Vicomte de Puyjoli; a romance of the French revolution

Contents

VOL. I.

CHAP. PAGE

I. “ Too Beautiful Puyjoli” 11

Preface

To Victorien Sardou.

My Dear Friend,

It is twenty years ago, perhaps even more — how time flies ! — since we, you and I, were walking one day from Saint-Germain to Marly le Roi, and as we walked we talked, do you remember ? And the subject of our conversation was a person long dead and forgotten — a person who had played a not ignoble part in the bloody drama of the Revolution. He was only a poor player ; nobody noticed him, yet (you said and truly) his should have been the applause, the glory given to others. When I say we talked, it was you who talked — ah, how eloquently ! — as we walked ; and the audiences which have with so much justice and discrimination applauded your work upon the stage, how much more would they have applauded had they been privileged to listen to you that day !

It was a pleasant road bordered by fragrant hedgerows. The time of year was summer, and we were both young then.

But why do I write ‘ then,’ you at least are young yet, and will never grow old, I think.

And I flatter myself that if you and I were upon that same road to-day, we should step out as sturdily, 7

Preface.

our mirth and laughter would be as cheerful as it was then, twenty years ago. I seem, as I write this, to hear your voice as you talk of La Bussière.

Of Charles de la Bussière, poor player of the Revolution, whose courage, whose devotion to his fellow artists in the dark days of the Thermidor made of him a hero. And you told in confidence that you had serious thoughts of making him the hero of your next drama.

Just then, however, a sudden shower obscured the sky. The rain fell in torrents, we had to run laughing to take refuge in a half-finished house at the foot of Monte Cristo.

While the rain streamed down you went on with your narration.

How eloquent your theme made you ! My attention never flagged, though the story was hardly done when we tramped into Marly. And the wonder of it all is that the tale was true, every word of it.

This poor, impecunious devil of a strolling player did really at the risk of his own life save scores and scores of his more gifted colleagues from the guillotine.

The Comédie Française should ever after have burnt a votive candle to his memory.

I imagine, however, that the poor player really thought the distinguished company would, — as a reward, — open its ranks to him.

Here, however, he made a mistake ; such a reward was not for him. The mountebank was never allowed to pose with the artists.

After the dark days of the Terror had passed, the Journal des Débats printed an article eulogizing in its columns the service done by La Bussière for the

Preface.

Comédie : — a benefit also was given him by the players whose lives he had saved.

Hamlet was given on that occasion, followed by the Two Pages. It was the night of the 15th Germinal, year 9, April fifteenth, 1801.

The First Consul condescended to occupy a box on that night, which, however, was only to be expected, perhaps, his consort, Josephine, having been one of those saved from death by La Bussière’s intervention. — Not content with protecting the mimic queens of the stage from death, La Bussière (think of it !) had managed to save the head of a future Empress of France from tumbling on the block. It was upon our excursion to Marly that, as I said before, you confided to me your intention of making of this man (who died poor and in a madhouse, — perhaps he had been a little mad all his life) the hero of a play you had then in your mind. He should, (you declared, and you have kept your word) have his triumph upon the stage of the Académie. It is there La Bussière lives and breathes again to future generations.

Thanks to you, he is rescued from forgetfulness and thankless oblivion. The poor player is known as the Hero that he was indeed. And I too, now many years later, lay a tiny leaf of laurel upon the tomb of La Bussière.

In this book of mine I have not done him the justice he deserves. How it happened I do not know, but in Puyjoli he refused to take any other rôle than the simple, humble one he acted when alive. It was you, the magician, who called him from the shades to my view.

As I wrote the book, it seemed to me as though you

Preface.

were again by my side, that we were youths and walking together along the pleasant road toward Marly.

Time passes, friendship endures. To-day in the rush and jostle of town life, in the midst of severe and engrossing labours, our companionship is as pleasant as it was in the idle, careless summer days.

Therefore it seems only meet and right to me that at the head of this book I inscribe your loved and honoured name. And permit me, I who so often with admiring crowds have applauded your written words upon the stage, to thank you for those spoken to me in private ; words which have inspired this tale.

Words which I alone was privileged to hear and silently to applaud.

Your devoted friend,

Jules Claretie.

VICOMTE DE P U Y JOLI.

Chapter I. “ Too Beautiful Puyjoli.”

This history opens a year or two before the breaking out of the French Revolution of 1789.

Versailles at that time was regarded by the nobility as the Promised Land was probably regarded by the Israelites of old, and for a courtier to be invited by his master to take a seat with him in the royal coach, was looked upon as the summit of earthly felicity.

It was a, time when all the clocks and watches throughout the kingdom were regulated by the tardy sundial in the garden at Trianon: a time when the nobles looked down upon the common people as the gods of old from secure Olympian heights gazed down upon their worshippers below.

Perigueux in Périgord had then (like all other petty provincial towns) its court modelled after the greater one at Versailles. The nobles of Périgord, moreover, frivolous and short-sighted as their brothers of Paris, took no notice of the muttering and growling of the thunder of the approaching Revolution, which was soon to overwhelm them in its depths. This noble 11

Vicomte de Puyjoli.

society of Perigueux made itself, on the contrary, extremely merry at the expense of one of its members.

A young nobleman — Gaston, Viscount Puyjoli, whose only fault (a grave one, however, in the eyes of his contemporaries) was that he was really too beautiful, — beautiful as the day ! — as a summer’s day of blinding sunlight and bright blue sky : — sunlight too fierce and sky too dazzlingly blue make one long to have their brightness obscured by a gray cloud or two or tempered by a sudden shower of rain.

Our poor Viscount ! His history, romantic and tragic, has become a legend of his native province, and the words “ Too beautiful Puyjoli ” have passed into a proverb. Certainly at the age of three-and-twenty Gaston de Puyjoli, though a brave and gallant youth enough, had at this time no other qualities to attract the eyes or draw the attention of detractors upon him but this transcendent, almost insolent, beauty.

He had been the most beautiful infant. As a lad, with his pink cheeks, sparkling blue eyes and golden curls falling on his shoulders he had caused the Canoness de Gignac to exclaim, when speaking of him — “ That boy is really too beautiful ; — he is beautiful as a ripe apple ! ”

And the phrase stuck to him even now when he had become a man.

The world of society in Perigueux laughed at it and repeated it. There was nothing else with which to reproach him except this ridiculous prodigality of nature for which, after all, he was not to blame. But when a man is too handsome, he is ridiculous.

Puyjoli, however, bore a name to which ridicule had never yet attached itself. He was the second son of the Count Monpazier who, since the death of his wife, had resided with the elder son in Paris.

The birth of Puyjoli had cost his mother her life, and the Count, who adored his wife, could never look upon the child without being reminded of her loss. He had been confided from his earliest infancy to the care of the Dowager Marchioness de Trémolat, his maternal grandmother, who adored and spoiled him.

“ You are really too beautiful, Gaston,” she would say, pressing her lips on the lad’s fresh pink cheeks.

When in addition to a beauty so remarkable one adds a bashfulness almost overpowering, it will be seen that this gift of prodigal Nature to him was not at all appreciated by the recipient of it.

To know that the moment one puts one’s foot out of doors the eyes of all the passers-by will be fastened on one with an admiration as undesired as embarrassing — it was really torture to the poor lad. He therefore decided at a very early age to abjure the society of his kind entirely. To lead a life of seclusion, surrounded by his dogs, whose big, faithful, brown eyes gazed upon him with a love unmingled with unwelcome admiration.

He was, however, not allowed to carry out this plan of his. The Marchioness insisted upon her grandson’s taking his place in the society to which rank and name entitled him.

On his very first appearance in it, moreover, he fell in love — in love suddenly but irremediably — absolutely, madly in love at the very first sight of the beloved object.

Mademoiselle de Louverchal, the object of this passion of the Viscount’s, was the daughter of a nobleman

Vicomte de Puyjoli.

living at an hôtel a short distance from that of Madame de Trêmolat !

She was a small, Grenze-like type of beauty, with saucy, red lips, blue eyes, rather scornful, and a nose tip-tilted like a flower. Gaston found her irresistible. The very day after meeting her he confided his passion for her to his grandmother, and his intention to marry her if possible.

“ Oh, oh,” laughed the old lady, “ but you have lost no time in falling in love, Gaston, my dear.”

It was not the day after meeting her exactly, but still very soon afterward, that Piyjoli determined to ask Mademoiselle de Louverchal’s hand of her father.

With the desperate courage of a timid man, he set out at once on his errand. Dressed in a rich suit of silk and velvet, a plumed cap on his golden curls, a sword jangling at his side, Gaston was indeed a superb apparition. The distance between the two houses was not a long one ; long enough, however, for him to encounter several pedestrians whose audible comments (flattering though they were) on his appearance materially disturbed his equanimity.

Quickening his footsteps to avoid hearing them, he arrived in front of the Hôtel Louverchal sooner than he anticipated. Fixing his eyes on the knocker and lowering his eyelids as would a man about plunging over a precipice, Gaston gave a knock loud enough to waken the dead.

In reply to this imperative summons the door opened directly, and a footman, seeing it was the Viscount, saluted him with a low bow and a grin of welcome.

“ Ah— tê, Monsieur le Vicomte,” exclaimed the man

— “ Pardon me, but bow fast your lordship must have come hither.”

Gaston looked at the man with a blank, unseeing gaze ; then, as one speaking in a dream, he asked if the Marquis were visible.

“ O — tê ! To you, Monsieur le Vicomte, always.”

Puyjoli felt his heart literally leaping up into his throat. How it beat — this poor timid heart. He had half a mind to turn about and run home again. To declare his hopes, to confess his love — eh, malepeste ! but the task would be a difficult one. He began to wish that the Marquis had not been visible to him.

“ I go to announce M. le Vicomte to M. le Marquis,” said the lackey.

Left alone, Puyjoli’s eyes wandered around the room into which the footman had shown him. He fell back slightly on perceiving on an easel just in front of him a pastel portrait of Mademoiselle de Louverchal in all the fresh beauty of her eighteen years. The colours, already a little faded, gave to the face of the portrait an expression of soft and tender melancholy, quite foreign to the original.

Bertha smiled and dreamed at the same moment. The eyes were smiling and mischievous, but the red lips were serious. Gaston gazed at the portrait with rapture — passionate, audacious rapture, for even the most timid lover could hardly be expected to feel abashed before a portrait.

Then, emboldened by the thought that he was quite alone with this charming image of his love, he ventured to send a kiss from the tips of his fingers toward the picture, a salute which the portrait received without a frown.

i6 Vicomte de Puyjoli.

Hardly, however, had the Viscount been guilty of this act of audacity when the door opened and the Marquis entered, exclaiming : —

“ Ah, good day, Viscount. What a delightful surprise to see you at this hour ! ”

Gaston bowed, took the chair pointed out to him by the Marquis and sat twirling his plumed hat in his fingers like a tenant, behindhand with his rent, before his landlord.

A pause ensued.

M. de Louverchal, who was still in his morning costume, a flowered dressing-gown, began to excuse it, to talk of the weather, of the news of Paris, of the recent convocation of the States General, of Mirabeau, who had just published a number of incendiary pamphlets, thereby causing his worthy father, author of “ L’Ami des Hommes,” and who was a friend, if you please, of his (M. de Louverchal), a great deal of dissatisfaction.

And all the while he was pouring out these phrases the Marquis was puzzling his brains as to what could be the object of Puyjoli’s visit.

Puyjoli, poor fellow, in his turn, had never felt himself so miserable, so unhappy, as at this moment. He endeavoured to speak, but the words died away in his throat, contracted by terror. He endeavoured to smile, but by means of a mirror directly in front of him he could see plainly the nervous grin which distorted his visage, scarlet with embarrassment. Worse than all this, he absolutely felt the tears rising to his eyes, and was filled with alarm at the thought that he might suddenly burst out crying then and there before the Marquis’s face.

A window looking out on the street was open. For one brief moment Puyjoli thought in his desperation of jumping out of it. M. de Louverchal, however, came unconsciously to his aid by asking him politely the object of his visit.

By a supreme effort of self-control, the Viscount found himself able to reply to this interrogation, and with the precipitancy of water flowing out of an overturned bottle, all his hopes and wishes came pouring forth.

He loved Mademoiselle de Louverchal — had loved her from the first moment he set eyes upon her ; loved her sincerely, deeply. He was aware that she was an heiress, but he too, as the heir of Madame de Trémolat, would one day be the possessor of a fortune still greater than hers. She was noble, but the Mopaziers were not less so. In short — here M. de Louverchal interrupted the suitor, the sight of whose face, red with emotion, caused the Marquis to feel as though he were sitting opposite a lighted brazier.

“ In short, my dear Viscount, I am immensely flattered by your proposal for my daughter’s hand, but the acceptance of it remains with her. She has a will of her own, I am sorry to say. If you like, I will speak to her, or here in your presence I will acquaint her with the proposal you have done her the honour to make her.”

“ Speak to her now and in my presence, if you please, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied Gaston, quickly, with the blind courage of a bashful yet desperate lover, wishing to endure everything but suspense.

The Marquis rang for a footman, and sent for his daughter.

She appeared directly, beautiful and smiling, and curtsied saucily to Puyjoli. On her father’s acquainting her with the object of the Viscount’s visit to them, she began to laugh. Yes, to laugh, and to laugh loud and long. Gaston de Puyjoli was confounded at this behaviour. He was no longer red ; he grew so pale that the Marquis, ashamed of his daughter, remonstrated with her gravely.

“ Bertha, my child, what does this mean ! Have you lost your senses suddenly?” But it was no easy matter to drive the laughter away from the lips of a petted beauty of eighteen.

At last, however, Mademoiselle de Louverchal deigned to explain the cause of her merriment.

She exhausted herself in excuses. Monsieur le Vicomte must pardon her — but. it was not her fault at all. It was all the fault of the Canon ess of Gignac. Why had the Canoness ventured to compare M. de Puyjoli, to a fruit? to an apple? An apple, or was it a nectarine ? As if one could marry a nectarine !

“ You must pardon me, Monsieur le Vicomte,” she added, “ but I cannot marry you. Beside you I should certainly look ugly. You are too beautiful.” Here she began to laugh again.

“ Too beautiful, Puyjoli ! ” exclaimed the Marquis. “ A rejection could not be couched in terms more flattering.”

But the Viscount had never before in his whole life fejt so deeply humiliated and mortified. He gazed boldly into the face of his pretty tormentor, and he, the bashful suitor, exclaimed brutally, to the astonishment of both father and daughter,

“Very well, Mademoiselle, I must, perforce, accept

“ Too Beautiful Puyjoli.

your refusal now, but I swear to you that one day you shall yet be mine. In a year, or ten, at Paris or Perigueuxor Peking — it matters not where — you shall some day be mine.”

Then, bowing low and turning on his high red heels, he abruptly left the room.

Oh, the temerity of this timid, bashful lover! At this moment, Gaston de Puyjoli was in a state to draw his sword single-handed against lions.

“ ‘ Too beautiful, too beautiful,”’ he muttered through his clenched teeth, as he strode rapidly back to the Hôtel de Trémolat.

“ Is it my fault ? ” he inquired later of his grandmother on telling her of his proposal to Bertha and her scornful rejection of it. “ Is it my fault that that detestable phrase of the Canoness is to cling to me for ever? Mangrebleu ! — humanity in general is quite ugly enough to satisfy the pious lady.”

Puyjoli had another auditor at this interview with his grandmother. A young girl, Clotilde Ponyade by name, who was being educated and brought up at Trémolat.

Clotilde’s father, Sergeant Ponyade, had accompanied Gerard de Monpazier to America, and been killed in battle there. He had in fact given his life for his lord, receiving in his own breast the point of the bayonet aimed at Gérard’s.

“ He died nobly” the Dowager was wont to say, with an emphasis on the last word.

After Ponyade’s death the Marchioness had taken his sister and child under her roof. On the death of the aunt, Clotilde had been adopted by the noble lady. A sum had been put aside for her by the Marchioness as a

Vicomte de Puyjoli.

marriage dowry. Clotilde was a few years older than Gaston, whom she looked upon almost as her brother.

When he had finished his narrative, this young lady, like Bertha a few hours before, began in her turn to laugh heartily.

“ My dear Gaston,” she said soon after, “ you should teach this scornful coquette a lesson. She has neither sense nor heart enough to understand or appreciate you ; but you will not do it. You will not return her scorn by an indifference she would find harder to endure than anger. You are not only ‘too beautiful,’ my poor Gaston, you are too kind, too magnanimous.”

It was now Puyjoli’s turn to laugh. Too beautiful, too kind, too magnanimous. Really, these eulogies of him were preposterous.

Afterward, however, on thinking them over, Clotilde’s words struck him more seriously. Was he too easy and careless in his intercourse with those about him ? Did they despise him for his good-nature as well as for his good-looks ?

Well, nature had not left him unprovided with teeth and claws. He made up his mind in the future to defend himself with these weapons. He set himself from that day to conquer his timidity, his bashfulness, his easy good-nature, which made him dislike to hurt or pain any living creature, as he would have set about training a dog to point for partridges.

He cultivated a cold, reserved demeanour in society. He used his tongue to defend himself as a sharp sword might have done. His acquaintances had chosen to make merry over his beauty ; very well, then, he for his part would show them that he found their lack of this quality as ridiculous.

However, though the inhabitants of the provinces were quite ignorant as yet of it, the Revolution, long smouldering, now broke out in Paris.

Just about this time Gaston de Puyjoli had a chance to prove to his scornful mistress that, although he was unfortunately possessed of that not-to-be-desired gift in a man, beauty, he was not lacking in those more-to-be-desired qualities, strength and courage.

Riding one day, accompanied only by her groom, Bertha’s horse took fright suddenly and ran away with her. She would have been dashed to death against a tree if Puyjoli, just at that moment, like a veritable hero of romance, had not appeared from behind it, and, catching her horse by the bridle after a short but sharp struggle succeeded in subduing the frightened animal.

It was well and gallantly done, and Bertha could not refuse a word of thanks to her preserver.

“ How you conquered the brute,” she murmured, with lips still white with terror.

“ I have succeeded, since I saw you, in subduing something much more formidable,” he answered, smiling.

“ And that is ”

“ My own timidity.”

The Marquis was exceedingly grateful to Gaston for saving the life of his daughter.

“ Cannot you succeed in making up j T our mind to marry him now ? ” he inquired anxiously of her, when told of the occurrence.

“ Marry whom ? ”

“ Gaston, the saviour of your life.”

Bertha’s pretty face clouded suddenly. With red, pouting lips she answered quickly:

“ No — no — no, decidedly no. He is too beautiful.”

Vicomte de Puyjoli.

“ I will wait for lier,” replied Puyjoli, phlegmatically, to whom the Marquis had the. fatuity to repeat this conversation. “ You know I will wait for her — ten years if necessary.” He had, it appears, already waited two.

One evening, some weeks after, Clotilde Ponyade, in the course of conversation happened to say in Gaston’s presence that there had been uprisings and rioting among the peasants in the neighbourhood of Sainte-Foy de Longas, an estate of M. de Louverchal’s, where he and his daughter were at present living.

Gaston immediately set out for Sainte-Foy de Longas, first taking the precaution to hang his pistols on the pommel of his saddle.

He arrived at the village just as a crowd of angry peasants, on coming out of church, had surrounded the Marquis and his daughter. Many voices among the crowd accused him of hiding away the wheat harvested the previous year, an act of which de Louverchal, be it remarked, was quite incapable. He was a selfish and indolent man, but not in any way a cruel one. It is possible, however, that his steward had been guilty of the deed of which the famished peasants accused their lord. The tone of the crowd was growing every moment more dangerous and menacing when suddenly, as though he had dropped from the sky above their heads, Gaston de Puyjoli appeared, spurring his horse among the forest of sticks and the showers of pebbles and small stones which fell thick around the Marquis and his daughter.

Bertha, pale but resolute, had placed herself in front of her father, interposing her body as a shield to keep the missiles off him.

“ Too Beautiful Puyjoli.

Pu}^joli forced his horse into the angry crowd, flourishing his pistols and shouting at the top of his lungs,

“ Back, back, all of you — or I fire ! ” His appearance, beautiful and menacing as an avenging angel, awed the peasants in spite of themselves. He was, besides, well known and liked by them as a bountiful and generous Sieur. They dispersed at once with cheers for the seigneur Puyjoli. The Viscount returned with the Marquis and his daughter to their château.

Afterward, when alone in the drawing-room with Puyjoli and his daughter, the Marquis exclaimed :

“You must, I think, confess yourself vanquished, Bertha. You can no longer refuse to marry the Viscount, my child.”

Bertha remained silent, but Puyjoli answered for her smiling : —

“ Mademoiselle need not hurry herself. In a year or ”

Bertha interrupted him pettishly.

“ Excuse us, Viscount, we know the rest by heart.”

“I think, Gaston,” said the Marquis, when Bertha had retired, leaving the two together, “ that was rather a blundering speech of yours — that assertion that you were in no hurry to marry her.”

“ Ah,” exclaimed Puyjoli, “ how could she and you have misunderstood me so completely ? ”

The years which followed seemed to Puyjoli to pass with frightful rapidity. In times of Revolution, one lives fast. Stormy days always appear the shortest.

However, by this time Gaston had left Perigueux to follow Mademoiselle de Louverchal and her father to Paris.

The old Marchioness de Trémolat and his father were

Vicomte de Puyjoli.

both now dead. Except Gerard de Monpazier, his brother, whom he met at Paris on his arrival there, the young man was quite alone in the world.

His beauty and his wealth insured his success in the gay world of Paris — gay, in spite of the protests, loud and discordant as they were to the ears of their lords and masters, of an oppressed and starving people.

“ This Puyjoli,” exclaimed one day one of the actresses at the “ Comédie,” makes no use at all of his beauty. He lets himself be gulled and cheated by us as though he were old and ugly. There is, too, something exasperating about his beauty. Ours is really cast into the shade by it.”

Thus the days went by ; Puyjoli wasting his time and his money on some beauty of the hour, as frail and faithless, as fair.

The memory of Bertha’s lovely face was, however, never absent from him ; the sound of her silvery laugh echoed ever in his ears, and often he exclaimed,

“Ah, well, whether she will or not, some day she shall be mine.”

The Loves of the Viscount.

Chapter II

Duking this time of feverish and anxious waiting for Mademoiselle de Louverchal to smile upon his wooing, truth compels us to say that Puyjoli permitted himself some distractions ; nor was he above resisting the pleasant temptations which in Paris assail on every side a nobleman young, rich and superbly handsome.

His love for Bertha was his one and only passion, but while waiting for her to return it, he amused himself with other fair ones neither so coquettish nor so disdainful.

He had, also, though quite unknown to himself, inspired a deep and fervent affection in the heart of a good and modest girl, the daughter of a draper, with whom an accident had brought him in contact.

One day, sauntering about the precincts of the Champs de Mars, Puyjoli was suddenly made aware that something out of the common was going on about him. It was, in fact, the day on which Lafayette and Bailly had ordered the street to be swept down by grape-shot as a means of dispersing the populace which had given signs of rioting and turbulence. There was a great rush of the crowd to save itself, and a young girl, accompanied by a much older woman, found themselves in the midst of it, in danger of being thrown down and

Vicomte de Puyjoli.

trampled upon. Puyjoli had come gallantly to the rescue, throwing an arm round the waist of each of them. By sturdy elbowing, he had succeeded in pushing through the crowd and turning down a side street.

It was an act of pure humanity on his part, and he had no idea with what feelings of admiration and gratitude the girl regarded her rescuer.

“ Destiny seems to will,” he thought laughingly to himself, “ that I shall be a squire of dames. If I had been born three hundred years ago, I should in all probability have been a knight-errant.”