The Salt Smugglers (17 page)

Not wishing however that the entirety of the expenses occasioned by this eviction in the public interest should be carried by the below-mentioned holder of the lease, the said petitioner hereby offers him the sum of twenty francs, payable to him by the municipal bank of Paris upon his acceptance of these terms within a fortnight of receipt.

Should the below-mentioned party refuse these terms within the agreed period, the petitioner will withdraw the offer officially tendered above of financial indemnification, and will purely and simply require the individual to vacate the premises as outlined above on the prescribed date in due accordance with the law.

This summons is served so that the below-mentioned party may not plead ignorance to the eviction order officially constituted by this document.

Cost, three francs.

BRIZARD

 

It is not my intention to get into politics here. — All I've ever wanted to do is to engage in opposition. — The expropriation may be perfectly justified, but the terms in which it is couched are contemptible. I observe that here in France the bureaucracies always take on a stern voice. — Similarly, in our courts a man is inevitably
considered guilty before being proven innocent. And even if he is proven innocent, he still remains suspect.

This is one of the major causes of all our civil disturbances. If we merely examine the inner dynamics of households, we will observe that when the master starts scolding, everybody, — from the top floor to the bottom, — starts scolding everybody else. — Even the dog starts growling. When the master gets nervous, everybody gets nervous and suffers accordingly. — This becomes particularly evident to anybody who has lived in the provinces, where the social stratifications are far more marked.

Having descended on my mother's side from peasants who lived in the early Frankish communes situated to the north of Paris, I have retained from earliest childhood a vivid sense of the importance accorded to the law in the French Flanders, — as is the case in England and the Low Countries. This is why, finding myself once again in this region, I am writing these lines to you, which may well seem somewhat peculiar to my Parisian readers, but whose heart-felt sentiments I hope they understand; — for Paris understands everything.

We went to Châalis to take a closer look at the estate before it was restored. The first thing that greets you is a large enclosure surrounded by elms; then there is a sixteenth-century structure to the left, no doubt restored at a later date in the ponderous architectural style of the small castle of Chantilly.

After you visit the kitchens and pantries, the great suspended staircase that dates back to the days of Henri IV leads you up to the first-floor galleries, — a series of large and small rooms that look out onto the woods. A few elaborately framed paintings, — the great Condé on horseback, several forest landscapes, — are all that drew my attention. One of the smaller rooms contains a portrait of Henri IV at the age of thirty-five.

This was the age at which he fell in love with Gabrielle, — and this castle no doubt was a scene of their amours. — This king (whom I cordially detest) resided in Senlis for quite some time, especially at the outset of the siege. Above the words
Liberté, egalité
,
fraternité,
his portrait in bronze graces the entrance of the town hall with an inscription claiming that the happiest days of his life were spent at Senlis, — in 1590. — Interestingly enough, however, it is not at Senlis that Voltaire places the crucial episode (imitated after Ariosto) of his love for Gabrielle d'Estrées.

Don't you find it rather strange that the
d'Estrées
family should also be related to the abbé de Bucquoy? And yet this is what the genealogy of his family reveals ... I am inventing nothing.

It was the keeper's son who guided us around the castle, — which has long been abandoned. — He was a fellow who, without being especially educated, nonetheless understood the respectful treatment that antiquities deserve. In one of the rooms he showed us
a monk
he had discovered among the ruins. As I inspected this skeleton lying in its trough of stone, I imagined that it was not a monk but rather a Celtic or Frankish warrior who had been buried according to local tradition, — that is, with his face turned toward the East. The names Erman or Armen
⁸
are after all not infrequent in this region, — not to mention nearby Ermenonville, which the locals also call Arme-Nonville or Nonval, which is its archaic name.

As I was making these observations to Sylvain, we proceeded toward the ruins. A passer-by informed the keeper's son that a swan had just fallen into a ditch.

« Go rescue him!

— Thanks a lot! ... I hope he won't take a swipe at me. »

Sylvain observed that swans were hardly dangerous animals.

« Well, gentleman, said the keeper's son, I've seen a swan break a man's leg with a single blow of his wing. »

Sylvain remained pensive.

The ancient abbey accounts for the most prominent cluster of ruins at Châalis. It was most likely constructed during the reign of Charles VIII, its flamboyant gothic architecture resting on the sturdy pillars of the Carlovingian vaults which contained the tombs. All that is left of its cloister is a long gallery of ogives linking the abbey to an earlier monument, a structure made up of Byzantine columns carved in the era of Charles the Fat and later integrated into sturdy sixteenth-century walls.

The keeper's son said to us, « They are thinking of tearing down the cloister wall so as to get a better view of the ponds from the castle. At least such was the advice that was given to Madame.

— She should instead be advised, I said, simply to knock out the masonry with which they bricked up the ogives; that way one will get a far more splendid view of the ponds through the arches of the gallery. »

He promised he would make a note of this.

Beyond these ruins there is a tower and a chapel. We climbed up the tower, from which we were able to get a glimpse of the entire valley, with its various ponds and rivers and the large expanse of bare terrain which is called the Desert of Ermenonville and which contains little else but outcroppings of gray sandstone, scrawny pine trees, and stretches of heath.

The reddish outlines of quarries were visible here and there through the naked trees, their hues contrasting with the greens of the woods and plains, — where the white birches with the ivy climbing around their trunks stood out against the russet masses of the forest, framed by the horizon's blues.

We climbed down from our vantage point and visited the chapel, — an architectural gem. The soaring quality of its pillars and ribs, the delicacy and sobriety of its ornamental detail indicated that it dated back to a period somewhere between flamboyant Gothic and Renaissance. Upon entering the chapel we admired its paintings, which seemed to date from the latter period.

« You're going to see some rather
décolleté
saints in here », the keeper's son said to us. And indeed, next to the door there was a fresco depicting some sort of Glory, perfectly preserved despite its faded colors, except for its lower portion which had been painted over in tempera, — but which would not be that difficult to restore.

The good old monks of Châalis had evidently wanted to cover up some of the more egregious nudity characteristic of the Medici style. — And it was true, all these angels and all these saints could easily have been mistaken for so many cupids and nymphs with their naked breasts and thighs. Between the ribs of its vault, the apse of the chapel offers another series of well preserved figures in the allegorical style that came into fashion after Louis XII. — As we turned to leave, our
eyes were caught by the armorial bearings above the door which might provide a clue to the date of these later ornamentations.

It was difficult to make out the details of the quartered escutcheon which had been painted over in blue and white at some later date. In the first and fourth quarters there were some birds that our guide identified as swans, marshaled by the second and first; — but, as it turned out, they were not swans.

Are they eagles displayed, or martlets or eaglets or osprey against a saltire of lightning flashes?

In the second and third quarters, there were spears or fleurs-de-lis, which are the same thing. Issuant from the shield was the crest of a cardinal's beret whose triangular netting with tassels fell to either side. But unable to count the strands because the stone was so worn away, we were unable to determine whether it was in fact an abbot's beret.

I have no reference books with me. But I would guess that what we have here are the arms of Lorraine, quartered by those of France. Could they be the arms of the cardinal of Lorraine who, under the name of Charles X, was proclaimed king by this region? Or do they belong to some other cardinal who was also supported by the League? ... I can make neither head nor tail of all this, remaining as I do (I admit) a rather amateur historian ...

THE CASTLE OF ERMENONVILLE THE ILLUMINATI. — THE KING OF PRUSSIA GABRIELLE AND ROUSSEAU THE TOMBS. — THE ABBOTS OF CHÂALIS

Ermenonville.

Leaving Châalis, you cross a few more clumps of trees before entering the Desert. The ‘desert' here is large enough so that when you stand in the middle of it, it seems to fill the entire horizon, — and yet small enough so that a half hour's walk takes you into one of most serene and charming landscapes in the world ... A slice of Swiss nature has been carved out of the local woods, René de Girardin having had the idea of transplanting the image of his native land to this region.

Several years before the Revolution, the castle of Ermenonville served as a meeting place for the Illuminati who were already silently dreaming up the future. Over the course of the celebrated
suppers
of Ermenonville, such figures as Saint-Germain, Mesmer, and Cagliostro delivered a series of inspired addresses in which they developed those ideas and paradoxes which would later be adopted by the so-called School of Geneva. — It would seem that in his younger days M. de Robespierre, (son of the founder of the Scottish Lodge of Arras) and, at a somewhat later date, Sénancour, Saint-Martin, Dupont de Nemours, and Cazotte all came to this castle (or to the nearby castle of Le Pelletier de Mortfontaine) in order set out their eccentric projects for the complete and utter transformation of a
society so old, so decrepit that even its younger members looked like ancient codgers under their fashionable powdered wigs.

Saint-Germain belonged to an earlier generation, but he too came to Ermenonville. — It was he who showed Louis XV the image of his beheaded grandson in a steel mirror, just as Nostradamus had shown Marie de Medici the line of kings that would descend from her, — the fourth of whom was also decapitated.

But all this is mere child's play. What truly bears these mystics out is an anecdote recounted by Beaumarchais (the village of
Beaumarchais
is located one away from Ermenonville, — land of legends): the Prussians had advanced within thirty leagues of Paris but suddenly and unexpectedly fell back when a vision appeared to their king and inspired to him to say almost like a knight of old: « Not one step farther! »

The French and German Illuminati were linked by their common affinities. Given the age-old sympathies and associations that bound together races sharing the same origins, the doctrines of Weisshaupt and Jacob Bœhme had easily penetrated into the ancient Frankish and Burgundian regions of France. The prime minister of the nephew of Frederick II was himself a member of the Illuminati. — Beaumarchais speculates that what had happened at Verdun was that Frederick William was somehow induced (perhaps during a seance of magnetism) to perceive a vision of his uncle who appeared to him and told him (as did Charles VI's ghost) to turn back.

These weird events baffle the imagination; — but Beaumarchais, who was a confirmed skeptic, claims that this phantasmagoric scene was in reality concocted with the help of the French actor Fleury, who had previously played the role of Frederick II on the Parisian stage and who thereby was able carry off the illusion that eventually convinced the king of Prussia to withdraw from the confederation of kings leagued against France.

The memories associated with these parts weigh rather heavily on me; — so I am conveying all this information to you in somewhat pell-mell fashion (but rest assured, its factual basis is solid). There is an even more important detail that should not be overlooked: when this region was taken over by the Prussians in the disastrous wake of the Napoleonic Wars, the general in charge, having learned that the tomb of Jean-Jacques Rousseau was located at Ermenonville, exempted the entire district up to and including Compiègne from the burdens of military occupation. — I think his name was the Prince of Anhalt: — a name that should go down in history.