La Vendee by Anthony Trollope

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JACQUES CHAPEAU,

PERRUQUIER.

Madame Chapeau was now disturbed in her unreasonable grumbling by a
knock at the closed door, and on her opening it, an officer in undress
uniform, about fifty years of age, politely greeted her, and asked her
if that was not the house of M. Jacques Chapeau. From his language, the
visitor might at first have been taken for a Frenchman; his dress,
however, plainly told that he belonged to the English army.

"Yes, Monsieur, this is the humble shop of Chapeau, perruquier," said
our old friend, the elder Annot, who, in spite of her feelings of
hostility to the English, was somewhat mollified by the politeness and
handsome figure of her visitor: she then informed him that Chapeau was
not at home; that she expected him in immediately; and that his
assistant, who was, in some respects, almost as talented as his master,
was below, and would wait upon Monsieur immediately; and she rang a
little bell, which was quickly responded to by some one ascending from
a lower region.

The visitor informed Madame Chapeau that he had not called at present
as a customer, but that he had taken the liberty to intrude himself upon
her for the purpose of learning some facts of which, he was informed,
her husband could speak with more accuracy than any other person in
Paris.

"It is respecting the battles of La Vendee," said he, "that I wish to
speak to him. I believe that he saw more of them than any person now
alive."

Madame Chapeau was considering within herself whether there would be any
imprudence in confessing to the English officer the important part her
husband had played in La Vendee, when the officer's question was
answered by another person, whose head and shoulders now dimly appeared
upon the scene.

These were the head and shoulders of Chapeau's assistant, who had been
summoned from his own region by the sound of his mistress's bell; the
stairs from this subterraneous recess did not open on to any passage,
but ascended at once abruptly into the shop, so that the assistant, when
called on, found himself able to answer, and to make even a personal
appearance, as far as his head was concerned, without troubling himself
to mount the three or four last stairs. From this spot he was in the
habit of holding long conversations with his master and mistress; and
now perceiving that neither the head nor chin of the strange gentleman
were to be submitted to his skill, he arrested his steps, and astonished
the visitor by a voice which seemed to come out of the earth.

Indeed he did, Monsieur, more than any one now alive--more even than
myself, and that is saying a great deal. Jacques Chapeau was an officer
high in command through the whole Vendean war; and I, even I, humble as
I am now, I also was thought not unworthy to lead brave men into battle.
I, Monsieur, am Auguste Plume; and though now merely a perruquier's poor
assistant, I was once the officer second in command in the army of La
Petite Vendee.

The gentleman turned round and gazed at the singular apparition, which
the obscurity of the shop only just permitted him to distinguish.
Auguste Flume was now above sixty years old, and completely bald; his
face was thin, lanternjawed, and cadaverous; and his eyes, which were
weak with age, were red and bleared; still he had not that ghastly, sick
appearance, which want both of food and rest had given him in the
glorious days to which he alluded: after the struggle in La Vendee, he
had lived for some time a wretched life, more like that of a beast than
a man; hiding in woods, living on roots, and hunting with the appetite
of a tiger after the blood of stray republicans; his wife and children
had perished in Carrier's noyades in the Loire; he himself had existed
through two years of continued suffering, with a tenacity of life which
almost reached to a miracle. He had joined the Chouans, and had taken
an active part in the fiercest of their fierce acts of vengeance. But
he had lived through it all; and now, in his old age, he had plenty and
comfort; yet he looked back with a fond regret to the days of his
imagined glory and power; he spoke with continual rapture of his own
brave achievements, and regretted that he had not been allowed to
continue a life, the miseries of which it would be impossible to
exaggerate.

"Bah, Auguste," said his mistress; "the gentleman does not care to hear
of your La Petite Vendee; it is of M. Henri--that is, of the young
Marquis de Larochejaquelin, and of Madame and of Mademoiselle Agatha,
and of M. de Lescure, and of Charette, and the Prince de Talmont, that
Monsieur will want to hear!"

The stranger was in the act of explaining that the hostess was right in
her surmise, when the master of the house himself returned. In spite of
what he had suffered, years had sat lightly on Chapeau, as they had done
on his wife. He was now a fat, good-humoured, middle-aged, comfortable
man, who made the most, in his trade, of the eclat which attended him,
as having been the faithful servant of the most popular among the
Vendean leaders. He never wearied his customers with long tales of his
own gallantry; he even had the unusual tact to be able to sink himself,
in speaking, as he was often invited to do, of the civil war: he was
known to have been brave, faithful, and loyal, and he was accordingly
very popular among the royalists of Paris, who generally preferred his
scissors and razors to those of any other artist in the city.

The officer, who was now seated in the shop, his wife and daughter, and
his assistant, began at once to explain to him the service which he was
required to perform; and Chapeau, bowing low to the compliments which
the stranger paid to him, declared with his accustomed mixture of
politeness and frank good nature, that he would be happy to tell
anything that he knew.

The gentleman explained, that in his early years he had known de Lescure
intimately; that he had met Larochejaquelin in Paris, and that he had
made one of a party of Englishmen, who had done their best to send arms,
money, and men from his own country into La Vendee. Chapeau was too well
bred to allude to the disappointment which they had all so keenly felt,
from the want of that very aid; he merely bowed again, and said that he
would tell Monsieur all he knew.

And so he did. From the time when Henri Larochejaquelin left Laval for
Granville, nothing prospered with the Vendeans; the army, as it was
agreed, had left that place for Granville, and their first misfortune
had been the death of de Lescure.

"He died in Laval?" asked the officer.

"No," said Chapeau. "When the moment for starting came, he insisted on
being carried with the army; he followed us in a carriage, but the
jolting of the road was too much for him--the journey killed him. He
died at Fougeres, on the third day after we left Laval."

"And Madame?" asked the stranger.

"It is impossible for me now," said Chapeau, "to tell you all the
dangers through which she passed, all the disguises which she had to
use, and the strange adventures which for a long time threatened almost
daily to throw her in the hands of those who would have been delighted
to murder her; but of course you know that she escaped at last."

"I am told that she still lives in Poitou, and I think I heard that,
some years after M. de Lescure's death, she married M. Louis
Larochejaquelin."

"She did so--the younger brother of my own dear lord. He was a boy in
England during our hot work in La Vendee."

"Yes; and he served in an English regiment."

"So I had heard, Monsieur; but you know, don't you, that he also has now
fallen."

"Indeed no!--for years and years I have heard nothing of the family."

"It was only two months since: he fell last May at the head of the
Vendeans, leading them against the troops which the Emperor sent down
there. The Vendeans could not endure the thoughts of the Emperor's
return from Elba. M. Louis was the first to lift his sword, and Madame
is, a second time, a widow. Poor lady, none have suffered as she has
done!" He then paused a while in his narrative, but as the stranger did
not speak, he continued: "but of M. Henri, of course, Monsieur, you
heard the fate of our dear General?"

"I only know that he perished, as did so many hundred others, who were
also so true and brave."

"I will tell you then," said Chapeau, "for I was by him when he died;
he fell, when he was shot, close at my feet: he never spoke one word,
or gave one groan, but his eyes, as they closed for the last time,
looked up into the face of one--one who, at any rate, loved him very
well," and Chapeau took a handkerchief from a little pocket in his
wife's apron, and applied it to his eyes.

"Yes," he continued," when the bullet struck him, I was as near to him
as I am to her," and he put his hand to his wife's head. "It might have
been me as well as him, only for the chance. I'll tell you how the
manner of it was. You know bow we all strove to cross back into La
Vendee, first at Angers and afterwards at Ancenis; and how M. Henri got
divided from the army at Ancenis. Well, after that, the Vendean army was
no more; the army was gone, it had melted away; the most of those who
were still alive were left in Brittany, and they joined the Chouans.
Here is my friend, Auguste, he was one of them."

"Indeed I was, Monsieur, for a year and eight months."

"Never mind now, Auguste, you can tell the gentleman by and bye; but,
as I was saying, M. Henri was left all but alone on the southern bank
of the river--there were, perhaps, twenty with him altogether--not more;
and there were as many hundreds hunting those twenty from day to day."

"And you were one of them, Chapeau?"

"I was, Monsieur. My wife here remained with her father in Laval; he was
a crafty man, and he made the blues believe he was a republican; but,
bless you, he was as true a royalist all the time as I was. Well, there
we were, hunted, like wolves, from one forest to another, till about the
middle of winter, we fixed ourselves for a while in the wood of Vesins,
about three leagues to the east of Cholet, a little to the south of the
great road from Saumur. From this place M. Henri harassed them most
effectually; about fifty of the old Vendeans had joined him, and with
these he stopped their provisions, interrupted their posts, and on one
occasion, succeeded in getting the despatches from Paris to the
republican General. We. were at this work for about six weeks; and he,
as he always did, exposed himself to every possible danger. One morning
we came upon two republican grenadiers; there were M. Henri, two others
and myself there, and we wanted immediately to fire upon them; but M.
Henri would not have it so; he said that he would save them, and rushed
forward to bid them lay down their arms; as he did so, the foremost of
them fired, and M. Henri fell dead without a groan."

"And the two men--did they escape?"

"No, neither of them," said Chapeau; and for a moment, a gleam of savage
satisfaction flashed across his face; "the man who fired the shot had
not one minute spared him for his triumph; I had followed close upon my
master, and I avenged him."

"And where was his young wife all this time?"

"She was with Madame de Lescure, in Brittany; and so was Mademoiselle
Agatha; they were living disguised almost as peasants, at an old chateau
called Dreneuf; after that they all escaped to Spain; they are both
still alive, and now in Poitou; and I am told, that though they have not
chosen absolutely to seclude themselves, they both pass the same holy
life, as though they were within the walls of a convent."

It was long before Chapeau discontinued his narrative, but it is
unnecessary for us to follow farther in the sad details which he had to
give of the loss of the brave Vendean leaders. The Prince de Talinont,
Charette, Stofflet, Marigny, all of them fell: "And yet," said Chapeau,
with a boast, which evidently gave him intense satisfaction, "La Vendee
was never conquered. Neither the fear of the Convention, nor the arms
of the Directory, nor the strength of the Consul, nor the flattery of
the Emperor could conquer La Vendee, or put down the passionate longing
for the return of the royal family, which has always burnt in the bosom
of the people. Revolt has never been put down in La Vendee, since
Cathelineau commenced the war in St. Florent. The people would serve
neither the republic nor the empire; the noblesse would not visit the
court; their sons have refused commissions in the army, and their
daughters have disdained to accept the hands of any, who had forgotten
their allegiance to the throne. Through more than twenty years of
suffering and bloodshed, La Vendee has been true to its colour, and now
it will receive its reward."

Chapeau himself, however, more fortunate, though not less faithful, than
his compatriots, had not been obliged to wait twenty years for his
reward; he owned, with something like a feeling of disgrace, that he had
been carrying on his business in Paris, for the last fifteen years, with
considerable success and comfort to himself; and he frankly confessed,
that he had by practice inured himself to the disagreeable task of
shaving, cutting and curling beards and heads, which were devoted to the
empire; "but then, Monsieur," said he apologizing for his conduct,
"there was a great difference you know between them and republicans."

Five-and-thirty years have now passed, since Chapeau was talking, and
the Vendeans triumphed in the restoration of Louis XVIII to the throne
of his ancestors. That throne has been again overturned; and, another
dynasty having intervened, France is again a Republic.

How long will it be before some second La Vendee shall successfully, but
bloodlessly, struggle for another re-establishment of the monarchy?
Surely before the expiration of half a century since the return of
Louis, France will congratulate herself on another restoration.

THE END

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