VII
Monseigneur
in Town
Monseigneur,
one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in
his grand hotel in
Yes.
It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of
them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative
of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy
chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the
sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little
instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a
fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was
impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the
chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have
been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on
by only three men; he must have died of two.
Monseigneur
had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and the Grand
Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most
nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur,
that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the
tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all
Monseigneur
had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let
everything go on in its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had
the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way--tend to his own power
and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other
truly noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order
(altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: "The
earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur."
Yet,
Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept into his affairs,
both private and public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied
himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because
Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them, and must consequently let
them out to somebody who could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals
were rich, and Monseigneur, after generations of great luxury and expense, was
growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while
there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she
could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General,
poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane with a
golden apple on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms,
much prostrated before by mankind--always excepting superior mankind of the
blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down upon him with the
loftiest contempt.
A
sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables,
twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife.
As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the
Farmer-General--howsoever his matrimonial relations conduced to social
morality--was at least the greatest reality among the personages who attended
at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.
For,
the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with every device
of decoration that the taste and skill of the time could achieve, were, in
truth, not a sound business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows in
the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the
watching towers of Notre Dame, almost equidistant from the two extremes, could
see them both), they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business--if
that could have been anybody's business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military
officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a
ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the
worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all
totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong
to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore
foisted on all public employments from which anything was to be got; these were
to be told off by the score and the score. People not immediately connected
with Monseigneur or the State, yet equally unconnected with anything that was
real, or with lives passed in travelling by any straight road to any true
earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors who made great fortunes out of
dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their
courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had
discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which the State was
touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single
sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at
the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the
world with words, and making card-towers of
The
leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon
Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional people who had
had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were
going rather wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the
half-dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were
even then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar,
and turn cataleptic on the spot--thereby setting up a highly intelligible
finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur's guidance. Besides these Dervishes,
were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a
jargon about "the Centre of Truth:" holding that Man had got out of
the Centre of Truth--which did not need much demonstration--but had not got out
of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the
Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and
seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits went
on--and it did a world of good which never became manifest.
But,
the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were
perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a
dress day, everybody there would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling
and powdering and sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially
preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour
to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and ever. The
exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding wore little pendent trinkets that
chinked as they languidly moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little
bells; and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and
fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his
devouring hunger far away.
Dress
was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping all things in their
places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off.
From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court,
through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows),
the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the
charm, was required to officiate "frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced
coat, pumps, and white silk stockings." At the gallows and the wheel--the
axe was a rarity--Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his
brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call
him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Monseigneur's
reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could
possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered,
gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out!
Monseigneur
having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the
doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then,
what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject
humiliation! As to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left
for Heaven--which may have been one among other reasons why the worshippers of
Monseigneur never troubled it.
Bestowing
a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one happy slave and a
wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to
the remote region of the Circumference of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and
came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up in his
sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, 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 soon but one person
left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in
his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on his way 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 the dust from his
feet, and quietly walked downstairs.
He
was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and with a
face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent paleness; every feature in it
clearly defined; one set expression on it. The nose, beautifully formed
otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two
compressions, or dints, the only little change that the face ever showed,
resided. They persisted in changing colour sometimes, and they would be
occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then,
they gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined
with attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line
of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much too
horizontal and thin; still, in the effect of the face made, it was a handsome
face, and a remarkable one.
Its
owner went downstairs into the courtyard, got into his carriage, and drove
away. Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he had stood in a
little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It
appeared, under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common
people dispersed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run
down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the furious
recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the
master. The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city
and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce
patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a
barbarous manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time,
and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out
of their difficulties as they could.
With
a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy
to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept
round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and
clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a
fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a
loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.
But
for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped;
carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind, 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 of the
horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the
mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.
"Pardon,
Monsieur the Marquis!" said a ragged and submissive man, "it is a
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 suddenly got up from the
ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand
for an instant on his sword-hilt.
"Killed!"
shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at their length
above his head, and staring at him. "Dead!"
The
people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was nothing
revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness;
there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say anything;
after the first cry, they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of
the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission.
Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over 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 care
of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the,
way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give him
that."
He
threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned
forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called
out again with a most unearthly cry, "Dead!"
He
was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way.
On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying,
and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the
motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as
the men.
"I
know all, I know all," said the last comer. "Be a brave man, my
Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live. It
has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as
happily?"
"You
are a philosopher, you there," said the, Marquis, smiling. "How do
they 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 horses there; are they
right?"
Without
deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur the Marquis leaned
back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman
who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had paid for it, and could
afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed 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, a moment before;
but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in that
spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the figure 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 very willingly,
and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the
carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed
under the wheels."
So
cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience of what such a
man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a 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 the Marquis in the face. It was
not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes passed over her, and
over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat again, and gave the
word "Go on!"
He
was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick succession; the
Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the
Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright
continuous flow, came whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes to
look on, and they remained looking on for hours; soldiers and police often
passing between them and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which they
slunk, and through which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his
bundle and bidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the
bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running
of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball--when the one woman who had
stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate.
The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into 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 together in their dark holes again,
the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.