Arthur O'Leary Part 37

'"You are asked," said he, "to remember why you appeared at the bridge of the Elster."

'"Hus.h.!.+" replied the prisoner, placing his finger upon his lips, as if to instil caution; "not a word!"

'"What can this mean?" said the President, "his mind appears completely astray."

'The members of the tribunal leaned their heads over the table, and conversed for some moments in a low tone, after which the President resumed the interrogatory as before.

'"Que voulez-vous?" said the Emperor, rising, while a crimson spot on his cheek evinced his displeasure; "Que voulez-vous, messieurs! do you not see the man is mad?"

'"Silence!" reiterated Aubuisson, in the same solemn voice; "silence a la mort!"

'There could no longer be any doubt upon the question. From whatever cause proceeding, his intellect was shaken, and his reason gone. Some predominant impression, some all-powerful idea, had usurped the seat of both judgment and memory, and he was a maniac.

'In ten days after, General Aubuisson--the distinguished soldier of the Republic, the _brave_ of Egypt, and the hero of many a battle in Germany, Poland, and Russia--was a patient of Charenton. A sad and melancholy figure, wasted and withered like a tree reft by lightning, the wreck of his former self, he walked slowly to and fro; and though at times his reason would seem to return free and unclouded, suddenly a dark curtain would appear to drop over the light of his intellect, and he would mutter the words, "Silence! silence a la mort!" and speak not again for several hours after.'

The Vicomte de Berlemont, from whom I heard this sad story, was himself a member of the court-martial on the occasion. For the rest, I visited Paris about a fortnight after I heard it, and determining to solve my doubts on a subject of such interest I paid an early visit to Charenton.

On examining the registry of the inst.i.tution, I found the name of 'Gustave Guillaume Aubuisson, native of Dijon, aged thirty-two. Admitted at Charenton the 31st of October, 1813. Incurable.' And on another page was the single line, 'Aubuisson escaped from Charenton, June 16, 1815.

Supposed to have been seen at Waterloo on the 18th.'

One more fact remains to be mentioned in this sad story. The old tower still stands, bleak and desolate, on the mountains of the Vesdre; but it is now uninhabited save by the sheep that seek shelter within its gloomy walls, and herd in that s.p.a.cious chimney. There is another change, too, but so slight as scarcely to be noticed: a little mound of earth, gra.s.s-grown and covered with thistles, marks the spot where 'Lazare the shepherd' takes his last rest. It is a lone and dreary spot, and the sighing night-winds as they move over the barren heath seem to utter his last _consigne_, and his requiem--'Silence! silence a la mort!'

CHAPTER XIX. THE TOP OF A DILIGENCE

'Summa diligentia,' as we used to translate it at school, 'on the top of the diligence,' I wagged along towards the Rhine. A weary and a lonely way it is; indeed, I half believe a frontier is ever thus--a kind of natural barrier to ambition on either side, where both parties stop short and say, 'Well, there's no temptation there, anyhow!'

Reader, hast ever travelled in the _banquette_ of a diligence? I will not ask you, fair lady; for how could you ever mount to that Olympus of trunks, carpet-bags, and hat-boxes; but my whiskered friend with the cheroot yonder, what says he? Never look angry, man--there was no offence in my question; better men than either of us have done it.

First, if the weather be fine, the view is a glorious thing; you are not limited, like your friends in the _coupe_, to the sight of the conductor's gaiters, or the leather disc of the postillion's 'continuations.' No; your eye ranges away at either side over those undulating plains which the Continent presents, unbroken by fence or hedgerow--one stretch of vast cornfields, great waving woods, interminable tracts of yellowish pasture-land, with here and there a village spire, or the pointed roof of some chateau rising above the trees. A yellow-earthy byroad traverses the plain, on which a heavy waggon plods along, the eight huge horses, stepping as free as though no weight restrained them; their bells are tinkling in the clear air, and the merry chant of the waggoner chimes in pleasantly with them. It is somewhat hard to fancy how the land is ever tilled; you meet few villages; scarcely a house is in sight--yet there are the fragrant fields; the yellow gold of harvest tints the earth, and the industry of man is seen on every side. It is peaceful, it is grand, too, from its very extent; but it is not homelike. No; our own happy land alone possesses that attribute. _It_ is the country of the hearth and home.

The traveller in France or Germany catches no glances as he goes of the rural life of the proprietors of the soil. A pale white chateau, seemingly uninhabited, stands in some formal lawn, where the hot sun darts down his rays unbroken, and the very fountain seems to hiss with heat. No signs of life are seen about; all is still and calm, as though the moon were shedding her yellow l.u.s.tre over the scene. Oh how I long for the merry schoolboy's laugh, the clatter of the pony's canter, the watch-dog's bark, the squire breathing the morning air amid his woods, that tell of England! How I fancy a peep into that large drawing-room, whose windows open to the greensward, letting in a view of distant mountains and far-receding foreground, through an atmosphere heavy with the rose and the honeysuckle! Lovely as is the scene, with foliage tinted in every hue, from the light sprayey hazel to the dull pine or the dark copper beech--how I prefer to look within where _they_ are met who call this 'home!' And what a paradise is such a home!----

But I must think no more of these things. I am a lone and solitary man; my happiness is cast in a different mould, nor shall I mar it by longings which never can be realised.

While I sat thus musing, my companion of the _banquette_, of whom I had hitherto seen nothing but a blue-cloth cloak and a travelling-cap, came 'slap down' on me with a snort that choked him, and aroused me.

'I ask your pardon, sir,' said he in a voice that betrayed Middles.e.x most culpably. 'Je suis--that is, j'ai----'

'Never mind, sir; English will answer every purpose,' cried I. 'You have had a sound sleep of it.'

'Yes, Heaven be praised! I get over a journey as well as most men. Where are we now--do you happen to know?'

'That old castle yonder, I suspect, is the Alten Burg,' said I, taking out my guidebook and directory. 'The Alten Burg was built in the year 1384, by Carl Ludwig Graf von Lowenstein, and is not without its historic a.s.sociations-----'

'd.a.m.n its historic a.s.sociations!' said my companion, with an energy that made me start. 'I wish the devil and his imps had carried away all such trumpery, or kept them to torture people in their own hot climate, and left us free here. I ask pardon, sir! I beseech you to forgive my warmth; you would if you knew the cause, I'm certain.'

I began to suspect as much myself, and that my neighbour being insane, was in no wise responsible for his opinions; when he resumed--

'Most men are made miserable by present calamities; some feel apprehensions for the future; but no one ever suffered so much from either as I do from the past. No, sir,' continued he, raising his voice, 'I have been made unhappy from those sweet souvenirs of departed greatness which guidebook people and tourists gloat over. The very thought of antiquity makes me shudder; the name of Charlemagne gives me the lumbago; and I'd run a mile from a conversation about Charles the Bold or Philip van Artevelde. I see what's pa.s.sing in your mind; but you 're all wrong. I'm not deranged, not a bit of it; though, faith, I might be, without any shame or disgrace.'

The caprices of men, of Englishmen in particular, had long ceased to surprise me; each day disclosed some new eccentricity or other. In the very last hotel I had left there was a Member of Parliament planning a new route to the Rhine, avoiding Cologne, because in the coffee-room of the 'Grossen Rheinberg' there was a double door that everybody banged when he went in or out, and so discomposed the honourable and learned gentleman that he was laid up for three weeks with a fit of gout, brought on by pure pa.s.sion at the inconvenience.

I had not long to wait for the explanation in this case. My companion appeared to think he owed it to himself to 'show cause' why he was not to be accounted a lunatic; and after giving me briefly to understand that his means enabled him to retire from active pursuits and enjoy his ease, he went on to recount that he had come abroad to pa.s.s the remainder of his days in peace and tranquillity. But I shall let him tell his own story in his own words.

'On the eighth day after my arrival at Brussels, I told my wife to pack up; for as Mr. Thysens the lawyer, who promised to write before that time, had not done so, we had nothing to wait for. We had seen Waterloo, visited the Musee, skated about in listed slippers through the Palais d'Orange, dined at Dubos's, ate ice at Velloni's, bought half the old lace in the Rue de la Madelaine, and almost caught an ague in the Allee Verte. This was certainly pleasure enough for one week; so I ordered my bill, and prepared "to evacuate Flanders." Lord help us, what beings we are! Had I gone down to the railroad by the Boulevards and not by the Montagne de la Cour, what miseries might I not have been spared! Mr.

Thysens's clerk met me, just as I emerged from the Place Royale, with a letter in his hand. I took it, opened, and read:--

'"Sir,--I have just completed the purchase of the beautiful Chateau of Vanderstradentendonk, with all its gardens, orchards, pheasantries, piscinae, prairies, and forest rights, which are now your property.

Accept my most respectful congratulations upon your acquisition of this magnificent seat of ancient grandeur, rendered doubly precious by its having been once the favourite residence and chateau of the great Van Dyck."

'Here followed a long encomium upon Rubens and his school, which I did not half relish, knowing it was charged to me in my account; the whole winding up with a pressing recommendation to hasten down at once to take possession, and enjoy the partridge shooting, then in great abundance.

'My wife was in ecstasy to be the Frow Vanderstradentendonk, with a fish-pond before the door, and twelve G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses in lead around it. To have a brace of asthmatic peac.o.c.ks on a terrace, and a dropsical swan on an island, were strong fascinations--not to speak of the straight avenues leading nowhere, and the winds of heaven blowing everywhere; a house with a hundred and thirty windows and half as many doors, none of which would shut close; a garden, with no fruit but crab-apples; and a nursery, so called, because the playground of all the brats for a league round us. No matter, I had resolved to live abroad for a year or two, and one place would do just as well as another; at least, I should have quietness--that was something; there was no neighbourhood, no town, no highroad, no excuse for travelling acquaintances to drop in, or rambling tourists to bore one with letters of introduction. Thank G.o.d! there was neither a battlefield, a cathedral, a picture, nor a great living poet for ten miles on any side.

'Here, thought I, I shall have that peace Piccadilly cannot give.

Cincinnatus-like, I'll plant my cabbages, feed my turkeys, let my beard grow, and nurse my rental. Solitude never bored me; I could bear anything but intrusive impertinence. So far did I carry this feeling, that on reading Robinson Crusoe I laid down the volume in disgust on the introduction of his man Friday!

'It mattered little, therefore, that the _couleur de rose_ picture the lawyer had drawn of the chateau had little existence out of his own florid imagination; the quaint old building, with its worn tapestries and faded furniture, suited the habit of my soul, and I hugged myself often in the pleasant reflection that my London acquaintances would be puzzling their brains for my whereabouts, without the slightest clue to my detection. Now, had I settled in' Florence, Frankfort, or Geneva, what a life I must have led! There is always some dear Mrs. Somebody going to live in your neighbourhood, who begs you 'll look out for a house for her--something very eligible; eighteen rooms well furnished; a southern aspect; in the best quarter; a garden indispensable; and all for some forty pounds a year--or some other dear friend who desires you 'll find a governess, with more accomplishments than Malibran and more learning than Porson, with the temper of five angels, and a "vow in heaven" to have no higher salary than a college bed-maker. Then there are the Thompsons pa.s.sing through, whom you have taken care never to know before; but who fall upon you now as strangers in a foreign land, and take the "benefit" of the "Alien Act" in dinners at your house during their stay. I stop not to enumerate the crying wants of the more lately arrived resident, all of which are refreshed for your benefit; the recommendations to butlers who don't cheat, to moral music-masters, grave dancing-masters, and doctors who never take fees--every infraction by each of these individuals in his peculiar calling being set down as a just cause of complaint against yourself, requiring an animated correspondence in writing, and concluding with an abject apology and a promise to cut the delinquent that day, though you owe him a half-year's bill. These are all pleasant; not to speak of the curse of disjointed society, ill-a.s.sorted, ill-conceived, unreasonable pretension, vulgar impertinence, and fawning toadyism on every side, and not one man to be found to join you in laughing at the whole thing, which would amply repay one for any endurance. No, thought I, I 've had enough of this!

I 'll try my barque in quieter waters, and though it's only a punt, yet I'll hold the sculls myself, and that's something.

'So much for the self-gratulation I indulged in, as the old _chaise de poste_ rattled over the heavy pavement, and drew up short at the portico of my future dwelling. My wife was charmed with the procession of villagers who awaited us on the steps, and (although an uglier population never trod their mother earth in wooden slippers) fancied she could detect several faces of great beauty and much interest in the crowd. For my part, I saw nothing but an indiscriminate haze of cotton nightcaps, striped jackets, blouses, black petticoats and sabots; so, pus.h.i.+ng my way through them, I left the ba.s.soon and the burgomaster to the united delights of their music and eloquence, and shutting the hall door threw myself on a seat, and thanked Heaven that my period of peace and tranquillity was at length to begin.

'Peace and tranquillity! What airy visions! Had I selected the post of cad to an omnibus, a steward to a Greenwich steamer, were I a guide to the Monument or a waiter at Long's my life had been one of dignified repose in comparison with my present existence.

'I had not been a week in the chateau when a travelling Englishman sprained his ankle within a short distance of the house. As a matter of course he was brought there, and taken every care of for the few days of his stay. He was fed, housed, leeched, and stuped, and when at length he proceeded upon his journey was profuse in his acknowledgments for the services rendered him; and yet what was the base return of the ungrateful man? I have scarcely temper to record it. During the very moment when we were most lavish in our attention to him, he was sapping the very peace of his benefactors. He learned from the Flemish servants of the house that it had formerly been the favourite residence of Van Dyck; that the very furniture was unchanged since his time; the bed, the table, the chair he had sat on were all preserved. The wretch--am I not warranted in calling him so?--made notes of all this; before I had been three weeks in my abode, out came a _Walk in Flanders_, in two volumes, with a whole chapter about me, headed "Chateau de Van Dyck." There we were, myself and my wife, in every window of the Row: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Blue, had bought us at a price, and paid for us; there we were--we, who courted solitude and retirement--to be read of by every puppy in the West End, and every apprentice in Cheapside. Our hospitality was lauded, as if I kept open house for all comers, with "hot chops and brown gravy" at a moment's notice. The antiquary was bribed to visit me by the fascinations of a spot "sacred to the reveries of genius"; the sportsman, by the account of my "preserves"; the idler, to say he had been there; and the guide-bookmaker and historical biographer, to vamp up details for a new edition of _Belgium as it was_, or _Van Dyck and his Contemporaries_.

'From the hour of the publication of that horrid book I never enjoyed a moment's peace or ease. The whole tide of my travelling countrymen--and what a flood it is!--came pouring into Ghent. Post-horses could not be found sufficient for half the demand; the hotels were crowded; respectable peasants gave up their daily employ to become guides to the chateau; and little busts of Van Dyck were hawked about the neighbourhood by children of four years old. The great cathedral of Ghent, Van Scamp's pictures, all the historic remains of that ancient city were at a discount; and they who formerly exhibited them as a livelihood were now thrown out of bread. Like the dancing-master who has not gone up to Paris for the last pirouette, or the physician who has not taken up the stethoscope, they were reputed old-fas.h.i.+oned and _pa.s.se_; and if they could not describe the Chateau de Van Dyck, were voted among the bygones.

'The impulse once given, there was no stopping; the current was irresistible. The double lock on the gate of the avenue, the bulldog at the hall door, the closed shutters, the cut-away bell-rope, announced a firm resolution in the fortress not to surrender; but we were taken by a.s.sault, escaladed, and starved out in turns.

'Scarcely was the tea-urn on the breakfast-table when they began to pour in--old and young, the halt, the one-eyed, the fat, the thin, the melancholy, the merry, the dissipated, the dyspeptic, the sentimental, the jocose, the blunt, the ceremonious, the courtly, the rude, the critical, and the free and easy. One came forty miles out of his way, and p.r.o.nounced the whole thing an imposition, and myself a humbug; another insisted upon my getting up at dinner, that he might sit down in my chair, characterised by the confounded guides as "le fauteuil de Van Dyck"; a third went so far as to propose lying down in our great four-post bed, just to say he had been there, though my wife was then in it. I speak not of the miserable practice of cutting slices off all the furniture as relics. John Murray took an inventory of the whole contents of the house for a new edition of his guidebook; and Holman, the blind traveller, _felt_ me all over with his hand as I sat at tea with my wife; and last of all, a respectable cheesemonger from the Strand, after inspecting the entire building from the attics to the cellar, pressed sixpence into my hand at parting, and said, "Happy to see you, Mr. Van Dyck, if you come into the city!"

'Then the advice and counsel I met with, oral and written, would fill a volume, and did; for I was compelled to keep an alb.u.m in the hall for the visitors' names. One suggested that my desecration of the temple of genius would be less disgusting if I dined in my kitchen, and left the ancient dining-room as the great artist had left it. Another hinted that my presence in my own house destroyed all the illusion of its historic a.s.sociations. A third, a young lady--to judge by the writing--proposed my wearing a point-beard and lace ruffles, with trunk hose and a feather in my hat, probably to favour the "illusion" so urgently mentioned by the other writer, and, perhaps, to indulge visitors like my friend the cheesemonger. Many pitied me--well might they!--as one insensible to the a.s.sociations of the spot; while my very servants, regarding me only as a show part of the establishment, neglected their duties on every side, and betook themselves to cicerones.h.i.+p, each allocating his peculiar territory to himself, like the people who show the lions and the armour in the Tower.

'No weather was either too hot or too cold, too sultry or too boisterous; no hour too late or too early; no day was sacred. If the family were at prayers or at dinner or at breakfast or in bed, it mattered not; they had come many miles to see the chateau, and see it they would. "Alas!" thought I, "if, as some learned persons suppose, individuals be recognisable in the next world, what a melancholy time of it will be yours, poor Van Dyck! If they make all this hubbub about the house you lived in, what will they do about your fleshy tabernacle?"

'As the season advanced, the crowds increased; and as autumn began, the conflicting currents to and from the Rhine all met in my bedroom. There took place all the rendezvous of Europe. Runaway daughters there first repented in papa's arms, and profligate sons promised amendment for the future. Myself and my wife were pa.s.sed by unnoticed and disregarded amid this tumult of recognition and salutation. We were emaciated like skeletons; our meals we ate when we could, like soldiers on a retreat; and we slept in our clothes, not knowing at what moment the enemy might be upon us. Locks, bolts, and bars were ineffectual; our resistance only increased curiosity, and our garrison was ever open to bribery.

'It was to no purpose that I broke the windows to let in the north wind and acute rheumatism; to little good did I try an alarm of fire every day about two, when the house was fullest; and I failed signally in terrifying my torturers when I painted the gardener's wife sky-blue, and had her placed in the hall, with a large label over the bed, "collapsed cholera." Bless your heart! the tourist cares for none of these; and I often think it would have saved English powder and shot to have exported half a dozen of them to the East for the siege of Seringapatam. Had they been only told of an old picture, a teapot, a hearth-brush, or a candlestick that once belonged to G.o.dfrey de Bouillon or Peter the Hermit, they would have stormed it under all the fire of Egypt! Well, it's all over at last; human patience could endure no longer. We escaped by night, got away by stealth to Ghent, took post-horses in a feigned name, and fled from the Chateau de Van Dyck as from the plague.

Determined no longer to trust to chances, I have built a cottage myself, which has no historic a.s.sociations further back than six weeks ago; and fearful even of being known as the _ci-devant_ possessor of the chateau, I never confess to have been in Ghent in my life; and if Van Dyck be mentioned, I ask if he is not the postmaster at Tervueren.

'Here, then, I conclude my miseries. I cannot tell what may be the pleasure that awaits the _live_ "lion," but I envy no man the delights that fall to his lot who inhabits the den of the _dead_ one.'

CHAPTER XX. BONN AND STUDENT LIFE