University of Virginia Library

4. COQ-À-L' ÂNE.

4. COQ-À-L' ÂNE.

A rainy and gloomy winter was just drawing
to its close, when I left Paris for the South
of France. We started at sunrise; and as we
passed along the solitary streets of the vast
and silent metropolis, drowsily one by one
its clanging horologes chimed the hour of six.
Beyond the city gates the wide landscape was
covered with a silvery net-work of frost; a
wreath of vapor overhung the windings of the
Seine; and every twig and shrub, with its
sheath of crystal, flashed in the level rays of
the rising sun. The sharp frosty air seemed

to quicken the sluggish blood of the old postillion
and his horses, a fresh team stood ready in
harness at each stage, and notwithstanding the
slippery pavement of the causeway, the long
and tedious climbing the hill-side upwards,
and the equally long and tedious descent with
chained wheels and the drag,—just after night-fall
the lumbering vehicle of Vincent Caillard
stopped at the gateway of the Three Emperors
in the famous city of Orleans.

I cannot pride myself much upon being a
good travelling companion, for the rocking of
a coach always lulls me into forgetfulness of
the present, and no sooner does the hollow
monotonous rumbling of the wheels reach my
ear, than like my friend Nick Bottom, “I
have an exposition of sleep come upon me.” It
is not, however, the deep, sonorous slumber of
a laborer, “stuffed with distressful bread;” but
a kind of day-dream, wherein the creations of
fancy seem realities, and the real world, which
swims dizzily before the half-shut, drowsy eye,
becomes mingled with the imaginary world
within. This is doubtless a very great failing
in a traveller; and I confess with all humility,

that at times the line of demarkation between
truth and fiction is rendered thereby so indefinite
and indistinct, that I cannot always determine
with unerring certainty, whether an event
really happened to me, or whether I only
dreamed it.

On this account I shall not attempt a detailed
description of my journey from Paris to
Bordeaux. I was travelling like a bird of passage;
and five weary days and four weary
nights I was on the way. The diligence stopped
only to change horses, and for the travellers
to take their meals; and by night I slept
with my head under my wing in a snug corner
of the coach.

Strange as it may appear to some of my
readers, this night-travelling is at times far
from being disagreeable. Nay, if the country
is flat and uninteresting, and you are favored
with a moon, it may be very pleasant. As the
night advances the conversation around you
gradually dies away, and is imperceptibly given
up to some garrulous traveller, who finds himself
belated in the midst of a long story, and
when at length he puts out his feelers in the

form of a question, discovers by the silence
around him, that the breathless attention of his
audience is owing to their being asleep. All
is now silent. You let down the window of
the carriage, and the fresh night air cools your
flushed and burning cheek. The landscape,
though in reality dull and uninteresting, seems
beautiful as it floats by in the soft moonshine.
Every ruined hovel is changed by the magic of
night to a trim cottage, every straggling and
dilapidated hamlet becomes as beautiful as
those we read of in poetry and romance.
Over the lowland hangs a silver mist; over the
hills peep the twinkling stars. The keen night
air is a spur to the postillion and his horses.
In the words of the old German ballad;
Anon you stop at the relay. The drowsy hostler
crawls out of the stable yard; a few gruff
words and strange oaths pass between him and
the postillion,—then there is a coarse joke in
patois, of which you understand the ribaldry
only, and which is followed by a husky laugh, a
sound between a hiss and a growl;—and then
you are off again in a crack. Occasionally a
way-traveller is uncaged, and a new-comer
takes the vacant perch at your elbow. Meanwhile
your busy fancy speculates upon all these
things, and you fall asleep amid its thousand
vagaries. Soon you wake again, and snuff the
morning air. It was but a moment, and yet the
night is gone. The gray of twilight steals into
the window and gives a ghastly look to the
countenances of the sleeping group around you.
One sits bolt upright in a corner, offending none,
and stiff and motionless as an Egyptian mummy;
another sits equally straight and immovable,
but snores like a priest; the head of a
third is dangling over his shoulder, and the
tassel of his nightcap tickles his neighbor's ear;
a fourth has lost his hat,—his wig is awry, and
his under lip hangs lolling about like an idiot's.
The whole scene is a living caricature of man,
presenting human nature in some of the grotesque
attitudes she assumes, when that pragmatical
school-master, propriety, has fallen
asleep in his chair, and the unruly members of
his charge are freed from the thraldom of the
rod.

On leaving Orleans, instead of following
the great western mail-route through Tours,
Poitiers, and Angoulême, and thence on to
Bordeaux, I struck across the centre provinces
of the Indre, the Haute-Vienne, and the Dordogne,
passing through the provincial capitals
of Châteauroux, Limoges, and Périgueux.
South of the Loire the country assumes a more
mountainous aspect, and the landscape is broken
by long sweeping hills, and fertile valleys.
Many a fair scene invites the traveller's foot to
pause; and his eye roves with delight over the
picturesque landscape of the valley of the
Creuse, and the beautiful highland scenery near
Périgueux. There are also many objects of
art and antiquity, which arrest his attention.
Argenton boasts its Roman amphitheatre, and
the ruins of an old castle built by king Pepin;
at Chalus the tower, beneath which Richard
Cœur-de-Lion was slain, is still pointed

out to the curious traveller, and Périgueux is
full of crumbling monuments of the Middle
Ages.

Scenes like these, and the constant chatter
of my fellow-travellers, served to enliven the
tedium of a long and fatiguing journey. The
French are preeminently a talking people; and
every new object afforded a topic for light and
animated discussion. The affairs of church
and State were, however, the themes oftenest
touched upon. The Law Project for the suppression
of the liberty of the press was then under
discussion in the Chamber of Peers, and
excited the most lively interest through the
whole kingdom. Of course it was a subject
not likely to be forgotten in the stage-coach.

“Ah! mon Dieu!” said a brisk little man,
with snow-white hair, and a blazing red face, at
the same time drawing up his shoulders to a level
with his ears, “The ministry are determined
to carry their point at all events. They mean to
break down the liberty of the press, cost what
it will.”

“If they succeed,” added the person who
sat opposite, “we may thank the Jesuits for it.

It is all their work. They rule the mind of
our imbecile monarch, and it is their miserable
policy to keep the people in darkness.”

“No doubt of that,” rejoined the first speaker,
“Why, no longer ago, than yesterday I
read in the Figaro, that a printer had been
prosecuted for publishing the moral lessons of
the Evangelists without the miracles.”

“Is it possible!” said I. “And are the people
so stupid as thus patiently to offer their
shoulders to the pack-saddle?”

“Most certainly not!—We shall have another
revolution.”

“If history speaks true, you have had revolutions
enough, during the last century or two,
to satisfy the most mercurial nation on earth.
You have hardly been quiet a moment since
the day of the Baracades and the memorable
war of the pots-de-chambre in the times of the
Grand Condé.”

“You are pleased to speak lightly of our
revolutions, Sir,” rejoined the politician, growing
warm. “You must, however, confess that
each successive one has brought us nearer to
our object. Old institutions, whose foundations
lie deep in the prejudices of a great nation, are

not to be toppled down by the springing of a
single mine. You must confess, too, that our
national character is much improved since the
days you speak of. The youth of the present
century are not so frivolous as those of the last.
They have no longer that unbounded levity
and light-heartedness so generally ascribed to
them. From this circumstance we have every
thing to hope. Our revolutions, likewise, must
necessarily change their character, and secure
to us more solid advantages than heretofore.”

“Luck makes pluck, as the Germans say.
You go on bravely; but it gives me pain to
see religion and the church so disregarded.”

“Superstition and the church, you mean,
Sir;” said the gray-headed man. “Why, Sir,
the church is nothing now-a-days, but a tumble-down,
dilapidated tower, for rooks, and
daws, and such silly birds to build their nests
in!”

It was now very evident that I had unearthed
a radical; and there is no knowing when his
harangue would have ended had not his voice
been drowned by the noise of the wheels, as we
entered the paved street of the city of Limoges.

A breakfast of boiled capon stuffed with
truffles, and accompanied by a pâté de Périgueux,
a dish well known to French gourmands,
restored us all to good humor. While
we were at breakfast a personage stalked into
the room, whose strange appearance arrested
my attention, and gave subject for future conversation
to our party. He was a tall, thin
figure, armed with a long whip, brass spurs,
and black whiskers. He wore a bell-crowned
varnished hat, a blue frock-coat with
standing collar, a red waistcoat, a pair of yellow
leather breeches, and boots, that reached to
the knees. I at first took him for a postillion,
or a private courier; but, upon inquiry, I found
that he was only the son of a Notary Public,
and that he dressed in this strange fashion
—to please his own fancy.

As soon as we were comfortably seated in
the diligence, I made some remark on the singular
costume of the personage, whom I had
just seen at the tavern.

“These things are so common with us,”
said the politician, “that we hardly notice
them.”

“What you want in liberty of speech, then,
you make up in liberty of dress.”

“Yes; in this, at least, we are a free people.”

“I had not been long in France, before I
discovered, that a man may dress as he pleases,
without being stared at. The most opposite
styles of dress seem to be in vogue at the same
moment. No strange garment, nor desperate
hat excites either ridicule or surprise. French
fashions are known and imitated all the world
over.”

“Very true indeed,” said a little man in
goslin green. “We give fashions to all other
nations.”

“Fashions!” said the politician with a
kind of growl, “Fashions!—Yes, Sir, and
some of us are simple enough to boast of it, as
if we were a nation of tailors.”

Here the little man in goslin green pulled
up the horns of his cotton dicky.

“I recollect,” said I, “that your Madame
de Pompadour in one of her letters says something
to this effect; We furnish our enemies
with hair-dressers, ribbons and fashions;
and they furnish us with laws.”

“That is not the only silly thing she said
in her life time. Ah! Sir, these Pompadours,
and Maintenons, and Montespans were the authors
of much woe to France. Their follies
and extravagancies exhausted the public treasury,
and made the nation poor. They built
palaces, and covered themselves with jewels,
and ate from golden plate, whilst the people
who toiled for them, had hardly a crust to keep
their own children from starvation! And yet
they preach to us the divine right of Kings!”

My radical had got upon his high horse
again; and I know not whither it would have
carried him, had not a thin man with a black,
seedy coat, who sat at his elbow, at that moment
crossed his path, by one of those abrupt and
sudden transitions, which leave you aghast at
the strange association of ideas in the speaker's
mind.

“Apropos de bottes!” exclaimed he.
“Speaking of boots, and Notaries Public, and
such matters,—excuse me for interrupting you,
Sir—a little story has just popped into my head
which may amuse the company; and as I am
not very fond of political discussions,—no offence,

Sir,—I will tell it, for the sake of changing
the conversation.”

Whereupon, without farther preamble or
apology, he proceeded to tell his story in as
nearly as may be the following words.

You must know, Gentlemen, that there
lived some years ago, in the city of Périgueux,
an honest Notary Public, the descendant of a
very ancient and broken-down family, and the
occupant of one of those old, weather-beaten
tenements, which remind you of the times of
your great-grandfather. He was a man of
an unoffending, sheepish disposition; the father
of a family, though not the head of it; for
in that family “the hen over-crowed the cock,”
and the neighbors, when they spake of the Notary,
shrugged their shoulders, and exclaimed,
“Poor fellow! his spurs want sharpening.”
In fine, you understand me, Gentlemen; he
was a hen-pecked man.

Well—finding no peace at home, he sought
it elsewhere, as was very natural for him to do;
and at length discovered a place of rest, far beyond

the cares and clamors of domestic life.
This was a little café estaminet, a short way
out of the city, whither he repaired every evening,
to smoke his pipe, drink sugar-water, and
play his favorite game of domino. There
he met the boon companions he most loved;
heard all the floating chit-chat of the day;
laughed when he was in merry mood; found
consolation when he was sad; and at all times
gave vent to his opinions without fear of being
snubbed short by a flat contradiction.

Now, the Notary's bosom friend, was a
dealer in claret and cognac, who lived about a
league from the city, and always passed his
evenings at the estaminet. He was a gross
corpulent fellow, raised from a full-blooded
Gascon breed, and sired by a comic actor of
some reputation in his way. He was remarkable
for nothing but his good humor, his love of
cards, and a strong propensity to test the quality
of his own liquors by comparing them with
those sold at other places.

As evil communications corrupt good manners,
the bad practices of the wine-dealer won
insensibly upon the worthy Notary; and before

he was aware of it, he found himself weaned
from domino and sugar-water, and addicted
to piquet and spiced wine. Indeed it not unfrequently
happened, that after a long session
at the estaminet, the two friends grew so urbane,
that they would waste a full half-hour at
the door in friendly dispute, which should conduct
the other home.

Though this course of life agreed well
enough with the sluggish, phlegmatic temperament
of the wine-dealer, it soon began to play
the very deuce with the more sensitive organization
of the Notary, and finally put his nervous
system completely out of tune. He lost
his appetite, became gaunt and haggard, and
could get no sleep. Legions of blue-devils
haunted him by day, and by night strange
faces peeped through his bed curtains, and
the night-mare snorted in his ear. The
worse he grew, the more he smoked and tippled;
and the more he smoked and tippled—
why, as a matter of course, the worse he grew.
His wife alternately stormed—remonstrated—
entreated; but all in vain. She made the
house too hot for him—he retreated to the tavern;

she broke his long-stemmed pipes upon
the andirons—he substituted a short-stemmed
one, which, for safe keeping, he carried in his
waistcoat pocket.

Thus the unhappy Notary ran gradually
down at the heel. What with his bad habits
and his domestic grievances, he became completely
hipped. He imagined that he was going
to die; and suffered in quick succession
all the diseases, that ever beset mortal man.
Every shooting pain was an alarming symptom;
—every uneasy feeling after dinner, a sure
prognostic of some mortal disease. In vain
did his friends endeavor to reason, and then to
laugh him out of his strange whims; for when
did ever jest or reason cure a sick imagination?
His only answer was, “Do let me alone, I
know better than you, what ails me.”

Well, Gentlemen; things were in this state,
when one afternoon in December, as he sat
moping in his office, wrapped in an over-coat,
with a cap on his head, and his feet thrust into
a pair of furred slippers, a cabriolet stopped at
the door, and a loud knocking without aroused
him from his gloomy revery. It was a message

from his friend the wine-dealer, who had
been suddenly attacked, the night before, with
a violent fever, and growing worse and worse,
had now sent in the greatest haste for the Notary
to draw up his last will and testament.
The case was urgent, and admitted neither excuse
nor delay; and the Notary, tying a handkerchief
round his face, and buttoning up to
the chin, jumped into the cabriolet, and suffered
himself, thought not without some dismal
presentiments and misgivings of heart, to be
driven to the wine-dealer's house.

When he arrived, he found every thing
in the greatest confusion. On entering the
house, he ran against the apothecary, who was
coming down stairs, with a face as long as your
arm, and a pharmaceutical instrument somewhat
longer; and a few steps farther, he met
the housekeeper—for the wine-dealer was an
old bachelor—running up and down, and
wringing her hands, for fear that the good man
should die—without making his will. He soon
reached the chamber of his sick friend, and
found him tossing about under a huge pile of
bed-clothes, in a paroxysm of fever, calling

aloud for a draught of cold water. The Notary
shook his head; he thought this a fatal
symptom; for ten years back, the wine-dealer
had been suffering under a species of hydrophobia,
which seemed suddenly to have left him.

When the sick-man saw who stood by his
bed-side, he stretched out his hand and exclaimed;

“Ah! my dear friend! have you come at
last?—You see it is all over with me. You
have arrived just in time to draw up that—that
passport of mine. Ah, grand diable! how
hot it is here! Water—water—water! Will
nobody give me a drop of cold water?”

As the case was an urgent one, the Notary
made no delay in getting his papers in readiness;
and in a short time the last will and testament
of the wine-dealer was drawn up in due
form, the Notary guiding the sick-man's hand
as he scrawled his signature at the bottom.

As the evening wore away, the wine-dealer
grew worse and worse, and at length became
delirious, mingling in his incoherent ravings
the phrases of the Credo and Pater-noster with
the shibboleth of the dram-shop and the cardtable.

“Take care! take care! There now—
Credo in—pop! ting-a-ling-ling! give me
some of that. Cent-é-dize! Why you old publican,
this wine is poisoned—I know your tricks!
—Sanctam ecclesiam catholicam. Well, well,
we shall see. Imbecil! To have a tiercemajor
and a seven of hearts, and discard the
seven. By St. Anthony, capot! You are lurched—Ha!
ha! I told you so. I knew very
well—there—there—don't interrupt me—Carnis
resurrectionem et vitam eternam!”

With these words upon his lips, the poor
wine-dealer expired. Meanwhile the Notary
sat cowering over the fire, aghast at the fearful
scene, that was passing before him, and
now and then striving to keep up his courage
by a glass of cognac. Already his fears were
on the alert; and the idea of contagion flitted
to and fro through his mind. In order to quiet
these thoughts of evil import, he lighted his
pipe, and began to prepare for returning home.
At that moment the apothecary turned round to
him, and said;

“Dreadful sickly time, this! The disorder
seems to be spreading.”

“What disorder!” exclaimed the Notary,
with a movement of surprise.

“Two died yesterday, and three to day;”
continued the apothecary without answering
the question. “Very sickly time, Sir,—very.”

“But what disorder is it? What disease
has carried off my friend here so suddenly?”

“What disease? Why scarlet fever, to be
sure.”

“And is it contagious?”

“Certainly!”

“Then I am a dead man!” exclaimed the
Notary, putting his pipe into his waistcoat
pocket, and beginning to walk up and down
the room in despair. “I am a dead man!—
Now don't deceive me—don't, will you!—What
—what are the symptoms?”

“A sharp, burning pain in the right side,”
said the apothecary.

“Oh, what a fool I was to come here!
Take me home—take me home, and let me die
in the bosom of my family!”

In vain did the housekeeper and the apothecary
strive to pacify him;—he was not a man
to be reasoned with; he answered, that he

knew his own constitution better than they did,
and insisted upon going home without delay.
Unfortunately, the vehicle he came in had returned
to the city; and the whole neighborhood
was a-bed and asleep. What was to be
done? Nothing in the world but to take the
apothocary's horse, which stood hitched at the
door, patiently waiting his master's will.

Well, Gentlemen; as there was no remedy,
our Notary mounted this raw-boned steed, and
set forth upon his homeward journey. The
night was cold and gusty, and the wind set
right in his teeth. Overhead the leaden clouds
were beating to and fro, and through them the
newly-risen moon seemed to be tossing and
drifting along like a cock-boat in the surf;
now swallowed up in a huge billow of cloud,
and now lifted upon its bosom, and dashed
with silvery spray. The trees by the road-side
groaned with a sound of evil omen, and before
him lay three mortal miles, beset with a thousand
imaginary perils. Obedient to the whip
and spur, the steed leaped forward by fits and
starts, now dashing away in a tremendous gallop,
and now relaxing into a long hard trot;

while the rider, filled with symptoms of disease,
and dire presentiments of death, urged him on,
as if he were fleeing before the pestilence.

In this way, by dint of whistling and
shouting, and beating right and left, one mile
of the fatal three was safely passed. The apprehensions
of the Notary had so far subsided,
that he even suffered the poor horse to walk
up hill; but these apprehensions were suddenly
revived again with tenfold violence by a sharp
pain in the right side, which seemed to pierce
him like a needle.

“It is upon me at last!” groaned the fearstricken
man. “Heaven be merciful to me,
the greatest of sinners! And must I die in a
ditch after all?—He! Get up—get up!”

And away went horse and rider at full
speed—hurry-skurry—up hill and down—panting
and blowing like all possessed. At every
leap, the pain in the rider's side seemed to increase.
At first it was a little point like the
prick of a needle—then it spread to the size
of a half-franc piece—then covered a place as
large as the palm of your hand. It gained upon
him fast. The poor man groaned aloud in

agony; faster and faster sped the horse over
the frozen ground—farther and farther spread
the pain over his side. To complete the dismal
picture, the storm commenced,—snow mingled
with rain. But snow, and rain, and cold were
naught to him; for though his arms and legs
were frozen to icicles, he felt it not; the fatal
symptom was upon him; he was doomed to
die,—not of cold, but of scarlet fever!

At length, he knew not how, more dead
than alive, he reached the gate of the city. A
band of ill-bred dogs, that were serenading at
a corner of the street, seeing the Notary dash
by, joined in the hue and cry, and ran barking
and yelping at his heels. It was now late at
night, and only here and there a solitary lamp
twinkled from an upper story. But on went
the Notary, down this street and up that, till at
last he reached his own door. There was a
light in his wife's bed-chamber. The good
woman came to the window, alarmed at such
a knocking, and howling, and clattering at her
door so late at night; and the Notary was too
deeply absorbed in his own sorrows to observe
that the lamp cast the shadow of two heads on
the window-curtain.

“Let me in! let me in! Quick! quick!”
he exclaimed almost breathless from terror and
fatigue.

“Who are you, that come to disturb a
lone woman at this hour of the night?” cried
a sharp voice from above. “Begone about
your business, and let quiet people sleep.”

“Oh, diable, diable! Come down and let
me in! I am your husband. Don't you know
my voice? Quick, I beseech you; for I am
dying here in the street!”

After a few moments of delay and a few
more words of parley, the door was opened,
and the Notary stalked into his domicil pale
and haggard in aspect, and as stiff and straight
as a ghost. Cased from head to heel in an
armor of ice, as the glare of the lamp fell upon
him, he looked like a knight-errant mailed in
steel. But in one place his armor was broken.
On his right side was a circular spot, as large
as the crown of your hat, and about as black!

“My dear wife!” he exclaimed with more
tenderness, than he had exhibited for many
years; “Reach me a chair. My hours are
numbered. I am a dead man!”

Alarmed at these exclamations, his wife
stripped off his over-coat. Something fell
from beneath it, and was dashed to pieces on
the hearth. It was the Notary's pipe! He
placed his hand upon his side, and lo! it was
bare to the skin!—Coat, waistcoat and linen
were burnt through and through, and there was
a blister on his side as large over as your head!

The mystery was soon explained, symptom
and all. The Notary had put his pipe into
his pocket without knocking out the ashes!
And so my story ends.

“Is that all?” asked the radical, when
the story-teller had finished.

“That is all.”

“Well, what does your story go to prove?
What bearing has it on the great interests of
man?”

“That is more than I can tell. All I
know is that the story is true.”

“And did he die?” said the nice little man
in goslin green.

“Yes; he died afterwards,” replied the
story-teller, rather annoyed by the question.

“And what did he die of?” continued
goslin-green, following him up.

“What did he die of?” winking to the
rest of the company; “Why, he died—of a
sudden!”