Оноре де Бальзак
A Start in Life
“And you are called Pere Leger?” asked Georges, very seriously, as the farmer attempted to put a foot on the step.
“At your service,” replied the farmer, looking in and showing a face like that of Louis XVIII., with fat, rubicund cheeks, from between which issued a nose that in any other face would have seemed enormous. His smiling eyes were sunken in rolls of fat. “Come, a helping hand, my lad!” he said to Pierrotin.
The farmer was hoisted in by the united efforts of Pierrotin and the porter, to cries of “Houp la! hi! ha! hoist!” uttered by Georges.
“Oh! I’m not going far; only to La Cave,” said the farmer, good-humoredly.
In France everybody takes a joke.
“Take the back seat,” said Pierrotin, “there’ll be six of you.”
“Where’s your other horse?” demanded Georges. “Is it as mythical as the third post-horse.”
“There she is,” said Pierrotin, pointing to the little mare, who was coming along alone.
“He calls that insect a horse!” exclaimed Georges.
“Oh! she’s good, that little mare,” said the farmer, who by this time was seated. “Your servant, gentlemen. Well, Pierrotin, how soon do you start?”
“I have two travellers in there after a cup of coffee,” replied Pierrotin.
The hollow-cheeked young man and his page reappeared.
“Come, let’s start!” was the general cry.
“We are going to start,” replied Pierrotin. “Now, then, make ready,” he said to the porter, who began thereupon to take away the stones which stopped the wheels.
Pierrotin took Rougeot by the bridle and gave that guttural cry, “Ket, ket!” to tell the two animals to collect their energy; on which, though evidently stiff, they pulled the coach to the door of the Lion d’Argent. After which manoeuvre, which was purely preparatory, Pierrotin gazed up the rue d’Enghien and then disappeared, leaving the coach in charge of the porter.
“Ah ca! is he subject to such attacks, – that master of yours?” said Mistigris, addressing the porter.
“He has gone to fetch his feed from the stable,” replied the porter, well versed in all the usual tricks to keep passengers quiet.
“Well, after all,” said Mistigris, “‘art is long, but life is short’ – to Bichette.”
At this particular epoch, a fancy for mutilating or transposing proverbs reigned in the studios. It was thought a triumph to find changes of letters, and sometimes of words, which still kept the semblance of the proverb while giving it a fantastic or ridiculous meaning.[*]
[*] It is plainly impossible to translate many of these proverbs
and put any fun or meaning into them. – Tr.
“Patience, Mistigris!” said his master; “‘come wheel, come whoa.’”
Pierrotin here returned, bringing with him the Comte de Serizy, who had come through the rue de l’Echiquier, and with whom he had doubtless had a short conversation.
“Pere Leger,” said Pierrotin, looking into the coach, “will you give your place to Monsieur le comte? That will balance the carriage better.”
“We sha’n’t be off for an hour if you go on this way,” cried Georges. “We shall have to take down this infernal bar, which cost such trouble to put up. Why should everybody be made to move for the man who comes last? We all have a right to the places we took. What place has monsieur engaged? Come, find that out! Haven’t you a way-book, a register, or something? What place has Monsieur Lecomte engaged? – count of what, I’d like to know.”
“Monsieur le comte,” said Pierrotin, visibly troubled, “I am afraid you will be uncomfortable.”
“Why didn’t you keep better count of us?” said Mistigris. “‘Short counts make good ends.’”
“Mistigris, behave yourself,” said his master.
Monsieur de Serizy was evidently taken by all the persons in the coach for a bourgeois of the name of Lecomte.
“Don’t disturb any one,” he said to Pierrotin. “I will sit with you in front.”
“Come, Mistigris,” said the master to his rapin, “remember the respect you owe to age; you don’t know how shockingly old you may be yourself some day. ‘Travel deforms youth.’ Give your place to monsieur.”
Mistigris opened the leathern curtain and jumped out with the agility of a frog leaping into the water.
“You mustn’t be a rabbit, august old man,” he said to the count.
“Mistigris, ‘ars est celare bonum,’” said his master.
“I thank you very much, monsieur,” said the count to Mistigris’s master, next to whom he now sat.
The minister of State cast a sagacious glance round the interior of the coach, which greatly affronted both Oscar and Georges.
“When persons want to be master of a coach, they should engage all the places,” remarked Georges.
Certain now of his incognito, the Comte de Serizy made no reply to this observation, but assumed the air of a good-natured bourgeois.
“Suppose you were late, wouldn’t you be glad that the coach waited for you?” said the farmer to the two young men.
Pierrotin still looked up and down the street, whip in hand, apparently reluctant to mount to the hard seat where Mistigris was fidgeting.
“If you expect some one else, I am not the last,” said the count.
“I agree to that reasoning,” said Mistigris.
Georges and Oscar began to laugh impertinently.
“The old fellow doesn’t know much,” whispered Georges to Oscar, who was delighted at this apparent union between himself and the object of his envy.
“Parbleu!” cried Pierrotin, “I shouldn’t be sorry for two more passengers.”
“I haven’t paid; I’ll get out,” said Georges, alarmed.
“What are you waiting for, Pierrotin?” asked Pere Leger.
Whereupon Pierrotin shouted a certain “Hi!” in which Bichette and Rougeot recognized a definitive resolution, and they both sprang toward the rise of the faubourg at a pace which was soon to slacken.
The count had a red face, of a burning red all over, on which were certain inflamed portions which his snow-white hair brought out into full relief. To any but heedless youths, this complexion would have revealed a constant inflammation of the blood, produced by incessant labor. These blotches and pimples so injured the naturally noble air of the count that careful examination was needed to find in his green-gray eyes the shrewdness of the magistrate, the wisdom of a statesman, and the knowledge of a legislator. His face was flat, and the nose seemed to have been depressed into it. The hat hid the grace and beauty of his forehead. In short, there was enough to amuse those thoughtless youths in the odd contrasts of the silvery hair, the burning face, and the thick, tufted eye-brows which were still jet-black.
The count wore a long blue overcoat, buttoned in military fashion to the throat, a white cravat around his neck, cotton wool in his ears, and a shirt-collar high enough to make a large square patch of white on each cheek. His black trousers covered his boots, the toes of which were barely seen. He wore no decoration in his button-hole, and doeskin gloves concealed his hands. Nothing about him betrayed to the eyes of youth a peer of France, and one of the most useful statesmen in the kingdom.
Pere Leger had never seen the count, who, on his side, knew the former only by name. When the count, as he got into the carriage, cast the glance about him which affronted Georges and Oscar, he was, in reality, looking for the head-clerk of his notary (in case he had been forced, like himself, to take Pierrotin’s vehicle), intending to caution him instantly about his own incognito. But feeling reassured by the appearance of Oscar, and that of Pere Leger, and, above all, by the quasi-military air, the waxed moustaches, and the general look of an adventurer that distinguished Georges, he concluded that his note had reached his notary, Alexandre Crottat, in time to prevent the departure of the clerk.
“Pere Leger,” said Pierrotin, when they reached the steep hill of the faubourg Saint-Denis by the rue de la Fidelite, “suppose we get out, hey?”
“I’ll get out, too,” said the count, hearing Leger’s name.
“Goodness! if this is how we are going, we shall do fourteen miles in fifteen days!” cried Georges.
“It isn’t my fault,” said Pierrotin, “if a passenger wishes to get out.”
“Ten louis for you if you keep the secret of my being here as I told you before,” said the count in a low voice, taking Pierrotin by the arm.
“Oh, my thousand francs!” thought Pierrotin as he winked an eye at Monsieur de Serizy, which meant, “Rely on me.”
Oscar and Georges stayed in the coach.
“Look here, Pierrotin, since Pierrotin you are,” cried Georges, when the passengers were once more stowed away in the vehicle, “if you don’t mean to go faster than this, say so! I’ll pay my fare and take a post-horse at Saint-Denis, for I have important business on hand which can’t be delayed.”
“Oh! he’ll go well enough,” said Pere Leger. “Besides, the distance isn’t great.”
“I am never more than half an hour late,” asserted Pierrotin.
“Well, you are not wheeling the Pope in this old barrow of yours,” said Georges, “so, get on.”
“Perhaps he’s afraid of shaking monsieur,” said Mistigris looking round at the count. “But you shouldn’t have preferences, Pierrotin, it isn’t right.”
“Coucous and the Charter make all Frenchmen equals,” said Georges.
“Oh! be easy,” said Pere Leger; “we are sure to get to La Chapelle by mid-day,” – La Chapelle being the village next beyond the Barriere of Saint-Denis.
CHAPTER IV. THE GRANDSON OF THE FAMOUS CZERNI-GEORGES
Those who travel in public conveyances know that the persons thus united by chance do not immediately have anything to say to one another; unless under special circumstances, conversation rarely begins until they have gone some distance. This period of silence is employed as much in mutual examination as in settling into their places. Minds need to get their equilibrium as much as bodies. When each person thinks he has discovered the age, profession, and character of his companions, the most talkative member of the company begins, and the conversation gets under way with all the more vivacity because those present feel a need of enlivening the journey and forgetting its tedium.
That is how things happen in French stage-coaches. In other countries customs are very different. Englishmen pique themselves on never opening their lips; Germans are melancholy in a vehicle; Italians too wary to talk; Spaniards have no public conveyances; and Russians no roads. There is no amusement except in the lumbering diligences of France, that gabbling and indiscreet country, where every one is in a hurry to laugh and show his wit, and where jest and epigram enliven all things, even the poverty of the lower classes and the weightier cares of the solid bourgeois. In a coach there is no police to check tongues, and legislative assemblies have set the fashion of public discussion. When a young man of twenty-two, like the one named Georges, is clever and lively, he is much tempted, especially under circumstances like the present, to abuse those qualities.
In the first place, Georges had soon decided that he was the superior human being of the party there assembled. He saw in the count a manufacturer of the second-class, whom he took, for some unknown reason, to be a chandler; in the shabby young man accompanied by Mistigris, a fellow of no account; in Oscar a ninny, and in Pere Leger, the fat farmer, an excellent subject to hoax. Having thus looked over the ground, he resolved to amuse himself at the expense of such companions.
“Let me see,” he thought to himself, as the coucou went down the hill from La Chapelle to the plain of Saint-Denis, “shall I pass myself off for Etienne or Beranger? No, these idiots don’t know who they are. Carbonaro? the deuce! I might get myself arrested. Suppose I say I’m the son of Marshal Ney? Pooh! what could I tell them? – about the execution of my father? It wouldn’t be funny. Better be a disguised Russian prince and make them swallow a lot of stuff about the Emperor Alexander. Or I might be Cousin, and talk philosophy; oh, couldn’t I perplex ‘em! But no, that shabby fellow with the tousled head looks to me as if he had jogged his way through the Sorbonne. What a pity! I can mimic an Englishman so perfectly I might have pretended to be Lord Byron, travelling incognito. Sapristi! I’ll command the troops of Ali, pacha of Janina!”
During this mental monologue, the coucou rolled through clouds of dust rising on either side of it from that much travelled road.
“What dust!” cried Mistigris.
“Henry IV. is dead!” retorted his master. “If you’d say it was scented with vanilla that would be emitting a new opinion.”
“You think you’re witty,” replied Mistigris. “Well, it is like vanilla at times.”
“In the Levant – ” said Georges, with the air of beginning a story.
“‘Ex Oriente flux,’” remarked Mistigris’s master, interrupting the speaker.
“I said in the Levant, from which I have just returned,” continued Georges, “the dust smells very good; but here it smells of nothing, except in some old dust-barrel like this.”
“Has monsieur lately returned from the Levant?” said Mistigris, maliciously. “He isn’t much tanned by the sun.”
“Oh! I’ve just left my bed after an illness of three months, from the germ, so the doctors said, of suppressed plague.”
“Have you had the plague?” cried the count, with a gesture of alarm. “Pierrotin, stop!”
“Go on, Pierrotin,” said Mistigris. “Didn’t you hear him say it was inward, his plague?” added the rapin, talking back to Monsieur de Serizy. “It isn’t catching; it only comes out in conversation.”
“Mistigris! if you interfere again I’ll have you put off into the road,” said his master. “And so,” he added, turning to Georges, “monsieur has been to the East?”
“Yes, monsieur; first to Egypt, then to Greece, where I served under Ali, pacha of Janina, with whom I had a terrible quarrel. There’s no enduring those climates long; besides, the emotions of all kinds in Oriental life have disorganized my liver.”
“What, have you served as a soldier?” asked the fat farmer. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine,” replied Georges, whereupon all the passengers looked at him. “At eighteen I enlisted as a private for the famous campaign of 1813; but I was present at only one battle, that of Hanau, where I was promoted sergeant-major. In France, at Montereau, I won the rank of sub-lieutenant, and was decorated by, – there are no informers here, I’m sure, – by the Emperor.”
“What! are you decorated?” cried Oscar. “Why don’t you wear your cross?”
“The cross of ‘ceux-ci’? No, thank you! Besides, what man of any breeding would wear his decorations in travelling? There’s monsieur,” he said, motioning to the Comte de Serizy. “I’ll bet whatever you like – ”
“Betting whatever you like means, in France, betting nothing at all,” said Mistigris’s master.
“I’ll bet whatever you like,” repeated Georges, incisively, “that monsieur here is covered with stars.”
“Well,” said the count, laughing, “I have the grand cross of the Legion of honor, that of Saint Andrew of Russia, that of the Prussian Eagle, that of the Annunciation of Sardinia, and the Golden Fleece.”
“Beg pardon,” said Mistigris, “are they all in the coucou?”
“Hey! that brick-colored old fellow goes it strong!” whispered Georges to Oscar. “What was I saying? – oh! I know. I don’t deny that I adore the Emperor – ”
“I served under him,” said the count.
“What a man he was, wasn’t he?” cried Georges.
“A man to whom I owe many obligations,” replied the count, with a silly expression that was admirably assumed.
“For all those crosses?” inquired Mistigris.
“And what quantities of snuff he took!” continued Monsieur de Serizy.
“He carried it loose in his pockets,” said Georges.
“So I’ve been told,” remarked Pere Leger with an incredulous look.
“Worse than that; he chewed and smoked,” continued Georges. “I saw him smoking, in a queer way, too, at Waterloo, when Marshal Soult took him round the waist and flung him into his carriage, just as he had seized a musket and was going to charge the English – ”
“You were at Waterloo!” cried Oscar, his eyes stretching wide open.
“Yes, young man, I did the campaign of 1815. I was a captain at Mont-Saint-Jean, and I retired to the Loire, after we were all disbanded. Faith! I was disgusted with France; I couldn’t stand it. In fact, I should certainly have got myself arrested; so off I went, with two or three dashing fellows, – Selves, Besson, and others, who are now in Egypt, – and we entered the service of pacha Mohammed; a queer sort of fellow he was, too! Once a tobacco merchant in the bazaars, he is now on the high-road to be a sovereign prince. You’ve all seen him in that picture by Horace Vernet, – ‘The Massacre of the Mameluks.’ What a handsome fellow he was! But I wouldn’t give up the religion of my fathers and embrace Islamism; all the more because the abjuration required a surgical operation which I hadn’t any fancy for. Besides, nobody respects a renegade. Now if they had offered me a hundred thousand francs a year, perhaps – and yet, no! The pacha did give me a thousand talari as a present.”
“How much is that?” asked Oscar, who was listening to Georges with all his ears.
“Oh! not much. A talaro is, as you might say, a five-franc piece. But faith! I got no compensation for the vices I contracted in that God-forsaken country, if country it is. I can’t live now without smoking a narghile twice a-day, and that’s very costly.”
“How did you find Egypt?” asked the count.
“Egypt? Oh! Egypt is all sand,” replied Georges, by no means taken aback. “There’s nothing green but the valley of the Nile. Draw a green line down a sheet of yellow paper, and you have Egypt. But those Egyptians – fellahs they are called – have an immense advantage over us. There are no gendarmes in that country. You may go from end to end of Egypt, and you won’t see one.”
“But I suppose there are a good many Egyptians,” said Mistigris.
“Not as many as you think for,” replied Georges. “There are many more Abyssinians, and Giaours, and Vechabites, Bedouins, and Cophs. But all that kind of animal is very uninteresting, and I was glad enough to embark on a Genoese polacca which was loading for the Ionian Islands with gunpowder and munitions for Ali de Tebelen. You know, don’t you, that the British sell powder and munitions of war to all the world, – Turks, Greeks, and the devil, too, if the devil has money? From Zante we were to skirt the coasts of Greece and tack about, on and off. Now it happens that my name of Georges is famous in that country. I am, such as you see me, the grandson of the famous Czerni-Georges who made war upon the Porte, and, instead of crushing it, as he meant to do, got crushed himself. His son took refuge in the house of the French consul at Smyrna, and he afterwards died in Paris, leaving my mother pregnant with me, his seventh child. Our property was all stolen by friends of my grandfather; in fact, we were ruined. My mother, who lived on her diamonds, which she sold one by one, married, in 1799, my step-father, Monsieur Yung, a purveyor. But my mother is dead, and I have quarrelled with my step-father, who, between ourselves, is a blackguard; he is still alive, but I never see him. That’s why, in despair, left all to myself, I went off to the wars as a private in 1813. Well, to go back to the time I returned to Greece; you wouldn’t believe with what joy old Ali Tebelen received the grandson of Czerni-Georges. Here, of course, I call myself simply Georges. The pacha gave me a harem – ”
“You have had a harem?” said Oscar.
“Were you a pacha with many tails?” asked Mistigris.
“How is it that you don’t know,” replied Georges, “that only the Sultan makes pachas, and that my friend Tebelen (for we were as friendly as Bourbons) was in rebellion against the Padishah! You know, or you don’t know, that the true title of the Grand Seignior is Padishah, and not Sultan or Grand Turk. You needn’t think that a harem is much of a thing; you might as well have a herd of goats. The women are horribly stupid down there; I much prefer the grisettes of the Chaumieres at Mont-Parnasse.”
“They are nearer, at any rate,” said the count.
“The women of the harem couldn’t speak a word of French, and that language is indispensable for talking. Ali gave me five legitimate wives and ten slaves; that’s equivalent to having none at all at Janina. In the East, you must know, it is thought very bad style to have wives and women. They have them, just as we have Voltaire and Rousseau; but who ever opens his Voltaire or his Rousseau? Nobody. But, for all that, the highest style is to be jealous. They sew a woman up in a sack and fling her into the water on the slightest suspicion, – that’s according to their Code.”
“Did you fling any in?” asked the farmer.
“I, a Frenchman! for shame! I loved them.”
Whereupon Georges twirled and twisted his moustache with a dreamy air.
They were now entering Saint-Denis, and Pierrotin presently drew up before the door of a tavern where were sold the famous cheese-cakes of that place. All the travellers got out. Puzzled by the apparent truth mingled with Georges’ inventions, the count returned to the coucou when the others had entered the house, and looked beneath the cushion for the portfolio which Pierrotin told him that enigmatical youth had placed there. On it he read the words in gilt letters: “Maitre Crottat, notary.” The count at once opened it, and fearing, with some reason, that Pere Leger might be seized with the same curiosity, he took out the deed of sale for the farm at Moulineaux, put it into his coat pocket, and entered the inn to keep an eye on the travellers.
“This Georges is neither more nor less than Crottat’s second clerk,” thought he. “I shall pay my compliments to his master, whose business it was to send me his head-clerk.”
From the respectful glances of Pere Leger and Oscar, Georges perceived that he had made for himself two fervent admirers. Accordingly, he now posed as a great personage; paid for their cheese-cakes, and ordered for each a glass of Alicante. He offered the same to Mistigris and his master, who refused with smiles; but the friend of Ali Tebelen profited by the occasion to ask the pair their names.
“Oh! monsieur,” said Mistigris’ master, “I am not blessed, like you, with an illustrious name; and I have not returned from Asia – ”
At this moment the count, hastening into the huge inn-kitchen lest his absence should excite inquiry, entered the place in time to hear the conclusion of the young man’s speech.
“ – I am only a poor painter lately returned from Rome, where I went at the cost of the government, after winning the ‘grand prix’ five years ago. My name is Schinner.”
“Hey! bourgeois, may I offer you a glass of Alicante and some cheese-cakes?” said Georges to the count.
“Thank you,” replied the latter. “I never leave home without taking my cup of coffee and cream.”
“Don’t you eat anything between meals? How bourgeois, Marais, Place Royale, that is!” cried Georges. “When he ‘blagued’ just now about his crosses, I thought there was something in him,” whispered the Eastern hero to the painter. “However, we’ll set him going on his decorations, the old tallow-chandler! Come, my lad,” he added, calling to Oscar, “drink me down the glass poured out for the chandler; that will start your moustache.”
Oscar, anxious to play the man, swallowed the second glass of wine, and ate three more cheese-cakes.
“Good wine, that!” said Pere Leger, smacking his lips.
“It is all the better,” said Georges, “because it comes from Bercy. I’ve been to Alicante myself, and I know that this wine no more resembles what is made there than my arm is like a windmill. Our made-up wines are a great deal better than the natural ones in their own country. Come, Pierrotin, take a glass! It is a great pity your horses can’t take one, too; we might go faster.”
“Forward, march!” cried Pierrotin, amid a mighty cracking of whips, after the travellers were again boxed up.
It was now eleven o’clock. The weather, which had been cloudy, cleared; the breeze swept off the mists, and the blue of the sky appeared in spots; so that when the coucou trundled along the narrow strip of road from Saint-Denis to Pierrefitte, the sun had fairly drunk up the last floating vapors of the diaphanous veil which swathed the scenery of that famous region.
“Well, now, tell us why you left your friend the pacha,” said Pere Leger, addressing Georges.
“He was a very singular scamp,” replied Georges, with an air that hid a multitude of mysteries. “He put me in command of his cavalry, – so far, so good – ”
“Ah! that’s why he wears spurs,” thought poor Oscar.
“At that time Ali Tebelen wanted to rid himself of Chosrew pacha, another queer chap! You call him, here, Chaureff; but the name is pronounced, in Turkish, Cosserew. You must have read in the newspapers how old Ali drubbed Chosrew, and soundly, too, faith! Well, if it hadn’t been for me, Ali Tebelen himself would have bit the dust two days earlier. I was at the right wing, and I saw Chosrew, an old sly-boots, thinking to force our centre, – ranks closed, stiff, swift, fine movement a la Murat. Good! I take my time; then I charge, double-quick, and cut his line in two, – you understand? Ha! ha! after the affair was over, Ali kissed me – ”
“Do they do that in the East?” asked the count, in a joking way.
“Yes, monsieur,” said the painter, “that’s done all the world over.”
“After that,” continued Georges, “Ali gave me yataghans, and carbines, and scimetars, and what-not. But when we got back to his capital he made me propositions, wanted me to drown a wife, and make a slave of myself, – Orientals are so queer! But I thought I’d had enough of it; for, after all, you know, Ali was a rebel against the Porte. So I concluded I had better get off while I could. But I’ll do Monsieur Tebelen the justice to say that he loaded me with presents, – diamonds, ten thousand talari, one thousand gold coins, a beautiful Greek girl for groom, a little Circassian for a mistress, and an Arab horse! Yes, Ali Tebelen, pacha of Janina, is too little known; he needs an historian. It is only in the East one meets with such iron souls, who can nurse a vengeance twenty years and accomplish it some fine morning. He had the most magnificent white beard that was ever seen, and a hard, stern face – ”
“But what did you do with your treasures?” asked farmer Leger.
“Ha! that’s it! you may well ask that! Those fellows down there haven’t any Grand Livre nor any Bank of France. So I was forced to carry off my windfalls in a felucca, which was captured by the Turkish High-Admiral himself. Such as you see me here to-day, I came very near being impaled at Smyrna. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for Monsieur de Riviere, our ambassador, who was there, they’d have taken me for an accomplice of Ali pacha. I saved my head, but, to tell the honest truth, all the rest, the ten thousand talari, the thousand gold pieces, and the fine weapons, were all, yes all, drunk up by the thirsty treasury of the Turkish admiral. My position was the more perilous because that very admiral happened to be Chosrew pacha. After I routed him, the fellow had managed to obtain a position which is equal to that of our Admiral of the Fleet – ”
“But I thought he was in the cavalry?” said Pere Leger, who had followed the narrative with the deepest attention.
“Dear me! how little the East is understood in the French provinces!” cried Georges. “Monsieur, I’ll explain the Turks to you. You are a farmer; the Padishah (that’s the Sultan) makes you a marshal; if you don’t fulfil your functions to his satisfaction, so much the worse for you, he cuts your head off; that’s his way of dismissing his functionaries. A gardener is made a prefect; and the prime minister comes down to be a foot-boy. The Ottomans have no system of promotion and no hierarchy. From a cavalry officer Chosrew simply became a naval officer. Sultan Mahmoud ordered him to capture Ali by sea; and he did get hold of him, assisted by those beggarly English – who put their paw on most of the treasure. This Chosrew, who had not forgotten the riding-lesson I gave him, recognized me. You understand, my goose was cooked, oh, brown! when it suddenly came into my head to claim protection as a Frenchman and a troubadour from Monsieur de Riviere. The ambassador, enchanted to find something to show him off, demanded that I should be set at liberty. The Turks have one good trait in their nature; they are as willing to let you go as they are to cut your head off; they are indifferent to everything. The French consul, charming fellow, friend of Chosrew, made him give back two thousand of the talari, and, consequently, his name is, as I may say, graven on my heart – ”
“What was his name?” asked Monsieur de Serizy; and a look of some surprise passed over his face as Georges named, correctly, one of our most distinguished consul-generals who happened at that time to be stationed at Smyrna.
“I assisted,” added Georges, “at the execution of the Governor of Smyrna, whom the Sultan had ordered Chosrew to put to death. It was one of the most curious things I ever saw, though I’ve seen many, – I’ll tell you about it when we stop for breakfast. From Smyrna I crossed to Spain, hearing there was a revolution there. I went straight to Mina, who appointed me as his aide-de-camp with the rank of colonel. I fought for the constitutional cause, which will certainly be defeated when we enter Spain – as we undoubtedly shall, some of these days – ”
“You, a French soldier!” said the count, sternly. “You show extraordinary confidence in the discretion of those who are listening to you.”
“But there are no spies here,” said Georges.
“Are you aware, Colonel Georges,” continued the count, “that the Court of Peers is at this very time inquiring into a conspiracy which has made the government extremely severe in its treatment of French soldiers who bear arms against France, and who deal in foreign intrigues for the purpose of overthrowing our legitimate sovereigns.”
On hearing this stern admonition the painter turned red to his ears and looked at Mistigris, who seemed dumfounded.
“Well,” said Pere Leger, “what next?”
“If,” continued the count, “I were a magistrate, it would be my duty to order the gendarmes at Pierrefitte to arrest the aide-de-camp of Mina, and to summon all present in this vehicle to testify to his words.”