CHAPTER XXIV. THE PAVILLON DE FLORE
As my humble carriage slackened its pace to a walk on approaching the Place Carousel, I for the first time perceived that the open space around was thronged with equipages, moving slowly along in line towards the gate of the Palace. A picket of dragoons was drawn up at the great archway, and mounted gendarmes rode up and down to preserve order in the crowd. Before me stretched the long facade of the Tuileries, now lighted up in its entire extent; the rich hangings and costly furniture could be seen even where I was.
What a sinking sense of shame overwhelmed me as I thought of my humble position amid that mighty concourse of all that was great and illustrious in France! and how I shrunk within myself as I thought of the poor scholar of the Polytechnique – for such my dress, proclaimed me – mixing with the most distinguished diplomatists and generals of Europe! The rebuke I had met with from my colonel in the morning was still fresh in my recollection, and I dreaded something like a repetition of it.
“Oh, why had I not known that this was a grand reception?” was the ever-rising thought of my mind. My card of invitation said a soiree, – even that I might have dared: but here was a regular levée! Already I was near enough to hear the names announced at the foot of the grand staircase, where ambassadors, senators, ministers of state, and officers of the highest rank succeeded each other in quick succession. My carriage stood now next but two. I was near enough to see the last arrival hand his card to the huissier in waiting, and hear his title called out, “Le Ministre de la Guerre,” when the person in the carriage before me cried to his coachman, “To the left, – the Pa villon de Flore;” and at the same moment the carriage turned from the line, and drove rapidly towards a distant wing of the Palace.
“Move up! move up!” shouted a dragoon. “Or are you for the soiree de Madame?”
“Yes, yes!” said I, hastily, as I heard his question.
“Follow that carriage, then,” said he, pointing with his sabre; and in a moment we left the dense file, and followed the sounds of the retiring wheels towards a dark corner of the Palace, where a single lamp over a gate was the only light to guide us.
Never shall I forget the sense of relief I felt as I lay back in the carriage, and listened to the hum and din of the vast crowd growing each moment fainter. “Thank Heaven,” said I, “it’s no levee!” Scarce half a dozen equipages stood around the door as we drove up, and a single dragoon was the guard of honor.
“Whom shall I announce, sir?” said a huissier in black, whose manner was as deferential as though my appearance bespoke an ambassador. I gave my name, and followed him up a wide stair, where the deep velvet carpet left no footfall audible. A large bronze candelabra, supporting a blaze of waxlights, diffused a light like day on every side. The doors opened before us as if by magic, and I found myself in an antechamber, where the huissier, repeating my name to another in waiting, retired. Passing through this, we entered a small drawing-room, in which sat two persons engaged at a chess table, but who never looked up or noticed us as we proceeded. At last the two wings of a wide folding door were thrown open, and my name was announced in a low but audible voice.
The salon into which I now entered was a large and splendidly-furnished apartment, whose light, tempered by a species of abat-jour, gave a kind of soft mysterious effect to everything about, and made even the figures, as they sat in little groups, appear something almost dramatic in their character. The conversation, too, was maintained in a half-subdued tone, – a gentle murmur of voices, that, mingling with the swell of music in another and distant apartment, and the plash of a small fountain in a vase of goldfish in the room itself, made a strange but most pleasing assemblage of sounds. Even in the momentary glance which, on entering, I threw around me, I perceived that no studied etiquette or courtly stateliness prevailed. The guests were disposed in every attitude of lounging ease and careless abandon; and it was plain to see that all or nearly all about were intimates of the place.
As the door closed behind me, I stood half uncertain how to proceed. Unhappily, I knew little of the habitudes of the great world, and every step I took was a matter of difficulty.
“I think you will find Madame Bonaparte in that room,” said a middle-aged and handsome man, whose mild voice and gentle smile did much to set me at my ease. “But perhaps you don’t know her.”
I muttered something I meant to be a negative, to which he immediately replied, —
“Then let me present you. There is no ceremony here, and I shall be your groom of the chambers. But here she is. Madame la Consulesse, this young gentleman desires to make his respects.”
“Ha! our friend of the Polytechnique, – Monsieur Burke, is it not?”
“Yes, Madame,” said I, bowing low, and blushing deeply as I recognized, in the splendidly-attired and beautiful person before me, the lady who so kindly held the water to my lips the day of my accident at the school.
“Why, they told me you were promoted, – a hussar, I think.”
“Yes, Madame; but – but – ”
“You are too fond of old associations to part from them easily,” said she, laughing. “Come here, Stephanie, and see a miracle of manhood, that could resist all the clinquant of a hussar for the simple costume of the É cole Militaire. Monsieur de Custine, this is my young friend of whom I told you the other day.”
The gentleman, the same who had so kindly noticed me, bowed politely.
“And now I must leave you together, for I see they are teasing poor Madame Lefebvre.” And with a smile she passed on into a small boudoir, from which the sounds of merry laughter were proceeding.
“You don’t know any one here?” said Monsieur de Custine, as he motioned me to a place beside him on a sofa. “Nor is there any very remarkable person here to point out to you this evening. The First Consul’s levée absorbs all the celebrities; but by and by they will drop in to pay their respects, and you ‘ll see them all. The handsome woman yonder with her fan before her is Madame Beauharnais Lavalette, and the good-looking young fellow in the staff uniform is Monsieur de Melcy, a stepson of General Rapp.”
“And the large handsome man with the embroidered coat who passed through so hurriedly?”
“Yes, he is somebody, – that’s Decrès, the Ministre de la Marine; he is gone to the levee. And there, next the door, with his eyes cast down and his hands folded, that is the Abbé Maynal, one of the most ‘spirituel’ men of the day. But I suppose you ‘d much rather look at the beauties of the Court than hear long stories about literature and politics. And there is the gem of loveliness among them.”
I turned my eyes as he spoke, and close beside me, engaged in an eager conversation with an old lady, stood a young and most beautiful girl. Her long hair, through which, in the then mode, violets were wreathed and interwoven, descended in rich masses of curl over a neck white as marble. The corsage of her dress, which, in imitation of Greek costume, was made low, displayed her well-rounded shoulders to the greatest advantage; and though rather below than above the middle size, there was a dignity and grace in the air of her figure, and a certain elegance about her slightest movements, that was most fascinating.
“And the ‘Rose de Provence,’ – how is she this evening?” said my companion, rising suddenly, and presenting himself with a smile before her.
“Ah! you here. Monsieur de Custine? we thought you had been at Nancy.”
The accent, the tone of voice in which she said these few words, sent a thrill through me; and as I looked again, I recognized the young lady who stood at Madame Bonaparte’s side on the memorable day of my fall. Perhaps my astonishment made me start; for she turned round towards me, and with a soft and most charming smile saluted me,
“How they are laughing in that room!” said she, turning towards her other companions. “Monsieur de Custine has deserted his dear friend this evening, and left her to her unassisted defence.”
“Ma foi,” replied he, “I got ill rewarded for my advocacy. It was only last week, when I helped her out through one of her blunders in grammar she called me a ‘ganache’ for my pains.”
“How very ungrateful! You that have been interpreter to her, her tutor for the entire winter, without whom she could neither have obtained an ice nor a glass of water!”
“So is it; but you are all ungrateful. But I think I had better go and pay my respects to her. Pray, come along with me.”
I followed the party into a small room fitted up like a tent, where, amid some half-dozen persons assembled around like an audience, sat a large, florid, and good-looking person, her costume of scarlet velvet, turban, and robe adding to the flushed and high-colored expression of her features. She was talking in a loud voice, and with an accent of such patois as I should much more naturally have expected in a remote faubourg than in the gilded salons of the Tuileries. She had been relating some anecdotes of military life, which came within her own experience; and evidently amused her auditory as much by her manner as the matter of her narrative.
“Oui, parbleu,” said she, drawing a long breath, “I was only the wife of a sergeant in the ‘Gardes Françaises’ in those days; but they were pleasant times, and the men one used to see were men indeed. They were not as much laced in gold, nor had not so much finery on their jackets; but they were bold, bronzed, manly fellows. You ‘d not see such a poor, miserable little fellow as De Custine there, in a whole demi-brigade.” When the laugh this speech caused, and in which her own merry voice joined, subsided, she continued; “Where will you find, now, anything like the Twenty-second of the line? Pioche was in that. Poor Pioche! I tied up his jaw in Egypt when it was smashed by a bullet. I remember, too, when the regiment came back, your husband, the General, reviewed them in the court below, and poor Pioche was quite offended at not being noticed. ‘We were good friends,’ quoth he, ‘at Mount Tabor, but he forgets all that now; that ‘s what comes of a rise in the world. “Le Petit Caporal” was humble enough once, I warrant him; but now he can’t remember me.’ Well, they were ordered to march past in line; and there was Pioche, with his great dark eyes fixed on the General, and his big black beard flowing down to his waist. But no, he never noticed him no more than the tambour that beat the rappel. He could bear it no longer; his head was twisting with impatience and chagrin; and he sprang out of the lines, and seizing a brass gun, – a pièce de quatre, – he mounted it like a fusee to his shoulder, and marched past, calling out, ‘Tu’ – he always tu’toied him – ’ tu te rappelles maintenant, n’est-ce pas, petit?’”
No one enjoyed this little story more than Madame Bonaparte herself, who laughed for several minutes after it was over. Story after story did she pour forth in this way; most of them, however, had their merit in some personality or other, which, while recognized by the rest, had no attraction for me. There was in all she said the easy self-complacency of a kind-hearted but vulgar woman, vain of her husband, proud of his services, and perfectly indifferent to the habits and usages of a society ‘whose manners she gave herself no trouble to imitate, nor of whose ridicule was she in the least afraid.
I sauntered from the room alone, to wander through the other apartments, where objects of art and curiosities of every kind were profusely scattered. The marbles of Greece and Rome, the strange carvings of Egypt, the rich vases of Sevres were there, amid cabinet pictures of the rarest and most costly kind. Those delicious landscapes of the time of Louis the Fifteenth, where every charm of nature and art was conveyed upon the canvas: the cool arbors of Versailles, with their terraced promenades and hissing fountains, – the subjects which Vanloo loved to paint, and which that voluptuous Court loved to contemplate, – the long alleys of shady green, where gay groups were strolling in the mellow softness of an autumn sunset; those proud dames whose sweeping garments brushed the velvet turf, and at whose sides, uncovered, walked the chivalry of France, – how did they live again in the bright pencil of Moucheron! and how did they carry one in fancy to the great days of the Monarchy! Strange place for them, too, – the boudoir of her whose husband had uprooted the ancient dynasty they commemorated, had erased from the list of kings that proudest of all the royal stocks in Europe. Was it the narrow-minded glory of the Usurper, that loved to look upon the greatness he had humbled, that brought them there? or was it rather the wellspring of that proud hope just rising in his heart, that he was to be successor of those great kings whose history formed the annals of Europe itself?
As I wandered on, captivated in every sense by the charm of what to me was a scene in fairyland, I came suddenly before a picture of Josephine, surrounded by the ladies of her Court. It was by Isabey, and had all the delicate beauty and transparent finish of that delightful painter. Beside it was another portrait by the same artist; and I started back in amazement at the resemblance. Never had color better caught the rich tint of a Southern complexion; the liquid softness of eye, the full and sparkling intelligence of ready wit and bright fancy, all beamed in that lovely face. It needed not the golden letters in the frame which called it “La Rose de Provence.” I sat down before it unconsciously, delighted that I might gaze on such beauty unconstrained. The white hand leaned on a balustrade, and seemed almost as if stretching from the very canvas. I could have knelt and kissed it. That was the very look she wore the hour I saw her first, – it had never left my thoughts day or night. The half-rising blush, the slightly averted head, the mingled look of impatience and kindness, – all were there; and so entranced had I become, that I feared each instant lest the vision would depart, and leave me dark and desolate. The silence of the room was almost unbroken. A distant murmur of voices, the tones of a harp, were all I heard; and I sat, I know not how long, thus wrapped in ecstasy.
A tall screen of Chinese fabric separated the part of the room I occupied from the rest, and left me free to contemplate alone those charms which each moment grew stronger upon me. An hour might perhaps have thus elapsed, when suddenly I heard the sound of voices approaching, but in a different direction from that of the salons. They were raised above the ordinary tone of speaking, and one in particular sounded in a strange accent of mingled passion and sarcasm which I shall never forget. The door of the room was flung open before I could rise from my chair; and two persons entered, neither of whom could I see from my position behind the screen.
“I ask you, again and again, Is the treaty of Amiens a treaty, or is it not?” said a harsh, imperious tone I at once recognized as that of the First Consol, while his voice actually trembled with anger.
“My Lord Whitworth observed, if I mistake not,” replied a measured and soft accent, where a certain courtier-like unction prevailed, “that the withdrawal of the British troops from Malta would follow, on our making a similar step as regards our forces in Switzerland and Piedmont.”
“What right have they to make such a condition? They never complained of the occupation of Switzerland at the time of the treaty. I will not hear of such a stipulation. I tell you. Monsieur de Talleyrand, I ‘d rather see the English in the Faubourg St. Antoine than in the Island of Malta. Why should we treat with England as a Continental power? Of India, if she will; and as to Egypt, I told my lord that sooner or later it must belong to France.”
“A frankness he has reason to be thankful for,” observed M. de Talleyrand, in a voice of sarcastic slyness.
“Que voulez-vous?” replied Bonaparte, in a raised tone. “They want a war, and they shall have it. What matter the cause? – such treaties of peace as these had better be covered with black crape.” Then dropping his voice to a half-whisper, he added: “You must see him to-morrow; explain how the attacks of the English press have irritated me; how deeply wounded I must feel at such a license permitted under the very eyes of a friendly government, – plots against my life encouraged, assassination countenanced! Repeat, that Sebastiani’s mission to Egypt is merely commercial; that although prepared for war, our wish, the wish of France, is peace; that the armaments in Holland are destined for the Colonies. Show yourself disposed to treat, but not to make advances. Reject the word ultimatum, if he employ it; the phrase implies a parley between a superior and an inferior. This is no longer the France that remembers an English commissary at Dunkirk. If he do not use the word, then remark on its absence; say, these are not times for longer anxiety, – that we must know, at last, to what we are to look; tell him the Bourbons are not still on the throne here; let him feel with whom he has to deal.”
“And if he demand his passport,” gravely observed Talleyrand, “you can be in the country for a day; at Plombiferes, – at St. Cloud.”
A low, subdued laugh followed these words, and they walked forward towards the salons, still conversing, but in a whispered tone.
A cold perspiration broke over my face and forehead, the drops fell heavily down my cheek, as I sat an unwilling listener of this eventful dialogue. That the fate of Europe was in the balance I knew full well; and ardently as I longed for war, the dreadful picture that rose before me damped much of my ardor; while a sense of my personal danger, if discovered where I was, made me tremble from head to foot. It was, then, with a sinking spirit, that I retraced my steps towards the salons, not knowing if my absence had not been remarked and commented on. How little was I versed in such society, where each came and went as it pleased him, – where the most brilliant beauty, the most spiritual conversationalist, left no gap by absence, – and where such as I were no more noticed than the statues that held the waxlights!
The salons were now crowded: ministers of state, ambassadors, general officers in their splendid uniforms, filled the apartments, in which the din of conversation and the sounds of laughter mingled. Yet, through the air of gayety which reigned throughout, – the tone of light and flippant smartness which prevailed, – I thought I could mark here and there among some of the ministers an appearance of excitement and a look of preoccupation little in unison with the easy intimacy which all seemed to possess. I looked on every side for the First Consul himself, but he was nowhere to be seen. Monsieur Talleyrand, however, remained: I recognized him by his soft and measured accent, as he sat beside Madame Bonaparte, and was relating some story in a low voice, at which she seemed greatly amused. I could not help wondering at the lively and animated character of features, beneath which were concealed the dark secrets of state affairs, the tangled mysteries of political intrigue. To look on him, you would have said, “There sits one whose easy life flows on, unruffled by this world’s chances.”
Not so the tall and swarthy man, whose dark mustache hangs far below his chin, and who leans on the chimneypiece yonder; the large veins of his forehead are swollen and knitted, and his deep voice seems to tremble with strong emotion as he speaks.
“Pray, Monsieur, who is that officer yonder?” said I, to a gentleman beside me, and whose shoulder was half turned away.
“That,” said he, raising his glass, “that is Savary, the Minister of Police. And, pardon, you are Mr. Burke, – is ‘t not so?”
I started as he pronounced my name, and looking fixedly at him, recognized the antagonist with whom I was to measure swords the next morning in the Bois de Boulogne. I colored at the awkwardness of my situation; but he, with more ease and self-possession, resumed, —
“Monsieur, this is, to me at least, a very fortunate meeting. I have called twice, in the hope of seeing you this evening, and am overjoyed now to find you here. I behaved very ill to you this morning; I feel it now, I almost felt it at the time. If you will accept my apology for what has occurred, I make it most freely. My character is in no need of an affair to make me known as a man of courage; yours, there can be no doubt of. May I hope you agree with me? I see you hesitate: perhaps I anticipate the reason, – you do not know how far you can or ought to receive such an amende?” I nodded, and he continued: “Well, I am rather a practised person in these matters, and I can safely say you may.”
“Be it so, then,” said I, taking the hand he proffered, and shaking it warmly; “I am too young in the world to be my own guide, and I feel you would not deceive me.”
A gratified look, and a renewed pressure of the hand, replied to my speech.
“One favor more, – you must n’t refuse me. Let us sup together. My calèche is below; people are already taking their leave here; and, if you have no particular reason for remaining – ”
“None; I know no one.”
“Allons, then,” said he, gayly, taking my arm. And I soon found myself descending the marble stairs beside the man I had expected to stand opposed to in deadly conflict a few hours later.