LITMIR.BIZ

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hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a soldier, and is quick at repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He may have been superb on a battle-field; in a household he is simply intolerable. He knows no love but barrack love—the love which those clever myth-makers, the ancients, placed under the patronage of Eros, son of Mars and Venus. Those delightful chroniclers of the old religions provided themselves with a dozen different Loves. Study the fathers and the attributes of these Loves, and you will discover a complete social nomenclature—and yet we fancy that we originate things! When the world turns upside down like an hour-glass, when the seas become continents, Frenchmen will find canons, steamboats, newspapers, and maps wrapped up in seaweed at the bottom of what is now our ocean.

      [*] I do not, on principle, like foot-notes, and this is the

       first I have ever allowed myself. Its historical interest

       must be my excuse; it will prove, moreover, that

       descriptions of battles should be something more than the

       dry particulars of technical writers, who for the last three

       thousand years have told us about left and right wings and

       centres being broken or driven in, but never a word about

       the soldier himself, his sufferings, and his heroism. The

       conscientious care with which I prepared myself to write the

       “Scenes from Military Life,” led me to many a battle-field

       once wet with the blood of France and her enemies. Among

       them I went to Wagram. When I reached the shores of the

       Danube, opposite Lobau, I noticed on the bank, which is

       covered with turf, certain undulations that reminded me of

       the furrows in a field of lucern. I asked the reason of it,

       thinking I should hear of some new method of agriculture:

       “There sleep the cavalry of the imperial guard,” said the

       peasant who served us as a guide; “those are their graves

       you see there.” The words made me shudder. Prince Frederic

       Schwartzenburg, who translated them, added that the man had

       himself driven one of the wagons laden with cuirasses. By

       one of the strange chances of war our guide had served a

       breakfast to Napoleon on the morning of the battle of

       Wagram. Though poor, he had kept the double napoleon which

       the Emperor gave him for his milk and his eggs. The curate

       of Gross-Aspern took us to the famous cemetery where French

       and Austrians struggled together knee-deep in blood, with a

       courage and obstinacy glorious to each. There, while

       explaining that a marble tablet (to which our attention had

       been attracted, and on which were inscribed the names of the

       owner of Gross-Aspern, who had been killed on the third day)

       was the sole compensation ever given to the family, he said,

       in a tone of deep sadness: “It was a time of great misery,

       and of great hopes; but now are the days of forgetfulness.”

       The saying seemed to me sublime in its simplicity; but when

       I came to reflect upon the matter, I felt there was some

       justification for the apparent ingratitude of the House of

       Austria. Neither nations nor kings are wealthy enough to

       reward all the devotions to which these tragic struggles

       give rise. Let those who serve a cause with a secret

       expectation of recompense, set a price upon their blood and

       become mercenaries. Those who wield either sword or pen for

       their country’s good ought to think of nothing but of doing their best, as our fathers used to say, and expect nothing, not even glory, except as a happy accident. It was in rushing to retake this famous cemetery for the third time that Massena, wounded and carried in the box of a cabriolet, made this splendid harangue to his soldiers: “What! you rascally curs, who have only five sous a day while I have forty thousand, do you let me go ahead of you?” All the world knows the order which the Emperor sent to his lieutenant by M. de Sainte-Croix, who swam the Danube three times: “Die or retake the village; it is a question of saving the army; the bridges are destroyed.” The Author.

      Now, I must tell you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile, timid, delicate little woman. What do you think of such a marriage as that? To those who know society such things are common enough; a well-assorted marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come to see how it is that this slender little creature handles her bobbins in a way to lead this heavy, solid, stolid general precisely as he himself used to lead his cuirassiers.

      If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her, like a bear drunk on grapes, and says, when anything is proposed, “If Madame approves.” When he comes to his wife’s room, with that heavy step which makes the tiles creak as though they were boards, and she, not wanting him, calls out: “Don’t come in!” he performs a military volte-face and says humbly: “You will let me know when I can see you?”—in the very tones with which he shouted to his cuirassiers on the banks of the Danube: “Men, we must die, and die well, since there’s nothing else we can do!” I have heard him say, speaking of his wife, “Not only do I love her, but I venerate her.” When he flies into a passion which defies all restraint and bursts all bonds, the little woman retires into her own room and leaves him to shout. But four or five hours later she will say: “Don’t get into a passion, my dear, you might break a blood-vessel; and besides, you hurt me.” Then the lion of Essling retreats out of sight to wipe his eyes. Sometimes he comes into the salon when she and I are talking, and if she says: “Don’t disturb us, he is reading to me,” he leaves us without a word.

      It is only strong men, choleric and powerful, thunder-bolts of war, diplomats with olympian heads, or men of genius, who can show this utter confidence, this generous devotion to weakness, this constant protection, this love without jealousy, this easy good humor with a woman. Good heavens! I place the science of the countess’s management of her husband as far above the peevish, arid virtues as the satin of a causeuse is superior to the Utrecht velvet of a dirty bourgeois sofa.

      My dear fellow, I have spent six days in this delightful country-house, and I never tire of admiring the beauties of the park, surrounded by forests where pretty wood-paths lead beside the brooks. Nature and its silence, these tranquil pleasures, this placid life to which she woos me—all attract. Ah! here is true literature; no fault of style among the meadows. Happiness forgets all things here—even the Debats! It has rained all the morning; while the countess slept and Montcornet tramped over his domain, I have compelled myself to keep my rash, imprudent promise to write to you.

      Until now, though I was born at Alencon, of an old judge and a prefect, so they say, and though I know something of agriculture, I supposed the tale of estates bringing in four or five thousand francs a month to be a fable. Money, to me, meant a couple of dreadful things—work and a publisher, journalism and politics. When shall we poor fellows come upon a land where gold springs up with the grass? That is what I desire for you and for me and the rest of us in the name of the theatre, and of the press, and of book-making! Amen!

      Will Florine be jealous of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre? Our modern Bourets have no French nobles now to show them how to live; they hire one opera-box among three of them; they subscribe for their pleasures; they no longer cut down magnificently bound quartos to match the octavos in their library; in fact, they scarcely

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