte’s room, and I have no idea what letters you are talking about. »

Luckily for him, La Corbinière had previously burned all the letters he had received, so nothing was found on him. Still holding his pistol in his hand, the count de Longueval nonetheless said to his son: « Cut off his moustache and his hair! »

The count imagined that after this procedure, La Corbinière would no longer be attractive to his daughter.

This is how she describes the episode:

« Seeing himself in this sorry condition and thinking that I would no longer love him, the poor boy wanted to die. But when I saw the state he was in on account of his love for me, my feelings for him knew no bounds; indeed, I swore that if my father ever treated him this poorly again, I should surely kill myself in front of his eyes. Being an intelligent man, he proceeded with caution and, without making any more scenes, dispatched him to the Beauvoisis on a good horse, his mission being to inform the local gendarmes to prepare for transfer to the garrison at Orbaix. »

COMMENTARY

Gendarmes again! ... Or rather, gendarmes already! ... — Well, there are no more gendarmes at Senlis. I had found them polite, but a little over-susceptible ... Today they have been replaced by cuirassiers from the cavalry regiment camped nearby. — They stand out at the town ball, take over all the public spaces, and make it impossible for a simple pedestrian to catch the eyes of the local Senlis beauties.

But this time around I had no disagreeable run-ins with the law: — I had a passport chock full of German stamps and, what’s more, I hired my own private cab to take me to Ermenonville. Fate was clearly smiling upon me, — and I remembered this phrase uttered by a hotel keeper in one of Balzac’s works:

« They shall be treated like princes, — princes with money. »

The young lady adds:

« Neither the cruel treatment to which he had been subjected by my father nor the latter’s admonitions that he remain within the bounds prescribed by his duties could keep him from spending that night with me. This is the ruse he resorted to: having been ordered to go to the Beauvoisis by my father, he accordingly rode off on his horse, but instead of proceeding on to his destination, he stopped in the forest of Guny until night had fallen, and then went to have something to eat at Tancar’s in Coucy-la-Ville; after supper, he took his two pistols and crept back into Verneuil by the small garden, where I was waiting for him with complete assurance, knowing as I did that everybody thought he was by now far away. I took him up to my room, and he said to me: “This is too fine an occasion to waste without kissing each other. Let us therefore get undressed ... There is nothing to fear ...” »

La Corbinière fell ill, which caused the count to be less severe in his regard. — But to get him out of his daughter’s sight, he said to him: « You shall have to go to the garrison at Orbaix, for the rest of gendarmes are already there. »

Which he did with a heavy heart.

At Orbaix, La Corbinière entrusted a letter for Angélique de Longueval to a certain Toquette who was the valet of the count’s falconer and was on his way to Verneuil. Fearing that the letter might be intercepted, he instructed the valet to place it under a stone before entering the castle, this way, if they searched him, they would find nothing.

Once he had made it into the castle, it would be very simple to go recover the letter from under the stone and remit it to the young lady. The young boy carried out his assignment very well; he approached Angélique de Longueval and said to her: « I have something for you. »

She was extremely happy with this letter. La Corbinière informed her that he had quit a most advantageous position in Germany to be by her side, and that he could not go on living if she did not consent to see him.

Having accompanied her brother to the castle of Neuville, Angélique asked one of her mother’s servants whose name was Court-Toujours: « Would you be so kind as to deliver this letter secretly to La Corbinière, who has just returned from Germany? »

COMMENTARY. — FRENCH LEGEND CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF ANGÉLIQUE LONGUEVAL

Before going into detail about Angélique de Longueval’s great decision, I wonder whether I might be allowed to insert a few words here. I promise that I shall hereafter interrupt the narrative only on rare occasions. It being illegal to engage in the historical novel, we shall just have to serve up the sauce on some other platter; — that is, local color, period atmosphere, analysis of characters, — complementing the material truth of the facts being related.

I hope that in what follows you will excuse me for having simply copied out a number of passages from the manuscript which I discovered in the Archives and which I have supplemented with other materials that I have researched. Habituated as I have been for the past fifteen years to the breakneck speed of newspaper writing, I actually tend to spend more time carefully choosing and copying than I do imagining things.

I have difficulty accounting for the trip La Corbinière took to Germany. Angélique de Longueval mentions nothing about it. Back in those days they used to refer to the entire area of upper Burgundy as Germany. It was here, as we have seen, that the duke de Longueval had come down with dysentery and, in all likelihood, it was here that La Corbinière probably spent some time in his service.

If I am to believe the ballads I used to hear in my childhood, the character of the fathers in the region I am now visiting has not changed over time. They display a mixture of paternal severity and grandfatherly goodnaturedness. Here is one of the songs I have collected in this ancient land of Île-de France that stretches from Parisis to the edge of Picardy:

King Loys sits on his bridge[4]

With his daughter on his lap.

She asks to marry a knight ...

Without a penny to call his own!

— Oh, my father, he shall be mine

Despite what mother thinks,

Despite my kith and kin

Father, despite my love for you!

Such is the character of the young women of this region. The father, — who shows quite a bit of character himself, — replies:

— Daughter, you must change your heart

Or I’ll lock you in the tower ...

To which the daughter responds:

— Father, I’d rather be in the tower

Than have to change my heart!

The father sticks to his guns:

— Quick, where are my grooms

Where is my palace guard?

Let them lock her in the tower,

From this very day and hour.

The balladeer adds:

There she remained for seven years,

Lost to all who held her dear.

At the end of the seventh year,

Her father came to visit her.

— Good day, daughter, how are you faring?

— Father, I am faring very poorly.

My feet are rotting on the floor,

My belly is full of worms.

— Daughter, you must change your heart

Or you’ll stay on in the tower.

— I’d rather die in this tower

Than change my heart, dear father.

Here we have just had an example of paternal strictness; — now let’s turn to paternal leniency.

It’s a shame you cannot hear these old tunes for yourself, — they are all the more poetic given the fact that their lines, which are full of assonances (in the Spanish style), follow the rhythm of the music:

Beneath the white rose tree

The lady makes her way ...

This ballad has since been ruined by anthologists who have tinkered with its lines and pretended that it came from the Bourbonnais region. They even printed a version of it accompanied by illustrations and dedicated it to the deposed queen of France ... I cannot quote the thing in its entirety, but here are some details I still remember.

The three captains ride by the white rose tree:

The youngest of the three

Took her by her hand so white:

— Come, my lovely lady, come

Away on my white steed ...

You can see from these four lines that poetry does not always have to rhyme. This is something the Germans know; — in some of their poems, they use only longs and shorts in the fashion of the Romans or Greeks.

The three horsemen and the young lady who was riding pillion behind the youngest one finally reached Senlis. When they got into town, the innkeeper cast her a glance:

— Come in, come in, my lovely girl,

Come in, but please be quiet

If with these three captains

You intend to spend the night.

Realizing that she has placed herself in a somewhat compromising position, after joining them for supper she plays dead and the three horsemen are naïve enough to fall for the trick. — They say to each other: « Oh lord, the girl is dead! » and wonder where they should now take her:

— To her father’s garden!

says the youngest one; and they proceed to dump her body beneath the rose tree.

The narrator continues:

And three days later

She comes back to life!

— Oh father, father,

Please open the door!

I’ve played dead for three days

My honor for to save!

The father and the entire family are having supper. Having worried about her absence for the past three days, they are all overjoyed to see the young lady, — who probably got married quite honorably some time later.

Let’s get back to Angélique de Longueval.

« But as for my decision to leave my native land, it came about as follows: when he[5] who had gone to Maine returned to Verneuil, my father asked him before supper: “How well off are you?” To which he replied: “Well enough off.” Rankled by this answer, my father grabbed a knife from the table and threw himself at him. My mother and I ran toward them, but he who was to cause me so much sorrow had already wounded his finger trying to get the knife away from my father ... and even after having been treated this poorly, his love for me was such that he refused to leave as indeed he should have.

« Eight days went by without my father so much as saying a word to him, during which time he sent me letters begging me to run off with him, a decision I was still unable to make. But after eight days, my father said to him in the garden: “I am surprised that you have the gall to stay on in my house after what happened; please leave the premises immediately and never dare set foot again in any of my houses, for you shall not be welcome.”

« He quickly saddled his horse and went up to his room to get his belongings; he had made a sign that I should meet him over in d’Haraucourt’s quarters where there was an antechamber with a door that closed where one could talk. I rushed over there and he said to me: “Now’s the time to make your decision; otherwise you shall never see me again.”

« I asked him to give me three days to think things over. He went off to Paris and came back to Verneuil after three days. Try as I might, I could not decide to give up everything I felt for him; as I turned things over in my mind, all the indignities I had suffered passed before my eyes. In the end, love and despair made up my mind. I had come to a decision. »

After three days, La Corbninière returned to the castle and went in through the small garden. Angélique de Longueval was waiting for him there and ushered him into her quarters, where he was seized with joy upon hearing of the young lady’s decision.

Their departure was fixed for the first Sunday of Lent and hearing him observe « that they would need money and a horse », she said she would see what she could do.

Angélique wracked her mind for a way to get at the silver dishes, for there was no money in the house, her father having taken it all to Paris with him.

When the appointed day arrived, she said to one of the grooms by the name of Breteau:

« I would be most grateful if you could lend me a horse. I need to send for some taffeta at Soissons tonight. I promise I’ll have the horse back to you by the morning, before mother gets up; the only reason I want to borrow it for the night is so she won’t reprimand you for coming to my aid. »

The groom bowed to the wishes of the young lady of the house. Now all she needed was the key to the front gate of the castle. She told the porter that she wanted to let someone out that night so they could go fetch something for her in town but she didn’t want her mother to find out ... if only he could slip her the key to the front gate without her mother noticing.

The main thing was to lay hands on the silver plate. The countess who, according to her daughter’s account, seemed « inspired by God » at that very moment, said over supper to one of the housekeepers: « Huberde, since M. d’ Haraucourt is away, I would like you to lock the silver dishes into this trunk and bring me the key. »

The young lady went pale, — they would have to change their day of departure. But when her mother went off to the country the following Sunday, she had a blacksmith brought in from the village to lift off the lock, — pretending that the key had been lost.

« But, she writes, that was not all. My younger brother had stayed behind with me and when he heard the various orders I was giving and noticed that I had closed the front gate of the castle, he said: “Sister, if you want to steal from mother and father I’m not going to go along with it; I’m going to go tell mother on you.” — Go ahead if want, you little brat, I said; she’ll find out anyway from my own lips, and if she objects, I’ll go ahead and do it anyway.” — But I said these words without in fact meaning them at all. The boy was running off to blurt out what I wanted to keep secret, but he kept on turning around to see if I was watching him; imagining that I did not care what he was up to, he decided to turn back. I had deliberately pretended indifference, knowing that the more you show children you are anxious, the more they want to divulge whatever you have asked them to keep secret. »

When night had fallen and it was time to go to bed, Angélique said goodnight to her mother with a heavy heart, — and, upon reaching her room, told her chambermaid:

« Jeanne, go to sleep. I have something on my mind; I’m going to stay up a bit longer ... »

She threw herself on her bed fully dressed and waited for midnight to strike. — La Corbinière arrived exactly on time.

« Oh Lord, what an hour! — Angélique writes, — I trembled when I heard the pebble he had thrown at my window ... for he had come in through the small garden. »

P.S. Someone wrote me today from a public library in Paris that there were two abbés de Bucquoy who existed, — a real one and a false one.

I had my suspicions, especially after reading the report that d’Argenson submitted to Pontchartrain which contained the phrase: « The alleged abbé de Bucquoy », etc.

We shall try down the line to unmask the interloper who supposedly usurped the identity of the descendent of the count de Bucquoy, generalissimo in the Austrian army during the Bohemian War.

THE DEPARTURE. — THE SILVER CHEST ARRIVAL AT CHARENTON. — DESCENT OF THE RHÔNE. — GENOA. — VENICE

When La Corbinière reached her room, Angélique said to him:

« “Things are not going as planned. Mother has placed all the silver dishes under lock and key, something she has never done before. But I have the key to the larder where they keep the trunk.”

« To this he simply replied: “Just get dressed and then we’ll figure out what to do.”

« With his help, I proceeded to pull on the boots and spurs over my stockings. Then the groom came over to my quarters with the horse. I was at my wit’s end and quickly slipped on a ratine skirt to cover up the men’s clothing I was wearing below the waist. Then I took the horse from Breteau and led it out the front gate of the castle and tied it up to the elm tree under which the girls used to dance during village festivals. Then I went back to my quarters where I found my cousin (that was what I was supposed to call him) waiting impatiently for me. He said: “Let’s go see what we can find; otherwise we’ll have to leave empty-handed.” — We proceeded to the kitchen, which was near the larder; having stirred up the coals in the hearth to create some light to see by, I caught sight of large iron shovel, which I picked up. I then said to him:

“Let’s go into the larder”, and having located the trunk, we tried to force open its lid, which was not tightly closed. I then said to him: “Place the shovel between the trunk and the lid.” We tried to pry it open, but nothing happened. We tried again, and the hinges snapped and I put my hand inside. »

She found a pile of silver plates which she handed over to La Corbinière. She was about to dig more out, when he said: « Don’t take anymore out, the sack is full. »

She wanted to take more articles, such as bowls, chandeliers, and ewers. But he said: « We’ll never be able to carry it all. »

And he told her to go put on her doublet and her cape, — so that nobody would recognize her dressed as a man.

They went straight to Compiègne, where they sold Angélique’s horse for forty écus. Then they took a post-chaise which brought them to Charenton that evening.

The river was flooded, so they had to spend the night there. — Angélique, dressed as a man, managed to pass unrecognized by the innkeeper’s wife, who said, — as « the postilion was pulling off her boots » : « Gentlemen, what would you like for supper?

— Whatever you recommend, Madame », was the reply.

But Angélique went to bed, too exhausted to eat. She was terrified they would be found out by her father the count de Longueval « who was in Paris at that moment ».

The following morning they took a boat as far as Essonne, but the young lady was so worn out that she said to La Corbinière:

« Why don’t you just proceed on to Lyons with the silverplate and wait for me there? »

They stayed on at Essonne for three days, waiting for the coach that was to take them on to Lyons and tending to all the scratches that Angélique had received on her thighs in the course of her wild ride.

Somewhere beyond Moulins, a man who was in the coach and who claimed to be a gentleman began mumbling:

« Do I smell a rat? Do we have a young lady here dressed as a man? »

To which La Corbinière replied:

« So what, sir?... Would you care to make anything of it? I believe I have the right to dress my wife any bloody way I choose. »

They arrived in Lyon that evening and stayed at the Red Hat inn where they sold their dishes for three hundred écus. With the proceeds La Corbinière had himself made « a handsome scarlet outfit with golden and silver braids, though he had no need for it whatsoever. »

They then took a boat down the Rhône and, having stopped at an inn for the night, La Corbinière wanted to try out his pistols. He was so clumsy that he managed to lodge a bullet in Angélique de Longueval’s right foot. To those who accused him of ineptitude, all he could say was: « What a stroke of bad luck ... if I don’t say so myself, — after all, the woman is my wife. »

Angélique spent three days in bed, then they once again embarked and followed the Rhône down to Avignon, where Angélique had her wound treated; when she recovered, they took another boat to Toulon, where they arrived on Easter Sunday.

As they were leaving port for Genoa, they were caught in a storm; they anchored in a safe haven, at a castle known as Saint-Soupir. Seeing them safe and sound, the lady of the manor had the Salve regina sung. Then she had a meal prepared for them, — a local preparation featuring olives and capers. Their servant was in turn served artichokes.

« You see what love can do, notes Angélique; — here we were in a place that was completely uninhabited and we went three days without food while waiting for the wind to rise. And yet the hours seemed like minutes to me, even though I was famished. Fearing the plague, they would not allow us to stop at Villefranche to take on provisions. We were thus forced to sail onward, all of us starved. But afraid the ship might go down, I first wanted to confess myself to a Franciscan priest who was on board, also on his way to Genoa.

« My husband (this is how she refers to him from here on in) seeing a gentleman from Genoa entering our room and addressing us in broken French, said: “Sir, is there anything I can do for you?” — Yes, said the gentleman of Genoa, I would like to have a few words with Madame.” My husband instantly drew his sword and said: “Are you acquainted with her? Get out of here before I kill you.”

« M. Audriffet came to see us forthwith and recommended that we immediately depart, for this gentleman of Genoa would certainly be taking his revenge.

« We disembarked at Civitavecchia and then proceeded on to Rome, where we stayed at one of the finest hotels while waiting to move into some furnished rooms located on the street of the Burgundians in the house of a gentleman from the Piedmont whose wife was Roman. One day, while I was at the window, the nephew of His Holiness was passing by with nineteen armed escorts, one of whom called up to me in Italian: “Signorina, His Eminence has asked me to inquire whether you would agree to receive him.” Trembling, I replied: “If my husband were here, I would gladly accept this honor; but since he is absent, I humbly beg your master to excuse me.”

« He had stopped his carriage three houses down from ours and was waiting for my answer; having heard my reply, he moved on in his carriage and I never heard from him again. »

Shortly after this, La Corbinière informed her that he had met one of her father’s falconers, a certain La Roirie. She felt a great desire to see him; when he laid eyes on her, « he stood there speechless »; then, having assured himself that she was indeed Angélique, he told her that the wife of the ambassador had heard about her and would like to see her.

Angélique de Longueval was well-received by the ambassador’s wife. — Nonetheless, she had reason to fear that the falconer had said things about her and La Corbinière that might lead to their arrest.

They were disappointed to have spent twenty-nine days in Rome and to have made so many efforts to get married without succeeding. « Thus, — Angélique observes, — I left Rome without ever seeing the Pope ... »

It was at Ancona that they caught the boat that was to take them to Venice. They got caught in a storm in the Adriatic; upon arriving in Venice, they found lodgings on the Grand Canal.

« Although a lovely city in all respects, — writes Angélique de Longueval, — I couldn’t bear the place because it was in the middle of the sea. Only the fear of dying made me continue eating and drinking while I was there. »

Meanwhile, their money was running out and Angélique said to La Corbinière: « What are we going to do? We shall soon be out of money! »

He said, « Once we’re back on terra firma, the good Lord will watch over us ... Get dressed, we’re going to mass at San Marco. »

When they got to the cathedral of San Marco, the couple sat in the pews reserved for senators; and though they were foreigners, nobody dared say a word to them; — for La Corbinière was wearing chausses of black velvet, a doublet and cloak made of the finest brocade and a silver plume.

Angélique was very elegantly dressed as well, and she was delighted to realize that the senators were unable to keep their eyes off the French fashions she was wearing.

The French ambassador, who was marching in the procession behind the doge, nodded in her direction.

But when it came time for dinner, Angélique did not want to leave the hotel, — preferring to rest rather than take a gondola over the waters.

La Corbinière, for his part, went to take a stroll on the piazza San Marco, where he met a certain M. de la Morte who offered him his services. Learning of the various obstacles that he andAngélique had encountered in their attempts to get married, the latter suggested he join him at his garrison in Palma-Nova where they could try to sort matters out and where La Corbinière could enlist.

At the garrison, M. de la Morte presented the future bride and groom to His Excellency the general who could not believe that a man as dapper as he was should want to take up a pike in a company. The company in which he had chosen to enlist was commanded by M. Ripert de Montélimart.

His Excellency the general nonetheless agreed to serve as a witness to their marriage ... after which they threw a small party which cost them the last twenty pistoles in their possession.

Eight days later, the Senate ordered the general to dispatch the company to Verona, — which plunged Angélique de Longueval into despair, for she was enjoying herself at Palma-Nova, where the cost of living was low.

Passing through Venice again, they bought household articles, « two pairs of sheets for two pistoles, not to mention a blanket, a mattress, six earthenware platters and six plates ».

When they got to Verona, they made the acquaintance of a number of French officers. — One of these, the lieutenant M. de Breunel, recommended them to M. de Beaupuis who put them up in comfortable, — and very cheap, — quarters. Across from their house there was a convent; the nuns invited Angélique de Longueval to come visit them, — « and were so affectionate to her that she was at a loss for words ».

It was at this point that she gave birth to her first child. His Excellency Georges Alluisi and the countess Bevilacqua acted as the godparents at his baptism. When Angélique de Longueval had recovered from the birth, His Excellency began sending over his carriage quite frequently.

At a ball that took place somewhat later, she astonished all the ladies of Verona by dancing with General Alluisi, — in her French fashions. — She adds:

« All the French officers in the service of the Republic were delighted to see that this great general, who was universally feared and admired, was bestowing such an honor on me. »

As they danced together, the general spoke to Angélique de Longueval « away from her husband ». He said to her: « What are you doing here in Italy? All you can expect from him is misery for the rest of your days. Don’t tell me it’s because he loves you, for you know I love you far more ... I’ll buy you the most beautiful pearls in the world and all the brocade you might want. Mademoiselle, forget your love for him and think of your own welfare; with me, you will be able to get back in the good graces of your parents. »

Meanwhile the general was advising La Corbinière to go off and join the wars in Germany; he told him that he would find things most advantageous at Innsbruck, which was only seven days away from Verona, and that he would be able to hook up with a company there ...

REFLECTIONS. — MEMORIES OF THE LEAGUE. — THE SYLVANECTS AND THE FRANKS. — THE LEAGUE

Senlis.

Despite the digressions which are so natural to my style of writing, — I never lose the thread of an idea, — and, whatever one might think, the abbé de Bucquoy will turn up sooner or later ...

Having returned to Senlis, I am still asking myself why the post office took twenty-one hours eight days ago to transmit to Paris a letter I had slipped into the mailbox at ten o’clock at night on All Saints’ Day. — There’s a mail pick-up at midnight and letters again go out at seven in the morning ... I can’t make heads or tails of it!

Am I still under surveillance in Senlis ...?[6] But the gendarme has become my good friend! I was even put in touch with the town’s deputy public prosecutor who has a side interest in science and history. — There are a number of deputy public prosecutors whom I know and admire, — just as I admire any person willing to temporarily put aside his opinions, his position, or his self-interest in order to become what he can be deep down inside, — a decent person.

As I was traveling through these parts, I came across a blue poster announcing a performance of Dumas’ Charles VII, — starring Beauvallet and Mademoiselle Rimblot. The play was particularly well-chosen, given this region’s veneration for the memory of the medieval and renaissance princes who built those marvelous cathedrals one sees everywhere or those magnificent castles which, given the work of time and civil wars, tend to be somewhat the worse for the wear. — People around here don’t quite know why they are not very fond of the Bourbons, — who nonetheless blended semipopular with princely taste. — I suspect them of being, ever so slightly, — like so many others, — republicans without knowing it.

This entire area was in fact the scene of bloody conflicts back in the days of the League ... There was an ancient nucleus of Protestantism here that nobody managed to disperse, — and later on, there was another nucleus of Catholicism which was just as fanatic and which opposed the Protestant turncoat known as Henri IV.

The bitterness of these feuds was extreme, — as is the case in all great political conflicts. In this part of the country, — which used to belong to Maguerite de Valois and the Medici, who did a great deal for the area, — the local population had developed a constitutional loathing for the race that had replaced them. How many times did I hear my grandmother say of the wife of Henri II (repeating what she had heard handed down by tradition): « Oh poor Catherine de Medici ... such a great lady ... and they killed all of her children! » Later on, having read Chénier’s Charles IX and having on the first day of the July Revolution looked at the window where this king supposedly fired on his people, — and also thinking of the blood fever that caused his death, I said to myself: « It is impossible that my grandmother should have been misled by local tradition. »

A number of the customs preserved in this back-woods region continue to reflect these ancient battles of the past. In certain villages, for example, the principal feast commemorates Saint Bartholomew. It is on this day that they organize the archery contests. — Admittedly, the bow today is a fairly innocuous weapon. But in fact it symbolizes and recalls the era during which the rough tribes known as the Sylvanects constituted a fearsome branch of the Celtic race.

The Druidic stones of Ermenonville, the stone adzes and the tombs in which the skeletons invariably lie with their faces turned toward the East, all bespeak the origins of the inhabitants of this region covered with forests and dotted with swamps, — which have since been turned into lakes.

The division between the Valois and that ancient little land called France would seem to confirm the fact that two very distinct races existed here. The land of France, which was merely one section of the Île-de-France, was originally populated (so it is claimed) by the Franks, a people that had come from Germany and that had made this region their first stop, as the chronicles say. It is now agreed that the Franks did not in any fashion conquer Gaul, but merely found themselves involved in certain of the battles between the provinces. The Romans imported them to settle certain regions, and especially to clear the great forests and drain the marshlands around Paris. Such were the lands to the north of Paris. Of Caucasian origin for the most part, this population lived on an equal footing with each other in patriarchal fashion. Later, when it became necessary to defend the land against invasions from the North, fiefs were created. But the farmers nonetheless retained ownership of the lands which had been awarded to them and which were called franc-alleu property.

The battle between these two races becomes especially evident during the so-called Wars of the League. It is likely that the descendents of the Gallo-Romans tended to favor the Béarn, whereas the other race, by nature more independent, leaned toward Mayenne, d’Epernon, the cardinal of Lorraine, and the Parisians. In certain areas, one still comes across heaps of corpses, — victims of the massacres and battles of the period, the fiercest of which was the battle of Senlis.

As to that great count Longueval de Bucquoy, — that is, the one who went on to fight in the Bohemian wars, — one wonders whether he would have ever acquired the notoriety that caused his descendent, — the abbé de Bucquoy, — so much trouble had he not been one of the leaders of the League and a longstanding protector of the towns of Soissons, Arras, and Calais against the armies of Henri IV? Having held out against the armies of the king for three years in Flanders, he retreated into Friesland, but not without having negotiated an armistice of ten years for these provinces to which Louis XIV would later lay waste.

And you are surprised by the persecution the abbé de Bucquoy would later face, — at the hands of minister Pontchartrain?

As for Angélique de Longueval, she is the petticoat version of this tradition of Opposition, even if she does love her father, — whom she had left with considerable regret. But the moment she had chosen the man of her life, — like the daughter of Duke Loys choosing Lautrec as her knight, — she did not waver in her decision, despite all the trials and tribulations she would subsequently have to endure. Even as she was helping her lover steal her father’s silverplate, she cried out: « What a thing is love! »

The people of the Middle Ages believed in charms. It seems indeed that a charm of some sort or another must have kept her enamored of this son of a pork butcher, — who was handsome according to all accounts, but who treated her rather shabbily. And yet even though she comments on some of the unfortunate penchants of the one she never names, she never for a second blames him. She simply limits herself to stating the facts, — and goes on loving him like some Platonic helpmate who quite rationally accepts her particular destiny.

CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT AUNT OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

The various remarks made by the lieutenant-colonel who wanted to remove La Corbinière from the picture finally sink in. The latter suddenly sells his commission in order to seek his fortune in Innsbruck, leaving his wife behind in Venice.

« Thus he sold his commission, — writes Angélique, — to the man who loved me (i.e. the lieutenant-colonel) and who was delighted at the thought I would soon be his. But love, queen of all the passions, made a mockery of these hopes, for as I saw my husband preparing to depart, I could not bear the thought of living without him. »

At the very last moment, while the lieutenant-colonel was already congratulating himself for having successfully pulled off this ploy which was about to deliver a woman without husband into his arms, — Angélique decided to follow La Corbinière to Innsbruck. « Thus, she writes, love proved to be our ruin in Italy as it had been in France, except that in Italy I was not at fault. »

They set off from Verona with a certain Boyer; since the latter was penniless, La Corbinière had agreed to pay for his trip to Germany. (Here La Corbinière comes off a bit better). After having traveled twenty-five miles and reached the place from which one crosses the lake over to Trento, Angélique had a moment of weakness and begged her husband to turn back to one of the towns that lay within the lands of Venice, — Brescia, for example. — Admiring Petrarch as she did, she found it painful to leave the sweet soil of Italy for the cloudy mountains that border Germany. « I was convinced, she says, that our remaining fifty pistoles would not last; but my love was greater than all these considerations. »

They spent eight days at Innsbruck; passing through town, the duke of Feria told La Corbinière that the place to find employment was a town by the name of Fisch. It was there that Angélique began to bleed profusely; a woman was called in and informed her that « she had sullied herself with child ». — The expression is a perfectly Christian one, — forgivable, given the particular era and country in question.

The act of bringing another sinner into the world, — even if it is a legitimate act, as it was in the case of Angélique who, after all, was married, — was always considered a stigma by the men of the Church. — This certainly violates the spirit of the gospels. — But that is neither here nor there.

Poor Angélique had barely recovered when she was again forced to get back on the only nag the couple owned: « Weak as I was, she writes, or to tell the truth, near death as I was, I accompanied my husband on horseback to the place where he was going to rejoin the army, — and where I was astonished to see there were as many women as men, especially many wives of colonels and captains. »

Her husband went to pay his respects to an important colonel named Gildaise who, being a Walloon, knew of the count Longueval de Bucquoy’s exploits in the defense of Friesland against Henri IV. He was most affectionate to Angélique’s husband and told him that while waiting for a company, he would give him a lieutenancy, — and that he would make sure Mademoiselle de Longueval rode in the carriage of his sister, who was married to the first captain of his regiment.

The newlyweds continued to suffer the blows of misfortune. La Corbinière came down with a fever and needed medical treatment. — But people everywhere were kind to them: Angélique complains only of having to travel « first to one place, and then to another » on account of the war and goes on to compare herself to a gypsy, even though she admits to being luckier than most of the other women, for she was the only one who dined at the colonel’s table alone with his sister. — « And the colonel was exceedingly generous to La Corbinière, — for he always gave him the best morsels at dinner ... seeing how ill he was. »

One night the troops were on the move and the only lodgings that could be found for the ladies consisted of a stable where, given the possibility of enemy attack, they would have to sleep fully clothed. « Waking up in the middle of the night, says Angélique, I felt so cold that I could not keep myself from crying out: “Oh Lord, I’m freezing to death.” » The German colonel took off his tabard, which was the only thing he was wearing over his uniform, and threw the cape over her.

At this point, she makes the profound observation:

« This act of courtesy might have certainly mollified a German woman, but it was hardly enough to appease a lady who, being French, could never find anything pleasing in war ... »

Nothing is more accurate than this observation. The women of Germany have not changed since Roman times, when Thusnelda battled against Hermann. When Marius was victorious over the Cimbri, there were as many women as men on the field.

Women rise to the occasion when it comes to family emergencies, suffering, and death. In our civil disturbances, it is the women who plant the flag on the barricades; — or who valiantly mount the scaffold, heads held high. In the provinces of our country that are nearest to Flanders or Germany one comes across Jeanne d’Arcs or Jeanne Hachettes. But for the most part, French women dread war, — given the love they feel for their children.

The warrior women among them are of Frankish descent. Among this population that originated in Asia, there is a tradition of exposing women in the midst of battle, — the reward thus promised presumably serving to prick up the valor of the combatants. This same custom exists among the Arabs. The virgin who devotes herself to the cause is called a kadra and she advances into battle surrounded by the troops who are determined to kill themselves for her. — The Frankish warriors, however, would throw several women into battle.

The courage and, indeed, the occasional cruelty of these women were such that the Salic law was eventually adopted. And yet these women, warriors or no, continued to exercise considerable sway in France as queens or court favorites.

The illness of La Corbinière was such that he resolved to return to Italy, — except that he forgot to take his passport with him. « We were quite at a loss, Angélique notes, when we got to a fortress called Reistre where they refused to allow us to continue on our way and detained my husband despite his ailment. » But being still free to move about, she managed to reach Innsbruck and throw herself at the feet of the archduchess Leopold to request a pardon for La Corbinière, — who, one assumes, might have been attempting to desert, even though his wife makes no mention of it.

Armed with a pardon signed by the archduchess, Angélique returned to the place where her husband was being held. She inquired of the people of this town of Reitz whether they had any information about a French gentleman who had been taken prisoner. She discovered where he was being held, found him half-dead near a stove, — and whisked him off to Verona.

There she again contacted M. de la Tour (of Périgord) and reproached him for having induced her husband to sell his commission to him, which was the cause of all their misfortunes. « I don’t know, she adds, whether it was because he still loved me or because he took pity on me, but he sent me twenty pistoles and the furnishings for an entire household, a household where my husband conducted himself so poorly that in no time he had run through all our possessions. »

He was now more or less back in good health and was living a life of debauchery with his two chums, M. de la Perle and M. Escutte. His wife’s affection for him, however, did not diminish. She decided « in order to make both ends meet, to take in lodgers », — and the venture seemed to be succeeding, except that La Corbinière was spending all their earnings during his nights out on the town « which pained me so much that it nearly proved the death of me. » In the end, he sold off all their furniture, — which meant they could no longer take in lodgers.

« Despite all this, the poor woman says, I continued to love him as deeply as I did when we left France. It is true that after having received my mother’s first letter, my heart was torn in two ... But I must admit that the love I felt for this man far exceeded my affection for my parents ... »

The National Archives manuscript in Angélique’s hand breaks off here.

But the folder continues with a series of notations made by her cousin, the Celestine monk Goussencourt. They lack the grace of Angélique de Longueval’s narrative, but at least they are marked by a genuine naïveté.

THE MONK GOUSSENCOURT. — DEATH OF LA CORBINIÈRE. — WALTER SCOTT DIALOGUE. — A SUSPECT ARCHAEOLOGIST CORRESPONDENCE

Here is a passage drawn from the observations of Goussencourt, the Celestine monk:

« Circumstances made innkeepers of them. The French soldiers who went to eat and drink in their establishment so respected her that they did not want to be served by her. She sewed heavy cotton collars for which she earned only eight sous a day, whereas he spent most of his time in the cellar, carousing with the guests and becoming all blotchy with drink in the end.

« One day she was at the door and a captain passed by and bowed in her direction and she returned the greeting, — which was seen by her jealous husband ... He calls her over and grabs her by the throat. She manages to cry out. The carousers rush over and find her stretched on the floor, half-dead. He had kicked her in the ribs and knocked the wind out of her and, to justify himself, he said that he had forbidden her to speak to that man and that had she so much as uttered a word he would have run her through with his sword. »

The more he drank the skinnier he became. It was around this time that she wrote her mother to ask her forgiveness. Her mother replied that she forgave her and advised her to return, adding that she would not forget her in her will.

This will was preserved at the church of Neuville-en-Hez and contains a legacy of eight thousand pounds.

During Angélique de Longueval’s absence, a young lady from Picardy turned up, pretending she was Angélique in order to usurp her rightful inheritance. — This young lady even had the audacity to present herself to Angélique’s mother, Mme d’Haraucourt, who of course maintained she was not her daughter. But the imposter trumped up so many stories that several members of the family eventually imagined she was the person she pretended to be ...

Her cousin the Celestine monk wrote her to return at once. — But La Corbinière wanted to hear nothing about this, being afraid that he would be arrested and executed if he returned to France. Things were not going very well for him either; — after Angélique had eloped with him, M. d’Haraucourt had expelled his mother and his brothers from Clermont-sur-Oise, « where they lived from the proceeds of their pork butcher business ».

When Mme d’Haraucourt was finally laid to rest in December, 1636 at Neuville-en-Hez (M. d’Haraucourt had died in 1632), their daughter did everything in her power to convince her husband to return to France.

By the time they reach Ferrara, both of them are grievously ill, which delays them twelve days before they catch a boat from Livorno and then arrive in Avignon, where they continue to be sick. — La Corbinière dies there the 5th of August, 1642. He lies buried at Sainte-Madeleine, having died with great remorse for having treated her so poorly and saying to her: « Whenever you feel too sad, just remember how badly I treated you. »

« At that moment, the monk continues, she was in such dire straits that she told me she would have surely died had not the Celestines come to her aid.

« She arrived in Paris by coach on Sunday the 19th of November and sent for her great friend Mme Boulogne to come fetch her. The latter was not home, so her major-domo came instead. The following day after dinner, she came to see me with the aforementioned Mme Boulogne and her mother-in-law, that is, the mother of La Corbinière, now a kitchen maid at the house of M. Ferrant, an occupation she had been reduced to after having been banished from Clermont on account of her son.

« The first thing she did was to throw herself at my feet, her hands clasped in prayer, asking for my forgiveness, which brought tears to the women’s eyes. I told her that I could not forgive her (which caused her to sigh and heave her breast, when she heard the rest) because she had not in fact sinned against me. Taking her by the hand, I said to her: “Get up”; and I sat her down by my side, where she again repeated to me what she had so often said to me by letter: namely, that after God and her mother, she owed her life to me. »

Four years later, she had retired to Nivilliers in a very unhappy state, having no shirt on her back, as the following letter indicates.

LETTER WRITTEN TO HER COUSIN THE CELESTINE MONK, FOUR YEARS AFTER HER RETURN FROM NIVILLIERS.

2 January, 1646.

My dearest Father (it was thus she addressed the Celestine),

I most humbly entreat you not to ascribe my silence to any lack of gratitude I might feel for everything you have done for me, but rather to the shame I continue to harbor because I can only show my deep appreciation by means of words. I continue to be pursued by ill luck, to the extent that I do not even have a shirt on my back. These misfortunes have until now held me back from writing to you and to Madame Boulogne, for it seems to me that you should receive as much satisfaction from hearing from me as I formerly received from the two of you. My misfortunes, not my intentions, are at fault here; therefore, my dear father, do me the honor of letting me hear from you.

Your most humble servant,

A. DE LONGUEVAL

(To M. de Goussencourt, Celestine Monk, Paris)

This is the last one hears of her. — As for Goussencourt, his simple imagination unable to accept his cousin’s love for a pork butcher boy, he therefore concluded some magic potion must have been involved. — Here are his speculations:

« They left on the night of the first Sunday of Lent in 1632 and returned in 1642, also during Lent. — Their love for each other began some three years before they eloped. — In order to cause her to fall in love with him, he gave her some sweets which he had had made up in Clermont and which contained Spanish fly, but these only served to inflame the girl and not to make her fall in love with him; then he gave her some cooked quince, which did the trick quite nicely. »

There is no proof whatsoever that brother Goussencourt gave his cousin a shirt. — Angélique certainly did not enjoy an odor of sanctity among her family, — which is borne out by the fact that she is not even named in its genealogy which mentions the names of Jacques-Annibal de Longueval, governor of Clermont-en-Beauvoisis, and of Suzanne d’Arquenvilliers, dame of Saint-Rimault. This couple left behind two Hannibals, the younger of whom, surnamed Alexander, was the same child who didn’t want his sister to steal from mother and father. There were two more boys as well. — But there is no mention of a daughter.

Rest assured that I would not be so persistent in my pursuit of the various heroes of this family whose various branches, — the de Longueval, — the d’Haraucourt, — and the de Bucquoy, — are torturing my imagination, were I not completely immersed in historical sources and had I not committed myself to the historical method, ever since it has become illegal to write novels.

All nations are curious to make the mental journey back into their origins and into the memories of their past; — this explains the success of Walter Scott in England and that of Augustin Thierry, Monteil, and a number of others in France. The history of France has been cruelly disfigured for more than two centuries now, thanks to the partisan support for the principle of absolute monarchy which the descendents of the Béarnais have attempted to enforce. — Historians in France were forced to follow this particular party line, or else go abroad to do their writing. — In the end, the writers remained in France, while the absolute monarchs emigrated.

The Academy recently awarded a prize to an author who had come up with the idea of painting the portrait of«a province during the reign of Louis XIV » ... My ambition is less grand. — All I wanted to do was paint one of those clans from the provinces who within the historical totality of a nation constitute a kind of collective individual entity unto itself, an entity which it is most interesting to study, given the light it casts on other such individuals.

Unfortunately the minute I stray from the straight and narrow path of history, I am liable to fall back into the historical novel, — and my uncompromising critics would therefore consider everything I have just written a pale imitation of those long prefaces in which the author of Waverley sets up dialogues between captain Clutterbuck and the reverend Jedidiah Cleisbotham.

I understand the ploy of using dialogue to set up the ensuing narrative ... This is why I never travel through this region without my friend and escort whom I shall refer to by his first name, Sylvain.

This name is a very common one in this province, — “Sylvie” is its graceful feminine form, — a name made famous by the bower in the forest of Chantilly to which the poet Théophile de Viau often used to repair to dream.

I said to Sylvain, « Shall we go to Chantilly? »

He replied, « No ... You said yesterday that we’d have to go to Ermenonville and then cut over to Soissons in order to visit the ruins of the Longueval castle over toward Champagne.

— You’re right, I answered; last night I had gotten completely intrigued with the lovely Angélique de Longueval and I wanted to see the castle from which she eloped with La Corbinière, — on horseback and dressed as a man.

— Are you sure this is the real Longueval? After all, there are Longuevals and Longuevilles everywhere ... just as there are Bucquoys everywhere ...

— I’m not so sure about the latter; but read this passage of Angélique’s manuscript: « When the day arrived on which he was to come fetch me at night, I said to one of the grooms by the name of Breteau: “I would be most grateful if you could lend me a horse. I need to send for some taffeta at Soissons tonight. I promise I’ll have the horse back to you by the morning, before mother gets up ...”»

— Which would seem to prove, — Sylvain said to me, that the Longueval castle was located not far from Soissons, so this is obviously not the moment to change directions for Chantilly. The last time you changed directions, you almost got yourself arrested, — after all, people who suddenly change their ideas tend to be suspicious characters ... »

As a matter of fact, a gendarme had paid a visit to my hotel during my last visit to Senlis, — I believe I informed you of this detail, — having learned that, — although not in possession of a passport, — I had initially announced that I was traveling in the direction of Ermenonville but instead had taken my place in a coach going to Chantilly. Understandably suspicious, he threatened my hotel-keeper with a fine of twenty-five francs ... But let’s let dead dogs lie.

This little adventure, — to be expected, seeing as how I was traveling without papers, — remained deeply engraved in my memory only because it recalled a similar contretemps which resulted in far more severe consequences for a friend of mine.

This man was a simple archaeologist by profession. Passing through L*** while awaiting the Senlis coach that would bring him back to Paris, he had stopped to contemplate a thirteenth-century church whose nondescript exterior was offset by its unusual age.

A gendarme, — all this happened a few months ago, — kept a steady eye on him as he was making his observations and made special note of the fact that he was scribbling things down in a notebook. For half an hour, he patiently kept his distance; — but in the end, no longer finding it natural that one might spend a half an hour examining a church, he became suspicious and decided to go tap him on the shoulder and ask for his papers.

« I need papers for L***? Only three leagues from Paris? the archaeologist calmly retorted.

— You have no papers? ... Follow me to the mayor’s office. »

This was not the proverbial mayor of Meaux, — reputed to be a very literate man. The mayor of L*** said to the archaeologist:

« What were you doing in front of that church?

— I was establishing its antiquity.

— While taking notes?

— I have them here.

— I have no need to look at your notes. What you need are papers. And since you have none, these gentleman will take you to see the deputy public prosecutor of P***. »

He was marched off, escorted by the two gendarmes.

The prosecutor said to archaeologist, who was bitterly complaining about the treatment he had received: « I can’t believe a single word of what you are telling me. It’s impossible that a public office holder in the department of the Oise such as our mayor could take it upon himself to have a man arrested for looking at a church!

— Well, dogs can gawk at archbishops! said the Parisian scholar.

— In this case I consider you even more suspect. Since you claim you live in Paris, we’ll just have to dispatch you back to the city and see what they make of this there. »

The archaeologist requested a carriage, having already gone two leagues on foot, — which is fairly disagreeable when one is escorted by gendarmes and exposed to the eyes of the ladies. — But luckily deliverance was at hand: a paddy wagon with room for other suspects had just arrived in town and was leaving for Paris.

The archaeologist was placed in the vehicle. This wagon had not yet been divided into separate cells, but at least thumb-cuffs had been provided. There was already a lone thief in the wagon. He was comfortably installed on a clump of straw ... and called out to the new fellow while they were getting tied up:

« Hello there, old chap! ... so they’re not giving you any straw? You know you have the legal right to straw, so you can sit on it like me. Ask the driver for some. »

Instead of replying, the archaeologist just let out a roar: he wanted to go on suffering, just to further shame the mayor of L***.

Once in Paris, he produced his letters and was immediately released.

This anecdote, — which is completely historical, — merely illustrates the idiocy of a certain village mayor. And it yet it might also remind us that French functionaries characteristically overstep their authority; — which is very likely the reason they produce such extreme counter-reactions.

CORRESPONDENCE

You have forwarded on to me two letters that were written in response to my initial articles concerning the abbé de Bucquoy. The first of these letters claims, on the basis of an abridged biography, that Bucquoy and Bucquoi are in fact not the same name. — To which I can only reply that the spelling of old names is never consistent. Only heraldry provides a relatively foolproof way of establishing family identities, and we have already provided the coat-of-arms of this particular family (gules, six bandlets, vair). This blazon is found among every branch of the family, be it in Picardy, Île-de-France, or Champagne (where the abbé de Bucquoy came from). Longueval borders on Champagne, as we have already seen. — It would be useless to push this discussion of heraldry any further.

You also forwarded on a second letter which comes from Belgium:

« As a reader who enjoys the work of M. Gérard de Nerval and who wishes to be of service to him, I am sending the enclosed document which might prove to be valuable as he pursues his humorous peregrinations in search of the abbé de Bucquoy, that elusive whippersnapper issued forth by the Riancey amendment. amendment.

A subscriber to the National ».

156. Olivier de Wree, de vermoerde oorlogh-stucken van den woonderdadighen velt-heer Carel de Longueval, grave van BUSQUOY, Baron de Vaux. Brugge, 1625. — Ej. mengheldichten: fyghes noeper; Bachus-Cortryck. Ibid., 1625. — Ej. Venus-Ban. Ibid., 1625, in-12, oblong, vel.[7]

Rare and curious item. The copy is water-stained.

I shall not attempt to translate this Dutch bibliographical entry. Let me only observe in passing that it has been excerpted from the prospectus of a library that is going to be offered for sale on December 5th and the following days under the direction of M. Héberlé, — 5, rue des Paroissiens, Brussels.

And this letter reaches me on the 15th!

I’d prefer to wait for Techener’s sale, — which I certainly hope is still scheduled for the 20th.

POST-SCRIPTUM. — THE RUINS COUNTRY WALKS. — THE ABBEY OF CHÂALIS ERMENONVILLE. — ROUSSEAU’S TOMB

I’m thinking of all the various mistakes that I have committed in the letters I have just sent off to you: an error of twenty kilometers when estimating a distance is probably nothing to worry about; — I’m having difficulty getting used to the new metric system ... yet I know that it is henceforth illegal to use the old term leagues in public documents. It must be the influence of this region that I am currently inhabiting that is causing me to lapse back into these archaic turns of phrase.

My fear of compromising you in any way is such that when I returned to you the letter that had been addressed to me from Belgium in order to inform me of the book sale that would include a volume relating to the Bucquoy family, I added a word of my own ... I have dishonored the autograph of an unknown friend by using the term issued forth. The point was being made that the abbé de Bucquoy was an elusive whippersnapper who was bound to snap at the heels of the Tinguy amendment; — and I continue to regret that I conjured up this impish creature; — for you know just how much I respect the law. — I thought I was toning down my sarcasm by insisting that the whippersnapper in question had been issued forth by the said amendment.

Well, I was wrong; — having sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God, following the example of that philosopher whose tomb I am about to visit and whose personal motto was Vitam impendere vero, — I should have merely reprinted the letter you sent me free from any additional commentary on my part. — The point of all this being that I am not out to attack the law per se, but merely the false interpretation that might be made of it, should it be seriously applied.

As for me, — as you well know, — I risk nothing; but you, you run the risk of being hit with a fine, — which could go as high as a million ... These are no laughing matters!

If you printed the passage where I described the arrest of the archaeologist, rest assured that this episode is entirely true and that I am ready to supply you with proof of the matter, — and what’s more, could cite another example of this sort of thing that occurred in another part of the Oise. — If I am a little vague about the precise geographical locations, it’s because I am afraid of compromising the persons in question.

In the material I just sent off to you there is yet another word which cost me an hour of sleep. I may well have committed an error in French, — or, as it were, against French, — when speaking of officials who « overstep their authority and hence provoke extreme counter-reactions. »

The mistake would seem to be an elementary one at first glance; — but there are several kinds of reactions: some reactions involve roundabout responses, — others simply involve grinding to a halt. The point I wanted to make was that one excess can lead to another. How otherwise explain acts of arson or the wanton destruction of property, — admittedly rare events these days? Every time a crowd starts getting agitated, there is always some foreign or hostile element that takes advantage of the situation in order push things beyond the limits usually established (and enforced) by common sense.

An anecdote that was told to me by a well-known bibliophile will bear this out. As it so happens, the hero of the story is another bibliophile.

On the day the February Revolution broke out, several carriages were burned, — it was believed that they had been purchased for the royal court with monies provided by the civil list. — This act was no doubt very wrong; looking back on it today, people tend to blame it on the traitors who had infiltrated the crowd that had gathered in the wake of the uprising ...

The bibliophile in question went over to Palais-National that very evening. He could not have cared less about the carriages that were being set on fire; all he cared about was a work in four folio volumes entitled Perceforest.

It was one of those romaunts of the Arthurian cycle, — or perhaps it was the Charlemagne cycle, — containing the epic accounts of our ancient chivalric wars.

Elbowing his way through the assembled crowd, he managed to enter the palace courtyard. — He was a lanky fellow with a wizened face now and then creased by a benevolent smile; respectably dressed in a black suit, he had been let through by the crowd out of sheer curiosity.

« My friends, he asked, has the Perceforest been burned?

— No, we’re just burning carriages.

— Very well. Carry on then. And the library?

— Hasn’t been touched ... What do you want, anyway ?

— I want them to spare the four-volume edition of Perceforest, a hero of yesteryear ... an irreplaceable edition, with two pages that have been transposed and a large ink stain in the third volume. »

He was told:

« Check with the first floor. »

He went to the first floor, where he was informed:

« We absolutely deplore what happened when the situation flared up ... Several paintings were damaged in the initial confusion ...

— Yes, I know, a Horace Vernet ... All this is nothing: — the Perceforest?...

They looked at him as if he were stark mad. He beat a quick retreat and finally managed to locate the concierge of the Palais-National, who was hiding out in her quarters.

« Madame, if they have not yet taken over the library, could you please go and see whether the Perceforest is still there, — it’s a sixteenth-century edition, bound in vellum by Gaume. The rest of the library is worthless ... poorly selected books for people who don’t read ... But the Perceforest has been estimated to be worth forty thousand francs. »

The concierge’s eyes opened wide.

« I would pay twenty thousand for it right here and now ... despite the depreciation of property values inevitably associated with revolutions.

— Twenty thousand francs!

— I have them at home! But if I bought the edition it would merely be in order to donate it to the nation. It’s a national treasure. »

Dazzled and astonished, the concierge courageously agreed to sneak over into the library by a small back stairway. She had been swept up by the scholar’s enthusiasm.

Presently she returned, having seen the book on the exact shelf indicated by the bibliophile.

« Sir, the book is there. But there are only three volumes ... You must have made some mistake.

— Three volumes! ... What a loss! ... I’m immediately going to inform the provisional government, — they usually set one up in these cases, don’t they? ... Perceforest incomplete! Revolutions are terrible things! »

The bibliophile rushed over to the Hôtel-de-Ville. — People had other things to deal with than bibliography. He nonetheless managed to buttonhole M. Arago, — who understood the importance of his mission and immediately issued orders that the matter be looked into.

The Perceforest was incomplete only because one of its volumes was on loan.

We are delighted that this work was fortunate enough to remain in France.

As for the History of the abbé de Bucquoy, which is due to go on sale on the 20th, it may very well not be as fortunate!

So I now beg you, please realize that mistakes do get made, — especially when a quick tour through a region such as this one is constantly interrupted by fog or rain ...

I regret having to leave Senlis; — but my friend is insisting that I continue on my way, if only to remain faithful to an idea that I was reckless enough to have shared with him ... Friends are like children, — they are royal pains, — another local expression.

I greatly enjoyed this town where virtually every street, stable, or cellar offers a glimpse of Roman antiquity, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance. I mentioned « the Roman towers in ivy clad »! — The eternal greenery that covers them is a living indictment of the inconstancy of our northern climes. — In the Orient, the woods are always green; — each tree naturally has a season in which it is bound to lose its leaves, but this season varies with the species. In Cairo I saw sycamores losing their leaves in the summer. But on the other hand, these same trees were green in January.

The wooded paths surrounding Senlis follow the course of the ancient Roman fortifications which were restored during the long period when this town was the capital of the Carlovingian kings but this late in the season all they offer to the eye are the rusty leaves of elm and lime trees. But there are still splendid views to be had of the surrounding landscape at sunset. — The forests of Chantilly, Compiègne, and Ermenonville, as well as the woods of Châalis and Pont-Armé stand out as russet masses against the bright green of the intervening fields. In the distance, the castles still display their towers, — solidly built out of Senlis stone and, more often than not, now reduced to dovecotes.

The spindly spires, which bristle with jutting stone-work that is (I know not why) called bonework in the region, still echo with the sound of the bells that plunged Rousseau’s soul into such a sweet state of melancholy ...

Let us pursue the pilgrimage that we promised ourselves to undertake: it shall lead us not to his mortal remains, — which are enshrined in the Pantheon, — but rather to the original site of his tomb on the Isle of Poplars at Ermenonville.

The cathedral of Senlis, the church of Saint-Pierre, — which has now been turned into a cavalry barracks, — the castle of Henri IV snuggled within the town’s ancient fortifications, the Byzantine cloisters of Charles the Fat and his successors, — none of this can now keep us back ... It is time to strike out through the woods, despite the lingering morning mist.

We left Senlis on foot and made our way into the woods, delighting in every deep breath of the autumn mist. Gazing at the great trees whose tops were bare except for the occasional bouquet of yellowed leaves, my friend Sylvain said to me:

« Do you remember the days when we used to play in these woods, when your relatives used to let you come over to our place to see the rest of your family? ... When we used to pull the shrimp out from under the rocks under the bridges of the Nonette and the Oise?... You were very careful to take off your socks and shoes, and we all called you: the little Parisian?

— I remember, I told him, that one day you abandoned me when I was in danger. It was at one of the eddies of the Oise, up toward Neufmoulin, — I absolutely wanted to get to the other side of the river in order to take the shortcut back to my wetnurse’s place. — You said to me: “There’s a crossing-place here.” The tall weeds and the green foam that gathers at the bends of our rivers had convinced me that the bottom wasn’t very deep at that ford. I was the first at the river. Then I plunged into seven feet of water. Then you ran off, afraid that you would be blamed for having allowed the little Parisian to get drownded. You had decided to claim, should anybody ask you what had happened, that he wanted to go his own fool way. — And this is what we call a friend. »

Sylvain blushed and said nothing.

« But your sister, thank God, had followed us, — the poor little thing, — and as I was flailing around in the water with my hands, having cut myself on the sharp leaves of the irises when I plunged in, she lay down on the shore on her belly and got hold of my hair and pulled with all her might.

— Poor Sylvie! said my friend, choking up.

— I hope it’s clear, I continued, that I owe you absolutely nothing ...

— Oh yes you do: I taught you how to climb trees. You see those magpie nests up there in the poplar and chestnut trees? — Well, I was the one who taught you how to get at them, — not to mention the wood-pecker nests, which are even higher in the trees come spring. — Since you were a Parisian, you had to attach climbing irons onto your shoes to make it up the trees, — whereas I did it bare-footed!

— Sylvain, I said, let’s not descend into recriminations. We’re about to go visit the tomb of Rousseau’s missing ashes. So let’s take it easy. — The memories he has left behind in this region far outweigh his mortal remains. »

We followed a path that led to the castle of Montl’Évêque and its woods. Here and there ponds glinted through the red foliage, accented by the dark greens of the pines. Sylvain sang me a traditional song of the region:

Courage, my friend, courage!

We’ve almost reached the village!

At the very first house we meet,

We’ll stop for a bite to eat!

The local wine they served in the village proved to be quite refreshing to travelers. Seeing our beards, the innkeeper said to us, « So you’re painters? ... You’ve come to see Châalis? »

Châalis, — the very name brought back memories of distant times ... when I was taken to the abbey once a year to listen to mass and to see the fair they annually used hold near there.

« Châalis, I said ... you mean the place still exists?

— Child, didn’t you know? They’ve sold off everything, — the castle, the abbey, the ruins, everything! Except that the people who bought them have no intention of destroying them ... They’re from Paris: they bought the entire property, — in order to restore it. The lady said that she was ready to spend four hundred thousand francs on it.

— Gee, said Sylvain, if people have that kind of money to spend they should keep it in the bank.

— This will be a great boon to the entire region, said the innkeeper.

— When the revolution broke out, said Sylvain, people in Senlis were quite frightened. Many sold their carriages and their horses for virtually nothing. There was one individual who was so afraid that his carriage might politically compromise him that he actually gave it away! A brace of horses worth five thousand francs was sold for six hundred.

— I would like to have gotten my hands on those!

— The horses?

— No ...

— Except, Sylvain went on to add, it should be pointed out in honor of our town that there were others who decided, given the circumstances, that they would spread their money around. People whose age or whose styles of life would have normally kept them quietly out of public view now decided to organize festivals, create jobs for workers, order carriages and even buy horses, — but not the horses that the scaredy-cats were selling off ... and which eventually ended up in the hands of the horse-traders.

— Sylvain, I said, you fill me with admiration. What a nice turn you’ve given to this little tale. »

La Chapelle-en-Serval, this 20th of November.

Just as it is only fitting, even if the symphony be merely a pastoral one, that the major theme (whether sprightly, tender, or overpowering) be now and then reintroduced in order that it may at last thunder forth in the gradual storm of instruments that gathers for the finale, — so I think it would be useful to reintroduce the abbé de Bucquoy here without however interrupting my journey in search of the castle of his ancestors, an excursion I am undertaking so as to be able to provide a precise description of the setting of his adventures, — which would otherwise be of little interest.

But if the final chords refuse to fall, — it is (as you shall see) certainly not deliberate on my part ...

But first, let me repair an injustice I may have committed toward M. R*** of the Bibliothèque Nationale. Far from having lightly dismissed my bibliographical quest as a wild-goose chase, he went through the roughly eight hundred thousand books in their holdings. I was only informed of this later, — but being unable to locate the missing item, he sent me a semi-official notification of the sale that was going to be held at Techener’s, — in short, he conducted himself like a true scholar.

Aware that auctions of great libraries usually drag on over a number of days, I had tried to find out on what day precisely the book would be put up for sale; if it was going to be on the 20th, I wanted to be sure to be there for the evening session.

But it’s been put off until the 30th!

The book has in fact been classified under the category of History and has been assigned number 3584. Incident of the rarest sort, etc., — but you’re already familiar with the title.

This listing is accompanied by the following note:

« Rare. — Such is the title of this bizarre book whose frontispiece consists of an engraving depicting The Living Hell, that is, the Bastille. The remainder of the volume is made up of extremely singular items. »

« Catalogue of the Library of Monsieur M***, etc. »

I can provide you with a foretaste of this fascinating story, — the truth of which several people would seem to be doubting, — by reproducing some of the notes I took while leafing through Michaud’s Dictionary of National Biography.

Immediately following the biographical article on Charles Bonaventure, count de Bucquoy (generalissimo and member of the Order of the Golden Fleece, famous for his participation in the wars of France, Bohemia, and Hungary, and whose grandson, Charles, was later made a prince of the Empire), there is an entry devoted to the abbé de Bucquoy, who is identified as belonging to the same family as the previous gentleman. His political life began with five years of military service. Having miraculously escaped a major disaster, he made a vow to withdraw from the world and shut himself up in a Trappist monastery. Unconvinced of his vocation, the abbé of Rancé, — the subject of Chateaubriand’s last book, — expelled him from the monastery. He once again put on his military uniform, which he soon traded for beggar’s rags.

Following the example of the fakirs and dervishes, he wandered the world, hoping to provide an example of humility and austerity. He called himself The Dead Man, — and it was under this name that he even established a free school at Rouen.

I’ll stop here for fear of giving the whole story away. But just to prove it has its serious side, let me simply mention that he later proposed to the united states of Holland (who were at war with Louis XIV) « a project to transform France into a republic and to rid the land of arbitrary power. » He died in Hanover at the age of ninety, leaving his books and remaining worldly possessions to the Catholic church, to which he had always remained faithful. — As for his sixteen years of travels through India, only the Dutch book in the Bibliothèque Nationale makes any mention of them. — We shall return to all this later.

Well, all this is quite serious indeed; here’s a bit of news no less serious:

I have just received notice, along with other information that I’d been awaiting, that I have been expelled from the apartment that I had long been renting in Paris. — Excuse me for going on and on about myself again. But just as the life of the abbé de Bucquoy can illuminate an entire epoch, — following the well-known analytical procedure of moving from the simple toward the complex, — so it seems to me that because the existence of a writer is by definition more public than that of other men (whose lives inevitably conceal shadowy nooks and crannies), he therefore has to use his own existence to provide examples of those ordinary occurrences typical of any society.

What follows is a rather feudal document which I leave it up to you to quote from; you may just want to insert those passages which usefully demonstrate how insulting the obsolete language of our bureaucrats can be when addressed to private citizens. — What’s at issue here are general customs and usages, not any individual in particular; the individual here is but a cog in the administrative wheel.

The petitioner of record (the prefect of the Seine), proceeding with the expropriation, which is to be undertaken in the public interest, of the edifices required for the expansion of the approaches to the Louvre and for the extension of the rue de Rivoli, edifices which include the one inhabited by the below-mentioned individual, hereby informs him by the present letter that he is to vacate all the living quarters that he occupies in the said building, and that he shall do so by the first of January eighteen hundred and fifty-one, on the understanding that at this precise date he shall no longer reside in these premises, having removed himself and all of his belongings and having paid all the fees and arrears required of a tenant at the termination of his lease;

Not wishing however that the entirety of the expenses occasioned by this eviction in the public interest should be carried by the below-mentioned holder of the lease, the said petitioner hereby offers him the sum of twenty francs, payable to him by the municipal bank of Paris upon his acceptance of these terms within a fortnight of receipt.

Should the below-mentioned party refuse these terms within the agreed period, the petitioner will withdraw the offer officially tendered above of financial indemnification, and will purely and simply require the individual to vacate the premises as outlined above on the prescribed date in due accordance with the law.

This summons is served so that the below-mentioned party may not plead ignorance to the eviction order officially constituted by this document.

Cost, three francs.

BRIZARD

It is not my intention to get into politics here. — All I’ve ever wanted to do is to engage in opposition. — The expropriation may be perfectly justified, but the terms in which it is couched are contemptible. I observe that here in France the bureaucracies always take on a stern voice. — Similarly, in our courts a man is inevitably considered guilty before being proven innocent. And even if he is proven innocent, he still remains suspect.

This is one of the major causes of all our civil disturbances. If we merely examine the inner dynamics of households, we will observe that when the master starts scolding, everybody, — from the top floor to the bottom, — starts scolding everybody else. — Even the dog starts growling. When the master gets nervous, everybody gets nervous and suffers accordingly. — This becomes particularly evident to anybody who has lived in the provinces, where the social stratifications are far more marked.

Having descended on my mother’s side from peasants who lived in the early Frankish communes situated to the north of Paris, I have retained from earliest childhood a vivid sense of the importance accorded to the law in the French Flanders, — as is the case in England and the Low Countries. This is why, finding myself once again in this region, I am writing these lines to you, which may well seem somewhat peculiar to my Parisian readers, but whose heart-felt sentiments I hope they understand; — for Paris understands everything.

We went to Châalis to take a closer look at the estate before it was restored. The first thing that greets you is a large enclosure surrounded by elms; then there is a sixteenth-century structure to the left, no doubt restored at a later date in the ponderous architectural style of the small castle of Chantilly.

After you visit the kitchens and pantries, the great suspended staircase that dates back to the days of Henri IV leads you up to the first-floor galleries, — a series of large and small rooms that look out onto the woods. A few elaborately framed paintings, — the great Condé on horseback, several forest landscapes, — are all that drew my attention. One of the smaller rooms contains a portrait of Henri IV at the age of thirty-five.

This was the age at which he fell in love with Gabrielle, — and this castle no doubt was a scene of their amours. — This king (whom I cordially detest) resided in Senlis for quite some time, especially at the outset of the siege. Above the words Liberté, egalité, fraternité, his portrait in bronze graces the entrance of the town hall with an inscription claiming that the happiest days of his life were spent at Senlis, — in 1590. — Interestingly enough, however, it is not at Senlis that Voltaire places the crucial episode (imitated after Ariosto) of his love for Gabrielle d’Estrées.

Don’t you find it rather strange that the d’Estrées family should also be related to the abbé de Bucquoy? And yet this is what the genealogy of his family reveals ... I am inventing nothing.

It was the keeper’s son who guided us around the castle, — which has long been abandoned. — He was a fellow who, without being especially educated, nonetheless understood the respectful treatment that antiquities deserve. In one of the rooms he showed us a monk he had discovered among the ruins. As I inspected this skeleton lying in its trough of stone, I imagined that it was not a monk but rather a Celtic or Frankish warrior who had been buried according to local tradition, — that is, with his face turned toward the East. The names Erman or Armen[8] are after all not infrequent in this region, — not to mention nearby Ermenonville, which the locals also call Arme-Nonville or Nonval, which is its archaic name.

As I was making these observations to Sylvain, we proceeded toward the ruins. A passer-by informed the keeper’s son that a swan had just fallen into a ditch.

« Go rescue him!

— Thanks a lot! ... I hope he won’t take a swipe at me. »

Sylvain observed that swans were hardly dangerous animals.

« Well, gentleman, said the keeper’s son, I’ve seen a swan break a man’s leg with a single blow of his wing. »

Sylvain remained pensive.

The ancient abbey accounts for the most prominent cluster of ruins at Châalis. It was most likely constructed during the reign of Charles VIII, its flamboyant gothic architecture resting on the sturdy pillars of the Carlovingian vaults which contained the tombs. All that is left of its cloister is a long gallery of ogives linking the abbey to an earlier monument, a structure made up of Byzantine columns carved in the era of Charles the Fat and later integrated into sturdy sixteenth-century walls.

The keeper’s son said to us, « They are thinking of tearing down the cloister wall so as to get a better view of the ponds from the castle. At least such was the advice that was given to Madame.

— She should instead be advised, I said, simply to knock out the masonry with which they bricked up the ogives; that way one will get a far more splendid view of the ponds through the arches of the gallery. »

He promised he would make a note of this.

Beyond these ruins there is a tower and a chapel. We climbed up the tower, from which we were able to get a glimpse of the entire valley, with its various ponds and rivers and the large expanse of bare terrain which is called the Desert of Ermenonville and which contains little else but outcroppings of gray sandstone, scrawny pine trees, and stretches of heath.

The reddish outlines of quarries were visible here and there through the naked trees, their hues contrasting with the greens of the woods and plains, — where the white birches with the ivy climbing around their trunks stood out against the russet masses of the forest, framed by the horizon’s blues.

We climbed down from our vantage point and visited the chapel, — an architectural gem. The soaring quality of its pillars and ribs, the delicacy and sobriety of its ornamental detail indicated that it dated back to a period somewhere between flamboyant Gothic and Renaissance. Upon entering the chapel we admired its paintings, which seemed to date from the latter period.

« You’re going to see some rather décolleté saints in here », the keeper’s son said to us. And indeed, next to the door there was a fresco depicting some sort of Glory, perfectly preserved despite its faded colors, except for its lower portion which had been painted over in tempera, — but which would not be that difficult to restore.

The good old monks of Châalis had evidently wanted to cover up some of the more egregious nudity characteristic of the Medici style. — And it was true, all these angels and all these saints could easily have been mistaken for so many cupids and nymphs with their naked breasts and thighs. Between the ribs of its vault, the apse of the chapel offers another series of well preserved figures in the allegorical style that came into fashion after Louis XII. — As we turned to leave, our eyes were caught by the armorial bearings above the door which might provide a clue to the date of these later ornamentations.

It was difficult to make out the details of the quartered escutcheon which had been painted over in blue and white at some later date. In the first and fourth quarters there were some birds that our guide identified as swans, marshaled by the second and first; — but, as it turned out, they were not swans.

Are they eagles displayed, or martlets or eaglets or osprey against a saltire of lightning flashes?

In the second and third quarters, there were spears or fleurs-de-lis, which are the same thing. Issuant from the shield was the crest of a cardinal’s beret whose triangular netting with tassels fell to either side. But unable to count the strands because the stone was so worn away, we were unable to determine whether it was in fact an abbot’s beret.

I have no reference books with me. But I would guess that what we have here are the arms of Lorraine, quartered by those of France. Could they be the arms of the cardinal of Lorraine who, under the name of Charles X, was proclaimed king by this region? Or do they belong to some other cardinal who was also supported by the League? ... I can make neither head nor tail of all this, remaining as I do (I admit) a rather amateur historian ...

THE CASTLE OF ERMENONVILLE THE ILLUMINATI. — THE KING OF PRUSSIA GABRIELLE AND ROUSSEAU THE TOMBS. — THE ABBOTS OF CHÂALIS

Ermenonville.

Leaving Châalis, you cross a few more clumps of trees before entering the Desert. The ‘desert’ here is large enough so that when you stand in the middle of it, it seems to fill the entire horizon, — and yet small enough so that a half hour’s walk takes you into one of most serene and charming landscapes in the world ... A slice of Swiss nature has been carved out of the local woods, René de Girardin having had the idea of transplanting the image of his native land to this region.

Several years before the Revolution, the castle of Ermenonville served as a meeting place for the Illuminati who were already silently dreaming up the future. Over the course of the celebrated suppers of Ermenonville, such figures as Saint-Germain, Mesmer, and Cagliostro delivered a series of inspired addresses in which they developed those ideas and paradoxes which would later be adopted by the so-called School of Geneva. — It would seem that in his younger days M. de Robespierre, (son of the founder of the Scottish Lodge of Arras) and, at a somewhat later date, Sénancour, Saint-Martin, Dupont de Nemours, and Cazotte all came to this castle (or to the nearby castle of Le Pelletier de Mortfontaine) in order set out their eccentric projects for the complete and utter transformation of a society so old, so decrepit that even its younger members looked like ancient codgers under their fashionable powdered wigs.

Saint-Germain belonged to an earlier generation, but he too came to Ermenonville. — It was he who showed Louis XV the image of his beheaded grandson in a steel mirror, just as Nostradamus had shown Marie de Medici the line of kings that would descend from her, — the fourth of whom was also decapitated.

But all this is mere child’s play. What truly bears these mystics out is an anecdote recounted by Beaumarchais (the village of Beaumarchais is located one away from Ermenonville, — land of legends): the Prussians had advanced within thirty leagues of Paris but suddenly and unexpectedly fell back when a vision appeared to their king and inspired to him to say almost like a knight of old: « Not one step farther! »

The French and German Illuminati were linked by their common affinities. Given the age-old sympathies and associations that bound together races sharing the same origins, the doctrines of Weisshaupt and Jacob Bœhme had easily penetrated into the ancient Frankish and Burgundian regions of France. The prime minister of the nephew of Frederick II was himself a member of the Illuminati. — Beaumarchais speculates that what had happened at Verdun was that Frederick William was somehow induced (perhaps during a seance of magnetism) to perceive a vision of his uncle who appeared to him and told him (as did Charles VI’s ghost) to turn back.

These weird events baffle the imagination; — but Beaumarchais, who was a confirmed skeptic, claims that this phantasmagoric scene was in reality concocted with the help of the French actor Fleury, who had previously played the role of Frederick II on the Parisian stage and who thereby was able carry off the illusion that eventually convinced the king of Prussia to withdraw from the confederation of kings leagued against France.

The memories associated with these parts weigh rather heavily on me; — so I am conveying all this information to you in somewhat pell-mell fashion (but rest assured, its factual basis is solid). There is an even more important detail that should not be overlooked: when this region was taken over by the Prussians in the disastrous wake of the Napoleonic Wars, the general in charge, having learned that the tomb of Jean-Jacques Rousseau was located at Ermenonville, exempted the entire district up to and including Compiègne from the burdens of military occupation. — I think his name was the Prince of Anhalt: — a name that should go down in history.

Rousseau only resided at Ermenonville for a relatively brief period. If he eventually accepted the asylum that was offered to him here, it was because he had long been familiar with the site: over the course of the walks he used to take when he lived in the Hermitage at Montmorency, he had recognized that the countryside over in this direction offered the botanist an unusual range of plants, given the variety of the terrain.

We stopped off at the Inn of the White Cross, where Rousseau had briefly lodged upon his arrival in the area. He subsequently moved to a house on the other side of the castle now occupied by a grocer. — M. René de Girardin later offered him an unoccupied lodge facing the lodge of the castle’s guardian. — It was there that he died.

We left the inn and set off for the misty woods. As the autumn haze gradually lifted, we caught sight of the blue mirrors of the lakes, — the entire countryside reminiscent of the scenery painted on snuffboxes of the period ...: — the Isle of Poplars, rising beyond the ornamental ponds that pour, — at least when the water is working, — into the artificial grotto ... — A landscape straight out of the idylls of Gessner.

The rock formations one encounters as one strolls through the woods are covered with poetic inscriptions. Here:

Time cannot outlast this deathless mass.

Elsewhere:

This site is the scene of those valorous races

That signal the stag’s ever-wanton graces.

Or again, beneath a bas-relief representing Druids cutting mistletoe:

Lo, see our ancestors in their lonely woods!

These magniloquent lines would seem to be by Roucher ... — Delille, at any rate, would have come up with something less bombastic.

M. René de Girardin was also a poetaster. — But he was a true gentleman as well. I think he was the author of the following lines, which may be found on a nearby fountain depicting Neptune and Amphi trite, — whose slight décolletage recalls the angels and saints of Châalis:

Passerby, having quit those flow’ry shores

Which my crystal waters so adored,

I have come here to serve your desires,

To offer man whatever he requires.

As you draw your treasures from my well,

Be aware of Nature’s gentle spell,

Let my liquid tributes ever inspire

Those peaceful souls who here retire.

I won’t comment on the formal qualities of these lines; — what I admire above all is the honorableness of the man’s intentions. — His influence can be deeply felt throughout the region. — You can notice it, for example, in the dance halls (where the benches reserved for the old folks are still visible) or in the archery ranges (with their ceremonial victory stands) ... or in the marble columns of the circular temples on the banks of rivers and ponds, dedicated to Venus Genetrix or to Hermes the Comforter. — Back then, all this mythology was laden with deep philosophical purport.

Rousseau’s tomb has remained exactly what it was: an ancient, simple monument surrounded in picturesque fashion by bare poplars and reflected in the still waters of the pond. Except that the small boat that used to ferry visitors over to the gravesite is now underwater ... And instead of gracefully gliding around the isle, the swans for some reason prefer the muddy waters of a stream that flows out of the pond between the reddish branches of the willows and then flushes into a washing-pool near the road.

We made our way back to the castle. — Constructed under Henri IV and then redone under Louis XV, it was probably built on the ruins of a far earlier structure, — for one can still see the remains of a crenellated tower whose style clashes with the rest of the building, as well as the traces of earlier drawbridges and posterns above the water-filled moat that surrounds its massive foundations.

The keeper would not let us visit the inside of the castle because it was still inhabited. — Artists have greater luck when trying to visit princely castles, for their current residents at least feel they owe something to the nation.

We were merely allowed to walk around the banks of the large lake, the left side of which is dominated by the so-called Tower of Gabrielle, which is all that remains of an ancient castle. A peasant who was accompanying us said: « Here is the tower where the fair Gabrielle was shut up ... Every evening Rousseau used to come and strum his guitar under her window, and the king, who was jealous, used to spy on him and had him killed in the end. »

This is how legends are born. Several centuries from now, this will be taken for fact. — Henri IV, Gabrielle and Rousseau are the major names that are remembered in this region. A mere two hundred years later, the memory of these two men has been conflated and Rousseau is gradually becoming a contemporary of Henri IV. Since Rousseau is beloved by the locals, they imagine that the king was jealous of him because his mistress preferred this man who felt so much sympathy for the sufferings of the oppressed. This imaginary scenario is perhaps truer than one might believe. — Rousseau, who refused the hundred louis offered to him by Madame de Pompadour, brought down the royal house founded by Henri. The entire edifice came tumbling down, — leaving in its wake the immortal image of Rousseau, his feet planted on the ruins.

As for his songs, some of which we recently saw at Compiègne, they celebrated other loves than Gabrielle. But are not the incarnations of ideal beauty as eternal as genius?

Upon leaving the park, we climbed the small hill leading to the nearby church. It is quite ancient, but far less exceptional than the other churches in the area. The cemetery was open; we inspected the tomb of De Vic, — a comrade-in-arms of Henri IV, — who received the domain of Ermenonville as a gift from the king. The inscription on this family tomb ends with an abbé. — Then there are the miscellaneous graves of daughters who married commoners, — a fate shared by many of the ancient houses. The ancient and virtually undecipherable tombstones of two abbés lie toward the edge of the terrace. Then, near a path, a simple stone bearing the inscription: Here lies Almazor. Is this the grave of a fool? — of a lackey? — of a dog? The stone does not say.

Looking out from the terrace of the cemetery, you get a fine view of the countryside, with glints of water here and there among the pines, the green oaks, and the great reddish trees. To the left, the sandstone expanse of the Desert has something Druidic to it. The tomb of Rousseau can be made out to the left, and slightly further on, the outline of a marble temple dedicated to a vanished goddess, — the goddess of Truth, no doubt.

It must have been a banner day when the delegation dispatched by the National Assembly came to Ermenonville to fetch the mortal remains of the philosopher in order to transfer them to the Pantheon. — Strolling around the village, you are immediately struck by the wholesome comeliness of its young girls, — beneath their large straw hats, they almost look Swiss ... The educational theories proposed by the author of Émile seem to have been put into practice here; a regimen based on sports, gymnastics, dance, and arts and crafts has made these young people healthy and energetic while at the same time developing their manual and intellectual dexterity.

I may have erred in my analysis of the escutcheon of the founder of the chapel of Châalis.

Someone has since supplied me with additional information concerning the abbots de Châalis. « Robert de la Tourette in particular, who was abbot from 1501 to 1522, undertook major restorations ... » His tomb may be seen in front of the high altar.

« Then you have the Medici: Hippolyte d’Este, cardinal of Ferrara, 1554; — Aloys d’Este, 1586.

« Then: Louis, cardinal de Guise, 1601; — Charles-Louis de Lorraine, 1630. »

It should be noted that the d’Este family only has a single eaglet at 2 and 3, whereas I saw three of them at 1 and 4 in the quartered shield.

« Charles II, cardinal de Bourbon (later, Charles X the Elder), — lieutenant general of the Île-de-France from 1551 on, — had a son named Poullain. »

I can easily believe that this cardinal-king had a bastard son; but I cannot understand these three eaglets in 2 and 1. Those of Lorraine are on a bend. Please excuse these details, but the key to the history of France is a good knowledge of heraldry ... And there is absolutely nothing we poor authors can do about it!

Ver.

I am very fond of this route, — I remember it from my childhood, — which, passing in front of the castle, links the two parts of the village of Ermenonville with four low towers at either end.

Sylvain says to me: « Now that we have had a look at Rousseau’s tomb, we should move on to Dammartin; from there, we’ll find transportation to Soissons and Longueval. Let’s ask those washerwomen in front of the castle for directions.

— Just follow the road to the left or the road to the right, they said ... Either way you’ll get to Ver or Eve, — then you’ll pass through Othys and after two more hours on foot, you’ll reach Dammartin. »

The misinformation supplied by these lovely young ladies launched us on something of a wild-goose chase. — I should also mention that it was raining.

« Let’s ask for another directions », said Sylvain (not unreasonably, if not in flawless French), « from the first people we run into. »

The first were three men making their way single file out of a small path onto the road.

They were : the steward of M. Ernest de Girardin, — followed by an architect, recognizable by the measuring stick he was carrying in lieu of a cane, and then a peasant in a blue smock. We were on the verge of asking further directions from them.

« Should we offer our greetings to the steward? I asked Sylvain. After all, he’s wearing a black suit. »

Sylvain replied, « By no means. It should be up to the locals to offer their greetings first. »

The steward passed by, rather surprised that we had not tipped our hats to him ... as no doubt any number of hats had previously been tipped to him.

The architect followed behind the steward, blind to the world. Only the peasant doffed his cap. We replied in kind.

« As you can see, said Sylvain, we have refused to lower ourselves ... let’s wait till we meet up with some woodcutter to ask for directions. »

The road was in very poor shape; the ruts were so filled with water that we had to walk on the grassy shoulder. And even so, our progress was often impeded by the huge thistles, — half-frozen but still spiky, — that came up to our chests.

After having progressed a league through the woods, we realized that since neither Ver nor Eve nor Othys was anywhere in sight, we were obviously on the wrong track.

Suddenly there was a clearing to our right, — one of those dark open spaces that seem extraordinarily bright when encountered in the middle of the woods...

There was a kind of primitive log cabin there with a thatched roof. A woodcutter was sitting in front of the door, smoking a pipe.

« How do we get to Ver?...

— That’s a long ways off ... If you keep on this road, you’ll end up at Montaby.

— But we want to go to Ver, — or Eve ...

— In that case, you’ll have to turn back for about a half a league (you can translate that into meters if you wish, to stay within the law), and then when you get to the archery range, take a right. Once you get out of the woods and back on open ground, everybody will be able to point you toward Ver. »

Well, one good turn deserves another. And yet the woodcutter refused the offer of a cigar, — a mistake on his part, I think.

We found the archery range with its victory stand and its ceremonial seats for the seven judges. Then we followed a path that must be quite lovely when the trees are green. We sang a local song from these parts to liven up the loneliness of the surroundings and to speed us on our way, a song that must have often lifted the spirits of wandering journeymen:

After my day was done ... — I went on my way!

(repeat)

And on my path I meet... — A girl so sweet.

I took her by the hand ... — And led her into the

woods.

When she was in the woods ... — She started to

weep.

— Ah, my little sweet ... — Why do you weep?

— I weep for my virtue ... — Which you want to

steal!

— Don’t weep, my sweet ... — That’s something

I’d never do.

I took her by the hand ... — I led her to the woods.

When we were in the fields ... — She began to sing.

— What is it, my sweet ... — That causeth you to

sing?

— I sing of what a fool you are ... — To have let me

escape:

You had a bird in hand ... — And let her fly away,

etc.

These songs can go on and on ... although the meaning here is quite clear. What strikes me above all is the mixture of unrhymed lines and assonances, — all of which remain perfectly musical. There’s a finer example of this no doubt in the song whose first line I quoted a while back and whose tune has a kind of sublime and lilting melancholy to it:

Beneath the white rose tree

The lady makes her way:

As bright as day ...

As white as snow!

In the garden of her father

Three horsemen

Fell upon her! ...

« Au jardin de son père,/ Trois cavaliers l’ont pris. » In today’s French, shaped as it is by the Académie Française and the vagaries of fashion, this last word (she being the direct object of the verb) should of course read prise; — but I’m just trying to underscore the musical possibilities of unrhymed verse. This is how the Germans, back in the days of (the much-imitated) Klopstock, composed poetry whose rhythms followed the classical prosody of longs and shorts.

One will say that prose is the only thing we know how to write. — But wherein does poetry lie? ... in measure, in rhyme, — or in the idea?

The road was devilishly long, though I don’t know how long the devil is, — this is the kind of fool question only a Parisian would ask himself. — While we were still in the woods, Sylvain sang the following round which must date back to the days of Louis XIV:

High-ho, a horseman, ho

Riding back from Flanders, oh ...

The rest of the song is difficult to summarize. — The refrain is addressed to the drummer:

Drum drum the call to arms

Drum till the break of day!

When Sylvain, — the strong silent type — gets started singing there’s no stopping him. — He sang me some sort of song about the Red Monks who were the original residents of Châalis. — And what monks they were ! They were in fact Templars! — The king and the pope got together to have them burned alive.

Let’s drop the red monks.

When we got out of the woods, we found ourselves among cultivated fields. We were carrying off a good portion of our native soil on the soles of our shoes; — but we redeposited most of it in the fields further along the way ... And we finally made it to Ver, — which, for a tiny village, turned out to be fairly sizeable.

The innkeeper was most friendly and her daughter most attractive, — with her lovely chestnut brown hair, her soft clean features, and that charming way of talking they have here in this land of mists, where even the youngest of girls have a contralto quality to their voices.

« So here you are, my boys, said the innkeeper ... Well, let’s toss a log on the fire.

— If it’s not too much trouble, we’d love a bite to eat.

— Would you like to start things off with some onion soup?

— That sounds just fine; what do you have to follow it up with?

— After the soup, there will be game. »

We had clearly come to the right place.

Sylvain is a talented and thoughtful fellow. Even though he never had much formal schooling, he is anxious to improve himself and to fill the holes in his scanty education.

He has his own ideas about everything. — He can assemble a pocket watch . . . or a compass. — The only thing that bothers him about watches is that you can’t get their chains to stretch far enough. And the only thing that bothers him about compasses is that their needles can only register the magnetic attraction of the pole. — And as for everything else, — as for the causes or uses of this and that, the information available can simply not be trusted!

The inn where we sought refuge is somewhat isolated, but solidly built: its inner courtyard is made up of a series of galleries constructed entirely along Valachian lines . . . Sylvain has managed to steal a kiss from the innkeeper’s daughter (who is very nicely built indeed), and we are sitting here, warming our feet by the fire, petting the two hunting dogs, watching the spit turn above the flames . . . just waiting for dinner . . .

« Let me tell you the plot, said Sylvain, of a play that I’d like to write about the death of Rousseau.

— O unhappy fellow! I said to him, you’re considering a career as a playwright?

— What can you expect? Everybody has to follow the path laid down for them by Nature. »

I cast him a severe glance. — He started reading:

At La Chevrette.

Grimm learns from his mistress, Mme d’Épinay, that she is illegitimately with child and that she will have to devise some sort of medical excuse to go into hiding in Geneva. She wants Rousseau to accompany her. Mme d’Houdetot, whom Rousseau is in love with, refuses to help her sister carry out this plan. Rousseau also refuses to come to her aid. General bitterness, recrimination, jealousy, etc. They threaten to inform his rival Saint-Lambert of this affair, — and to have him expelled from the Hermitage. Rousseau replies to all this by showering abuse upon them. He leaves the scene, leaving them to plot his ruin.

Montmorency.

Snow covers the ground. Rousseau in an open pavilion, « with no other fire than his heart’s », is writing a letter to d’Alembert. He is full of energy. At moments, he strikes into song and sings the melody of the Spartiates , lashing out at his enemies. Thérèse brings him his lunch, — a bit of wine, bread and water. — While she is serving chicken and claret to a stranger (who kisses her at the window), Grimm arrives asking for Rousseau, comically listing all the grudges that he and his friends hold against him and in the end asking him to copy out some music. Rousseau calms down and boasts about his talents as a music copyist. A gift from the Maréchale is brought for Thérèse. Grimm ironically congratulates his stoic friend on all the gifts he has been receiving. — The latter is angered by this, insisting he has no knowledge of these. Grimm withdraws, not believing a word he has heard. Rousseau calls over Thérèse and complains bitterly: « You’re bringing dishonor upon me, etc. » — The bookseller Duchesne appears, saying that he doesn’t dare publish Rousseau’s Émile without suppressing the Savoyard Vicar section. Rousseau refuses to agree to this, observing that his Dutch publisher has not requested this. Duchesne replies that this edition is certain to be cut to pieces by the censor. Rousseau, who has been sent into a rage by this piece of news, notices that Saint-Lambert has appeared on the scene; the latter, having been alerted by Mme d’Épinay, accuses Rousseau of having betrayed his friendship. Rousseau remains at a loss for words.

Aubonne.

Rousseau has wanted to see Mme d’Houdetot again. Saint-Lambert’s jealousy has reduced her to tears. Rousseau goes as far as to offer to take his own life. « You see, he explains, Parliament has issued a warrant for my arrest. So just say the word and I will offer myself up to the blade of the executioner who has already lacerated my book. » Saint-Lambert enters. He has heard everything. He opens his arms wide and offers his forgiveness, — adding that Messieurs Luxembourg and Malesherbes have asked him to retrieve their compromising letters and to help him make his escape. — Rousseau at this point launches into a tirade against the ruling class, the magistrates, and the clergy, promising that he will get his revenge on Archbishop Beaumont, who had the temerity to attack him from the pulpit, and that he, Rousseau, will go into exile with the full and joyous knowledge that he has shaken this unjust society to its very foundations, while predicting the full-scale catastrophe of a revolution soon to come. (He takes his leave.)

Motiers-Travers.

Thérèse and the stranger combine efforts to convince Rousseau to leave Switzerland; they recall what they have already done to bring this about: the scene of the children who were recruited to lapidate him at Motiers, the denunciation made to the local consistory, etc.; they conclude that they will have the stranger lodge some sort of complaint about the scandalous goings-on. This way they will be able to go live in a large city where they will be protected from gossip and have greater access to certain resources. Rousseau appears; he is sick and wearing his Armenian outfit; — he has just been gathering plants for his herbals and holds some hemlock and some periwinkles in his hand. He rambles on about Mme de Warens, about his suicide, about the injustice of mankind, about his sufferings, about his love for his native land. Thérèse hands him a package that has just arrived from she knows not where; he opens it and finds it contains nothing but libels of him. While his irritation mounts as he reads through these slanders, a delegation from the consistory is ushered in: it seeks guarantees that he will give up on his project of approaching the communion table because this would create too great a scandal . . . Rousseau again loses his temper, railing against all the wretched persecutions of which he has been the victim. — In the midst of this scene, the stranger makes an appearance, demanding that Rousseau pay him back the nine francs he had lent him when he was in need. Hearing this, Rousseau orders him out of his sight and threatens to report him to the Neufchatel police; but he is too exhausted and collapses, overwhelmed, saying to Thérèse: « Let’s get out of here. — But where to? — Wherever you wish. »

Ermenonville.

Seated in front of a little hut, Rousseau is talking with a young boy. The boy comes and goes, bringing back plants. « What is this? — Hemlock? — Bring me all the hemlock you can find. » Thérèse brings his coffee to Rousseau and notices a pistol in his hands: « What are you up to? — I’m going to put an end to an existence that has been one long agony on account of you. » He knows about everything and tells her as much. « The father of the children whom I have been accused of abandoning to the public orphanage is a groom in this very house, etc. » Thérèse falls to her knees. « It’s too late! . . . Just keep in mind that in the eyes of the world I have allowed you to bear a name that is destined for eternal fame.» The boy returns; Rousseau tells Thérèse to leave: refusing to budge, she points to the pistol. Rousseau finally surrenders it to her and she takes her leave. Then, while chatting with the boy, he squeezes the juice of the hemlock plants into his coffee which he proceeds to calmly drink while caressing the child. « Will you be attending the party at the chateau this evening? — No. — Why not? Monsieur Diderot, Monsieur Saint-Lambert, Madame d’Houdetot, etc. will be attending. » His writhings frighten the boy, who runs away. Rousseau finishes himself off with another pistol that he pulls from his pocket. The noise causes all the guests to come running. Madame d’Houdetot is the first to arrive and throws herself onto him to pick him up. — Rousseau is dead . . .

This, though its formulation requires a certain suspension of disbelief, is the piece that sums up Sylvain’s ideas, — and which he hopes to develop into a play. He was unfortunate enough to come across a stray volume of the end of Rousseau’s Confessions and his imagination did the rest ...

We can only bemoan the fact that he never received a proper classical education . . .

To the Director of the National

Sir,

It is certainly no fault of mine if there has been a ten-day hiatus in the elaboration of the historical narrative you requested of me. The work that was to have provided the basis for this narrative, namely the official history of the abbé de Bucquoy, was due to be sold on November 20th but in fact was not put up for sale until the 30th, either because it had been withdrawn for some reason (which was what I was told) or because the number of items in the catalogue was such that the book had to wait ten days before coming up for auction.

There was a chance the work would end up abroad, like so many of our books. The information I had received from Belgium referred only to the existence of Dutch translations of the book, but there was no mention of its original edition, printed in Frankfurt, with the German on facing pages.

As you are aware, I had unsuccessfully attempted to locate the book in Paris. It was not to be found in the public libraries, and the various rare book dealers I had visited had not set sight on it for some time. According to them, there was only one bookseller, M. Toulouse, who was likely to have a copy of it.

M. Toulouse specializes in books having to do with religious issues. He asked me what exactly the book I was looking for was about, and then said to me: « My dear sir, I do not have a copy of it on hand... But even if I did, I could not guarantee I would sell it to you. »

I understood that because he generally sold books to the clergy, he obviously wanted nothing to do with a son of Voltaire.

I replied that I could just as well do without the book, having already managed to acquire a fairly general idea of its title character.

« And this how people write history these days! » he sneered.[9]

You’ll probably tell me that I should have just borrowed the history of the abbé de Bucquoy from M. de Montmerqué or some other bibliophile. To which I would reply that a serious bibliophile never lends his books. In fact he does not even read his books, for fear of wearing them out.

There was a famous bibliophile who had a friend; — this friend had fallen in love with a sextodecimo edition of Anacreon, printed in Lyon in the sixteenth century and bound together with the poetry of Bion, Moschus, and Sappho. The owner of the book would not have defended his wife as vigorously as this sexto. Every time his friend dropped by for lunch, he would cross through the library with a studied indifference, casting a secret covetous glance at the Anacreon.

One day he said to his friend, « What are you planning to do with that poorly bound sixteenmo with the cut pages? I’d be happy to trade you the Italian version of the Dream of Polyphile in the Aldine editio princeps, with engravings by Bellini. The book is only of interest to me because I want to round out my collection of Greek poets. »

The owner merely smiled.

« What else could you want in exchange?

— Nothing, I don’t like swapping books.

— What if I also threw in my Romaunt of the Rose, with annotations in the hand of Marguerite de Valois?

— Nothing doing ... Let’s just drop the subject.

— You know I’m not a rich man, but I’d gladly offer a thousand francs.

— Forget it . . .

— Well, fifteen hundred then.

— Money matters shouldn’t come between friends. »

The bibliophile’s resistance only served to whet the desire of his friend. After several more offers, all of which were rejected, the friend, unable to contain his passion any longer, blurted out:

« Well, I shall have the book at your death, when they sell off your estate.

— At my death? But I’m younger than you are . . .

— That may be, but you have a wicked cough.

— And what about your sciatica?

— You can make it to eighty with sciatica! »

I’ll stop here. This discussion could easily be a scene out of Molière or one of those illustrations of human folly that only Erasmus was capable of treating in light-hearted fashion . . . The long and the short of it was that the bibliophile died several months later and his friend was able to get the book for six hundred francs.

« And to think that he refused to sell it to me for fifteen hundred», he would inevitably remark when showing off his treasure. But, once one got off the topic of this book (which had been the only cloud in their fifty-year friendship), his eyes would mist with tears as he affectionately remembered his fine friend.

This anecdote may serve a useful purpose in an age when the art of collecting, be it of books, autographs, or objets d’art, is no longer generally understood in France. It may also explain some of the difficulties I encountered in trying to procure the Abbé de Bucquoy.

Last Saturday, at seven in the evening, I returned to Paris from Soissons, — where I had been looking for further information on the Bucquoys, — in order to be present at Techener’s for the auctioning off of the library of M. Motteley, — an auction that has been going on for some time now and that was the object of an article in the Indépendance de Bruxelles the day before yesterday.

An auction of books or of curiosities holds the same attraction for the collector as the green felt of a gaming table holds for the gambler. The paddle with which the auctioneer pushes the books toward the buyers and rakes in the money makes this comparison all the more exact.

The bidding was lively. There was one book alone that went for six hundred francs. At a quarter of ten, the History of the abbé de Bucquoy was put on the auction block at twenty-five francs . . . When the price reached fifty-five francs, the regulars and even M. Techener himself called it quits: there was just one other person left bidding against me.

At sixty-five francs, my competitor bowed out.

The mallet of the auctioneer[10] awarded me the book for sixty-six francs.

I subsequently had to come up with another three francs and twenty centimes to pay the auction fee.

I have since learned that my competitor was a representative from the Bibliothèque Nationale.

The book is thus mine; I am now in a position to continue on with my work.

Yours, etc.

GÉRARD DE NERVAL

CONTINUATION AND CONCLUSION OF THE FOREWORD. — SAINT-MÉDARD THE ARCHIVES. — THE LONGUEVAL DE BUCQUOY CASTLE. — REFLECTIONS, ETC.

It takes only an hour and a half to walk from Ver to Dammartin. — I set off one fine morning, and was delighted by the ten-league horizon stretching out on all sides of the once redoubtable old castle that dominates the countryside. Its tall towers have been demolished, but you can still see the original location of its entranceway and courtyards on a raised site that has since been replanted with rows of lime trees to create an esplanade. The remaining moats have been safely hedged off with thorn bushes and belladonna, — although an archery range has been set up in one of them just on the outskirts of town.

Sylvain has returned home; — leaving me to continue on toward Soissons through the forest of Villers-Cotterets; all the leaves are down, but here and there one comes across green patches of pine that have been planted in an effort to reforest the huge areas that had formerly been thinned out here. — That evening, I arrived in Soissons, the celebrated Augusta Suessonium where the destiny of France was decided in the 6th century.

It was after Clovis triumphed at the battle of Soissons that this Frankish king underwent the humiliation of having to give up the golden vase he had acquired during the sack of Reims. Perhaps he thought that by rendering this sacred and precious object he might make his peace with the Church. But one of his warrior chieftains insisted that this vase be portioned out along with the rest of the booty that was to be shared in common, — equality being one of the cardinal principles of these Frankish tribes who had originated in Asia. — The golden vase was therefore broken up in parts, as was the head of this egalitarian chieftain when it eventually fell victim to Clovis’s hatchet (or francisque). Such was the origin of our monarchy.

Soissons, a fortified town of the second class, contains a number of curious antiquities. The cathedral, whose tall spire commands some seven leagues of surrounding countryside, also boasts a lovely Rubens behind its high altar. The original cathedral is far more curious with its lacy, festooned steeples, but unfortunately only its façade and towers still stand. There is another church that they are in the process of restoring with that exquisite stone and Roman mortar which are the pride of this region. I stopped to chat with some of the stone carvers who were having lunch around a fire of briar roots and who seemed to me to know their art history extremely well. They lamented the fact (as I had) that Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, the town’s original cathedral, was not being restored and that they were instead repairing this dreary church, — which had apparently been deemed more commodious. In these days of lukewarm faith, the flock of the faithful can only be attracted by a certain level of elegance and comfort.

The stone carvers told me that Saint-Médard was worth visiting, — it was just outside of town, beyond the bridge and the railroad station on the Aisne. The modern part of it has been remodeled into an establishment for the deaf-and-dumb. But there was a surprise in store for me. First, the crumbling tower where Abelard had briefly been held prisoner. You can still see the Latin inscriptions scrawled on the walls in his own hand. — Then, there were the huge vaults that have only recently been cleared out and where they discovered the tomb of Louis the Fair, — a kind of large stone vat that reminded me of tombs of Egypt.

Near these vaults, which are made up of underground cells with niches here and there as in Roman catacombs, one can see the prison where this same emperor was held by his children, the ledge where he slept on a mat, as well as various other details, all perfectly preserved because the limestone caverns, together with fossilized debris that sealed off these underground chambers, kept the humidity out. All they had to do was clear away the debris, — an operation that is still underway at the present, with new discoveries being made every day. It’s a Carlovingian Pompeii.

As I left Saint-Médard, I strayed along the banks of the Aisne which flows among the reddish stands of osier and the naked poplars. The weather was splendid, the grass was green, and two kilometers downstream I found myself in a village by the name of Cuffy, which provides an excellent view of Soissons with its towers in jagged profile and its Flemish roofs flanked by stone stairs.

They serve a refreshing local white wine in this village, as bubbly as real champagne.

And indeed, the lay of the land here is virtually identical to Épernay. It’s an outcropping of the nearby Champagne region, and the southern exposure of its slopes makes for red and white wines that are fairly tangy. All the houses are built out of millstones that have been perforated like sponges by snails and tendrils. The church is old, but rustic. There is a glassworks at the top of the hill.

It was no longer possible to lose my way back to Soissons. I returned to town to continue my research at the local library and archives. — I found nothing in the library that was not equally available in Paris. The archives are at the subprefecture and probably contain some interesting items, given how far the town dates back. The secretary said to me, « Sir, our archives are up there in the attic, but they haven’t been sorted into any kind of order.

— Why not?

— Because the town has allocated no funds for this purpose. Most of the items are in Gothic and Latin . . . We’d need to have some sort of specialist sent over from Paris. »

It was obviously not going to be easy to dig up anything about the Bucquoys there. As for the current condition of the Soissons archives, let me merely mention it in passing to concerned paleographers. — If France proves to have the resources to pay specialists to examine the memories of its past, I shall be happy to have somehow contributed to the undertaking.

There are so many other things I would have liked to have brought to your attention: the great fair that was at that moment going on in town, the municipal theater (which was playing Lucrèce Borgia), the local customs which have been well-preserved in the region, given the absence of any rail links to the rest of the country, — even though the residents of these parts resent this situation. They had hoped the Northern Line would pass through here, for it would have created numerous economic advantages . . . A person of great influence had apparently managed to convince the Strasbourg Line to run its tracks through the surrounding wood-lands (on account of the access to the timber this would permit), — but these are merely local suppositions and rumors whose truth cannot be substantiated.

I have finally reached the goal of my excursion. The Soissons to Reims diligence dropped me off at Braine. An hour later, I was at Longueval, the cradle of the Bucquoys. Here it was, the home of the lovely Angélique and the chief residence of her father — who seems to have had as many castles as his ancestor, the great count de Bucquoy, conquered during the wars of Bohemia. — The towers have all crumbled, as at Dammartin. But the underground vaults still exist. The site of the castle, which dominates the village below in its narrow gorge, is covered with new buildings, all built within the last seven or eight years (which is when the ruins were finally sold). Having thus soaked up enough local color to make any novel appealing or any work of history credible, I proceeded on to Château-Thierry, site of the celebrated statue of La Fontaine, who stands there dreaming on the banks of the Marne, a stone’s throw from the tracks of the Strasbourg Line.

REFLECTIONS

« And then . . . (This is how Diderot began one of his stories, someone is bound to remind me.)

— Go on!

— You have merely imitated Diderot.

— Who had imitated Sterne . . .

— Who had imitated Swift.

— Who had imitated Rabelais.

— Who had imitated Merlinus Coccaius . . .

— Who had imitated Petronius . . .

— Who had imitated Lucian. And Lucian had imitated numerous others . . . And most particularly, the author of the Odyssey who led his hero around the Mediterranean for ten years before finally bringing him home to that fabled Ithaca, whose queen, hounded as she was by some fifty suitors, spent every night undoing what she had woven that day.

— But Ulysses finally found his way back to Ithaca.

— And I have found my way back to my abbé de Bucquoy.

— Explain.

— What else do you think I have been talking about for the past month? » By now my readers must be sick of hearing about the count of Bucquoy, member of the League and later generalissimo in the Austrian army, — or about M. de Longueval de Bucquoy and his daughter Angélique, — who eloped with La Corbinière from the very castle whose ruins I have just been inspecting . . .

Or about the abbé de Bucquoy himself, a biographical sketch of whom I have provided, — and whom M. d’Argenson refers to in his correspondence as the alleged abbé de Bucquoy.

— The same probably holds true of those salt smugglers, the faux saulniers. Nobody believes in them anymore. — These fake salt merchants could not be true salt merchants. The documents of the period spelled their name as follows: fauxçonniers. They were simply people engaged in the illegal sale of salt, not only in the Franche-Comté, Lorraine, Burgundy, but also in Champagne, Picardy, Brittany, — everywhere. Saint-Simon on several occasions recounts their exploits, and even mentions that certain regiments of the army would engage in salt smuggling when their paydays became too erratic, — this under the reign of Louis XIV or during the Regency. Mandrin, at a somewhat later date, was a captain of these salt smugglers. Could a simple highwayman have had the resources to occupy villages and to engage in pitched battles?... But given the way history was written back in those days, there were no doubt good reasons to hush up the existence of such widespread resistance to the gabelles, — one of the principle causes of popular discontent. The peasants have always considered the salt tax as something that cut into their subsistence, — and as one of the heaviest burdens farmers had to bear.

THE HISTORY OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

The book I have just bought at the auction of the Motteley library would be worth far more than sixty-nine francs and twenty centimes had its margins not been so cruelly trimmed back. Its binding, which is brand new, bears the following title in golden letters: The History of the abbé count de Bucquoy, Esq., etc. If this duodecimo has any real value at all, it is probably because three brochures in verse and prose composed by the author have been bound into the book; but since these were originally printed on far larger sheets, their margins have been cut down to the very quick of the text, though without affecting its legibility.

The volume contains all the various items listed in Brunet, Quérard, and the Michaud Biography. Facing the title page, there is an engraving of the Bastille with the caption Living Hell, accompanied by the quotation: Facilis descensus Averni.

Luckily we have since had these lovely lines by Chénier:

The hell of the Bastille, now scattered to the

winds,

Is but a gust of lowly dust and lifeless ash;

And from this tomb of blackness now rises to the

sky,

Proud, sparkling, ready to bear arms,

The wing of Blessèd Liberty!

The French here echoes the Latin.

I. A ROADHOUSE IN BURGUNDY

The grand siècle was no more: — it had gone the way of all waning moons and suns. The period of Louis XIV’s brilliant military victories was now on the decline. He was losing the territories he had formerly conquered in Flanders, Franche-Comté, on the banks of the Rhine, in Italy. Prince Eugène was scoring successes in Germany, Marlborough was prevailing in the North ... The French nation was reduced to taking its revenge with the words of a folk song.

France had exhausted itself in the service of the old king’s dynastic ambitions and stubborn system of government. Our nation has always been eager to throw its support behind warrior kings, and Henry IV and Louis XIV of the house of Bourbon were only too willing to oblige, even though the latter had occasion to complain that it was only his « majesty » that had driven him to cross the Rhine. If necessary, these kings took refuge in their vices. Their amorous adventures contributed to the upkeep of castles and rustic retreats, and they were thereby able to maintain that ideal mixture of gallantry and valor which has always been one of the most chivalrous dreams of our nation.

There were certain provinces in the land, however, that did not share in this admiration and that made their protestations known in a variety of forms, either in the guise of religious nonconformity or, more explicitly, in the shape of peasant uprisings, rebellious leagues or outright fronds.

Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes was the final blow delivered against these remaining pockets of resistance. Villars had successfully quashed the uprising of the Cévennes; those Camisards who had survived the general massacre made their way to Germany in small groups, where they joined up with the millions of Protestant exiles who had been forced to emigrate with the wreckage of their fortunes, taking with them their skills in commerce and trade.

Louis XIV’s troops burned the Palatinate, the French Protestants’ place of refuge: « such are the pastimes of princes », as La Fontaine might have quipped. The sun of the grand siècle was still enjoying its own reflection in the ornamental pools of Versailles; but it was noticeably growing paler. Even Mme de Maintenon had ceased to battle against time: her major concern now was to instill religious fervor into the soul of her skeptical consort, whose only response was to present her with the sums he received every day from his Minister of Finances, Chamillart:

Three million in debts! . . . how on earth could Providence ever repay them?

Louis XIV was no ordinary man. It is very likely that he cared deeply for France and its military glory, but his character, combined with his blind nepotism, proved to be his undoing as he advanced in years and became subject to the machinations of his entourage.

Shortly after the battle of Hochstedt, which cost us a hundred leagues of land in Flanders, Archambault de Bucquoy was passing through Morchandgy, a small village in Burgundy, about two leagues away from Sens.

Where was he coming from?... Difficult to determine . . .

Where was he going?... We shall find out later ...

One wheel of his carriage was broken; the village wheelwright said it would take an hour to fix. The count said to his servant: « The only place I see around here is this inn . . . Let me know when the wheelwright has finished.

— It would be safer if the count just waited in his carriage.

— Don’t worry, my man! ... I’ll just pass the time in the inn; I’m sure there’s no danger. »

Archambault de Bucquoy made his way into the kitchen and asked for some soup. — But first he wanted to take a sip of the stock.

The innkeeper bowed to his request. But having found it a bit too salty, Archambault observed: « I see that salt is rather cheap in these parts.

— Not all that cheap, said the innkeeper.

— I imagine that the salt smugglers make it readily available.

— These are not people I know, she said, besides, they wouldn’t dare set foot here . . . His Majesty’s troops would immediately intervene; at any rate, all their bands have been cut to ribbons by the authorities, except for some thirty carters who were marched off to prison in shackles.

— Ah, said Archambault de Bucquoy, so the poor devils ended up getting caught, did they? . . . If they had a man like myself as their leader, their business outlook might be far rosier. »

From the kitchen he made his way into the dining room, where he quaffed down a bottle of excellent burgundy, which wouldn’t have aged well elsewhere at any rate.

Having taken his place at the table, Archambault de Bucquoy was served his soup, — which he continued to find too salty. The denizens of Burgundy, it might be remembered, loathe this particular adjective: ever since the fifteenth century, the vilest insult one could hurl at them was to call them salty Burgundians.

The stranger tried to explain himself.

— All I mean is that you don’t seem to be skimping on salt in this establishment . . . Which goes to prove that it’s not exactly a rare commodity in these parts.

— Right you are, chimed in a man of colossal stature who was drinking with friends at a nearby table and who got up and tapped him on the shoulder. But it takes men with guts to make sure that salt comes cheap around here!

— What’s your name? »

The man did not answer, but a fellow diner said to Archambault de Bucquoy:

« He’s the captain . . .

— My word, he replied, I see I am among a band of brothers . . . So let me speak freely . . . It’s clear you deal in contraband salt . . . Well, bully for you.

— Times are hard, said the captain.

— Well, my brothers! God looks out for those who look after others.

— Sounds like a Huguenot, some of the drinkers whispered to each other.

— The end is upon us, Archambault continued, the old king is on his last legs; his old mistress is running out of steam . . . He has sucked dry all the genius and vigor of France. The major battles these days have been reduced to the spats between Fénelon and Bossuet! The former maintains that “the love of God and of one’s neighbor can be pure and disinterested.” The other that “charity, qua charity, should always be founded on the hope for Eternal Bliss.” These, my brothers, are the burning issues of the day! »

Gales of laughter throughout the inn greeted this particular observation. Archambault lowered his head and gulped down his soup without uttering a further word.

The captain tapped him on the shoulder:

« What is your opinion of the religious ecstasies of Mme Guyon?

— Fénelon thought she was a saint and, despite his initial skepticism, Bossuet is now ready to concede that she is, at the very least, divinely inspired.

— Squire, said the captain, I suspect you of being something of an expert in theology.

— I’m done with all that . . . I’ve decided to become a simple Quietist, especially after having read the following in this book called Contempt for the World: “It profits a man more greatly to cultivate himself in the sight of the Lord than to cultivate the earth, which is as ashes to us.”

— A rule of thumb that a lot of people seem to be following these days, said the captain. Who cultivates the earth anymore? . . . People fight, people hunt, people do a bit of salt smuggling . . . or bring in contraband goods from Germany or England, or sell books that have been banned. People with a bit of money on their hands speculate on ground rents; but as for cultivating the earth, it’s a job for ignoramuses. »

Archambault seized the irony behind these words. « My friends, he said, I find myself here by sheer chance, and yet I feel I am one of you . . . I come from one of those ancient military families who have always feuded with kings and who have always been suspected of rebellious tendencies. I myself am no Protestant, but I am among those who have protested against absolute monarchy and all its abuses of authority . . . My family wanted to make a priest out of me . . . but I threw my frock away and became a free man. How many of you are there anyway?

— Six thousand! said the captain.

— I’ve put in some years of military service myself... I even tried to organize a regiment after having given up the religious life . . . But all the debts of my late uncle crippled the financial resources I had expected from my family . . . M. de Louvois caused us untold anguish!

— My dear sir, said the captain, you don’t seem to have lost your pluck . . . There’s still a chance to make a go of it. — Where will you be staying in Paris?

— With my aunt, the dowager countess de Bucquoy. »

One of the group got up and said to his table companions, « This is the man we have been looking for. » This man was known to be a member of the auxiliary police; he rushed out to find an officer of the constabulary.

At the very moment that Archambault de Bucquoy, forewarned by his servant, was getting back into his carriage, the officer arrived on the scene with six gendarmes and informed him he was under arrest. The company that had been gathered at the inn spilled out onto the road and tried to put a halt to the proceedings. He wanted to use his pistols but the officer now had reinforcements.

The traveler was placed in his carriage between two officers; the gendarmes followed in the rear. Soon they reached Senlis. The provost judge first questioned all those present in an impartial manner, then said to the traveler:

« You are the abbé de La Bourlie?

— No, your honor.

— You’ve been down in the Cévennes?

— No, your honor.

— You are a disturber of the peace?

— No, your honor.

— I know that, back at that inn, you claimed your name was de Bucquoy; but if you are indeed the abbé de La Bourlie, also known as the marquis de Guiscard, you can go ahead and admit it, for you will receive the same treatment. He got mixed up in the affairs of the Cévennes; you have compromised yourself with the salt smugglers ... Whoever you are, I shall be obliged to have you escorted to the prison of Sens. »

Archambault de Bucquoy found himself there in the company of some thirty salt smugglers who were being tried by the presidial court of Sens; the circuit judge, who had been sent over from Melun for this case, considered his arrest to have been ill-advised and rather unfounded. Nonetheless, he was already facing several charges.

He had been a military man for five years, then had become what was back in those days called a petit maître or man of the world . . . and then « without taking much account of the Christian religion», he embraced the system of belief « claimed by some to be a gentleman’s religion », that is, what used to be termed deism.

After an adventure whose details remain rather sketchy but which would seem to involve affairs of the heart, the count de Bucquoy threw himself into a religious devotion so fervid that it seemed merely the impulse of a moment. He joined the order at La Trappe and vowed to observe its law of silence, so difficult to maintain . . . Eventually he grew tired of this discipline, put his military uniform back on, and left the Trappist monastery without so much as a goodbye.

Back on the road, he quarreled with a man who had insulted him and wounded him with his sword. This stroke of bad luck landed him back in the lap of religion. He became convinced that he should shed his earthly garments and exchange them with those of a pauper and it was at this point that, converted to the doctrines of St. Paul, he founded a community or seminary at Rouen which he directed under the name of Le Mort, that is, The Dead Man. For him, this name symbolized the forgetting of all of life’s sorrows and the desire for eternal rest.

He proved to be extremely eloquent as a teacher, which may well have been the result of his protracted silence among the Trappists. At any rate, hearing of this, the Jesuits wanted to invite him to join their order; but he was afraid that this might too greatly « expose him to society ».

Although some of this previous history may well have caused the officials at Sens to view the abbé de Bucquoy with suspicion, it was his unfortunate luck to have been mistaken for the abbé de La Bourlie, who had been heavily implicated in the Cévennes uprisings.

In addition, the abbé de Bucquoy’s position had been further aggravated by the fact that in his carriage there had been found « books dealing extensively with revolutions, a mask, and a number of caps », not to mention tablets covered with ciphers.

When asked to justify these items, he managed to explain himself quite well, and his case was beginning to look up. But having grown restless during this stay in prison, he took it upon himself to attempt an escape, having persuaded the thirty salt smugglers who were locked up with him to join forces, together with a number of other inmates who had been arrested on petty charges in order to impress them into the regiment of the Count de Tonnerre. Back in those days, all along the highways men were being seized by this kind of levy in order to supply soldiers for the wars of Louis XIV.

The escape plan was soon discovered and the abbé de Bucquoy was accused of having enticed the daughter of the concierge to aid him in his scheme. At two in the morning they entered his jail cell, clapped his hands and feet into irons in a very civil fashion and then stuffed him into a van, escorted by a dozen constables of the watch.

At Montereau, he invited his escort to dine with him and, even though they were keeping a very close eye on him, he managed to get rid of certain compromising documents. The constables paid no great attention to this detail, but while bantering over the dinner table they told him that they dared him to escape.

They put him to bed, chaining one of his feet to the bedpost. They then bedded down in an entryway . . . When he had made sure that they were asleep, the abbé de Bucquoy managed to lift up the canopy of his bed and slipped the chain over the top of the bedpost to which he had been attached. Then he started toward the window, but bumped against the boots of one of the guards, who woke up and started yelling for help.

They chained him up more tightly, put him on the coach from Sens and brought him to the hotel of the Silver Key on the rue de la Mortellerie in Paris. Not being one to bear grudges, he paid for his escorts’ supper.

Now under secure guard, he was escorted by two of the constables to the Fort-l’Évêque, which was located on the quai now known as quai de la Vallée.

There he remained for eight days without being questioned. He was free, however, to walk around the prison yard, where he reflected on just how one might escape from this place.

Upon arriving, he had noticed that the façade of the Fort-l’Évêque featured a series of grated windows reaching all the way up to the attics and that these grates could easily serve as ladders, except for the spaces formed by the gaps between floors.

After his official questioning, in the course of which he proved that he was not the abbé de La Bourlie but indeed the abbé de Bucquoy, and after having let it be known that « he was nonetheless in a position to rely on the influence of some very prominent personages », they no longer kept him under close watch and he was allowed to roam the corridors of the prison unsupervised.

Since he still had some gold coins on him, the jailer allowed him to go up into the attic area during the evening in order to get the fresh air he said was indispensable to his health. During the day, he passed his time twisting the linen of his bed sheets and towels into ropes and one evening, pretending absent-mindedness, he tricked them into forgetting all about him as he wandered through one of the highest corridors.

It was no great affair to force the attic door and throw the mansard window open. When he cast his eyes down onto the quai de la Vallée (then known as the Vallée de la Misère), he gave a start, frightened at the sight of all these moonlit branches covered with spikes and wire entanglements and other obstacles which, he said « created the most fearsome spectacle . . . it was as if one were looking at a forest bristling with spears. »

Nonetheless, in the middle of night, when the sounds of the city had died down and he could no longer hear the patrols passing by, the abbé de Bucquoy cast his ropes over the edge of the roof and, despite all the spikes along the window grates, managed to slide down safely onto the pavement of the quai de la Valléé . . .

II. OTHER ESCAPES

We have not gone into all the details of the abbé de Bucquoy’s escape from Fort-l’Évêque for fear of interrupting our principal narrative. Once he had come up with his plan of escape, — namely, to slip out through one of the mansard windows in the attic, — he realized that the door that led to the gables had a lock on it. He had no tools on him, so he decided to burn down the door. His keeper had allowed him to cook in his room and had sold him some eggs . . . i.e. charcoal and a tinder box.

It was by means of these that he set fire to the door, wanting simply to burn a hole in it large enough to allow him to squeeze through. But the flames shot up and threatened to set fire to the roof timbers; luckily he was able to find a bucket of water to extinguish them but the smoke nearly asphyxiated him and the fire singed much of his clothing.

We have thought it fitting to mention these details in order to explain what happened to him once he set foot on the quai de la Vallée. As he lowered himself down the rope, the spikes on the window grates and the wire entanglements ripped his already charred clothing to shreds, so that he presented quite a sight to the various shopkeepers who were opening for business at the break of day. But nobody breathed a word, — except for a bunch of street urchins who scampered after him, pursuing him with hoots, before a sudden downpour scattered them.

Thanks to the distraction of this rain shower, which also kept the sentries in their boxes, the abbé was able to cross the Pont-Neuf, make his way to the Saint-Eustache quarter, and finally arrive in the neighborhood of the Temple, where he found a tavern that was open.

The sorry state of his clothing, to which he had not yet paid much attention, provoked a certain amount of merriment; he said nothing, paid for his fare, and went looking for a safe hideout. It would not have been a good idea to hole up at the home of his aunt, the dowager countess of Bucquoy, but he remembered that one of his servants’relatives lived at the Enfant-Jésus near the Madelonnets.

The abbé arrived at this woman’s house at an early hour, telling her that he had just gotten into town from the provinces and that, while passing through the forest of Bondy, he had been attacked by robbers, — which explained his sorry state. She kept him there all day and cooked him up some food. Toward evening, he sensed she was casting him suspicious glances, which led him to decide to look for a safer hideout . . . He was on good terms with a number of those noble-minded persons who frequented the salon of Ninon de Lenclos, who was over eighty years old at the time and still had her share of lovers, despite what Mme de Sévigné claims in her letters. The great houses of the Marais provided the last remaining asylum for those townspeople and members of Parliament who formed the opposition to the king. A few aristocrats, the last remnants of the Fronde, were occasionally to be seen in these ancient homes whose deserted buildings nostalgically recalled the days when the counselors of the Grande Chambre and of the Hôtel des Tournelles used to stride through the crowds in their red robes, saluted and applauded as if they were the Roman senators of the party of the people.

There was a small establishment on the île Saint-Louis that they called the café Laurent. It was there that the modern Epicureans gathered: they hid the dying embers of their simmering but stubborn opposition to the monarchy under an outward display of skepticism and gaiety, just as Harmodius and Aristogiton hid their swords under roses.

Their rapier wit, sharpened to a philosophical point by the reading of Descartes and Gassendi, was something to be reckoned with. This group was kept under strict surveillance but thanks to the protection of several great lords, such as d’Orléans, Conti, and Vendôme, and thanks also to their mastery of wit and gallantry, — which seduced even the police (or easily hoodwinked them), — the neo-frondeurs were generally left in peace, even if the court society of the day thought it could sully their reputation by referring to them as a mere clique or cabal.

Fontenelle, Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, Lafare, Chaulieu were at various points regulars at the café Laurent. Molière had previously frequented the place; Boileau was too old. The older habitués chatted about Molière and Chapelle and the dinners in Auteuil which had been the center of their first gatherings.

Most of the regulars of the café still remembered the days when the lovely Ninon reigned in her salon on the rue des Tournelles, where she died at the age of eighty-six, leaving a pension of two thousand pounds to the young Arouet, — the future Voltaire, — who had been introduced to her by the abbé de Châteauneuf, the last of her lovers . . .

The abbé de Bucquoy had a number of longstanding friends who were members of the cabal. He waited for them to leave the café and, pretending to be a beggar, approached one of them, drew him aside and explained his predicament . . . This gentleman took him back to his home, outfitted him with new clothes and provided him with a secure hideout, — from which the abbé was able to contact his aunt and receive necessary help. Safely ensconced in his hideout, he addressed several appeals to the Parliament, requesting that his case be dismissed. His aunt in turn petitioned the king himself on his behalf. But no decision was taken in the end, even though the abbé de Bucquoy had agreed to give himself up to one of the prisons of the Conciergerie if he received guarantees that his case would be adjudged in an equitable fashion.

Seeing that all these appeals had come to naught, the abbé de Bucquoy made the decision to leave the kingdom of France. He set off on the road to Champagne, disguised as a traveling salesman. Unfortunately he arrived at La Fère the very moment that a detachment of the allies who had kidnapped M. le Premier saw their path cut off in the vicinity of Ham and were forced to disband. The abbé was suspected of being one of these fugitives and even though he protested that he was a mere salesman, he was deposited in the prison of La Fère pending further instructions from Paris ... His eagle eye, which had previously allowed him to discover an escape route from Fort-l’Évêque, now brought into his view certain piles of stones which offered access to the ramparts of the prison.

Before entering his cell, he had asked his keeper to go fetch him something to drink; now left alone, he proceeded to scramble up onto the ramparts, from which he dove into the moat that surrounded the prison. He was swimming across this moat when the keeper’s wife, — who had seen him from a window, — sounded the alarm, with the result that he was seized on the far side and returned to his cell exhausted and all covered with mud. This time, to be double sure, they placed him in solitary confinement.

They had a hard time rousing the poor abbé de Bucquoy from the protracted swoon caused by his plunge into the water; the words he was mumbling about Providence having abandoned him to his fate aroused their suspicions that he might be a Calvinist minister fleeing the Cévennes: it was therefore decided to dispatch him to Soissons, the prison there being more secure than the one in La Fère.

Soissons is a most interesting town, should you be free to visit it. The prison back in those days was located between the bishop’s palace and the church of Saint-Jean; to the north, it abutted the town’s fortifications.

The abbé de Bucquoy was placed in a tower with an Englishman who had been captured during the Ham expedition. The turnkey who prepared their meals allowed the abbé, who continued to play the invalid as he had in Fort-l’Évêque, to take the air every evening at the top of the tower in which he was imprisoned. The fellow had a Burgundian accent, which the abbé recognized from having previously heard it in the vicinity of Sens.

One evening, he said to him: « Monsieur l’abbé, this would be a lovely evening to go have a look at the stars from the tower. »

The abbé looked at him, but without registering the man’s features.

The dungeon was shrouded in fog.

The abbé made his way back down and found the door of the dungeon wall open. A sentry was walking to and fro along the battlements. He withdrew when the soldier drew close to him and whispered: « Abbé . . . It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it . . . to go for a little stroll: who could possibly see you in this fog? »

The abbé thought this was merely an act of kindness on the part of a good-hearted soldier who was asking the sentry to bend the rules a bit for a poor prisoner.

At the edge of the parapet he felt a rope and, testing it up with his hand, realized that it had knots in it and that it had been equipped with a sling.

The sentry had his back turned, so the abbé, who was quite adept at this kind of thing, slipped over the edge, seated in the sling like a house painter.

He found himself in a moat empty of water and choked with weeds. The exterior walls were far too high to be scaled. But while looking for some sort of crack that might provide a chimney for his ascent, he discovered a drain opening surrounded by scattered debris and freshly split stones, — an indication that it was undergoing repairs.

Out of nowhere, an unknown figure lifted his head out of the drain hole and whispered:

« Is that you, abbé?

— Why do you ask?

— Because it’s such a lovely evening; but the weather is far better down here. »

The abbé immediately seized his meaning and proceeded down a ladder through this rather fetid shaft. The man silently guided him toward a spiral staircase and said: « Climb up it until your path is blocked . . . at which point, knock on the obstacle and someone will open it for you. »

The abbé climbed a good three hundred steps, then his head bumped against a trap door so heavy he could barely budge it with his shoulders.

A moment later, he felt the door lift and heard someone saying:

« Is that you, abbé? »

The abbé said: « Of course it’s me; but who are you? ... »

The stranger replied with a shush, and the abbé found himself standing on a solid floor, surrounded by utter darkness.

III. CAPTAIN ROLAND

As he felt his away around in the dark, the abbé de Bucquoy became aware of tables that extended for some length and felt even more unsure about where exactly he was. But the man who had previously spoken to him soon lit a lantern that illuminated the entire room. Silverware glinted in the display cases and thousands of gold jewels and precious stones sparkled on the tables . . . which were obviously countertops. There was no mistaking it: this was a goldsmith’s shop.

The abbé thought things over for a minute, then said to himself upon observing the features of the man holding the lantern: « This is surely a thief: whatever his intentions toward me, my conscience obliges me to alert the goldsmith that he is in the process of being robbed. »

And indeed, a second individual had crawled out from under one of the other counters and was rifling through the most precious jewels. The abbé shouted out: « Help! Seize the robbers! » It was in vain that they warned him to hold his tongue, clapping their hands over his mouth. But he had already made such a racket that a man in a nightshirt now appeared at the back of the room, candle in hand, frightened out of his wits.

« Sir, you are being robbed! the abbé shouted out.

— Help! Over here! Robbers! the goldsmith in turn screamed.

— Will you shut up?» said the man with the lantern, threatening him with a pistol.

The goldsmith quieted down, but the abbé started knocking frantically on the outer door while continuing to scream for help.

The measured steps of a patrol could be heard approaching on the street outside. The robbers again ducked under the counters. The clatter of rifle butts was heard right in front of the door.

« Open up! In the name of the king! » a rough voice commanded.

The goldsmith went looking for his keys and opened the door. The patrol entered.

« What’s going on here? said the sergeant.

— I am being robbed, the jeweler blurted out, they are hiding under the counters . . .

— Sergeant, said the abbé de Bucquoy, persons whom I do not know and whose motives I do not understand have conspired to have me escape from the Soissons prison . . . I have now realized that these persons are indeed criminals and, seeing as I am a gentleman, I absolutely cannot consent to being their accomplice . . . I know that the Bastille is awaiting me; so arrest me . . . and take me back to prison. »

The sergeant, who was a large burly individual, turned toward his soldiers and said: « First arrest the goldsmith and then strap the scare pear on him so that he’ll shut up. And then do the same with the abbé . . . he’s getting on my nerves. »

The scare pear was a special kind of gag made of a leather bag filled with bran: you could chew on it as much as you wanted but you couldn’t make a single peep.

P.S. We have received the following letter:

« Sir,

« Allow me to correct a small detail in your installment of December 8th. — This may have little effect on the whole history of the abbé de Bucquoy, but it will be of interest to those whose primary concern is historical exactitude.

« You say that de Bucquoy was taken to Fort-l’Évêque, situated on the quai de la Vallée.

« Readers of today might well recognize the quai de la Vallée as the stretch on the left bank of the Seine that runs from the Saint-Michel bridge to the Pont-Neuf, the location of the poultry market, known as the marché de la Vallée.

« But the For-l’Évêque (and not Fort, given that the name derives from the Latin forum) was situated on the right bank; to be exact, it occupied the house numbers 65, 67, etc. of the rue Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, and reached as far as the rue de l’Arche-Marion. This means that it also gave onto the quai de la Mégisserie, the portion of which that was closest to the Châtelet was called the Vallée de Misère. It is this latter place name that no doubt caused your confusion. Of For-l’Évêque nothing remains but its underground vaults and a steep gable roof on the rue de l’Arche-Marion.

ONE OF YOUR READERS. »

The author must confess that he was misled by the following words in the German edition: « Die Mauer von dem Vallée, etc. » The events therefore clearly must have taken place on the opposite side of the river. How simple it would have been to go to the National Library and consult the street atlas, — all twenty folio pages of it, — of Paris during the reign of Louis XIV. But public access to it is restricted to two days a week and it takes three days to get a library card. Not to mention that historians are not born overnight.

As to the word Fort-l’Évêque, it is indeed spelled this way in the books of the period.

The abbé, gagged as he was by the scare pear, could not for the life of him understand why the goldsmith who had been robbed was being submitted to the same treatment as he was. His surprise only increased when he noticed that the soldiers of the patrol were helping the two robbers clean out the store. A few phrases in argot that they exchanged finally made things crystal clear to him. The patrol was a fake patrol.

The sergeant, a hulk of Herculean proportions, was recognized by the abbé as none other than the captain of the salt smugglers with whom he had conversed back in Morchandgy, near Sens.

They had finished stuffing everything into sacks when they heard a major commotion, rifle shots and all, out on the street. « Let’s get everything loaded up », said the captain.

They made quick work of all the sacks and even the abbé, who had been tied up like a bundle, found himself slung over the back of one of the robbers. They all rushed out of the shop onto the rue de l’Intendance.

The glow of a major fire was visible over toward the gate of Compiègne . . . some sort of battle was going on across the way. The small band of robbers forced the garden gate of the bishop’s palace and, slipping in among the trees, met up with a larger detachment of men who were all carrying sacks on their backs and who were entering the city while others, exchanging the occasional sign of acknowledgment, climbed down the ramparts on ladders and then fled across the opening created by the crumbling counterscarp. From that point on they had to ford the river Aisne in order to reach the heights of Cuffy and the outer edges of the forest.

OBSERVATIONS

The author of this serial, — who has made every effort at historical veracity, — feels he should pause here for reflection. What worries him is that certain ill-disposed individuals might well question his right, — always interpreting the Riancey amendment in the narrowest of terms, — to engage in the mise en scène (or mise en dialogues) of certain portions of his narrative, the overall factual base of which can of course not be challenged.

They may be reassured, however, to learn that yesterday’s newspaper was not seized by the authorities, — which would tend to corroborate the intelligence of those bureaucrats who work as readers for the Stamp Office. But would it not be possible that the censors were simply waiting for the issues to pile up so that they could levy an all the more weighty fine? This is the sword that Damocles imagined in his dream.

On the other hand, we writers can reassure ourselves with the knowledge that when it comes to history, there are several ways of skinning the cat. Froissart and Monstrelet filled their narratives with dialogues whose authenticity they would certainly have trouble proving. Old Daniel and Mézeray followed the trick perfected by Titus-Livius, Tacitus, and others of having their characters deliver long harangues in Roman fashion, — while Péréfixe was not adverse to peppering his history of Henri IV with witticisms.

In our own day, Alexis Monteil has written a History of the French in dialogue form. M. de Lamartine has indulged in a number of novelistic techniques in his History of the Girondists. — As for MM. de Barante, Guizon, Thiers, etc., the licenses they take with their material should also reassure us.

But there is still one point that leaves us uneasy. When we inserted the rectification that was so kindly addressed to us yesterday, — we had not yet realized the extent to which this detail destroyed a crucial element in our narrative of the abbé du Bucquoy’s escape from the Fort-l’Évêque. Our documents indicating that he had fled in the direction of the neighborhood of the Temple, we thought it was entirely legitimate to have him cross over the Pont-Neuf. — Under the given circumstances, he could have taken another bridge . . . but it proved necessary to bind together the narrative by indicating his supposed movements.

Now that it has been proved that Fort or For-l’Évêque was located on the right bank of the Seine, it follows that our abbé could not possibly have crossed a bridge to reach the Temple quarter. To admit this error is to demonstrate the sincerity of our whole enterprise.

It should be added that another reason we interrupted our narrative of these most recent events is because we are not entirely sure that the prison of Soissons from which the salt smugglers tried to engineer the abbé de Bucquoy’s escape was located near the church of Saint-Jean. Having just undertaken a trip to Soissons a few days ago to make certain of this, we cannot plead innocent to the unforgivable sin of having forgotten to note down the exact name of the church.

If it now turns out that, not content to have sometimes dramatized the events of our story, — although this has merely involved touching up some of the dialogue recorded in documents of the period, — we have also been willing to make a detour in the direction of the historical novel, nobody could possibly prove to us that, being in possession as we are of a book no other copy of which apparently exists in France, we are deliberately trying to deceive the Stamp Office and the general public.

To return to the facts at hand: — people whose intentions remain unknown attempt to mastermind the abbé de Bucquoy’s escape from the prison of Soissons: — they are obviously members of that same band of salt smugglers whom he had met in Burgundy and to whom he had offered his leadership . . . A nobleman this rich and adventurous, this well-connected in France and abroad was precisely what they needed.

— Who was this captain Roland who later appeared disguised as the sergeant of a fake patrol?

— He had previously been a leader of the partisans in the Cévennes who then fled through the provinces of the East after the surrender of Cavalier. While the latter was parading around at Versailles as the chief of a defeated tribe, having sold out his brothers for a royal pardon, Roland, aided by bands of salt smugglers, — which, as is well known, were composed of a hodgepodge of protestants, deserters, and poverty-stricken peasants, — was trying to flee to the North to seek asylum there if necessary. In the meantime, his followers engaged in salt smuggling, secretly aided and abetted by the local populace and by underpaid soldiers of the royal armies. — They would set fire to a house and everybody would rush to the scene. Having created this distraction, the salt smugglers, who were well-armed and quite numerous, would then move sacks of salt into town through one of the poorly guarded ramparts. If necessary, they would wage battle and then beat a quick retreat into the safety of the woods. — If the archives of Soissons were in some sort of catalogued order, we might be able to find out just why these salt smugglers, who were partisans for the most, had ransacked the shop of a goldsmith on the rue de l’Intendance. Here, at least, is what we can gather from the historical record.

During the period when Protestants were in such a hurry to flee France that they had no time to put their affairs in order, jewels of considerable value had been deposited in this goldsmith’s care; the latter dabbled in usury and had loaned out various sums that were far inferior to the actual value of this collateral. Later on, the refugees sent representatives to reclaim the jewels and to repay the sums that were owed. The goldsmith resorted to an easy ploy: he simply denounced these claimants to the authorities. This then was the background to the expedition in which captain Roland was participating.

What a fine novel all this material could have made! The abbé de Bucquoy and the captain are quite compelling as characters. Let’s imagine what would happen if we slightly nudged the story along a different route: the abbé, now fallen into the hands of the salt smugglers, — who are retreating through the woods, loaded down with loot, — is taken to a castle. — The castle of Longueval, the birthplace of his family line, if you will, or the castle of Orbaix, another residence of his great uncle. — There, like some hero out of a Walter Scott novel, his memories take him back into the landscapes of his childhood, the Gothic vaults, the trefoils perforated with stained glass windows, the armory, the royal chamber all hung in white, the room to the rear where the lovely Angélique received La Corbinière. — All the loves of yesteryear, all the flowers of the days of yore, faded, yet still scented, like those sweet memories slumbering in a grandmother’s chest of drawers.

The majestic portraits of figures with moustaches and goatees à la Louis XIII, or the full beards of the reign of Henri IV, or the tapered beards of the Medici plunged him into a state of melancholy reverie, especially when he recognized eyes whose shrewdness now and then simmered with dark fires, or noble brows creased at an early age with the worries of war or the anxieties of adventure, or cheeks pale and hollow with fatigue, or thin lips that only sometimes softened into a dream, — all signs familiar from these images that have been conserved for us, and which he rediscovered within himself.

And then this other series of portraits of figures dressed as Diana or Venus, later all decked out with headdresses made of nets of gold and strands of pearls or large dashing hats and long-waisted gowns with trunk hose . . .

Now imagine a certain portrait of a young girl with locks of ash-blond hair cascading down from beneath her ribbons. Let this be, if you will, the portrait of a cousin of his, — a cousin long lost, be it because of a marriage or because she belonged to a Protestant branch of his family and was forced to follow her parents into exile.[11]

Would all of this not serve to explain just why the lovesick abbé, — herein following the example of his superior, the abbé de Rancé, — entered the Trappist monastery? — After all, the motivations behind this decision of his have always remained quite obscure.

Why exactly, as if suddenly struck by a lightning-bolt of illumination, did he cry out: « I adore the God of Saint Paul! » Can this only be attributed to personal convictions? Yet after having left the Carthusians, he subsequently walked away from the Trappists, claiming he could not find sufficient solitude in their midst, — and, in the end, only renounced his saintly vocation because, despite all of his efforts to lead the contemplative life, he was unable to succeed at making miracles. — This was obviously the decision of a very clear-sighted individual, for this being the case, why bother to be a saint?

One might object: « But this love, this despair, these changes of station, all this is far too vague for a decent novel; in novels, romantic passion must rule the day. » But what if, in this ancient castle where the salt smugglers are hiding out, frightening all the locals with tales of their ghostly apparitions, — for it was their habit to appear out of nowhere, as the story of Mandrin proves; — what if, in this ancient castle, one arranged to have him meet up again with the young girl whom he had so loved and who, fleeing with her family, pursued from one hiding place to another, now found herself in this very castle, protected by the rebel bands, awaiting the right moment to cross over the border into Germany? What if the abbé’s Catholic convictions stood in the way of his love for a Protestant? What if the castle, now surrounded by the archers of Louis XIV, were ordered to surrender? What if we mixed in an element of rivalry? What if we placed the ironic and majestic figure of the captain Roland at the center of the plot, either in the role of protector or romantic rival? Given all this, how could one possibly doubt we had a novel on our hands?

Alas, this genre is off limits to us. — Let’s plunge back into the domain of sober fact.

The salt smugglers, — who had attempted, for reasons known only to themselves, to orchestrate the escape of the abbé de Bucquoy, — found their route blocked beyond the river Aisne. A number of them were captured and then hanged or broken on the wheel, depending on their rank. The historical records no longer mention captain Roland, — and as for the abbé de Bucquoy, under greater suspicion than ever, he was transported to the Bastille.

When he was removed from his coach, he barely had occasion to cast an eye to the right and left, « whether onto the drawbridge or onto the counterscarp . . . they left him no time to dream up an escape», for he was immediately whisked off to the tower known as the Bretignière.

Still, it is quite disheartening for a writer who thought he might try his hand at the novel, — that most lucrative of all literary callings, — to realize that he will have great difficulty finishing a project he had promised for publication some three months ago, before all this Riancey amendment business. The author had not only come up with a corking plot for a novel, — but he had also read a slew of works about the century of Louis XIV; he had imagined descriptions of the festivities given in honor of the Duchess of Burgundy, — this figure whose pallor already indicated her forebodings of her approaching death . . . and yet whose gaiety enlivened the pomp and circumstance of the final years of Louis XIV’s reign. To create a contrast to all this, he would have staged the sudden appearance at court of the dowager de Bucquoy, cutting a severe figure (just like her ancestors in the League) as she arrived on the scene of the festivities in order to demand that her nephew be released from prison, given that the due process of the law was not being observed in his case: — we shall later cite the memorable petition that this great lady addressed to the king, whose tone was such that she herself almost risked being thrown into the Bastille.

What a picture might have subsequently emerged of the misfortunes that befell the court? Victories transformed into defeats. All the offspring of the old king dying within a few years, including that brilliant Duke of Burgundy whom everybody wanted to make into a hero and yet who merely displayed the courage befitting a Frenchman or the dignity of his position, — which however did not stop him from losing any number of battles. Of these princes who died in the service of their king, only one survived, the son of the Duke of Burgundy, — the future Louis XV. — One was already hearing the following observation being made back in those days: « My brothers, only God is great! »

We therefore also have to abandon the fruits of a visit we recently made to Baden, where we were able to locate the most attractive figure of the grand margravine Sibylle who, while her son was off waging war against the Turks, had become a second Marguerite de Navarre. Her residence, the château de la Favorite, also summons up memories of the Renaissance: especially to be admired are the one hundred fifty figures painted in silhouette on the mirrors of her boudoir, — representing her in a dizzying variety of carnival disguises.

What a series of landscapes and dramatic tableaux one could have painted while recounting the welcome that the grand margravine might have extended to the abbé de Bucquoy and his cousin! Following this, one might have caught glimpse of Villars off in the distance, threatening the region, burning castles, bringing the war to the Danube, — and finally escorting the unfortunate count de Bucquoy back to the Bastille, where he was forced to once again become a mere abbé.

But our reader will have to forgo all this. — Can the bare-bones account of a poor prisoner compensate for the absence of dramatic highlights such as these? . . . We have nonetheless thought it would be of interest to disassemble the machine that we were unable to put into motion as a whole, to reveal its inner workings, — its anatomy, if you will. Sometimes one takes great pleasure in visiting the wings of a theater to take a peep behind the scenes at all the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene-shifting, the step-ladders and demon-traps, in short all the tricks of the theatrical trade . . . We have just laid before your eyes all the compositional secrets of an historical novel, — fully mapped out, but alas no longer feasible!

LIVING HELL

There were eight towers to the Bastille, each of which had its own name and each of whose six floors offered light by a single window. A grate on the exterior and interior walls revealed a sort of room hollowed out by the space in between, at the far side of which one could draw breaths of fresh air.

The abbé had been placed in the tower of the Bretignière.

The others went by the names of: the tower of the Bretaudière, the tower of the County, of the Well, of the Treasure, of the Corner, of Liberty. The eighth was called the tower of the Chapel. As a rule, one left these towers only in order to die, unless one was marched down the dank stairs into one of those legendary oubliettes , the remnants of which were rediscovered when the Bastille was finally demolished.

The abbé de Bucquoy spent several days in the lower rooms of the tower of the Bretignière, which was a sign that his case seemed quite serious indeed, for otherwise prisoners were normally better treated upon their arrival. His first interrogation, presided over by d’Argenson,[12] allayed suspicions that he had been the willing accomplice of the salt smugglers of Soissons. In addition, he relied on his family’s highly placed connections, with the result that governor Bernaville himself graced him with a visit and invited him to lunch, — a common practice upon the arrival of prisoners of a certain rank.

The abbé de Bucquoy was placed in a room on a higher and better ventilated floor along with other prisoners. This was in the tower of the Corner: a place where inmates enjoyed more privileges, thanks to the presence of a certain turnkey called Ru known for his gentle humanity toward his guests.

Upon entering the cell that he was to share with the other inmates, the abbé was seized with amazement upon seeing that an image of Christ on the frescoed walls had been grotesquely disfigured.

Red horns had been drawn on his head and on his chest had been printed the word: Mystery.

Above this, someone had written in charcoal: « The great whore of Babylon, mother of all the depravities and abominations of the earth. »

It is clear that this inscription had been placed there by some Protestant who had previously inhabited the prison. But no one had thought to erase it thereafter.

Above the fireplace there was an oval portrait representing Louis XIV. Another prisoner had scrawled the word Spitoon around his head and his features were barely discernible under all the mutilations.

The abbé de Bucquoy said to the turnkey: « Ru, why has one allowed these respected images to be defaced in this fashion? » The turnkey just chuckled, replying that « if one had to punish all the crimes committed by the prisoners, we’d be here all day breaking them on the wheel and burning them, so it’s far better just to allow educated gentlemen to see to what extremes their exaggerated ideas can push religious fanatics. »

The inhabitants of this tower enjoyed a relative amount of liberty; at certain hours of the day they were allowed to take strolls in the governor’s garden, which was situated in the center of the fortress and was planted in quincunx with lime trees and included a bowling green and tables where prisoners with money could play cards and enjoy refreshments. Governor Bernaville had sold the franchise for this concession to one of the prison cooks.

The abbé de Bucquoy, who no longer posed any threat of escape and who had enlisted the help of powerful friends, was now part of this privileged circle. He had been supplied with gold, a commodity rarely frowned upon in prisons, and had managed to gamble away several louis in cards to Corbé, thus gaining the friendship of this nephew of the previous governor of the prison (M. de Saint-Mars), who still retained a position of considerable influence under Bernaville.

It might be useful to provide a portrait of this Bernaville by quoting the physical description left of him by one of the Bastille’s prisoners who later took refuge in Holland.

« He has two green eyes that are sunken under two thick eyebrows: when he looks at you, it’s as if you were pierced by the gaze of a basilisk. His brow is as wrinkled as the bark of a tree on which some mufti had engraved the Alcoran . . . The pallor of his complexion seems to express all the yellowing cares produced by a lifetime of envy. Avarice has etched its gauntness into his facial features. His cheeks are as creased as an old coin purse or a monkey’s buns . . . The stubble of his beard is a reddish bay shading into burnt umber.

« When he was formerly a chevalier de la mandille (i.e. a lackey), he wore his hair flat and twirled into rolls like candlesticks. He later dropped this affectation.

« Although he rarely speaks, he no doubt must listen to himself talking, because his mouth stretches from ear to ear. And yet he opens it only to utter monosyllabic commands, which are immediately carried out by the minions he has trained to fawn over his every word . . . »

Bernaville had in fact formerly been in the service of the marréchal Bellefonds and had worn the mandille, that is, the livery of the household; but at the latter’s death he managed to insinuate himself into the good graces of his widow, whose children were still quite young, and it was on her recommendation that he was placed in charge of the hunts at Vincennes, a position which proved quite lucrative, seeing as it involved the supervision of the hunting lodges and eating establishments where the gentry of the court spent money hand over fist. This explains why he was contemptuously referred to as that greasy spoon . . . He was the perfect example, — or so the inmates claimed behind his back, — of a lackey who had spent so much time with his feet on the backboards of carriages that in the end he had just clambered in . . . But let us not make any rush judgments before actually having observed the conduct of the said Bernaville; it would hardly be fair to lend credence to the exaggerated tales of prisoners.

As for the aforementioned Corbé, his henchman, here his portrait, drawn somewhat in the style of the school of Cyrano:

« He wore a short gray jacket of Nîmes cloth that was so threadbare that he scared the daylights out of thieves when dangling a noose in front of their noses; his trousers were blue, worn at the seat, patched at the knees; his hat was all faded and its ancient black plume had lost most of its feathers, just as his wig was a mere memory of red. His coarse features, which placed him far below his actual station, were those of a lowly prison guard, not an officer of the law’s. »

The abbé of Bucquoy, playing at piquet with Renneville under a trellised arbor, remarked: « How comfortable we are here; with evening soon approaching, who would even think of trying to escape?

— The thing would be impossible, said Renneville . . . But before you wax ecstatic about the kind of treatment we’re receiving in this castle, wait a bit longer.

— You do not feel at ease here?

— Very much so for the moment . . . You remind me of my first honeymoon days here.

— How did you end up here?

— Quite simply, like many others . . . I have no idea why.

— You must have done something.

— I wrote a ditty.

— Recite it to me . . . I’ll give you my honest opinion.

— The problem is that this little ditty gave rise to another poem, a parody of mine, using the same rhyme schemes and which was later erroneously ascribed to me ...

— That sounds far more serious. »

At that very moment, Corbé passed by, all smiles, and said: « Ah! you’re discussing your poem again, are you, M. de Renneville? ... Don’t worry about it: it’s just a charming trifle.

— Well, it’s the reason I’m locked up here today, said Renneville.

— But can you complain about the conditions?

— How could I? We are in the care of such gentlemen! »

Corbé, his vanity flattered, moved to another table wearing his implacable smile . . . He was offered refreshments by the prisoners but, as usual, refused to partake. Now and then he would cast his eyes toward the windows, from which one could occasionally glimpse the vague outlines of the lady prisoners across the way, — and it seemed to him that there was no place on earth more delightful than the confines of this prison of the State.

« And just what exactly, said the abbé de Bucquoy to Renneville while shuffling the cards, did your ditty consist of?

— It was just a traditional tribute. I had addressed it to M. le marquis de Torcy with the idea that he might show it to the king. The poem praised the powerful union of Spain and France leagued in battle against the allies . . . which I developed using a conceit drawn from the rules of piquet. »

Renneville proceeded to recite his ditty, which ended with the following lines, addressed to the Northern allies:

Should you dare to enter battle against France and

Spain,

You will not take a single trick . . .

In your hands, you will be left holding a Fourteenth

and a Fifth!

« By which I was obviously alluding to Louis XIV and Philip V.

— This strikes me as quite innocent, said the abbé de Bucquoy.

— Far from it, replied Renneville; although this pretty little conceit was admired by everybody, someone was malicious enough to parody my lines and turn them into a poem in praise of our enemies. As follows:

Let’s do a repique . . . and outwit old Spain and

France,

Who will have to fold . . . with a Fourteenth and a

Fifth in their hands.

« I ask you, Monsieur le comte, how in the world could I have written this treasonable parody of my own poem without even observing the same meter?

— I agree, this would seem highly improbable, replied the abbé, I know, for I am something a poet myself.

— Well, this was enough to arouse the suspicions of M. de Torcy, who had me thrown into the Bastille[13]. . . even though I had the full support of M. de Chamillard, to whom I have dedicated several books and who has always kindly offered his services to me.

— What? . . . said the abbé pensively, do you mean a mere ditty can land you in the Bastille?

— A mere ditty? . . . Even a single couplet can open the gates of this hell. We have among us here a young man . . . whose hair is beginning to grow gray, it is true . . . who because of a couplet he had composed in Latin ended up spending years on the islands of Sainte-Marguerite . Then when M. de Saint-Mars (who had been the jailer of Fouquet and Lauzun) was named governor here, he brought the man to the Bastille with him so he could get a change of air. This young fellow, — or, if you wish, this graybeard, — was one of the Jesuits’ prize students.

— And they did nothing in his defense?

— This is what happened. Above the entrance to their Paris headquarters the Jesuits had inscribed a Latin couplet in honor of Christ. Later, wanting to make sure that they had the support of the court against certain powerful gentlemen of the robe or cabalists who were out to attack them, they decided to stage a tragedy with choruses, in the same style of the performances that used to be given at Saint-Cyr. The king and Mme de Maintenon were delighted to be invited. Everything in this celebration was calculated to remind them of their younger years. Since there were no girls to be had in the establishment, they had dressed up their young male students as women and the choruses and ballets were executed by the company of the Opera. Such was the success of this production that the king, — utterly charmed, utterly dazzled, — allowed the Jesuit fathers to inscribe his name above the door of their building . . . The existing inscription ran: Collegium claro montanum societatis Jesu. This was replaced by the following: Collegium Ludovici magni. — The young man in question wrote a couplet on the wall in which he observed (in Latin) that the name of Jesus had been replaced by the name of Louis the Great . . . This is the crime for which he is still atoning in this very prison.

— But how can we really complain about the hardships that we are being subjected to here? asked the abbé de Bucquoy. I suffered a bit in the provincial jails, but this is a prison of the State . . . and, sitting beneath this arbor, enjoying the warmth of a full-bodied burgundy wine, I feel quite disposed to be patient.

— It’s four years now that I’ve been patient, Renneville replied. If only I told you the things I’ve have had to endure . . .

— I’d like to know what just terrible punishments they had in store for somebody guilty of a ditty.

— I would have no complaints at all, had I not left my wife in Holland... But that’s neither here nor there. After my arrest at Versailles, I was brought to Paris by chaise. Passing by the Samaritaine, I pulled out my watch and, comparing it to the sundial on the fountain, realized that it was eight in the morning. The officer escorting me said to me: “Your watch works well.” This man was not entirely uneducated: “The fact that I was forced to arrest you does not sit well with me; it goes entirely against my inclinations . . . But these were the last orders I was required to carry out in my previous position, which I have now left to become the equerry of the Duchess of Lude. My name is De Bourbon . . . My military obligations have ceased as of today; do not hesitate to get in touch with me should the need arise . . .” This officer struck me as an honest man and as we passed by the Pont-Neuf, I suggested we stop off so I could offer a drink to him and to the three constables who were accompanying us and whose tunics were emblazoned with the image of a mace bristling with spikes and the motto: monstrorum terror. As we shared our drinks, I could not help quipping: “You are the terror . . . and I am the monster!” They burst into laughter and we all arrived at the Bastille in fine spirits.

« The governor received me in a room hung in yellow damask with silver fringes . . . He offered me his hand and asked me to stay for lunch . . . His hand was cold, which I took to be a bad omen . . . Corbé, his nephew, fluttered into the room and proceeded to brag about his exploits in the war against the Dutch . . . and of his later triumphs in the bull rings of Madrid where the ladies, admiring his bravura, had tossed him eggs filled with perfumes. At the end of lunch, the governor said to me: “Rest assured, I shall always be at your service” and turned to his nephew to add: “Escort our new guest to the pavilion of the princes.”

— Clearly the governor held you in the greatest esteem, sighed the abbé de Bucquoy.

— The pavilion of the princes can be seen from here . . . it’s on the ground floor. There are green shutters on its windows, except that you have to pass through five doors to reach the room. I found it rather depressing, despite the fact that there was a decent straw mattress on the bed and the sleeping alcove was furnished with a curtain of crisp brocade, not to mention the three armchairs upholstered in tailor’s canvas.

— You were far better lodged than I, said the abbé de Bucquoy.

— I was beginning to worry that I might have to go without towels and sheets when I saw the turnkey Ru arriving with linens, blankets, vases, candlesticks, in short, with everything I needed to feel comfortable in my new abode.

« It was now evening. Guided on their way by Corbé, two boys from the prison canteen delivered my dinner.

« This dinner consisted of: — a nicely simmered bowl of pea soup garnished with lettuce; a portion of poultry; a slice of beef; a serving of forcemeat and mutton tongue . . . For dessert there was biscuit cake and pippins . . . Burgundy wine.

— I would certainly be quite happy with prison fare like this, said the abbé de Bucquoy.

— Corbé bowed in my direction and asked: “Will the food be charged to your own account, or is the king footing the bill?”

« Not feeling very hungry after the lunch that I had been offered by the governor, I had asked Corbé to sit down and help me down the dinner; but he replied that he was not hungry and even refused to share a glass of burgundy.

— That’s pretty serious! said the abbé de Bucquoy.

A bell sounded, alerting the prisoners that it was time to return to their cells.

« Did you know, said Renneville as they were making their way back from the garden, that this Corbé is quite a ladies’ man?

— You don’t say! What a monster!

— Yes, he’s quite the seducer . . . though he is a bit more coercive when it comes to the female prisoners . . . Yesterday we witnessed a rather disagreeable scene in our stairwell. There was a huge ruckus going on in the dungeons at the bottom of the tower. Finally the noise died down . . .

« We saw the turnkey Ru come stumbling up the stairs, his trousers smeared with blood. He said to us: “I have just saved that poor young Irish girl whom M. Corbé wanted to please . . .” The latter had locked her up in solitary confinement because she had refused to accept his visits; and since she was still refusing his attentions, he decided to place her in one of the lower dungeons.

« When they tried to transport her downstairs, she put up so much resistance that they had to drag her all the way, with the result that her head was bouncing up and down on the steps of the stairs ... I ended up getting all spattered with her blood. She had been dragged out of her bed half-naked . . . and Corbé, who was directing the entire operation, tortured her without mercy.

— Did she die? asked the abbé de Bucquoy.

— She strangled herself that very night. »

IV. THE TOWER OF THE CORNER

The society gathered on the third floor of the tower of the Corner was quite select. It was here that the favorites of the governor were lodged. In addition to Renneville and the abbé, their number included: a German gentleman by the name of the baron of Peken, who had been arrested for saying that « the king only sees things through the lenses of Mme de Maintenon »; then a certain de Falourdet, compromised in a case involving the forgery of titles of nobility; then a former soldier called Jacob le Berton, accused of having sung off-color songs in which the name of the king’s mistress had been disrespected.

Renneville pitied the latter a great deal for having been locked up for such a minor infraction, and claimed that Mme de Maintenon should have followed the example of Catherine de Medici who, opening her window in the Louvre palace one day, saw a group of soldiers roasting a goose by the banks of the Seine and whiling their time away by singing a song directed against her. She contented herself with yelling out to them: « Why say such bad things about this poor queen Catherine, who has done you no harm whatsoever? After all, it’s thanks to her money that you are able to roast this goose! »

The king of Navarre, who was standing by her side, wanted to rush downstairs and immediately punish the rascals, but she said to him: « No, stay put; all this is taking place so far beneath us. »

There was also an Italian abbé by the name of Papasaredo.

When dinner was served, Corbé as was his custom supervised the staff and asked if anybody had any complaints about the service. « I must complain, said the abbé Papasaredo, that we now have too many people in our midst, especially with the recent addition of a second abbé . . . I’d prefer having women! And God knows there are certainly a great number of women available for company here.

— This is completely against the rules, said Corbé.

— Come now, Corbé my man, can’t you just lock me up in a cell with one of the female prisoners? »

Corbé shrugged his shoulders.

« Be a sport, you could certainly offer me a Marton or a Fleury or a Bondy or a Dubois, in short, one of your leftovers . . . or why not that pretty Marguerite Filandrier, who sold wigs in the cloister of Sainte-Opportune and whom we hear singing all day long.

— Is this really the way a priest ought to talk? asked Corbé . . . Gentlemen, what do you think? As for the Filandrier girl, we threw her into the hole for having exchanged words with one of the officers of the guard.

— Oh! said the abbé Papasaredo, that was not the real reason . . . You just couldn’t bear the thought that she had been chatting up this officer . . . Corbé, your jealousy can render you most cruel!

— Not in the least, retorted Corbé, flattered by this observation. This girl’s hobby is raising and training birds. We allowed her to keep a few sparrows here. Her window overlooks the garden. One of her sparrows escapes and is pounced upon by a cat. She cries out to the officer: “Oh! please save my little bird! It’s the prettiest one I have, the one who dances the rigadoon!” The officer was gullible enough to run after the cat and didn’t even succeed in saving the bird: he has been placed under arrest and she has been thrown into the hole, and that’s that. »

Corbé turned on his heels and took his leave, avoiding the sarcasms directed at him by the Italian abbé. He was, moreover, in an excellent mood because one of the inmates had just bribed him with a sapphire ring and because the abbé de Bucquoy, unhappy with his prison rations, had decided to have his dinners delivered from the outside at his own cost. M. de Falourdet commented that after he had similarly decided to pay for his own meals, his treatment had notably improved, even if the price for doing this was very high and the service was miserable: you would pay a livre for champagne and they would deliver you a wine worth six sous, and so on and so forth down the line.

He had therefore said to Corbé: « Listen, I’ll pay you twice the price, but I want better provisions. » Corbé had replied: « Right you are, our food suppliers are such scoundrels . . . Let me deal with the choice of wines and victuals myself. »

In fact, from that day on the quality of the fare noticeably improved.

After Corbé had left, the conversation grew more heated; only the baron of Peken sat there sulking in front of his plate, his anger slowly building up and finally exploding in the direction of the turnkey Ru.

« Jesus Christ! said the baron, why am I sitting here looking at a half bottle of wine, whereas the new fellow over there has a full one?

— Because, said Ru, you are paying five livres a day for your meals, whereas M. le comte de Bucquoy is paying twice that.

— What! One can’t even get a full bottle of wine with one’s meal at five livres! shouted the baron. Get that lousy greasy spoon of a Corbé back in here and let’s ask him if a gentleman can be content with a half-bottle of rotgut! If I ever see that little bottle again, I break it over your head!

— Monsieur le baron, said Ru, please calm down and above all don’t request M. Corbé’s presence; if he is asked to return, he’ll immediately throw you into the hole . . . As you may or may not know, this would be in his interest: all it costs to feed a prisoner in the hole is one sou per day and lodging amounts to nothing because it is the king who pays the bill . . . As for the profits that are being made on our food, one third of them end up in the pockets of M. Corbé and the rest go to M. de Bernaville. »

Ru, as can be seen, was a master of diplomacy and the only thing the inmates reproached him for was the occasional disappearance of certain items of food, most notably those little patés which he absolutely could not resist. — But in general, he was aware that his prison duties resembled those of a clergyman, which tended to keep him on the ecclesiastical up and up.

Renneville and the abbé de Bucquoy declared that they were not big wine drinkers and offered some of theirs to the baron of Peken, who finished up his dinner without a fuss. Renneville recounted the hardships he had to endure when they had placed him in solitary confinment after he had engaged in a similar outburst. He had come up with an ingenious invention that enabled him to correspond with the prisoners on the floor above and below him.

He had devised an extremely simple sort of alphabet which consisted of a series of raps made with the rod of a chair. One rap for the letter a, two for the letter b and so on and so forth. His neighbors eventually deciphered his system and responded in kind, except that it took very long. Here, for example, is how the word Monsieur was rendered:

M (12 raps), o (14), n (13), s (18), i (9), e (5), u (20), r (17).

In this fashion he was able to learn the names of all the prisoners in the same tower, with the exception of a certain abbé who wished to remain anonymous.

In prison all one talks about is prison, or the ways of dealing with its inconveniences. De Falourdet told of how he had managed to establish communication with one of his friends in the prison using a system no less ingenious than the alphabet invented by Renneville. He had been housed in one of the upper rooms of the towers which were called calottes and whose only drawback was that they were as boiling hot during the summer as they were glacially cold during the winter; — on the other hand, they offered magnificent views. Before he was separated from his friend, M. de La Baldonnière (who had been thrown into the Bastille for having discovered the secret of making gold and not having wanted to share this secret with the ministers), Falourdet had learned that the latter was going to be transferred to the ground floor of the same tower, which opened out onto a small garden that had been laid out in one of the bastions. Using the quill pen he had manufactured out of a pigeon bone and the ink he had made out of diluted lamp black, he wrote letters which he then threw out his window and which, having been weighted with a small stone, landed at the foot of the tower.

His friend La Baldonnière had in turn trained one of the governor’s dogs who was often in the garden to go fetch stray pieces of paper and to bring them back to his window grate. By supplying the dog with scraps from his table, he had transformed the canine into a useful accomplice . . . who would faithfully retrieve the little packages that Falourdet had dropped from the tower above. Their strategem was eventually discovered, however. The correspondence between the two friends was seized and they were both roundly bullwhipped by the prison guards. Falourdet, who was deemed to be the guiltier of the two, was transferred to a dungeon which he shared with a dead man whose corpse lay there for three days before being removed. Later, having been supplied with money, he was able to regain the good graces of the governor.

While he was still living up in the calotte, he had also found a means to correspond with his wife who had rented a room in one of the nearby houses of the faubourg Saint-Antoine. He would draw very large letters in charcoal on a plank which he would place inside his window; then, by erasing these letters and replacing them with others, he would be able to convey entire phrases in her direction.

Someone else mentioned that he had come up with a system that was even more efficient: having trained pigeons that he had caught on top of the towers, he would attach letters to their feet which they would then carry to houses on the outside.

Such were the conversations among the prisoners of this tower of the Corner, whose previous inhabitants had included Marie de Mancini, the niece of Mazarin, who had created the Academy of Humorists, and later the celebrated Mme Guyon who had only briefly passed through the Bastille but whose confessor, now an eighty-year-old, was still a prisoner during the days when our hero, the abbé de Bucquoy, resided there, unconcerned (unlike his fellow inmates) about finding means of corresponding with the outside. Seeing that his case was making little progress, he was instead contemplating an outright escape from the place. Having thought the matter through, he sought the advice of his fellow inmates who were quick to assure him that the thing was utterly impossible. The abbé’s ingenious mind, however, had soon solved the problems that such an escape presented. Falourdet was of the opinion that the plan proposed by the abbé had a good chance of succeeding but that money would be needed to encourage Ru and Corbé to look the other way.

At which point the abbé proceeded to produce, — from where, nobody knew, — a great amount of gold and jewelry: suddenly his plan seemed to become far more feasible. It was decided to rip bed sheets into strips in order to create rope and to use the metal sawhorses supporting the beds and nails from the fireplace to fashion iron hooks.

Things were proceeding quite nicely when Corbé burst onto the scene with soldiers, announcing that he was wise to their plans. One of the prisoners had betrayed them . . . none other than the abbé Papasaredo. He had hoped to obtain a pardon by acting as an informant; but the only advantage he gained in the end was to be treated a bit more leniently for a short period of time.

All the others were thrown into the hole; the abbé de Bucquoy was dispatched to the lowest dungeon of all.

V. FURTHER ESCAPE PLANS

It would be pointless to underscore how unpleasant the abbé comte de Bucquoy found life in this dungeon. After several days of penitence, he resorted to a strategem that had served him well on a number of previous occasions: he decided to play the invalid. The turnkey who was looking after him became quite alarmed at his condition, which alternated between a kind of feverish exaltation and a deep depression which rendered him as motionless as a corpse. He managed to fake this condition so well that the Bastille medical staff had great difficulty recognizing any signs of life in him and declared that his illness was degenerating into a state of complete paralysis. After he had undergone this examination, he pretended that half of his body was fully paralyzed and that he could only move one side of it.

Corbé came to see him and said:

« We’ll have you moved elsewhere. But see where your escape plans have gotten you?

— Escape plans! exclaimed the abbé. Who possibly could hope to escape from the Bastille? Has anybody ever succeeded?

— Never! Hugues Aubriot, who had completed the construction of this fortress before being locked up in it himself, only managed to get free because of the revolution of the Maillotins. He’s the only person who has left this place against the wishes of the government.

— My Lord! said the abbé, were it not for this illness that has struck me down, I would have nothing to complain about . . . except for these toads that leave tracks of slime on my face when they traverse it during my sleep.

— You see what is gained by rebellion.

— On the other hand, I am finding some consolation in educating the rats down here: I give them the king’s bread which my poor state of health does not allow me to eat . . . Let me show you how intelligent they are. »

And he called out: « Moricaud? »

A rat scampered out of a crack in the stone wall and came to attention at the abbé’s bedside . . .

Corbé could not help but laugh out loud, and said:

« Let’s find you more appropriate quarters.

— If I had my choice, said the abbé, I’d like to share a room with the baron of Peken. I had just begun converting this Lutheran and now that my spirit is turned toward more spiritual matters because of this malady that God has visited upon me, I would be most happy to finish up the job. »

Under Corbé’s orders the abbé was transported to a room on the second floor of the tower of the Bretaudière where the baron of Peken had already spent several days in the company of an Irishman.

The abbé continued to play the paralytic, even in front of his companion, for the recent events in the tower of the Corner had put him on his guard. The German got along very poorly with the Irishman who soon also got on the abbé’s nerves. The baron de Peken, even more easily irritated, insulted the Irishman so grievously that the matter had to be resolved by a duel.

A pair of scissors was taken apart, the two blades were well sharpened, and the two men commenced the duel in accordance with the rules. The abbé de Bucquoy had initially thought that this was all a joke, but seeing that the situation was heating up and that blood was being shed, he started pounding on the door, hoping to attract the attention of the turnkey.

When questioned about this affair, he declared that it was the Irishman who was at fault, so that the latter was taken away, leaving him alone with the baron. It was at this point that he confided to him that he had come up with a plan of escape that was bound to be far more successful than the previous one: it involved piercing the wall that communicated with the latrines whose malodorous drainpipes in turn led down to the sewers on the rue Saint-Antoine.

They set to work with great determination, eventually breaking through the entire wall . . . But alas the baron of Peken was something of a prattler and a braggart. He had managed to establish communication with the prisoners on the floor above through the passage they had cleared, and soon both of them were conversing with these new and unidentified acquaintances.

The baron mentioned to them that he and his friend were hoping to escape and, whether out of jealousy or out of the desire to curry favor, one of the residents of the upper rooms, a certain Joyeuse, the son of a judge from Cologne, denounced them to Corbé, who in turn informed the governor of their plans.

Bernaville summoned the abbé de Bucquoy to his quarters. The latter, given his paralytic condition, had to be physically carried in; but once there, he engaged in a spirited defense, claiming that the baron of Peken, after several glasses of wine too many, had decided to regale this Joyeuse, who was something of a simpleton, with a number of tall tales. Besides, it would be a crying shame if an unfounded accusation of this sort should mean that he would have to be separated from the baron, whose conversion was coming along so nicely.

The baron corroborated his version of the events and Joyeuse’s accusations were in the end dismissed. Furthermore, the two friends had been tipped off in advance by their turnkey, whom the abbé’s money had transformed into a useful ally and had thus been able to repair the wall in time, so that nobody suspected anything.

The abbé de Bucquoy was placed in another room in the tower of Liberty. He continued his efforts to convert the Lutheran baron of Peken, while at the same time furthering their plans of escape.

He had been quite humiliated to hear from the turnkey just how easily a certain Du Puits had made his exit from the prison of Vincennes using a set of false keys.

This Du Puits had been the secretary of M. de Chamillard and was known as the golden quill because of the excellence of his handwriting. He was no less adept at duplicating keys, which he forged by melting down the tin plates on which his meals were served.

With the keys that he had thus fashioned, this Du Puits used to leave his room at night to pay visits to his fellow prisoners, and even to some of the female inmates, who received him with as much astonishment as largesse.

He finally succeeded in escaping from Vincennes and took refuge in Lyon with a certain Pigeon, his cell-mate. « Never, observes Renneville in his memoirs, never was Doctor Faustus deemed as great a magician as this Du Puits. »

As fate would have it, he was rearrested in Lyon where, in order to come up with quick cash, he had forged a number of official treasury bonds issued in the name the king.

At the Bastille Du Puits had less luck escaping than at Vincennes. He had succeeded in climbing down into a moat where they were mowing weeds and had noticed that when the workers went home in the evening they left the gate open behind them. He therefore hid out near this gate but it still being daytime, a sentry took a shot at him with his harquebus and he was taken back to the Bastille where, after a long illness, he was reduced to limping around with a bracket under his arm.

The end of this story was far from reassuring. Nonetheless, when it came to his own escape plans, the abbé de Bucquoy remained undeterred. He was careful to strip all the bottles he was served of their wicker casings, assuring his turnkey that he needed these to light his fire in the mornings. He spent his days weaving the wicker into ropes, using thread he had extracted from his bed sheets, his towels, and from the canvas cover of his mattress, and being careful to sew all these back up so nothing would be suspected.

For his part, the baron of Peken occupied himself with the fabrication of tools with bits of iron that he picked up here and there, or the odd nail or kitchen utensil. Having heated up all this metal in the fireplace, they then sharpened it on the stoneware pots in which their water was kept.

The wicker ropes were extremely bulky. The abbé de Bucquoy pried up a number of floor tiles and succeeded in creating a hiding place for all this material. One day, however, he dug so deeply under the floor that its joists, which were rotten with age, suddenly collapsed, causing him and the baron of Peken to plummet into the room directly below, which was occupied by a Jesuit priest . . . who, already a bit soft in the head, now went completely out of his wits.

The abbé de Bucquoy and his accomplice escaped with a few minor contusions. The Jesuit priest was shouting for help so frantically that the abbé enjoined him (in Latin) to kindly shut up, while promising to include him in their future escape plans. The Jesuit, feeble of mind as he was, thought that his life was being threatened and bellowed all the louder as a result.

The turnkeys arrived on the scene and the abbé de Bucquoy and the baron in turn started screaming and yelling, complaining to high heaven about the rotten floor that had caused their fall.

Upon being returned to their room, they quickly hid the rope ladders and iron hooks that they had stored under the floor. All was going well until one day a workman arrived, informing them that he had been ordered to create a grate in the door . . . The abbé asked him why this was being undertaken and he replied that the grate would be used to slide in food to the mad Jesuit who was to be soon moved into this cell. As for them, they were going to be transferred to a better room . . . This did not sit well with our two friends, for they had already managed to saw through the window bars and had prepared everything for an imminent escape.

The abbé requested an interview with the governor and informed him that he was most happy with his current quarters; besides, if he were to be separated from the baron of Peken, the latter’s conversion would become impossible, seeing as he had not yet been able to gain the Lutheran’s full confidence . . . But the governor would have none of it: and upon his return the abbé informed the German of their dilemma.

On the abbé’s advice, the latter pretended that the mere threat of changing rooms had rendered him so melancholy that he was being driven to suicide. The baron played his part so well that instead of just shedding a few drops of blood, he opened the veins of his arms and, terrified at the sight of this blood spurting all over the place, the abbé called out for help. The sentries alerted their superiors, and even the governor made a visit to their cell, manifestly moved.

If the governor had displayed this level of sympathy, it was because he had been recently instructed to set the baron free . . . But, to further profit from his prison fees, he had delayed his liberation for as long as possible.

After this adventure, the abbé de Bucquoy was transported not to the dungeons but to one of the top floors of the towers called calottes. Previous prisoners in the room had taken it upon themselves to cover its walls with frightening images and quotations from the Bible that allowed them « to prepare them to meet their maker ».

Other prisoners, less religious than political in inspiration, had written satires of the following ilk on the wall:

Under Fouquet, if the truth be told

We were favored with an Age of Gold;

The Age of Silver followed in its wake

With Colbert at the helm; his policies alas

Caused Pelletier to make many a mistake

And we all lapsed back into the Age of Brass.

But now bereft of money and bread,

The sky has fallen on poor France’s head:

Under Pontchartrain’s greedy reign,

The Age of Iron dawns once again.

Another prisoner had been so bold as to scrawl the following doggerel on the wall:

King Louis should not get too sore

About losing Milan, Naples, Sicily,

Spain and Holland in his glorious wars.

After all, he’s got La Maintenon for his whore:

How could a king want anything more?

The abbé was not at all happy to find himself all alone in this octagonal room with its ogival vaults. They offered him the company of a Capuchin called Brandebourg, but the abbé soon complained that this priest put on too many airs and insisted on being treated like royalty. He asked that the governor place him with some decent Protestant lad so that he might devote himself to his conversion. He even mentioned a certain Grandville about whom he had already heard from his previous cellmates.

This Grandville was a very enterprising fellow, less interested in conversion than in making his escape; he proved to be an excellent match for the abbé de Bucquoy.

VI. THE FINAL ESCAPE ATTEMPTS OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY

The abbé and Grandville set to work on the wall; they had almost broken through it by demolishing an ancient bricked-up window when suddenly their labors were interrupted by the arrival of two new guests, one of whom was the chevalier de Soulanges, a trustworthy fellow whom the abbé de Bucquoy had previously met. They exchanged embraces. As for the fourth individual, he was a queer duck by the name of Gringalet who was suspected of being an informer, one of those spies whom the authorities always placed in the larger cells. But they made his life so disagreeable that he asked to be transferred out of the room and was soon replaced by someone else.

The four prisoners, recognizing that they were all men of honor and brothers in arms, held a council in which they discussed strategies for escape; in no time the abbé’s plan was unanimously agreed upon.

The plan was simple: to saw through the window bars and to lower themselves into the moat in the middle of the night by means of ropes. The abbé had managed to hold on to a few of the wicker ropes he had woven with the baron de Peken and he explained to his companions how to fabricate more of them and how to melt metal into hooks.

As for sawing through the bars, he showed them a tiny file that he always kept ready at hand and that would nicely do the job.

His recent escape attempts having been so often foiled, the abbé had grown somewhat distrustful of his accomplices; he therefore requested that everybody formally promise not to betray the others. To this effect, he wrote out passages from the Gospels with a pen made of straw and ink made of diluted soot and demanded that everybody solemnly swear upon the Bible.

They argued, however, as to how best approach the counterscarp once they had made it to the moat.

The abbé thought it made better sense to climb up the counterscarp that lay on the rue Saint-Antoine side of the prison; the others were for « cutting across the demilune of the moat that runs just outside the gate ».

Opinions were so divided on this matter that they had to name someone president of their council . . . In the end they resolved that, once in the moat, each individual would just follow the escape route that suited him best.

It was on the 5th of May at two in the morning that the escape finally took place.

To support the ropes, they needed to affix a hook to the window which would project out and thus provide the necessary clearance. They had constructed something that resembled a sundial which they attached to a rod and stuck out the window, the hope was the sentries would get used to the sight of this contraption. Then they had to stain the ropes black using soot and hang them off the hook that projected from the window. Since they ran the risk of being seen as they dangled in the front of the window of the floor below, they had taken the precaution of hanging out a large blanket which they pretended to be drying.

The abbé de Bucquoy was the first to make his way down. It had been agreed that he would observe the back-and-forth movements of the sentry and then inform his comrades by jerks of the rope whether it was a good moment or not to descend. He lay there waiting in the tall weeds for over two hours without seeing anyone come down.

Things had been delayed because Grandville’s girth was such that he was unable to pass through the opening they had made in the bars and which they were now frantically trying to enlarge.

At long last two of the prisoners made it down the ropes and informed the abbé de Bucquoy that Grandville, unable to squeeze through the bars, had decided to sacrifice himself to the common good, saying « that it was better if just a single one of them perished. »

The abbé’s mind, however, was entirely on the sentry; he offered to take him out of commission, seeing as how his comings and goings were seriously threatening their escape route over the counterscarp on the rue Saint-Antoine side. His friends disagreed, however, saying they would rather flee in another direction and take advantage of the cover provided by the weeds.

The abbé, never one to vacillate, stuck to his guns and remained where he was, waiting for the sentry to move away before he climbed over the wall and dropped into another moat. Once he had crossed this moat, he found himself at the top of a drain pipe which connected onto the rue Saint-Antoine. All he then had to do was to clamber down the roof of a building that housed butcher stalls.

As he was preparing to slip down the drainpipe, he wanted to check on his comrade’s progress; but all he heard was a rifle shot, which led him to conclude that theyhad unsuccessfully attempted to disarm the sentry.

As he was sliding down the drainpipe, the abbé de Bucquoy had cut himself on a metal flange, opening a gash in his arm. But paying no attention to his wound, he hastened down the rue Saint-Antoine, then turned onto the rue des Tournelles and, crossing all of Paris, finally arrived at the porte de la Conférence at the home of one of his acquaintances from the café Laurent. There he hid out for several days. This time, however, he did not make the mistake of remaining in Paris: adopting a disguise, he traveled through Burgundy and finally reached Switzerland. There is no record of his having stopped along the way to deliver speeches to the salt smugglers.

The abbé’s escape had serious repercussions on the remaining prisoners in the Bastille. Up to that point popular opinion had it that it was impossible to escape from the place . . . Bernaville was so upset by the abbé’s exploit that he ordered all the trees cut down in the prison garden and in the street just beyond the ramparts. Then, having learned from Corbé of the means by which some of the prisoners were communicating with the outside, he had all the pigeons and crows that nested on the top of the towers killed, and even slaughtered the sparrows and robins who provided such solace to the inmates.

Corbé was suspected of having been bribed by the abbé de Bucquoy into neglecting his duties. His behavior toward the female prisoners had also earned him several reprimands.

He had fallen desperately in love with the wife of an Irishman by the name of Odricot; she had been locked up in the Bastille without her husband even knowing she was now his neighbor. Corbé and Giraut (the prison chaplain) were most attentive to this lady, who ended up pregnant . . . but by whom, it was impossible to know.

Corbé nonetheless convinced himself that he was indeed the father and managed, through his connections, to obtain a pardon for his lady Odricot, a lovely lass indeed, if slightly too red-headed. Corbé was quite avaricious and so greedy for money that it was generally suspected that he had allowed a Protestant minister by the name of Cardel to starve to death just so that he could inherit some of the silverware that this poor man owned. But his lady Odricot so dominated him that he ruined himself to buy her a carriage and to supply her with servants and all the outward appearances of great wealth. After a great number of well-founded complaints were lodged against him, he was finally dismissed and everything would indicate that he did not meet a happy end.

Bernaville, who was such a glutton for gold that it was estimated he was making a profit of six hundred thousands francs a year off his prisoners, was eventually replaced by Delauney just before the death of Louis XIV. The last notable prisoner to be consigned to his care was the young Fronsac, duke of Richelieu, who had been caught one day hiding under the bed of the duchess of Burgundy, wife of the heir apparent to the crown . . . The wags of the period quipped that it was a shame that the duke of Burgundy’s bed of laurels had not protected him from this affront. As it turned out, he died shortly thereafter, leaving Fénelon to regret all the flowery phrases he had concocted to instruct his royal pupil in the fine art of ruling.

VII. CONCLUSION

We have shown the abbé de Bucquoy escaping from the Bastille, no mean feat. It would be tedious at this point to recount his various travels through those German-speaking lands towards which he directed himself upon leaving Switzerland. The count of Luc, to whom J.-B. Rousseau addressed a celebrated ode, was France’s ambassador there and attempted to smooth things out with the court. But he had little success, no more than did the abbé’s aunt, the dowager de Bucquoy, who addressed a petition to the king that began as follows:

« The widow of the count de Bucquoy very humbly protests to Your Majesty that the honorable abbé de Bucquoy, nephew of my husband the count, was so unfortunate as to be falsely arrested in the vicinity of Sens, having been mistaken for the abbé de La Bourlie, suspected of being an agent of M. de Marlborough sent to encourage the salt smuggling of the fauxçonniers of Burgundy and Champagne and thereby to foment rebellion. »

The countess underscored the miscarriage of justice that had led to this unfortunate arrest and depicted the sufferings undergone by this faithful subject of the king, the count abbé de Bucquoy, who had been confused with the abovementioned rebels and had initially been held in the prison of Soissons alongside those individuals guilty of kidnapping M. de Beringhem.[14]

The countess subsequently attempts to show just how much bravery it took for her nephew to escape from the Bastille, in the most discreet manner, on the fifth of May, having put a great deal of sweat and blood into this exploit . . . Now that he finds himself on foreign soil, however, he requests that his innocence be recognized, protesting that he is one of the king’s most zealous subjects, indeed « one those subjects à la Fénelon who goes straight to the truth, a truth in which the king finds a glory whose brilliance is grounded only in virtue . . . »

The countess furthermore requests that « his prison records be entirely erased and expunged, at Sens, at Fort-l’Évêque, and the Bastille, and that all his rights, honors, prerogatives, and titles, etc. be restored and that the six hundred pistoles taken from him during his various imprisonments be repaid ». She goes on to observe that her nephew’s valet and serving woman, Fourier and Louise Duputs, had also conspired to run off with two thousand écus of his when he escaped.

The dowager de Bucquoy concludes by requesting that her nephew be rewarded with an honorable employment either in the armies of the king or in the church, he being entirely open to whatever order one might want to place him in, disposed as he is « to find everything acceptable, as long as he can contribute to the common good ».

The petition was dated July 22, 1709.

It met with no response.

When in Switzerland, it is quite easy to descend the Rhine, be it on ordinary boats or on those timber rafts which often carry entire villages downstream on their planks of pine. The many canals into which the branches of the Rhine feed in turn facilitate access to the Low Countries.

We know not how the abbé de Bucquoy made it from Switzerland to Holland, but it is certain that he was welcomed there by the grand pensionary Heinsius who, being a philosopher, received him with open arms.

The abbé de Bucquoy had already traced out an entire project for a republic, one which was applicable to France and which included the means necessary to eliminate the monarchy. He entitled his proposal: Anti-Machiavellianism, or Metaphysical Reflections on Authority in General and Arbitrary Power in Particular.

« One could say, he observed in this proposal, that republics are merely reforms that now and then occur when time has caused abuses to creep into the administration of a nation. »

Probably to be fair to both sides, the abbé de Bucquoy adds that monarchies may likewise often offer a violent remedy against the excesses of republics . . . « Nature expresses itself in both of these forms of government, the republican and the monarchical, but far more spontaneously in the former. »

He admits that monarchical power in the hands of a sage would be the most perfect of all systems, but where find such a sage?... All things considered, the republican state strikes him as the lesser of two evils.

« Arbitrary power (which for the abbé meant the government of Louis XIV) makes all too frequent appeals to God only, but why? To cover its own injustices . . . It can amaze the multitudes or so stun them with visions of Gehenna that their dumbfoundment seems a form of applause; but caution should be exercised . . . All it takes is a few stalwart men, or the right moment or stroke of luck, or some small fortuitous turn of events, in order to awaken a people from its supposed slumbers.

« And how sure can you be, the abbé adds, of all the hidden atheists in your midst who, not unlike you, think only of themselves? Don’t expect them to come to your assistance when push comes to shove. “They shall follow the times and leave you astounded that they were the first to abandon you.” »

We are here merely sketching out the barest outlines of a biography in order to suggest the abbé de Bucquoy as one of the precursors of the French Revolution. The work whose overall tenor we have just summarized is followed by an Extract from a Treatise on the Existence of God in which the author seeks to demonstrate, against the philosophers of materialism, that matter cannot possesses its own existence and movement by virtue of itself.

« Is each atom of matter, he asks, possessed of an independent existence? If this were the case, there would be as many necessary beings as atoms . . . This would produce gods without end, as in the imaginations of the heathens. » Bodies, according to the abbé, possessed no independent existence or movement . . . Could one possibly claim that « at the center of matter, one atom pushes upon another and from this reciprocal interaction order results? » This the abbé cannot accept without the intervention of a God.

« Bodies can no more account for their own regular movement than for their existence. Would chance have to be factored in here? Much depends on this. But does it exist on its own, in violation of everything we have been told? Then it would be God.

Is it neither this nor that? Then it would be nothing! »

The author, as is clear, is here combating certain ideas then in the air which were launched by d’Holbach and La Mettrie. Nor could he restrain himself from concluding with a final swipe at the court of Louis XIV. « O Lord, many a confession is addressed to you by the lips, but how many come deep from the heart? Lord, if you have been granted so much credit here on earth, is it only so that those in power can invoke you as a justification for their injustices? »

The governor of the Low C ountries took a great deal of interest in the projects of the abbé de Bucquoy; but it would have been well-nigh impossible to establish a republic in France at this time: this could only have come about through the victory of the allies over the French monarchy.

The abbé’s success in Holland was thus primarily restricted to its salons, where he passed for a profound metaphysician. He was listened to with great approbation in certain circles, applauded by that France which had been scattered abroad by persecutions of all sorts and which was composed of courageous Catholics as well as Protestants. These two parties were united in their common animosity toward the figure who answered to such epithets as Viro immortali or fit regia divo.

As for the petition addressed by his aunt to the king, the ladies of The Hague thought she had gone slightly overboard. According to them, it was no longer the fashion in France to speak this loudly or this forthrightly . . . « Look what this cost M. de Cambray, who had nevertheless taken great pains to bedeck himself with the flowers of his phrasing . . . »

Shortly after Louis XIV’s death, the abbé de Bucquoy wrote the following quatrain entitled:

HIS FINAL PERFORMANCE

(The scene is Saint-Denis.)

See him now, he’s in the ground:

His royal days are gone to dung:

Who would now praise his memory,

Should forever hold his tongue.

There was perhaps a grain of exaggeration in the abbé’s epigram. « His reign was a true novel », he remarks further on. “I want it, I do it!” was his motto. — What did he do? Nothing.

« How restore to life those thousands he sacrificed to his ambitions? »

It was to the regent’s mother that the count de Bucquoy addressed this observation from his exile in Hanover on the third of April, 1717.

While in Hanover, the abbé de Bucquoy published a series of reflections on the untimely death of the king of Sweden. While commenting on the exalted positions that sovereigns are called to assume, he wrote the following phrase: « What a disgrace and scandal it is that all of those whom Providence has cast into the limelight are not wise enough to hide their brilliance under a bushel. » He added: « The soul of the lowest of commoners puffed up into a king shocks me no end. »

As for His Majesty the king of Sweden, he reproaches him for having read Quintus Curtius at too young an age . . . « Beware, he adds, of a man who has but a single book in his pocket.

« He may well have been a fearless soldier and model renadier, but his readings of Quintus Curtius ruined him. From his victory at Nerva, he was reduced to fleeing the enemy at Pultava, to hiding out at Bender, and finally to dying needlessly at Fredrichstahl . . . »

Such were the political meditations that the abbé de Bucquoy was engaged in around 1718. But from 1721 on, his attention was completely taken up by women, which inspired various comments on his part concerning « the malignity of the fairer sex ». In one of his late books dealing with this particular subject one finds the following:

« O woman! Product of a rib! Daughter of night and of sleep: Adam was dreaming when God made you . . . Had he been awake, the resultant piece of work would perhaps have been more finely crafted; or perhaps he would have asked the Lord to make the bone of his bones somewhat more pliable, especially in the region of the head.

« Adam might also have said to God: “Leave my rib as is; I prefer solitude to this unfortunate companionship” ... »

The abbé de Bucquoy continued to be well-received at the court of Hanover, where he was provided with living quarters in the palace. But he was unprepared for a certain lady by the name of Martha whom he met there; she was the caretaker’s wife and caused him a great deal of consternation on a number of occasions. Being extremely rapacious, she tried to take him for all he was worth.

During one of his trips to Leipzig, money had been sent to him in his absence. When he returned from his travels, there was no mention of anything, although he found a letter awaiting him that informed him of the sums that had been forwarded his way. After he complained, the caretaker’s wife admitted that she had made use of his money while he was away, but she promised to return it to him in the near future. He merely commented in German: Es ist nicht recht (This is not right).

Given that he had sought out her husband to express his misgivings about her, she arrived at his lodgings one morning, wearing a white chemise and a very short petticoat over her naked legs . . . « Who knows, said the abbé, perhaps this was some Phèdre transported by love and rage . . . » It was at this point that he went for his pistols « to give her a little taste of buckshot. Needless to say, the lady beat a quick retreat . . . »

These persecutions, coming as they did so late in his life, were particularly painful for the abbé de Bucquoy and on several occasions he lodged complaints with His British Majesty, the ruler of Hanover. One can well imagine that, now almost ninety years of age, his mind was betraying him and causing him to exaggerate his plight.

Apart from this, we possess little information about the final years of the abbé comte de Bucquoy’s life.

He has struck us as a rather remarkable author, not only because of his prison escapes but because of the quality of his writings. We should nonetheless be careful not to confuse him with a certain Jacques de Bucquoy, author of the book in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale entitled: Reïse door de Indïen, door Jacob de Bucquoy, — Harlem, Jan Bosch, — 1744.

The count of Bucquoy, after his escape from prison, spent the rest of his life in Holland or in Germany and definitely did not travel to India, although one of his relatives may have done so during this same period.

The author of this historical serial having now reached his final installment, which has been based on a biography he believed might be of some service to the history of his nation, requests that the Bibliothèque Nationale kindly accept the copy of the History of the abbé de Bucquoy that is missing from its collection, together with the volume containing the narrative of the military exploits of his uncle, the count of Bucquoy, in Bohemia.

This latter is far less valuable than the former, — whose rarity is, in the end, all that recommends it.

This edition follows the text established and annotated by Jacques Bony in volume two of Nerval’s Oeuvres complètes (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1984). The translator and the publisher wish to thank Editions Gallimard and M. Bony for their kind permission to use this material.

The twenty-seven installment breaks are indicated by — in the text.

NOTES

7 Frankfurt: Nerval traveled through Frankfurt in September 1850. A hotbed of revolutionary fervor in 1848 — the Frankfurt Parliament was the first such freely elected body in the history of Germany — the city was at that point already experiencing the repressive repercussions of the Prussian occupation of Hesse.

7 Hecker the revolutionary: Karl Franz Hecker, leader of the republican left in Baden.

7 Robert Blum: German writer and politician involved in Kossuth’s Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and later executed by the Austrians. In October 1849, Nerval had contributed to a similar “revolutionary” almanac, Le Diable rouge. Entitled “Les Prophètes rouges,” his essay sympathetically surveyed the work of such socialist illuminati as Lamennais, Mickiewicz, Leroux, Proudhon, and Considérant.

8 Riancey amendment: Voted into law on July 16, 1850, it imposed a stamp tax of one centime per copy on any newspaper featuring a serial novel in its pages. Ostensibly intended to protect the interests of booksellers and to safeguard the morality of the press, the law was in fact more likely aimed at suppressing such phenomenally successful romans-feuilleton as Eugène Sue’s Mystères de Paris, which, in the opinion of the government, had contributed significantly to stirring up the workers’ insurrections of 1848.

8 a larger series of studies: Nerval had already published essays on the eighteenth-century figures Restif de la Bretonne, Jacques Cazotte, and Cagliostro in various newspapers and magazines. He would subsequently collect these (together with his biography of the abbé de Bucquoy) in his 1852 volume Les Illuminés [The Illuminati], subtitled The Precursors of Socialism.

8 Madame Dunoyer: Anne-Marguerite Dunoyer (1663- 1719). French woman of letters of Calvinist origin who after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes fled to Holland, where she edited an émigré newspaper and published her memoirs. The adventures of the abbé de Bucquoy are recounted in her Lettres historiques et galantes de deux dames de condition (Amsterdam, 1720), a volume which would have been readily available to Nerval but which he chose to eschew.

9 Government censorship in Vienna: Over the course of the winter of 1839-40, Nerval published a number of articles in the Viennese journal Die Allgemeine Theaterzeitung. Censorship in Metternich’s Austria (known as the China of Europe) was the most draconian on the continent, with a list of some five thousand forbidden books.

9 French newspapers: Le National and Le Charivari were journals of the opposition and Le Journal des débats and La Quotidienne semi-official government organs.

10 Camisard uprising: None of these events — all related to the various Protestant and regional uprisings following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 — is mentioned in the book.

11 M. Thiers and M. Capefigue: No doubt intended ironically. Neither of these nineteenth-century French historians was especially noted for his humor.

11 Hypatia: Neo-Platonic philosopher murdered by a Coptic mob in 415 — another instance, as Nerval notes in Les Illuminés, of Christianity’s attempt to suppress the gnostic and mystery religions of antiquity.

12 The resultant de and du: A point not lost on Gérard Labrunie, who had reinvented himself under the aristocratic pen name Gérard de Nerval.

13 various police reports of the year 1709: This collection of documents in fact exists at the Bibliothèque Nationale, though the liberties Nerval takes with it are extreme.

13 M. de Pontchartrain: Jérôme Phélypeaux, count of Pontchartrain, served as High Commissioner to the King from 1699 to 1715; the marquis d’Argenson was Lieutenant General of the police from 1697 to 1718.

14 This is not a novel: Echoes Diderot’s 1773 Short story “Ceci n’est pas un conte.”

16 in the fashion of Froissart and Monstrelet: Jean Froissart (1333?-1404?) and Enguerrand de Monstrelet (1390?- 1453?) were both authors of Chronicles.

17 that charming opera you wrote: Nerval’s opera Piquillo, coauthored with Alexandre Dumas, was performed in 1837 and starred Jenny Colon, object of his unrequited love. His “second” opera, Les Monténégrins, was produced in 1849.

18 one of my literary mentors: Charles Nodier (1780-1844), polymath, bibliophile, and author of fantastic tales.

18 an edition of Faust: Most likely the novel Faust’s Life, Deeds, and Journey into Hell (1791) by the German dramatist Klinger, which inspired Nerval’s own play on the Faust theme and the invention of printing, L’Imagier de Harlem (1851).

22 Sabory champagne: This installment of The Salt Smugglers , published on October 27, 1850, alludes to President Louis Napoléon’s review of the troops at the military camp of Sabory two weeks earlier — where he plied them with cigars, champagne, and garlic sausage, eliciting the cry “Long Live the Emperor” from a number of the regiments. General Changarnier, who vigorously protested this violation of military regulations, was subsequently relieved of his command, thus opening the way to Louis Napoléon’s coup d’état the following year.

23 as much as a representative to the National Assembly: During the Second Republic, representatives were paid twenty-five francs a day — a sum considered far too princely by many of the working-class opponents of the regime.

23 Renewed Reveries of the Greeks: A parody of Iphigenia in Tauris published in 1779.

24 Dumas’ God Disposes: Dumas’ serial novel of this title began publication in L’Événement in July 1850, costing the newspaper some twenty-one thousand francs in fines.

25 changing my political colors: The left-wing newspaper Le Corsaire published an article in its October 30, 1850, number entitled “Encore un fantaisiste qui tourne au rouge,” which accused Nerval of political opportunism. Nerval is being a bit disingenuous in his self-defense, for it would appear that he did indeed have close contacts with Jean-Louis Lingay, the minister of the interior under Louis-Philippe — who rewarded him with a secret mission to Vienna in early 1840 to indemnify him for the delays caused by the censorship of his play Léo Burckart.

25 I wrote a play: The play in question, Léo Burckart, grew out of Nerval’s travels in Germany with Alexandre Dumas in 1838-39 (an account of which he included in his 1852 travelogue Lorely, Souvenirs d’Allemagne). Loosely based on events that took place in the Rhineland in 1819 — notably the assassination in Mannheim of the reactionary political journalist and dramatist Kotzebue by the Bavarian theology student Karl Sand, and the failed assassination in Frankfurt of the prime minister Ibell by a young man named Loening — the play evokes the nationalist ferment among the secret student fraternities (or Burschenschaften) of the Young Germany movement, which led that same year to the passage of the Carlsbad Decrees imposing strict censorship on the press and instituting repressive measures against universities — measures which were revoked only during the revolutionary turmoil that swept through the German states in 1848 during the “springtime of the people.” Given the various attempts on the life of Louis-Philippe in 1835-36 — the most spectacular of which involved Giuseppe Marco Fieschi’s discharge of an “infernal machine” (composed of twenty gun barrels fired simultaneously) on the boulevard du Temple, which killed eighteen and wounded innumerable others — the censors may well have been justifiably nervous about the student conspirators represented in Léo Burckart. In late 1850, with the dictatorial star of the Prince President Louis Napoléon on the rise, the play would have lost none of its political relevance.

26 The Italian carbonari: The carbonari (or charcoal burners) were secret revolutionary societies, organized along the lines of Freemasonry, who opposed French and Austrian rule and sought the creation of a unified and independent Italy. After a series of revolutionary skirmishes in 1820-21 and 1831, they were replaced by the “Young Italy” movement led by Mazzini. France had most recently invaded Italian territory during the controversial Rome Expedition of the spring of 1849.

27 the reactionary politics of a small German court: Léo Burckart, the play’s eponymous hero, is torn between the loyalty that he owes his ruler as prime minister and the sympathies he feels toward the nationalist ideals of the young student radicals — the leader of whom, Frantz Lewald, is in love with Burckart’s neglected wife, Marguerite. Chosen by his fellow students (during the convening of the secret Saint Wehme tribunal in Act Four) to assassinate the prime minister, Frantz Lewald falters and, unable to follow through on this Oedipal scenario (which involves killing father figure Léo Burckart in order to possess his wife, Marguerite), commits suicide by turning his pistol onto himself.

27 Bocage: Pierre-François Bocage (1797-1863), one of the best-known of the boulevard actors, celebrated for his performances in Dumas’ smash hits Antony (1831) and La Tour de Nesle (1832). There is no record, however, of his ever being associated with this production of Léo Burckart. Indeed, Nerval’s entire account of his dealings with Harel’s Porte-Saint-Martin theater is a tissue of half-truths and outright fabrication — no doubt devised to heighten this comedy of errors.

28 Thiers and Guizot: Louis-Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) and François Guizot (1787-1874) both served as prime ministers during the July Monarchy.

28 Koerner: Carl Theodor Körner (1791-1813), German poet and soldier. Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826), German composer.

29 Vatel’s fish course: At the extravagant banquet he had prepared at the Château de Chantilly in honor of Louis XIV, the French chef François Vatel (1631-1671), distraught that the fish for the main course had not been delivered, committed suicide — at least as reported by Mme de Sévigné.

29 the theater license: In an attempt to control and monitor the space of public representation, Napoléon had in 1807 reduced the number of licensed theaters in Paris from thirty-three to eight. By 1850, the number had grown back to twenty-three, but the theater licensing requirement was not entirely abolished until 1864.

30 the scene of the Saint Wehme: Saint Wehme was a secret society founded by the Teutonic knights in Westphalia in the thirteenth century. Its original purpose had been the creation of secret tribunals in order to dispatch summary justice (usually by hanging) for crimes committed against the Church.

30 sicaires and trabans: Paid assassins and honor guards.

31 La Parisienne: Patriotic song composed by Casimir Delavigne celebrating the popular uprisings during the July Revolution of 1830.

32 the Archives contain a charming love story: Nerval apparently did consult this manuscript at the National Archives, although he relied more heavily on Jules Taschereau’s published version of it in the Revue Rétrospective (1834). The materials he later cites as existing in Compiègne, by contrast, are pure invention.

34 the Hôtel de la Cloche celebrated by Alexandre Dumas: Mentioned in his Count of Monte-Cristo (1845).

37 their caresses remained pure: Nerval here censors the straightforwardness of the original, which speaks of an easy sexuality that is far from the chaste, Platonic love he describes in the following paragraph. Angélique writes: “It would be impossible to describe all the caresses we exchanged; he did everything to me except actually take my virginity — this I managed to protect from his assaults, for he would often say to me: ‘I am sure that when I finally possess you entirely, you will immediately get with child.’”

38 the invention of printing: Nerval had published an article on the early inventors of printing (Faust, Gutenberg, Schoeffer, and Laurent Coster) in La Presse on August 26, 1850. A letter critical of the historical accuracy of this piece was written to the newspaper by a certain Auguste Bernard, a copy editor at the National Printing House. Nerval was himself an inventor of a linotype-like printing device named a “Stereograph,” for which he submitted a patent in 1844.

39 Laurent Coster: Laurens Janszoon Coster (1370-c.1440), native of Haarlem and thought by the Dutch to have invented block printing around 1430, having gotten the idea by cutting letters upon the bark of a tree and then impressing them on paper. He is the Faustian hero of Nerval’s 1851 play L’Imagier de Harlem. Nerval’s mother’s maiden name was also Laurens, which, spelled backwards — in printing everything is reversed — turns into Nerval.

39 Agis: Agesilas, according to Plutarch. The reference at the end of this parable to “a republic governed by kings” is another transparent swipe at the monarchical — or, indeed, imperial — ambitions of Louis Bonaparte.

39 La Fontaine’s “Power of Fables”: Here given in the Elizur Wright translation, Boston, 1841.

41 swindled by dead or stuffed birds: During his farcical landing at Boulogne in August 1840 — his second attempt at a coup after his failure in Strasbourg in 1836 — Louis Bonaparte had arranged for an eagle (some said a vulture) to accompany him to victory, in memory of the imperial symbol of his uncle.

41 our Parisian beards: Beards singled one out as an “artist” or political “radical.”

42 I even own some property around here: The “clos de Nerval” — the source of his pseudonym — was a small parcel of land situated in nearby Loisy, which he had inherited from his mother’s side of the family.

47 Here is one of the songs I have collected: Inspired by such German writers as Herder, Nerval began collecting old folk songs and ballads from the Valois region in 1842. His “Chansons et légendes du Valois” were published as an appendix to “Sylvie” in 1854.

55 back in the days of the League: Religious wars tore France apart during the reigns of the last Valois kings, Charles IX and Henri III (1560-89). The Catholics, led by the Guise family, formed the League and obtained Spanish support against the Protestant Henry of Navarre — who, when he became Henri IV, eventually defeated the League but was nonetheless forced to convert to Catholicism before being allowed to enter Paris in 1594 and become the first Bourbon king of France.

55 Saint Bartholomew: The traditional patron saint of many localities in the Valois. The massacre of the Huguenots occurred on Saint Bartholomew’s Day in 1572.

56 the battle of Senlis: Nerval borrows the theory of the fundamental racial conflict between the Franks and Gallo-Romans from the work of French historian Augustin Thierry (1795-1856). The battle of Senlis was fought in 1589.

57 she had sullied herself with child: Nerval seems to have read the expression “elle s’est gâtée d’un enfant” as meaning that she gave birth to a child. Instead, a miscarriage or abortion is probably here intended.

58 Jeanne Hachette: Distinguished herself by her heroic resistance to the Burgundians during the siege of Beauvais in 1472. This entire passage on warrior women implicitly alludes to Nerval’s own mother — who died in Silesia in 1810 while accompanying her husband’s military regiment in its retreat from Russia.

58 Salic law: Rule of succession in certain royal and noble families of Europe forbidding females and those descended in the female line to succeed to the titles or offices in the family.

62 the author of Waverley: Scott’s Waverley, initially published anonymously in 1811 and often considered the first historical novel, was so popular that he henceforth published under the heteronym “the author of Waverley.”

62 Théophile de Viau: This baroque poet (1590-1626), a frequent visitor to the castle of Chantilly, was the author of Le Bosquet de Sylvie. Nerval’s most celebrated novella — Proust’s favorite among his works — is entitled “Sylvie.”

65 the new metric system: The metric system became the law of the land on January 1, 1840.

65 the Tinguy amendment: The Tinguy amendment, added as a rider to the press laws of July 16, 1850, stipulated that “any newspaper article containing political, philosophical, or religious discussions must be signed by its author.” Prior to this law, Nerval often published his newspaper pieces anonymously or under a variety of different initials. Now journalists would be obliged to speak — and, more crucially, be legally answerable — under their own names.

65 Vitam impendere vero: In his “Letter to d’Alembert” (1758), Rousseau announces that he will henceforth take as his motto this phrase from Juvenal, variously translated as “I shall risk my life on the truth” or “I shall consecrate my life to truth.”

66 Palais-National: The Palais-Royal, rebaptized the Palais-National after the 1848 Revolution, was plundered on February 24, 1848.

66 Horace Vernet: Derided as a hack by Baudelaire in his art criticism, Horace Vernet (1789-1863) was a specialist in military scenes.

67 M. Arago: The physicist and astronomer François Arago (1786-1853) was a member of the Provisional Government of 1848.

71 the prefect of the Seine: In 1850, this position was held by Jean-Jacques Berger — who had replaced Rambuteau and who would later be succeeded by Haussmann, in 1853. Nerval would appear to have moved to this address at 4 rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre around 1848. He evokes this same neighborhood near the Louvre when chronicling his “bohemian” youth on the impasse du Doyenné in his book of reminiscences, Petits châteaux de Bohême (1853). The demolition of the Louvre district also provides the subject for Baudelaire’s poem “Le Cygne” (first published in 1860). As his various lifts from the latter’s Voyage en Orient attest, Baudelaire was one of Nerval’s most astute readers. Could his great allegory of modernity contain unconscious reminiscences of this particular section of Les Faux Saulniers — which in the course of a few pages moves from the urban renewal of Paris to a brief glimpse of a disoriented swan?

72 This king whom I cordially detest: Nerval’s negative view of the much-beloved Henri IV reflects the animus of various liberal historians of the period who considered him to be the founder of France’s absolute and centralized monarchy — hostile to regional independence and, more importantly for Nerval, responsible for the expulsion of the Medici from the Valois. Voltaire’s epic poem La Henriade evokes Henri IV’s romantic idylls with Gabrielle d’Estrées, modeled after Canto VII of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.

73 the Desert: Name given to a large sandy expanse near Ermenonville — now the Mer de Sable amusement park.

74 René de Girardin: Proprietor of the domain of Ermenonville, where he hosted Rousseau during the philosopher’s final days in 1778, the Marquis René de Girardin (1755-1808) was also the author of an influential treatise on landscape gardening, De la composition des paysages (1777), whose principles he applied to the various parks on his estate. When Rousseau died, he was buried on the Isle of Poplars in the Elysium that Girardin had created on his property: his grave quickly became a pilgrimage site for literary tourists.

74 the Illuminati: In his Les Illuminés: The Precursors of Socialism (1852), Nerval gathered a series of biographical essays intended to illustrate that broad spectrum of esoteric or occult thought which he believed had provided the counter-Enlightenment illumination for the French Revolution. Among those mentioned here: the Count of Saint-Germain (1698?-1780), a colorful alchemist and spiritist well-known to the various courts of Europe, was said to have initiated the Italian magus and necromancer Alessandro Cagliostro (1743-1795) into the mysteries of Egyptian Masonry. Cagliostro would exercise an extraordinary fascination over the court of Louis XVI, where he was implicated in the celebrated Affair of the Diamond Necklace. The theories of animal magnetism and hypnotic trance therapy popularized by the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) similarly enjoyed a considerable vogue in Paris just prior to the Revolution. The “School of Geneva” alludes to the first Swiss Masonic Lodge, founded in 1737.

74 all came to this castle: Jacques Cazotte (1719-1792), author of the fantastic tale Le Diable amoureux and of a famous prophecy predicting the execution of Louis XVI. Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), mystical illuminist and theosophist. Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817), French economist associated with the Physiocrats. Étienne de Senancour (1770-1846), author of Obermann, admired by Nerval for his pantheistic philosophy.

75 Nostradamus: French astrologer and physician (1503- 1566), author of a collection of rhymed prophecies, The Centuries (1555). In this anecdote, Nerval confuses Marie with Catherine de Médicis.

75 the doctrines of Weisshaupt and Boehme: Adam Weisshaupt (1748-1830), German founder of the sect of the Illuminati. Jakob Boehme (1575-1624), German mystic and student of Paracelsian philosophy.

75 Frederick William was induced to perceive a vision: Frederick William II, king of Prussia from 1786 to 1797, nephew and successor of Frederick II (Frederick the Great), member of the European coalition against the French Republic. Both he and his prime ministers were Rosicrucians.

75 the Prince of Anhalt: Nerval nods: it was Field Marshal Blücher (1742-1819).

76 Gessner: Salomon Gessner (1730-1788), Swiss author of the widely imitated collections of bucolic poetry, Idylls (1756 and 1772).

76 Roucher . . . Delille: Antoine Roucher (1745-1794), minor didactic poet. Abbé Jacques Delille (1738-1813), author of descriptive landscape poetry.

78 Ver — or Eve: Anagrams of Rêve — dreamland.

80 They were in fact Templars: In Les Illuminés, Nerval argues that the Templars’ attempts to syncretize Christian doctrines with Oriental spiritual traditions and the mystery cults of Antiquity provided the eventual basis for Freemasonry, which in turn prepared the French Revolution.

81 a play . . . about the death of Rousseau: This madcap scenario was cobbled together out of various legends surrounding the death of Rousseau: Corancez had come up with the Wertherian suicide by pistol, whereas Mme de Staël had opted for the more Socratic hemlock diluted in bowl of café au lait. In his 1821 book Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, V. D. Musset-Pathay also attempted to argue — against the eyewitness testimony to the contrary offered by Rousseau’s patron René de Girardin and his common-law wife, Thérèse — for Rousseau’s suicide.

81 Mme d’Épinay: Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d’Esclavelles d’Épinay (1726-1783), French writer known for her liaisons with Rousseau and the Baron von Grimm — as well as for her close acquaintanceship with the philosophers Diderot, d’Alembert, and d’Holbach — who Rousseau, toward the end of his life, deliriously imagined were leagued against him in a “plot” or organized conspiracy. At her Château de la Chevrette in the valley Montmorency, Mme d’Épinay had supplied a home for Rousseau in 1756, which she named the Hermitage, but during the years 1757 to 1759, She paid long visits to Geneva, where she was a constant guest of Voltaire, thus earning her the jealous enmity of Rousseau.

81 Mme d’Houdetot: Elisabeth-Françoise-Sophie de la Live de Bellegarde (1730-1813), wife of the count d’Houdetot, and subsequently mistress of Saint-Lambert. Rousseau met her at the Hermitage through her sister-in-law, Mme d’Épinay, and fell head over heels in love with her. Book Nine of his Confessions describes how he sublimated this impossible passion into the plot of his best-selling novel of 1761, La Nouvelle Héloïse — with the love triangle that existed between himself, Mme d’Houdetot, and Saint-Lambert now transformed into the fictional relationship of St. Preux, Julie, and M. de Wolmar.

81 Grimm: Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm (1723- 1807), German-born encyclopedist and correspondent of many of the great sovereigns and courts of Europe. Originally a close friend of Rousseau, who introduced him to Mme d’Épinay at Montmorency; their resultant love affair aroused the animosity of the Swiss philosopher.

81 Thérèse: Thérèse Levasseur (?-1801), semi-literate seamstress and common-law wife of Rousseau, to whom she may have borne as many as five children, all of whom were given away to foundling homes between 1746 and 1752. After Rousseau’s death in 1778, she became the sole heiress of all his belongings, including his manuscripts and royalties, and married the valet Jean-Henri Bally the following year.

82 Émile: Rousseau’s treatise on education, Émile, was banned or burned upon its publication in Paris and Geneva in 1762 because of its controversial section including the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.”

82 his Armenian outfit: Rousseau explains in his Confessions just why he adopted the loose flowing robes of this “Armenian” outfit: the wearing of trousers irritated his genitals, causing him to urinate too frequently.

82 his herbals . . . and some periwinkles: During the years he spent under the maternal tutelage of Mme de Warens (1699-1762) at Les Charmettes in 1735-36, Rousseau learned the rudiments of botany. He describes foraging for plants for his herbals in his posthumous Reveries of a Solitary Walker. His discovery of the mnemonic talisman of the periwinkle — or pervenche — provides a classic Proustian madeleine moment in Book Six of his Confessions.

83 Ten-day hiatus: No installments of Nerval’s feuilleton appeared in Le National between November 23 and December 6. In its place, this editorial notice was inserted: “Desirous to provide our readers at long last with the HISTORY OF THE ABBÉ DE BUCQUOY, M. Gérard de Nerval wishes to devote all his time to the pursuit of his elusive hero. We respect his prerogatives as a historian and therefore suspend the course of his narrative until such a day as he will have laid hands on the book in question — which will no doubt soon cease to evade the perseverance of his research.”

84 The Dream of Polyphile: I.e., Polyphilo Hypnerotomachia (1499) by the Venetian neo-Platonist Francesco Colonna.

86 the celebrated Augusta Suessonium: Founder of the Merovingian dynasty, Clovis (c.466-511), defeated the Roman legions at Soissons in 486.

87 Lucrèce Borgia: Melodramatic historical drama by Victor Hugo (1838).

88 Merlinus Coccaius: Pseudonym of the Italian poet Teofilo Folengo (1496-1544), whose macaronic burlesques of chivalric romances prefigure Cervantes. The first-century authors Petronius and Lucian round out this Bakhtinian tradition of the “dialogical” novel.

89 Facilis descensus Averni: Aeneid, VI, 126: “It is easy to descend into Avernus.”

89 these lovely lines by Chénier: André-Marie Chénier (1762-1794), French poet and martyr who was imprisoned at Saint-Lazare in 1794 on trumped-up charges; accused of having participated in a prison conspiracy, he was guillotined as a subversive the same year. Nerval quotes (loosely) from one of his Odes.

89 Prince Eugène was scoring successes: François-Eugène, Prince of Savoy-Carignan (1663-1736), French-born military commander who, rejected by King Louis for service in the French army, transferred his loyalty to the Habsburg Monarchy. During the War of the Spanish Succession, in partnership with the Duke of Marlborough, he secured victories against the French on the fields of Blenheim, Oudenaarde, and Malplaquet.

89 the words of a folk song: I.e., “Marlborough s’en va’t-en guerre” (also known as “Mort et convoi de l’invincible Marlborough”), sung to the tune of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

89 revocation of the Edict of Nantes: The Edict of Nantes was issued in 1598 by Henri IV to guarantee the Calvinist Protestants of France their rights and to bring the wars of religion to an end. In 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict and declared Protestantism illegal, thus creating an exodus to Great Britain, Prussia, the Dutch Republic, and the French colonies of North America. The Huguenots of the Cévennes region of south-central France, known as the Camisards, raised an insurrection against the persecution of Protestants, which lasted on and off from 1702 to 1715.

90 Mme de Maintenon: Françoise d’Aubigné Scarron (1635- 1719), morganatic second wife of Louis XIV — though her marriage to the king was never officially announced or admitted to. Deeply pious, she advised the king on domestic and foreign policy, while encouraging his religious devotion.

90 the battle of Hochstedt: August 13, 1704: Prince Eugène and Marlborough defeat the army of Louis XIV.

90 Where was he coming from?: Compare the celebrated opening paragraph of Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste: “How had they met? By chance, like everybody. What were their names? Why do you care? Where were they coming from? From the nearest point. Where were they going? Does one ever know?”

91 salty Burgundians: During the Hundred Years’ War, the Burgundians captured the coastal fortress of Aigues-Mortes; when its inhabitants revolted in 1422 and massacred the occupiers from Burgundy, they preserved their bodies in local sea salt so that they could be placed on display as trophies.

91 the spats between Fénelon and Bossuet: François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651-1715), Catholic theologian, poet, and writer, and advocate of Quietism, considered heretical by the pope. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), French bishop, theologian, and renowned pulpit orator. Madame Guyon (1648-1717), French mystic and practitioner of Quietism, imprisoned in the Bastille from 1695 to 1703 for having published A Short and Easy Method of Prayer.

93 La Trappe: La Trappe Abbey in Soligny-la-Trappe (Orne) is the house of origin of the Order of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance. Its fourteenth abbot, Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé, the stepson of Cardinal Richelieu, was the subject of an 1844 biography by Chateaubriand.

93 a number of caps: I.e., Phrygian caps, ancient symbols of liberty?

95 Ninon de Lenclos: French author, courtesan, and patron of the arts (1620-1705). Her lovers included the king’s cousin, the Great Condé, Gaspard de Coligny, and La Rochefoucauld, and in 1656, she was briefly imprisoned in a convent for her libertine ways. At the age of sixty, she was the mistress of Charles de Sévigné, son of the marquise — hence the latter’s disparaging portrait of her in her Memoirs.

100 when it comes to history: Froissart and Monstrelet, previously mentioned, were medieval authors of Chronicles. Le père Daniel (1649-1728) was Louis XIV’s royal historiographer, as was François-Eudes de Mézeray (1610- 1683); Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe (1605-1671) wrote a history of the reign of Henri IV; Alexis Monteil (1769-1850) was the author of l’Histoire des Français des divers états (1827-1844); Lamartine’s History of the Girondists appeared in 1847; Prosper de Barante (1782- 1866) was a specialist of the Dukes of Burgundy; François Guizot (1787-1874) wrote a number of histories of France and Europe in the 1820s; Louis-Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) was the author of a ten-volume History of the French Revolution (1823-1827).

103 My brothers, only God is great: The first sentence of Massillon’s funeral oration for Louis XIV.

104 Villars off in the distance: The Duke of Villars (1653-1734) was the last great general of Louis XIV; after pacifying the Cévennes, he led France to several decisive victories in Germany and Austria during the War of the Spanish Succession.

104 visiting the wings of a theater: Adapted from Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” (1846).

104 when the Bastille was finally demolished: Nerval took most of his information about the Bastille from Constantin de Renneville’s four-volume L’Inquisition française (Amsterdam and Leyden, 1724).

107 Fouquet and Lauzun: Nicolas Fouquet (1615-1680) was superintendent of finances under Louis XIV — who, displeased with his enormous wealth and extravagance, had him imprisoned at the fortress of Pignerol in 1665, where he died fifteen years later. The Duke of Lauzun (1633-1723), a favorite of Louis XIV, was imprisoned for ten years, first at the Bastille and then at Pignerol, after a passionate romance with the king’s cousin Mlle de Montpensier.

108 the performances at Saint-Cyr: Founded by Mme de Maintenon in 1685, this school for the daughters of impoverished noblemen was also the scene of the performances of Racine’s late Christian dramas Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691).

108 the existing inscription: The Latin reads “The College of Clermont of the Society of Jesus,” which was changed to “The College of Louis the Great.”

120 J.-B. Rousseau: Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1671-1741), no relation to Jean-Jacques, was considered one of the premier poets of his age.

121 Heinsius: Antoine Heinsius (1640-1720); the Dutch title is the equivalent of a prime minister.

122 d’Holbach and La Mettrie: The Baron d’Holbach (1723- 1789), French encyclopedist and early proponent of materialism in his 1770 Système de la nature. Julian Offray de la Mettrie (1709-1751), best known for his atheistic L’Homme machine of 1748.

122 the king of Sweden: Charles XII, who ruled Sweden from 1697 to 1718. He was victorious over the Russians at Narva — and not, as Nerval writes (following the abbé de Bucquoy), Nerva — but then was routed by Peter the Great at Poltava in the Ukraine, before taking refuge at Bender, in Turkey. Quintus Curtius was a Roman historian who wrote a ten-volume biography of Alexander the Great.

TRANSLATOR’S POSTSCRIPT

Nerval’s The Salt Smugglers was never published in book form during his own lifetime; to this day, this experimental serial novel lies largely forgotten in the pages of tome two of the Pléiade edition of his Oeuvres complètes, unavailable to the general reader. An ephemeral journalistic performance addressed to the political topicalities of the ailing Second Republic, the text first appeared in twenty-seven installments in Le National between October 24 and December 22, 1850, a year before Louis Napoléon’s coup d’état. Except for a brief hiatus in late November, it came out regularly in the Thursday through Sunday issues of the paper, the other days of the week being devoted to feature pieces on the theater, fine arts, or recent activities at the Academy of Sciences. Following the standard newspaper format of the day, the feuilleton filled four columns on the bottom third of the front page and four additional columns at the bottom of the reverse page. Each column was composed of thirty-three lines, and Nerval was probably paid the going rate for a journalist of his reputation, namely, twenty-five centimes a line — which meant he was earning a little over eight francs per column of print, or roughly seventy francs per installment. If indeed he was paid in full, he may have netted eighteen hundred francs for his efforts, a respectable sum for the period, yet a pittance compared to the thirty thousand francs that his friend Alexandre Dumas had raked in for the serial publication of his blockbuster Count of Monte-Cristo several years earlier.

A master of the assembly-line techniques of the new littérature industrielle (as Sainte-Beuve dubbed it), Dumas had used the columnar format of the newspaper serial novel to great effect: by foreshortening his paragraphs and pasting in great swatches of rapid-fire dialogue, he was able to significantly inflate the number of lines for which he was being paid. This typographical padding out of the text with blanks, however, at the same time created a new kind of visual prosody: given the precipitous speed at which these serials hurtled along, the half-distracted newspaper reader needed only to scroll down the column of print, rapidly scanning the events that unrolled upon the filmstrip before the eyes. Nerval, who was Dumas’ erstwhile collaborator and occasional ghostwriter, observes a similar economy of the page in The Salt Smugglers. This is the first edition that attempts to reproduce the actual disposition of the text as originally published in Le National: the four columns per double-page layout will, it is hoped, provide a reasonable facsimile of the novel’s original journalistic pace. Similarly, the French punctuation of the original — guillemets and all — has also been systematically retained, not only in order to “foreignize” the translation but, more importantly, to articulate Nerval’s quirky prose rhythms, nowhere more evident than in his liberal (and financially profitable) use of the digressional dash — atypographical flourish that earned him the sobriquet of “le Sterne français.”

When Le National announced the forthcoming publication of Nerval’s feuilleton in the early fall of 1850, the project bore the somewhat recondite title of ÉTUDES HISTORIQUES: LES FAUX SAULNIERS (Extrait de la Vie et des Aventures de l’abbé Bucquoi). No doubt anxious to avoid the punitive stamp tax that, according to the recently passed press laws of July, they would have had to pay if caught publishing fiction in their pages, the editors preferred to pass off Nerval’s text as a “Historical Study” (or, perhaps, more accurately “A Study in History”). The “abbé Bucquoi” whom Nerval had promised to deliver to his editors as the genuinely documentary (and not merely novelistic) object of his narration was a certain Jean-Albert D’Archambaud, comte de Bucquoy (1650?-1740), a minor aristocrat who lived during the reign of Louis XIV and who was best known as one of the rare inmates to have successfully escaped from the state prison of Fort-l’Évêque (in 1706) and, even more incredibly, from the Bastille (in 1709). An attractive candidate for a swashbuckling tale set in le grand siècle (Dumas had already mined this rich vein of the historical novel in his D’Artagnan Romances), the abbé de Bucquoy also attracted Nerval’s interest as an early Utopian fantasist who, during his later years of exile in Holland — where he lived to the ripe old age of ninety — had published a number of pamphlets proposing the transformation of monarchical France into a republic. In 1852, Nerval would recycle the abbé de Bucquoy portion of his newspaper serial (where, deferred until December, it occupied only the final third of the installments) into the collection of biographical essays he entitled Les Illuminés , or the “Precursors of Socialism.” A portrait gallery of a series of eccentrics ranging from the semi-fictional Raoul Spifame, a mad sixteenth-century social reformer and printer, to such eighteenth-century authors and adventurers as the prophet of revolution Jacques Cazotte, the “communist” polygraph and pornographer Restif de la Bretonne, the alchemist and necromancer Alessandro Cagliostro, and the neo-pagan philsopher Quintus Aucler, the volume outlined an underground tradition of misfits and illuminati all committed to the radical reimagining of political community.

As for the title of Nerval’s serial, Les Faux Saulniers, most contemporary readers versed in French history would have recognized the allusion to the notorious gabelle, or salt tax, one of the most despised revenue sources of the ancien régime — which required every person over the age of eight to purchase a minimum amount of salt (about fifteen pounds) each year at elevated prices set by the Crown’s monopoly and its corrupt tax farmers. Faux saunage (or salt fraud) was rampant in the provinces where the tax was highest, and in 1675, some seven thousand Breton peasants rose up against the gabelle, provoking a brutal repression by royal troops and an even more drastic revision of the salt tax laws by Colbert. Given these circumstances, the salt smugglers or clandestine salt makers known as faux sauniers (Nerval prefers the archaic spelling to saulniers) stood to make considerable profit on their contraband and, like the rum-runners of the Prohibition Era, were often seen as romantic outlaws in league with the local peasantry against the distant and ever more oppressive nation-state. By the late eighteenth century, more than three thousand French men, women, and children were sentenced to prison or death every year for crimes against the gabelle. After the French Revolution, the new National Assembly abolished the salt tax in early 1790 and amnestied all those accused of faux saunage. Reestablished by Napoléon in 1806 to defray the costs of his foreign wars, it remained in effect until the revolution of 1848, when, in one of its very first February decrees (laden with symbolism), the new provisional government eliminated the salt tax altogether — only to see it reintroduced in December later that same year.

Of all of this there is virtually no mention in Nerval’s feuilleton: its title, Les Faux Saulniers (literally, the “false salters”), turns out to be a false title of sorts. The abbé de Bucquoy’s brief falling-in with a band of salt smugglers occupies only a fraction of its overall historical narrative, with these bootleggers merely playing a supporting role within the larger drama of insurrection against the Crown during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — aprotracted civil war whose actors included the (Catholic) League, the (Protestant) Camisards in the Cévennes, and the nobles enlisted in that aristocratic backlash against absolutism known as La Fronde. Nerval calls this entire legacy of resistance against the centralized authority of the state the Tradition of Opposition and, in The Salt Smugglers at least, locates its epicenter in his native Valois, ancestral seat of Angélique de Longueval, the grand-aunt of the abbé de Bucquoy and the picaresque heroine whose first-person narrative of her adventuresome life and loves meanders in and out of seven early installments of the feuilleton. In 1854, Nerval cannibalized this entire portion of his newspaper serial and published it in Les Filles du feu as a separate novella entitled “Angélique” — a companion piece to “Sylvie,” his other tale of his childhood memories of the Valois (and Proust’s favorite among Nerval’s writings).

Lying twenty-five miles northeast of Paris on the rolling wooded plain of the Île-de-France, the Valois functions as a kind of “near abroad” in Nerval’s work, for it is a region just far enough away from the capital to have retained its historic and geographic foreignness, yet close enough to the city to be accessible in a matter of hours. An enclave of premodernity — the recently built railway system made a beeline around the entire region, leaving it cut off from the nearby metropolis — the Valois is the locus of Nerval’s earliest memories and a repository of the repressed histories of France. Arriving in Compiègne on the Day of the Dead to pursue his archival research into the de Bucquoy and Longueval families in situ, Nerval spends the November chapters of his feuilleton wandering among the ghostly presences of the past. As he makes his leisurely autumnal way through such magical place-names as Senlis, Chantilly, Chapelle-en-Serval, Chaâlis, Ermenonville, Ver, Eve, Dammartin, and Soissons, traveling sometimes by coach, sometimes by foot, intermittently accompanied by his childhood friend, a droll country bumpkin by the name of Sylvain (shades of Cervantes or Diderot), while artfully interweaving his own peregrinations with those of his seventeenth-century heroine Angélique, Nerval surrenders to a nostalgic errantry through space and time. In this suspended state of reverie, past and present converge into a single palimpsest where the various strata of the Valois’ legendary history simultaneously coexist: the Utopian Enlightenment of the Illuminati, the pagan Renaissance of Catherine de Médicis, the early Gothic of Chaâlis and Senlis, the Frankish kingdom of Soissons, the battle sites of the Romans and Gauls, the shadowy forest tribes of the Sylvanects, the looming Druid rocks ...

At the heart of this orphaned world — whose local Capet and Valois dynasties were displaced by the Bourbons, just as its Renaissance castle of Saint-Germain was abandoned for Versailles by Louis XIV — lies Ermenonville, the estate where Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived out his final days, only a stone’s throw from Nerval’s childhood village of Mortefontaine. Twice the narrator and his sylvan doppelgänger set out for the philosopher’s final resting place and twice they are detoured and delayed; only on their third attempt, some eight installments later, do they finally reach the goal of their literary pilgrimage — the Isle of Poplars, site of Rousseau’s now-vacant tomb, his mortal remains having been translated to the capital during the Revolution. In this allegorical landscape of ruins (much admired by Michel Leiris), a small marble temple stands nearby, also empty of its local divinity — the goddess of Truth. No doubt in honor of her absence, the narrator’s rustic sidekick Sylvain reads him one of the more remarkable (false) documents that are inserted throughout the feuilleton, namely, his rough draft of a play on the death of Rousseau. Never republished by Nerval, this madcap scenario follows the philosopher’s manic descent into dementia while a guest of Mme d’Épinay’s at the Château de la Chevrette in nearby Montmorency, culminating in his final suicide (by hemlock and pistol) at Ermenonville — an exemplary fiction that translates the Socratic philosophe into a romantic Werther. In one of the climactic scenes of the play, the deranged Jean-Jacques launches into an imprecation against his enemies, announcing “his joy at having shaken this unjust society to ruination” while predicting “the horrors of a revolutionary catastrophe” to come. With this dramatization of the death of Rousseau — whose paranoia uncannily recalls the symptoms that landed Nerval in Bedlam in 1841 — the Valois portion of The Salt Smugglers draws to a close, its pastoral vistas receding into disconsolate rage ...

Although rarely read as a writer of worldliness — his name still evokes romantic legends of the eccentric who walked his pet lobster on a leash or of the suicide who hanged himself in the rue de la Vieille Lanterne with the Queen of Sheba’s garter — the Nerval of The Salt Smugglers nonetheless reveals himself to be one of the savviest political novelists of the short-lived Second Republic. Like The Charterhouse of Parma, Nerval’s newspaper serial provides a deft satire of the modern police state: where Stendhal takes on Metternich’s empire of fear (emblematized by the notorious Spielberg prison), Nerval prophetically registers the impending military dictatorship of Napoléon III, allegorically rhyming it with the absolutist France of Louis XIV (whose most Dantescan bolge is the “Enfer des Vivants” or Living Hell of the Bastille). In preparing his account of the abbé de Bucquoy’s various prison breaks, Nerval not only had in mind Cellini’s escape from the Castle Sant’Angelo, Casanova’s flight from Venice’s Piombi, or the various evasions from the prison of Vincennes by Jean-Henri Latude (the model for Father Faria in Dumas’ Count of Monte-Cristo), but diligent historian that he was, he also consulted Constantin de Renneville’s 1724 L’Inquisition française ou l’histoire de la Bastille . The Bastille, however, functions as more than a mere literary topos in The Salt Smugglers. Nerval himself had been briefly thrown into jail in early 1832, mistakenly arrested as a “legitimist” conspirator during the police roundup that had followed the so-called rue des Prouvaires plot to remove Louis-Philippe from the throne. Although he would later make comic light of this incident in a parody he published of Silvio Pellico’s Le mie prigioni, Nerval’s confinement to a mental institution for nine months in 1841 — a hospitalization which he privately compared to Mirabeau’s incarceration in Vincennes just prior to the French Revolution — marks a decisive turn in his representations of prisons. For example, in his biography of the founder of the Druse religion, “The Tale of the Caliph Hakem,” published in the Revue des deux mondes on the eve of the 1848 Revolution, he provides a virtually Foucaldian analysis of how political or religious heresy is silenced and immured (here, in the lunatic ward of Cairo’s Moristan prison) by the repressive authority of medical science. Nerval’s subsequent hospitalizations for mental illness — two months in an asylum in early 1852, followed by another eleven months over the course of 1853 and 1854 — are memorably evoked in his autobiographical Aurélia, whose carceral universe is never far from the ancien régime prisons of The Salt Smugglers.

Much as Nerval might have sometimes deluded himself into imagining that he was a political prisoner — the figure of Napoléon on St. Helena haunts his work from his earliest poetry onward — he was no Dostoevsky: at the very moment that The Salt Smugglers was appearing in Paris, the latter was expiating his suspected sympathies for the Revolution of 1848 in the nightmare confines of a katorga prison camp in Siberia. Similarly, France’s most famous political prisoner, the firebrand republican Auguste Blanqui (known as L’Enfermé), had been released from captivity in February 1848, only to be resentenced to ten years in jail in late 1849 when his left-wing extremism became a liability to the ever more reactionary Second Republic. The bloody June Days of 1848, which left 1,500 military and 3,000 insurgents dead, further increased France’s prison population: of the 4,000 opponents of the regime deported to Algeria, a considerable number ended up at the prison colony at Blidah. During the military putsch of the night of December 2, 1851, Louis Napoléon (himself no stranger to prisons, having spent six years incarcerated at the fortress of Ham after his abortive coup d’état of 1840) arrested and incarcerated the major members of the opposition — including General Changarnier and conservative bigwig Adolphe Thiers, both of whom he summarily dispatched to the prison at Mazas.

Most of this contemporary history of the 1848 Revolution lies just below the textual surface of Nerval’s newspaper serial, only rarely ruffling its Shandyan amiability. In the course of his visits to the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale in search of bibliographic traces of the ever-elusive abbé de Bucquoy, Nerval stumbles onto a number of dossiers containing police reports from the year 1709. Although they have precious little to do with his mysterious abbé, he nonetheless devotes two installments of his feuilleton to quoting documents relative to a minor criminal case investigated by Louis XIV’s police commissioners Pontchartrain and d’Argenson — largely, it would seem, to set up his own arrest a few installments later in the Valois town of Senlis by a local gendarme who wants to book him for traveling without identity papers (just as, in a similar scene somewhat later down the line, a Parisian archaeologist is arrested by the police for his suspicious taking of notes in front of a local church). Although these episodes are handled in a broadly humoristic fashion, their political message is clear: in these waning (and rather Weimarish) days of the Second Republic, the modern security state soon to be put into place by Napoléon III is already largely a fait accompli.

Compared to the scholarship devoted to the reactions of a Hugo, Lamartine, Baudelaire, or Flaubert to the political events of 1848 to 1851, Nerval’s transit through this period of hope, horror, and disenchantment remains relatively under-studied. As a former celebrant of the July Revolution of 1830, he of course joined the rest of the Parisian literati in welcoming the abdication of Louis-Philippe in February 1848 — a revolution largely hatched and carried out in the newspaper offices of La Réforme and Le National, whose editorial boards figured prominently in the initial provisional government of Lamartine. The June Massacres of 1848 — the first chapter in the modern civil war between proletariat and bourgeoisie, according to Marx — are alluded to only en passant by Nerval in his July introduction to his translations of Heine’s poetry, here offered to the public as a quiet “prayer at the altar of poetry” during “these tumultuous days when the clamor in public places has rendered everybody hoarse.” In the following spring of 1849, attempting to cash in on the vogue for period pieces set during the great Revolution, Nerval published a historical novel in the manner of Walter Scott entitled the Marquis de Fayolle and drew its plot from the Chouan uprisings in the Vendée. Broken off after the feuilleton publication of its first two parts, this aborted project not only illustrates its author’s inability to master the genre of the historical novel (a running joke in The Salt Smugglers) but also, at a deeper psychoanalytical level, his failure to successfully resolve the Oedipal scenario of political revolution — a failure to kill the father, which also determines the suicide of the young German student revolutionary in Nerval’s 1839 political psychodrama, Léo Burckart.

The decisive blow to the progressive “demo-soc” (i.e., democratic-socialist) parties of the Second Republic was delivered, most historians agree, in June 1849 — when a state of siege was decreed in Paris to quash the demonstrations against President Louis Napoléon’s unconstitutional dispatch of French soldiers to put down the Mazzini-inspired republican uprising against the papacy in Rome. Following the government’s swift repression of the ill-organized street-fighting in Paris and Lyons, Ledru-Rollin, the leader of the left wing of the Constituent Assembly (called the “Mountain” in memory of Robespierre’s faction during the great Revolution) went into exile, as did the influential socialist ideologue Louis Blanc. Surveying this wholesale collapse of the Left (which coincided with a cholera epidemic in the city), Nerval wrote to his old friend Théophile Gautier: “Paris has just witnessed a revolution manqué, a day of absurdities; in short, everything is done for and, to judge from appearances, for a long time too ... The poor Mountain has been razed and its principal leaders arrested, bunglers for the most part.” And then this perfectly Flaubertian observation (one thinks of the père Roque in L’Éducation sentimentale): “All we henceforth have to fear is the ferocity of law-abiding citizens, who are sure to put us at even greater risk.”

While keeping one eye on the fast-moving course of contemporary political events, Nerval, with his other, contemplated them sub specie aeternitatis — at least to judge from his contributions to a popular Almanach cabalistique published in the fall of 1849 (which included satirical horoscopes of political figures as well as Nostradamus’s predictions for the year 1850). Under the provocative title of “Le Diable rouge” (“The Red Devil”), Nerval provided a learned examination of the figure of Lucifer from the Old Testment and the apocryphal Book of Enoch down through Dante, Milton, and Goethe (the translation of whose Faust Part Two he was at that point in the process of completing). Underscoring (as had Shelley) the etymological root of the demon Demogorgon in the Greek word demos, Nerval construes the figure of Satan (and here he comes very close to Blake) as a figure of revolutionary libidinal energy and, via his role in Faust’s invention of printing, as a Promethean benefactor of mankind — a champion, in short, of the “materialism” and “communism” that had inspired the European-wide uprisings of 1848. In a companion piece published in this same Almanach cabalistique, Nerval provides a survey of those “Red Prophets” who could be counted among the Devil’s party: the Christian socialist Buchez, the Catholic populist Lamennais, the Polish nationalist poet Mickiewicz, the Fourierist Considérant, and the anarchist Proudhon — all contemporary descendants of those illuminati whose biographies would subsequently figure (together with The History of the Abbé Bucquoy) in Nerval’s Les Illuminés.

Nerval’s other response to the current anti-revolutionary turn of the tide was to coauthor a one-act play (conceived as a curtain-opener for the theater version of George Sand’s François-le-Champi) entitled Une nuit blanche, fantaisie noire. A Hegelian farce featuring Soulouque, the Emperor of Haïti, who turns white colonists into his black field slaves, this vaudeville was shut down after four performances in February 1850, the portrait of the president of the Republic as a negro despot presumably having crossed the bounds of permissible satire. By contrast, Lamartine’s blackface critique of the current Napoléon in his play Toussaint Louverture, performed later that spring, fared better at the hands of the censors, even though the liberties gained in 1848 were at this point eroding at an ever more rapid pace. In March 1850, the Falloux Law relegitimated the Church’s prominent role in national education; in late May, the conservative majority of the Assembly passed new legislation which disenfranchised about one third of the electorate, most of them workers; sweeping new laws restricting the freedom of the press and of assembly were also enacted, the most ludicrous of these (at least from Nerval’s point of view) being the so-called Riancey amendment to the Press Law of July 16 — which stipulated that “any newspaper publishing a roman-feuilleton [i.e., serial novel] in its pages or as a supplement be required to pay a stamp tax of one centime per copy.” The state, in other words, was now prepared to police the boundary separating the real from the imaginary: whereas fact remained admissible in the public sphere of the press, fiction would be fined out of existence. And little wonder, for as the very title Les Faux Saulniers suggests — it could also be translated as the Salt Counterfeiters — in a fake Republic, presided over by a fake president who was very likely merely the fake descendant of the great Napoléon, no subject was more politically sensitive than the legitimacy of Fiction.

Eighteen forty-eight, “the springtime of the people,” was also very much a springtime of the printed word. The early years of the Second Republic saw the creation of some 400 new periodicals in France — not to mention an explosion of almanacs, broadsheets, popular prints, caricatures, and cabinets de lecture for the people’s perusal — and the combined daily press runs for all Paris newspapers rose from 50,000 to 400,000 as a result (by contrast, after the draconian press laws of February 1852, only fourteen Parisian daily newspapers were left standing). The stamp tax levied on the publication of serial novels by the Riancey amendment was thus part of a broader right-wing strategy to strangle the popularity and the profitability of the daily press. The fact that this law should have specifically targeted the roman-feuilleton may in part be due to the Assembly’s apprehension about the rabble-rousing success of the recently elected socialist representative Eugène Sue, whose serial novels, Les Mystères de Paris and subsequent Mystères du peuple, were seen as encouraging populist uprisings against the regime not only because of their unflinching representation of the miseries of the urban masses but, perhaps more importantly, because they encouraged a kind of participatory democracy among their reading public, consisting of recitations of their latest installments in the workplace or letters to their author from readers offering commentaries and corrections — a feature that Nerval would imitate in The Salt Smugglers by including (fictitious?) correspondence addressed to him by subscribers to Le National. The Riancey amendment, in any event, proved a blessing in disguise for Nerval, for it provided him with the basic comic shtick of his feuilleton: ever anxious to follow the letter of the law and please the censor, its hapless narrator will valiantly attempt to avoid “committing a novel” (as he puts it), only to fail again and again as he discovers that “history” itself is nothing more than a purely linguistic, purely narrative construct whose “facts” are often no more stable than the six different spellings of the abbé de Bucquoy’s name.

As if this legislative enforcement of the ideology of referentiality were not enough — after all, Plato’s Republic, recognizing the perils of unfounded mimesis, had similarly recommended the expulsion of poets — there was another rider attached to these press laws of July 16, namely, the so-called Tinguy amendment, which required that any newspaper article dealing with “matters political, philosophical, or religious” be signed by the name of its author. Gérard Labrunie, who had spent most of his literary career publishing under a variety of initials and pseudonyms before arriving at his definitive nom de plume Gérard de Nerval in the 1840s, could not fail to be amused and alarmed by this attempt to institutionalize the “author function” (as Foucault calls it) by fixing the legal liability of utterance within the locus of the proper name. He wryly observed that this new law obliging journalists to affix their signatures to their articles would no doubt lead writers to “develop their personalities beyond measure,” causing them to preen and posture in front of their readers. Whereas the “we” traditionally used by the feuilletoniste indicated that the opinions he offered were not simply his own, but rather those collectively held by the staff of his newspaper or by the guild of his literary confreres, the newly instituted regime of the “I” (so Nerval argued) broke down this spirit of community, leaving the author a “mere individual, a mere spectator, constrained at all points to protect his own personal dignity and modesty” from the glare of public — and legal — exposure.

To protect his privacy on the public page, Nerval devised an elaborate cat and mouse game with his censors — and his readers. Even as he puts in his daily conversational visits to his public, gently nudging it with his elbow like some affable eighteenth-century narrator, he remains forever elusive — much like his alter egos the abbé de Bucquoy or Angélique de Longueval, both “historical” figures to be sure, but in the end only knowable as evanescent textual traces. At moments these autofictional sleights of hand leave Sterne or Diderot behind altogether and seem to anticipate the New Journalism of the 1960s. It is difficult, at any rate, to think of any other French newspaper writer before Nerval who had adapted the essayistic feuilleton mode to this level of random autobiographical disclosure: he shares with us his childhood memories of the Valois, his battles with censors and theater directors during the 1839 production of his play Léo Burckart, his recent travels in Germany, and even informs us of his imminent eviction from his current apartment in Paris because of the planned urban renewal of his neighborhood — the historical veracity of which he proves by reprinting the actual (?) expropriation notice sent to him by the prefecture of the Seine. Yet even as we think we have entered into the quotidian intimacy of our narrator, sharing in his frustrations with the French postal system as he tries to dispatch his copy back to the capital or sympathizing with his ill treatment at the hands of a grumpy bookseller (on whom he takes revenge by printing his business address at the bottom of the page to warn away future customers), the Nervalian “I” keeps slipping through our fingers, lost in the labyrinth of the Archive, its voice receding into the intertextual murmur of the Library of Babel.

Nearly two months after embarking upon his initiatory quest for the rare book containing the life and adventures of the abbé de Bucquoy, our narrator informs his newspaper readers that he has at last reached his grail. It is now their turn to speak. Lector in fabula:

“And then ...” (This is how Diderot began one of his stories, someone is bound to remind me.)

“Go on!”

“You have merely imitated Diderot.”

“Who had imitated Sterne ...”

“Who had imitated Swift ...”

“Who had imitated Rabelais ...”

“Who had imitated Merlinus Coccaius ...”

“Who had imitated Petronius ...”

“Who had imitated Lucian. And Lucian had imitated numerous others ... And most particularly, the author of Odyssey, who led his hero around the Mediterranean for ten years before finally bringing him home to that fabled Ithaca, whose queen, hounded as she was by some fifty suitors, spent every night undoing what she had woven that day.”

“But Ulysses finally found his way back to his Ithaca.”

“And I found my way back to my abbé de Bucquoy.”

“Tell me about it.”

This exchange provides a textbook example of what the Russian critic Mikhael Bakhtin defined as the “dialogism” of the novel — agenre whose origins he located in exactly the same tradition as Nerval (the Odyssey, Hellenistic romance, Rabelais, etc.). Dialogism, for Bakhtin, represents the liberatory subversion of all forms of monologic authoritarianism — the literary equivalent, as it were, of violating salt monopolies and of bootlegging contraband across borders. The Salt Smugglers is a “polyphonic” text in very much this political sense, for its “eccentricity” (a favorite word of Nerval’s) works to undermine any stable notion of a sovereign center, replacing it instead with the unlicensed play of multiple narratives, multiple temporalities, multiple voices. For a newspaper serial of this relatively brief compass, the generic diversity and hybridity of Nerval’s text are startlingly (pre-post-)modern. Although framed as an epistolary novel (i.e., as a series of letters to the director of Le National), its pages serve up a carnival feast of proven recipes for fiction: the quest romance, the picaresque novel, the adventure story, the detective tale, the confessional memoir, the folk legend, the anecdote, the conte fantastique, and, of course, the historical novel — all punctuated by various found textual objects that are collaged into the narrative (police reports, book catalogue entries, snippets from manuals of heraldry, tombstone inscriptions, not to mention the periodic strains of verse, both rhymed and free, that sing forth from the contrapuntal motifs of his prose). Nerval at one point refers to his work as a “symphonie pastorale,” thus hinting at the musical structure of his performance — the syncopations of whose chapter breaks and the unpredictable modulations of whose tonalities (now idyll, now elegy, now satire) also look forward to the riffs and improvised solos of jazz. Behind this term “symphony” one also hears distant echoes of the Sympoesie theorized and practiced by the Jena Romantics — a collective work (or act) of art based, like Nerval’s experimental fiction, on the Utopian imagination of a community engaged in a revolutionary process of continual remembering and remaking and retelling:

“And I found my way back to my abbé de Bucquoy.”

“Tell me about it.”

1

Here the sergeant observes the principle that someone of higher rank always has to have the last word.

2

Notice to the post office. — This letter, posted from Senlis at ten the previous night, only reached us at our offices at seven in the evening.

3

The term in France was traditionally applied to any place that lay within the territory of the Île-de-France — as opposed to the neighboring regions of Picardy or Soissons. The term is still used to today to designate certain localities.

4

I have no idea what this line means; I refer it to the paleographers.

5

She never mentions La Corbinière by name; it was only through the narrative of Angélique’s cousin, the Celestine monk, that we learned of his identity.

6

This letter that I posted at eleven at night once again arrived the following day at seven in the evening. So I suppose there was nothing out of the ordinary either this time or the previous time, — except for the fact that it takes the post office an eternity to cover a distance of forty kilometers which the stages manage in four hours.

7

This note has been clipped from a sale catalogue. So far we have encountered five different spellings of the name de Bucquoy; here’s the sixth: Busquoy.

8

Hermann, Arminius, or perhaps Hermes.

9

M. Toulouse, rue du Foin-Saint-Jacques, across from the police station.

10

M. Boulouze

11

A Protestant branch of the de Bucquoy family in fact existed in the Quercy region.

12

After the storming of the Bastille, most of its archives were transported to the Library of the Arsenal. We hope to find traces of this interrogation among its holdings. This material, however, has lain there unclassified since ’89, even though some progress is currently being made. We shall communicate the result of our research to the public once the library has completed its classification of these archives.

13

Historical.

14

Michaud’s Biographie universelle refers to a M. le Premier. The semi-German book in our possession offers this other name.

English translation copyright © 2009 by Richard Sieburth

First Archipelago Book edition, 2009

Originally appeared as Les faux saulniers in Le National newspaper in Paris, 1850.

This edition follows the text established and annotated by Jacques Bony in volume

two of Nerval’s Oeuvres complètes (Bibiothèque de la Pléaide, 1984).

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nerval, Gérard de, 1808-1855.

[Faux saulniers. English]

The salt smugglers / by Gérard de Nerval ;

translated from the French by Richard Sieburth.

p. cm.

Translation of: Les faux saulniers.

eISBN : 978-0-981-98739-2

1. Lost books — France — Fiction. 2. Censorship — France — History —

19th century — Fiction. 3. Satire. I. Sieburth, Richard. II. Title.

PQ2260.G36F’.7 — dc22

2009014413

The publishers are grateful for the support of Lannan Foundation,

the Florence Gould Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts,

and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.