by Eugène Sue
On the road to France, this little party had met the first check, in the only tavern of Mockern village. Not only had a wild beast showman, known as Morok the lion-tamer, sought to pick a quarrel with the inoffensive veteran, but that failing, had let a panther of his menagerie loose upon the soldier’s horse. That horse had carried Dagobert, under General Simon’s and the Great Napoleon’s eyes, through many battles; had borne the General’s wife (a Polish lady under the Czar’s ban) to her home of exile in Siberia, and their children now across Russia and Germany, but only to perish thus cruelly. An unseen hand appeared in a manifestation of spite otherwise unaccountable. Dagobert, denounced as a French spy, and his fair young companions accused of being adventuresses to help his designs, had so kindled at the insult, not less to him than to his old commander’s daughters, that he had taught the pompous burgomaster of Mockern a lesson, which, however, resulted in the imprisonment of the three in Leipsic jail.
General Simon, who had vainly sought to share his master’s St. Helena captivity, had gone to fight the English in India. But notwithstanding his drilling of Radja-sings sepoys, they had been beaten by the troops taught by Clive, and not only was the old king of Mundi slain, and the realm added to the Company’s land, but his son, Prince Djalma, taken prisoner. However, at length released, he had gone to Batavia, with General Simon. The prince’s mother was a Frenchwoman, and among the property she left him in the capital of Java, the general was delighted to find just such another medal as he knew was in his wife’s possession.
The unseen hand of enmity had reached to him, for letters miscarried, and he did not know either his wife’s decease or that he had twin daughters.
By a trick, on the eve of the steamship leaving Batavia for the Isthmus of Suez, Djalma was separated from his friend, and sailing for Europe alone, the latter had to follow in another vessel.
The missionary priest trod the war trails of the wilderness, with that faith and fearlessness which true soldiers of the cross should evince. In one of these heroic undertakings, Indians had captured him, and dragging him to their village under the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, they had nailed him in derision to a cross, and prepared to scalp him.
But if an unseen hand of a foe smote or stabbed at the sons of Rennepont, a visible interpositor had often shielded them, in various parts of the globe.
A man, seeming of thirty years of age, very tall, with a countenance as lofty as mournful, marked by the black eyebrows meeting, had thrown himself — during a battle’s height — between a gun of a park which General Simon was charging and that officer. The cannon vomited its hail of death, but when the flame and smoke had passed, the tall man stood erect as before, smiling pityingly on the gunner, who fell on his knees as frightened as if he beheld Satan himself. Again, as General Simon lay upon the lost field of Waterloo, raging with his wounds, eager to die after such a defeat, this same man staunched his hurts, and bade him live for his wife’s sake.
Years after, wearing the same unalterable look, this man accosted Dagobert in Siberia, and gave him for General Simon’s wife, the diary and letters of her husband, written in India, in little hope of them ever reaching her hands. And at the year our story opens, this man unbarred the cell-door of Leipsic jail, and let Dagobert and the orphans out, free to continue their way into France.
On the other hand, when the scalping-knife had traced its mark around the head of Gabriel the missionary, and when only the dexterous turn and tug would have removed the trophy, a sudden apparition had terrified the superstitious savages. It was a woman of thirty, whose brown tresses formed a rich frame around a royal face, toned down by endless sorrowing. The red-skins shrank from her steady advance, and when her hand was stretched out between them and their young victim, they uttered a howl of alarm, and fled as if a host of their foemen were on their track. Gabriel was saved, but all his life he was doomed to bear that halo of martyrdom, the circling sweep of the scalper’s knife.
He was a Jesuit. By the orders of his society he embarked for Europe. We should say here, that he, though owning a medal of the seven described, was unaware that he should have worn it. His vessel was driven by storms to refit at the Azores, where he had changed ship into the same as was bearing Prince Djalma to France, via Portsmouth.
But the gales followed him, and sated their fury by wrecking the “Black Eagle” on the Picardy coast. This was at the same point as were a disabled Hamburg steamer, among whose passengers where Dagobert and his two charges, was destroyed the same night. Happily the tempest did not annihilate them all. There were saved, Prince Djalma and a countryman of his, one Faringhea, a Thuggee chief, hunted out of British India; Dagobert, and Rose and Blanche Simon, whom Gabriel had rescued. These survivors had recovered, thanks to the care they had received in Cardoville House, a country mansion which had sheltered them, and except the prince and the Strangler chief, the others were speedily able to go on to Paris.
The old grenadier and the orphans — until General Simon should be heard from — dwelt in the former’s house. His son had kept it, from his mother’s love for the life-long home. It was such a mean habitation as a workman like Agricola Baudoin could afford to pay the rent of, and far from the fit abode of the daughters of the Duke de Ligny and Marshal of France, which Napoleon had created General Simon, though the rank had only recently been approved by the restoration.
But in Paris the unknown hostile hand showed itself more malignant than ever.
The young lady of high name and large fortune was Adrienne de Cardoville, whose aunt, the Princess de Saint-Dizier, was a Jesuit. Through her and her accomplices’ machinations, the young lady’s forward yet virtuous, wildly aspiring but sensible, romantic but just, character was twisted into a passable reason for her immurement in a mad-house.
This asylum adjoined St. Mary’s Convent, into which Rose and Blanche Simon were deceitfully conducted. To secure their removal, Dagobert had been decoyed into the country, under pretence of showing some of General Simon’s document’s to a lawyer; his son Agricola arrested for treason, on account of some idle verses the blacksmith poet was guilty of, and his wife rendered powerless, or, rather, a passive assistant, by the influence of the confessional! When Dagobert hurried back from his wild goose chase, he found the orphans gone: Mother Bunch (a fellow-tenant of the house, who had been brought up in the family) ignorant, and his wife stubbornly refusing to break the promise she had given her confessor, and acquaint a single soul where she had permitted the girls to be taken. In his rage, the soldier rashly accused that confessor, but instead of arresting the Abbe Dubois, it was Mrs. Baudoin whom the magistrate felt compelled to arrest, as the person whom alone he ventured to commit for examination in regard to the orphans’ disappearance. Thus triumphs, for the time being, the unseen foe.
The orphans in a nunnery; the dethroned prince a poor castaway in a foreign land; the noble young lady in a madhouse; the missionary priest under the thumb of his superiors.
As for the man of the middle class, and the working man, who concluded the list of this family, we are to read of them, as well as of the others, in the pages which now succeed these.
CHAPTER I. THE MASQUERADE.
THE FOLLOWING DAY to that on which Dagobert’s wife (arrested for not accounting for the disappearance of General Simon’s daughters) was led away before a magistrate, a noisy and animated scene was transpiring on the Place du Chatelet, in front of a building whose first floor and basement were used as the tap-rooms of the “Sucking Calf” public-house.
A carnival night was dying out.
Quite a number of maskers, grotesquely and shabbily bedecked, had rushed out of the low dance-houses in the Guildhall Ward, and were roaring out staves of songs as they crossed the square. But on catching sight of a second troop of mummers running about the water-side, the first party stopped to wait for the others to come up, rejoicing, with many a shout, in hopes of one of those verbal battles of slang and smutty talk which made Vade so illustrious.
This mob — nearly all its members half seas over, soon swollen by the many people who have to be up early to follow their crafts — suddenly concentrated in one of the corners of the square, so that a pale, deformed girl, who was going that way, was caught in the human tide. This was Mother Bunch. Up with the lark, she was hurrying to receive some work from her employer. Remembering how a mob had treated her when she had been arrested in the streets only the day before, by mistake, the poor work-girl’s fears may be imagined when she was now surrounded by the revellers against her will. But, spite of all her efforts — very feeble, alas! — she could not stir a step, for the band of merry-makers, newly arriving, had rushed in among the others, shoving some of them aside, pushing far into the mass, and sweeping Mother Bunch — who was in their way — clear over to the crowd around the public-house.
The new-comers were much finer rigged out than the others, for they belonged to the gay, turbulent class which goes frequently to the Chaumiere, the Prado, the Colisee, and other more or less rowdyish haunts of waltzers, made up generally of students, shop-girls, and counter skippers, clerks, unfortunates, etc., etc.
This set, while retorting to the chaff of the other party, seemed to be very impatiently expecting some singularly desired person to put in her appearance.
The following snatches of conversation, passing between clowns and columbines, pantaloons and fairies, Turks and sultans, debardeurs and debardeuses, paired off more or less properly, will give an idea of the importance of the wished-for personage.
“They ordered the spread to be for seven in the morning, so their carriages ought to have come up afore now.”
“Werry like, but the Bacchanal Queen has got to lead off the last dance in the Prado.”
“I wish to thunder I’d ‘a known that, and I’d ‘a stayed there to see her — my beloved Queen!”
“Gobinet; if you call her your beloved Queen again, I’ll scratch you! Here’s a pinch for you, anyhow!”
“Ow, wow, Celeste! hands off! You are black-spotting the be-yutiful white satin jacket my mamma gave me when I first came out as Don Pasqually!”
“Why did you call the Bacchanal Queen your beloved, then? What am I, I’d like to know?”
“You are my beloved, but not my Queen, for there is only one moon in the nights of nature, and only one Bacchanal Queen in the nights at the Prado.”
“That’s a bit from a valentine! You can’t come over me with such rubbish.”
“Gobinet’s right! the Queen was an out-and-outer tonight!”
“In prime feather!”
“I never saw her more on the go!”
“And, my eyes! wasn’t her dress stunning?”
“Took your breath away!”
“Crushing!”
“Heavy!”
“Im-mense!”
“The last kick!”
“No one but she can get up such dresses.”
“And, then, the dance!”
“Oh, yes! it was at once bounding waving, twisting! There is not such another bayadere under the night-cap of the sky!”
“Gobinet, give me back my shawl directly. You have already spoilt it by rolling it round your great body. I don’t choose to have my things ruined for hulking beasts who call other women bayaderes!”
“Celeste, simmer down. I am disguised as a Turk, and, when I talk of bayaderes, I am only in character.”
“Your Celeste is like them all, Gobinet; she’s jealous of the Bacchanal Queen.”
“Jealous! — do you think me jealous? Well now! that’s too bad. If I chose to be as showy as she is they would talk of me as much. After all, it’s only a nickname that makes her reputation! nickname!”
“In that you have nothing to envy her — since you are called Celeste!”
“You know well enough, Gobinet, that Celeste is my real name.”
“Yes; but it’s fancied a nickname — when one looks in your face.”
“Gobinet, I will put that down to your account.”
“And Oscar will help you to add it up, eh?”
“Yes; and you shall see the total. When I carry one, the remainder will not be you.”
“Celeste, you make me cry! I only meant to say that your celestial name does not go well with your charming little face, which is still more mischievous than that of the Bacchanal Queen.”
“That’s right; wheedle me now, wretch!”
“I swear by the accursed head of my landlord, that, if you liked, you could spread yourself as much as the Bacchanal Queen — which is saying a great deal.”
“The fact is, that the Bacchanal had cheek enough, in all conscience.”
“Not to speak of her fascinating the bobbies!”
“And magnetizing the beaks.”
“They may get as angry as they please; she always finishes by making them laugh.”
“And they all call her: Queen!”
“Last night she charmed a slop (as modest as a country girl) whose purity took up arms against the famous dance of the Storm-blown Tulip.”
“What a quadrille! Sleepinbuff and the Bacchanal Queen, having opposite to them Rose-Pompon and Ninny Moulin!”
“And all four making tulips as full-blown as could be!”
“By-the-bye, is it true what they say of Ninny Moulin?”
“What?”
“Why that he is a writer, and scribbles pamphlets on religion.”
“Yes, it is true. I have often seen him at my employer’s, with whom he deals; a bad paymaster, but a jolly fellow!”
“And pretends to be devout, eh?”
“I believe you, my boy — when it is necessary; then he is my Lord Dumoulin, as large as life. He rolls his eyes, walks with his head on one side, and his toes turned in; but, when the piece is played out, he slips away to the balls of which he is so fond. The girls christened him Ninny Moulin. Add, that he drinks like a fish, and you have the photo of the cove. All this doesn’t prevent his writing for the religious newspapers; and the saints, whom he lets in even oftener than himself, are ready to swear by him. You should see his articles and his tracts — only see, not read! — every page is full of the devil and his horns, and the desperate fryings which await your impious revolutionists — and then the authority of the bishops, the power of the Pope — hang it! how could I know it all? This toper, Ninny Moulin, gives good measure enough for their money!”
“The fact is, that he is both a heavy drinker and a heavy swell. How he rattled on with little Rose-Pompon in the dance and the full-blown tulip!”
“And what a rum chap he looked in his Roman helmet and top-boots.”
“Rose-Pompon dances divinely, too; she has the poetic twist.”
“And don’t show her heels a bit!”
“Yes; but the Bacchanal Queen is six thousand feet above the level of any common leg-shaker. I always come back to her step last night in the full-blown tulip.”
“It was huge!”
“It was serene!”
“If I were father of a family, I would entrust her with the education of my sons!”
“It was that step, however, which offended the bobby’s modesty.”
“The fact is, it was a little free.”
“Free as air — so the policeman comes up to her, and says: ‘Well, my Queen, is your foot to keep on a-goin’ up forever?’ ‘No, modest warrior!’ replies the Queen; ‘I practice the step only once every evening, to be able to dance it when I am old. I made a vow of it, that you might become an inspector.’”
“What a comic card!”
“I don’t believe she will remain always with Sleepinbuff.”
“Because he has been a workman?”
“What nonsense! it would preciously become us, students and shop-boys, to give ourselves airs! No; but I am astonished at the Queen’s fidelity.”
“Yes — they’ve been a team for three or four good months.”
“She’s wild upon him, and he on her.”
“They must lead a gay life.”
; “Sometimes I ask myself where the devil Sleepinbuff gets all the money he spends. It appears that he pays all last night’s expenses, three coaches-and-four, and a breakfast this morning for twenty, at ten francs a-head.”
“They say he has come into some property. That’s why Ninny Moulin, who has a good nose for eating and drinking, made acquaintance with him last night — leaving out of the question that he may have some designs on the Bacchanal Queen.”
“He! In a lot! He’s rather too ugly. The girls like to dance with him because he makes people laugh — but that’s all. Little Rose-Pompon, who is such a pretty creature, has taken him as a harmless chap-her-own, in the absence of her student.”
“The coaches! the coaches!” exclaimed the crowd, all with one voice.
Forced to stop in the midst of the maskers, Mother Bunch had not lost a word of this conversation, which was deeply painful to her, as it concerned her sister, whom she had not seen for a long time. Not that the Bacchanal Queen had a bad heart; but the sight of the wretched poverty of Mother Bunch — a poverty which she had herself shared, but which she had not had the strength of mind to bear any longer — caused such bitter grief to the gay, thoughtless girl, that she would no more expose herself to it, after she had in vain tried to induce her sister to accept assistance, which the latter always refused, knowing that its source could not be honorable.
“The coaches! the coaches!” once more exclaimed the crowd, as they pressed forward with enthusiasm, so that Mother Bunch, carried on against her will, was thrust into the foremost rank of the people assembled to see the show.
It was, indeed, a curious sight. A man on horseback, disguised as a postilion, his blue jacket embroidered with silver, and enormous tail from which the powder escaped in puffs, and a hat adorned with long ribbons, preceded the first carriage, cracking his whip, and crying with all his might: “Make way for the Bacchanal Queen and her court!”
In an open carriage, drawn by four lean horses, on which rode two old postilions dressed as devils, was raised a downright pyramid of men and women, sitting, standing, leaning, in every possible variety of odd, extravagant, and grotesque costume; altogether an indescribable mass of bright colors, flowers, ribbons, tinsel and spangles. Amid this heap of strange forms and dresses appeared wild or graceful countenances, ugly or handsome features — but all animated by the feverish excitement of a jovial frenzy — all turned with an expression of fanatical admiration towards the second carriage, in which the Queen was enthroned, whilst they united with the multitude in reiterated shouts of “Long live the Bacchanal Queen.”
