Epilogue
Wherein Is Some Further Account of François and of Those Who Helped Him
In a little book which has found many friendly readers I related a strange story of the French Revolution.2 In it was promised some further account of the most remarkable of the personages concerned. I have now fulfilled my desire to relate the adventures of François. The singular incidents I record are not without foundation.
In the story above mentioned I have told how I chanced to meet François and those with whom he spent his days after the stormy period during which they first came together. My acquaintance with M. des Illes and the old Duc de St. Maur slowly ripened into friendship. I was a lonely student in the Latin Quarter, and felt deeply the kindness which never ceased insisting that their house should be to me a home. In the summer, and often after that, I was a guest at Des Illes’s château in Touraine. There I came to know François, as one may know a French or an Italian servant. During these visits he acted as my valet, serving me with admirable care, and never better pleased than when I invited him to talk about himself. He had long since shed his thief-skin, but I fear that it was only the influence of fortunate circumstances which left him without excuse to be or to seem other than as honest as the rest of the world about him.
I have known a great variety of disreputable folk in my lifetime, but never one who had so many winning qualities, or who was so entirely at his ease. A scamp in the company of men of better morals usually becomes hypocritical or appears awkwardly aware of breathing an atmosphere to which he is unused. François had no such difficulties. For half a century he had been for Des Illes something between friend and servant. His former life and habits were well known to the few who came to his master’s house. He was comfortable, with some forty thousand francs in the rentes, for his old acquaintance, the marquis, had not forgotten his services. He had no necessity to exercise what he still tranquilly called his profession. Like a clever street-dog adopted by a respectable family, though for a time uneasy, he ceased by degrees to wander for the joy of stealing a bone, and became contented with the better and less perilous chances of a dinner at home.
I learned from M. de St. Maur, the duke’s son, that while Mme. des Illes lived François remained the most domestic of animals. Her death caused him a grief so profound that for a time his master was troubled lest his reason might suffer. She herself would never hear a word against him. Unlike her husband, she was a fervent Protestant, and had now and then some vain hope of converting François. While she lived he considered himself her special servant, but after her death transferred his regard to young Des Illes, the son. For many months François pined, as I have said. He then became restless, disappeared for a week at a time, and it is to be feared that once, or more often, he courted temptation. When I knew him all this was in a remote past. At the château he usually came to my bedroom an hour before dinner to set out my evening dress, and was pretty sure, when this was done, to put his head in my little salon and ask if I needed anything. Perhaps, like M. des Illes, I might desire a petit verre of vermuth for the bettering of appetite. As I soon found what this meant, I commonly required this sustaining aid. When by and by he returned, carrying a neat tray with vermuth and cognac, it came to be understood that he should be led into talk of himself over the little glass, which would, I am sure, have paid toll before it got back to the buffet. Pretty soon I got into the way of making him sit down, while I drew from by no means unwilling lips certain odd stories which much amused me. With an English or Irish servant such familiar intercourse would have been quite impossible; but François, who had none of the shyness of other races, soon came to be on as easy terms with me as he was with M. des Illes. When I asked him one evening to tell me his own story of the famous escape through the catacombs, he said, “But it is long, monsieur.” When I added, “Well, sit down; I must have it,” he replied simply, “As monsieur wishes,” and, taking a chair, gave me an account of their escape, in which he drew so mirthful a picture of the duke’s embarrassments that I saw how little of the humor of the tale M. des Illes had allowed himself to put into his recital.
Francis’s long life amid people of unblemished character had by no means changed his views. Yes, he had been a thief; but now he was out of business. He had retired, just as M. des Illes had done, there being no longer any cause why he should relieve his own necessity by lessening the luxury of others; monsieur might feel quite secure.
As for politics, he was all for the Bonapartes, who, he said, were magnificent thieves, whereas he had never been able to rise to the very highest level of his business. M. des Illes objected, and the last time he had indulged himself in a prolonged absence—monsieur would comprehend that this was many years ago—there had been a serious quarrel; and how could he annoy so good a master, even though they disagreed as to matters political? If monsieur were still curious as to his life, he had a few pages in which he had set down certain things worth remembering, and would monsieur like to see them? Monsieur would very much like to read them. Thus came into my possession this astonishing bit of autobiography, which at last I had leave to copy. It was oddly written, in a clear hand, and in a quaint and abrupt style, from which, in my use of it, I have generally departed, but of which I fear some traces may yet be seen.
Two evenings later, and before I had found leisure to read all of it, François said to me, “Does monsieur think to give my poor little account to the world?” I said I did not. At this I saw his very expressive face assume a look which I took to mean some form of regret. As he spoke he was standing in the doorway, and was now and then mechanically passing a brush over my dress-coat. Presently he said: “I only desired not to have set forth in France, when I am gone, such things as might give concern to M. des Illes, or trouble him if he should outlive me.”
I replied that it should never be published; and when, after this, he lingered, I added, “Is that as you desire?” It was not. His vanity was simple and childlike, but immense.
“Monsieur will find it entertaining,” he said; and I, that this was sure to be the case, and that it were a pity the world should lose so valuable a work. At this his lean face lighted up. Perhaps in English it might some day be of interest to monsieur’s friends; and as he understood that the English were given to stealing whole countries belonging to feeble folks, it might seem to them less unusual than it would to people like those of France. But monsieur was not English. He asked my pardon. I kept a grave face, and inquired if it were a treatise on the art of theft.
This embarrassed him a little, and he made answer indirectly: did monsieur entirely disapprove this form of transfer? He seemed to regard it as merely a manner of commercial transaction by which one man alone profited. I returned that as to this nations held diverse opinions, and that some Oriental people considered it a creditable pursuit, but that personally it did seem to me wrong.
M. des Illes was distinctly of that opinion; but, after all, his (François’s) account of what he had seen and been was not limited to mere details of business, and I might discover his adventures to have other interest. When he heard at last that some day I might, through his writings, enlighten the nations outside of the pale of Gallic civilization, he went away with the satisfied air of a young author who has found a publisher with a just appreciation of his labors—a thing both rare and consolatory.
His personal history, as I have said, was well known to the entire household; nor did he resent a jest now and then as to his disused art, if it came from one of a rank above his own. The old duke would say, “Any luck of late in snuff-boxes, François?”
“M. le Duc knows they are out of fashion.”
“Eh bien; then handkerchiefs?”
“Diable!” says François. “They are no more of lace; what use to steal them? M. le Duc knows that gentlemen are also out of fashion. M. le Bourgeois is too careful nowadays.”
“True,” says the duke, and walks away, sadly reflective.
This François was what people call a character. He had a great heart and no conscience; was fond of flowers, of birds, and of children; pleased to chat of his pilferings, liking the fun of the astonishment he thus caused. Had he really no belief in its being wrong to steal? I do not know. The fellow was so humorous that he sometimes left one puzzled and uncertain. He went duly to mass and confession, but—“Mon Dieu, monsieur; nowadays one has so little to confess, M. le Curé must find it dull.”
When I would know his true ethics as to thine and mine, he cried, laughing, “Le mien et le tien; ’t is but a letter makes the difference, and, after all, one must live.” It seemed a simple character, but there is no such thing; all human nature is more complex than they who write choose to think it. If character were such as the writer of fiction often makes it, the world would be a queer place.
He is dead long ago, this same François, as my old friend Des Illes wrote me a few years later. He was very fond of a parrot he had taught to cry, “Vive Bonaparte!” whenever the aged duke came by his perch. One morning Poll was stolen by some adroit purveyor of parrots. This loss François felt deeply, and vastly resented the theft,—in fact, he described himself as being humbled by the power of any one to steal from a man bred up to the business,—and so missed his feathered companion that for the first time he became depressed, and at last took to his bed. He died quietly a few weeks after, saying to the priest who had given him the final rites of the church: “M. le Curé—the gold snuff-box the duke gave you—” “Well, my son?” “The left-hand pocket is the safer; we look not there.” Then, half wandering, he cried: “Adieu, Master Time! Thou art the best thief, after all”; and so died, holding Des Illes’s hand.
I learned from the duke and his son, as well as from M. des Illes, many more facts as to François than he himself recorded; the good old Curé Le Grand, who was a great friend of mine, also contributed some queer incidents of François’s life; and thus it was that, when years had gone by, and I became dependent on my pen, I found myself able to write fully of this interesting product of Parisian life.
After considering the material in my possession, I soon discovered that it would not answer my purpose to let François’s broken memoirs tell his story. There were names and circumstances in them which it were still unwise to print. Much of what I may call the scenery of his somewhat dramatic adventures was supplied by the singular knowledge of the Revolution which the curé delighted to furnish. The good priest was by far the most aged of this group, and yet to the last the most clear as to memories of a tragic past. Thus it came that I was led to write my story of François in the third person, with such enlightening aid as I obtained from those who knew him better than I.
In his defense I may be permitted to quote the curé’s cautiously worded opinion:
“Oh, monsieur, no man knows another, and every man is ever another to himself. For you François is a thief, strangely proud of an exceptional career and of his victories over the precautions of those from whom he stole. Is it not so, monsieur?” I said it was. “But the bon Dieu alone knows all of a man. I was not a priest until after the great wars. God pardon me, but I like still to tell tales of Jena and Austerlitz, and of what we did in those days of victory. To kill men! The idea now fills me with horror, and yet I like nothing better, as monsieur well knows, than to talk of those days of battle. And François—’t is much the same. How could one live with these dear people, and get no lesson from their lives? Our gay, merry-minded François loved to surprise the staid folks who came hither to visit us; but I know that—ah, well, well, priests know many things.”
I thanked him, but still had doubts as to whether the moral code of our friend François was ever materially altered by precept, example, or by the lack of necessity to carry on his interesting branch of industry.
Before telling his story I like to let him say for himself the only apologetic words I could discover in this memoir:
“I have no wish to write my whole life. I want to put down some things I saw and some scenes in which I was an actor. I am now old. I suppose, from what I am told, that I was wicked when I was young. But if one cannot see that he was a sinner, what then? The good God who made me knows that I was but a little Ishmaelite cast adrift on the streets to feed as I might. I defend not myself. I blame not the chances of life, nor yet the education which fate gave me. It was made to tempt one in need of food and shelter. ’T is a great thing to be able to laugh easily and often, and this good gift I had; and so, whether in safety or in peril, whether homeless or housed, I have gone through life merry. I had thought more, says M. le Curé, had I been less light of heart. But thus was I made, and, after all, it has its good side. I have always liked better the sun than the shadow; and as to relieving my wants, are the birds thieves?”
I noticed on the margins of François’s memoirs remarks in a neat female handwriting, which he told me were made by Mme. des Illes, who alone had read his story.
At the end I found written: “If ever another should read what is set down in these pages, let them have the comment of charity. He who wrote them was by nature gifted with affection, good sense, and courage. He had many delicacies of character, but that of which nature meant to make a gentleman and a man of refinement, desertion and evil fortune made a thief and a reprobate. She who wrote this knew him as no one else did, and, with God’s help, drew him out of the slough of crime and into a long life of honest ways. CLAIRE DES ILLES.”
Notes
2 “A Madeira Party,” The Century Co., which contains a tale called “A Little More Burgundy,” to which the reader is referred.