Diary And Notes Of Horace Templeton, Esq. Volume I

“I see,” said the lieutenant smiling, “that you are indisposed to receive an acknowledgment for what you set such small store by – a kindness to a mere ‘soldier of the Republic;’ but when you wear a sword yourself, Mons. le Comte, as you will doubtless one of these days – ”

“No,” said Alfred, hastily interrupting him, “never! I shall never wear one.”

“How, never! What can you mean?”

“That I shall never be a soldier,” said Alfred. “I am to be a priest.”

“A priest! You, Mons. le Comte de Vitry, of the best blood of Auvergne – you, a monk!”

“I did not say a monk,” said Alfred, proudly; “there are other ranks among churchmen. I have heard tell of Prince-bishops and Cardinals.”

“And if one were to begin life at the age they usually take leave of it, such a career might not be held so cheaply; but for a young man of good birth and blood, with a heart to feel proudly, and a hand to wield a weapon – no, no, this were a shame not to be thought of.”

Stung alike by the severity of the sarcasm, and animated by the old spirit of the Père’s teaching, Alfred hastily answered: —

“And if men of rank and station no longer carry arms as their forefathers did, with whom lies the blame? Why do they now bend to adopt a path that in former days was only trodden by the weak-hearted and the timid? Because they would not draw the sword in a cause they abhor, and for a faction they despised; neither would they shed their blood to assure the triumph of a rabble.”

“Nor would I,” interposed the lieutenant, while a slight flush coloured his cheek. “The cause in which I perilled life was that of France, my country. You may safely trust, that the nation capable of such conquests will neither be disgraced by bad rulers, nor dishonoured by cowardly ones.”

“I have no faith in Republicans,” said Alfred, scornfully.

“Because they were not born to a title, perhaps! But do you know how many of those who now carry victory into foreign lands belong to this same class that includes all your sympathy? – prouder, far prouder, that they sustain the honour of France against her enemies than that they carry the blazon of a marquis or the coronet of a duke on their escutcheon? You look incredulous! Nay, I speak no more than what I well know: for instance, the humble lieutenant who now addresses you can claim rank as high and ancient as your own. You have heard of the Liancourts?”

“Le Duc de Liancourt?”

“Yes; I am, or rather I was, the Duc de Liancourt,” said the lieutenant, with an almost imperceptible struggle: “my present rank is Sous-Lieutenant of the Third Lancers. Now listen to me calmly for a few moments, and I hope to shew you, that in a country where a dreadful social earthquake has uprooted every foundation of rank, and strewed the ground with the ruins of every thing like prescription, it is nobler and better to shew that nobility could enter the lists, unaided by its prestige, and win the palm, among those who vainly boasted themselves better and braver. This we have done, not by assuming the monk’s cowl and the friar’s cord, but by carrying the knapsack and the musket; not by shirking the struggle, but by confronting it. Where is the taunt now against the nobility of France? whose names figure oftenest in the lists of killed and wounded? whose lot is it most frequently to mount first to the assault or the breach? No, no, take to the alb and the surplice if your vocation prompt it, but do not assume to say that no other road is open to a Frenchman because his heart is warmed by noble blood.”

If Alfred was at first shocked by hearing assertions so opposed to all the precepts of his venerated tutor, he was soon ashamed of offering opposition to one so far more capable than himself of forming a just judgment on the question, while he felt, inwardly, the inequality of the cause for which he would do battle against – that glorious and triumphant one of which the young officer assumed the championship.

Besides, De Liancourt’s history was his own; he had been bred up with convictions precisely like his, and might, had he followed out the path intended for him, been a priest at the very hour that he led a charge at Lodi.

“I was saved by an accident,” said he. “In the march of Berthault’s division through Chalons, a little drummer-boy fell off a waggon when asleep, and was wounded by a wheel passing over him: they brought him to our château, where we nursed and tended him till he grew well. The Curé, wishing to snatch him as a brand saved from the burning, adopted him, and made him an acolyte; and so he remained till one Sunday morning, when the ‘Chasseurs gris’ marched through the town during mass. Pierre stole out to see the soldiers; he heard a march he had often listened to before; he saw the little drummers stepping out gaily in front; worse, too, they saw him, and one called out to his comrades, ‘Regarde donc le Prêtre; ce petit drôle là – c’est un Prêtre.’

“‘Du tout,’ cried he; tearing off his white robe, and throwing it behind him, ‘Je suis tambour comme toi,’ and snatching the drum, he beat his ‘Ran tap-plan’ so vigorously and so well, that the drum-major patted him on the head and cheek, and away marched Pierre at the head of the troop, leaving Chalons, and Curé, and all behind him, without a thought or a pang.

“I saw it all from the window of the church; and suddenly, as my eyes turned from the grand spectacle of the moving column, with its banners flying and bayonets glistening, to the dim, half-lighted aisles of the old church, with smoky tapers burning faintly, amid which an old decrepid priest was moving slowly, a voice within me cried, – ‘Better a tambour, than this!’ I stole out, and reached the street just as the last files were passing: I mingled with the crowd that followed, my heart beating time to the quick march. I tracked them out of the town, further and further, till we reached the wide open country.

“‘Will you not come back, Pierre?’ said I, pulling him by the sleeve, as, at last, I reached the leading files, where the little fellow marched, proud as the tambour-major.

“‘I go back, and the regiment marching against the enemy!’ exclaimed he, indignantly; and a roar of laughter and applause from the soldiers greeted his words.

“‘Nor I either!’ cried I. And thus I became a soldier, never to regret the day I belted on the knapsack. But here comes the Père Duclos: I hope he may not be displeased at your having kept me company. I know well he loves not such companionship for his pupil – perhaps he has reason.”

Alfred did not wait for the priest’s arrival, but darted from the spot and hastened to his room, where, bolting the door, he threw himself upon his bed and wept bitterly. Who knows if these tears decided not all his path in life?

That same evening the lieutenant left the château; and in about two months after came a letter, expressing his gratitude for all the kindness of his host, and withal a present of a gun and a chasseur’s accoutrement for Alfred.. They were very handsome and costly, and he was never weary of trying them on his shoulder and looking how they became him; when, in examining one of the pockets for the twentieth time, he discovered a folded paper: he opened it, and found it was an appointment for a cadet in the military school of St. Cyr. Alfred de Vitry was written in pencil where the name should be inscribed, but very faintly, and so that it required sharp looking to detect the letters. It was enough, however, for him who read the words: he packed up a little parcel of clothes, and, with a few francs in his pocket, he set out that night for Chalons, where he took the malle. The third day, when he was tracked by the Père, he was already enrolled a cadet, and not all the interest in France could have removed him against his consent.

I will not dwell on a career which was in no respect different from that of hundreds of others. Alfred joined the army in the second Italian campaign – was part of Dessaix’s division at Marengo – was wounded at Aspern, and finally accompanied the Emperor in his terrible march to Moscow. He saw more service than his promotion seemed to imply, however; for, after Leipsig, Dresden, Bautzen, he was carried on a litter, with some other dying comrades, into a little village of Alsace – a lieutenant of hussars, nothing more.

An hospital, hastily constructed of planks, had been fitted up outside the village – there were many such, on the road between Strasbourg and Nancy; and here poor Alfred lay, with many more, their sad fate rendered still sadder by the daily tidings, which told them that the cause for which they had shed their blood was hourly becoming more hopeless.

The army that never knew defeat now counted nothing but disasters. Before Alfred had recovered from his wound, the allies bivouacked in the Place Carrousel, and Napoleon was at Elba!

When little dreaming that he could take any part in that general joy by which France, in one of her least-thinking moments, welcomed back the Bourbons, Alfred was loitering listlessly along one of the quays of Paris, wondering within himself by what process of arithmetic he could multiply seven sous – they were all he had – into the price of a supper and a bed; and while his eyes often dwelt with lingering fondness on the windows of the restaurants, they turned, too, with a dreadful instinct towards the Seine, whose eddies had closed over many a sorrow and crime.

As he wandered thus, a cry arose for help: an unfortunate creature – one whose woes were greater, or whose courage to bear them less, than his own – had thrown herself from the Pont-Neuf into the river, and her body was seen to rise and sink several times in the current of the rapid stream, It was from no prompting of humanity – it was something like a mere instinct, and no more – mayhap, too, his recklessness of life had some share in the act; – whatever the reason, he sprung into the river, and, after a long and vigorous struggle, he brought her out alive; and then, forcing through the crowd that welcomed him, he drew his miserable and dripping hat over his eyes. He continued his road – Heaven knows he had little purpose or object to warrant the persistence!

He had not gone far when a number of voices were heard behind him, calling out, —

“That is he! – there he is!” and at the same instant an officer rode up beside him, and, saluting him politely, said that her royal highness the Duchess of Berri desired to speak to him; – her carriage was just by.

Alfred was in that humour when, so indifferent is every object in life, that he would have turned at the bidding of the humblest gamin of the streets; and, wet and weary, he stood beside the door of the splendid equipage.

“It was thou that saved the woman?” said the Duchess, addressing him, and using the conventional “Du,” as suitable to his mean appearance.

“Madame,” said Alfred, removing his tattered hat, “I am a gentleman! These rags were once – the uniform of the Guard.”

“My God! – my cousin!” cried a voice beside the Duchess; and, at the same instant, a young girl held out her hands towards him, and exclaimed, —

“Knowest thou not me, Alfred? I am Alice – Alice de Vitry – thy cousin and thy sister!”

It would little interest you to dwell on the steps that followed, and which, in a few weeks, made of a wretched outcast – without a home or a meal – an officer of the Guard du Corps, with the order of St. Louis at his breast.

Time sped on, and his promotion with it; and at length his Majesty, graciously desiring to see the old nobility resume their place and grade, consented to the union of Alfred with his cousin. There was no violent love on either side, but there was sincere esteem and devoted friendship; and if they neither of them felt that degree of attachment which becomes a passion, they regarded each other with true affection.

Alice was a devoted Royalist: all that she had suffered for the cause had endeared it to her; and she could forgive, but not forget, that her future husband had shed his blood for the Usurper.

Alfred was what every one, and with reason, called a most fortunate fellow: a colonel at twenty-eight – a promotion that, under the Empire, nothing but the most distinguished services could have gained – and yet he was far from happy. He remembered with higher enthusiasm his first grade of “corporal,” won at Aspern, and his epaulettes that he gained at Wilna. His soldiering had been learned in another school than in the parade-ground at Versailles, or the avenue of the Champs Elysées.

“Come, mon ami!” said Alice, gaily, to him one morning, about ten days before the time appointed for their marriage; “thou art about to have some occasion for thy long-rusting sword: the Usurper has landed at Cannes.”

“The Emperor at Cannes!”

“The Emperor, if thou wilt – but without an Empire.”

“No matter. Is he without an army?” said Alfred.

“Alone – with some half-dozen followers, at most. Ney has received orders to march against him, and thou art to command a brigade.”

“This is good news!” said Alfred; for the very name of war had set his heart a-throbbing; and as he issued forth into the streets, the stirring sounds of excitement and rapid motion of troops increased his ardour.

Wondering groups were gathered in every street, some, discussing the intelligence, others, reading the great placards, which, in letters of portentous size, announced that “the Monster” had once more polluted by his presence the soil of France.

Whatever the enthusiasm of the old Royalists to the Bourbon cause, there seemed an activity and determination on the part of the Buonapartists who had taken service with the King to exhibit their loyalty to the new sovereign; and Ney rode from one quarter of Paris to the other, with a cockade of most conspicuous size, followed by a staff equally remarkable.

That same day Alfred left Paris for Lyons, where his regiment lay, with orders to move to the south, by forced marches, and arrest the advance of the small party which formed the band of the invader. It was Alice herself fastened the knot of white ribbon in his shako, and bade him adieu with a fondness of affection he had never witnessed before.

From Paris to Lyons, and to Grenoble, Alfred hastened with promptitude. At Lesseim, at last, he halted for orders.