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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-Elysees 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 Moliere.
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-Elysees, 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 passersby, 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 pere de Gand, Rendez-nous notre
pere." "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.Every thing 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 Angeles 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 Angles 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
Piraeus, 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 Grenetat 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 Angles' report, we will
return to our four couples.
The dinner, as we have said, was drawing to its close.
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