How They Came Out of Ham

On the night of the 7th and 8th of January, Charras was sleeping. The noise of his bolts being drawn awoke him.

“So then!” said he, “they are going to put us in close confinement.” And he went to sleep again.

An hour afterwards the door was opened. The commandant of the fort entered in full uniform, accompanied by a police agent carrying a torch.

It was about four o’clock in the morning.

“Colonel,” said the Commandant, “dress yourself at once.”

“What for?”

“You are about to leave.”

“Some more rascality, I suppose!”

The Commandant was silent. Charras dressed himself.

As he finished dressing, a short young man, dressed in black, came in. This young man spoke to Charras.

“Colonel, you are about to leave the fortress, you are about to quit France. I am instructed to have you conducted to the frontier.”

Charras exclaimed,—

“If I am to quit France I will not leave the fortress. This is yet another outrage. They have no more the right to exile me than they had the right to imprison me. I have on my side the Law, Right, my old services, my commission. I protest. Who are you, sir?”

“I am the Private Secretary of the Minister of the Interior.”

“Ah! it is you who are named Léopold Lehon.”

The young man cast down his eyes.

Charras continued,—

“You come on the part of some one whom they call ‘Minister of the Interior,’ M. de Morny, I believe. I know M. de Morny. A bald young man; he has played the game where people lose their hair; and now he is playing the game where people risk their heads.”

The conversation was painful. The young man was deeply interested in the toe of his boot.

After a pause, however, he ventured to speak,—

“M. Charras, I am instructed to say that if you want money —”

Charras interrupted him impetuously.

“Hold your tongue, sir! not another word. I have served my country five-and-twenty years as an officer, under fire, at the peril of my life, always for honor, never for gain. Keep your money for your own set!”

“But, sir —”

“Silence! Money which passes through your hands would soil mine.”

Another pause ensued, which the private secretary again broke,—

“Colonel, you will be accompanied by two police agents who have special instructions, and I should inform you that you are ordered to travel with a false passport, and under the name of Vincent.”

“Good heavens!” said Charras; “this is really too much. Who is it imagines that they will make me travel by order with a false passport, and under a false name?” And looking steadily at M. Léopold Lehon, “Know, sir, that my name is Charras and not Vincent, and that I belong to a family whose members have always borne the name of their father.”

They set out.

They journeyed by carriage as far as Creil, which is on the railway.

At Creil station the first person whom Charras saw was General Changarnier.

“Ah! it is you, General.”

The two proscripts embraced each other. Such is exile.

“What the deuce are they doing with you?” asked the General.

“What they are probably doing with you. These vagabonds are making me travel under the name of Vincent.”

“And me,” said Changarnier, “under the name of Leblanc.”

“In that case they ought at least to have called me Lerouge,” said Charras, with a burst of laughter.

In the meantime a group, kept at a distance by the police agents, had formed round them. People had recognized them and saluted them. A little child, whose mother could not hold him back, ran quickly to Charras and took his hand.

They got into the train apparently as free as other travellers. Only they isolated them in empty compartments, and each was accompanied by two men, who sat one at the side and the other facing him, and who never took their eyes off him. The keepers of General Changarnier were of ordinary strength and stature. Those of Charras were almost giants. Charras is exceedingly tall; they topped him by an entire head. These men who were galley sergeants, had been carabineers; these spies had been heroes.

Charras questioned them. They had served when quite young, from 1813. Thus they had shared the bivouac of Napoleon; now they ate the same bread as Vidocq. The soldier brought to such a sorry pass as this is a sad sight.

The pocket of one of them was bulged out with something which he was hiding there.

When this man crossed the station in company with Charras, a lady traveller said,—

“Has he got M. Thiers in his pocket?”

What the police agent was hiding was a pair of pistols. Under their long, buttoned-up and doubled-breasted frock coats these men were armed. They were ordered to treat “those gentlemen” with the most profound respect, but in certain circumstances to blow out their brains.

The prisoners had each been informed that in the eyes of the different authorities whom they would meet on the road they would pass for foreigners, Swiss or Belgians, expelled on account of their political opinions, and that the police agents would keep their title of police agents, and would represent themselves as charged with reconducting these foreigners to the frontier.

Two-thirds of the journey were accomplished without any hindrance. At Valenciennes an incident occurred.

The coup d’état having succeeded, zeal reigned paramount. No task was any longer considered despicable. To denounce was to please; zeal is one of the forms of servitude towards which people lean the most willingly. The general became a common soldier, the prefect became a commissary of police, the commissary of police became a police spy.

The commissary of police at Valenciennes himself superintended the inspection of passports. For nothing in the world would he have deputed this important office to a subordinate inspector. When they presented him the passport of the so-called Leblanc, he looked the so-called Leblanc full in the face, started, and exclaimed,—

“You are General Changarnier!”

“That is no affair of mine,” said the General.

Upon this the two keepers of the General protested and exhibited their papers, perfectly drawn up in due form.

“Mr. Commissary, we are Government agents. Here are our proper passports.”

“Improper ones,” said the General.

The Commissary shook his head. He had been employed in Paris, and had been frequently sent to the headquarters of the staff at the Tuileries, to General Changarnier. He knew him very well.

“This is too much!” exclaimed the police agents. They blustered, declared that they were police functionaries on a special service, that they had instructions to conduct to the frontier this Leblanc, expelled for political reasons, swore by all the gods, and gave their word of honor that the so-called Leblanc was really named Leblanc.

“I do not much believe in words of honor,” said the Commissary.

“Honest Commissary,” muttered Changarnier, “you are right. Since the 2d of December words of honor and oaths are no more than worthless paper money.”

And then he began to smile.

The Commissary became more and more perplexed. The police agents ended by invoking the testimony of the prisoner himself.

“Now, sir, tell him your name yourself.”

“Get out of the difficulty yourselves,” answered Changarnier.

All this appeared most irregular to the mind of a provincial alguazil.

It seemed evident to the Commissary of Valenciennes that General Changarnier was escaping from Ham under a false name with a false passport, and with false agents of police, in order to mislead the authorities, and that it was a plot to escape which was on the point of succeeding.

“Come down, all three of you!” exclaimed the Commissary.

The General gets down, and on putting foot to the ground notices Charras in the depths of his compartment between his two bullies.

“Oho! Charras, you are there!” he cries.

“Charras!” exclaimed the Commissary. “Charras there! Quick! the passports of these gentlemen!” And looking Charras in the face,—

“Are you Colonel Charras?”

“Egad!” said Charras.

Yet another complication. It was now the turn of Charras’s bullies to bluster. They declared that Charras was the man called Vincent, displayed passports and papers, swore and protested. The Commissary’s suspicions were fully confirmed.

“Very well,” said he, “I arrest everybody.”

And he handed over Changarnier, Charras, and the four police agents to the gendarmes. The Commissary saw the Cross of Honor shining in the distance. He was radiant.

The police arrested the police. It happens sometimes that the wolf thinks he has seized a victim and bites his own tail.

The six prisoners — for now there were six prisoners — were taken into a parlor at the railway station. The Commissary informed the town authorities. The town authorities hastened hither, headed by the sub-prefect.

The sub-prefect, who was named Censier, comes in, and does not know whether he ought to salute or to question, to grovel in the dust or to keep his hat on his head. These poor devils of magistrates and local officials were very much exercised in their minds. General Changarnier had been too near the Dictatorship not to make them thoughtful. Who can foresee the course of events? Everything is possible. Yesterday called itself Cavaignac, to-day calls itself Bonaparte, to-morrow may call itself Changarnier. Providence is really cruel not to let sub-prefects have a peep at the future.

It is sad for a respectable functionary, who would ask for nothing better than to be servile or arrogant according to circumstances, to be in danger of lavishing his platitudes on a person who is perhaps going to rot forever in exile, and who is nothing more than a rascal, or to risk being insolent to a............