1.F.3.5. 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. 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 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.