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_ Any one who had chanced to pass through the little town of Vernon
at this epoch, and who had happened to walk across that fine
monumental bridge, which will soon be succeeded, let us hope,
by some hideous iron cable bridge, might have observed, had he
dropped his eyes over the parapet, a man about fifty years of age
wearing a leather cap, and trousers and a waistcoat of coarse
gray cloth, to which something yellow which had been a red ribbon,
was sewn, shod with wooden sabots, tanned by the sun, his face
nearly black and his hair nearly white, a large scar on his forehead
which ran down upon his cheek, bowed, bent, prematurely aged,
who walked nearly every day, hoe and sickle in hand, in one of
those compartments surrounded by walls which abut on the bridge,
and border the left bank of the Seine like a chain of terraces,
charming enclosures full of flowers of which one could say, were they
much larger: "these are gardens," and were they a little smaller:
"these are bouquets." All these enclosures abut upon the river
at one end, and on a house at the other. The man in the waistcoat
and the wooden shoes of whom we have just spoken, inhabited the
smallest of these enclosures and the most humble of these houses
about 1817. He lived there alone and solitary, silently and poorly,
with a woman who was neither young nor old, neither homely
nor pretty, neither a peasant nor a bourgeoise, who served him.
The plot of earth which he called his garden was celebrated in the
town for the beauty of the flowers which he cultivated there.
These flowers were his occupation.
By dint of labor, of perseverance, of attention, and of buckets
of water, he had succeeded in creating after the Creator, and he
had invented certain tulips and certain dahlias which seemed to have
been forgotten by nature. He was ingenious; he had forestalled
Soulange Bodin in the formation of little clumps of earth of
heath mould, for the cultivation of rare and precious shrubs from
America and China. He was in his alleys from the break of day,
in summer, planting, cutting, hoeing, watering, walking amid
his flowers with an air of kindness, sadness, and sweetness,
sometimes standing motionless and thoughtful for hours, listening to
the song of a bird in the trees, the babble of a child in a house,
or with his eyes fixed on a drop of dew at the tip of a spear of grass,
of which the sun made a carbuncle. His table was very plain,
and he drank more milk than wine. A child could make him give way,
and his servant scolded him. He was so timid that be seemed shy,
he rarely went out, and he saw no one but the poor people who
tapped at his pane and his cure, the Abbe Mabeuf, a good old man.
Nevertheless, if the inhabitants of the town, or strangers, or any
chance comers, curious to see his tulips, rang at his little cottage,
he opened his door with a smile. He was the "brigand of the Loire."
Any one who had, at the same time, read military memoirs, biographies,
the Moniteur, and the bulletins of the grand army, would have been
struck by a name which occurs there with tolerable frequency, the name
of Georges Pontmercy. When very young, this Georges Pontmercy had
been a soldier in Saintonge's regiment. The revolution broke out.
Saintonge's regiment formed a part of the army of the Rhine;
for the old regiments of the monarchy preserved their names
of provinces even after the fall of the monarchy, and were only
divided into brigades in 1794. Pontmercy fought at Spire, at Worms,
at Neustadt, at Turkheim, at Alzey, at Mayence, where he was one
of the two hundred who formed Houchard's rearguard. It was the
twelfth to hold its ground against the corps of the Prince of Hesse,
behind the old rampart of Andernach, and only rejoined the main body
of the army when the enemy's cannon had opened a breach from the cord
of the parapet to the foot of the glacis. He was under Kleber at
Marchiennes and at the battle of Mont-Palissel, where a ball from
a biscaien broke his arm. Then he passed to the frontier of Italy,
and was one of the thirty grenadiers who defended the Col de Tende
with Joubert. Joubert was appointed its adjutant-general, and
Pontmercy sub-lieutenant. Pontmercy was by Berthier's side in the
midst of the grape-shot of that day at Lodi which caused Bonaparte
to say: "Berthier has been cannoneer, cavalier, and grenadier."
He beheld his old general, Joubert, fall at Novi, at the moment when,
with uplifted sabre, he was shouting: "Forward!" Having been embarked
with his company in the exigencies of the campaign, on board a pinnace
which was proceeding from Genoa to some obscure port on the coast,
he fell into a wasps'-nest of seven or eight English vessels.
The Genoese commander wanted to throw his cannon into the sea,
to hide the soldiers between decks, and to slip along in the dark
as a merchant vessel. Pontmercy had the colors hoisted to the peak,
and sailed proudly past under the guns of the British frigates.
Twenty leagues further on, his audacity having increased, he attacked
with his pinnace, and captured a large English transport which was
carrying troops to Sicily, and which was so loaded down with men
and horses that the vessel was sunk to the level of the sea.
In 1805 he was in that Malher division which took Gunzberg from
the Archduke Ferdinand. At Weltingen he received into his arms,
beneath a storm of bullets, Colonel Maupetit, mortally wounded at
the head of the 9th Dragoons. He distinguished himself at Austerlitz
in that admirable march in echelons effected under the enemy's fire.
When the cavalry of the Imperial Russian Guard crushed a battalion
of the 4th of the line, Pontmercy was one of those who took their
revenge and overthrew the Guard. The Emperor gave him the cross.
Pontmercy saw Wurmser at Mantua, Melas, and Alexandria, Mack at Ulm,
made prisoners in succession. He formed a part of the eighth corps
of the grand army which Mortier commanded, and which captured Hamburg.
Then he was transferred to the 55th of the line, which was the old
regiment of Flanders. At Eylau he was in the cemetery where,
for the space of two hours, the heroic Captain Louis Hugo,
the uncle of the author of this book, sustained alone with his
company of eighty-three men every effort of the hostile army.
Pontmercy was one of the three who emerged alive from that cemetery.
He was at Friedland. Then he saw Moscow. Then La Beresina, then Lutzen,
Bautzen, Dresden, Wachau, Leipzig, and the defiles of Gelenhausen;
then Montmirail, Chateau-Thierry, Craon, the banks of the Marne,
the banks of the Aisne, and the redoubtable position of Laon.
At Arnay-Le-Duc, being then a captain, he put ten Cossacks to the sword,
and saved, not his general, but his corporal. He was well slashed
up on this occasion, and twenty-seven splinters were extracted from
his left arm alone. Eight days before the capitulation of Paris
he had just exchanged with a comrade and entered the cavalry.
He had what was called under the old regime, the double hand,
that is to say, an equal aptitude for handling the sabre or the musket
as a soldier, or a squadron or a battalion as an officer. It is
from this aptitude, perfected by a military education, which certain
special branches of the service arise, the dragoons, for example,
who are both cavalry-men and infantry at one and the same time.
He accompanied Napoleon to the Island of Elba. At Waterloo, he was
chief of a squadron of cuirassiers, in Dubois' brigade. It was he
who captured the standard of the Lunenburg battalion. He came and
cast the flag at the Emperor's feet. He was covered with blood.
While tearing down the banner he had received a sword-cut across
his face. The Emperor, greatly pleased, shouted to him: "You are
a colonel, you are a baron, you are an officer of the Legion of Honor!"
Pontmercy replied: "Sire, I thank you for my widow." An hour later,
he fell in the ravine of Ohain. Now, who was this Georges Pontmercy?
He was this same "brigand of the Loire."
We have already seen something of his history. After Waterloo,
Pontmercy, who had been pulled out of the hollow road of Ohain,
as it will be remembered, had succeeded in joining the army,
and had dragged himself from ambulance to ambulance as far
as the cantonments of the Loire.
The Restoration had placed him on half-pay, then had sent him
into residence, that is to say, under surveillance, at Vernon.
King Louis XVIII., regarding all that which had taken place
during the Hundred Days as not having occurred at all, did not
recognize his quality as an officer of the Legion of Honor,
nor his grade of colonel, nor his title of baron. He, on his side,
neglected no occasion of signing himself "Colonel Baron Pontmercy."
He had only an old blue coat, and he never went out without
fastening to it his rosette as an officer of the Legion of Honor.
The Attorney for the Crown had him warned that the authorities
would prosecute him for "illegal" wearing of this decoration.
When this notice was conveyed to him through an officious intermediary,
Pontmercy retorted with a bitter smile: "I do not know whether I
no longer understand French, or whether you no longer speak it;
but the fact is that I do not understand." Then he went out for eight
successive days with his rosette. They dared not interfere with him.
Two or three times the Minister of War and the general in command
of the department wrote to him with the following address:
A Monsieur le Commandant Pontmercy." He sent back the letters
with the seals unbroken. At the same moment, Napoleon at Saint
Helena was treating in the same fashion the missives of Sir Hudson
Lowe addressed to General Bonaparte. Pontmercy had ended, may we
be pardoned the expression, by having in his mouth the same saliva as
his Emperor.
In the same way, there were at Rome Carthaginian prisoners who refused
to salute Flaminius, and who had a little of Hannibal's spirit.
One day he encountered the district-attorney in one of the streets
of Vernon, stepped up to him, and said: "Mr. Crown Attorney,
am I permitted to wear my scar?"
He had nothing save his meagre half-pay as chief of squadron.
He had hired the smallest house which he could find at Vernon.
He lived there alone, we have just seen how. Under the Empire,
between two wars, he had found time to marry Mademoiselle Gillenormand.
The old bourgeois, thoroughly indignant at bottom, had given his consent
with a sigh, saying: "The greatest families are forced into it."
In 1815, Madame Pontmercy, an admirable woman in every sense,
by the way, lofty in sentiment and rare, and worthy of her husband,
died, leaving a child. This child had been the colonel's joy
in his solitude; but the grandfather had imperatively claimed
his grandson, declaring that if the child were not given to him he would
disinherit him. The father had yielded in the little one's interest,
and had transferred his love to flowers.
Moreover, he had renounced everything, and neither stirred up mischief
nor conspired. He shared his thoughts between the innocent things
which he was then doing and the great things which he had done.
He passed his time in expecting a pink or in recalling Austerlitz.
M. Gillenormand kept up no relations with his son-in-law. The
colonel was "a bandit" to him. M. Gillenormand never mentioned
the colonel, except when he occasionally made mocking allusions
to "his Baronship." It had been expressly agreed that Pontmercy
should never attempt to see his son nor to speak to him, under penalty
of having the latter handed over to him disowned and disinherited.
For the Gillenormands, Pontmercy was a man afflicted with the plague.
They intended to bring up the child in their own way. Perhaps the
colonel was wrong to accept these conditions, but he submitted to them,
thinking that he was doing right and sacrificing no one but himself.
The inheritance of Father Gillenormand did not amount to much; but the
inheritance of Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder was considerable.
This aunt, who had remained unmarried, was very rich on the
maternal side, and her sister's son was her natural heir. The boy,
whose name was Marius, knew that he had a father, but nothing more.
No one opened his mouth to him about it. Nevertheless, in the society
into which his grandfather took him, whispers, innuendoes, and winks,
had eventually enlightened the little boy's mind; he had finally
understood something of the case, and as he naturally took in the
ideas and opinions which were, so to speak, the air he breathed,
by a sort of infiltration and slow penetration, he gradually came
to think of his father only with shame and with a pain at his heart.
While he was growing up in this fashion, the colonel slipped away
every two or three months, came to Paris on the sly, like a criminal
breaking his ban, and went and posted himself at Saint-Sulpice,
at the hour when Aunt Gillenormand led Marius to the mass.
There, trembling lest the aunt should turn round, concealed behind
a pillar, motionless, not daring to breathe, he gazed at his child.
The scarred veteran was afraid of that old spinster.
From this had arisen his connection with the cure of Vernon,
M. l'Abbe Mabeuf.
That worthy priest was the brother of a warden of Saint-Sulpice,
who had often observed this man gazing at his child, and the scar on
his cheek, and the large tears in his eyes. That man, who had so manly
an air, yet who was weeping like a woman, had struck the warden.
That face had clung to his mind. One day, having gone to Vernon to
see his brother, he had encountered Colonel Pontmercy on the bridge,
and had recognized the man of Saint-Sulpice. The warden had mentioned
the circumstance to the cure, and both had paid the colonel a visit,
on some pretext or other. This visit led to others. The colonel,
who had been extremely reserved at first, ended by opening his heart,
and the cure and the warden finally came to know the whole history,
and how Pontmercy was sacrificing his happiness to his child's future.
This caused the cure to regard him with veneration and tenderness,
and the colonel, on his side, became fond of the cure. And moreover,
when both are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other,
and so amalgamate with each other, as an old priest and an old soldier.
At bottom, the man is the same. The one has devoted his life to his
country here below, the other to his country on high; that is the
only difference.
Twice a year, on the first of January and on St. George's day,
Marius wrote duty letters to his father, which were dictated by his aunt,
and which one would have pronounced to be copied from some formula;
this was all that M. Gillenormand tolerated; and the father answered
them with very tender letters which the grandfather thrust into his
pocket unread. _
Read next: VOLUME III: BOOK THIRD - THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON: CHAPTER III. Requiescant
Read previous: VOLUME III: BOOK THIRD - THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON: CHAPTER I. An Ancient Salon
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