第 三十三 章 · AT BOMBARDA’S

The Russian mountains having been exhausted, they began to think about

dinner; and the radiant party of eight, somewhat weary at last, became

stranded in Bombarda’s public house, a branch establishment which had

been set up in the Champs-Élysées by that famous restaurant-keeper,

Bombarda, whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near

Delorme Alley.

A large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (they had

been obliged to put up with this accommodation in view of the Sunday

crowd); two windows whence they could survey beyond the elms, the quay

and the river; a magnificent August sunlight lightly touching the

panes; two tables; upon one of them a triumphant mountain of bouquets,

mingled with the hats of men and women; at the other the four couples

seated round a merry confusion of platters, dishes, glasses, and

bottles; jugs of beer mingled with flasks of wine; very little order on

the table, some disorder beneath it;

“They made beneath the table

A noise, a clatter of the feet that was abominable,”

says Molière.

This was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five o’clock in

the morning, had reached at half-past four in the afternoon. The sun

was setting; their appetites were satisfied.

The Champs-Élysées, filled with sunshine and with people, were nothing

but light and dust, the two things of which glory is composed. The

horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, were prancing in a cloud of

gold. Carriages were going and coming. A squadron of magnificent

body-guards, with their clarions at their head, were descending the

Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the setting

sun, floated over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde,

which had become the Place Louis XV. once more, was choked with happy

promenaders. Many wore the silver fleur-de-lys suspended from the

white-watered ribbon, which had not yet wholly disappeared from

button-holes in the year 1817. Here and there choruses of little girls

threw to the winds, amid the passers-by, who formed into circles and

applauded, the then celebrated Bourbon air, which was destined to

strike the Hundred Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain:—

“Rendez-nous notre père de Gand,

Rendez-nous notre père.”

“Give us back our father from Ghent,

Give us back our father.”

Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even

decorated with the fleur-de-lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over the

large square and the Marigny square, were playing at rings and

revolving on the wooden horses; others were engaged in drinking; some

journeyman printers had on paper caps; their laughter was audible.

Everything was radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace and profound

royalist security; it was the epoch when a special and private report

of Chief of Police Anglès to the King, on the subject of the suburbs of

Paris, terminated with these lines:—

“Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be

feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats.

The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. These

are very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them to make one

of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on the part of the

populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of

this population should have diminished in the last fifty years; and the

populace of the suburbs is still more puny than at the time of the

Revolution. It is not dangerous. In short, it is an amiable rabble.”

Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform

itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the

miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so despised

by Count Anglès possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their

eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to the

Minerva Aptera of the Piræus, there stood on the public square in

Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat. The ingenuous police of

the Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too “rose-colored” a

light; it is not so much of “an amiable rabble” as it is thought. The

Parisian is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one

sleeps more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy

than he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not

be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but

when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in

every sort of fury. Give him a pike, he will produce the 10th of

August; give him a gun, you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon’s stay

and Danton’s resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a

question of liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled

with wrath, is epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a

chlamys. Take care! he will make of the first Rue Grenétat which comes

to hand Caudine Forks. When the hour strikes, this man of the faubourgs

will grow in stature; this little man will arise, and his gaze will be

terrible, and his breath will become a tempest, and there will issue

forth from that slender chest enough wind to disarrange the folds of

the Alps. It is, thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the

Revolution, mixed with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his

delight. Proportion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long

as he has for refrain nothing but _la Carmagnole_, he only overthrows

Louis XVI.; make him sing the _Marseillaise_, and he will free the

world.

This note jotted down on the margin of Anglès’ report, we will return

to our four couples. The dinner, as we have said, was drawing to its

close.