Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel

‘None; you are the arbiter of your own fortune at any moment you wish.’

‘You smile, sir, and naturally enough, that one poor and friendless as I am should make such conditions; but remember, my liberty is all my wealth – so long as I have that, so long am I master of myself: free to come and go, I am not lost to self-esteem. I accept,’ and so saying, he gave his hand to the Abbé, who pressed it cordially, in ratification of the compact.

‘You will return with me to Florence, Monsieur le Chevalier,’ said the Abbé, rising, and assuming a degree of courteous respect which Gerald at once saw was to be his right for the future.

BOOK THE SECOND

CHAPTER I. THE ‘SALLE DES GARDES’

In a large salon of the palace at Versailles, opening upon a terrace, and with a view of the vast forest beneath it, were assembled a number of officers, whose splendid uniforms and costly equipments proclaimed them to be of the bodyguard of the king. They had just risen from table, and were either enjoying their coffee in easy indolence, gathered in little knots for conversation, or arranging themselves into parties for play.

The most casual glance at them would have shown what it is but fair to confess they never sought to conceal – that they were the pampered favourites of their master. It was not alone the richness of their embroidered dress, the boundless extravagance that all around them displayed, but, more than even these, a certain air of haughty pretension, the carriage and bearing of a privileged class, proclaimed that they took their rank from the high charge that assigned them the guard of the person of the sovereign.

When the power and sway of the monarchy suffered no check – so long as the nation was content to be grateful for the virtues of royalty, and indulgent to its faults – while yet the prestige of past reigns of splendour prevailed, the ‘Garde du Corps’ were great favourites with the public: their handsome appearance, the grace of their horsemanship, their personal elegance, even their very waste and extravagance had its meed of praise from those who felt a reflected pride from the glittering display of the court. Already, however, signs of an approaching change evidenced themselves: a graver tone of reprehension was used in discussing the abandoned habits of the nobility; painfully drawn pictures of the poor were contrasted with the boundless waste of princely households; the flatteries that once followed every new caprice of royal extravagance, and which imparted to the festivities of the Trianon the gorgeous colours of a romance, were now exchanged for bare recitals, wherein splendour had a cold and chilling lustre. If the cloud were no bigger than a man’s hand, it was charged with deadliest lightning.

The lack of that deference which they had so long regarded as their due, made these haughty satraps but haughtier and more insolent in their manner toward the citizens. Every day saw the breach widen between them; and what formerly had been oppression on one side and yielding on the other, were now occasions of actual collision, wherein the proud soldier was not always the victor. If the newspapers were strong on one side, the language of society was less measured on the other. The whole tone of conversation caught its temper from the times; and ‘the bourgeois’ was ridiculed and laughed at unceasingly. The witty talker sought no other theme; the courtly epigrammatist selected no other subject; and even royalty itself was made to laugh at the stage exhibitions of those whose loyalty had once, at least, been the bulwark of the monarchy.

In the spacious apartment already mentioned, and at a small table before an open window, sat a party of three, over their wine. One was a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man, with something Spanish in his look, the Duc de Bourguignon, a captain in the Garde; the second was a handsome but over-conceited-looking youth, of about twenty-two or three, the Marquis de Maurepas. The third was Gerald, or as he was then and there called, Le Chevalier de Fitzgerald. Though the two latter were simple soldiers, all their equipment was as costly as that of the officer at their side. As little was there any difference in their manner of addressing him. Maurepas, indeed, seemed rather disposed to take the lead in conversation, and assumed a sort of authority in all he said, to which the Duke gave the kind of assent usually accorded to the ‘talkers by privilege.’ The young Marquis had all the easy flippancy of a practised narrator, and talked like one who rarely fell upon an unwilling audience.

‘It needs but this, Duke,’ said he, after a very energetic burst of eloquence; ‘it needs but this, and our corps will be like a regiment of the line.’

‘Parbleu!’ said the Duke, as he stroked his chin with the puzzled air of a man who saw a difficulty, but could not imagine any means of escape.

‘I should like to know what your father or mine would have said to such pretension,’ resumed the Marquis. ‘You remember what the great monarch said to Colonna, when he asked a place for his son? – “You must ask Honoré if he has a vacancy in the kitchen!” And right, too. Are we to be all mixed up together! Are the employments of the State to be filled by men whose fathers were lackeys! Is France going to reject the traditions that have guided her for centuries?’

‘To what is all this apropos, Gaston!’ asked Fitzgerald calmly.

‘Haven’t you heard that M. Lescour has made interest with the king to have his son appointed to the Garde?’

‘And who is M. Lescour?’

‘I ‘ll tell you what he is, which is more to the purpose: he himself would be puzzled to say who. M. Lescour is a fermier-general – very rich, doubtless, but of an origin the lowest.’

‘And his son?’

‘His son! What do I know about his son? I conclude he resembles his father: at all events, he cannot be one of us.’

‘Pardon me if I am not able to see why,’ said Gerald calmly. ‘There is nothing in the station of a fermier-general that should not have opened to his son the approach to the very highest order of education, all that liberal means could bestow – ’

‘But, mon cher, what do we care for all that? We want good blood and good names among our comrades; we want to know that our friendships and our intimacies are with those whose fathers were the associates of our fathers. Ask the Duke here, how he would fancy companionship with the descendants of the rabble. Ask yourself, is it from such a class you would select your bosom friends?’

‘Grant all you say to be correct: is not the king himself a good judge of those to whom he would intrust the guardianship of his person?’ interposed Gerald. ‘The annals of the world have shown that loyalty and courage are not peculiar to a class.’

‘A’nt they —parbleu!’ cried Maurepas. ‘Why, those sentiments are worthy of the Rue Montmartre. Messieurs,’ added he, rising, and addressing the others, scattered in groups through the room, ‘congratulate yourselves that the enlightened opinions of the age have penetrated the darkness of our benighted corps. Here is the Chevalier de Fitzgerald enunciating opinions that the most advanced democracy would be proud of.’

The company thus addressed rose from their several places and came crowding around the table where the three were seated. Gerald knew not very accurately the words he had just uttered, and turned from one face to the other of those around to catch something like sympathy or encouragement in this moment of trial, but none such was there. Astonishment and surprise were, perhaps, the most favourable among the expressions of those who now regarded him.

‘I was telling the Duc de Bourguignon of the danger that impended our corps,’ began Maurepas, addressing the company generally. ‘I was alluding to what rumour has been threatening us with some time back, the introduction into the Garde of men of ignoble birth. I mentioned specifically one case, which, if carried through, dissolves for ever the prestige of that bond that has always united us, when our comrade here interposes and tells me that the person of his Majesty will be as safe in the guardianship of the vile “Koturier” as in that of our best and purest blood. I will not for an instant dispute with him as to knowledge of the class whose merits he upholds.’ A faint murmur, half astonishment, half reproof, arose throughout the room at these words; but Gerald never moved a muscle, but sat calm and still awaiting the conclusion of the speech.

‘I say this without offence, resumed Maurepas, who quickly saw that he had not the sympathy of his hearers in his last sally; ‘without the slightest offence, for, in good truth, I have no acquaintanceship outside the world of my equals. Our comrade’s views are doubtless, therefore, wider and broader; but I will also say that these used not to be the traditions of our corps, and that not only our duty, but our very existence, was involved in the idea that we were a noble guard.’

‘Well said!’ ‘True!’ ‘Maurepas is right!’ resounded through the room.

‘We are, then, agreed in this,’ resumed Maurepas, following up his success with vigour; ‘and there is only one among us who deems that the blood of the plebeian is wanting to lend us chivalry and devotion.’

‘Shame! shame!’ cried several together, and looks of disapprobation were now turned on Fitzgerald.

‘If I have unintentionally misrepresented the Chevalier,’ resumed Maurepas, ‘he is here to correct me.’

Gerald arose, his face crimson, the flush spreading over his forehead and his temples. There was a wild energy in his glance that showed the passion that worked within him; but though his chest heaved with high indignation and his heart swelled, his tongue could not utter a word, and he stood there mute and confounded.

‘There, there – enough of it!’ exclaimed an old officer, whose venerable appearance imparted authority to his words. ‘The Chevalier retracts, and there is an end to it.’

‘I do not. I withdraw nothing – not a syllable of what I said,’ cried Gerald wildly.

‘It is far better thus, then,’ cried Maurepas; ‘let the corps decide between us.’

‘Decide what,’ exclaimed Gerald passionately. ‘Monsieur de Maurepas would limit the courage and bravery of France to the number of those who wear our uniform. I am disposed to believe that there are some hundreds of thousands just as valiant and just as loyal who carry less lace on their coats, and some even – ’ here he stopped confused and abashed, when a deep voice called out —

‘And some even who have no coats at all. Is it not so you would say, Chevalier?’

‘I accept the words as my own, though I did not use them,’ cried Gerald boldly.

‘There is but one explanation of such opinions as these,’ broke in Maurepas; ‘the Chevalier de Fitzgerald has been keeping other company than ours of late.’

Gerald rose angrily to reply, but ere he could utter a word an arm was slipped within his own, and a deep voice said —

‘Come away from this – come to my quarters, Gerald, and let us talk over the matter.’ It was Count Dillon, the oldest captain of the corps, who spoke, and Gerald obeyed him without a word of remonstrance.

‘Don’t you perceive, boy,’ said the Count, as soon as they reached the open air, ‘that we Irish are in a position of no common difficulty here? They expect us to stand by an order of nobility that we do not belong to. To the king and the royal family you and I will be as loyal and true as the best among them; but what do we care – what can we care – for the feuds between noble and bourgeois? If this breach grows wider every day, it was none of our making; as little does it concern us how to repair it.’

‘I never sought for admission into this corps,’ said Gerald angrily. ‘Madame de Bauffremont promised me my grade in the dragoons, and then I should have seen service. Two squadrons of the very regiment I should have joined are already off to America, and instead of that, I am here to lounge away my life, less a soldier than a lackey!’

‘Say nothing to disparage the Garde, young fellow, or I shall forget we are countrymen,’ said Dillon sternly; and then, as if sorry for the severity of the rebuke, added, ‘Have only a little patience, and you can effect an exchange. It is what I have long desired myself.’

‘You too, Count?’ cried Gerald eagerly.

‘Ay, boy. This costly life just suits my pocket as ill as its indolence agrees with my taste. As soldiers, we can be as good men as they, but neither you nor I have three hundred thousand livres a year, like Maurepas or Noailles. We cannot lose ten rouleaux of Louis every evening at ombre, and sleep soundly after; our valets do not drink Pomard at dinner, nor leave our service rich with two years of robbery.’

‘I never play,’ said Gerald gravely.

‘So I remarked,’ continued Dillon; ‘you lived like one whose means did not warrant waste, nor whose principles permitted debt.’

By this time they had reached a small pavilion in the wood, at the door of which a sentry was stationed.

‘Here we are,’ cried Dillon; ‘this is my quarter: come up and see how luxuriously a Chef d’Escadron is lodged.’

Nothing, indeed, could be more simple or less pretentious than the apartment into which Gerald was now ushered. The furniture was of a dark nut-wood, and the articles few and inexpensive.