BY
BERNARD CAPES
AUTHOR OF
‘THE MILL OF SILENCE,’ ‘THE LAKE OF WINE,’ ETC.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCVIII
All Rights reserved
TO
R. C.,
BEST COUNSELLOR AND HELPMATE.
IV. THE CHÂTEAU DES PIERRETTES
VIII. QUATREMAINS-QUATREPATTES
XIV. THE QUARRIES OF MONT-ROUGE
One morning I awoke in La Bourbe and looked across at DeputyBertrand as he lay sprawled over his truckle-bed, his black hair likea girl’s scattered on the pillow, his eyelids glued to his flushedcheeks, his face, all blossoming with dissipation, set into theexpression of one who is sure of nothing but of his own presentsurrender to nothingness. Beside him were his clothes, flung upon achair, the tri-colour sash, emblematic stole of his confused ritual,embracing all; and on a nail in the wall over his head was hispreposterous hat, the little carte de civisme stuck in its band.
Casimir Bertrand (one time Casimir Bertrand de Pompignan) I had knownand been friendly with at Le Plessis. Later he had imbibed theories;had become successively a Lameth, a Feuillant, a Jacobin—aconstitutionalist, a moderate, an extremist; had spouted in theFaubourgs and overflowed in sectional Committee rooms; had finallybeen elected to represent a corner of the States-General. I had knownhim for a pious prig, a coxcomb, a reckless bon-vivant. He was alwayssincere and never consistent; and now at last, in the crisis of hisengaging sans-cullotism, he had persuaded me, a proscribed royalist,to take an advantage of his friendship by lodging with him. Then itwas that the driving-force behind his character was revealed to me. Itwas militant hedonism. Like Mirabeau, he was a strange compound ofenergy and voluptuousness. He turned altogether on the nerves ofexcitement. He was like a clock lacking its pendulum, and he wouldcrowd a doze