A troubled conscience would not suffer Martin Franc and his wife to close their eyes; but they lay awake lamenting the doleful events of the night. The knock at the door sounded like a death-knell in their ears. It still continued at intervals, rap--rap--rap!--with a dull, low sound,--as if something heavy were swinging against the pannel; for the wind had risen during the night and every angry gust that swept down the alley, swung the arms of the lifeless sacristan against the door. At length Martin Franc mustered courage enough to dress himself and to go down, whilst his wife followed him with a lamp in her hand; but no sooner had he lifted the latch, than the ponderous body of Friar Gui fell stark and heavy into his arms.
“Jesu Maria!” exclaimed Marguerite, crossing herself;--“here is the monk again!”
“Yes, and dripping wet, as if he had just been dragged out of the river!”
“O we are betrayed--betrayed!” exclaimed Marguerite in agony.
“Then the devil himself has betrayed us;” replied Martin Franc, disengaging himself from the embrace of the sacristan; “for I met not a living being; the whole city was as silent as the grave.”
“Holy Saint Martin defend us!” continued his terrified wife. “Here, take this scapulary to guard you from the evil one;--and lose no time. You must throw the body into the river; or we are lost! Holy Virgin! How bright the moon shines!”
Saying this she threw round his neck a scapulary--with the figure of a cross on one end and an image of the Virgin on the other, and Martin Franc again took the dead Friar upon his shoulders and with fearful misgivings departed on his dismal errand. He kept as much as possible in the shadow of the houses, and had nearly reached the quay, when suddenly, he thought he heard footsteps behind him.--He stopped to listen; it was no mistake--they came along the pavement, tramp! --tramp! and every step grew louder and nearer. Martin Franc tried to quicken his pace;--but in vain;--his knees smote together, and he staggered against the wall. His hand relaxed its grasp; and the monk slid from his back, and stood ghastly and straight beside him, supported by chance against the shoulder of his bearer. At that moment, a man came round the corner, tottering beneath the weight of a huge sack. As his head was bent downwards, he did not perceive Martin Franc, till he was close upon him; and when, on looking up, he saw two figures standing motionless in the shadow of the wall, he thought himself waylaid, and, without waiting to be assaulted, dropped the sack from his shoulders, and ran off at full speed. The sack fell heavily on the pavement, and directly at the feet of Martin Franc. In the fall the string was broken; and out came the bloody head--not of a dead monk, as it first seemed to the excited imagination of Martin Franc,--but of a dead hog!--When the terror and surprise caused by this singular event had a little subsided, an idea came into the mind of Martin Franc, very similar to what would have come into the mind of almost any person in similar circumstances. He took the hog out of the sack and putting the body of the monk into its place, secured it well with the remnants of the broken string; and then hurried homeward with the hog upon his shoulders.
He was hardly out of sight, when the man of the sack returned, accompanied by two others. They were surprised to find the sack still lying on the ground, with no one near it, and began to jeer the former bearer, telling him he had been frightened at his own shadow on the wall. Then one of them took the sack upon his shoulders, without the least suspicion of the change that had been made in its contents, and all three disappeared.
Now it happened that the city of Rouen was at that time infested by three street robbers, who walked in darkness like the pestilence, and always carried the plunder of their midnight marauding to the Tête-de-Bœuf, a little tavern in one of the darkest and narrowest lanes of the city. The host of the Tête-de-Bœuf was privy to all their schemes, and had an equal share in the profits of their nightly excursions. He gave a helping hand, too, by the length of his bills, and by plundering the pockets of any chance traveller, that was luckless enough to sleep under his roof.
On the night of the disastrous adventure of Friar Gui, this little marauding party had been prowling about the city until a late hour, without finding any thing to reward their labors. At length, however, they chanced to spy a hog, hanging under a shed in a butcher’s yard in readiness for the next day’s market; and as they were not very fastidious in selecting their plunder, but on the contrary rather addicted to taking whatever they could lay their hands on, the hog was straightway purloined, thrust into a large sack, and sent to the Tête-de-Bœuf on the shoulders of one of the party, whilst the other two continued their nocturnal excursion. It was this person, who had been so terrified at the appearance of Martin Franc and the dead monk; and as this encounter had interrupted any further operations of the party--the dawn of day being now near at hand,--they all repaired to their gloomy den in the Tête-de-Bœuf. The host was impatiently waiting their return; and, asking what plunder they had brought with them, proceeded without delay to remove it from the sack. The first thing that presented itself, on untying the string, was the monk’s hood.
“The devil take the devil!” cried the host, as he opened the neck of the sack, “What’s this?--Your hog has got a cowl!”
“The poor devil has become disgusted with the world, and turned monk!” said he, who held the light, a little surprised at seeing the head covered with a coarse gray cloth.
“Sure enough he has,” exclaimed another, starting back in dismay, as the shaven crown and ghastly face of the Friar appeared. “Holy Saint Benedict be with us!--It is a monk, stark dead!”
“A dead monk, indeed!” said a third, with an incredulous shake of the head, “How could a dead monk get into this sack?”--No, no: there is some diablerie in this. I have heard it said, that Satan can take any shape he pleases; and you may rely upon it, this is Satan himself, who has taken the shape of a monk to get us all hanged.”
“Then we had better kill the devil than have the devil kill us!”--replied the host, crossing himself. “And the sooner we do it, the better; for it is now near day-light, and people will soon be passing in the street.”
“So say I;” rejoined the man of magic; “and my advice is to take him to the butcher’s yard, and hang him up in the place where we found the hog.”
This proposition so pleased the others, that it was executed without delay. They carried the Friar to the butcher’s house, and passing a strong cord round his neck, suspended him to a beam in the shed, and there left him.
When the night was at length passed, and daylight began to peep into the eastern windows of the city, the butcher arose, and prepared himself for market. He was casting up in his mind, what the hog would bring at his stall, when looking upward--lo! in its place he recognized the dead body of Friar Gui.
“By Saint Dennis!” quoth the butcher, “I always feared that this Friar would not die quietly in his cell; but I never thought I should find him hanging under my own roof.-- This must not be; it will be said, that I murdered him, and I shall pay for it with my life. I must contrive some way to get rid of him.”
So saying he called his man, and showing him what had been done, asked him how he should dispose of the body, so that he might not be accused of murder. The man, who was of a ready wit, reflected a moment, and then answered;
“This is indeed a difficult matter; but there is no evil without its remedy.--We will place the friar on horseback--”
“What!--a dead man on horseback?-- impossible!” interrupted the butcher. “Who ever heard of a dead man on horseback!”
“Hear me out, and then judge. We must place the body on horseback, as well as we may, and bind it fast with cords, and then set the horse loose in the street, and pursue after him crying out, that the monk has stolen the horse. Thus all who meet him will strike him with their staves, as he passes, and it will be thought that he came to his death in that way.”
Though this seemed to the butcher rather a mad project, yet, as no better one offered itself, at the moment, and there was no time for reflection, mad as the pr
oject was, they determined to put it into execution. Accordingly the butcher’s horse was brought out, and the Friar was bound upon his back, and with much difficulty fixed in an upright position. The butcher then gave the horse a blow upon the crupper with his staff, which set him into a smart gallop down the street, and he and his man joined in pursuit crying;
“Stop thief!--Stop thief!--The friar has stolen my horse!”
As it was now sunrise the streets were full of people, peasants driving their goods to market, and citizens going to their daily avocations. When they saw the Friar dashing at full speed down the street, they joined in the cry of “Stop thief!--Stop that horse!” and many, who endeavored to seize the bridle as the Friar passed them at full speed, were thrown upon the pavement, and trampled under foot. Others joined in the halloo! and the pursuit; but this only served to quicken the gallop of the frightened steed, who dashed down one street and up another like the wind, with two or three mounted citizens clattering in full cry at his heels. At length they reached the market place.--The people scattered right and left in dismay--and the steed and rider dashed onward, overthrowing in their course men and women, and stalls, and piles of merchandise, and sweeping away like a whirlwind. Tramp--tramp--tramp! they clattered on; they had distanced all pursuit. They reached the quay; the wide pavement was cleared at a bound--one more wild leap--and splash!--both horse and rider sank into the rapid current of the river--swept down the stream--and were seen no more!
THE VILLAGE OF AUTEUIL.
Epigraph
Il n’est tel plaisir
Que d’estre à gésir
Parmy les beaux champs,
L’herbe verd choisir,
Et prendre bon temps.
Martial d’Auvergne.
THE VILLAGE OF AUTEUIL.
Oyez-vous Ce bruit tant doux Décliquer de la gorgette Du geai mignot, Du linot Et de la frisque allouette?
Bonaventure Desperriers.
The sultry heat of summer always brings with it, to the idler and the man of leisure, a longing for the leafy shade and the green luxuriance of the country. It is pleasant to interchange the din of the city,--the movement of the crowd,--and the gossip of society, with the silence of the hamlet,--the quiet seclusion of the grove, and the gossip of a woodland brook. As is sung in the old ballad of Robin Hood,
In somer when the shawes be sheyn,
And leves be large and long, Hit is full mery in feyre foreste,
To here the foulys song. To se the dere draw to the dale
And leve the hilles hee, And shadow hem in the leves grene,
Vnder the grene wode tre.
It was a feeling of this kind, that prompted me during my residence in the north of France to pass one of the summer months at Auteuil --the pleasantest of the many little villages that lie in the immediate vicinity of the metropolis. It is situated on the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne--a wood of some extent, in whose green alleys the dusty cit enjoys the luxury of an evening drive, and gentlemen meet in the morning to give each other satisfaction in the usual way. A cross road, skirted with green hedge-rows, and overshadowed by tall poplars, leads you from the noisy highway of St. Cloud and Versailles to the still retirement of this suburban hamlet. On either side, the eye discovers old chateaux amid the trees, and green parks, whose pleasant shades recall a thousand images of La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière; and on an eminence overlooking the windings of the Seine, and giving a beautiful though distant view of the domes and gardens of Paris, rises the village of Passy, long the residence of our countrymen Franklin and Count Rumford.
I took up my abode at a Maison de Santé; not that I was a valetudinarian,--but because I there found some one to whom I could whisper, ‘How sweet is solitude!’ Behind the house was a garden filled with fruit trees of various kinds, and adorned with gravel walks, and green arbors, furnished with tables and rustic seats, for the repose of the invalid and the sleep of the indolent. Here the inmates of the rural hospital met on common ground, to breathe the invigorating air of morning, and while away the lazy noon or vacant evening with tales of the sick chamber.
The establishment was kept by Dr. Dent-de-lion, a dried up little fellow, with red hair, a sandy complexion, and the physiognomy and gestures of a monkey. His character corresponded to his outward lineaments; for he had all a monkey’s busy and curious impertinence. Nevertheless, such as he was, the village Æsculapius strutted forth the little great man of Auteuil. The peasants looked up to him as to an oracle,--he contrived to be at the head of every thing, and laid claim to the credit of all public improvements in the village:--in fine he was a great man on a small scale.
It was within the dingy walls of this little potentate’s imperial palace, that I chose my country residence. I had a chamber in the second story, with a solitary window, which looked upon the street, and gave me a peep into a neighbor’s garden. This I esteemed a great privilege; for, as a stranger, I desired to see all that was passing out of doors, and the sight of green trees, though growing on another man’s ground, is always a blessing. Within doors,--had I been disposed to quarrel with my household gods,--I might have taken some objection to my neighborhood; for on one side of me was a consumptive patient, whose grave-yard cough drove me from my chamber by day,--and on the other, an English Colonel, whose incoherent ravings, in the delirium of a high and obstinate fever, often broke my slumbers by night. But I found ample amends for these inconveniences in the society of those, who were so little indisposed as hardly to know what ailed them, and those, who in health themselves, had accompanied a friend or relative to the shades of the country in pursuit of it. To these I am indebted for much courtesy; and particularly to one, who, if these pages should ever meet her eye, will not, I hope, be unwilling to accept this slight memorial of a former friendship.
It was, however, to the Bois de Boulogne, that I looked for my principal recreation. There I took my solitary walk, morning and evening; or, mounted on a little mouse-colored donkey, paced demurely along the woodland pathway. I had a favorite seat beneath the shadow of a venerable oak, one of the few hoary patriarchs of the wood, which had survived the bivouacs of the Allied Armies. It stood upon the brink of a little glassy pool, whose tranquil bosom was the image of a quiet and secluded life, and stretched its parental arms over a rustic bench, that had been constructed beneath it, for the accommodation of the foot-traveller, or, perchance, some idle dreamer like myself. It seemed to look round with a lordly air upon its old hereditary domain, whose stillness was no longer broken by the tap of the martial drum, nor the discordant clang of arms; and, as the breeze whispered among its branches, it seemed to be holding friendly colloquies with a few of its venerable cotemporaries, who stooped from the opposite bank of the pool, nodding gravely now and then, and ogling themselves with a sigh in the mirror below.
In this quiet haunt of rural repose, I used to sit at noon,--hear the birds sing, and “possess myself in much quietness.” Just at my feet lay the little silver pool, with the sky and the woods painted in its mimic vault, and occasionally the image of a bird, or the soft watery outline of a cloud, floating silently through its sunny hollows. The water-lily spread its broad green leaves on the surface, and rocked to sleep a little world of insect life in its golden cradle. Sometimes a wandering leaf came floating and wavering downward, and settled on the water; then a vagabond insect would break the smooth surface into a thousand ripples, or a green-coated frog slide from the bank, and plump!--dive headlong to the bottom.
I entered, too, with some enthusiasm into all the rural sports and merrimakes of the village. The holidays were so many little eras of mirth and good feeling; for the French have that happy and sunshine temperament-- that merry-go-mad character,--which makes all their social meetings scenes of enjoyment and hilarity. I made it a point never to miss any of the Fêtes Champêtres, or rural dances, at the wood of Boulogne; though I confess it sometimes gave me a momentary uneasiness to see my rustic throne beneath the oak usurped by a noisy group of girls, t
he silence and decorum of my imaginary realm broken by music and laughter, and, in a word, my whole kingdom turned topsyturvy, with romping, fiddling, and dancing. But I am naturally, and from principle too, a lover of all those innocent amusements, which cheer the laborer’s toil, and, as it were, put their shoulders to the wheel of life, and help the poor man along with his load of cares. Hence I saw with no small delight the rustic swain astride the wooden horse of the carrousel, and the village maiden whirl- ing round and round in its dizzy car; or took my stand on a rising ground that overlooked the dance, an idle spectator in a busy throng. It was just where the village touched the outward border of the wood. There a little area had been levelled beneath the trees, surrounded by a painted rail, with a row of benches inside. The music was placed in a slight balcony, built around the trunk of a large tree in the centre, and the lamps, hanging from the branches above, gave a gay, fantastic and fairy look to the scene. How often in such moments did I recall the lines of Goldsmith, describing those “kinder skies,” beneath which “France displays her bright domain,” and feel how true and masterly the sketch--
Alike all ages; dames of ancient days
Have led their children through the mirthful maze,
And the gay grandsire, skilled in gestic lore,
Has frisked beneath the burden of three-score.
Nor must I forget to mention the Fête Pa- tronale,--a kind of annual fair, which is held at mid-summer in honor of the patron saint of Auteuil. Then the principal street of the village is filled with booths of every description; strolling players, and rope-dancers, and jugglers, and giants, and dwarfs, and wild beasts, and all kinds of wonderful shows excite the gaping curiosity of the throng, and in dust, crowds, and confusion the village rivals the capital itself. Then the goodly dames of Passy descend into the village of Auteuil;--then the brewers of Billancourt, and the tanners of Sèvres dance lustily under the greenwood tree; --and then, too, the sturdy fish-mongers of Brétigny and Saint-Yon regale their fat wives with an airing in a swing, and their customers with eels and craw-fish;--or as is more poetically set forth in an old Christmas Carol,
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