St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England by Stevenson (books for new readers TXT) 📕

the Americans.  And when the north-bound mail arrived, crowned with holly, and the coachman and guard hoarse with shouting victory, I went even so far as to entertain the company to a bowl of punch, which I compounded myself with no illiberal hand, and doled out to such sentiments as the following:—

‘Our glorious victory on the Nivelle’!  ‘Lord Wellington, God bless him! and may victory ever attend upon his arms!’ and, ‘Soult, poor devil! and may he catch it again to the same tune!’

Never was oratory more applauded to the echo—never any one was more of the popular man than I.  I promise you, we made a night of it.  Some of the company supported each other, with the assistance of boots, to their respective bedchambers, while the rest slept on the field of glory where we had left them; and at the breakfast table the next morning there was an extraordinary assemblage of red eyes and shaking fists.  I observed patriotism to burn much lower by daylight.  Let no one blame me for insensibility to the reverses of France!  God knows how my heart raged.  How I longed to fall on that herd of swine and knock their heads together in the moment of their revelry!  But you are to consider my own situation and its necessities; also a certain lightheartedness, eminently Gallic, which forms a leading trait in my character, and leads me to throw myself into new circumstances with the spirit of a schoolboy.  It is possible that I sometimes allowed this impish humour to carry me further than good taste approves: and I was certainly punished for it once.

This was in the episcopal city of Durham.  We sat down, a considerable company, to dinner, most of us fine old vatted English tories of that class which is often so enthusiastic as to be inarticulate.  I took and held the lead from the beginning; and, the talk having turned on the French in the Peninsula, I gave them authentic details (on the authority of a cousin of mine, an ensign) of certain cannibal orgies in Galicia, in which no less a person than General Caffarelli had taken a part.  I always disliked that commander, who once ordered me under arrest for insubordination; and it is possible that a spice of vengeance added to the rigour of my picture.  I have forgotten the details; no doubt they were high-coloured.  No doubt I rejoiced to fool these jolter-heads; and no doubt the sense of security that I drank from their dull, gasping faces encouraged me to proceed extremely far.  And for my sins, there was one silent little man at table who took my story at the true value.  It was from no sense of humour, to which he was quite dead.  It was from no particular intelligence, for he had not any.  The bond of sympathy, of all things in the world, had rendered him clairvoyant.

Dinner was no sooner done than I strolled forth into the streets with some design of viewing the cathedral; and the little man was silently at my heels.  A few doors from the inn, in a dark place of the street, I was aware of a touch on my arm, turned suddenly, and found him looking up at me with eyes pathetically bright.

‘I beg your pardon, sir; but that story of yours was particularly rich.  He—he!  Particularly racy,’ said he.  ‘I tell you, sir, I took you wholly!  I smoked you!  I believe you and I, sir, if we had a chance to talk, would find we had a good many opinions in common.  Here is the “Blue Bell,” a very comfortable place.  They draw good ale, sir.  Would you be so condescending as to share a pot with me?’

There was something so ambiguous and secret in the little man’s perpetual signalling, that I confess my curiosity was much aroused.  Blaming myself, even as I did so, for the indiscretion, I embraced his proposal, and we were soon face to face over a tankard of mulled ale.  He lowered his voice to the least attenuation of a whisper.

‘Here, sir,’ said he, ‘is to the Great Man.  I think you take me?  No?’  He leaned forward till our noses touched.  ‘Here is to the Emperor!’ said he.

I was extremely embarrassed, and, in spite of the creature’s innocent appearance, more than half alarmed.  I thought him too ingenious, and, indeed, too daring for a spy.  Yet if he were honest he must be a man of extraordinary indiscretion, and therefore very unfit to be encouraged by an escaped prisoner.  I took a half course, accordingly—accepted his toast in silence, and drank it without enthusiasm.

He proceeded to abound in the praises of Napoleon, such as I had never heard in France, or at least only on the lips of officials paid to offer them.

‘And this Caffarelli, now,’ he pursued: ‘he is a splendid fellow, too, is he not?  I have not heard vastly much of him myself.  No details, sir—no details!  We labour under huge difficulties here as to unbiassed information.’

‘I believe I have heard the same complaint in other countries,’ I could not help remarking.  ‘But as to Caffarelli, he is neither lame nor blind, he has two legs and a nose in the middle of his face.  And I care as much about him as you care for the dead body of Mr. Perceval!’

He studied me with glowing eyes.

‘You cannot deceive me!’ he cried.  ‘You have served under him.  You are a Frenchman!  I hold by the hand, at last, one of that noble race, the pioneers of the glorious principles of liberty and brotherhood.  Hush!  No, it is all right.  I thought there had been somebody at the door.  In this wretched, enslaved country we dare not even call our souls our own.  The spy and the hangman, sir—the spy and the hangman!  And yet there is a candle burning, too.  The good leaven is working, sir—working underneath.  Even in this town there are a few brave spirits, who meet every Wednesday.  You must stay over a day or so, and join us.  We do not use this house.  Another, and a quieter.  They draw fine ale, however—fair, mild ale.  You will find yourself among friends, among brothers.  You will hear some very daring sentiments expressed!’ he cried, expanding his small chest.  ‘Monarchy, Christianity—all the trappings of a bloated past—the Free Confraternity of Durham and Tyneside deride.’

Here was a devil of a prospect for a gentleman whose whole design was to avoid observation!  The Free Confraternity had no charms for me; daring sentiments were no part of my baggage; and I tried, instead, a little cold water.

‘You seem to forget, sir, that my Emperor has re-established Christianity,’ I observed.

‘Ah, sir, but that was policy!’ he exclaimed.  ‘You do not understand Napoleon.  I have followed his whole career.  I can explain his policy from first to last.  Now for instance in the Peninsula, on which you were so very amusing, if you will come to a friend’s house who has a map of Spain, I can make the whole course of the war quite clear to you, I venture to say, in half an hour.’

This was intolerable.  Of the two extremes, I found I preferred the British tory; and, making an appointment for the morrow, I pleaded sudden headache, escaped to the inn, packed my knapsack, and fled, about nine at night, from this accursed neighbourhood.  It was cold, starry, and clear, and the road dry, with a touch of frost.  For all that, I had not the smallest intention to make a long stage of it; and about ten o’clock, spying on the right-hand side of the way the lighted windows of an alehouse, I determined to bait there for the night.

It was against my principle, which was to frequent only the dearest inns; and the misadventure that befell me was sufficient to make me more particular in the future.  A large company was assembled in the parlour, which was heavy with clouds of tobacco smoke, and brightly lighted up by a roaring fire of coal.  Hard by the chimney stood a vacant chair in what I thought an enviable situation, whether for warmth or the pleasure of society; and I was about to take it, when the nearest of the company stopped me with his hand.

‘Beg thy pardon, sir,’ said he; ‘but that there chair belongs to a British soldier.’

A chorus of voices enforced and explained.  It was one of Lord Wellington’s heroes.  He had been wounded under Rowland Hill.  He was Colbourne’s right-hand man.  In short, this favoured individual appeared to have served with every separate corps, and under every individual general in the Peninsula.  Of course I apologised.  I had not known.  The devil was in it if a soldier had not a right to the best in England.  And with that sentiment, which was loudly applauded, I found a corner of a bench, and awaited, with some hopes of entertainment, the return of the hero.  He proved, of course, to be a private soldier.  I say of course, because no officer could possibly enjoy such heights of popularity.  He had been wounded before San Sebastian, and still wore his arm in a sling.  What was a great deal worse for him, every member of the company had been plying him with drink.  His honest yokel’s countenance blazed as if with fever, his eyes were glazed and looked the two ways, and his feet stumbled as, amidst a murmur of applause, he returned to the midst of his admirers.

Two minutes afterwards I was again posting in the dark along the highway; to explain which sudden movement of retreat I must trouble the reader with a reminiscence of my services.

I lay one night with the out-pickets in Castile.  We were in close touch with the enemy; the usual orders had been issued against smoking, fires, and talk, and both armies lay as quiet as mice, when I saw the English sentinel opposite making a signal by holding up his musket.  I repeated it, and we both crept together in the dry bed of a stream, which made the demarcation of the armies.  It was wine he wanted, of which we had a good provision, and the English had quite run out.  He gave me the money, and I, as was the custom, left him my firelock in pledge, and set off for the canteen.  When I returned with a skin of wine, behold, it had pleased some uneasy devil of an English officer to withdraw the outposts!  Here was a situation with a vengeance, and I looked for nothing but ridicule in the present and punishment in the future.  Doubtless our officers winked pretty hard at this interchange of courtesies, but doubtless it would be impossible to wink at so gross a fault, or rather so pitiable a misadventure as mine; and you are to conceive me wandering in the plains of Castile, benighted, charged with a wine-skin for which I had no use, and with no knowledge whatever of the whereabouts of my musket, beyond that it was somewhere in my Lord Wellington’s army.  But my Englishman was either a very honest fellow, or else extremely thirsty, and at last contrived to advertise me of his new position.  Now, the English sentry in Castile, and the wounded hero in the Durham public-house, were one and the same person; and if he had been a little less drunk, or myself less lively in getting away, the travels of M. St. Ives might have come to an untimely end.

I suppose this woke me up; it stirred in me besides a spirit of opposition, and in spite of cold, darkness, the highwaymen and the footpads, I determined to walk right on till breakfast-time: a happy resolution, which enabled me to observe one of those traits of manners which at once depict a country and condemn it.  It was near midnight when I saw, a great way ahead of me, the light of many torches; presently after, the sound of wheels reached me, and the slow tread of feet, and soon I had joined myself to the rear of a sordid, silent, and lugubrious procession, such as we see in dreams.  Close on a hundred persons marched by torchlight in unbroken silence; in their midst a cart, and in the cart, on an inclined platform, the dead body of a man—the centre-piece of this solemnity, the hero whose obsequies we were come forth at this unusual hour to celebrate.  It was but a plain, dingy old fellow of fifty or sixty, his throat cut, his shirt turned over as though to show the wound.  Blue trousers and brown socks completed his attire, if we can talk so of the dead.  He had a horrid look of a waxwork.  In the tossing of the lights he seemed to make faces and mouths at us, to frown, and to be at times upon the point of speech.  The cart, with this shabby and tragic freight, and surrounded by its silent escort and bright torches, continued for some distance to creak along the high-road, and I to follow