VII. Monseigneur in Town
Monseigneur, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held hisfortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was inhis inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests tothe crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneurwas about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great manythings with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be ratherrapidly swallowing France; but, his morning's chocolate could not somuch as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of fourstrong men besides the Cook.
Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and theChief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in hispocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, toconduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carriedthe chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothedthe chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function;a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two goldwatches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur todispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his highplace under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot uponhis escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only threemen; he must have died of two.
Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedyand the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out ata little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and soimpressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had farmore influence with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs andstate secrets, than the needs of all France. A happy circumstancefor France, as the like always is for all countries similarlyfavoured!--always was for England (by way of example), in the regretteddays of the merry Stuart who sold it.
Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, whichwas, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular publicbusiness, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all gohis way--tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general andparticular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the worldwas made for them. The text of his order (altered from the originalby only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: "The earth and the fulnessthereof are mine, saith Monseigneur."
Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept intohis affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classes ofaffairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to financespublic, because Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them, andmust consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to financesprivate, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur, aftergenerations of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. HenceMonseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while there was yettime to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she couldwear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General,poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane witha golden apple on the top of it, was now among the company in the outerrooms, much prostrated before by mankind--always excepting superiormankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, lookeddown upon him with the loftiest contempt.
A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in hisstables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-womenwaited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder andforage where he could, the Farmer-General--howsoever his matrimonialrelations conduced to social morality--was at least the greatest realityamong the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.
For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned withevery device of decoration that the taste and skill of the time couldachieve, were, in truth, not a sound business; considered with anyreference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and notso far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almostequidistant from the two extremes, could see them both), they wouldhave been an exceedingly uncomfortable business--if that could havebeen anybody's business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military officersdestitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship;civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of theworst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives;all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly inpretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order ofMonseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from whichanything was to be got; these were to be told off by the score and thescore. People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the State,yet equally unconnected with anything that was real, or with livespassed in travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, wereno less abundant. Doctors who made great fortunes out of dainty remediesfor imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their courtlypatients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who haddiscovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which theState was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest toroot out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any earsthey could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. UnbelievingPhilosophers who were remodelling the world with words, and makingcard-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with UnbelievingChemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at thiswonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen ofthe finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time--and has beensince--to be known by its fruits of indifference to every naturalsubject of human interest, were in the most exemplary state ofexhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had these variousnotabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that the spiesamong the assembled devotees of Monseigneur--forming a goodly halfof the polite company--would have found it hard to discover amongthe angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners andappearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act ofbringing a troublesome creature into this world--which does not go fartowards the realisation of the name of mother--there was no such thingknown to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close,and brought them up, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed andsupped as at twenty.
The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendanceupon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptionalpeople who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them thatthings in general were going rather wrong. As a promising way of settingthem right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a fantasticsect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselveswhether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on thespot--thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to theFuture, for Monseigneur's guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were otherthree who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with ajargon about "the Centre of Truth:" holding that Man had got out of theCentre of Truth--which did not need much demonstration--but had not gotout of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out ofthe Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre,by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, muchdiscoursing with spirits went on--and it did a world of good which neverbecame manifest.
But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel ofMonseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only beenascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would have been eternallycorrect. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, suchdelicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallantswords to look at, and such delicate honour to the sense of smell, wouldsurely keep anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemenof the finest breeding wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as theylanguidly moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells;and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade andfine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine andhis devouring hunger far away.
Dress was the one
unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping allthings in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball thatwas never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, throughMonseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunalsof Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Balldescended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, wasrequired to officiate "frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps,and white silk stockings." At the gallows and the wheel--the axe was ararity--Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his brotherProfessors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to callhim, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company atMonseigneur's reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth yearof our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzledhangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged, wouldsee the very stars out!
Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken hischocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrownopen, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing andfawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As to bowing down inbody and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven--which may havebeen one among other reasons why the worshippers of Monseigneur nevertroubled it.
Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on onehappy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affablypassed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference ofTruth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and so in duecourse of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolatesprites, and was seen no more.
The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little storm,and the precious little bells went ringing downstairs. There was soonbut one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his armand his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on hisway out.
"I devote you," said this person, stopping at the last door on his way,and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, "to the Devil!"
With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken thedust from his feet, and quietly walked downstairs.
He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, andwith a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent paleness; everyfeature in it clearly defined; one set expression on it. The nose,beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the topof each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the only littlechange that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted in changingcolour sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and contractedby something like a faint pulsation; then, they gave a look oftreachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined withattention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in theline of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being muchtoo horizontal and thin; still, in the effect of the face made, it was ahandsome face, and a remarkable one.
Its owner went downstairs into the courtyard, got into his carriage, anddrove away. Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he hadstood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmerin his manner. It appeared, under the circumstances, rather agreeableto him to see the common people dispersed before his horses, andoften barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he werecharging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought nocheck into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint hadsometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age,that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patriciancustom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in abarbarous manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a secondtime, and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches wereleft to get out of their difficulties as they could.
With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment ofconsideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriagedashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screamingbefore it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out ofits way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of itswheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from anumber of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.
But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not havestopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their woundedbehind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry,and there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles.
"What has gone wrong?" said Monsieur, calmly looking out.
A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet ofthe horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and wasdown in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.
"Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!" said a ragged and submissive man, "it isa child."
"Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?"
"Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis--it is a pity--yes."
The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was,into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenlygot up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur theMarquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt.
"Killed!" shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms attheir length above his head, and staring at him. "Dead!"
The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There wasnothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulnessand eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did thepeople say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and theyremained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was flatand tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyesover them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.
He took out his purse.
"It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people cannot take careof yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever inthe way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Givehim that."
He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the headscraned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. Thetall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, "Dead!"
He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the restmade way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder,sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women werestooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. Theywere as silent, however, as the men.
"I know all, I know all," said the last comer. "Be a brave man, myGaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than tolive. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an houras happily?"
"You are a philosopher, you there," said the Marquis, smiling. "How dothey call you?"
"They call me Defarge."
"Of what trade?"
"Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine."
"Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine," said the Marquis,throwing him another gold coin, "and spend it as you will. The horsesthere; are they right?"
Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur theMarquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with theair of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common thing, and hadpaid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenlydisturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor.
"Hold!" said Monsieur the Marquis. "Hold the horses! Who threw that?"
He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood, amoment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face onthe pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was thefigure of a dark stout woman, knitting.
"You dogs!" said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front,except as to the spots on his nose: "I would ride over any of you verywillingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascalthrew at the carriage, and if that brigand were suffic
iently near it, heshould be crushed under the wheels."
So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience ofwhat such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that nota voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men, not one.But the woman who stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked theMarquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice it; hiscontemptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other rats; and heleaned back in his seat again, and gave the word "Go on!"
He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quicksuccession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, theDoctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the Comedy, thewhole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling by. The ratshad crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained lookingon for hours; soldiers and police often passing between them and thespectacle, and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and throughwhich they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle andbidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundlewhile it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the runningof the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball--when the one woman whohad stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastnessof Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day raninto evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule,time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close togetherin their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, allthings ran their course.
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