Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience

This was an oath of allegiance, and when taken we moved on to the barber, and in a few minutes the ceremony was completed, and we were soldiers of France.

I had imagined, and indeed I had convinced myself, that I was so schooled in adversity I could defy fortune. I thought that mere bodily privations and sufferings could never seriously affect me, and that, with the freedom of my own thoughts unfettered, no real slavery could oppress me. In this calculation I had forgotten to take count of those feelings of self-esteem which are our defences against the promptings of every mean ambition. I had not remembered that these may be outraged by the very same rules of discipline that taught us to fire and load, and march and manouvre! It was a grievous error!

France was once more at war with all the world: her armies were now moving eastward to attack Austria, and more than mere menaces declared the intention to invade England. Fresh troops were called for with such urgency that a fortnight or three weeks was only allowed to drill the new recruits and fit them for regimental duty. Severity compensated for the briefness of the time, and the men were exercised with scarcely an interval of repose. In periods of great emergency many things are done which in days of calmer influences would not be thought of; and now the officers in command of depots exercised a degree of cruelty towards the soldiers which is the very rarest of all practices in the French army; in consequence, desertions became frequent, and, worse again, men maimed and mutilated themselves in the most shocking manner to escape from a tyranny more insupportable than any disease. It is known to all that such practices assume the characteristics of an epidemic, and when once they have attained to a certain frequency, men’s minds become familiarized to the occurrence, and they are regarded as the most ordinary of events. The regiment to which I was attached – the 47th of the line – was one of the very worst for such acts of indiscipline; and although the commanding officers had been twice changed, and one entire battalion broken up and reformed, the evil repute still adhered to the corps. It is a mistake to suppose that common soldiers are indifferent to the reputation of their regiment; even the least subordinate, those in whom military ardor is lowest, feel acutely, too, the stigma of a condemned corps. We had reason to experience this, on even stronger grounds. We were despatched to Brest to garrison the prison, and hold in check that terrible race who are sentenced to the galleys for life. This mark of disgrace was inflicted on us as the heaviest stain upon a regiment openly pronounced unworthy to meet the enemies of France in the field.

This act seemed to consummate the utter degradation of our corps, from which, weekly, some one or other was either sentenced to be shot, or condemned to the even worse fate of a galley-slave. I shrink from the task of recalling a period so full of horror. It was one long dream of ruffian insubordination and cruel punishment. Time, so far from correcting, seemed to confirm the vices of this fated regiment; and at length a commission arrived from the ministry of war to examine into the causes of this corruption. This inquiry lasted some weeks; and amongst those whose evidence was taken, I was one. It chanced that no punishment had ever been inflicted on me in the corps; nor was there a single mark in the “conduct roll” against my name. Of course, these were favorable circumstances, and entitled any testimony that I gave to a greater degree of consideration. The answers I returned, and the views I had taken, were deemed of consequence enough to require further thought. I was ordered to be sent to Paris to be examined by General Caulincourt, at that time the head of the état major.

It would little interest the reader to enter further into this question, to which I have only made allusion from its reference to my own fortunes. The opinions I gave, and the suggestions I made, attracted the notice of my superiors, and I received, as a reward, the grade of corporal, and was attached to the Chancellerie Militaire at Strasburg, – a post I continued to occupy for upwards of two years. Two peaceful, uneventful years were they, and to look back upon, they seem but as a day.

The unbroken monotony of my life, the almost apathetic calm which had come over me, and my isolation from all other men, gave me the semblance of a despondent and melancholy nature; but I was far from unhappy, and had schooled myself to take pleasure in a variety of simple, uncostly pursuits which filled up my leisure hours; and thus my little flower-garden, stolen from an angle of the glacis, was to me a domain of matchless beauty. Every spare moment of my time was passed here, and every little saving of my humble pay was expended on this spot. The rose, the clematis, and the jessamine here twined their twigs together to make an arbor, in which I used to sit at evening, gazing out upon the spreading Rhine, or watching the sunset on the Vosges mountains. I had trained myself not to think of the great events of the world, momentous and important as they then were, and great with the destiny of mankind. I never saw a newspaper, – I held no intercourse with others; to me life had resolved itself into the very simplest of all episodes, – it was mere existence, and no more.

This dream might possibly have ended without a waking shock, and the long night of the grave have succeeded to the dim twilight of oblivion, had not an event occurred to rouse me from my stupor, and bring me back to life and its troubles.

An order had arrived from Paris to put the fortress into a state of perfect defence. New redoubts and bastions were to be erected, the ditches widened, and an additional force of guns to be mounted on the walls. The telegraph had brought the news in the morning, and ere the sunset that same evening my little garden was a desert; all my care and toil scattered to the winds; the painful work of long months in ruin, and my one sole object in life obliterated and gone. I had thought that all emotions were long since dead within me. I fervently believed that every well of feeling was dry and exhausted in my nature; but I cried and cried bitterly as I beheld this desolation. There seemed to my eyes a wantonness in the cruelty thus inflicted, and in my heart I inveighed against the ruthless passions of men, and the depravity by which their actions are directed. Was the world too much a paradise for me, I asked, that this small spot of earth could not be spared to me? Was I over-covetous in craving this one corner of the vast universe? In my folly and my selfishness I fancied myself the especial mark of adversity, and henceforth I vowed a reckless front to fortune.

He who lives for himself alone, has not only to pay the penalty of unguided counsels, but the far heavier one of following impulses of which egotism is the mainspring. The care for others, the responsibilities of watching over and protecting something besides ourselves, are the very best of all safeguards against our own hearts. I have a right to say this.

From a life of quiet and orderly regularity, I now launched out into utter recklessness and abandonment. I formed acquaintances with the least reputable of my comrades, frequented their haunts, and imitated their habits. I caught vice as men catch a malady. It was a period little short of insanity, since every wish was perverted, and every taste the opposite of my real nature. I, who was once the type of punctuality and exactness, came late and irregularly to my duties. My habits of sobriety were changed for waste, and even my appearance, my very temper, altered; I became dissolute-looking and abandoned, passionate in my humors, and quick to take offence.

The downward course is ever a rapid one, and vices are eminently suggestive of each other. It took a few weeks to make me a spendthrift and a debauchee; a few more, and I became a duellist and a brawler. I ceased to hold intercourse with all who had once held me in esteem, and formed friends among the dissolute and the depraved. Amidst men of this stamp the sentence of a Provost-Marshal, or the durance of the Salle de Police, are reckoned distinctions; and he who has oftenest insulted his superiors and outraged discipline is deemed the most worthy of respect. I had won no laurels of this kind, and resolved not to be behind my comrades in such claims. My only thought was how to obtain some peculiar notoriety by my resistance to authority.

I had now the rank of sergeant, – a grade which permitted me to frequent the café resorted to by the officers; but as this was a privilege no sous-officer availed himself of, I of course did not presume to take. It now, however, occurred to me that this was precisely the kind of infraction the consequences of which might entail the gravest events, and yet be, all the while, within the limits of regimental discipline. With this idea in my head I swaggered, one evening, into the “Lion Gaune,” at that time the favorite military café of Strasburg. The look of astonishment at my entrance was very soon converted into a most unmistakable expression of angry indignation; and when, calling for the waiter, I seated myself at a table, my intrusion was discussed in terms quite loud enough for me to hear.

It was well known that the Emperor distinguished the class I belonged to, by the most signal marks of favor: the sergeant and the corporal might have dared to address him when the field-marshal could not have uttered a word. It was part of his military policy to unbend to those whose position excluded them from even the very shadow of a rivalry, and be coldly distant to all whose station approached an equality. This consideration restrained the feelings of those who now beheld me, and who well knew, in any altercation, into which scale would be thrown the weight of the imperial influence.

To desert the side of the room where I sat, and leave me in a marked isolation, was their first move; but seeing that I rather assumed this as a token of victory, they resorted to another tactic, – they occupied all the tables, save one at the very door, and thus virtually placed me in a position of obloquy and humiliation. For a night or two I held my ground without flinching; but I felt that I could not continue a merely defensive warfare, and determined, at any hazard, to finish the struggle. Instead, therefore, of resuming the humble place they had assigned me, I carried my coffee with me, and set the cup on a table at which a lieutenant-colonel was seated, reading his newspaper by the fire. He started up as he saw me, and called out, “What means this insolence? Is this a place for you?”

“The general instructions of the army declare that a sous-officer has the entrée to all public cafés and restaurants frequented by regimental officers, although not to such as are maintained by them as clubs and messrooms. I am, therefore, only within the limits of a right, Monsieur Colonel,” said I, offering a military salute as I spoke.

“Leave the room, sir, and report yourself to your captain,” said he, boiling over with rage.

I arose, and prepared to obey his command.

“If that fellow be not reduced to the ranks on to-morrow’s parade, I ‘ll leave the service,” said he to an officer at his side.

“If I have your permission to throw him out of the window, Monsieur Colonel, I ‘ll promise to quit the army if I don’t do it,” said a young lieutenant of cuirassiers. He was seated at a table near me, and with his legs in such a position as to fill up the space I had to pass out by.

Without any apology for stepping across him, I moved forward, and slightly – I will not say unintentionally – struck his foot with my own. He sprang up with a loud oath, and knocked my shako off my head. I turned quickly and struck him to the ground with my clenched hand. A dozen swords were drawn in an instant. Had it not been for the most intrepid interference, I should have been cut to pieces on the spot. As it was, I received five or six severe sabre wounds, and one entirely laid my cheek open from the eye to the mouth.

I was soon covered with blood from head to foot; but I stood calmly, until faintness came on, without stirring; then I staggered back, and sat down upon a chair. A surgeon bandaged my wrist, which had been cut across, and my face; and, a carriage being sent for, I was at once conveyed to hospital. The loss of blood perhaps saved me from fever. At all events, I was calm and self-possessed; and, strangest of all, the excitement which for months back had taken possession of me was gone, and I was once again myself, – in patience and quiet submission calmly awaiting the sentence which I well knew must be my death. We frequently hear that great reverses of fortune elicit and develop resources of character which under what are called happier circumstances had remained dormant and unknown. I am strongly disposed to attribute much of this result to purely physical changes, and that our days of prosperity are seasons of inordinate excitement, with all the bodily ills that accompany such a state. If it be so hard for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, is it not that his whole nature has been depraved and perverted by the consummate selfishness that comes of power? What hardeners of the heart are days of pleasure and nights of excess! And how look for the sympathy that consoles and comforts, from him whose greatest sufferings are the jarring contrarieties of his own nature?

I have said I was again myself, but with this addition, that a deep and sincere sorrow was over me for my late life, and an honest repentance for the past. I was eleven weeks in hospital; two severe relapses had prolonged my malady; and it was nigh three months after the occurrence I have detailed, that I was pronounced fit to be sent forward for trial by court-martial.

There were a considerable number awaiting their trial at the same time. Men had been drafted to Strasburg from various places, and a commission sat en permanence, to dispose of them. There was little formality, and even less time, wasted in these proceedings. The prisoner defended himself if he were able; if not, the reading of the charge and some slight additions of testimony completed the investigation; the sentence being, for form sake, reserved for a later period. Occasionally it would happen that some member of the court would interpose a few favorable words, or endeavor to throw a pretext over the alleged crime; but these cases were rare, and usually nothing was heard but the charge of the accuser.

Having determined to make no defence, my whole effort was to accustom my mind to the circumstances of my fate, and so steel my heart to bear up manfully to the last. My offence was one never pardoned. This I well knew, and it only remained for me to meet the penalty like a brave man. Few, indeed, could quit the world with less ties to break, – few could leave it with less to regret; and yet, such is the instinctive love of life, and so powerful are the impulses to struggle against fate, that as the time of my trial drew nigh, I would have dared any danger with the hope of escape, and accepted any commutation of a sentence short of death. I believe that this is a stage of agony to which all are exposed, and that every criminal sentenced to the scaffold must pass through this terrible period. In my case it was prolonged, my name being one of the very last for trial; and already five weeks had gone over before I was called. Even then a postponement took place, for the Emperor had arrived on his way to Germany, and a great review of the garrison superseded all other duties.

Never had all the pomp and circumstance of war seemed so grand and so splendid to my eyes as when, through the grating of my prison-cell, I strained my glances after the dense columns and the clanking squadrons, as they passed. The gorgeous group of staff-officers and the heavy-rolling artillery had all a significance and a meaning that they had never possessed for me before. They seemed to shadow forth great events for the future, portentous changes in time to come, gigantic convulsions in the condition of the world, kingdoms rocking, and thrones overturned. The shock of battle was, too, present to my eyes, – the din, the crash, and the uproar of conflict, with all its terrors and all its chivalry. What a glorious thing must life be to those about to enter on such a career! How high must beat the hearts of all who joined in this enthusiasm!

That day was to me like whole years of existence, filled with passages of intensest excitement and moments of the very saddest depression. My brain, hitherto calm and collected, struggled in vain against a whole torrent of thoughts without coherence or relation, and at length my faculties began to wander. I forgot where I was, and the fate that impended over me. I spoke of all that had happened to me long before, – of my infancy, my boyhood, my adventures as a man, and those with whom I lived in intimacy. The turnkey, an invalided sergeant of artillery and a kind-hearted fellow, tried to recall me to myself, by soothing and affectionate words. He even affected an interest in what I said, to try and gain some clew to my wanderings, and caught eagerly at anything that promised a hope of obtaining an influence over me. He fetched the surgeon of the jail to my cell at last, and he pronounced my case the incipient stage of a brain fever. I heard the opinion as he whispered it, and understood its import thoroughly. I was in that state where reason flashes at moments across the mind, but all powers of collected thought are lost. Amongst the names that I uttered in my ravings one alone attracted their attention: it was that of Ysaffich, the Pole, of whom I spoke frequently.

“Do you know the Colonel Ysaffich?” said the doctor to me.

“Yes,” said I, slowly; “he is a Russian spy.”

“That answer scarcely denotes madness,” whispered the doctor to the turnkey, with a smile, as he turned away from the bed.

“Should you like to see him?” said he, in a kind tone.

“Of all things,” replied I, eagerly; “tell him to come to me.”

I conclude that this question was asked simply to amuse my mind, and turn it from other painful thoughts, for he shortly after retired, without further allusion to it; but from that hour my mind was riveted on the one idea; and to everybody that approached my sick bed, my first demand was, “Where was Count Ysaffich, and when was he coming to see me?”

I had been again conveyed back to the military hospital, in which I was lying when the Emperor came to make his customary visit. The prisoners’ ward was, however, one exempted from the honor he bestowed on the rest; and one could only hear the distant sounds of the procession as it passed from room to room.

I was lying, with my eyes half closed, lethargic and dull, when I heard a voice say, —

“Yes, Colonel, he has spoken of you constantly, and asks every day when you mean to come and see him.”

“He never served in the Legion, notwithstanding,” replied another voice, “nor do I remember ever to have seen him before.”

The tones of the speaker recalled me suddenly to myself. I looked up, and beheld Count Ysaffich before me. Though dressed in the lancer uniform of the Garde, his features were too marked to be forgotten, and I accosted him at once.

“Have you forgotten your old colleague, Paul Gervois?” said I, trying to appear calm and at ease.

“What! – is this – can you be my old friend Gervois?” cried be, laying a hand on my shoulder, and staring hard at my face. But I could not utter a word; shame and sorrow overcame me, and I covered my face with both my hands.

Ysaffich was not permitted to speak more with me at the time; but he returned soon, and passed hours with me every day to the end of my illness. He was intimate with the officer I had insulted; and, by immense efforts, and the kind assistance of the medical authorities, succeeded in establishing a plea of temporary insanity for my offence, by which I escaped punishment, and was dismissed the service. This was a period of much suffering to me, mentally as well as bodily. I felt all the humiliation at which my life had been purchased, and more than once did the price appear far too great a one.

CHAPTER XLVI. YSAFFICH

I was now domesticated with Ysaffich, who occupied good quarters in Kehl, where the Polish Legion, as it was called, was garrisoned. He treated me with every kindness, and presented me to his comrades as an old and valued friend. I was not sorry to find myself at once amongst total strangers, – men of a country quite new to me, and who themselves had seen reverses and misfortunes enough to make them lenient in their judgments of narrow fortune. They were, besides, a fine, soldier-like race of fellows, – good horsemen, excellent swordsmen, reckless as all men who have neither home nor country, and ready for any deed of daring or danger. There was a jealousy between them and the French officers which prevented any social intercourse; and duels were by no means a rare event whenever they had occasion to meet. The Imperial laws were tremendously severe on this offence; and he who killed his adversary in a duel was certain of death by the law. To evade the consequences of such a penalty, the most extravagant devices were practised, and many a deadly quarrel was decided in a pretended fencing-match. It was in one of these mock trials of skill that Colonel le Brun was killed, an officer of great merit, and younger brother of the general of that name.

From that time the attention of the military authorities was more closely drawn to this practice; and such meetings were for the future always attended by several gendarmes, who narrowly scrutinized every detail of the proceeding. With such perfect good faith, however, was the secret maintained on both sides that discovery was almost impossible. Not only was every etiquette of familiar intimacy strictly observed on these occasions, but a most honorable secrecy by all concerned.

I was soon to be a witness of one of these adventures. Ysaffich, whose duties required him to repair frequently to Strasburg, had been grossly and, as I heard, wantonly outraged by a young captain of the Imperial staff who, seeing his name on a slip of paper on a military table d’hôte, added with his pencil the words Espion Musse after it. Of course a meeting was at once arranged, and it was planned that Challendrouze, the captain, and four of his brother officers were to come over and visit the fortifications at Kehl, breakfasting with us, and being our guests for the morning. Two only of Ysaffich’s friends were intrusted with the project, and invited to meet the others.

I cannot say that I ever felt what could be called a sincere friendship for Ysaffich. He was one of those men who neither inspire such attachments, nor need them in return. It was not that he was cold and distant, repelling familiarity and refusing sympathy. It was exactly the opposite. He revealed everything, even to the minutest particle of his history, and told you of himself every emotion and every feeling that moved him. He was frankness and candor itself; but it was a frankness that spoke of utter indifference, – perfect recklessness as to your judgment on him, and what opinion you should form of his character. He told you of actions that reflected on his good faith, and uttered sentiments that arraigned his sense of honor, not only without hesitation, but with an air of assumed superiority to all the prejudices that sway other men in similar cases. Even in the instance of the approaching duel, he avowed that Challendrouze’s offence was in the manner, and not the matter, of the insult. His whole theory of life was that every one was false, not only to others, but to himself; that no man really felt love, patriotism, or religion in his heart, but that he assumed one or more of these affections as a cloak to whatever vices were most easily practised under such a disguise. It was a code to stifle every generous feeling of the heart, and make a man’s nature barren as a desert.

He never fully disclosed these sentiments until the evening before the duel. It was then, in the midst of preparations for the morrow, that he revealed to me all that he felt and thought. There was, throughout these confessions, a tone of indifference that shocked me more, perhaps, than actual levity; and I own I regarded him with a sense of terror, and as one whose very contact was perilous.

“I have married since I saw you last,” said he to me, after a long interval of silence. “My wife was a former acquaintance of yours. You must go and see her, if this event turn out ill, and ‘break the tidings,’ as they call it, – not that the task will demand any extraordinary display of skill at your hands,” said he, laughing. “Madame the Countess will bear her loss with becoming dignity; and as I have nothing to bequeath, the disposition of my property cannot offend her. If, however,” added he, with more energy of manner, “if, however, the Captain should fall, we must take measures to fly. I ‘ll not risk a cour militaire in such a cause, so that we must escape.”