CHAPTER XIX.
EUGENE DE RIBEAUPIERRE.
"Ford. Well, he's not here I seek for.
Page. No, nor nowhere else but in your brain.
Ford. Help me to search my house this one time: if I
find not what I seek, show me no colour for my extremity,
let me for ever be your table sport; let them say of me, 'As
jealous as Ford, that searched hollow walnuts for his wife's
leman.'"—Merry Wives of Windsor.
Quentin Kennedy was only master of a certain amount of the Spanish language, which he had rapidly acquired through the medium of his friend the dominie's sonorous Scottish latinity; but fortunately the young Frenchman, who seemed to be highly accomplished, spoke English with remarkable fluency.
His uniform, we have said, was in rags; his epaulettes had gone in the recent struggle, the straps of lace for retaining them on the shoulders alone remained. A hole in the breast of his light green jacket showed where the gold cross of the Legion had been rent away by some guerilla's hand, and the state of his scarlet pantaloons made one see the advantage of wearing a kilt for pugnacious casualties, as they were now reduced to mere shreds.
He was a slender young man, in appearance only a year or two older than Quentin, though really many years his senior in experience of the world and of life generally. His hair, which he wore in profusion, was dark brown and silky, and his hands, on one of which sparkled a splendid ring, were white and almost ladylike. An incipient moustache shaded his short upper lip; his features were very regular, and he was so decidedly good-looking, that Quentin could not help thinking that if he had a sister like him, she must be charming!
They quitted the highway and entered a dense thicket by the wayside, where breathless, hot, and weary, they cast themselves on the cool deep grass that grew under the leafy shade, and the last of the contents of Quentin's canteen, divided between them, proved very acceptable to both.
"I perceive that you are a French officer," said Quentin; "may I ask whom I have had the honour of succouring?"
"Certainly, mon camarade; I am a sous-lieutenant of my father's regiment, the 24th Chasseurs à Cheval—my name is Eugene de Ribeaupierre."
"Any relation of the general who commands in Valencia?"
"A very near one," said he, laughing; "I am his son, and monsieur's very obedient servant. Come! let us rest ourselves and talk a little. The tap on the head you gave that Spaniard was most critical and serviceable to me."
"True—it only came just in time!"
"I hope it may have despatched him outright."
"I trust not, now that the end was accomplished."
"Now that we have breathing time, you will perhaps excuse my little curiosity, and say how you came to be here, within two or three miles of our sentinels?"
"The country is quite open," said Quentin, evasively, with a smile.
"Your troops, we have heard, are closing up from Lisbon and elsewhere; but have not as yet been rash enough to enter Spain, the territories of King Joseph."
"Rash, monsieur?"
"Peste! I suppose your generals have not forgotten the sharp lessons we taught them at Roleia and Vimiera?"
Quentin laughed to hear the pleasant tone in which the Frenchman spoke of two very important defeats of the Emperor's troops as "lessons" to the British, but he said plainly enough,
"I am here because I was sent on duty."
"To whom, monsieur?"
Quentin hesitated.
"Nay, out with it, man—trust me, on my honour—I may well pledge it to one who has saved me from a barbarous death within this hour, and earned my warmest gratitude."
"Well, then, I go to Don Baltasar de Saldos."
"Diable! the man's a guerilla chief, and we have just had a severe brush with his people. My patrol, consisting of a sergeant, a corporal, and twelve chasseurs, were riding leisurely along the road from San Vincente towards the summit of yonder mountain, when, from a grove of cork and cypress trees, there flashed out some twenty muskets. It was an ambush; the leading section of them fell dead; the rest broke through, sabre à la main, and fled, pursued by the guerillas, who sprang after them with the yells of fiends and the activity of squirrels, leaping from bank to rock, and from rock to tree, firing and reloading so long as we were in range. Struck by a ball in the counter, my horse reared wildly up, and threw me; for some minutes I was insensible, and on recovering, found myself in the paws of yonder Spanish bear, who was thrice my bulk and strength. You know the rest. I thought it was all up with me. As Francis said at Pavia, 'tout est perdu, sauf l'honneur!' Baltasar's head-quarters are in a mountain puebla near Herreruela, where he successfully defies my father's cavalry. Am I right in supposing that you have been sent to invite his co-operation in some projected movement?"
"My orders were simply to deliver to him a despatch and rejoin my regiment."
"It is a dangerous and desperate errand, my friend," said the young Frenchman, while regarding Quentin with some interest; "I mean desperate to be undertaken by one alone. It looks almost like a sacrifice of you!"
"A sacrifice?" repeated Quentin, as his thoughts naturally wandered to Cosmo.
"Parbleu, yes—to the exigencies of the service."
"Some of my friends were not slow in saying as much," replied Quentin; "but then I—I am only a volunteer, and as such, must take any hazardous duty, I have been told."
"Well, here we must lurk till nightfall—you to avoid our patrols, which are usually withdrawn for a few hours after the evening gun fires, when the inlying picquet gets under arms; I to avoid those pestilent guerillas. The shade here is cool, and if we had a bottle of wine, a sliced melon, and a little ice, our pleasure would be complete."
"And you think I must conceal myself here?"
"Undoubtedly, mon ami; our people are scouring all the highways, and would be sure to cut you off. Then there is that devilish Spaniard—ah, the brigand!—he will not be in haste to forget the knock you gave him on the head, and should he or his comrades fall in with you, I would not give you a sou for your safety!"
"Strange, is it not, that the first man I have struck on Spanish ground should be a Spaniard?"
"These dons have unpleasant memories for such little attentions, and here the secret shot or stab usually settles everything; but before we separate, I shall have the honour of showing you the direct path to the head-quarters of De Saldos, after which, you must look to your pistols and put your trust in Providence. I shall keep your secret, and if there is any other way in which I can serve you, command me."
"I thank you; but I hope that to-night, or to-morrow morning at latest, will see my face turned towards Portugal, for I long to rejoin my corps."
"The fugitives of my party will spread a calamitous report concerning me in Valencia, and my father, the poor old general, will suppose that I am lying shot on the mountains, instead of holding this pleasant tête-à -tête with one of the sacré Anglais over the comfortable contents of his canteen," said Ribeaupierre, laughing. "What a droll world it is!"
"And your mother—I think I heard you mention your mother. She——"
"Happily will know nothing about it, as she is with Joseph's court. She is a gentle and loving creature, with a heart all tenderness. Ah, the seat of war, would never do for her, and, ma foi! it doesn't suit me either. It was not willingly I became a soldier, be assured; and yet, now that I am fairly in for it, and have won my epaulettes and cross, I should not like to find myself a mere citizen again. Peste! I shall not in a hurry forget the night on which, by a great malheur, a great mistake, I was forced to become a soldier."
"Mistake—how?" asked Quentin, smiling at the young Frenchman's gestures and energy.
"Mon camarade, a man says more when under the influences of eau-de-vie, or champagne, than he ever does under those of vin-ordinaire, cold water, or a bowl of gruel; and, as your remarkably potent rum-and-water has put me in that condition when a man reveals his loves and hates, and, more foolish still, sometimes his private history, I don't care if I tell you how I became a soldier.
"My father," began the garrulous chasseur, "is an officer of the old days of the monarchy, and held his first commission, like the Emperor himself, from Louis XVI., the Most Christian King, and they were brother subalterns in the regiment of La Fere. To the friendship that grew up between them there, the old gentleman owes his brigade and the Grand Cross of the Legion, quite as much as to his own bravery in Germany, Italy, and Flanders. My mother (or she at least whom I have been taught to call my mother, for she is his second wife,) was a widow of rank, who lost her whole possessions in the stormy days of the Revolution. She was without children, and when my father was assisting the Little Corporal to play the devil at Toulon, Arcola, Lodi, Marengo, and elsewhere, she most affectionately took charge of me, and of my education in Paris.
"As we were not rich, it was proposed to make a doctor of me, and so I was duly matriculated at the Ecole de Médecine, and commenced my studies there, not with much enthusiasm or industry either; but in the vague hope, nevertheless, that I might some day cut a figure and have my portrait hung among the full lengths of Ambrose Paré, Maréchal, La Peyronnie, and others in the school.
"I look back with no small repugnance to the daily tasks I performed there, and to the horrors of the dissecting-room, after boyish curiosity grew satiated. My brain became addled by lectures on the maxillary sinus, on diseases of the stomach, of the pylorus, the hepatic and abdominal viscera; elephantiasis, aortic aneurism, the lacteal and glandular system, and Heaven alone knows all what more, till I imagined that I had alternately in my own person every ailment peculiar to man. We had plenty of subjects, for daily the guillotine was slicing away in the Place de la Grève, and I have seen the loveliest women and the noblest men in France laid on those tables to be stripped and dissected by the knife of the demonstrator.
"I was soon voted the worst if not the most stupid student that ever put his foot within the college walls. The professors were in despair. They could make nothing of me; and to muddle my poor brain more, about this time I must needs fall in love. Ah! I perceive that you now become interested. I was not much over seventeen, and my first love——"
"First?" said Quentin.
"Oui—ma foi! I have had a dozen—was Madame Lisette Thiebault, a friend of my mother."
"A widow, of course?"
"Not at all. She was unfortunately the wife of one of our doctors in the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine;" replied the étourdi young Frenchman.
"Married!" said poor Quentin, somewhat aghast.
"Peste! of course she was; but we don't care for such little obstacles in Paris. Well, Lisette, for so I must name her, was nearly ten years my senior, and so had what she called a motherly interest in me. She was a very handsome woman, somewhat inclined to embonpoint, with a clear pale complexion and laughing eyes, exactly the colour of her hair, which was a rich deep brown. She was always gay, laughing and smiling, except when her husband, the doctor, was present, and one could no more make fun with him, than with old Bébé."
"Who, or what was he?"
"The mummy of the King of Poland's dwarf—Ouf! what a horror it is!—which we have in the School of the Faculty at Paris. Lisette was very fond of me, and, being a little addicted to literature—she was fond of poetry, too—so we read much together.
"Ere long, monsieur, the doctor began to think all this very improper, so he rudely and abruptly put a stop to our studies; he locked Ovid up, and me out. Tudieu! here was an outrage! I thought of inviting him to breathe the morning air on the Bois de Boulogne; but a duel between a first-year's student and an old doctor was not to be thought of. Madame had a tender heart, so she pitied me. She considered her husband's conduct cruel, ungrateful, outrageous, barbarous; so, as it was necessary that my classical studies should not be neglected, we arranged a little code of signals. Thus, Lisette, by simply keeping a drawing-room window open or shut, or a muslin curtain festooned or closely drawn, could inform me when Bluebeard was at home or abroad; whether the breach was practicable or not; and thus we circumvented our tyrant for a time, and I returned with ardour to the study of classical poetry; but as for the dissecting-room, diable! it saw no more of me.
"Of the doctor I had always a wholesome dread, as he was a Septembriseur."
"What is that?" asked Quentin, perceiving a dark expression shade the face of Ribeaupierre.
"'Tis a name we have in Paris for those who were concerned as aiders or abettors of the horrible September massacres—he would have thought no more of slily putting a bullet into me, than of killing a wasp; thus, you see, I pursued the acquisition of knowledge under difficulties.
"Now came out the edict issued about eight years ago, for raising two hundred thousand men for the army and marine, and every young man in France had to inscribe his name for the conscription. I omitted—we shall call it delayed—to inscribe mine; but my learned friend, M. le Docteur Thiebault, unknown to me, performed that little service in my behalf. He was extremely loth that the Republic—it was the glorious indivisible Republic of liberty, equality, fraternity, and tyranny then—should be deprived of my valuable aid by land or sea.
"About the time when he usually returned from visiting his patients, I had bidden adieu to madame, for our studies were over, and in the dusk of the evening was on my way home when surprised by a patrol of the police under a commissaire, at the corner of the Rue Ecole de Médecine. To avoid them I shrunk into a porch, but they invited me rather authoritatively to come forth, and on my doing so, a sergeant passed his lantern scrutinizingly across my face.
"'A young man,' said the commissaire, who was new in the quartier; 'who are you?'
"'I am not obliged to say,' said I.
"'Ah—we shall see that; what are you?'
"'A student of the Faculty of Médecine. Vive la République! War to the cottage—peace to the castle!' I replied, waving my hat.
"'Is your name inscribed for the levy, blunderer? You quote oddly for a student!'
"'Of course my name is inscribed,' said I, boldly, though I little knew that it was so.
"'Show me your card which certifies this.'
"'Mon Dieu!' I exclaimed, as a brilliant thought occurred to me; 'do not speak so loud, monsieur.'
"'Diable; may we not raise our voices in the streets of Paris?' he asked.
"'Not if you knew the mischief an alarm would do me.'
"'Tête Dieu! 'tis an odd fellow, this!'
"'Monsieur, pity me!' said I, in a voice full of entreaty. 'I throw myself upon your generosity—I perceive that I melt your heart. I have not my card; it is with my wife——'
"'Morbleu! you are very young to have a wife, my friend, with a chin like an apple,' said the grim old sergeant, as he passed his lantern across my face again; 'I hope she is fully grown; but to the point, my fine fellow, or we shall have to march you to the Conciergerie, and they have an unpleasant mode of pressing questions there.’
"'Where is this wife of yours, my little friend?'
"'In her house, M. le Commissaire, where you see that light above the lamp with the scarlet bottle. Ah, the perfidious! There she awaits a lover for whom I am watching.'
"I acted my part to the life, though jealousy is not a peculiarity of French husbands.
"'And this lover?' said the commissaire, becoming suddenly interested, perhaps from some fellow-feeling.
"'He is a young brother student of mine.'
"'His name?' said the commissaire, producing a note-book.
"'Eugene de Ribeaupierre.'
"'We know him,' said the other, 'for the greatest young rascal in all Paris. He destroyed a tree of liberty in the Palais Royal, and painted the nose of Equality red in the Jardin des Plantes.'
"'The same, monsieur,' said I, in a whining voice; 'he will come here disguised in a grey wig and spectacles to delude you, M. le Commissaire, and me too, unhappy that I am. Ah, mon Dieu, there he is! there he is! Seize him, in the name of morality and justice, of the République Démocratique et Sociale!'
"The patrol instantly laid violent hands on the person of Doctor Thiebault, who, to do him justice, made a violent resistance, and broke the sergeant's lantern, to the tune of twenty francs, before he was borne off to the Conciergerie, where he passed three days and nights in a horrid vault among thieves and malefactors, before he was brought up for examination, when it was discovered that it was not a young student, but an old professor of the healing art, standing high in the estimation of all Paris, who had been maltreated and carried off by the watch.
"So the whole story came out, and on the fourth day I found myself off en route to join my father's corps of Chasseurs à Cheval, then serving against the Austrians. My good mother shed abundance of tears at my departure; the Abbé Lebrun gave me abundance of good advice and a handful of louis d'or, which I considered of more value, and in a month after I found myself face to face with the white coats in the forest of Frisenheim, on the left bank of the Rhine.
"As a parting gift my dear friend Lisette had given me a holy medal to save me from bullets and so forth; but, diable! it nearly cost me my life, for one of the first balls fired near Oggersheim beat it into my ribs; the ball came out, but the blessed medal stuck fast, and all the skill of our three doctors was required to extract it, so after three months I found myself again in my beloved Paris on sick leave."