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THE SUBSTITUTE
It chanced that the regiment to which Lieutenant Theodule
belonged came to perform garrison duty in Paris.
This inspired Aunt Gillenormand with a second idea.
She had, on the first occasion, hit upon the plan of having
Marius spied upon by Theodule; now she plotted to have Theodule
take Marius' place.
At all events and in case the grandfather should feel the
vague need of a young face in the house,--these rays of dawn are
sometimes sweet to ruin,--it was expedient to find another Marius.
"Take it as a simple erratum," she thought, "such
as one sees in books. For Marius, read Theodule."
A grandnephew is almost the same as a grandson; in default
of a lawyer one takes a lancer.
One morning, when M. Gillenormand was about to read something
in the Quotidienne, his daughter entered and said to him in her
sweetest voice; for the question concerned her favorite:--
"Father, Theodule is coming to present his respects to
you this morning."
"Who's Theodule?"
"Your grandnephew."
"Ah!" said the grandfather.
Then he went back to his reading, thought no more of his grandnephew,
who was merely some Theodule or other, and soon flew into a rage,
which almost always happened when he read.
The "sheet" which he held, although Royalist, of
course, announced for the following day, without any softening
phrases, one of these little events which were of daily occurrence
at that date in Paris:
"That the students of the schools of law and medicine
were to assemble on the Place du Pantheon, at midday,--to deliberate."
The discussion concerned one of the questions of the moment,
the artillery of the National Guard, and a conflict between the
Minister of War and "the citizen's militia," on the
subject of the cannon parked in the courtyard of the Louvre. The
students were to "deliberate" over this.
It did not take much more than this to swell M. Gillenormand's
rage.
He thought of Marius, who was a student, and who would probably
go with the rest, to "deliberate, at midday, on the Place
du Pantheon."
As he was indulging in this painful dream, Lieutenant Theodule
entered clad in plain clothes as a bourgeois, which was clever
of him, and was discreetly introduced by Mademoiselle Gillenormand.
The lancer had reasoned as follows:
"The old druid has not sunk all his money in a life pension.
It is well to disguise one's self as a civilian from time
to time."
Mademoiselle Gillenormand said aloud to her father:--
"Theodule, your grandnephew."
And in a low voice to the lieutenant:--
"Approve of everything."
And she withdrew.
The lieutenant, who was but little accustomed to such venerable
encounters, stammered with some timidity:
"Good day, uncle,"-- and made a salute composed
of the involuntary and mechanical outline of the military salute
finished off as a bourgeois salute.
"Ah! so it's you; that is well, sit down," said
the old gentleman.
That said, he totally forgot the lancer.
Theodule seated himself, and M. Gillenormand rose.
M. Gillenormand began to pace back and forth, his hands in
his pockets, talking aloud, and twitching, with his irritated
old fingers, at the two watches which he wore in his two fobs.
"That pack of brats! they convene on the Place du Pantheon!
by my life! urchins who were with their nurses but yesterday!
If one were to squeeze their noses, milk would burst out. And
they deliberate to-morrow, at midday.
What are we coming to? What are we coming to?
It is clear that we are making for the abyss. That is what
the descamisados have brought us to!
To deliberate on the citizen artillery!
To go and jabber in the open air over the jibes of the National
Guard!
And with whom are they to meet there? Just see whither Jacobinism
leads.
I will bet anything you like, a million against a counter,
that there will be no one there but returned convicts and released
galley-slaves. The Republicans and the galley-slaves,--they form
but one nose and one handkerchief. Carnot used to say:
`Where would you have me go, traitor?' Fouche replied:
`Wherever you please, imbecile!'
That's what the Republicans are like."
"That is true," said Theodule.
M. Gillenormand half turned his head, saw Theodule, and went
on:--
"When one reflects that that scoundrel was so vile as
to turn carbonaro! Why did you leave my house?
To go and become a Republican!
Pssst! In the first place, the people want none of your republic,
they have common sense, they know well that there always have
been kings, and that there always will be; they know well that
the people are only the people, after all, they make sport of
it, of your republic-- do you understand, idiot?
Is it not a horrible caprice?
To fall in love with Pere Duchesne, to make sheep's-eyes at
the guillotine, to sing romances, and play on the guitar under
the balcony of '93--it's enough to make one spit on all these
young fellows, such fools are they!
They are all alike.
Not one escapes. It suffices for them to breathe the air which
blows through the street to lose their senses.
The nineteenth century is poison. The first scamp that happens
along lets his beard grow like a goat's, thinks himself a real
scoundrel, and abandons his old relatives. He's a Republican,
he's a romantic.
What does that mean, romantic? Do me the favor to tell me
what it is.
All possible follies. A year ago, they ran to Hernani.
Now, I just ask you, Hernani! antitheses! abominations which
are not even written in French! And then, they have cannons in
the courtyard of the Louvre. Such are the rascalities of this
age!"
"You are right, uncle," said Theodule.
M. Gillenormand resumed:--
"Cannons in the courtyard of the Museum!
For what purpose? Do you want to fire grape-shot at the Apollo
Belvedere?
What have those cartridges to do with the Venus de Medici?
Oh! the young men of the present day are all blackguards!
What a pretty creature is their Benjamin Constant!
And those who are not rascals are simpletons! They do all
they can to make themselves ugly, they are badly dressed, they
are afraid of women, in the presence of petticoats they have a
mendicant air which sets the girls into fits of laughter; on my
word of honor, one would say the poor creatures were ashamed of
love. They are deformed, and they complete themselves by being
stupid; they repeat the puns of Tiercelin and Potier, they have
sack coats, stablemen's waistcoats, shirts of coarse linen, trousers
of coarse cloth, boots of coarse leather, and their rigmarole
resembles their plumage. One might make use of their jargon to
put new soles on their old shoes. And all this awkward batch of
brats has political opinions, if you please.
Political opinions should be strictly forbidden. They fabricate
systems, they recast society, they demolish the monarchy, they
fling all laws to the earth, they put the attic in the cellar's
place and my porter in the place of the King, they turn Europe
topsy-turvy, they reconstruct the world, and all their love affairs
consist in staring slily at the ankles of the laundresses as these
women climb into their carts.
Ah!
Marius!
Ah! you blackguard! to go and vociferate on the public place!
to discuss, to debate, to take measures!
They call that measures, just God! Disorder humbles itself
and becomes silly.
I have seen chaos, I now see a mess.
Students deliberating on the National Guard,-- such a thing
could not be seen among the Ogibewas nor the Cadodaches! Savages
who go naked, with their noddles dressed like a shuttlecock, with
a club in their paws, are less of brutes than those bachelors
of arts!
The four-penny monkeys!
And they set up for judges! Those creatures deliberate and
ratiocinate!
The end of the world is come!
This is plainly the end of this miserable terraqueous globe!
A final hiccough was required, and France has emitted it. Deliberate,
my rascals!
Such things will happen so long as they go and read the newspapers
under the arcades of the Odeon. That costs them a sou, and their
good sense, and their intelligence, and their heart and their
soul, and their wits.
They emerge thence, and decamp from their families.
All newspapers are pests; all, even the Drapeau Blanc!
At bottom, Martainville was a Jacobin.
Ah! just Heaven! you may boast of having driven your grandfather
to despair, that you may!"
"That is evident," said Theodule.
And profiting by the fact that M. Gillenormand was taking
breath, the lancer added in a magisterial manner:--
"There should be no other newspaper than the Moniteur,
and no other book than the Annuaire Militaire."
M. Gillenormand continued:--
"It is like their Sieyes!
A regicide ending in a senator; for that is the way they always
end.
They give themselves a scar with the address of thou as citizens,
in order to get themselves called, eventually, Monsieur le Comte.
Monsieur le Comte as big as my arm, assassins of September.
The philosopher Sieyes! I will do myself the justice to say,
that I have never had any better opinion of the philosophies of
all those philosophers, than of the spectacles of the grimacer
of Tivoli!
One day I saw the Senators cross the Quai Malplaquet in mantles
of violet velvet sown with bees, with hats a la Henri IV.
They were hideous.
One would have pronounced them monkeys from the tiger's court.
Citizens, I declare to you, that your progress is madness,
that your humanity is a dream, that your revolution is a crime,
that your republic is a monster, that your young and virgin France
comes from the brothel, and I maintain it against all, whoever
you may be, whether journalists, economists, legists, or even
were you better judges of liberty, of equality, and fraternity
than the knife of the guillotine! And that I announce to you,
my flne fellows!"
"Parbleu!" cried the lieutenant, "that is wonderfully
true."
M. Gillenormand paused in a gesture which he had begun, wheeled
round, stared Lancer Theodule intently in the eyes, and said to
him:--
"You are a fool."
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