LOOKING on a certain afternoon (it was that of the 27th of November) from his high perch, Ned saw the people of the streets to be in a more than usual state of excitement and commotion. Once or twice latterly it had occurred to him that the ferment of national affairs was not subsiding, as he had expected it to do, under the tonic treatment of the national comptrollers—that the people were bent on levying on their taxmasters a tax more stringent than any they had themselves groaned under. Sometimes turning, as he rarely did, into the Palais Royal, and marking how, in that garden of public sedition, the very veil had been torn from innuendo; how furious agitators, each with his knot of eager listeners, found applause proportionate to the daring of their vituperation; how struggling hordes fought from door to counter of Desein’s book-shop, that they might feed their revolutionary hunger with any cag-mag of radicalism, provided it were dressed to look raw and bloody—he would fall curiously grave over a thought of the impotence of any known principle to precipitate passions held in such intricate solution, curiously speculative as to the drifting of a rudderless bark of state. For himself, he was conscious of having been shouldered from all his little snug standpoints of legislative philosophy; of the treading-under of his protoplasmic theories by innumerable vigorous feet; of his inadmissible claim to be allotted a portfolio in any government whatsoever of man by man. He was become, indeed, quite humble, and yet larger-souled than before, by reason of his content to act the part of insignificant unit in a drama, the goodly developments of which he was nevertheless still confident enough to foretell. And surely at this point he would have cried—and that, despite the augurs—as Mirabeau cried ecstatically at a later date: “How honourable will it be for France that this great Revolution has cost humanity neither offences nor crimes.... To see it brought about by the mere union of enlightened minds with patriotic intentions: our battles mere discussions; our enemies only prejudices that may well be forgiven; our victories, our triumphs, so far from being cruel, blessed by the very conquered themselves.”
“And, indeed,” thought Ned, “what reforms were ever compelled without pressure, and what pressure, that was considerate of the pressed, was ever effective?”
Now he ran downstairs in haste to inquire of Madame Gamelle the reason of the popular excitement. He found the good woman herself fluttered by it to an uncommon degree. She put the pledge into a half-empty tub of potatoes (a something despised vegetable in the France of that date), that she might gesticulate the more comprehensively.
“It is news,” she cried; “a fine ‘facer’ to the notables. How they will squirm, the rascals! We are to have the double representation. It is decreed by Louis, the good king.”
“Rather by Sieyes and M. d’Entraigues, is it not?”
“Oh, çà! That is the way to talk. But you forget the Minister of Finance, who shall go into the calendar of saints, cheek by jowl with St Antoine himself.”
On the very noon following that of the declaration respecting the Tiers Etat, lo! there was new commotion in the streets, and holiday faces and footsteps hurrying westward. Again Ned descended and again inquired. Madame received him with a shrill cackle:—
“Oh yes! it is excitement and all excitement, as you say. But what infamy that I am chained to my kennel like a vicious dog.”
“What is to do then, madame?”
“But this, monsieur: a gas-balloon is to ascend from the garden of the Thuilleries at two o’clock.”
Ned sniggered.
“The hubbub is extreme beyond that of yesterday; and madame is cut from the enjoyment? Supposing, then, I were to take her place as fruitière?”
“That is impossible. What fly has stung you? But you can go yourself, and report to me of the proceedings.”
“Well,” said Ned, “I think I will, that I may learn to differentiate between the emotions of triumph and of pleasure.”
He saw over the trees, as he turned into the gardens, the soft blue dome of the great envelope stretching its creases to the sun—an opaline mound that glistered high and lonely as an untrodden hill summit. But about the show spot itself, when he reached it, he could have thought two-thirds of all Paris collected. In one vast circle—wheel-fely and hub—this enormous hoop of onlookers enclosed the centre of attraction. On its white face-surface upturned, as on the surface of a boiling geyser, bubbles of myriad talk seethed and broke, filling the air with reverberation. Winds of laughter ruffled it; a sun of merriment caught the facets of its countless eyes. It was a wheel of jovial Fortune—of a jewelled triumphal car that had yesterday been a war-chariot, scythed and menacing.
Compact of solid humanity throughout its circumference, its edge was nevertheless frayed, like the exterior of a clustered swarm of bees, into a flitting and buzzing superficies of place-seekers. These—scurrying, criss-crossing; sometimes settling upon and becoming part of the main body; sometimes affecting a cynical indifference to a show, from view of the inner processes of which their position debarred them; in their formless excitement, their hysteric and unmannered hunt for points of vantage, their magnifying of occasion into epoch, their utter lack of the sense of moral proportion, of the sense to distinguish appreciably between affairs of moment and affairs of the moment—exhibited, as the typical traveller exhibits, those national characteristics that seem as little accommodating to revolution in principle as to revolution in habit.
“Only here,” thought Ned, “they are not discreditable exceptions to the national rule, but fair samples of the whole.”
A couple, pausing within ear-shot of him, engaged his attention at the instant. One of these, a lord of clinquant, self-satisfied, arrogant-looking, and dressed, one might have fancied, to the top bent of bourgeoisie, saluted the other, as a skipjack humours in himself a holiday mood of affability, with an air of tolerant condescension.
“Eh, indeed, M. David!” said he. “You profit yourself of this occasion. But, if I were in your position, I should seize it to lie abed.”
The person addressed stood a half minute at acrid gaze—his shoulders humped, and his hands gripped on the ebony crutch of his cane—before he replied. He was a man of a somewhat formidable expression, with red-brown hair all writhed into little curls, as if a certain inner heat had warped it. His eyes were hard as flints; and the natural causticity and determination of his face took yet more sinister emphasis from a permanent distortion of the upper jaw, whereon an accidental blow had caused a swelling that impaired his right speech and made of his very smile a wickedness. His figure, square and firm, if inclined to embonpoint, set off to advantage his suit of dark blue cloth, very plain and neat, with silver buttons; his handkerchief and simple ruffles were spotless, and about the whole man was an appearance of cold self-containment that was full of the conscious pride of intellectual caste.
“My good Reveillon,” he said at length, “yesterday it was decreed that the deputies of the third state should equal in number those of the nobility and of the clergy put together. That was a momentous concession, was it not? Also, the eligibility for election, into the second order, of curés, and into the Tiers Etat of Protestants, was made known—truly all subjects for popular rejoicing. Doubtless, then, your employés, leaning out of the windows of the paper factory in the Rue St Antoine” (“They could not,” thought Ned. “I know the place. Every window is barred.”), “tossed their caps into the street, into the air—anywhere but into your face, crying Vive Necker and A bas les notables!”
“It is always for you to claim the privilege to speak, as you paint, enigmas,” said the other, with a certain excited insolence of tone. He was flushed with aggravation under the hard inquisition of the eyes that had so deliberately taken his measure.
“True enough, the rascals showed enthusiasm,” he cried. “And what then, M. David?”
“Why, you would drive them to work again, would you not, when the effervescence was subsided?”
“Assuredly. What is any effervescence but bubbles that break and vanish? Their business is not to discuss politics but to roll paper, as it is yours to cover the sheets with hieroglyphics (that, I confess, I do not understand) when prepared. Well, monsieur, you get your price and they theirs. Does yours satisfy you? But it might not if I charged the stuff you buy of me with the interest of time lost over irresponsible chatter on the part of my employés.”
“Surely, my friend, here is a little spark to produce an explosion.”
“Oh, monsieur! I can read between the lines, and I am not ignorant of what may be implied in a sneer. You are peintre du Roi, M. David; you have chambers at the Louvre, M. David. That is very well; and it is also very well to subordinate your convictions to your prosperity, so long as the sun of royalty shines on you.”
“Be very careful to pick your words, my pleasant Reveillon,” said the painter, already, in some emotion of self-suppression, articulating with difficulty.
“Why?” said the paper-maker, waning cool as the other gathered heat. “Is it not true, then, that you are a democrat?”
“What has that to do with the question?”
“It has everything, monsieur, if I am to understand your innuendoes. It signifies, of course, your dogmatic advocacy of the labour, as opposed to the capital side of industrial economy. It signifies that, in your opinion, it is tyranny to enforce discipline upon any body of men who congregate for other than belligerent purposes, and that any popular demonstration may serve Jack Smith as excuse for neglecting his work, but not Jack Smith’s master for docking the absentee’s wages.”
“They are always little enough,” said M. David, still very indistinct.
“And I throw the word in your teeth!” cried the paper-maker hotly in his turn.
The dispute aroused small interest amongst the near bystanders, whose attention was otherwise engaged. One or two, however, gave a pricked ear to it.
“I am a kind master,” continued the angry manufacturer. “I dare any one to refute it. How many hands do I employ, monsieur, do you think? Not a few, monsieur, not a few; and of them all, two-thirds are here this afternoon—here in these gardens, with permission, though I suffer by it, to attend the fête of the balloon.”
He spoke the last words uncommonly loudly. The painter burst into a louder laugh, that distorted his face horribly.
“My exquisite Reveillon,” he said, advancing and endeavouring to take the other’s arm, only to be peevishly repulsed. “My dear soul, you are admirable! I see crystallised in you every chief characteristic of the latter-day Parisian.”
“Very well,” said the Sieur Reveillon, sullen and glowering: “see what you like; I do not care.”
“To lay down one’s work a moment to applaud the emancipation of a people: to make a national fête of a balloon ascent!”
He tried to affect an air of humorous dilemma; but the part was beyond him.
“Oh!” he cried savagely, paraphrasing La Fontaine, and stamping his foot on the ground: “On fit parler les morts; personne ne s’émut!”
By a strong effort he controlled himself.
“Good M. Reveillon,” he said, “understand that my wits are my employés. If, following your edifying example, I give them an outing, I must accompany them like a schoolmaster. Thus your penetration may divine the reason why I do not lie abed on this rare occasion of a holiday, which, as your plutocratship suggests, should be an excuse for rest to all poor devils of workmen.”
A young mechanic, in his squalor and hungering leanness, simply typical of his class, hurried by at the moment, eagerly seeking a place to view. His roving eyes, catching those of the paper manufacturer, took a hostile, half-anxious expression as he went on his way with a louting salutation.
“One of the two-thirds?” asked David. “A testimony, indeed, to the fostering kindness of the Sieur Papetier.”
“Bah!” cried Reveillon. “It is the cant. The successful must always be held responsible for the ineptitude of the improvident. He that passed was a journeyman; and a journeyman may live very handsomely on fifteen sous a-day, if he is sober and prudent. I have been through it and I know. I have no false pride, monsieur le peintre du Roi. I was apprentice—journeyman myself—before I was master.”
As he spoke, a great seething roar issued from the crowd. Ned, who had been sketching desultorily as he listened, raised his face. A huge bulge of grey went up into the sky—a mystery of bellying silk and intricate ropes straining at a little cockle-shell of a car. To the explosion of guns, to the frantic waving of flags and handkerchiefs, to the jubilant vociferating of half a city, the quasi-scientific toy rose, and was reflected as it sprang aloft in the pupils of ten thousand eyes. The circle of the mob dilated as its components yielded a pace or so to secure the better view, and the act brought the two disputants into Ned’s close neighbourhood. M. Reveillon, for all his late colloquy, was now no less hysterical than the rest of the company.
“Voilà!” he shouted, clutching at the young fellow’s arm spasmodically: “is it not a sight the very acme of sublimity! Behold the unconquerable enterprise of man thus committed to victory or destruction. There is no middle course. He is to triumph or to die.”
His excited grasp tightened on the sleeve he held. His glance travelled swiftly to and from the sketch-book, on a page of which Ned was endeavouring to hastily record some impression of the buoyant monster above. The Englishman marvelled to see this sudden eruption from so flat and commonplace a surface.
“You can discipline yourself to draw in the face of this stupendous fascination,” cried the paper-maker. “Mon Dieu! that you had been with me at Boulogne in ’85, when Rozier’s Montgolfier took fire at the height of a thousand mètres, and he and Romain were precipitated to the earth!”
He never removed his hungry gaze from the mounting balloon while he talked.
“Fifteen sous a-day!” ejaculated M. David’s voice to the other side of Ned.
“It was like the bursting of a shell,” said Reveillon, in a sort of rapturous retrospection. “We were looking—our vivats still echoed in the air; the smiles with which they had parted from us were yet reflected on our faces; there came a spout of flame, very mean and small against the blue, and little black things shot from it and fled earthwards. It was fearful—heart-thrilling, that sound of a man falling through two-thirds of a mile. And the finish—the settling vibration! Mon Dieu! but I have never since missed an ascent.”
“Fifteen sous a-day!” exclaimed David.
But Ned instinctively withdrew himself from a touch that had grown unpleasant to him.
“The cloven hoof!” he thought. “And is to be without bowels the secret of every plutocrat’s success?”
“Fifteen sous a-day!” repeated David monotonously.
Reveillon came back to earth a moment, and made him an ironic bow.
“Certainly,” he said. “It is the wages of a good journeyman, and more than those of many an artist who disdains to be a time-server.”
The disintegrated crowd, swarming abroad like a disturbed knot of newly hatched spiders, surrounded and absorbed him. M. le peintre du Roi summoned Ned’s attention, peering over his shoulder.
“It is an insolent parvenu,” he said; “a Philistine double damned for grinding the faces of the poor. Permit me the privilege to look, monsieur. An artist is known by his performance. There is a severity here that entirely commends itself to me.”