‘Thus, Sir, you show yourself not completely disillusioned,’ said Stefanik, his round face glowing in the cold air. ‘If all men of good will employed their energies in our Cause, the injustices can surely be corrected? We have travelled a great distance, Sir, to assist in your struggle. We met with suspicion and ostracism all the way from Austria and even here, in Switzerland.’ He put a thumb upon his discreet sash.
I feared that, in giving him the negative view, I pulled the very bread of life from a baby’s hand. ‘You’ll meet with great suspicion in modern France, gentlemen. Foreigners are almost all assumed natural traitors by the Mob. And the Mob has no taste for fine argument. You’d be dead and stripped before you could cry “Jacobin”.’
Krasny fought for his bit of spiritual sustenance. ‘I fear that’s mighty hard to believe, Sir. Schiller, Beethoven, Wilberforce, Pestalozzi, de Pauw – George Washington himself – are all honorary citizens of France. As you are, Sir. It is a brotherhood extending beyond nations –’
‘No longer!’ I raised my hand, bored and even afeared of these familiar phrases. ‘Believe me, I beg you, gentlemen. Turn your attentions to some other moral purpose. That of Poland’s liberty, for instance. Her plight is more easily comprehended.
‘Poland wants nothing but a king and bishops free to exploit what Russia and Prussia already claim for themselves,’ said Staszekovski. ‘Cloots preaches International liberation of the common people. So we concluded, in conversation amongst ourselves, that Poland’s freedom begins in France.’
‘Cloots’s freedom ends in France.’ I swore at myself for my foolishness in pressing this point. ‘And mark me, my young brothers, so shall your own!’
Krasny avoided my snatch at his heart’s food and was firm in his reply. ‘We shall try our luck, at any rate, citizen, though we respect your opinions. Can we escort you part-way on your journey, Sir? Do you head for Dijon?’
I stretched a hand behind me. The last of Montsorbier’s men could be observed labouring up to the crest of the steep hillside. ‘France lies yonder – where those guardsmen flee.’ I hesitated for a moment. ‘Myself, I journey to Lausanne. My revolutionary years ended with the last days of this past December. And why, Monsieur Krasny, should you ever wish to leave the sanity and justice of Wäldenstein? By repute she’s the most contented nation on Earth!’
‘Contented burghers make poor insurgents,’ he said soberly. ‘It’s dull, my homeland, with self-importance and piety.’
‘Then, Sir,’ said I, ‘it is plain to me it’s the Romance and Adventure of revolution you’re hungry for. You’ll find plenty of the latter in France just now, probably to your cost, but your romantic notions will scarcely survive, I think.’
Up piped the young Slav, von Lutzov. ‘Surely, Sir, if France’s situation is as you describe, our ideals are unfounded and the world is ruled by the Seven Vices, by the Devil Himself!’
‘Your hopes are not unfounded, Sir,’ I replied. ‘Neither shall I presume to question your generosity, your optimism, your faith – even your capacity to impose a little justice here and there upon our world. It is your sense of the horrid realities of life which is faulty, what we may truly term the “common” sense. It was lack of this sense, of a proper education in the motives of the vulgar people, which brought me to this pass.’
At the sound of what they might reasonably believe to be familiar pomposity they became impatient and showed their mood by many little gestures – arranging their harness, straightening their backs in their saddles, adjusting their spurs, pulling their hats forward on their heads. These signs I took as indications that persuasion was impossible, so I saluted them. ‘I bid you bon voyage and bonne chance, gentlemen. I thank ye for my rescue. I trust, in turn, you keep your heads.’ Whereupon I rode my fine new horse, replete with a sabre and pistols holstered on an excellent Castillian saddle, towards the cottage where now two women, one young, one middle-aged, stared from their gate.
‘Then if you flee France, Sir,’ came Krasny’s puzzled complaint, ‘who were the soldiers?’
‘Members of the national army, Sir. That which serves the Committee of Public Safety.
I plucked the cockade from my hat and threw it back to Krasny. Then I was off at a smart trot, bowing to the ladies and complimenting them on the prettiness of their valley. ‘The loveliest in Vaud.’ They grinned and did not contradict me. I was in Switzerland! The mountains ahead of me were clear of political sanctities and hypocrisies; all I need fear in them were the usual natural dangers and the attacks of brigands who, if they cut my throat, would do it not for a cause but for a crust or two of bread. The air had a wholesome freshness to it of a sudden.
The road again grew steeper and the snow heavier as I ascended into the Alps proper. Peaks were soon in view as the sky cleared to a vivid blue. I, like Nature, was suddenly tranquil; she revealed herself, noble and monumental, in white and green, with black veins of rock and snow-covered pastures. Here, from time to time, little cottages, their thatched roofs stretching almost to the ground, crouched in sheltered ridges. Rooks and crows sprang up into the air at the vibrations of my trotting Spaniard. Those enormous pinnacles were one of the most uplifting sights on Earth, outstripping even the Appalachian grandeur of America, the only others I have witnessed to compare (lately I have seen engravings of the Rocky Mountains which seem, if the artist has not exaggerated, an equal to the Alps).
This vast pile of natural beauty, those crags and fir trees and hovering hawks, those echoing ravines and vast tumblings of snow and earth, brought me swiftly to the understanding of my own insignificance and, indeed, the insignificance of all human struggle. Thus absorbed in philosophic generalities, I scarcely noticed the growing twilight in my admiration of a scarlet sunset staining every detail with its bloody light. As luck would have it I was once again upon a fair-sized ‘toby’ as my old friends of vagabond days used to call the high road. Twice I was passed by coaches whose drivers informed me of a reasonably clean and cheaply priced inn some five miles distant.
As the sun faded I entered a kind of corridor of trees whose interwoven branches blocked almost all the remaining light and whose sweetness of scent came close to overwhelming me so it seemed I entered another World, a World where Winter had turned to Spring and peace triumphed universally. Soon after, I heard the rattle of a four-horse coach ahead, travelling at fair speed. As I approached, the driver whipped his horses recklessly, almost as if he feared pursuit. The thought came to me that perhaps this road had a reputation for attracting rogues and highwaymen. I passed him with a friendly halloo, so as to assure him of my own pacific intent, but he did not answer, save to crack his long whip over his team. He had a lantern on a post by his head and it cast shadows into his cape: all I could detect were eyes reflecting the yellow light. Was it my fancy made those eyes appear to glare at me with unwarranted ferocity? Whether this was true or no, I changed my mind about requesting his permission to ride beside his lantern. The darkness, indeed, became attractive by comparison. I left his cold yet fiery gaze in the tunnel as I broke out onto a grey landscape now considerably colder and with the mountains forming a black wall on every side. My clothing was still damp. I was like to freeze on my newly stolen saddle if I did not reach the inn soon after dark. If the air had not been dry, in keeping with the altitude, I might well have perished there and then.
At last I perceived a glimmering on the curve of the road and this soon became the cheering diffused glow of several fires, lamps and candles on the other side of thick green glass panes, while a sign on a gallows-post proclaimed the building as Le Coq D’Or (almost every hostelry in Switzerland was named so in those days, the Swiss prizing conformity above all else) while beyond this was an archway leading to a large courtyard. The inn was of good size and thoroughly appointed. I was approving as, very soon after my entry into the yard, ostlers with candle-boxes were immediately on hand to take the bridle and lead my horse to a well-earned grooming and a meal of oats.
Sadd
lebags shouldered and cloak dusted off as best it could be, I made my way through passages of old oak and older stone to the public room. Here I stood beside the fire, steaming away like a coster’s brazier and causing chagrin to two priests, an Yverdon farmer and a couple of heavily armed freelance warriors on their way, they said cautiously, to enlist with the Prussians and save France. I had unwound my sash and stripped off my jackboots and greatcoat for the one-eyed innkeeper to take to his wife for her attention, but doubtless I remained the picture of the Communard, with my lank hair, unshaved face and ungentlemanly apparel. ‘It will take more than a pair of Switzer bravos to do that,’ said I. ‘But you might as well try. For my own part I’ve failed in the attempt, which is why I am presently taking myself as far from France as possible. Let ’em rot, is my view!’
‘You’re just come out of France then, Sir,’ said the elder priest in the eager accents of Provence. ‘What news for us?’
I was no friend of his class, but yet was in little mood for judging or lecturing. I told him simply that priests were no longer being murdered piecemeal, which was true. ‘But Guillotin’s machine remains at work night and day, in capital and departments alike,’ I added. ‘Many believe this will only end if Robespierre himself is killed. My opinion is that he’s too cautious to expose himself to a Mademoiselle Corday.’
‘So he remains the people’s darling,’ said the old priest in a sour tone.
‘Let the Mob stay on his side,’ I said, putting mulled wine of poor sweetness to my lips, ‘and he’ll rule France for ever. If the Mob turns – and ’tis ever a fickle creature – he’ll fall.’
‘Yet that event’s unlikely, eh?’ The priest was anxious for my denial. I could not give it.
‘Sir,’ said I cruelly, ‘it is impossible.’ (Which speaks poorly for our family’s famous ‘second sight’.)
At this, the priest’s novice chimed in with a peal or two of his own. He was an angular, spiderish creature, prominently pale, with a tendency to blubber his lips when he spoke. ‘Truly the devil’s come to Earth. This Robespierre is the Anti-Christ so many have predicted. He will rise to his greatest power next year.’
‘Demme, Sir,’ I retorted, ‘if the Anti-Christ has not been predicted every other month since Anno Domini One! How many can there be? If there were as many about as the oracles predict, we’d be knee-deep in ’em. There would be more Anti-Christs on Earth than ordinary folk.’ I found myself grinning at my own jest and I looked about the room. ‘The odds are that seven out of every eight people at this inn are Anti-Christs!’
This set the martials to guffawing but it merely made the young priest bluster. Before he could reply to me, however, a clerkish fellow spoke up from the back. I had seen him slip in a few moments before. He wore the weeds of a bookman and he ran his gloved fingers up and down his beaker with that distant air of private mirth so common to many of his calling – the kind who have much borrowed wisdom but little original wit. ‘Is not the French mob as you describe, Sir? Could you not argue for the congregation of a mass of Anti-Christs as opposed to one? Would that congregation not be more effective than a single individual? Could Robespierre be no more than the crest upon the cockerel, the cockerel comprised in turn of a million peasants (or what have you?)?’
‘Perhaps, Sir, perhaps,’ said I, scenting a tame bore, as it were, wandered in from the barren forest of unearned Learning. But this was not enough to stop him. One could tell how pleased he was with his humour:
‘And might not that cockerel be in reality a cockatrice, his claws the claws of Hellish revenge upon Christ’s followers – his breath the breath of Damnation, to set afire the whole world as a beacon summoning all our souls to judgement?’
This aroused curiosity only in the wretched, blubbering novice, who must come in eagerly with: ‘You ask these questions, Sir, as if the answers are already known to you.’
The older priest turned to his Latin chapbook and his cup of ale, clearly no more willing than myself to maintain this deadly flow.
‘I merely converse, brother,’ said the bookman piously. ‘I offer speculation, never opinion.’
I was determined not to be trapped between this pair, so yawned loudly and spoke crudely, with the impatience of a dedicated revolutionary official. ‘Well, Master Schoolman, the majority here are uninterested in your fancies. Speaking for myself, my feet are planted four-square on this hearth-stone. My brain’s weary and capable of handling only the simplest of facts, connected with my body’s necessities. Imagination brings only bad luck, believe me. Mine at least had a little originality in its day. Yours, Sir, is all on hire from a library. By God, Sir, it gives off a dust which even now irritates my nose! Let me not sneeze, Sir, all over your fine weeds.’
At my snub he retired into his demi-octavo, but I was still threatened by his blushing co-philosopher, the novice priest. I turned on him with the habits of one who has been both a professional fighting man and a professional politician. ‘As for Robespierre,’ said I, remarking to my surprise how the novice became unnaturally coloured, as if blood slowly filled up a parsnip from within, ‘he’s the very model of fallible mankind.’ The novice was taking as a personal matter my slighting of the clerk. ‘I know him well enough,’ I continued. ‘He’s vain. His vanity’s hurt by the world’s refusal to accept his remedies and become immediately Enlightened. And what does a vain man do when insulted, Sir?’
The novice was now red as a boiled-over cooking pot. He hissed a little at me; it seemed all his liquors were evaporating.
‘He lashes out, Sir,’ says I. ‘He seeks to portion blame. He fumes, Sir. He attacks. In the case before us, such is his despotic power, he kills. He kills, Sir. He wars on other nations. Mary’s blood, Sir, but this poor sphere of ours suffers more from the single, frustrated egoist than from any natural – or supernatural – misery. Your own Church’s history, Sir, illustrates my point well enough, eh? We are too frequently in the power of mad children, who rage and stamp and break Kingdoms as they break toys. They order thousands of deaths a day as if they were spoiled brats kicking at their dolls!’ I had overstretched my statement and, foolishly, through my weariness, invited further reply.
‘Those who respect God do not behave thus,’ said our Provençal priest very primly.
I uttered a laugh. ‘The Pope cannot respect God in that case, Sir. I’ll not attack your Faith, father, but all your Church provides for is a superior excuse for the same behaviour as Robespierre’s, sometimes expressed quite as dramatically, and executed with much the same apparent self-control as the dictator’s. Was Richelieu any less guilty than Robespierre? The Huguenots did not think so. And the Cardinal also acted, he said, for the good of France.’
The priest shook his head at this. ‘You have witnessed much distress, my son.’
I bridled. ‘Sir, I am not your son. Your choice of words assumes an authority over me you do not possess.’ My radicalism, I thought to myself, was going to be less easily suppressed than I had supposed.
His miserable wheedling having failed to gain him his expected effect upon me, he became at once offended. ‘Your experience has taught you nothing, Sir.’ He raised himself to his feet and, with a fuss or two at his cassock, herded self and novice off to bed, disappointed in his hopes for a grateful penitent, a comfortable ally, in me.
The two mercenaries were amused and offered to stand me a further flagon. Since they were the only company I found at all congenial I accepted their proffered jugs and warmed my bones with the contents. The youthful soldier, who was called Bamboche, had a pronounced limp, which he used for self-mocking comedy; his merry face was of the kind, as we used to say, to charm its owner out of a noose. He was joining the Prussians to avenge his brother, he informed me. Bamboche major had been executed by the Revolution; he had been a member of Louis’s own Swiss Guard. The older warrior was thick-set, matter-of-fact, a rogue with a cropped head, scars visible on every inch of his exposed skin. He told me that while he found French peasants obnox
ious, their women were attractive enough; so fighting was better for him than staying at home where both women and men were unsightly. He had tried farming up beyond Geneva and had become bored. The work was no different in the effort expended, he said, but it took longer; one’s free hours were far too few and the choice of one’s company severely limited. His name was Olrik van Altdorf. He was a musketeer. He pointed to three swaddled guns in the corner. All good English pieces, he said, from Baker in London and rifled for greater range, though the ‘twist’ was not as exaggerated as in some of Baker’s other guns. You could lose in accuracy what you gained in distance. ‘But they make a good musketeer and his loader the equal to a platoon in battle at long range.’
He was content to dismiss Politics and lecture me on weaponry. I was weary enough to listen with half an ear while his hobby-horse was ridden through half the countries of the world, the quality of their steel and their skills at gunsmithery fully discussed. At length, drunk, I was ready for bed. My two companions readily helped me up a flight or two of stairs to the garret with its row of truckles. Onto these, one by one, we fell, having made only the poorest effort to disrobe. Happily, they were no more fastidious and smelled no worse than I. My dreams were of pursuit, of ancient monsters growling and furious as they sought to break free of the earth’s deepest caverns, of an astonishing sweetness of atmosphere which filled my whole being with happiness, of hellfire and Satan Himself, in a sea-green coat and a perfect cravat, hooking innocents by their pleading mouths and swinging them with busy aplomb into the furnaces. I awoke briefly in a sweat, put my nightmares down to bad company and worse wine, and returned to sleep, whereupon I dreamed I searched through rocky tunnels for the source of that sweetness I had earlier experienced.
In the morning, as we shared a jug of water and a basin, I asked the musketeers, since I must soon pass through that country, what they knew about Bohemia at the present time. They had little to offer. Austria, Herr Olrik informed me, was by all accounts an easy-going master. As a result, Bohemia was effectively self-ruling. ‘If you’re unwelcome in all these empires, Sir,’ he suggested, ‘you should go to Venetia.’ He was adamant in his recommendation. The Republic of Venice, though somewhat severe in certain of her laws, would not penalise a properly contrite ex-revolutionist. With a smile of gratitude I told him that my Italian was poor and my Latin not much better. I was anxious that they should not learn my true destination, lest they inadvertently release the information to my pursuers. ‘I have a mind to make myself rich,’ I told Olrik. ‘I’ve been a poor fighting man all my life. I had thought to set up business in Prague where, in the main, persons of consequence speak my native German.’
The City in the Autumn Stars Page 5