Chapter 15

IN THE CHAMBER OF PEERS.

1846.

Yesterday, February 22, I went to the Chamber of
Peers. The weather was fine and very cold, in spite of the
noonday sun. In the Rue de Tournon I met a man in the
custody of two soldiers. The man was fair, pale, thin,
haggard; about thirty years old; he wore coarse linen
trousers; his bare and lacerated feet were visible in his
sabots, and blood-stained bandages round his ankles took
the place of stockings; his short blouse was soiled with
mud in the back, which indicated that he habitually slept
on the ground; his head was bare, his hair dishevelled.
Under his arm was a loaf. The people who surrounded
him said that he had stolen the loaf, and it was for this
that he had been arrested.

When they reached the gendarmerie barracks one of the
soldiers entered, and the man stayed at the door guarded by
the other soldier.

A carriage was standing at the door of the barracks. It
was decorated with a coat of arms; on the lanterns was a
ducal coronet; two grey horses were harnessed to it;
behind it were two lackeys. The windows were raised, but
the interior, upholstered in yellow damask, was visible.
The gaze of the man fixed upon this carriage, attracted mine.
In the carriage was a woman in a pink bonnet and costume
of black velvet, fresh, white, beautiful, dazzling, who was
laughing and playing with a charming child of sixteen
months, buried in ribbons, lace and furs.

This woman did not see the terrible man who was
gazing at her.

I became pensive.

This man was no longer a man for me; he was the
spectre of misery, the brusque, deformed, lugubrious
apparition in full daylight, in full sunlight, of a revolution
that is still plunged in darkness, but which is approaching.
In former times the poor jostled the rich, this spectre
encountered the rich man in all his glory; but they did not
look at each other, they passed on. This condition of
things could thus last for some time. The moment this
man perceives that this woman exists, while this woman
does not see that this man is there, the catastrophe is inevitable.

GENERAL FABVIER

Fabvier had fought valiantly in the wars of the Empire;
he fell out with the Restoration over the obscure affair
of Grenoble. He expatriated himself about 1816. It
was the period of the departure of the eagles. Lallemand
went to America, Allard and Vannova to India, Fabvier to
Greece.

The revolution of 1820 broke out. He took an heroic
part in it. He raised a corps of four thousand palikars, to
whom he was not a chief, but a god. He gave them
civilization and taught them barbarity. He was rough and
brave above all of them, and almost ferocious, but