The Wandering Jew — Complete
emerged from under the archway, and were traversing the square, when one
of them, a gray-haired veteran, suddenly slackened the rolling of his
drum, and stood still: his companions turned round in surprise--he had
turned green; his legs gave way, he stammered some unintelligible words,
and had fallen upon the pavement before those in the front rank had time
to pause. The overwhelming rapidity of this attack startled for a moment
the most hardened among the surrounding spectators; for, wondering at
the interruption, a part of the crowd had rushed towards the soldiers.
At sight of the dying man, supported in the arms of two of his comrades,
one of the individuals, who, concealed under the arch, had watched the
beginning of the popular excitement, said to the drummers: "Your comrade
drank, perhaps, at some fountain on the road?"
"Yes, sir," replied one; "he was very thirsty; he drank two mouthfuls of
water on the Place du Chatelet."
"Then he is poisoned," said the man.
"Poisoned?" cried several voices.
"It is not surprising," replied the man, in a mysterious tone; "poison
is thrown into the public fountains; and this very morning a man was
massacred in the Rue Beaubourg who was discovered emptying a paper of
arsenic into a pot of wine at a public-house."(38)
Having said these words, the man disappeared in the crowd. This report,
no less absurd than the tales about the poisoning of the Hospital
patients, was received with a general burst of indignation. Five or
six ragged beings, regular ruffians, seized the body of the expiring
drummer, hoisted it upon their shoulders, in spite of all the efforts
of his comrades to prevent them, and paraded the square exhibiting the
dismal trophy. Ciboule and the quarryman went before, crying: "Wake way
for the corpse! This is how they poison the people!"
A fresh incident now attracted the attention of the crowd. A travelling
carriage, which had not been able to pass along the Quai-Napoleon, the
pavement of which was up, had ventured among the intricate streets of
the city, and now arrived in the square of Notre-Dame on its way to the
other side of the Seine. Like many others, its owners were flying from
Paris, to escape the pestilence which decimated it. A man-servant and a
lady's maid were in the rumble, and they exchanged a glance of alarm as
they passed the Hospital, whilst a young man seated in the front part
of the carriage let down the glass, and called to the postilions to go
slowly, for fear of accident, as the crowd was very dense at that part
of the square. This young man was Lord Morinval, and on the back seat
were Lord Montbron and his niece, Lady Morinval. The pale and anxious
countenance of the young lady showed the alarm which she felt; and
Montbron, notwithstanding his firmness of mind, appeared to be
very uneasy; he, as well as his niece, frequently had recourse to a
smelling-bottle filled with camphor.
During the last few minutes, the carriage had advanced very slowly,
the postilions managing their horses with great caution, when a sudden
hubbub, at first distant and undefined, but soon more distinct, arose
among the throng, as it drew near, the ringing sound of chains and
metal, peculiar to the artillery-wagons, was plainly audible, and
presently one of these vehicles came towards the travelling-carriage,
from the direction of the Quai Notre-Dame. It seemed strange, that
though the crowd was so compact, yet at the rapid approach of this
wagon, the close ranks of human beings opened as if by enchantment, but
the following words which were passed from mouth to mouth soon accounted
for the prodigy: "A wagon full of dead! the wagon of the dead!" As
we have already stated, the usual funeral conveyances were no longer
sufficient for the removal of the corpses; a number of artillery wagons
had been put into requisition, and the coffins were hastily piled in
these novel hearses.
Many of the spectators regarded this gloomy vehicle with dismay, but the
quarryman and his band redoubled their horrible jokes.
"Make way for the omnibus of the departed!" cried Ciboule.
"No danger of having one's toes crushed in that omnibus," said the
quarryman.
"Doubtless they're easy to please, the stiff-uns in there."
"They never want to be set down, at all events."
"I say, there's only one reg'lar on duty as postilion!"
"That's true, the leaders are driven by a man in a smock-frock."
"Oh! I daresay the other soldier was tired, lazy fellow! and got into
the omnibus with the others--they'll all get out at the same big hole."
"Head foremost, you know."
"Yes, they pitch them head first into a bed of lime."
"Why, one might follow the dead-cart blind-fold, and no mistake. It's
worse than Montfaucon knacker-yards!"
"Ha! ha! ha!--it's rather gamey!" said the quarryman, alluding to the
infectious and cadaverous odor which this funeral conveyance left behind
it.
"Here's sport!" exclaimed Ciboule: "the omnibus of the dead will run
against the fine coach. Hurrah! the rich folks will smell death."
Indeed, the wagon was now directly in front of the carriage, and at a
very little distance from it. A man in a smock-frock and wooden shoes
drove the two leaders, and an artilleryman the other horses. The coffins
were so piled up within this wagon, that its semicircular top did
not shut down closely, so that, as it jolted heavily over the uneven
pavement, the biers could be seen chafing against each other. The fiery
eyes and inflamed countenance of the man in the smock-frock showed that
he was half intoxicated; urging on the horses with his voice, his heels,
and his whip, he paid no attention to the remonstrances of the soldier,
who had great difficulty in restraining his own animals, and was obliged
to follow the irregular movements of the carman. Advancing in this
disorderly manner, the wagon deviated from its course just as it should
have passed the travelling-carriage, and ran against it. The shock
forced open the top, one of the coffins was thrown out, and, after
damaging the panels of the carriage, fell upon the pavement with a dull
and heavy sound. The deal planks had been hastily nailed together, and
were shivered in the fall, and from the wreck of the coffin rolled a
livid corpse, half enveloped in a shroud.
At this horrible spectacle, Lady Morinval, who had mechanically leaned
forward, gave a loud scream, and fainted. The crowd fell back in dismay;
the postilions, no less alarmed, took advantage of the space left open
to them by the retreat of the multitude; they whipped their horses, and
the carriage dashed on towards the quay. As it disappeared behind
the furthermost buildings of the Hospital, the shrill joyous notes
of distant trumpets were heard, and repeated shouts proclaimed: "The
Cholera Masquerade!" The words announced one of those episodes combining
buffoonery with terror, which marked the period when the pestilence was
on the increase, though now they can with difficulty be credited. If
the evidence of eyewitnesses did not agree in every particular with the
accounts given in the public papers of this masquerade, they might be
regarded as the ravings of some diseased brain, and not as the notice of
a fact which really occurred.
"The Masquerade of the Cholera" appeared, we say, in the square of Notre
Dame, just as Morinval's carriage gained the quay, after disengaging
itself from the death-wagon.
(37) It is well-known that at the time of the cholera, such placards
were numerous in Paris, and were alternately attributed to opposite
parties. Among others, to the priests, many of the bishops having
published mandatory letters, or stated openly in the churches of their
diocese, that the Almighty had sent the cholera as a punishment to
France for having driven away its lawful sovereign, and assimilated the
Catholic to other forms of worship.
(38) It is notorious, that at this unhappy period several persons were
massacred, under a false accusation of poisoning the fountains, etc.
CHAPTER XIX. THE CHOLERA MASQUERADE.(39)
A stream of people, who preceded the masquerade, made a sudden irruption
through the arch into the square, uttering loud cheers as they advanced.
Children were also there, blowing horns, whilst some hooted and others
hissed.
The quarryman, Ciboule, and their band, attracted by this new spectacle,
rushed tumultuously towards the arch. Instead of the two eating-houses,
which now (1845) stand on either side of the Rue d'Arcole, there was
then only one, situated to the left of the vaulted passage, and much
celebrated amongst the joyous community of students, for the excellence
both of its cookery and its wines. At the first blare of the trumpets,
sounded by the outriders in livery who preceded the masquerade, the
windows of the great room of the eating-house were thrown open, and
several waiters, with their napkins under their arms, leaned forward,
impatient to witness the arrival of the singular guests they were
expecting.
At length, the grotesque procession made its appearance in the thick of
an immense uproar. The train comprised a chariot, escorted by men and
women on horseback, clad in rich and elegant fancy dresses. Most of
these maskers belonged to the middle and easy classes of society. The
report had spread that masquerade was in preparation, for the purpose
of daring the cholera, and, by this joyous demonstration, to revive
the courage of the affrighted populace. Immediately, artists, young men
about town, students, and so on, responded to the appeal, and though
till now unknown one to the other, they easily fraternized together.
Many brought their mistresses, to complete the show. A subscription had
been opened to defray the expenses, and, that morning, after a splendid
breakfast at the other end of Paris, the joyous troop had started
bravely on their march, to finish the day by a dinner in the square of
Notre Dame.
We say bravely, for it required a singular turn of mind, a rare firmness
of character, in young women, to traverse, in this fashion, a great
city plunged in consternation and terror--to fall in at every step with
litters loaded with the dying, and carriages filled with the dead--to
defy, as it were, in a spirit of strange pleasantry, the plague that was
detonating the Parisians. It is certain that, in Paris alone, and
there only amongst a peculiar class, could such an idea have ever been
conceived or realized. Two men, grotesquely disguised as postilions at
a funeral, with formidable false noses, rose-colored crape hat-bands and
large favors of roses and crape bows at their buttonholes, rode before
the vehicle. Upon the platform of the car were groups of allegorical
personages, representing WINE, PLEASURE, LOVE, PLAY. The mission of
these symbolical beings was, by means of jokes, sarcasms, and mockeries,
to plague the life out of Goodman Cholera, a sort of funeral and
burlesque Cassander, whom they ridiculed and made game of in a hundred
ways. The moral of the play was this: "To brave Cholera in security, let
us drink, laugh, game, and make love!"
WINE was represented by a huge, lusty Silenus, thick-set, and with
swollen paunch, a crown of ivy on his brow, a panther's skin across his
shoulder, and in his hand a large gilt goblet, wreathed with flowers.
None other than Ninny Moulin, the famous moral and religious writer,
could have exhibited to the astonished and delighted spectators an
ear of so deep a scarlet, so majestic an abdomen, and a face of such
triumphant and majestic fulness. Every moment, Ninny Moulin appeared to
empty his cup--after which he burst out laughing in the face of Goodman
Cholera. Goodman Cholera, a cadaverous pantaloon, was half-enveloped in
a shroud; his mask of greenish cardboard, with red, hollow eyes, seemed