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.