Devereux — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best interesting books to read txt) 📕

even the most feudal, the vassal obtains from the master; a peasantry famished; a nation loaded with debt which it sought to pay by tears,—these are what I saw,—these are the consequences of that heartless and miserable vanity from which arose wars neither useful nor honourable,—these are the real components of that triumph, as you term it, which you wonder that I regret.”

Now, although it was impossible to live at the court of Louis XIV. in his latter days, and not feel, from the general discontent that prevailed even there, what a dark truth the old soldier’s speech contained, yet I was somewhat surprised by an enthusiasm so little military in a person whose bearing and air were so conspicuously martial.

“You draw a melancholy picture,” said I; “and the wretched state of culture which the lands that we now pass through exhibit is a witness how little exaggeration there is in your colouring. However, these are but the ordinary evils of war; and, if your country endures them, do not forget that she has also inflicted them. Remember what France did to Holland, and own that it is but a retribution that France should now find that the injury we do to others is (among nations as well as individuals) injury to ourselves.”

My old Frenchman curled his mustaches with the finger and thumb of his left hand: this was rather too subtile a distinction for him.

“That may be true enough, Monsieur,” said he; “but, morbleu! those maudits Dutchmen deserved what they sustained at our hands. No, Sir, no: I am not so base as to forget the glory my country acquired, though I weep for her wounds.”

“I do not quite understand you, Sir,” said I; “did you not just now confess that the wars you had witnessed were neither honourable nor useful? What glory, then, was to be acquired in a war of that character, even though it was so delightfully animated by cutting the throats of those maudits Dutchmen?”

“Sir,” answered the Frenchman, drawing himself up, “you did not understand me. When we punished Holland, we did rightly. We conquered.”

“Whether you conquered or not (for the good folk of Holland are not so sure of the fact),” answered I, “that war was the most unjust in which your king was ever engaged; but pray, tell me, Sir, what war it is that you lament?”

The Frenchman frowned, whistled, put out his under lip, in a sort of angry embarrassment, and then, spurring his great horse into a curvet, said,—

“That last war with the English!”

“Faith,” said I, “that was the justest of all.”

“Just!” cried the Frenchman, halting abruptly and darting at me a glance of fire, “just! no more, Sir! no more! I was at Blenheim and at Ramilies!”

As the old warrior said the last words, his voice faltered; and though I could not help inly smiling at the confusion of ideas by which wars were just or unjust, according as they were fortunate or not, yet I respected his feelings enough to turn away my face and remain silent.

“Yes,” renewed my comrade, colouring with evident shame and drawing his cocked hat over his brows, “yes, I received my last wound at Ramilies. Then my eyes were opened to the horrors of war; then I saw and cursed the evils of ambition; then I resolved to retire from the armies of a king who had lost forever his name, his glory, and his country.”

Was there ever a better type of the French nation than this old soldier? As long as fortune smiles on them, it is “Marchons au diable!” and “Vive la gloire!” Directly they get beaten, it is “Ma pauvre patrie!” and “Les calamites affreuses de la guerre!”

“However,” said I, “the old King is drawing near the end of his days, and is said to express his repentance at the evils his ambition has occasioned.”

The old soldier shoved back his hat, and offered me his snuff-box. I judged by this that he was a little mollified.

“Ah!” he renewed, after a pause, “ah! times are sadly changed since the year 1667; when the young King—he was young then—took the field in Flanders, under the great Turenne. Sacristie! What a hero he looked upon his white war-horse! I would have gone—ay, and the meanest and backwardest soldier in the camp would have gone—into the very mouth of the cannon for a look from that magnificent countenance, or a word from that mouth which knew so well what words were! Sir, there was in the war of ‘72, when we were at peace with Great Britain, an English gentleman, then in the army, afterwards a marshal of France: I remember, as if it were yesterday, how gallantly he behaved. The King sent to compliment him after some signal proof of courage and conduct, and asked what reward he would have. ‘Sire,’ answered the Englishman, ‘give me the white plume you wore this day.’ From that moment the Englishman’s fortune was made.”

“The flattery went further than the valour!” said I, smiling, as I recognized in the anecdote the first great step which my father had made in the ascent of fortune.

“Sacristie!” cried the Frenchman, “it was no flattery then. We so idolized the King that mere truth would have seemed disloyalty; and we no more thought that praise, however extravagant, was adulation, when directed to him, than we should have thought there was adulation in the praise we would have given to our first mistress. But it is all changed now! Who now cares for the old priest-ridden monarch?”

And upon this the veteran, having conquered the momentary enthusiasm which the remembrance of the King’s earlier glories had excited, transferred all his genius of description to the opposite side of the question, and declaimed, with great energy, upon the royal vices and errors, which were so charming in prosperity, and were now so detestable in adversity.

While we were thus conversing we approached Versailles. We thought the vicinity of the town seemed unusually deserted. We entered the main street: crowds were assembled; a universal murmur was heard; excitement sat on every countenance. Here an old crone was endeavouring to explain something, evidently beyond his comprehension, to a child of three years old, who, with open mouth and fixed eyes, seemed to make up in wonder for the want of intelligence; there a group of old disbanded soldiers occupied the way, and seemed, from their muttered conversations, to vent a sneer and a jest at a priest who, with downward countenance and melancholy air, was hurrying along.

One young fellow was calling out, “At least, it is a holy-day, and I shall go to Paris!” and, as a contrast to him, an old withered artisan, leaning on a gold-headed cane, with sharp avarice eloquent in every line of his face, muttered out to a fellow-miser, “No business to-day, no money, John; no money!” One knot of women, of all ages, close by which my horse passed, was entirely occupied with a single topic, and that so vehemently that I heard the leading words of the discussion. “Mourning—becoming—what fashion?—how long?—O Ciel!” Thus do follies weave themselves round the bier of death!

“What is the news, gentlemen?” said I.

“News! what, you have not heard it?—the King is dead!”

“Louis dead! Louis the Great, dead!” cried my companion.