The Ingoldsby Legends :: :: University of Virginia Library

Francois Xavier Auguste was a gay Mousquetaire,
The Pride of the Camp, the delight of the Fair:
He'd a mien so distingué and so débonnaire,
And shrugg'd with a grace so recherché and rare,
And he twirl'd his moustache with so charming an air,
—His moustaches I should say, because he'd a pair,—
And, in short, show'd so much of the true scavoir faire,
All the ladies in Paris were wont to declare,
That could any one draw Them from Dian's strict law,
Into what Mrs. Ramsbottom calls a “Fox Paw,”
It would be Francois Xavier Auguste de St. Foix.

Now, I'm sorry to say, At that time of day,
The Court of Versailles was a little too gay;
The Courtiers were all much addicted to Play,
To Bourdeaux, Chambertin, Frontignac, St. Peray,
Lafitte, Chateau Margaux, And Sillery (a cargo
On which John Bull sensibly (?) lays an embargo),
While Louis Quatorze Kept about him, in scores,
What the Noblesse, in courtesy, term'd his “Jane Shores,”
—They were call'd by a much coarser name out of doors.

This, we all must admit, in A King's not befitting!
For such courses, when followed by persons of quality,
Are apt to detract on the score of morality.

Francois Xavier Auguste acted much like the rest of them.
Dress'd, drank, and fought, and chassée'd with the best of them;
Took his œil de perdrix Till he scarcely could see,
He would then sally out in the streets for a “spree;”
His rapier he'd draw, Pink a Bourgeois,
(A word which the English translate “Johnny Raw,”)
For your thorough French Courtier, whenever the fit he's in,
Thinks it prime fun to astonish a citizen;
And perhaps it's no wonder that this kind of scrapes,
In a nation which Voltaire, in one of his japes
Defines “an amalgam of Tigers and Apes,”
Should be merely considered as “Little Escapes.”
But I am sorry to add, Things are almost as bad
A great deal nearer home, and that similar pranks
Amongst young men who move in the very first ranks,
Are by no means confined to the land of the Franks.

Be this as it will, In the general, still,
Though blame him we must, It is really but just
To our lively young friend, Francois Xavier Auguste,
To say, that howe'er Well known his faults were,
At his Bacchanal parties he always drank fair,
And, when gambling his worst, always play'd on the square
So that, being much more of pigeon than rook, he
Lost large sums at faro (a game like “Blind Hookey”),
And continued to lose, And to give I O U's,
Till he lost e'en the credit he had with the Jews;
And, a parallel if I may venture to draw
Between Francois Xavier Auguste de St. Foix,
And his namesake, a still more distinguished Francois,
Who wrote to his “sœur” From Pavia, “Mon Cœur,

I have lost all I had in the world fors l'honneur.”
So St. Foix might have wrote No dissimilar note,
“Vive la bagatelle! toujours gai—idem semper—
I've lost all I had in the world but—my temper!”

From the very beginning, Indeed of his sinning,
His air was so cheerful, his manners so winning,
That once he prevailed—or his friends coin the tale for him—
On the bailiff who “nabbed” him, himself to “go bail” for him.
Well—we know in these cases
Your “Crabs” and “Deuce Aces”
Are wont to promote frequent changes of places;
Town doctors, indeed, are most apt to declare
That there's nothing so good as the pure “country air,”
Whenever exhaustion of person, or purse, in
An invalid cramps him, and sets him a cursing;
A habit, I'm very much grieved at divulging,
Francois Xavier Auguste was too prone to indulge in.
But what could be done? It's clear as the sun,
That, though nothing's more easy than say “Cut and run!”
Yet a Guardsman can't live without some sort of fun—
E'en I or you, If we'd nothing to do,
Should soon find ourselves looking remarkably blue.
And, since no one denies What's so plain to all eyes,
It won't, I am sure, create any surprise,
That reflections like these half reduced to despair
Francois Xavier Auguste, the gay Black Mousquetaire.

Patience par force! He considered, of course,
But in vain—he could hit on no sort of resource—
Love?—Liquor?—Law?—Loo
They would each of them do,
There's excitement enough in all four, but in none he
Could hope to get on sans l'argent—i.e. money.

Love?—no;—ladies like little cadeaux from a suitor.
Liquor?—no,—that won't do, when reduced to “the Pewter.”—
Then Law?—'tis the same; It's a very fine game,
But the fees and delays of “the Courts” are a shame,
As Lord Brougham says himself—who's a very great name,
Though the Times made it clear he was perfectly lost in his
Classic attempt at translating Demosthenes,
And don't know his “particles.”— Who wrote the articles,
Showing his Greek up so, is not known very well;
Many thought Barnes, others Mitchell—some Merivale;
But it's scarce worth debate, Because from the date
Of my tale one conclusion we safely may draw,
Viz.: 'twas not Francois Xavier Auguste de St. Foix!
Loo?—No; that he had tried; 'Twas, in fact, his weak side,
But required more than any a purse well supplied.
“Love?—Liquor?—Law?—Loo? No! 'tis all the same story.
Stay! I have it—Ma foi! (that's “Odds Bobs!”) there is Glory!

Away with dull care! Vive le Roi! Vive la Guerre!
Peste! I'd almost forgot I'm a Black Mousquetaire!
When a man is like me, Sans six sous, sans souci,
A bankrupt in purse, And in character worse,
With a shocking bad hat, and his credit at zero,
What on earth can he hope to become,—but a Hero?
What a famous thought this is! I'll go as Ulysses
Of old did—like him I'll see manners and know countries;
Cut Paris,—and gaming,—and throats in the Low Countries,”

So said, and so done—he arranged his affairs,
And was off like a shot to his Black Mousquetaires.

Now it happen'd just then That Field-Marshal Turenne
Was a good deal in want of “some active young men,”
To fill up the gaps Which through sundry mishaps,
Had been made in his ranks by a certain “Great Condé,”
A General unrivall'd—at least in his own day—

Whose valour was such, That he did not care much
If he fought with the French,—or the Spaniards,—or Dutch,—
A fact which has stamped him a rather “Cool hand,”
Being nearly related to Louis le Grand.
It had been all the same had that King been his brother;
He fought sometimes with one, and sometimes with another;
For war, so exciting, He took such delight in,
He did not care whom he fought, so he was fighting.
And, as I've just said, had amused himself then
By tiokling the tail of Field-Marshal Turenne;
Since which, the Field-Marshal's most pressing concern
Was to tickle some other Chief's tail in his turn.
What a fine thing a battle is !—not one of those
Which one saw at the late Mr. Andrew Ducrow's,
Where a dozen of scene-shifters, drawn up in rows,
Would a dozen more scene-shifters boldly oppose,
Taking great care their blows Did not injure their foes,
And alike, save in colour and cut of their clothes,
Which were varied, to give more effect to “Tableaux,”
While Stickney the Great Flung the gauntlet to Fate,
And made us all tremble, so gallantly did he come
On to encounter bold General Widdicombe—
But a real good fight, like Pultowa, or Lützen,
(Which Gustavus the Great ended all his disputes in,)
Or that which Suwarrow engaged without boots in,
Or Dettingen, Fontenoy, Blenheim, or Minden,
Or the one Mr. Campbell describes, Hohenlinden,
Where “the sun was low,” The ground all over snow,
And dark as mid-winter the swift Iser's flow,—
Till its colour was altered by General Moreau:
While the big drum was heard in the dead of the night,
Which rattled the Bard out of bed in a fright,
And he ran up the steeple to look at the fight,
'Twas in just such another one, (Names only bother one—
Dutch ones indeed are sufficient to smother one—)
In the Netherlands somewhere—I cannot say where—
Suffice it that there La Fortune de guerre
Gave a cast of her calling to our Mousquetaire.

One fine morning, in short, Francois Xavier Auguste,
After making some scores of his foes “bite the dust,”
Got a mouthful himself of the very same crust:
And though, as the Bard says, “No law is more just
Than for Necis artifices,”—so they call'd fiery
Soldados at Rome,—“arte suâ perire,”
Yet Fate did not draw This poetical law
To its fullest extent in the case of St. Foix.
His Good Genius most probably found out some flaw,
And diverted the shot From some deadlier spot
To a bone which, I think, to the best of my memory,'s
Call'd by Professional men the “os femoris;”
And the ball being one of those named from its shape,
And some fancied resemblance it bears to the grape,
St. Foix went down, With a groan and a frown,
And a hole in his small-clothes the size of a crown.—
—Stagger'd a bit By this “palpable hit,”
He turn'd on his face, and went off in a fit.

Yes! a Battle's a very fine thing while you're fighting
These same Ups-and-Downs are so very exciting.

But a sombre sight is a Battle-field
To the sad survivor's sorrowing eye,
Where those, who scorn'd to fly or yield,
In one promiscuous carnage lie;
When the cannon's roar Is heard no more,
And the thick dun smoke has roll'd away,
And the victor comes for a last survey
Of the well-fought field of yesterday!

No triumphs flush that haughty brow,—
No proud exulting look is there,—
His eagle glance is humbled now,
As, earthward bent, in anxious care
It seeks the form whose stalwart pride
But yester-morn was by his side!

And there it lies!—on yonder bank
Of corses, which themselves had breath

But yester-morn—now cold and dank,
With other dews than those of death!
Powerless as it had ne'er been born
The hand that clasp'd his—yester-morn!

And there are widows wand'ring there,
That roam the blood besprinkled plain,
And listen in their dumb despair
For sounds they ne'er may hear again!
One word, however faint and low,—
Ay, e'en a groan,—were music now!

And this is Glory!—Fame!—

But, pshaw!
Miss Muse, you're growing sentimental;
Besides, such things we never saw;
In fact they're merely Continental.
And then your Ladyship forgets
Some widows came for epaulettes.

So go back to your canter; for one, I declare,
Is now fumbling about our capsized Mousquetaire,
A beetle-browed hag, With a knife and a bag,
And an old tatter'd bonnet which, thrown back, discloses
The ginger complexion, and one of those noses
Peculiar to females named Levy and Moses,
Such as nervous folks still, when they come in their way, shun,
Old vixen-faced tramps of the Hebrew persuasion.

You remember, I trust, Francois Xavier Auguste,
Had uncommon fine limbs, and a very fine bust.
Now there's something—I cannot tell what it may be—
About good-looking gentlemen turn'd twenty-three,
Above all when laid up with a wound in the knee,
Which affects female hearts in no common degree,
With emotions in which many feelings combine,
Very easy to fancy, though hard to define;
Ugly or pretty Stupid or witty,
Young or old, they experience in country or city,
What's clearly not Love—yet it's warmer than Pity—

And some such a feeling, no doubt, 'tis that stays
The hand you may see that old Jezebel raise,
Arm'd with the blade, So oft used in her trade
The horrible calling e'en now she is plying,
Despoiling the dead, and despatching the dying!
For these “nimble Conveyancers,” after such battles,
Regarding as treasure trove all goods and chattels,
Think nought, in “perusing and settling” the titles,
So safe as six inches of steel in the vitals.

Now don't make a joke of That feeling I spoke of;
For, as sure as you're born, that same feeling,—whate'er
It may be, saves the life of the young Mousquetaire!—
The knife, that was levell'd erewhile at his throat,
Is employ'd now in ripping the lace from his coat,
And from what, I suppose, I must call his culotte;
And his pockets, no doubt, Being turned inside out,
That his mouchoir and gloves may be put “up the spout,
(For of coin, you may well conceive, all she can do
Fails to ferret out even a single écu;)
As a muscular Giant would handle an elf,
The virago at last lifts the soldier himself,
And, like a She-Samson, at length lays him down
In a hospital form'd in the neighbouring town!
I am not very sure, But I think 'twas Namur;
And there she now leaves him, expecting a cure.

Mrs. Ingoldsby, who is read in Robertson, informs me that this is a mistake: that the lady to whom this memorable billet was delivered by the hands of Pennalosa, was the unfortunate monarch's mamma, and not his sister. I would gladly rectify the error, but then,—what am I to do for a rhyme?—On the whole, I fear I must content myself, like Talleyrand, with admitting that “it is worse than a fault—it's a blunder!” for which enormity,—as honest old Pepys says when he records having kissed his cookmaid,—“I humbly beg pardon of Heaven, and Mrs. Ingoldsby!”

Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes. Who viewed men's manners, Londons, Yorks, and Derbys.