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L'Orme

<h4>CHAPTER XX.</h4> I believe my sleep would have lasted longer than the night, had Garcias not woke me towards daybreak, and told me that they were preparing to depart. Amongst the smugglers, every one took care of his own horse, and of course I could not expect to be exempt from the same charge in their wandering republic, where the only title to require service oneself was the having shown it to others. I started up, therefore, in order to repair, as much as I could, my negligence of the night before. To my surprise, however, I found that the horse had been already rubbed down and saddled by the little player; who, having drunk more cautiously than myself, had woke early in the morning; and, after having shown this piece of attention to me, was engaged in tricking out, for his own use, an ass, which one of the smugglers had procured from some acquaintance at the foot of the mountain. I thanked the little man for his civility; when, laying his hand upon his heart, he professed his pleasure in serving me, and begged, in humble terms, if I had any thought of engaging a servant in the expedition wherein we were both engaged, that he might be preferred to that high post. "The post would certainly be more honourable than profitable, my good friend," replied I, with some very melancholy feelings concerning my own destitute condition, for my whole fortune consisted of about thirty Louis d'ors and a diamond ring, the value of which I did not know. "I must tell you thus much concerning my situation," I added; "I am now quitting my father's house and my native land, from circumstances which concern me alone, but which may render my absence long; and during that absence, I expect no supply or pecuniary aid from any one. You may now judge," I proceeded, with somewhat of a painful smile, "whether such a man's service be the one to suit you." "Exactly!" replied the little player, to my surprise; "for during the time you have nothing to give me, you will judge whether I am like to suit you when you can pay me well. I ask no wages but meat and drink. That, I am sure, you will give me while you can get any for yourself; and if a time should come when you can get none, perhaps it may be my turn to put my hand in fortune's bag, and pull out a dinner. Alone, and with no one to help me, I have never wanted food, but that one day at Argelez; and, God knows, I never knew from day to day where I should fill my cup or load my platter, but in company with your lordship--never fear, we shall always find plenty. Two people can accomplish a thousand things that one cannot. You can do a thousand that I do not know how to do, and I can do a thousand that you would be ashamed to do. Thank God, for having been turned out upon the world at nine years old, without a sous in my pocket. 'Twas the best school in nature for finishing my education." I was hurt, I own, at the sort of companionship which the miserable little player seemed to have established, in his own mind, so completely between himself and me; and the haughty noble was rising with some acrimony to my lips, when I suddenly bethought me, what a thing I was to be proud over my fellow-worm! It was a thought to take down the high stomach of my nobility, and after a moment's pause, I merely replied, "Your life must afford a curious history, and doubtless has been full both of turns of fate and turns of ingenuity." "Oh, 'tis a very simple history," answered the player, "as brief as the courtship of a widow. When your lordship has got on horseback, and I have clambered on my ass, I will tell it to you as we go along. 'Twill at least spend a long five minutes." His proposal was not disagreeable to me, for my mind was in that state when anything which could fill up a moment with some external feeling or interest was in itself a blessing. Had he told such a tale as those with which they amuse children in a nursery, I should have been contented; and accordingly, as soon, after having mounted, as we were once more on our journey, I begged he would proceed, which he complied with as follows:-- "My mother's husband, who had the credit--if any honour was thereunto attached--of being my father, was, when I can first remember him, intendant to the estates of M. le Comte de Bagnols. He had originally studied the law; but not having money enough to purchase any charge at the bar, he was very glad to take the management of a young nobleman's estates, who, though not indeed careless and extravagant, was still young--consequently inexperienced--consequently plunderable, and consequently a hopeful speculation for one in my father's situation. The Count was liberal, and therefore the appointments were in themselves good, consisting of a separate house half a mile from the château, a considerable glebe of land, and a salary of a thousand crowns. I must remark here, that the intendant was the ugliest man in Christendom, but he had the advantage of possessing in my poor dear mother a very handsome wife, whose beauties he considered as a certain means of performing the curious alchymical process of the transmutation of metals; that is to say, the changing his own brass into the Count's gold. "Now I should be most happy could I claim any kindred with the noble family of Bagnols, but sorry I am to say, I was several years old when the young Count returned to the château from his campaigns with the army. Nor, indeed, should I have been much better off had fortune decreed me to be born afterwards; for though the worthy intendant was as liberal as Cato in many respects, and the most decided foe to all sorts of jealousy, and though my mother also was a complete prodigal in the dispensation of her smiles, the Count was as cold as ice. Indeed, as his marriage with the beautiful Henriette de Vergne was soon after brought on the carpet, I can hardly blame him for thinking of no one else. All went on well for two years, during which time my mother had twice occasion to call upon Lucina, and the intendant was gratified by finding himself the father of two other sturdy children. At the end of that time, however, the marriage of the Count was broken off with Mademoiselle de Vergne, and the young lady was promised to the Marquis de St. Brie. You have heard all that sad story, I dare say! The Marquis not liking a rival at liberty--for they began to whisper that the Count still privately saw Mademoiselle de Vergne, and some even said was married to her--had him arrested and thrown into prison, on an accusation of aiding the rebels at Rochelle. The count, however, found means to write to the intendant a letter from the Bastille, containing two orders: one was to send him instantly a certain packet of papers containing the proofs of his innocence; the other, to sell as speedily as possible all the alienable part of his property, and to transmit the amount to a commercial house at Saragossa. The worthy intendant set himself to consider his own interests, and finding that it would be best to keep his lord in prison, he could never discover the papers. At the same time, the buying and selling of a large property is never without its advantage to the steward, and therefore he punctually obeyed the Count's command in this particular, selling all that he could sell, and transmitting the money to Spain, at the end of which transaction he found himself very comfortably off in the world. One night, while he sat counting his gains, however, he was somewhat surprised by a visit from the count, who had made his escape from the Bastille, and came to make his intendant a call, much more disagreeable than interesting. "So much did the intendant wish his lord at the devil, that he was civil to him beyond all precedent; and having gone up in the dark to the château, they spent two hours in diligent search for the papers, which they unfortunately could not find, for this very good reason--the intendant had taken care to remove them three or four days before, and had given them in charge to his dear friend and co-labourer, the Count's apothecary, to keep them as a sacred deposit as much out of the Count's way as possible." "After all this, sorry to have lost the papers, but glad to find he had a considerable fortune placed securely in Spain, the Count set out to seek his fair Henriette, resolving to carry her to another land; and thinking all the while that his intendant was the honestest man in the world. Under this impression, he made him his chief agent in all his plans, told him of his private marriage, and, in short, did what very wise men often do, let the greatest rogue of his acquaintance into all his most important secrets. "The Marquis de St. Brie very soon found out the proceedings of his friend the Count. The Count was of course assassinated, and thrown into the river; the Countess was put into a convent, where she died in childbirth, and God knows what became of the money in Spain. Matters being thus settled to the satisfaction of every one, the intendant found he had quite enough money to set up procureur, and went to live in the same town with his dear friend the apothecary." "But what became of the papers?" demanded I; "and why do you always call him the intendant? Were you a son by some former marriage of your mother?" "Be patient! be patient! Monsieur le Comte, and you shall hear," replied the little player. "I was just about to return to my mother, with regard to whom a man may feel himself tolerably certain. There is a proverb against human presumption in speaking of one's father, 'Sage enfant qui connoit son père!' However, my mother was, as I have said, a very handsome woman, and she made use of her advantages; but, at the same time, she was a very superstitious one, and though she governed her husband in all domestic matters with a rod of iron, she suffered herself to be governed by her confessor in a manner still more despotic. Never used she to fail in her attendance at the confessional, and yet I never heard the good priest complain she troubled him unnecessarily. "At length it so happened that she fell ill, and the only thing that could have saved her, namely, the physicians giving her up, having been tried in vain, and she being both in the jaws of death and in a great fright, her priest would not give her absolution except upon a very hard condition, which she executed as follows--She sent for her husband, and having bade him adieu in very touching terms, upon which he wept--he could always weep when he liked--she sent for his dear friend the apothecary, for a worthy goldsmith of the city, and for a couple of young gentlemen our neighbours, and having brought them all into her bedroom, she acknowledged to her husband all her faults and failings, comprising many which I, in my filial piety, will pass over; after which she begged his forgiveness, and obtained it--requested and received in so touching a manner, that every one wept. She then made her excellent spouse embrace his injurers, which he did like a charitable soul and a sensible man, with a most solemn and edifying countenance. After this she called all her children, of which there were by this time four, round her, and having given us her blessing and her last advice in a very striking and instructive manner, she allotted us severally to the care of her friends. My next brother she bequeathed to the fatherly tenderness of the intendant himself; though there was an unfortunately small degree of likeness between them. I fell to the portion of the apothecary; the youngest son was assigned to the protection of the goldsmith, and so on. When this distribution was concluded, she found herself very much exhausted, and, sending us all away, fell into a profound sleep, from which she woke the next morning in a fair way for recovery. The confessor declared that it was the special interposition of Heaven, as a reward for her punctual obedience to his commands; but her husband thought it the handiwork of the devil; on which difference of conclusion I shall not offer an opinion. Suffice it, my mother recovered, and finding that the story had got abroad, and that every one she met laughed at or avoided her, she insisted on her husband changing his abode and carrying her and her family to another town. At length, however, her malady returned upon her after a year's absence, and she died for good and all, leaving her husband inconsolable for her loss. The moment the breath was out of her body, the excellent procureur took me to the door of his house, and told me tenderly to get along for a graceless little vagabond, and none of his. 'Go to Auch! go to Auch!' cried he, 'and tell that villain of an apothecary I have sent him his own.' To Auch I accordingly went, and delivered the procureur's message to the apothecary, who held up his hands and eyes at the hard-heartedness of his former friend, and giving me a silver piece of a livre tournois, he bade me go along, and not trouble him any more. "The next morning, when my livre was spent, and I began to grow hungry, I naturally turned my steps towards the apothecary's, and hung about near his door without daring to enter, when suddenly I saw him driving out in fury the boy that carried his medicines, who had been guilty, I found afterwards, of drinking the wine set apart for making antimonial wine; and so great was the rage of my worthy parent, that he threw both the pestle and the mortar into the street after the culprit. "Having had all my life a sort of instinctive dislike to the society of an angry man, I was in the act of gliding away as fast as I could, when his eye fell upon me, and beckoning me to him, he called me to come near, in a tone that made me obey instantly. 'Come hither,' cried he, 'come hither! Now I wager an ounce of kermes to a grain of jalap that thou hast been well taught to thieve and to lie! Hey? Is it not so?'--'No, your worship,' answered I, trembling every limb, 'but I dare say I shall soon learn under your teaching.'--'Holla! thou art malapert,' cried he; 'but come in; out of pure charity I will give thee the place of that thief I have just kicked out. But remember, it is out of pure charity--thou hast no claim on me whatever! mark that! But if thou servest me truly, and appliest thyself to my lessons, I will make thee a rival to Galen and Hippocrates.' Thus was I established as medicine-boy at my father the apothecary's, after having been turned out of my father the procureur's, and soon learned his mood and his practice. The first was somewhat arbitrary but despotic, and, by taking care never to contradict him, except where he wished to be contradicted, I soon ingratiated myself with him to a very high degree. "His practice also was very simple. Whenever he was called in to any patient, he began by giving them an emetic, to clear away all obstructions, as he said. He next inquired if the complaint was local, and where? If it was in the head he put a blister on the soles of the feet; if it was in the lower extremities he placed one on the crown of the head; if it was between the two he took care to blister both. When the malady was general, he began by bleeding, and went on by bleeding, till the patient died or recovered; declaring all the while, that let the disease be as bad as it would, he would have it out of him one way or other. He had a good deal of practice when I came, and it rapidly increased, for he was always called in by poor dependents, who expected legacies, to their rich relatives; by young heirs of estates to old annuitants; by the expectants of abbeys, and persons possessing survivorships to their dear friends the long-lived incumbents: and he was also applied to frequently by young wives for their old husbands, and other cases of the kind, wherein he was supposed to practise very successfully. As I grew up, he initiated me into all the secrets of his profession, took me to the bedside of his patients; and, in fact gave me many a paternal mark of his regard! Nor did he confine his confidence in me entirely to professional subjects. It was from him that I learned the earlier part of my own history, and that of the Count de Bagnols, whose papers I had many an opportunity of seeing, for they lay wrapped in a piece of old sheepskin in the drawer with the syringes. Thus passed the time till a company of players visited Auch; and as every night of their performance I went to see them, I speedily acquired a taste--I may say a passion, for the stage, which evidently showed that nature had destined me to wear the buskin. From that moment I was seized with horror at the indiscriminate slaughter which I daily aided in committing, and I resolved to quit Auch the very first opportunity. This, however, did not occur immediately, for before I could prepare my plans the players had left the place, and I was obliged to remain in my sanguinary profession for another year, during which I learned by heart every play that had ever been written in the French language. One day, while I was sitting alone reading Rotrou, a man came in and addressed me with an air of cajolery which instantly put me on my guard; but when he gave me to understand, after a thousand doublings, that he wished to know if ever I had heard my father, or, as he called him, 'master,' talk of certain papers belonging to the late Count de Bagnols, which might be of the greatest service in clearing the honour of his family; and when, at the same time he offered me ten Louis d'ors if I could find the papers, I became as pliant as wax, slipped one hand into the drawer, took the money with the other, delivered the papers, and recommenced my book. My father never missed the papers; and when the players returned I lost no time, but addressed myself to their manager, who made me recite some verses, applauded me highly, declared he wanted a new star, and that if I would steal away from my gallipots and join the company a mile from Auch, I should meet with my desert. I took him at his word, and easily executed my plan during the apothecary's absence. My name was soon changed to Achilles Lefranc, and the provincial spectators found out that I was a genius of a superior class. Ambition, the fault of gods, misled our little troop; and thinking to carry all before us, we went to Paris, obtained permission to perform, and chose a deep tragedy, at which the malicious Parisians roared with laughter from beginning to end. We slunk out of Paris in the middle of the night, but the bond of union was gone amongst us, and we dispersed. Since then I have hawked my talents from village to village, and from company to company; sometimes I have risen to the highest flights of tragedy, and have trod the stage as a king or a hero, and at others I have descended to the lowest walk of comedy, and, for the sake of a mere dinner, performed the part of jester at a marriage entertainment or a fête de village; I have been applauded and hissed, wept at and laughed at, but I have always contrived to make my way through the world, till here I am at last your lordship's--humble servant." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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